Apple’s annual ‘back to school’ promotion begins tomorrow!

Apple will begin it’s annual ‘Back To School’ Promotion tomorrow,  Tuesday, July 1st, with a likely offer of an iTunes Store/App Store gift card to students that purchase a Mac, iPad, or iPhone.

 

If similar to last’s year’s promotion, the offer will be a $100 App Store gift card for the purchase of a new Mac or a $50 App Store gift card with the purchase of an iPad or iPhone.

 

So if you’ve been waiting for a good time to make that Apple purchase, now might just be the right time! Tomorrow in fact! The same exact right time that the US is going to beat Belgium in the World cup!

 

What a good day, tomorrow. We like you.

 

 

 

OS X Yosemite designed with Retina screens in mind?

Macworld’s Jason Snell, after spending some time hands on with OS X Yosemite, has declared that he thinks that the operating system was designed with Retina Screens in mind – exciting – considering that we’re still sitting here patiently waiting for the MacBook Air’s to be graced with the power of Retina.

 

From the Sauce:

 

“For a while now, I’ve thought that 2014 would be the year that Retina spreads across the Mac product line. After spending time with Yosemite on both Retina and non-Retina systems, I’m more confident than ever in that guess. Yosemite’s new design feels like it was built for Retina displays: Thin Helvetica Neue replaces the long-serving but chunky Lucida Grande as the system typeface.”

 

The general consensus is that a Retina macbook air will be released later this year to coincide with the public release of Yosemite. Yay!

 

 

 

 

iPhone Tip Of The Day! Siri Edition.

Here’s your hot tip for this fine Friday afternoon! In iOS 7 you don’t have to do all that work (pressing the home button ) to get Siri’s attention – if the phone is awake, you can simply lift the phone to your ear and start talking. After you’ve gotten her attention, you can put the phone anywhere in front of you to talk to her.

 

Simply go to Settings> General> Siri> Switch the button for ‘Raise to Speak’ to on.

 

Easy! Now go ask Siri what awesome things you should do this weekend! Oh, what, you already have awesome things planned? Well aren’t you just too cool for school. You still need Siri man, how you gonna get to that awesome place where they have those awesome free cocktails without her? Huh? How you gonna have cool facts to impress the ladies without her? HUH?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

iPhone Tip Of The Day

This one’s for the walkers out there, you good honest souls you! When using maps in iOS 7, you have the option to choose walking directions as a dafault in settings, and to have Siri read you the directions turn- by- turn. Snazzy.

 

To set walking directions as your default, go to Settings>Maps. Scroll down to the Preferred Directions section and choose between walking and driving.

 

To ask Siri to give you prompted map directions whilst walking, tap the Directions button in the top left hand corner, select the walking icon at the top of the screen, enter your destination and then tap Route.

 

Interesting, (and some might say challenging), fact for you – Given that the world is about 25,000 miles in circumference and that the average walking rate is 3 miles per hour, it would take a person walking nonstop approximately 347 days to walk around the world.

 

Go to it!

 

 

 

 

New Emoji yay

In case you guys weren’t paying attention to your Facebook feed last week,  the world has been blessed by around 250 new Emoji ( yes, the plural of Emoji is Emoji. Like moose, although we, as awesome people, prefer Meese.)

 

Apparently the people in charge of Emoji are The Unicode Consortium, which sounds way fancier than what we had imagined – ‘ the wacky consortium of fun little doodle things.’  Anyway, they’ve announced version 7.0 of the Unicode Standard, which will in turn see the introduction of all those sweet new Emoji which will be seen in future versions of the Android and iOS operating systems.

 

According to the Unicode Consortium, the new emoji characters are primarily derived from characters used in the Wingdings and Webdings fonts. A full list of the new emoji names can be found on Emojipedia, which includes descriptions for each future emoji. A few examples:

 

 

– “Clamshell Mobile Phone”
– “man in business suit levitating”
– “Black Skull & Crossbones”
– “chipmunk”
– “Sleuth or Spy”
– “reversed hand with middle finger extended”

 

 

We’re especially looking forward to using the man in business suit levitating next to a chipmunk. For… reasons.

 

 

iPhone Tip Of The Day! Camera Edition

If you’re like us, you use your iPhone camera a lot. Which is super handy and awesome, right, but sometimes there’s that little issue of lighting that can overexpose, underexpose, or just crappily expose your photos.

 

Here’s a handy tip for getting better lighting by using the Exposure and Focus Lock feature:

 

 

*Point the Camera at the lighting you want to use.

*Tap and hold to lock the exposure to those light conditions.

*Turn the phone to the object of your photographic attraction, taking the locked exposure with you.

*Shoot your photo as normal.

*Magic.

 

This feature is also be used to lock focus, so you can overcome weird depth issues as well by doing  exactly the same as above. And now, you, like us, can become just that little bit closer to shooting photos like a pro!

 

Sweet Bro!

