New iPads!

Apple pre-orders for iPad Air 2 and the iPad Mini 3 have begun in the United States! Have you gotten one yet? According to secret sauces, the iPad Air 2 might have lower supply levels than expected so go DO THAT ISH, MAN! Here! Right now!

You can get free shipping with an estimated shipping time (right now) of 2-3 business days. This will moooost likely increase as time goes on. If you don’t like to go direct through Apple, AT&T are also accepting pre-orders for both iPad models with a longer shipping estimate of 6-10 business days.

If you’re more of an in-store person, Apple has been rather classically vague about in-store availability, saying only that it will most likely be ‘Later in the Week’.

No doubt, if you’re in the market for the sleek power of an iPad Air 2 OR a shiny gold iPad Mini 2, you will get your hands on one, but we would recommend pre-ordering, probably through Apple themselves as soon as you can.

The iPad Air 2 is available in 16, 64, and 128GB configurations, with the Wi-Fi only models priced at $499, $599, and $699, respectively. Wi-Fi + Cellular models are priced at $629/$729/$829 for 16/64/128GB capacities.

Available in silver, gold, and space gray.

The iPad mini 3 comes in silver, space grey and gold, and 16, 64, and 128GB configurations. The Wi-Fi only models are priced at $399, $499, and $599, while the Wi-Fi + Cellular models are priced at $529, $629, and $729 for 16, 64, and 128GB configurations.

Missed the media event?

Missed Apple’s special media event last Thursday? Did you actually want to see the physical thing instead of just reading about what happened?

We got you!

Apple has released the whole event on their website, so you can sit down with a steaming cup of pumpkin spiced whiskey and some macaroons and watch that ish.

Here it is. 

Enjoy, you macaroon loving whisky drinking Apple fan you!*

*Macaroons & Whiskey not essential but solidly recommended.

Mark Zuckerberg cares about Ebola.

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Pricsilla Chan have given the Center for Disease Control Foundation a check for $25 MILLION dollars to help the fight against the spread of Ebola. Because Ebola be scary and is on the precipice of completely tearing apart and ruining parts of West Africa.

From the sauce direct:
“It has infected 8400 people so far, but it is spreading very quickly and projections suggest it could infect 1 million people or more over the next several months if not addressed,” he wrote. “We need to get Ebola under control in the near term so that it doesn’t spread further and become a long-term global health crisis that we end up fighting for decades at large scale, like HIV or polio.

“We believe our grant is the quickest way to empower the CDC and the experts in this field to prevent this outcome,” he continued. “Grants like this directly help the front-line responders in their heroic work. These people are on the ground setting up care centers, training local staff, identifying Ebola cases and much more.”

We, unlike other media, are not going to compare their $25 million gift to their current net worth or recent purchases, because these guys are being GOOD GUYS and any money you give to help others in need, no matter what, is not only admirable but amazing.

Rant over.

The donation will go to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Ebola response effort in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and in other spots in the world where Ebola is a threat.

If you want to give a donation, please head on over here – http://www.cdcfoundation.org/ –  then feel good about yourself for the rest of the day !

Apple Pay Making it’s Debut Monday!

Apple pay will be making it’s spectacular (ish) debut this coming Monday the 20th October!

Secret sauces ( mmm KFC, uh…) spilled the beans last week that retailers who will have Apple Pay enabled at their point of sale systems have already completed their training for the payments process AND THEN Tim Cook confirmed at the iPad media event on Thursday that Apple pay will indeed be up and running on Monday.

Banks however look like they’ll begin to support the payment system at different times (makes sense) making the release more of a staggered release. For example, USAA, one of Apple’s bank partners, has claimed that it plans on starting to support Apple Pay come November 7th.

Apple Pay will be enabled on iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus with a free update to iOS 8.1 and will be available in over 220,000 merchants country wide, including some big name chains such as Macy’s, Bloomingdales, McDonalds, Staples, Sephora, Walgreens, Whole Foods and, obviously, Apple. Because it would be weird if they didn’t.

You will also be able to use Apple Pay within the apps of companies such as Groupon, Lyft & Uber, Airbnb, OpenTable and Target. You will be able to use Apple pay with iPhone 5, iPhone 5S and iPhone 5c’s with the addition of your very own Apple Watch next year.

Hooray for Apple Pay? It’s spectacularish because it should be awesome, and a solid improvement to how payments are processed BUT not everyone can use it yet and there will probably be some (non-security related) bugs to work out before it becomes totally stable. BUT WE think it’s pretty exciting!

Therefore, Hooray!

Another NFL player got caught wearing beats!

Beats Headphones have been getting the best marketing in their life in the past few weeks, all thanks to Bose. Say whaat? Yup, you heard us. See, Beats have sponsorship with some of the heavyweight players in the NFL such as Cam Newton and Colin Kaepernick, however with Bose becoming the official sponsor of the entire NFL, this has caused some conflict.

