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.

The Apple announcement!

This morning, at 10:00 AM Pacific time, Tim Cook took to the stage at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of De Anza College in Cupertino.

Over almost 2 hours, we were introduced to two new models of iPhone, a new service in ApplePay and the Apple Watch. A lot of rumors were confirmed, some were seen to be false (bye easy to type iWatch) and a raft of new services not foreseen were revealed.

The live stream was not the best thing anyone’s ever seen, far from it actually, from consistent pauses and breakdowns in the streaming video, to the addition of a lovely Chinese translator (we’re assuming?) cutting in over Tim Cook’s sentences. It seemed to work itself out after about 40 minutes thank goodness, but not before Twitter was set on fire annihilating Apple for being unable to use simple streaming technology.

But, it worked itself out. Shout out to the guys over at MacRumors for live blogging so we could understand anything we missed! We were introduced to the two models of the iPhone 6 – the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. They are, as rumored, a 4.7 inch model and 5.5 inch model respectively. They both have a bunch of updates and improvements and we’ll delve into them in a little bit in our detailed iPhone 6 blog post.

We had confirmation of NFC capabilities with ApplePay, aiming to make payment transactions in a bunch of online and in-store retailers all over the US simpler and more secure.

Then; One more thing!

Those magic words that we haven’t heard in a while! That one more thing? Nope, not the iWatch. Natch. It’s the Apple Watch. And it’s so very pretty! And functional! And innovative, and useful. We’ll be going into far more detail in our Apple Watch blog post coming soon. But all you need to know for right now? There are two sizes and three models – the Apple Watch, the Apple Watch Sport, and the Apple watch Edition. They’ll be coming in early 2015, they’re highly customizable, they start at $349, and you’ll probably want one.

Tim Cook ended the event with a performance by U2 and the announcement of their new Album ‘Songs of Innocence’. And Apple just made the album free to all half a billion iTunes users!

We’ll be bringing you the details of both models of the iPhone 6, Apple Pay and Apple Watch shortly.

Photos courtesy of 9to5mac.com

Apple Media event on September 9th is confirmed!

Thanks to the lovely guys over at The Loop, we have for you the official invitation to the upcoming Apple media event – confirming that a big announcement will be made by Apple on September 9th.

The event is highly anticipated and expected to be unveiling two new models of the iPhone 6 and their new wearable tech product, currently referred to as the iWatch.

The invitations carry the tagline “Wish we could say more.”

The event will take place at 10:00 AM Pacific Time at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of De Anza College in Cupertino.

The Flint center hasn’t been used by Apple for a long time, but is the same location where Steve Jobs introduced the original Mac 30 years ago and holds a lot more people than the usual venues Apple uses for it’s announcements. Apple seems to be building a huge, highly guarded structure on the campus in preparation for the announcement on the 9th.

We sense something major coming this way…

It hasn’t been confirmed if Apple will be streaming the event or not ( we hope so) but we will keep you up to date to everything we know when we know it!

11 days 15 hours 35 minutes until the unveiling!

Definitive indication there will be two models of the iPhone 6!

So, the rumor mill has been spinning off it’s wheels lately  ( do mills have wheels? Sure they do.) regarding Apple’s upcoming iPhone 6 release, which is expected to be announced early september.

Most people believe that there will actually be two versions of the iPhone 6 – differentiated by size. One is said to be 4.7 inch whilst the other will be a pretty massive 5.5 inch.  Speculation is rife as to if this will come to fruition, if those are the correct specifications, and if the’ll they be released concurrently.

BUT WAIT! Now we seem to have something pretty definitive ( probably) with a recent announcement from Takorn Tantasith, who is the Secretary General of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) in Thailand.

Uh, what does he have to do with anything? Well the NBTC needed to approve Apple’s application to distribute two iPhone 6 models in Thailand. Which they did, and according to government regulations, these approvals had to be announced publicly. Which is also what they did.

On August 5th, Apple reportedly filed the import application and on August 8th they received certification of equipment and a written approval notice  for two iPhones with model numbers A1586 and A1524. The approval was then announced and was also mentioned in a tweet by Nakorn Tantasith. 

Details on the iPhone 6 handsets referenced in the documents are, unfortunately, sealed. Bummer hummer. Guess we’ll just have to wait like patient little Appler’s!

