News/Rumors

TweetDeck for mobile stops but still supports Mac and PC version

Twitter announced on Monday that it is discontinuing support for iOS and Android iterations of TweetDeck, as well as TweetDeck AIR and integration with Facebook, in an attempt to focus efforts on web-based versions of the product.
The real-time conversation tracking tool, acquired by Twitter in 2011 for $40 million, will be removed from the iOS and Android Play app stores in May, with service for the platforms to cease soon after. Also reaching its end of life is TweetDeck AIR, the Adobe-based version of the tool.

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TweetDeck Announcement:
“To continue to offer a great product that addresses your unique needs, we’re going to focus our development efforts on our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck. To that end, we are discontinuing support for our older apps: TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone. They will be removed from their respective app stores in early May and will stop functioning shortly thereafter. We’ll also discontinue support for our Facebook integration.”
Of note is the stoppage of integration with Facebook, highlighting the ongoing rivalry between the two companies which recently saw the Facebook-owned Instagram pull inline preview capabilities from Twitter. Leading up to the apps’ deprecation, users may experience outages as Twitter performs tests associated with its upcoming API version change from v1.0 to v1.1.
TweetDeck notified that it will still support the desktop versions. It will also still be available for Mac and PC users. With this news, we are hoping that Tweeter will come up with a brand new app for mobile user feeling left out due to this announcement.

News/Rumors

Mac and PC browsers vulnerable to HTML 5 bug

A recently discovered flaw in the HTML 5 coding language could allow websites to bombard users with gigabytes of junk data, with a number of popular browsers being open to the vulnerability.

According to developer Feross Aboukhadijeh, who uncovered the bug this week, data dumps can be performed on most major Web browsers, including Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Opera, the BBC reported. The only browser to stop data dump tests was Mozilla’s Firefox, which capped storage at 5MB.

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The problem is rooted in how HTML 5 handles local data storage. While each browser has different storage parameters, many of which support user-definable limits, all provide for at least 2.5 megabytes of data to be stored on a user’s computer.

Aboukhadijeh discovered a loophole that bypasses the imposed data cap by creating numerous temporary websites that are linked a user-visited site. Because most browsers don’t account for the contingency, the secondary sites were allowed local storage provisions in amounts equal to the primary site’s limit. By generating a multitude of linked websites, the bug can dump enormous amounts of data onto affected computers.

In testing the flaw, Aboukhadijeh was able to dump 1GB of data every 16 seconds on his SSD-equipped MacBook Pro with Retina display. He noted that 32-bit browsers like Chrome may crash before a disk is filled.
The developer has released code to exploit the bug and has created a dedicated website called Filldisk to highlight the flaw. In true internet meme fashion, the site dumps images of cats on to an affected machine’s hard drive.

Bug reports have already been sent to makers of the affected Web browsers, and Aboukhadijeh said malicious use of his code has yet to been seen in the wild.

Mac, News/Rumors

Mac being a standard PC in business

In the last year, I’ve witnessed a sea change in Macs’ acceptance in business,” Galen Gruman reports for InfoWorld. “To be sure, Macs have been the standard PCs for designers, layout artists, and the like since the mid-1980s, and Silicon Valley developers adopted the Mac as the preferred dev platform years ago (because it runs Unix, Linux, and Windows, too). MacBook Airs became senior execs’ preferred status-symbol PCs a couple years ago as well.”

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The latest is Acronis’s enterprises backup tool and its newfound support this week for OS X and its Time Machine backups, letting IT integrate OS X’s native (and free) backups into an enterprisewide workflow. It’s long been easier to back up Macs than PC, locally via an optionally encrypted backup drive or department ally via OS X Server. Now Macs can be backed up at enterprise scale.
It’s not just Acronis. Because OS X Lion and Mountain Lion use the same management API as iOS, mobile management vendors AirWatch and MobileIron have been able to extend their mobile device management (MDM) tools to Macs. Thus, IT can manage everything from app permissions to encryption and password requirements using the tools they already have for iPhones and other mobile devices.
There are also Mac management plug-ins for Microsoft’s System Center PC management server from JAMF and Dell (Quest), as well as multipatform management tools from Centrify, Dell (Kace), LANDesk, and Symantec (Altiris).
“But for bread-and-butter computing, it has been a Windows-only world. Those creative, dev, and exec Macs were the ‘other’ handled outside the normal IT processes,” Gruman reports. “That’s changing — fast. Gartner says IT will consider Macs to be as valid as Windows PCs next year. The tools to enable that are already coming.”
Gruman reports, “The latest is Acronis’s enterprises backup tool and its newfound support this week for OS X and its Time Machine backups, letting IT integrate OS X’s native (and free) backups into an enterprisewide workflow. It’s long been easier to back up Macs than PC, locally via an optionally encrypted backup drive or department ally via OS X Server. Now Macs can be backed up at enterprise scale.”

