Apple’s new iPad Air ad is poetry to your ears.

Apple has released a new ad for the iPad air and as per usual, it teams magnificent visuals with an emotional and thought provoking voiceover. The ad was debuted during the NFL playoffs this last weekend – oh, wait a sec –

Go Niners!

Ahem. Excuse us. The ad features a speech from the movie Dead Poets society by Robin Williams’ character, including poetry by Whitman, over the top of people using iPads in extraordinary and inspiring ways.

Apple has also simultaneously launched a new website called ‘Your Verse’ to share the stories of the people featured in the ad, plus more who use the iPad in their occupations.

To quote from the ad –

“That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

What will your verse be?

Another pretty rad ad from the magic people at Apple who seem to know exactly what we like to see and respond to best. Very suspiciously awesome Apple, we’re watching you.

Cos that’s what you want.

Cue rat playing the trumpet.

Images courtesy of 49ers.com and intermezzo.typepad.com. Video courtesy of Apple’s YouTube Channel. 

App Store records broken

Apple recently announced that their App store made an astonishing $10 Billion last year, with $1 Billion in December. Their customers downloaded almost 3 billion apps.

That’s so many Apps.

Eddie Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services said this about the feat:

“We’d like to thank our customers for making 2013 the best year ever for the App Store,” said Eddy Cue, . “The lineup of apps for the holiday season was astonishing and we look forward to seeing what developers create in 2014.”

Ya, we are too Eddie. particularly the app where you can taste what you see on the internet, the app that uses time travel technology (obviously) and the make your own tiny dinosaur App. Those are the ones we’re really looking forward to.

Our tiny pet dinosaur will be named Sheldon. D’uh.

Images couresy of Android.appstorm.net & Pinterest.

Head of T-Mobile crashed At&T party

See this guy? This guy is John Legere, the CEO of T-Mobile. A couple of days ago he was at CES 2014, the biggest consumer electronics show in the world. Probably because he has some kind of mild interest in new technology, right? Also – apparently John Legere really likes Macklemore., because he went to see him perform while he was there, and because Macklemore is pretty rad, right?

All of this sounds realllly logical. Until you get to the part where Macklemore was actually performing at the  AT&T CES party at Rain Nightclub, which John Legere crashed, and was promptly escorted out by security because AT&T got a little upset.

CNET News Executive Editor Roger Cheng was at the party and tweeted:

“Ran into @JohnLegere at the AT&T party. Yep, he crashed it. And still wearing the pink t-mo shirt. #CES2014”

and then:

“Oh wow, security just escorted @JohnLegere out of the party. AT&T is not happy with my tweet. #ces2014”

“Some security guards escorted him out. It was crazy. ”

According to a security guard that spoke with Geek Wire AT&T staffers said that the CEO was “harassing” them.

Later on in the evening, the twitter world heard from the man himself-

” @RogerWCheng great to see you! I just love Macklemore! Very bad move by @ATT and #PalmCasino . Have a great night! I am very angry!

C’mon guys, can’t we all just get along? What would  Macklemore do? What what what whaaat what what what whaaaaat…?

Also, some friday afternoon hilarity just for you guys:

Images courtesy of Geekwire, Pandawhale & Memecenter

Apple acquires small Australian tech company

What would you do if you were Apple; a super giant mobile tech company with millions of dollars and super smart employees and awesome products- stay with us- and some kid comes along with an App that makes your smartphone camera 100 times better? Well?

You buy it, dummies! Or, excuse us, you ‘acquire’ it.

And that’s what Apple has just done, although we may have slightly misspoken with all that ‘kid’ talk. Doctor John Papandriopoulos is the San Fransisco based Australian founder (and sole employee!) of Snappycam, an app which basically turns the iPhone camera super awesome by giving it the capability to take 20 photos per second, giving it burst shoot functionality.

He did this by rewriting the JPEG Algorithm. Obviously.

The acquisition has been rumored for some time after the App was taken out of the App store and all social media presence of Snappycam was taken down, but it was confirmed to the Wall Street Journal last Saturday.

Apple will most likely use the technology to improve their own camera capabilities and release them to us with future software updates.

Yay!  We like better camera stuff! We just can’t wait until you can take things out of photos, you know what we mean? Like cupcakes. And Beach holidays. And kittens. This guy should start working on that.

Images courtesy of Techradar & Petapixel

Smartphone Users, By The Numbers

INFOGRAPHICS! YEAH! These things make everything fun to read what with the colors and the shapes and the little pointy arrows!

We give you the best fun of 2014 so far- Smartphone infographics!

YEAH!

This Infographic is produced by Coupon Audit (provides Converse promo code) and iPhoneAntidote – Sell Your Cracked iPhone

Google Glass becoming more accessible!

Want to try Google Glass? Haven’t been able to yet? You can either check out eBay for a couple thousand clams OR you can try checking out subscribing to Google’s All Access Music service.

In Google’s most recent device expansion, users who are currently subscribed in the US would have recently received an invitation to try the infamous wearable tech. For only about $1500! Sweet right?

Um, by the way…

Um, yeah. Whats up with that Google? Opportunity MISSED! What suckers. …really rich powerful suckers. Are we right?

Anyway. Google Play Music was just launched on Google Glass, so it made sense for them to send out the invitations for Glass at the same time. Google Play Music All Access is a service available for $9.99 per month that lets users stream music from the internet on their devices.

According to AndroidCentral the invitations read: “Interested in rocking out while exploring with Glass? Sign up to receive your invitation below!”

If you live outside the US, can’t justify the cost, or just can’t fandangle an invite yet, Google Glass is expected to be released to the general public at some point this year, and possibly at less than the current $1500 price tag.