New iPhone announcment September 9?

Behold! The future is getting closer!!

(Duh)

According to sauces in the know, specifically John Paczkowski from Re/code,  Apple will hold a special media event regarding the iPhone 6 on, wait for it, wait we already told you in the title, September 9th! That’s only like, 34 days, 6 hours and 4 minutes away! Who just got shivers!?

The rumors are still holding strong that the new iPhone will come in 2 sizes, most likely 4.7 and 5.5 inches respectively, that they will both retain the fingerprint sensor, run on new and improved A8 processors and feature sapphire displays.

Traditionally, the new iPhone is released to the public the next Friday after they are announced, so if Apple continues on that theme, some of us will be able to hold the new iPhone 6 in our hot little hands come Friday, September 19. Lucky Us!

And THEN we can use that awesome piece of technology ( we hope)  to track the next piece of Apple newness – the iWatch, rumored to be announced in October! Yay!

Exciting tool revealed in iOS 8 Beta 5 released today!

This morning, Apple released the Beta 5 update to iOS 8 as well as OS X 10.10 Yosemite Developer preview 5 to developers. Aside from being good news indicating that things appear to be moving along relatively smoothly with the new iOS, there is something we think is particularly exciting being reported about the updates in iOS 8 Beta 5.

What’s so exciting iPhone Antidote? Well, kids, Healthkit now includes the addition of Spirometry.

Uh…. wha?

Spirometry! Apart from being an excellent word to say, (c’mon, say it aloud, you know it’ll make you feel good..) spirometry is the most common of the pulmonary function tests measuring lung function. It’s an important tool used for generating pneumotachographs, which are helpful in assessing conditions such as asthma, pulmonary fibrosis, cystic fibrosis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

We hate ALL those stupid things, so spirometry is a tool we’re excited to hear will be included in iOS 8.

The Health app was also updated with new icons for Body data, Data Exporting, and a new option for showing Medical ID on Emergency Lock screen. Those things are cool too, we guess.

Image from page 569 of “The science and practice of medicine” (1866) by Internet Book Archive Images is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

You now need Facebook Messenger app to message!

As of this week, you will no longer be able to use the messaging feature in the Mobile Facebook App. Instead, as Facebook announced yesterday, it’s more than 200 million wordlwide users will need to use the separate Facebook messenger App on their mobile devices.

If you already have the messenger app installed, nothing will change. If you try to use the messaging function in the main Facebook app once the full change comes into effect, it will link you to the messenger app instead of the inbox.

Those of you who do not have the standalone Messenger App installed, either go ahead and install it (it’s free, so that’s a come up, right?) or say goodbye to all those lovely, animated Facebook conversations! And to those silly hooligans Pusheen, Meep, Biscuit and Beast. Now that’s a sad day! (If you don’t know who they are, well, you’re already missing out. Maybe.)

OS X Yosemite Available on Beta today!

OS X Yosemite is Apple’s new update to their Mac operating system, and as per usual it will be released in the Fall of this year. What is not as per usual is that this year, Apple will be giving the public the opportunity to be a part of the OS X Beta program and try out Yosemite before the Fall. 

That’s right Kiddies! All that exciting stuff we talked about here, will be available at some of your very lovely fingertips as of… um.. when was that again…. oh yeah…today!

This is the first time a major version of OS X will be available to you guys, members of the public, before it’s actually released, so a lot of people are awfully excited.

So here’s the deal –  Beta means that the software is working, but needs some more testing before it’s formal release. It could just be in need of some polishing, or it could need a little more than that. There will most definitely be bugs and although almost all of the features will be there, some of them will not have full or even some functionality.  The idea behind releasing it to the public is basicallly to give us a sneak peak, make us feel special, and then use us as free testers so we can tell Apple any of the glitches that we encounter. Then, they fix all the problems, and OS X Yosemite is PERFECT come release day.

The number of people that are being accepted to take part in the Beta program is limited to 1 Million. To sign up and be 1 in 1 million, go to the OS X Beta sign up page  and follow the steps. It’s really easy. You will need a valid Apple ID and you will, of course, have to agree to the terms and conditions. (Duh.) Oh, and it’s free.

