AppleInsider

MacBook sticker sellers see sizable sales surge after Apple's 'Stickers' ad airs Posted: 01 Aug 2014 08:16 AM PDT Apple's latest television advertisement -- which shows a number of MacBook Airs that have been customized by their owners with fanciful stickers -- has reportedly been a boon for shops that sell the vinyl decals, with some receiving four times as many orders as they did before the ad's release.

Apple officially closes on $3B purchase of Beats headphones & streaming service Posted: 01 Aug 2014 06:50 AM PDT Apple on Friday gave an official welcome to Beats Music and Beats Electronics, which are now a part of the Cupertino, Calif., outfit after the $3 billion purchase price was finalized.

Home button parts claimed to be for Apple's 4.7" & 5.5" 'iPhone 6' units surface with different designs Posted: 01 Aug 2014 05:16 AM PDT A pair of parts claimed to be for both Apple's anticipated 4.7- and 5.5-inch "iPhone 6" models were posted online Friday, showing very different designs not only from each other, but from the current iPhone 5s.

'BadUSB' malware lives in USB firmware to remain undetected, unfixable Posted: 31 Jul 2014 10:26 PM PDT A pair of researchers has discovered a flaw in the USB protocol's basic architecture that allows for malware to be programed into a device's firmware, making it nearly undetectable and impossible to patch.

Facebook's Slingshot adds 'reactions-to-reactions' in latest update, bypasses reply to unlock Posted: 31 Jul 2014 05:22 PM PDT Facebook on Thursday pushed out an update to its Slingshot photo messaging service and app, allowing users to bypass the "reply-to-unlock" mechanic by replying to "reactions" with photos, video or text.

Apple to roll out in-store iPhone 5s screen replacement program on Aug. 4 Posted: 31 Jul 2014 02:23 PM PDT Apple Stores will on Monday expand their iPhone repair services to include iPhone 5s screen replacements, helping to cut down on overall cost and turnover rates.

Redesigned Typo 2 physical keyboard for Apple's iPhone 5 & 5s now available for preorder Posted: 31 Jul 2014 01:42 PM PDT After being slapped with an injunction because of similarities to BlackBerry keyboards, the Typo physical keyboard for iPhone has been redesigned in a new second-generation model that will begin shipping in mid-September.

Apple likely to ship only 3 million 'iWatch' units this year, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says Posted: 31 Jul 2014 12:19 PM PDT Market expectations for Apple's anticipated "iWatch" may be grossly overestimated, as well-connected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said on Thursday that he expects that only 3 million wrist-worn smart devices from Apple will make it to store shelves by the end of this year.

Apple activates in-house content delivery network, begins migrating content downloads - report Posted: 31 Jul 2014 11:25 AM PDT Following months of rumors, Apple appears to be in the early stages of launching its own in-house content delivery network, the latest in a series of steps taken by the company in recent years to reduce its reliance on third-party infrastructure vendors to deliver content to customers.

MacRumors : Mac News and Rumors

Microsoft's Office for iPad apps, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint received a major update today that adds several new user-requested features to each app. All three apps have gained the ability to export files as PDFs, and each one has also gained new Picture Tools that let users crop to focus on the right part of an image. Third-party fonts have also been added to each app.

Excel now includes improved external keyboard support to make the experience of using Excel on the iPad more like a desktop usage experience. There are more print options available, and a new "Flick to Select" feature lets users flick to select all data in a row or column.

Excel is all about interacting with, consuming, and manipulating your data. When it comes to interacting with data, PivotTables are key to helping explore that data. With Excel for iPad you can now sort, filter, expand and collapse, show details, and even refresh PivotTables whose data is all contained within the workbook. You can even change how your PivotTables look and feel by changing both their visual style and layout.

We've also made it easier to consume workbooks and select data, including a large data range, with the introduction of a new flick gesture. Simply grab the selection handle, flick it in any direction, and Excel will automatically select from where you started to the next blank cell. Say you're at the top of a column of data and want to select all the way to the bottom. Just flick down and the column is selected automatically.

Word didn't gain new features beyond the Picture Tools, Fonts, and ability to send PDFs, but PowerPoint has seen some improvements. The app has a new Presenter View that lets users view and edit speaker notes, see next slides, and jump to other slides while presenting. Presenter tools allow for highlights and drawings to be erased within presentations, while new media features make it possible for users to play videos, sound effects, and background music while presenting. There are also new tools to insert videos from the Camera Roll and add/edit hyperlinks.

