Deals of The Week Thursday !

Hiya! Ready for some rockin’ deals? Yeah? YEAH! Here they come, slugger.

* Coming in bang on the money in first place, we have Macbooks on sale at Best Buy! Due to the new Macbook and the updated current models announced at the Special Media Event on Monday, Best Buy has dropped prices on it’s current inventory of the old models.

So!

Get a 11″ MacBook Air 128GB Model  for just $799.99.  College Student Pricing: $749.99

11″ MacBook Air 256GB Model for $999.99 / College Student Pricing: $949.99

13″ MacBook Air 128GB Model for $799.99 / College Student Pricing: $749.99

13″ MacBook Air 256GB Model for $1099.99 / College Student Pricing: $1049.99

13″ MacBook Pro with Retina 128GB Model for $1149.99 / College Student Pricing: $1099.99

13″ MacBook Pro with Retina 256GB Model for $1349.99 / College Student Pricing: $1299.99

13″ MacBook Pro with Retina 512GB Model for $1649.99 / College Student Pricing: $1599.99

You can pick these deals up online WITH free shipping, however, if you want to get an even better deal, combine the sale with a Best Buy Movers Coupon (Available from your post office)  and purchase in store for another 10% off. Wowza.

* Get a $100 Staples Gift Card (Email Delivery)  for just $85 clams! Check it out at eBay now! 

*On Nintendo’s online store they have a refurbished Wii U with Nintendo Land and Super Mario 3D World for $225. Limited stock available so get in quick!

*Into cooking? Know that sous vide is a super fancy cooking method? You might be interested in getting an Anova Precision Cooker (Sous Vide) for just $154, down from $179 after you enter promo code SPRING25 with Free Shipping!

*Get the Transformers movie for free on Google Play! Note: You must be logged into your Google account to get this deal.

*Grab yourself a Bluetooth Selfie Button for just $7.99 from Groupon!!

* Got an old console hanging around? Wanna upgrade? Don’t leave your stinky electronics hanging around! GameStop is offering an extra 50% Trade-In Credits when you trade in a console INCLUDING the PlayStation 2! Deal is on until March 15th.

*forget about your 60-inch TV, live it up this summer with a Pyle LED Home Theater Projector with up to 140″ Viewing Screen, Built-In Speakers, and USB Reader. From Groupon!

*

Get a 3 Month Google Play Music Subscription for just $3. This deal is for new subscribers only and after the 3 months is up you can either cancel or continue subscribing for the regular price of $9.99 a month.

Happy wheeling and dealing guys!

Tech Of the Day!

Our tech of the day is something that has seemed like a long time coming. Food wastage is not only an extremely serious problem in our world, where there are so many people without, but definitely also a first world problem when you go to the supermarket hungry, after pay day, after watching a cooking show, and go ahead and buy all kinds of fancy Salmon and beef cheeks and scallops and prawns and pork belly.

Then you get home, and realize that you forgot that you work and have family and stuff and you don’t really have time to cook all of that before it goes bad, but you still have hope so you don’t freeze it and then it’s a couple of days past the sell by date and you smell it but you don’t trust your nose so you throw it out.

Bad.

Food wastage is bad. Food poisioning  is also, pretty bad.

But hooray! This product is here to solve both! Introducing the Foodsniffer. 

This new tech product helps you figure out the quality of meat, poultry and fish, and their suitability to eat.

How?  Well, the product has four different sensors that measure temperature, humidity, ammonia and VOC’s (Volatile Organic Compounds) all of which point towards the freshness of the meat in question.

Point the product towards the meat, and it will send all the data it measures via bluetooth to your smartphone or tablet, where it will show you the results in detail, as well as a recommendation regarding the safety of the meat.

You can pre-order the Foodsniffer now for $120 in three different colors. Check it out here for yourself. 

Apple Watch updates!

It’s Friday! Happy Weekend guys!!

So, we get that you don’t usually look forward to Mondays on a Friday afternoon, but guess what makes this coming Monday different?