You will be able to find out automatically if you’ve been accepted as one of the million. Go! Go now! And…. congratulations!

Now here’s the slammer. We are part of the Beta program, but as such, we cannot talk about anything we see there that’s awesome and not yet publicly disclosed unless the person we’re talking to is part of the program also. So.. uh, you guys? Go join. But make sure if you do, you actually test it. We want Yosemite to be as good as it can be, so, therefore, we want the testers to be as good as they can be.

Yay for Yosemite! Oh! And also? Talking of slammers reminds us, Happy Tequila Day! Our tip for all of you over 21’ers out there today ( drinking responsibly of course) – if you’re doing shots of tequila, try orange and cinnamon instead of lemon and salt. You’re welcome.

New iOS 8 Features discovered

There’s by now been some time since the features of iOS 8 were announced at WWDC 2014. Developers have had access to the new operating system since then and some more details have arisen from that. Hooray for developers!

Here’s some of what they’ve discovered:

* You can send your iPhone or iPad’s last location to Apple before it’s battery dies.

* The magical miracle of Shazam will not be integrated into Siri, and you will have the option to buy or find out more about the song playing once it’s identified. Um, Awesome.

* Using Safari, you will be able to use the device’s camera to scan in credit card numbers when you make online purchases, rather than typing the number in. Because those numbers are soooo long, you guys.

* You know how sometimes you hand your phone or iPad to a friend so they can see a photo? And then they just start rolling on through all the rest of your photos? And sometimes we have photos that should not be seen by others, are we right? Well, in iOS 8 you will have the option to hide certain photos from the Moments, Collections and Years view within the app. The photos will still be visible in the albums view, but in a sneaky new ‘Hidden’ album.

* The Photos app will have two new albums; “Recently Added” and “Recently Deleted.” The Recently Deleted album will temporarily show photos that have been recently deleted. (d’uh).

* The Camera app will have a sweet new Time Lapse feature, manual exposure controls and a self timer mode for 3 or 10 seconds.

* The new Weather app will take it’s information from The Weather Channel in iOS 8 and will feature a bucket load more details about the weather- UV Index, sunset/sunrise times, humidity, pressure and that all important ‘feels like’ option.

* Photos will be able to be inserted into notes in iOS 8, so that instead of trying to describe that amazing thing you saw that one night that meant that you were actually supposed to be an astronaut, you can take a photo. Cos that’s a thousand words right there.

*There will be new options for calendars in iOS 8, including Islamic, Chinese and Hebrew. Meanwhile, keyboards will be available in Filipino, Marathi, Slovenian, and Urdu. Sladko!

* There will be location based apps displayed on your screen depending on where you are – the example given is the Apple App store App will display automatically if you’re in an Apple store. So many Apples.

* Peer-to-peer Airplay will give users the option to stream content via Apple TV without having to share a network connection.

So there you have it, some more details surfacing about iOS 8! Pretty neat ones too. Although we really can’t wait until the developers tell everyone about the iOS 8 line of sight transportation feature. Now that’s a rad feature.

OS X Yosemite

Welcome to the new OS X Yosemite. Available for free in the fall, the updated Mac operating system has some quality new features that look to make the Mac and Apple device user experience more seamlessly integrated and an overall better user experience. The new design may take a while to grow on some people, and there isn’t a lot of really new stuff, but snazzy additions like email markup and multi platform sharing, or ‘continuity’, is enough to make us want to ride the OS X Yosemite train.

Here’s what we can look forward to.

 Notification Center

The new ‘Today’ feature in Notification Center gives you a concise and summarized look at everything you need to know — upcoming events, reminders, stocks, weather, and more. You will also have the opportunity to add widgets from the Mac App Store to customize whatever else you might like to see.

Design

The updated user interface design is aiming for bolder and cleaner, with more white and brighter, poppier colors. Rounded icons and button shapes, a new font, streamlined toolbars and window translucency make up the new look.

If you’re not a fan of all things bright, you will also have the option to use your Mac in ‘dark mode’ .

The close, minimize, and maximize window buttons are now close, minimize, and full screen, eliminating the extra full-screen control which we know a lot of people will be happy about.

