Apple

Writing Aid, a real assist for writers

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If you are a writer, check out the Writing Aid, an iPhone app by Benjamin Mayo. The interface couldn’t be simpler. Launch the app, type in a word or phrase, and a banner appears at the top of the app, scrolling side to side with a list of synonyms. At the same time, the definition of the word appears in the main body of the app.

Tap a synonym to jump to a new page with more synonyms and a definition of that word. And so on. You can tap on the upper left of the screen to climb back out to previous synonyms.

Simple, elegant, effective.

Microsoft selling Office 365 within iPad apps, Apple getting 30 percent cut

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While one of the big holdups for Office for iPad was getting the software just right, another was Apple’s policy that apps that sell things — including subscriptions — use Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism and hand over 30 percent of that revenue to Apple.

This had been a big sticking point historically, so it was one of the key question marks looming over this launch.

Indeed, Microsoft does offer Office 365 subscriptions within the just-released Word for iPad and the other Office apps and, yes, it is paying the 30 percent cut, Apple confirmed to Re/code. Microsoft declined to comment on the matter.

Wonder if that was the real sticking point that kept iPad versions of Office in the can? Maybe the previous regime refused to budge, newer thinking prevailed? Just a thought.

Apple offers “Refund for In-App Purchases made by a minor”

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Apple sent an email today to its iTunes account holders who have made in-app purchases. The email gave account holders the chance to ask for a refund for any and all in app purchases made by a minor.

I think this is beyond fair. The text of the email is in the post.

Political move? Russians shelve iPads

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Journalists spotted that ministers at a cabinet meeting were no longer using Apple tablets, and minister Nikolai Nikiforov confirmed the changeover “took place not so long ago.”

He said the ministers’ new Samsungs were “specially protected devices that can be used to work with confidential information.”

Something smells fishy here.

Nikiforov denied that Russia was clamping down on US technology in response to Western sanctions imposed over its takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.

Ah, that was it. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. Political bullshit is what it is.

Apple patents iPad smart cover with built-in gesture aware keyboard

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On March 27, 2014, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals an all-new iPad smart cover configuration that includes a keyboard panel. One of the aspects of this design which differentiates itself from Microsoft’s Surface tablet cover is that Apple’s keyboard has been uniquely designed to double as a multi-touch gesture keyboard eliminating the need for a touchpad.

I like the premise, the idea that you can gesture on the surface of the keyboard itself.

The emails that led to accusations of an Apple and Google wage-fixing cartel

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From Mark Ames at PandoDaily:

Back in January, I wrote about “The Techtopus” — an illegal agreement between seven tech giants, including Apple, Google, and Intel, to suppress wages for tens of thousands of tech employees. The agreement prompted a Department of Justice investigation, resulting in a settlement in which the companies agreed to curb their restricting hiring deals. The same companies were then hit with a civil suit by employees affected by the agreements.

This week, as the final summary judgement for the resulting class action suit looms, and several of the companies mentioned (Intuit, Pixar and Lucasfilm) scramble to settle out of court, Pando has obtained court documents (embedded below) which show shocking evidence of a much larger conspiracy, reaching far beyond Silicon Valley.

Confidential internal Google and Apple memos, buried within piles of court dockets and reviewed by PandoDaily, clearly show that what began as a secret cartel agreement between Apple’s Steve Jobs and Google’s Eric Schmidt to illegally fix the labor market for hi-tech workers, expanded within a few years to include companies ranging from Dell, IBM, eBay and Microsoft, to Comcast, Clear Channel, Dreamworks, and London-based public relations behemoth WPP. All told, the combined workforces of the companies involved totals well over a million employees.

More info in the post.

UK proposes close of tax loophole, iTunes VAT to move from 3% to 20%

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From the Guardian:

George Osborne’s latest budget could spell an end to 99p song downloads by closing a tax loophole that meant consumers were paying VAT at very low foreign rates on online purchases of books, music and apps.

The chancellor will bring in new laws making sure that internet downloads are taxed in the country where they are purchased, meaning web firms such as Amazon and Apple will have to charge the UK’s 20% rate of VAT. At the moment they are allowed to sell digital downloads through countries such as Luxembourg, where the tax rate is as low as 3%.

In a little-noticed announcement, Osborne said he would used this year’s finance bill to impose the new law from 1 January 2015.

Read the post for more and a clarifying post from Kirk McElhearn.

A drone that can hack into your phone?

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This is really no different than the danger you face when you go out in any crowded public space. But that doesn’t mean the danger is not real. Pretty interesting.

An unknown iOS 7 feature that is a real game changer

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Ever hear of the Multipeer Connectivity framework? No reason you should, unless you are an iOS developer and keep up with the latest and greatest evolutions in networking. But this is a game changer. Read the post for details.

See an airplane flying overhead? Siri can tell you all about it

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Follow the headline link for all the details, but here’s the short and sweet version. Fire up Siri and say:

Flights overhead

If you are in a relatively urban area, you might be amazed at how many planes are overhead at any given moment.

We did a small Twitter experiment this morning, and it seem like the Wolfram Alpha database that makes this work only has data for North America. If you see an exception to this, please let me know (@davemark).

Apple adds Indie Game Showcase to iTunes

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To get to the page, launch iTunes, click the App Store link at the top of the page to get to the App Store, then click the Indie Games Showcase banner at the top of the page (you might need to wait for it to rotate into view).

iBeacons used to nudge people in the nosebleed seats to upgrade

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Some fans who bought nosebleed-seat tickets to see the Golden State Warriors received a friendly suggestion from their phones when they stepped off the escalators at Oracle Arena: Wouldn’t they like to spend a few extra bucks for a seat where they could actually distinguish Stephen Curry from Andrew Bogut?

See any downside to this? All good?

Colors of the iOS 7 App Store

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Have an app or icon to design?

Have you ever wondered what the most popular colors are in each category of the iOS store? We did. So we crawled the iOS app store and grabbed the top 5 app icons in each category and ran a histogram analysis on each one to find which colors were used most often. What we found was very interesting.

Before you design you next app icon, take a look at the color palettes below.

Great idea. Pass this along to your dev friends.

FirstTech, the first Apple reseller, closing its doors

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Before there were Apple Stores, before big box retailers like Best Buy, there were the mom and pop computer shops. It’s where you’d go to buy your first Apple computer, where you’d get supplies like floppy disks and perforated computer paper (one long sheet of paper, perfed into individual pages, sprocket feed holes on the side). More importantly, it’s where you’d go to get your questions answered, buy your software (or find shareware), and get your computer fixed. And now they are closing.