Apple releases battery case for iPhone 6

This last week Apple released an iPhone 6 Smart Battery Case that gives you waaay more juice. The case is said to prolong your talk time to 25 hours, and your internet time to 18 hours.

The battery status is displayed on the iPhone Lock screen and in Notification Center, so you know  how much charge you have.

The case is silicone, with a hump lookin’ thing sitting in the middle where the extra battery sits. It comes in Charcoal Gray and white and they’re charging (ha!! Get it? Ha!)  a whammin’ $99.

‘Tis the season for Christmas Apps!

Tra la la la la…. la la la laaaaaaa.

*First up, and most importantly, you’ll need a Christmas Countdown app –

– which let’s you know exactly how many days you have left with a whimsical image and quote. Now that you have something that tells you what day it is, you can relax, and sip on some super rad Christmas Drinks –

– while you make a list of everyone you need to shop for and budget accordingly with Santa’s Bag Christmas Gift List App.

Then, depending on how much that Christmas drink was spiked, make yourself another and do your Christmas Shopping – Check out our gift guide here – and make sure to get Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and all the big retail stores (like Best Buy) apps on your phone if you’re a shop-on-the go type of guy or gal.

*Cook up a storm with Christmas Recipes from food bloggers all over the world –

– while you’re listening to Christmas hits from over 50 unique stations on Christmas Radio.

*Meanwhile, you’re keeping the kids busy with Christmas Piano or Xmas photo booth. If they’re really good, treat them to –

– A Call From Santa! Children can record a voicemail message for Santa with their Christmas wish list, be put on the naught or nice list, find out what Santa is doing right now, check the weather forecast for the North Pole, and hear the names of Santa’s reindeers.

*And, finally, we can’t have a Christmas App guide without mentioning, ye olde favorite, Elf youself! Hours of fun for all ages. And all species, like iPhone Antidote’s Guinea Pig, Papa Nu. She goes nuts for Elfing herself.

Merry Christmas!

The Future of Television

Want to know what the future of television is? Boy, we sure do. We hope it’s something to do with virtual reality and kittens. And puppies.

Here’s what Apple thinks it is, via their Ad, aptly named ‘The Future of Television’. We think they’re thinking much more short term, much more focused around the new Apple TV, and far less about small, young, animals.

Get free cell phone service! Right now!

How do you guys feel about free cell phone service? Do you feel good about it? Yeah? Read on fools!

Ringplus has an eggzellent deal on right now – pay $12 upfront, buy a special SIM card (unless you have a Sprint cell phone) and you get a no-contract cell phone service that allows you 1200 real cellular minutes, 1200 texts, and 1200 MB of LTE data per month, plus tethering.

For free. All of it. Free!

It’s called the Leonardo 3 Free plan and there’s a couple of very, very minor catches. Numero uno – when you call someone, instead of hearing the dial-tone, you’ll hear ads. Let some wheelers and dealers bend your ear for however long it takes you friend to pick up.

Before you sign up, you’ll also need to take a short survey and link your Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn account. If you don’t currently have one of those, you can add it within 3 weeks after sign up.

As we said, you’ll need a special SIM unless you already have a Sprint cell phone.

You can buy a SIM from RingPlus here for $15. According to reports, you can also go into an Apple store and ask for a Sprint SIM to fit into your phone and they’ll give you one for free.

If you’re an iPhone guy or gal, you’ll need an unlocked or Verizon iPhone 5C or above. Alternatively, you can check out some sweet $40 phones that will work with the service, like the Sprint Prepaid – Motorola Moto E 4G with 8GB Memory or the VM 1GB Nokia Lumia 635 4G, both currently on sale at Best Buy.

The initial $12 payment is for overage, and if your Top-Up balance reaches $0, another $12 auto Top Up will be automatically charged to your credit card on file.

The service uses the Sprint network, so if  you know that it’s sketchy in your area, you should take that into consideration.

The deal is available Tuesday December 8, 2015 from 12 Noon PST until Thursday December 10, 2015 at 12 Noon PST.

Go get it!

Deal of the Day!

Who wants an Apple Watch for christmas? Yeah? Do you want a good deal on it too? Merry Christmas!