Even though some people are complaining about it looking cartoonish, we especially like the extra smiley finder icon – we think he might be our new best friend. Craig Federighi himself was most impressed with the Trash can icon. And it’s pretty cool, for a trash can.

Email

A nice new feature of Mail is  Mail Drop, which lets you send super large attachments through the cloud without worrying about your service provider’s limitations or the recipients’ email service.

One of our favorite features of all from Yosemite, mainly because we like doodling so much, (but also because it looks insanely useful)  is the new Markup feature. With this you can quickly annotate an attachment you receive and send it back — without leaving Mail. You can fill out forms, add shapes or text, and add your signature by signing with your finger or capturing it with the camera on your Mac.  You also have the option to zoom. And everyone loves a good zoom, are we right?

Cross Platform interactivity or Continuity

If you have an iPhone with iOS 8, Apple has introduced a way to seamlessly integrate it with your Mac – something they call Continuity. With it you will be able to make and receive phone calls, iMessages, and SMS messages on both your Mac and your iDevices. We’re excited, because we’re lazy.  And just like in iOS 8, messages in Yosemite will now include audio and video capabilities. We’re excited, because we love Karaoke.

Another sweet deal is that with Yosemite (and iOS 8)  you will be able to use your iPhone as a personal hotspot for your Mac and connect to the internet that way if WiFi is unavailable. Something that wasn’t shown at WWDC but is expected to be an active feature of Yosemite when it’s released is a screen sharing feature in iMessages so whomever you’re messaging can see exactly what you see.

As a part of Continuity, the new iCloud Drive feature will give you the ability to to store any type of file in iCloud and access it on any device.  A Dropbox-like service that syncs documents across Macs, iOS devices AND Windows ( WHAT!),  it offers an iCloud storage folder directly within Finder.

Apple has introduced new pricing for iCloud with the debut of iCloud Drive. The first 5GB of iCloud storage is free, while 20GB costs $0.99 per month and 200GB costs $3.99 per month. Tiers of up to 1TB are also available.

The best part of Continuity is Handoff.   A super nifty new feature, it will let you seamlessly switch from your Mac to your iOS device and vice versa no matter what you’re doing. For instance if you’re on a web page, writing an email or finishing a document on your Mac, you will be able to pick up your iOS device and continue without missing a beat. It’s almost like they don’t want us to stop using their products or something…

Spotlight

With a new search window and scrollable previews of your results, Spotlight now finds information from Wikipedia, Bing, Maps, movies, sports, and heaps of other sources. It pops up in the center of your desktop and will give you more a stack more options for what you want to do with the results, such as read a document,make an appointment, save a phone number,  send an email, or make a phone call.

Safari

Safari will have new ways to view what you do. For favorites, click the smart search field and a grid drops down, revealing the icons of your favorite websites. Click an icon and off you go. For your Tabs (on all your devices, because CONTINUITY) you can click ‘Tab View’ to see all your tabs in a nicely organized view.

When you search for something, Safari provides Spotlight Suggestions from sources like Wikipedia, Bing, Maps, news, and iTunes, along with suggestions from your search engine.

Yosemite will bring advanced JavaScript engine optimizations to Safari. Sweet right? Yeah, that just means it’ll be faster. It’ll also be more energy efficient, so, apparently we can do things like watch Netflix for up to 2 hours longer. Because not watching enough Netflix was purportedly a big problem for a lot of people. (We’re being sarcastic. Back away from the Netflix. YOU CAN CONTROL IT. YOU DON’T HAVE TO WATCH THE WHOLE SEASON OF ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK AT ONCE!)

There are also more privacy options  in Safari.  A little late to the party, but you will be able to open one Safari window in Private Browsing mode — which doesn’t save your browsing history — while keeping others in regular browsing mode. AND you can also now search the web using DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn’t track you. Kudos to the naming team on that one, by the way.

So there you have it folks, OS X Yosemite. The future of your Mac and integration with all your Apple devices, and changing the way we communicate and all that good and weird stuff.

OS X Yosemite is available today to registered developers and will be launched to the public this fall as a free upgrade for all users. There will also be an public open beta program launched later this summer.

You can sign up for the OS X Yosemite beta program here: https://appleseed.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/

If you guys have any questions about OS X Yosemite, please let us know and we’ll endeavor to find answers for you!