On Wednesday, the Unicode Consortium released Unicode 8, the next major update to the Unicode Standard. The Standard defines things like special characters and emoji, which many manufacturers, including Apple, use in their software.
Unicode 8 introduces nearly 8,000 new characters, including letters to support new languages and six new scripts. Perhaps more interesting, to us anyway, is that it also includes 37 new emoji and 5 emoji modifiers for various skin colors.
Google-owned Nest launched some new home automation gear while refreshing its entire lineup at a media event held in San Francisco this morning. Designed for personal home security, the new Nest Cam is born out of Nest's acquisition of Wi-Fi video streaming camera maker Dropcam.
The $199 camera has a magnetic stand and can capture and stream a 130-degree video in Full HD 1080p resolution so you can keep an eye on your home while at work.
Moreover, it has advanced night vision, Nest Aware-powered activity alerts and boasts some other cool features worth mentioning.
A stylized Tomb Raider game is coming to mobiles as developer Square Enix Montréal announced at E3 Lara Croft GO. Created by the same team that brought you award-winning strategy game Hitman GO, Lara Croft GO is billed as a ground-breaking mobile experience.
The game takes place in a long-forgotten ancient civilization and adopts a turn-based concept with exploration and puzzle solving thrown in for good measure, a recipe which has made Lara Croft, the heroine of the hugely successful Tomb Raider series, such a phenomenon in video games.
Apple Music launches June 30 and while the company has said that unlimited streaming will set US-based music lovers back $9.99 per month, the iPhone maker has yet to reveal pricing for other markets in which the service will sell.
A recent sighting in the latest iOS 8.4 beta shared with iDownloadBlog indicates Apple Music will be priced the same dollar for dollar across Europe, with UK customers paying £9.99 per month and the rest of the continent €9.99 per month, or £14.99/€14.99 for family plans.
These prices have yet to be confirmed on Apple’s official website. It's important to note that UK prices include tax while US ones don't include sales tax, which varies by state. As a result, Brits will be paying a bit of a premium compared to US users.
Meanwhile, many independent labels in the UK may refuse to sign Apple Music contract, meaning the service could launch without such big-name artists as Adele and the Arctic Monkeys.
Starting today, Wednesday, June 17, in-store sales of the Apple Watch have kicked off in select Apple retail stores with limited availability across launch markets.
As per web reports, last evening certain Apple Stores in the United States have begun receiving shipments of the device for in-store pickup via Apple's new Reserve & Pickup service for watch buyers.
Several supply chain reports have indicated that this year's 'iPhone 6s' and 'iPhone 6s Plus' releases will feature Apple's pressure-sensitive screen technology called Force Touch that debuted on the Apple Watch and now a revered analyst has given these reports an aura of credibility.
Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities wrote in a note to clients, a copy of which was obtained by the Japanese blog MacOtakara, that Apple's implementation of Force Touch on the upcoming phones will make them slightly thicker than the present-generation iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
Apple has revoked Monster's MFi license in wake of its Beats lawsuit, reports The Wall Street Journal. Monster, the A/V company who manufactured headphones for Beats in its early days, filed a lawsuit against the company in January for duping it out of potential proceeds from the Apple acquisition.
Monster’s general counsel David Tognotti said Apple's move to pull its MFi license is in retribution for the suit, and that it can significantly disrupt their business—which still involves building premium headphones. “It shows a side of Apple that consumers don’t see very often,” he said. “Apple can be a bully.”
Apple News, a brand new Flipboard-like app set to debut when iOS 9 launches this fall, will be run by a team of professional journalists who are currently being hired by Apple, The Financial Times learned Tuesday.
It's part of a broader push by the company to personalize the content it delivers to users of its devices, according to a recent job ad seeking successful candidates that would “identify and deliver the best in breaking national, global and local news”.
More importantly, the move indicates Apple is more interested in doing curated distribution for the News service than rely on algorithms like Google News does.
Telltale Games, the makers of rather popular cinematic cross-platform games such as The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and The Wolf Among Us, announced at E3 a brand new miniseries for the iPhone and iPad called The Walking Dead: Michonne.
Developed by Skybound and framed as the next installment in The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series, the game takes place between issues #126 and #139 in the comics series and features the particularly popular Michonne character.
Microsoft-owned Skype has now made its web-based client available regardless of where you live, following its limited rollout last November.
Skype for Web runs in any web browser that supports modern web technologies, including Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox on Windows and OS X.
If you ever wondered which artists you would be listening to if you were born in another time, now you can thanks to Rewind, a new feature by Spotify that helps you turn your music back in time.
By doing so, Rewind makes it easy and supposedly fun to know what you'd be listening to in another decade, based on what you listen to today and thanks in no small part to Spotify's rich knowledge graph about its user base.
It's taken a week, but Apple has finally uploaded this year's WWDC keynote to YouTube. The replay has been available as an embedded video on Apple's website, but it required that you be on a device with QuickTime installed to watch it.
So folks who missed Apple’s WWDC keynote last week, or would just like to watch it again, things have just been made much easier. You can now view it within YouTube's desktop or mobile web app, or via the native mobile YouTube app.