News/Rumors

Faster shipping times for iMac

In January, shipping times for the 21.5-inch iMac slipped to 2–3 weeks, and the 27-inch iMac has been in short supply since its November release. The supply shortage has been attributed to issues with display production resulting from a new lamination process.

During Apple’s first quarter financial call, Tim Cook noted that iMac supply constraints in the fourth quarter had impacted sales results. He expected supplies to increase during Q1 2013, which was confirmed in late January with a report that assembly rates for the iMac had been improved.

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The changes apply to both the 21.5-inch model and the 27-inch variety, in all of the default available processor speeds. Just this week, the 21.5-inch model was estimated to ship in two to three weeks, while the 27-inch model was advertised to take up to a month to ship.The first signs that iMac availability was improving came in January, when Apple saw its overall domestic Mac sales surge up 31 percent year over year. The new iMacs debuted in December in extremely limited supply, which contributed to a 17 percent drop in sales in the holiday quarter.

The new iMacs were plagued with production issues when new, thinner desktops went on sale. It’s been reported that those issues came from a unique screen lamination process utilized in the design.With shipping times for the iMacs having dramatically improved, any improvements to production could pave the way for a redesigned Thunderbolt Display that would feature the same slim profile as the new iMacs. Apple’s current model of the 27-inch Thunderbolt Display has been in limited supply at resellers in recent months, and a drawdown in inventory frequently signals Apple is planning to introduce new hardware to the market.

As for the Mac, analysts generally expect that Apple will see sales rebound this quarter thanks to improved availability of the new iMac models. The company also recently improved speeds and cut prices on its Retina MacBook Pro models, which is expected to help boost sales.

Apps Lists, News/Rumors

League of Legends now on Mac

The incredibly popular multiplayer game League of Legends has arrived on the Mac. Existing players can download the game directly, while new users will need to create an account.

The free-to-play League of Legends was originally released in 2009 for the PC. Inspired by the Warcraft III map Defense of the Ancients, players compete in 5v5 (or 3v3) battles controlling a single character. Each week there’s a rotation of available characters to play as, and the game is monetized by allowing players to pay to permanently unlock these characters as well as cosmetic skins for them.

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League of Legends is also one of the most popular eSports games and many events are streamed live with hundreds of thousands of viewers. Prizes for the highest level leagues can run into the millions of dollars and each team has their own personalities and fan followings.
Going native on Mac has been a big goal for us, and we’re really excited to offer the same experience across both platforms. And just in case you’re still skeptical, we managed to wrangle an endorsement from this business-savvy professional. We’re confident you all know that this man games as he pleases!

The Mac client does everything that the PC client does, meaning you’ll get all future features, bug fixes and new content on the same schedule as PC players, but on your native OS. The Cross-Platform team will also continue working diligently to smash any Mac bugs that surface during the open beta.
League of Legends had a private Mac beta client that was scrapped a few years ago, and rumblings of the game returning to OS X have been all over the internet for months now. League of Legends’ payment model is designed to be very different from the timer-based freemium games like Real Racing 3. Users can play as much as they want without paying, but they are limited to the characters available that week. Alternatively, gamers can pay between $5 and $10 to permanently unlock a playable character or players can earn in-game currency through gameplay.

Mac, News/Rumors

U.S. Mac sales go up by 31%

Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray believes domestic Mac sales saw such a significant spike in January because Apple likely satisfied some of the overwhelming demand the company had seen for its redesigned iMac in the December quarter. Munster attributes the strong performance to Apple finally being able to roll out orders of the new iMac, even as the company remains significantly constrained with multi-week waits for new orders through its online stores. Apple announced the new iMac in late October of last year, but did not begin taking orders until the end of the November with the larger 27-inch models not arriving until several weeks later.

