1 hour ago | Posted in: industry
US-based game retailer GameStop is planning to add 23 Simply Mac locations this year, and as many as 400 Spring Mobile and Cricket locations, says the Star-Telegram. The company bought out Simply Mac and Spring Mobile last year in an attempt to diversify its revenue. Simply Mac is an authorized Apple reseller, whereas Spring Mobile sells AT&T products; Cricket is based on the AT&T network. The expansion is expected to cost up to $140 million, based on a mix of buying existing outlets and constructing new ones. GameStop says it expects to add 200 to 250 Spring locations and 100 to 150 Cricket outlets.
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The Samsung Galaxy S5 might be the phone that Android users have been craving for some time. Information coming out of Mobile World Congress painted the phone to be the next leap in innovation spearheaded by Samsung to breathe life back into their smartphones. From changes in the camera and adding pieces of technology to aid a healthy lifestyle, on top of a powerful set of internals, the phone has been set up by Samsung marketing to be the next must have phone for consumers at all levels. But is Samsung creating a phone that will indeed work for everyone, or are they stretching themselves too thin to cover so many ideas? Read our review and find out.
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Analysts for two financial firms, Barclays and Morgan Stanley, are contending that Taiwanese firm Catcher Technology will supply metal casings for the next-generation iPhone. Both firms in fact expect Catcher's share of iPhone 6 casings to top 10 million units this year. Much of the argument is based on Catcher's existing involvement in the Apple supply chain; the firm is thought to produce casings for both the MacBook Pro and the iPhone 5s, to the degree that 40 percent of its revenue stems from Apple orders.
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Google has updated its online Maps service by adding the option to view earlier Street View imagery. Users of Google Maps can, in a number of locations, use previously-collected Street View photographs to explore an area, and be able to compare recent shots of the location with those from the same place dated from as far back as 2007.
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4 hours ago | Posted in iOS apps
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Movies provides users with reviews, trailers, and showtimes for all of the movies currently in theaters. Users can also find information on upcoming movies and titles recently released on DVD. A number of reported bugs have been addressed with this update.
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Path is a social network where users can share various aspects of their day-to-day life. Support is included for capturing thoughts, photos, videos, places, music, movies, books, and even sleep. Version 3.4.3 includes a number of bug fixes and will be the last release that support iOS 6.
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TextExpander allows users to create a library of abbreviation shortcuts for frequently used snippets of text. These snippets can then be used to quickly type text in more than 150 apps that include TextExpander support, such as OmniFocus, Things, and WriteRoom. A problem where plain text snippets could change to form mated text inadvertently has been fixed in this release.
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Pinnacle Studio allows iPad users to edit film footage directly on their mobile device. Clips can be arranged on a storyboard, while built-in transitions, effects, and audio can be used to enhance footage. Various bugs have been fixed in the v5.0.1 update.
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Image Blender is a tool for combining images with masks and different blend modes. Within the app users can specify exactly where images should be blended, and personalized filters with overlays can be saved for later use. Version 2.2.2 fixes issues with saving just a masked foreground. A problem where masks would not be cleared has also been resolved.
4 hours ago | Posted in: peripherals
Code contained in iOS 7.1 and 7.1.1 suggests that Apple is planning to bring Siri to the Apple TV. A PLIST file for Assistant -- an internal Apple name for Siri -- includes the Apple TV lineup under its collection of supported devices. Notably, though, no Apple TV to date has included the microphone that would be needed for Siri.
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Subscribers of Amazon Prime will be able to enjoy classic HBO shows in the near future, the retailer has revealed. At the same time, Amazon has announced HBO Go will be added to the company's Fire TV, allowing the streaming media box to show recently-broadcast programs as well as its archive of over 1,700 shows, original films, and specials.
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Apple has released a minor update for the OS X version of FaceTime, v1.0.5. The patch is aimed directly at resolving connection problems some people have been experiencing, particularly in OS X Snow Leopard. The file is a 17.6MB download at the Mac App Store.
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WhatsApp has hit a milestone of half a billion active users, the messaging service has announced. The 500 million-user figure is 50 million more than it reported in February, when it also announced it was being acquired by Facebook for a total of $19 billion in cash and shares, with the service now seeing 700 million photographs and 100 million videos being shared between users every day.
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The biggest news in today's Apple vs Samsung patent trial was the previously-reported revelation of a secret deal between Google and Samsung in which the search and advertising giant not only agreed to indemnify Samsung if it lost on two of the patent claims in this trial, but that Google -- not Samsung -- was to "direct and control" litigation and defense on Samsung's behalf. The revelation, which Samsung had previously denied in court, will be used to diminish the Samsung claim that the case is really about Android.
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16 hours ago | Posted in: iPhone, Apple
A new Apple ad premiered tonight on Disney-owned ABC, called "Powerful." The 90-second spot (now available on Apple's YouTube channel) is the first this year to spotlight the iPhone 5s rather than the iPhone 5c, and features a band performing the Pixies song "Gigantic" while an array of apps -- beginning with musically-oriented ones, then branching off in other directions -- is shown. Like most recent Apple ads, the focus is on enabling people to do interesting things using their iPhones.
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Among other updates issued on Tuesday, Apple has further updated the iOS versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote -- formerly known collectively as iWork apps -- to version 2.2.1, just three weeks after its last update. The previous version introduced new features and restored old ones, but today's update lists only unnamed "stability and bug fixes," which might hint that the change is related somehow to an OpenSSL patch for 2013 Airport Extremes and Time Capsules issued earlier today.
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On Tuesday, Apple -- which had previously said none of its key software, operating systems, websites or web services had been affected by the Heartbleed OpenSSL security flaw -- issued a patch to its 2013 (only) Airport Extreme and Time Capsule products that support 802.11ac to fix the issue. The 2013 Airport Express is not affected by the bug, and does not require the update. The patch boosts the firmware version on the Extreme and Time Capsule to 7.7.3 and "provides security improvements related to SSL/TLS."
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21 hours ago | Posted in: industry, Apple
Google attorney James Mccoun testified today that the search engine giant agreed to defend Samsung at least in part against some of the claims against it in the ongoing Apple versus Samsung trial. Apple played pre-recorded testimony from the attorney who confirmed emails that Google would provide some level of indemnity over four patents held by Apple if Samsung was sued, or would possibly take over defense of the claims.
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As has been predicted for some time, a new malware threat exploits the same flaws in iOS that jailbreaking tools use in order to install itself on older jailbroken iPhones and iPads. The malware, likely to be found in devices where the user has installed third-party customizations, scans for the Apple ID and password of the user, then transmits it to remote servers. Current, 64-bit iOS devices like the iPhone 5s, iPad Air or second-generation iPad mini -- and un-jailbroken iOS devices of all sorts -- appear to be immune so far.
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OnOne Software has announced the upcoming release of its latest version of Perfect Photo Suite, adding improvements to photo browsing, file-management options, and more. Perfect Photo Suite 8.5 Photo Editor is a full-featured photo editor that also works as a plug-in with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and Apple Aperture. In v8.5.0, the Browse module includes speed and productivity enhancements, such as faster thumbnail and preview viewing, and new file management features for organization. Improved performance with the Perfect Eraser tool simplify object removal on difficult gradient background, and enhanced masking support in Perfect Effects and Perfect Layers utilizes multiple Masking Bugs on a layer.
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For the first time, access to OS X beta releases has been opened to non-developers. Apple has introduced the Beta Seed Program, which requires only that a person have an Apple ID and sign a confidentiality agreement. The agreement blocks people from sharing information to anyone not also registered to receive betas.
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