A video showing a group of African students being asked to leave an Apple store at Highpoint shopping centre in Melbourne on Tuesday has caused widespread outrage on social media amid claims of blatant racism.
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A spokeswoman from Apple said it was looking into the situation but said Apple was committed to cultural diversity and inclusion.
Once upon a time, Apple was known for designing easy-to-use, easy-to-understand products. It was a champion of the graphical user interface, where it is always possible to discover what actions are possible, clearly see how to select that action, receive unambiguous feedback as to the results of that action, and to have the power to reverse that action—to undo it—if the result is not what was intended.
No more. Now, although the products are indeed even more beautiful than before, that beauty has come at a great price. Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people don’t realize exist.
The products, especially those built on iOS, Apple’s operating system for mobile devices, no longer follow the well-known, well-established principles of design that Apple developed several decades ago. These principles, based on experimental science as well as common sense, opened up the power of computing to several generations, establishing Apple’s well-deserved reputation for understandability and ease of use. Alas, Apple has abandoned many of these principles. True, Apple’s design guidelines for developers for both iOS and the Mac OS X still pay token homage to the principles, but, inside Apple, many of the principles are no longer practiced at all. Apple has lost its way, driven by concern for style and appearance at the expense of understandability and usage.
The iPad Pro is now available to pre-order on Apple’s website. People who pre-order today will receive their iPad Pro on Friday November 13. If they opt for free delivery instead, the iPad should make its way to your door on Monday November 16.
Look. I get it. There are completely valid arguments for why statements like Tim Cook’s ‘end of the PC’ quote yesterday could be considered marketing hype or delusion. But there is a bigger issue. I am absolutely fed up with tech bloggers and technical writers assuming that all people use computers the way they do. There is no longer just the ‘truck’ of the desktop and laptop and the ‘car’ of the phone. There are gradations of tone in between, and the iPad Pro absolutely, 100% could be the central computing device for a home. Many days, I run TechCrunch from my phone. On those days, the ‘traditional’ computers in my household lie dormant, completely. If you think this is an edge case, you are blinding yourself to the way the world has changed.
Apple did an impressive job making iPad Pro a device that everyone can use—everyone. Pros and novices will both get great use from iPad Pro, but developers are going to help make this a device that can get things done like no iPad has to date.
Even with a bigger screen and new accessories, the iPad still feels like a “sometimes computer.” I can take it with me on vacation instead of a MacBook and do pretty much everything I want, and I can even get quite a bit of work done on one (the majority of this review was written on an iPad Pro, usually while also chatting in Slack or Messages or firing off e-mails). But what really does it in for me are the many small ways in which the iPad Pro is not quite a traditional computer and iOS is not quite OS X.
You can get a lot more done with iPad apps than with the paltry selection of tablet / touch-first apps available for the Surface. But, because Apple hasn’t made a great keyboard, the iPad Pro isn’t a complete replacement for a great laptop like the MacBook Air — even for a tablet guy like me.
The iPad Pro will no doubt make a lot of Apple users happy, especially if they use it for graphics. But I won’t be buying one, and I don’t recommend that average users do so either.
Mr Mossberg also finds the iPad Pro too big and too heavy as a tablet.
I enjoyed putting the big screen to use while immersing myself in a movie. And the sound, with four speakers in each corner, is excellent.
While I like the iPad Pro and can see it reinvigorate iPad sales to a degree, its overall impact remains to be seen. After all, the biggest of the iPads also carries the biggest cost, and that’s before you might want to spring for pricey accessories. It’s not for everyone.
Just hours after Apple opened the iPad Pro preorder floodgates, Logitech unveiled its first accessories for the jumbo-sized tablet, including the Create Backlit Keyboard Case, a folio-style protector with full-size keyboard, Smart Connector support and more.
No, of course that screenshot doesn’t show the actual engraving (my name and contact info). But if Apple allowed a whole paragraph, I don’t think you could do better than to lie and claim that this $1000 device is in fact a Golden Ticket to a personal meeting with a fabulous and unambiguously-beloved Hollywood celebrity.
If you're an OS X user who rebuffs iOS smartphones in favor of Android yet also invests wholeheartedly in the iTunes and Apple Music ecosystem, Apple has finally strung together a working solution for your smartphone of choice. Tuesday saw the launch of Apple Music for Android, fulfilling the promise Apple made during June's WWDC reveal of the subscription-based app.