Conflict, which, whilst perhaps costing Beats some cash to the tune of a couple of tens of thousands of dollars has also bought them some great PR.

The NFL, after signing with Bose, has said that they would fine every NFL player that was seen wearing Beats headphones on camera during training camps, practice before, during, and 90 minutes after any game.

Colin Kaepernick has already broken their rule and been fined $10,000 for wearing a pink pair (for breast cancer awareness) after a game a few weeks ago. It has been unclear as to whether Beats or Kaepernick himself picked up the tab for that one, but we know what we would have done if we were Beats. (Picked up the tab.)

More recently Cam Newton was also seen wearing beats on camera during pre-game warm ups in Cincinnati. It hasn’t been concluded if Newton has been fined or not, but there’s certainly been a lot about it in the press.

If he was fined, and if Beats did cover it, we think $20,000 is a pretty cheap price tag for them to pay to have international press coverage WITH  controversy over players breaking the rules in order to wear their brand.

Fun Fact: Michael Jordan was fined $5,000 for each game he played whilst wearing Air Jordans, but he wore them every game, and the fine reached $410,000 for the season while his salary was $610,000 per season at the time. BUT he didn’t care – because Air Jordan’s picked up the TAB believing, rightly, that the money was well worth the press coverage of both the controversy and seeing Michael play in the shoes.

BAM Marketing lesson!

Apple Special Media Event!

So the Apple Special media event happened!  But! What actually happened?

Tim Cook began the event with a little spiel about how great Apple has been doing this year with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus being the fastest selling iPhones in history, rolled out now in 32 Countries, and rolling out in China today.

He went on to talk about how Apple Pay is cool, with 500 more banks signed up to partner with Apple on the payment system so far, and more retailers coming on board too. Apple pay is launching this Monday October 20th! 

The CEO then spoke about how proud they are of the Apple Watch, how it’s super rad and has been on the cover of Vogue China!  Watchkit (for the benefit of potential Apple Watch developers) will be available next month. Christmas time is App making time, yo!

Mr Craig Federighi came on stage then to talk about software, with iOS 8 get the first spotlight. He explained that 48% of Apple customers are using the new iOS so far and 94% are using either iOS 8 or iOS 7.  They have apparently been listening to customer feedback to improve the user experience. The example he makes for this is that they’re bringing back the camera roll.

iOS 8.1 will be available free on Monday!

Now on to OS X Yosemite. It’s cool. It has cool features.  AND it will be available free from the Mac App Store today!  Check out our rundown of the features of OS X Yosemite here.

ALSO: New iWork for iOS and Mac is available today, for free. 

Tim Cook came back on stage to talk about iPads. They’re cool, there’s 675,000 apps in the app store for them, a 100% customer satisfaction rating for the Retina Mini, they’re the best iPads ever, aaaaand he introduces a thinner iPad Air, now available in Gold. According to Phil Schiller, it’s pretty thin: ‘6.1mm thick, 18% thinner. Thinnest iPad ever. World’s thinnest tablet.’

And: two iPad Air’s  on top of one another are still thinner than an original iPad. Technology, you be silly.

It has a sharper image, an A8X chip, 2nd-gen 64-bit architecture, 3 billion transistors, 40% faster CPU, and 2.5x faster GPU.

New anti-reflective coating reduces reflection by 56% and it has a 10 hour battery life. Features include an 8MP iSight camera with 2.4 aperture, 1080p HD video, Apple-designed image signal processor and a M8 coprocessor.

It will be capable of taking panoramas up to 43 megapixels, burst mode photos , Slo-mo video at 720p FPS and Time-lapse photos.
It will come equipped with faster Wi-Fi, 80211ac with MIMO.  There’s a new FaceTime camera on the front with larger 2.2 aperture, 81% more light, improved face detection, burst selfies, Single-shot HDR photos and HDR videos.

AND it will come with Touch ID fingerprint scanner and be able to support Apple Pay.

We will now have Pixelmator for iPad Air as well as a new video editing app called Replay.

iPad Air 2 will retail for $499/599/699 for 16GB/64GB/128GB in Wi-Fi versions. Silver, Space Gray, Gold.

Cellular versions will be offered at $629/729/829.

The iPad Mini is getting a mini update too!  This third generation comes in Silver, Space Grey & Gold and comes equipped with the Touch ID.  Selling for $399/499/599 for 16GB/64GB/128GB Cellular for $529/629/729.

You can pre-order an iPad Air 2 or an iPad Mini 3 tomorrow, and shipping starts next week.

NOW. 30th birthday of the Mac y’all! Macs are cool.