With this update you can also make your presentations more rich and interactive than ever by more easily including video and sound to help get your point across. Not only do all of your embedded videos and sound recordings now play right from PowerPoint for iPad, but you can insert video directly from your Camera Roll as well. This allows you to quickly record, embed, and present interactive content more quickly than ever, and all from one device.

Today's update is the second major update the Office software has gotten since its March release. Back in April, the three apps gained some important features that had been missing since launch, including the ability to print directly from the apps.

Microsoft's Office for iPad apps have proven to be highly successful for the company. During its Q4 earnings call in July, Microsoft announced that its Office for iPad software had been downloaded more than 35 million times.

Microsoft has committed to continually improving its Office for iPad apps, which now directly compete with Apple's own iWork suite including Numbers, Keynote, and Pages. "As this wave of updates hopefully shows, we're making good on our commitment to delivering continuous updates and improvements to the Office for iPad apps," read's the company's blog post on the new update.

All of the updates to the new Office apps are currently available and can be downloaded from the App Store for free. While the apps can be accessed for free, unlocking full capabilities, including editing and creating documents, requires an Office 365 subscription.

- Microsoft Word for iPad [Direct Link]

- Microsoft Excel for iPad [Direct Link]

- Microsoft PowerPoint for iPad [Direct Link]

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"Apple Clickbait Generator" is amazing

The iPhone 5c is a bust. Tim Cook doesn't know what he's doing. Apple can't innovate. The iPhone 6 is delayed. The sky is falling, Apple is doomed... dooooomed!

Despite Apple's long and arguably unparalleled track record of releasing innovative and successful products, not to mention its penchant for generating billions in revenue each and every single quarter, many pundits would still have you believe that Apple's demise is just a matter of time. As Horace Dediu astutely stated last year, "no activity by Apple has been seen as sufficient for its survival."

And so, even in 2014, there are no shortage of vapid, shortsighted, and laughably uninformed articles detailing Apple's impending demise.

But why send pageviews to the undeserving when you can create your own "Apple is doooomed!" article with just the click of a button.

Introducing the Apple Clickbait Generator. Created by Kirk Lennon and Owen Evans, this lovely tool creates a new clickbait Apple article with each refresh. The results are delightful.

Here's an excerpt of what came up for me when I tried it.

Many analysts are telling Apple to cut prices, reduce margins and to chase market share, but Apple's Cook refuses to budge. And yet there are clouds on the horizon. Existing iPhone owners may love their handsets, but they aren't winning over new owners. The move signals a fundamental change in philosophy, the philosophy that made Apple great, which was to innovate. Innovation is what made Apple great. It may take a few years, but you will slowly see the erosion of the Mac into an elegant OS for launching crappy apps.

As authentic as it gets.

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Your photos are super boring, but Matter can change that

Matter is a strange app. In all honesty, there's absolutely no reason for it to exist, and it serves virtually no meaningful purpose. That being said, I absolutely love it and I find myself using it far more often than I ever would have imagined.

Matter is a photo manipulation app that lets you add physical objects to your photos, but that description probably isn't going to sell you on how cool the app really is, so let me show you a photo I took -- along with the object I added in Matter -- which took me about 30 seconds to create:

Isn't that cool? I think it's cool. What is this crazy structure jutting out of the pond? I have absolutely no idea, but I put it there. I dropped the object in, tweaked the shadow a little bit to match the shadows in the photo, and saved it. Ta-da! But to be fair, that photo was pretty cool even before I added Matter to it, so let's take a look at an extremely boring photo instead.

Here's a shot of an apartment complex garage. It doesn't get much more bland than that, right? Now we'll add some objects that definitely don't belong there.

What are these strange UFO-esque discs hovering over the garage and parking lot? Your guess is as good as mine, but that totally drab snapshot is now a peculiar work of art thanks to Matter.

As you've probably gathered by now, this isn't the kind of app that is going to let you put a vintage filter on a touching photo of your kid, or help you create the perfect selfie. What it will do, however, is give you the tools to put dozens of geometric shapes into your world in an extremely easy way, and make your utterly dry photos actually enjoyable to look at. You can't ask for much more than that for US$1.99.