As people download and dissect it, they’ll doubtless be looking at how Apple builds on Android, what features are ported over from iOS and what Apple’s pan-operating-system Music philosophy looks like in the mobile age. In advance of the launch, I spoke with Apple’s SVP of Internet Software and Services, Eddy Cue, about exactly those things.
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“It’s a full native app, so it will look and feel like an Android app. The menus will look like Android, you know the little hamburger they use on the top. It’ll definitely feel very much like an Android app,” says Cue.
Marques published a video showing how the malware works, but he didn't specify how a user would actually get infected, which is usually a much harder task than developing the malware.
Patrick Wardle, an OS X security expert with Synack, said it is likely that if users encounter Mac ransomware, they would have to be tricked into running it, a kind of technique known as social engineering.
According to a Peppersoft developer who goes by the Twitter handle David L-R, "Who Viewed Your Profile — InstaAgent" was a nefarious username and password harvesting tool masquerading as an app for monitoring Instagram profile visitors. Digging into the app's code revealed sensitive account information being sent unencrypted to a remote server, instagram.zunamedia.com, and in some cases used to log in and post unauthorized photos to users' Instagram feeds. David L-R notes the remote server is not connected to Instagram's official network.
On the iPhone and iPad version, you can play two trial songs for free or pay $50 via In-App Purchase to unlock the full game with 38 additional songs. However, on Apple TV, the game is completely non-functional without the controller accessory. You have to buy the controller for the game to work at all. Incidentally, you can buy the full game and controller on Amazon as a $99 bundle, for both iOS and tvOS.
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We have reached out to Apple for comment but one possible explanation is that the Guitar Hero game accessory is not technically an ‘MFI game controller’. It is a completely custom peripheral that only works with the Guitar Hero game. This may be a bit of a loophole that allows Activision to require the peripheral as it doesn’t technically fall under the ‘no MFI controller exclusive games’ requirement … because it isn’t an MFI controller.
Boomerang's trick is to turn a short video into a back-and-forth loop for an amusing effect. The app doesn't try to create its own new social video network or require others to have the app. Instead it relies on existing hugely popular social networks. Like Hyperlapse, Boomerang is pretty much a one-trick video-effect pony, but ponies are fun and everyone wants one.
Now, the app is capable of showing more streams, as well as replays. Live streams are denoted by red dots, while blue dots represent replays from the last 24 hours.
Roemmele, a well-known entrepreneur, consultant and researcher in the world of digital payments, has created Pay Finders, an iPhone app that shows people which businesses around them accept the mobile payments service. The app is not the first app of its kind, but Roemmele hopes it will be the most accurate by combining crowd-sourced data from Apple Pay enthusiasts with data from industry companies and other sources.
The defining aspect, and first thing you will notice, of this app is it does away with the traditional method of tracking your eating habits by counting calories. Not only does this play a major role in inspiring the name of the app itself, but it also lowers the barrier to entry by negating the need to complicate the progress of the user with numbers that can be both intimidating, and off-putting.
In addition to raising the number of active testers, Apple doubled beta periods to 60 days, giving members ample time to work out kinks before their invitation expires. Developers encountered difficulties with the previous trial period limitation, saying 30 days is sometimes not a sufficient window for full app evaluations.
Want to develop an app for the newly released Apple TV? Of course you do. Not sure how to get started? Apple is touring the globe for “Apple TV Tech Talks” which promise to get you rocking. You have to register by November 13th, though…so hop to it.
Apple is to hire an additional 1,000 staff in Ireland, the government said on Wednesday, as the iPhone maker bids to boost its presence in the country where it declares much of its overseas profit for tax purposes.
Why is it that I know so many things can be done faster, and easier with Siri, but yet I never use Siri for these things unless I am in my car and alone?
In order to gain the full benefit of Siri, I have to be willing to talk out loud to an inanimate object. And, as it turns out, that’s a problem for me.
Me too.
As they turn high-tech, libraries need to protect patrons’ information.
If I can time-travel back to the past, I'll probably not going to kill Hitler. Too much work -- and I don't know how to do it.
Maybe I will tell my younger self to buy Apple stock back in the mid 90s. Or, if I have time to do some research before departing for the past, I will find out what lottery numbers my younger self should buy. Maybe. I'll be extra careful not to mess up, so that I can still meet my wife, and see my daughter.
But what I do know: if I figured out a way to go back to the past, I'll never move forward to the future anymore. It's probably all downhill anyway.
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Thanks for reading.