That’s right, an Apple Special Media Event, that’s what. Time to SPRING FORWARD!

Obviously it’s not that exciting. We’d be really excited if they were, like, giving away free Apple Watches at the event. Or even releasing them to be sold for, let’s face it, quite a bit of monies.

BUT

They will be talking a bit more about it. So that’s pretty cool, right? .. right? RIGHT! Well, cool enough. The Apple Watch product release is building in anticipation, and this is one of the ways that Apple amp that anticipation up a notch, those clever guys. And you know what else they do? Release information as rumors right beforehand!

So here’s what we’re looking at rumor-wise: The Apple Watch will take about 2 hours to charge, which will give you all day battery life, with about 5 hours of heavy use in that day.

The Apple Watch will only deliver notifications whilst the watch is sitting pretty on your wrist, and will stop with the notifications when it’s not on your skin or below 10% battery.
Pressing and holding the Digital Crown will summon Siri, which (who?) is apparently working really well on the watch.

If your battery is low but you still really need to know the time, the watch will have a Power Reserve Mode, which can be accessed at any time and will shut down all functionality except for the watch. The time-telling Watch. The clock bit. You know what we mean.

Apparently the Apple Watch will have 8GB of storage available, with other larger options available, such as in the iPhone/iPad.

The keynote begins on Monday at 10 AM P.S.T. and will be live-streamed on the Apple Website and on a designated Apple TV channel. We will be keep you up to date on  all the Apple Watch details and everything else that is revealed on Monday!

Have a rad weekend.

New Jony Ive Interview!

The great man himself, Apple’s design chief Jony Ive, recently gave a rare interview to the Financial Times.  Focusing on the design process of the Apple Watch, Ive delves into why and how the new tech was created and has evolved.

From the sauce:

“It was different with the phone – all of us working on the first iPhone were driven by an absolute disdain for the cellphones we were using at the time. That’s not the case here. We’re a group of people who love our watches. So we’re working on something, yet have a high regard for what currently exists.”

It’s a great interview, giving a rare insight into one of the worlds most renowned designers on a product a very many are excited about. In the lead up to Monday’s Apple Watch-centric special media event – go check it out!! 

Apple hit with another lawsuit

Even more uh-oh spaghettios!

Apple has been hit by another lawsuit this week, with Ericsson suing them for infringing on 41 wireless-related patents which they believe make little products like the iPhone and the iPad work. Hmm.

This occurred after Apple refused to accept a licensing deal from Ericcson, as their previous deal expired mid January. When that happened, Apple was a little miffed at Ericsson and filed suit against them, claiming that they were demanding excessive royalties for patents not essential to LTE standards. Ericsson countersued, seeking an estimated $250 million to $750 million in royalties per year for Apple to continue licensing its patented wireless technologies. Apple refused to settle, and now Ericsson is really pissed. 
“By refusing Ericsson’s fair and reasonable licensing offer for patented technology used in Apple smartphones and tablets, Apple harms the entire market and reduces the incentive to share innovation,”

However, Ericsson is not actually asking for money from Apple anymore, with the company now asking the U.S. International Trade Commission for an exclusion order against Apple. That means they want the iPhone, the iPad and other products they believe use their patented technology blocked from being sold in the United States.

As we said, Uh, oh, spaghettios.

Apple car debuting as early as when?!

Reports have surfaced that the Apple Electric – possibly self driving- car that has lately hit the rumor mill with a vengeance will be debuting as early as 2020.

2020! That’s a very short 5 years away.

This ads to rumors that Apple is looking to buy Tesla (whilst Elon Musk has his interests in SpaceX and in batteries) and has suffered from a lawsuit claiming that Apple has poached vital and under contract engineers from Electric-car battery maker A123 Systems. They are also purported to have hired engineers from Ford, GM, MIT Motorsports, Ogin, Autoliv, Concept Systems, and General Dynamics.