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Apple's CDN is live, should speed iOS and OS X upgrades

Since Apple began relying on downloaded upgrades of its operating system and software products, the need for a fast content delivery network (CDN) has been apparent whenever millions of users have tried to reach out for upgrades, and were suddenly silenced. Well, the next upgrades should be a bit smoother, as an industry analyst reports that Apple's fast CDN has gone live in the US and Europe.

The CDN can handle "multiple terabits per second of capacity," and according to Frost & Sullivan analyst Dan Rayburn, Apple has invested "well more than $100M in their CDN build out." That's not all -- Apple has reportedly paid Comcast and other internet service providers for direct access to their networks. Rayburn did a trace route on OS X downloads from a number of ISPs showing that the downloads were coming directly from Apple's CDN.

Rayburn talked to ISPs who say that "Apple has put a massive amount of capacity in place, with many saying that Apple has more than 10x the capacity they are using today." That will come in handy when OS X 10.10 Yosemite is released later this year and should speed up other downloads as well. To quote Rayburn,

Apple already controls the hardware, the OS (iOS/OS X) as well as the iTunes/App store platforms. Right now they control the entire customer experience, except for the way content is delivered to their devices, and they are quickly working to change that. While Apple doesn't own the last mile, paying to connect directly to it (in some places) and delivering content from their own servers allows them much more control over the user experience, especially for cloud based services. Over time, this is something that will make the experience and performance for consumers even better – and Apple's only just getting started.

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Apple gives Beats a big ol' public hug

Anyone with even a casual interest in the tech world, Apple products, or personal audio knows that Apple and Beats are BFFs now, but for everyone else, Tim Cook and company have now made it official with what the kids would call a public display of affection. A new page on Apple's site is devoted to welcoming Dre, Iovine, and the Beats brand into the fold.

Predictably, the welcome heaps praise on Beats and what the company has accomplished thus far while promising great things in the future. The blurb wraps up with "We can't wait to hear what's next." Get it? Get it? Apple can't wait to hear what's next. Because Beats is a music brand. Oh, what a bunch of rascals they have in Cupertino, eh?

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Tonality for Mac is a powerful black and white image editor

I used to think that my photos needed color to be compelling, but a good black-and-white image can be very powerful. Of course, producing a monochrome image from a color one is not as simple as removing the color information.

Talented photographers like the late Ansel Adams, who worked primarily in black and white, often shot with colored filters to highlight certain aspects of a subject, and then spent hours in the darkroom getting the tonality just right.

Today, there's a Mac app called Tonality. It's US$24.99 at the Mac App Store, and it offers great control over the final look of your black-and-white image. Yes, many of these tools are available in Photoshop and Lightroom, but this app is quicker and easier to use.

It features more than 150 pre-sets to get you started, but you can easily create your own looks. The app even supports digital color filters, so you can get very selective about how skies and other things in your image translate to black and white. For example, A red filter, used so frequently by Ansel Adams, darkens a light sky while letting the tones of the landscape pass mostly unchanged. Tonality gives you the freedom to experiment and create some really stunning photos.

The app also includes pressure-sensitive brushes and masking tools, and you can work with multiple layers. You also have control of selective blurring, vignette creation and frames.

Using the app is quite simple. You can load up to a 16 bit raw file and edit away (JPEGS or TIFF files are fine too). Down the right side of the screen are a series of pre-sets, or you can use sliders and filters to get the look you want.

When you're done editing, Tonality offers several export options. You can output to iPhoto, Aperture, Photoshop or Lightroom. You can also export to several social photo services like Flickr, Facebook, and SmugMug. Finally, you can share any image via email.There are also options to have your work professionally printed for postcards, framed prints, or prints on canvas. The only thing I found missing is the ability to compare your original color image, which would be good to have.

If you want a bit more, there is a Pro Edition available for $69.99. It's not available in the Mac App Store, but it adds things like plug-in support for Photoshop and Lightroom. It also adds more layers (eight rather than five) and some improvements in the histogram display.

The only thing I've seen with equal power and ease of use is part of the Nik tools package from Google for $150.00. Silver Efex Pro as part of that set has similar features.

Tonality is a very powerful package that is going to make a lot of photographers happy. Unlike Photoshop, it doesn't require a subscription. If you want to explore black-and-white imaging this is a great tool to have.

Tonality requires OS X 10.8 or later, and a 64 bit processor.

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