 

 

 

How to take an extra 10% off any single purchase at Best Buy

Just in case you guys didn’t see it- yesterday we outlined how to get the best deal on a brand new MacBook Air that we’ve ever seen. 

 

One important part of getting that deal is something that we want to make sure everyone is aware of, because it can help you in so many more purchases in the future!

 

It’s the Best Buy 10% off any single item purchase coupon from the Movers Guide Coupon Book. This book is free, convenient, and anyone can get one. Just go to your local Post Office, if it’s not lying around, you can ask any one of the lovely USPS employees for one and they’ll get one for you, no problems.

 

Again, 10% off any single item purchase at Best Buy! We’ll bring you all the great deals on tech stuff that Best buy have in the future so you can combine and stack those discounts too!

 

Sweet!

 

 

 

$585 for a brand new MacBook Air? Here’s how.

Right now you can get a brand spanking new MacBook Air for as little as $585. We know, it’s the best deal we’ve ever seen, AND it’s from a triple stacked discount, which is all kinds of extra fun.

 

So here’s how you get it:

 

Best Buy currently has a $100 discount on all of the newest 2014 MacBook Air

 

This is awesome, but it only gets better once you combine that deal with the second deal that Best Buy is offering – if you have a valid .edu email address, you get an extra $150 off. 

 

This is what this means, broken down:

 

– 11.6″ MacBook Air, 4GB, 128GB SSD: $899. With the $100 Discount –  $799. With the extra $150 discount, the final price is $649

 

– 11.6″ MacBook Air, 4GB, 256GB SSD: $1099. With the $100 Discount – $999. With the extra $150 discount, the final price is $849

 

– 13.3″ MacBook Air, 4GB, 128GB SSD: $999. With the $100 Discount – $899. With the extra $150 discount, the final price is $749.

 

– 13.3″ MacBook Air, 4GB, 256GB SSD: $1199. With the $100 Discount – $1099. With the extra $150 discount, the final price is $949.

 

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

 

Would you like an extra 10% off that already heavily discounted price? Yeah?

 

Ok, here’s what you do. Go to your local post office. You’re looking for the Movers Coupon book. They’ll usually have them lying around, but if they don’t, you can ask them for one. They’re free, and inside you’ll find a coupon for 10% off any single purchase at Best Buy.

 

And yes, this further discount can be combined with the two discounts above. The only caveat is that in order to use the Movers Coupon you need to go in-store to make your purchase.

 

If you choose to take up the first two deals without the 10% Movers Coupon, you can make your purchase from the online Best Buy Store and shipping is free. The combined Best Buy deals will last until June 21, 2014. The $150 off deal for students lasts until July 12, 2014.

 

 

You’re welcome.

 

 

 

iPhone Fact Of The Day – Logo edition

Apple’s first logo was designed by a guy named Ron Wayne, and depicts Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree.

 

It was almost immediately replaced by Rob Janoff’s ‘Rainbow Apple. The logo was apparently designed with a bite taken out of it so that it wouldn’t be confused with a cherry, and the colored stripes were to make the logo more accessible and to represent the fact that the Apple II computer could generate graphics in color.

 

There is a myth that the Apple logo with a bite taken out of it is a reference to the ‘father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence’  Alan Turing, and what is thought to be  his method of suicide- eating an apple with a lethal dose of cyanide in it. This myth has lingered, although both Janoff and Apple deny any homage to Turing in the design of the logo.

 

On August 27, 1999 Apple officially dropped the rainbow scheme and began to use monochromatic themes. An Aqua-themed version of the monochrome logo was used from 1999 to 2003, and a Glass-themed version was used from 2007 to 2013. With the release of iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks in fall of 2013, the logo now appears flat and white with no glossy effects.

 

So there you have it! Bet you didn’t know you were gonna learn THAT today, huh!

 

 

 

New iwatch rumours

The iWatch rumors have ramped up recently, with sources claiming October will be when the new wearable Apple product will be announced.

 

Excited much?

 

Both Re/code‘s John Paczkowski and the Nikkei Asian Review Newspaper both have sources who both claim that come october there will be a special event to announce the watch, and that we can expect to see the new technology tie in closely with the Health App which Apple announced at WWDC and which will be available to the public with iOS 8 a month earlier.

 

Nikkei added that the wearable tech will have a curved OLED touchscreen and that Apple is expecting to sell up to 5 million units per month. Because it’s going to be an awesome product, obviously ( hopefully)!

 

Other rumors doing the rounds is that the iWatch will be a product of an Apple/Nike collaboration, that the iWatch face will be round and that  it will come in two or more sizes.  See our previous article on the iWatch to see the people Apple has hired to purportedly work on the product.

 

We know there’s a lot of anticipation and skepticism surrounding the idea of this product, so it will be interesting to see what happens when ( if?) it launches. We personally think it will surprise many of the doubters, that it will sell by the bucketload, that it’ll be rad, and that it will be announced in October and be available before Christmas.

 

We also like putting it all on black, so there you have it.