It’s interesting to think about Apple’s entry into such a huge new industry- considering that to buy General Motors they would only need to access 10% of their cash stockpile, it’s an interesting, intriguing and entirely possible new direction they seem to be turning.

As always it remains to be seen whether this project will actually come to fruition or not. We’ll keep you up to date with all the rumors until then!

What do you guys think, would you buy an electric car from Apple?

Happy Birthday Photoshop!

Today marks the 25th anniversary of Photoshop, which, after it’s creation by John Knoll in 1987, was launched on a Mac Plus on the 19th February 1990. To put that into some context for you, this was the same month that Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years imprisonment in South Africa, and that the Bette Midler song Wind Beneath My Wings won at the Grammy’s.

So – pretty long ago.

Photoshop has come a long way since then, enriching our lives, and becoming the industry standard image editing app (and making it so people can trick people everywhere. Thanks photoshop).

Adobe has launched a special celebration of Photoshop, looking back at the last 25 years and looking to the future of the next 25. Check it out here. 

From the Sauce:

“Today, the digital imaging revolution that Photoshop started is so pervasive that remembering a time before it existed takes some work. So it’s with great pleasure, on Photoshop’s 25th anniversary, that we look back to the simpler, pre-millennial world into which it was born, not to celebrate the past but to recognize what an awesome transformation our world has undergone in such a short amount of time.”

Do yourself a favor – Google Photoshop so you can truly appreciate it’s effect on society (and enjoy a treasure trove of majestic images!)

Upcoming Modern Family show shot entirely on Apple devices!

Everyone’s favorite dysfunctional family, the Dunphy’s & Pritchett’s from ABC’s show Modern Family will be coming at you through the lens of only Apple devices in an upcoming episode of the show.

On February 25th, the Modern Family you see will have been entirely shot on an iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2. Not only that, but the whole episode will take place on a MacBook Screen as Claire Dunphy tries to get in touch with her daughter Haley by using various Mac Apps (think iMessage, FaceTime etc) to call members of her family whilst stuck at an airport. Pretty impressive!

The episode, entitled “Connection Lost” airs Wednesday, February 25 on ABC.

List of stores and Apps that now take Apple pay

As per our previous article, Apple Pay just keeps on growing. We thought it might be handy for you guys to know which merchants you can use Apple Pay in, and which merchants will very soon support it.

Stores:

Aeropostale
American Eagle (Per keynote slide; not yet listed on site)
Anthropologie (Coming later this year)
Apple
Babies R Us
Bi-Lo
BJ’s
Bloomingdales
Champs
Chevron
Disney (Coming later this year)
Duane Reade
Extra Mile
Food Maxx
Foot Locker
Foot Action
Free People (Coming later this year)
Harveys
House of Hoops by Foot Locker
Jewel-Osco
Kids Foot Locker
Lady Foot Locker
Lucky
Macy’s
McDonald’s
Nike
Office Depot
Panera Bread
Petco
PetSmart (Coming later this year)
Radio Shack
Run by Foot Locker
Save Mart
Shaw’s
Six:02
Sephora (Coming later this year)
Sports Authority
Sprouts
Staples
Subway
Texaco
Toys R Us
United Supermarkets
Unleashed
Urban Outfitters (Coming later this year)
Walgreens
Walt Disney Parks & Resorts (Coming later this year)
Wegmans
Whole Foods
Winn-Dixie

Apps:

Airbnb
Apple Store
Bierhaus
Chairish
Dapper
Disney Store  (iPhone only)
Eventbrite (Coming later this year)
Deal Flicks
Drync
Fancy
Flextrip
Free Prints
Gametime
Getaround
GoldieBlox and the Movie Machine
Groupon
Hotel Tonight
Houzz
Indiegogo
Instacart
Jack Threads
Keep Shopping
Levi’s Stadium (Coming later this year)
LIFX
Lyft
Merchbar – Merch and Vinyl
MLB.com
OpenTable  (New York City, San Francisco, Washington D.C. only; pay.opentable.com)
Orange Harp Shopping
Panera Bread
ParkWhiz – Discounted Parking
Pose added
Postmates
Priceline
Print Studio
RadPad
SeatGeek Tickets
Sephora
Sosh
SpotHero
Spring – Go Shopping
20Stamps
Staples
Starbucks (Coming later this year)
Stayful
StubHub
StyleIt
Target
ThirdLove: Lingerie Reinvented
Ticketmaster
Tickets.com
ThreadFlip: Buy and Sell Fashion
Touch of Modern
Uber added
Washio
YPlan