Images courtesy of TheVerge, Knowyourmeme & Lolshelf.

And now for something completely different…

So guys, it’s almost 2014, which means it’s almost the future, right? And what better way to realize that then by realizing that sharks are now using Twitter?

Yup, You heard us correctly.

Off the coast of Western Australia there are 320 sharks ( Great Whites included) outfitted with transmitters that automatically update Surf Life Saving Western Australia’s Twitter feed when the sharks get too close ( within 0.6 of a mile) to any of the coast’s popular beaches.

The move is to keep surfers and swimmers safe and aware of the sharks’ presence, which is vitally important with 6 deaths due to shark attacks off Western Australia in the past two years.

For example, a tweet sent early Saturday in Australia reads: “Fisheries advise: tagged Bronze whaler shark detected at Garden Island (north end) receiver at 06:0700 AM on 27-Dec-2013.”

We love this. Sure, it’s a program designed to protect life and it seems to be working and all that good stuff, but it’s also sharks sending tweets. 

Welcome to the future, kids.

Images courtesy of  Memecenter, & Comediva

Tim Cook’s end of year letter to Apple employees

Thanks to 9to5Mac, we have the full letter that Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, sent to his employees. The letter reflects on the last year, cements the ideals of the company and looks forward to 2014.

Team,

This holiday season, tens of millions of people around the world, from all walks of life, are experiencing Apple products for the first time. Those moments of surprise and delight are magical, and they’re all made possible by your hard work. As many of us prepare to celebrate the holidays with our loved ones, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on what we’ve achieved together over the past year.

First and foremost, we introduced industry-leading products in each of our major categories in 2013, showing the breadth and depth of innovation at Apple. We extended our lead in the smartphone market with iPhone 5s; launched iOS 7, an extraordinarily ambitious project; released OS X Mavericks for free to our customers; introduced the iPad Air and the iPad mini with Retina display; and this week began shipping the Mac Pro from a manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas. We also marked our 50 billionth download on the App Store – a milestone no one could have predicted we would reach so quickly.

Together we’ve shown the world that innovation at Apple goes beyond our products to the way we do business and how we give back to our community. This year, Apple raised and donated tens of millions of dollars for important charities and relief efforts like Red Cross aid to typhoon victims in the Philippines, and we continue to be the largest contributor to (PRODUCT)RED, supporting the Global Fund in its fight against the spread of AIDS in Africa. Just a few weeks ago, Jony Ive led an unprecedented effort that brought money and awareness to eliminating the transmission of AIDS from mother to child.

And finally, Apple is standing up for what we believe is right. We know that equality and diversity make our company and our society stronger, so we’ve urged the U.S. Congress to support workplace protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. We are also laser focused on our contribution to several environmental initiatives and we will increase our efforts even more in this area in the future.

We have a lot to look forward to in 2014, including some big plans that we think customers are going to love. I am extremely proud to stand alongside you as we put innovation to work serving humankind’s deepest values and highest aspirations. I consider myself the luckiest person in the world for the opportunity to work at this amazing company with all of you.

Happy Holidays,

Tim

Makes you feel all kinds of goo inside, right? in 2014 we as customers can look forward to a bunch of new and updated software and hardware releases such as the iWatch, iTV, iPhone 6 and a larger iPad.

We’ll be going into the ins and outs of everything we can look forward to early in the new year. It’s very exciting!

Meanwhile, it’s Christmas eve eve! We hope your holiday season is everything you guys could have wished for so far, and is set only to get better!

We wished for a kitten wearing a santa hat and drinking eggnog, as well as a bunch of stinky old iPhones, so things are going excellently!

Images courtesy of qz.com and Efunlist.com

Google’s turn to make us cry!

Man, the tech companies did pretty good with their end of year stuff this year.

Here’s Google’s attempts at pulling at our collective heart strings. It makes us feel sad, it makes us feel happy, it makes us feel good to be humans!

Thanks Google!

Google’s top trending searches 2013

What did we search for this year? Was it how to solve the never ending riddle behind how Pharrell doesn’t age?

Nope!

Google just released their annual year in review, with the worldwide and US based top trending searches listed from Most to Aaron Carter.

Just so you guys know, this is not actually or accurately the things that were searched for the most- as if Google would give us any kind of specific information like that! They have to keep all their knowledge and hence power in their sanctum! Duh! ( BTW we totally think the sanctum is kept on Larry Page’s super yacht)

Instead, trending searches, according to the Googleheads, “represent queries that had the highest amount of traffic over a sustained period in 2013 as compared to 2012.”

Here’s the worldwide top 10.

1. Nelson Mandela

2. Paul Walker

3. iPhone 5s

4. Cory Monteith

5. Harlem Shake

6. Boston Marathon

7. Royal Baby

8. Samsung Galaxy S4

9. PlayStation 4

10. North Korea

In the US, Paul Walker was number 1, the Boston Marathon was number 2, Nelson Mandela was number three, Cory Monteith was Number 4 and the iPhone 5S was number 5.

We feel like maybe we gotta start searching for some more happy things.

Google did give us some specific information on the most searched for people this year, and, you guys, it’s kind of disappointing.

1. Miley Cyrus

2. Drake

3. Kim Kardashian

4. Justin Bieber

5. Beyonce

6. Rihanna

7. Taylor Swift

8. Selena Gomez

9. Katy Perry

10. Kanye West

Kanye’s 10th?! He’s gonna be so upset, sitting there eating his fish sticks.

If you want to check out the lists for yourself, head here right now! 

Images courtesy of Iconarchive, Sodahead, Luxuo & Blacksportsonline.