Tim Cook introduced a new iMac with 5K retina display. How many K retina display? 5. 5K.

5120×2880, 67% more pixels than 4K. It’s got a 27″ display, with 14.7 million pixels which makes it the world’s highest resolution display. Retina 5K display.

The new iMac comes equipped with Thunderbolt 2, Fusion Drive, 3.5GHz quad-core i5, upgradable to 4.0GHz quad-core i7. AMD Radeon $9 M290x, upgradable to M295X.

New iMac with Retina 5K starts at $2499. Shipping today!

And finally, the Mac Mini , such a cute little fella, he gets an update too with a 4th-gen Intel Core processor, Intel Iris and HD Graphics, PCIe-based flash storage, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and 2 Thunderbolt 2 ports. 

New mini starts at $499. Starts shipping today! 

And that’s it folks! Tim Cook signed off with this:

“Designed to be incredible products individually. Also designed to work together seamlessly. Because we create both the hardware and the software, we can deliver something that no one else can do. A simple, intuitive and yes, magical experience for our customers.This is our vision of personal technology. And we are just getting started.”

What do you think? Pretty solid updates, but nothing super exciting? 5k is pretty exciting, and everything seems to be getting more cohesive as a group of products that can work beautifully together. We’ll need to get our hands on some iPad Air 2’s to see just how close they come to stacking up to an original, because 6.1mm thick is not thick and stacking iPads sounds like fun. We’re pretty excited to try out Apple Pay on Monday, and get OS X Yosemite too.

Not sure it was “Apple special Media event’ worthy, but there’s a pretty solid little set of updates for us.

Deals Of The Week Wednesday!

DEAL TIME!

AND there’s only 69 days & 16 hours until Christmas! (Thanks awesome internet christmas clock) So go get yourself some awesome stuff for cheap!

*Get a 3 Month Unlimited Skype Subscription Card w/Free Binatone Webcam & Headset for $8.99 from Walmart (was 49.99) OR $7.99 from Rakuten.com, both deals have free shipping. With a Skype Subscription card you’ll get unlimited calls to mobiles and landlines in the US and Canada.

*Best Buy has Epson Expression Home XP-410 Wireless All-in-One Printer for $59.99 down from $99.99. Use a $25 off Student Discount coupon (get it here)  to drop the price further to $34.99 with free shipping.

*Get $50 off $200+ Orders at Staples  if you use Visa Checkout. Discount will automatically be applied when you use Visa checkout. Deal expires 10/31, while supplies last.

* Get a free $10 promo code when you buy a gift card worth $50 or more from Amazon.  Enter “OCTOBERGCS” at checkout to qualify. Offer expires October 31st.

*Get an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite WiFi 6″ Tablet for just $89 from Staples. offer valid in-store only ( $119 online)

*Check out ThinkGeek’s sale section for some aweome toys such as Light Show Fountain Speakers, Gear Ties or Magnetically Gyroscopic Balls (because why not?). PLUS get 20% off  on order $40 and above with code PREPSCHOOL. Expires 11:59PM ET 10/16

* Check out Amazon right now and save 10% or more on select speaker products, like the ION Party Starter portable Bluetooth speaker with built-in light show.

Sweet Deal Time Wednesday bros!

TOOL OF THE WEEK

Why haven’t they made it so you can select all and un-capitalize things yet? Is it just us who starts typing without looKING AT WHAT THEY’RE DOING AND REALIZE HALFWAY THROUGH THAT THEY HAVE TO DELETE SOOOOOOO many words that are capitalized but should’t be? And you’re really not trying to yell in the middle of your work email/Facebook post/essay?

Well, look what we found: http://uncapslock.com/

That’s right. Just select the offending words, copy (Command+C), and then paste them into the input section. Click the uncapslock button and HEY PRESTO (I meant that) your words are un-capslocked! Just remember to re-capitalize the bit that are supposed to capitalized.

You’re welcome.

How to do a reverse google image search!

Ok, so say you’re trying to keep up with the MLB, (Major League Baseball, maybe you should know that much) and you know who you’re rooting for, obviously the San Francisco Giants, Duh, but then you want to know who they’re going to have to beat to get the the World Series. And you’re talking to someone about it and looking at a chart on the internet but then you realize you have no idea what team this guy represents:

But depending on who the person is, you might not want to look stupid and ask just who that guy is with his fancy looking beak and orange flair. SO WHAT DO YOU DO?

If you’re on a Mac, a double fingered click (or control+click) on the image in question will open a small separate menu. From here you can do a bunch of things such as save the image to your Mac, open it in a new tab/window, OR do a reverse Google image search, by clicking ‘Search Google for this image’. It will then open up a new page listing search results from that image.

and then BAM BALTIMORE ORIOLES!*

* Go Giants.

baltimore orioles

App Of The Week!