Happy Holidays!

The iPhone Antidote family would like to wish all of our wonderful customers and blog readers a wonderful and merry Christmas.

The blog will be taking a 2-day hiatus – don’t miss us too much- we’ll be back right after! (A little fatter, and a little bit sore in our smiling muscles.)

We sincerely hope that your Holidays are full of family and love and smiling and some sneaky eggnog and mistletoe!

Peace x

Apple’s Holidays Ad will make you cry happy tears

Happy tears are the best you guys. And it’s Christmas time, so obviously Apple want us to cry happy tears, so that we’ll feel warm and fuzzy, associate those feelings with them, thus creating subconscious brand loyalty.

Which is smart and also makes us feel a little squirmy inside. BUT its still an awesome commercial that will make you feel warm and fuzzy and in all likelihood make you cry big sploshy happy tears. So you should probably watch it. What are you, a grinch?

Happy holidays!

App of the Day! Camera Edition

You guys, it’s almost the Holidays! One week ’til Halloween, then Thanksgiving and then Christmas! All the times you’ll be wanting to take the best possible camera phone photos…

SO you’ll prolly be wanting to get the updated version of VSCO Cam. It’s super cool, the newest update has been catered towards iOS 8 and you can manually control all kinds of wonderful photo-taking things like shutter speed, white balance, focus and exposure.

Not to worry though, they also actually manage to make all that stuff pretty intuitive to folks who aren’t that versed in camera terminology.

It comes equipped with post photo editing tools and the ability to share straight to Facebook or Instagram from the App and it’ll make your Holiday pictures superb, we promise.

Get it from the App store.  It’s free with the option to make in-app purchases for filters etc.

Thanksgiving yaya!!

Brace yourselves: Thanksgiving is coming!

You guys probably don’t really need to brace yourselves though, cos thanksgiving means yummy foods and cool leaves and family (maybe brace yourselves a bit).

It also means holidays! And this year, like many in the past, Apple employees are in for extra special thanksgiving- with extra days off to be thankful for!

Thanks Tim Cook! (Is what we’d say if we were given days off for thanksgiving. And we worked for apple).

Apple employees all over the world get the entire week of thanksgiving off WITH pay. WHHHOOOOOOOP!

Peeps who work in retail and customer service, as well as those for whom thankgiving means, well, not a lot, i.e. those in other countires, can take those paid days leave at other, convenient, staggered times.  Whoop.

Here’s the email Tim Cook Sent to his loved and thankful staff regarding the extra paid days off, thanks to 9to5mac.

Team-

It’s been an exciting summer. For the first time, we’ve launched two new iPhone product lines. iOS 7 was created from a deep collaboration between our design and engineering teams, bringing to our customers a stunning new user interface and amazing new features. We unveiled OS X Mavericks and the most powerful Mac ever. The App Store celebrated a new milestone — 50 billion downloads. And we continued to express our love for music with iTunes Radio and the iTunes Festival.

I had the opportunity to visit a few of our stores during the iPhone launch. There is no better place to see and feel why Apple is special. The best products on Earth. Energy. Enthusiasm. The best customers in the world. Passionate team members focused on enriching people’s lives. Innovative products that serve humanity’s deepest values and highest aspirations.

And I am proud to tell you that Apple is also a force for good in our world beyond our products. Whether it’s improving working conditions or the environment, standing up for human rights, helping eliminate AIDS, or reinventing education, Apple is making a substantial contribution to society.

None of this would have been possible without you. Our most important resource is not our money, our intellectual property, or any capital asset. Our most important resource — our soul — is our people.

I realize many of you worked tirelessly to bring us this far. I know it required great personal sacrifice. In recognition of your incredible efforts and achievements, I’m happy to announce that we’re extending the Thanksgiving holiday this year. We will shut down with pay on November 25, 26, and 27 so our teams can have the whole week off.

Retail, AppleCare and a few other teams will need to work that week so we can continue to serve our customers, but will receive the same number of days off at an alternate time. Please check with your manager for details. Our international teams will schedule the vacation days at a time that is best suited for their specific country.

I hope you find the extra time restful and relaxing. You deserve it. Details will be available on AppleWeb soon. I am exceedingly proud of all of you. I am in awe of what you’ve accomplished and couldn’t be more excited about the future.

Enjoy the time away!

So that’s cool. But hey, even if we’re not Apple employees and aren’t getting more full paid days off over Thanksgiving, at least we’ve got Captain Halloween to look forward to.

And, if you guys are anything like us, lots to be thankful for.