Happy Apple Pay Shopping! We for sure see some useful Valentines Day merchants on that list! ( Hint Hint… just kidding)

Apple adds new banks & Credit Unions to Apple Pay, is yours among them?

Apple Pay is continuing to grow with Apple still adding not only merchants who accept it, but Banks and Credit unions that support it. The list of Banks and Credit Unions now runs at over 45 and Apple just added over a dozen names to that list.

Here are the names of the new institutions that support Apple Pay:

Alliant Credit Union
Altra Federal Credit Union
Andrews Federal Credit Union
BBVA Compass
BECU (Boeing Employees’ Credit Union)
Ent Federal Credit Union
F&A Federal Credit Union
Fifth Third Bank
First Niagara Bank
First Tech Federal Credit Union
Golden 1 Credit Union
INOVA Federal Credit Union
Savings Bank of Danbury
Star One Credit Union
Uwharrie Bank

Whilst this brings the number of banks and Credit unions that support Apple pay up to 60, Tim Cook made mention in his 1st quarter earnings call last week that their have been 750 institutions in total that have committed to rolling out support of Apple Pay in the future.

He also brought out the pretty fantastic number –  $2 out of every $3 spent using contactless payments across the three major credit card companies—Visa, MasterCard, and American Express—was made using Apple Pay.

That sounds a little surprising, doesn’t it? To use Apple Pay your banking institution must support Apple Pay, the merchant or App you are making a purchase though must support Apple Pay, and you must have an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, or iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3 with apps only.

Users with an iPhone 5, iPhone 5C and iPhone 5s will be able to use Apple Pay if they use it in combination with an Apple Watch after it’s release in early April.

Here is the total list of Banks & Credit unions that currently support Apple Pay.

-L&N Federal Credit Union
-UW Credit Union
-Commerce Bank
-America First Credit Union
-American Express
-Bank of America
-Barclaycard
-Capital One
-Citi
-Commerce Bank
-J.P. Morgan
-M&T Bank
-Merrill Lynch
-Navy Federal Credit Union
-PNC
-Regions Bank
-SunTrust
-U.S. Bank
-U.S. Trust
-USAA
-Wells Fargo
-Fremont Bank
-National Institutes of Health FCU
-Security Service Federal Credit Union
-Consumers Credit Union
-Virginia Credit Union
-Cyprus Federal Credit Union
-Fairwinds Credit Union
-Mountain America Credit Union
-Partners Federal Credit Union
-Customers Bank
-A+ Federal Credit Union
-Amegy Bank of Texas
-America First Credit Union
-Bethpage Federal Credit Union
-California Bank & Trust
-Connex Credit Union
-Goldenwest FCU
-Huntington Bank
-KeyPoint Credit Union
-Meijer Credit Union
-National Bank of Arizona
-Nevada State Bank
-The Bank of Greene County
-Vectra Bank
-Zions First National Bank
-Alliant Credit Union
-Altra Federal Credit Union
-Andrews Federal Credit Union
-BBVA Compass
-BECU (Boeing Employees’ Credit Union)
-Ent Federal Credit Union
-F&A Federal Credit Union
-Fifth Third Bank
-First Niagara Bank
-First Tech Federal Credit Union
-Golden 1 Credit Union
-INOVA Federal Credit Union
-Savings Bank of Danbury
-Star One Credit Union
-Uwharrie Bank

What has your experience been like with Apple Pay?