Target is currently offering the Apple Watch starting at $349 PLUS you get a free $100 gift card! That way, you get what you want for christmas, and you get to shop for everyone else’s Christmas present, all for the price of an Apple Watch. Which you want. Win!

The $100 gift card applies to all Apple Watch Sport purchases and you can use your Target Redcard to save an additional 5%. This deal is only available online while stocks last. The gift card will be added to your cart automatically.

Get on it!

Check out the deal here.

Apple’s gifts to employees

Have you gotten a big fat Xmas gift from your employer this year yet? No? Well, either you’re just not doing a good enough job (kidding, probably, for most of you) or you don’t work for Apple.

The wonderful world of Apple employment celebrated the holidays by giving employees a set of black and red urBeats earphones from the Beats by Dr. Dre product lineup. The packaging says it all : ‘Thank You 2015.”

We feel like their should be more punctuation there, though. Are they thanking the employee, or the year? 2015 has been pretty spectacular for Apple.

But, since it’s the employee – all of the employees, all over the world – getting the headphones priced at $99.99, it’s probably them that they’re thanking.

Merry Christmas Apple Employees! And Merry christmas, 2015!

Merry Christmas Video from Apple

From Apple’s family to yours, here’s Stevie Wonder and Andra Day singing his 1967 holiday classic, “Someday At Christmas”.

From us too. Can we do that? Nah, we probably can’t do that. Stay tuned for our Christmas video, from our family to yours, featuring… our Guinea Pig, PapaNu. And…Rihanna. Yeah. Singing that Chipmunk Christmas song. K? K. In the meantime, enjoy this.

New iPhone ads!

Apple just released 2 new ads celebrating and, uh, advertising the iPhone. Because no -one’s heard of those, right?

The first is letting us know just how powerful the iPhone 6s is (motorcycle metaphor!) – and hence how much faster everything you use it for is… and all the cool things you can use it for. Cue Jon Favreau.

Video 2 is all about that lovely lady we all love to talk to – Siri. Siri can do all kinds of wonderful things, like tell Penelope Cruz crossword answers. That’s cheating Penelope. 

AT&T to raise the price on Grandfathered Unlimited Plans

Are you on a grandfathered unlimited data plan with AT&T? Bad news bear says if you are, expect to be $5 poorer each month from Febuary next year.

Why? Simple. AT&T are raising the grandfathered unlimited data plans from $30 to $35 beginning in Feb, the month of love (and being $5 poorer).

This is the first rate change the plan has seen in seven years however this plan has recently become more valuable, with the cap at which you become throttled on congested networks increasing from 5GB of LTE data usage to 22GB in September.

If you are on this plan, you will be notified by AT&T, and if you wish to cancel your service because of it, your early termination fees will be waived for the affected lines.

New Headphone Jack?

It’s iPhone rumor time!

Yeah, we have a while yet, but there’s always a good time for an iPhone rumor! This time we’re looking at the possibility of the next iPhone (presumably the iPhone 7) losing the 3.5 mm headphone jack in order to slim the phone down by whole damn millimeter.

Ruh Roh. The rumor began with Macotakara, a Japanese Apple blog that has had some success with predictions in the past. The slimming down of the next iPhone has been in the rumor mill for a while now, but until now no-one had seriously mentioned the possible loss of the headphone jack.

And no, considering Apple just acquired Beats Music and released Apple Music, they’re are not going full dumb dumb and removing the ability to listen to music from your iPhone – they will supposedly be replacing it with a lightening connector, and possibly incorporating it into a multi-purpose USB-C port.

A USB-C port is 2.5 mm high, exactly a millimeter thinner than your standard audio jack.

People are up in arms about how Apple are going to disrupt the Headphone industry and makes every one stompy and mad and why do they have to change things just because they’re stupid Apple.. etc. etc.

Yeah, Apple do have a history of being early adaptors of new and better technologies, and sometimes being a part of that early adaption sucks because of… well.. adaptors. If this happens and you want to use your non-Apple headphones, then you might be SOL without an adaptor. OR we might be lucky and the only way people listen to music from their phones at the time of release is using bluetooth.

As always with these kinds of early rumors, we’ll just have to wait and see… Would you be stompy and mad if Apple got rid of the 3.5 headphone jack?