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“We have analyzed domestic NPD retail data for the month of January which suggests Mac sales were up 31% y/y through the first month of the March quarter. We believe the reason for the significant improvement in the sales data is primarily due to Apple catching up with iMac supply, which the company noted to be constrained in the December quarter. CEO Tim Cook noted that iMac sales were down 700k units y/y in December (we note iMac sales are likely far less impacted by iPad, thus the vast majority of the y/ y unit decline is likely supply).”
The latest NPD data also revealed that iPod sales were up 3 percent year over year domestically in the month of January. Munster’s current projections call for total iPod sales in the March quarter to be down 17 percent. He cautioned that even if iPod sales did surprise to the upside in the quarter,it would mean less than 1 percent upside to Apple’s overall numbers.

Mac, News/Rumors

iPhone 5’s Touch Display Technology rumored to be implemented on Mac

Apple’s In-Cell display patent application has come to light. Yet perhaps the real story here is that Apple has clearly stated that this technology could apply to Macs and went out of their way to list the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and even a future iMac. So contrary to Tim Cook’s adamant position that Apple has no interest in creating a hybrid MacBook-iPad variant whatsoever, today’s patent filing shows that Apple’s engineers were obviously given different instructions that contradict Apple’s “marketing position.” If the new Ultrabook Convertible segment becomes a run-away hit over the next 24 months, it’s clear that Apple has a backup plan, just like they did when the 7″ tablet segment proved to be the consumer’s sweet spot. I personally have my fingers crossed that Apple will surprise us on this front sooner rather than later.

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Embodiments found in Apple’s patent application/invention relate to liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and electronic devices incorporating LCDs that employ in-cell and/or on-cell touch sensor components, such as black matrix material within and/or above display pixel cells. Specifically, rather than employ a separate, overlaid touch sensor panel over an LCD panel, embodiments of the present disclosure may incorporate integrated touch sensor components in-cell within display pixel cells of the LCD or on-cell above the display pixel cells. Among other things, these touch sensor components may include a conductive portion of in-cell black matrix, which also may shield light from one pixel from bleeding into another pixel. By way of example, an electronic display may include a lower substrate, an upper substrate, and a black matrix material that shields light between pixels of the electronic display. At least a portion of the black matrix material may form all or part of a component of a touch sensor of the electronic display. Various in-cell layers and/or other structures may form these in-cell touch sensor components. These in-cell touch sensor components may include integrated display panel components serving a secondary role as touch sensor components.

News/Rumors

Tips & Tricks: Change Your Desktop Wallpaper into Satellite Pictures of Your Location

Ever wondered how interesting your Mac Desktop would look like if it displayed the satellite view of the exact place where you are standing? Satellite Eyes does just the things, it allows the user to change his wallpaper in a blink of an eye to the satellite picture of his position. For coping with the app, one does not need special knowledge in the domain because the app switches automatically the view when you move the gadget.

Satellite Eyes offers the possibility of selecting from aerial photography (Bing Aerial satellite imagery), Terrain map (has the aspect of a general map), Toner and abstract Watercolor for their Desktop Images. One may also flick through zooming levels like Street Level, Neighborhood, City and Region.

If a certain picture appeals and wish to keep a single one, it’s indicated to quit the app after possessing a certain picture on the background for not letting it change automatically. For working, the app uses Location Services in Mac OS X so it’s indicated to have them enabled for providing qualitative satellite image. If captured your attention, you can download for free SATELLITE EYES (1.1.2) from the Developer.

Neighbourhood Picture Painted in Watercolors

iPad, iPhone, Tips

How to use App Store in all countries without having a Credit Card?

Remember the moment when you tried to sign up on Apple Store and you needed a Credit Card? We provided a couple of tips for succeeding in browsing on Apple Store and downloading apps and updates without the need of a  credit card on your iOS and Mac. For adding gift certificates and redeem codes through the account, one does not necessarily need a credit card attached to the Apple ID.

Tips and Tricks for using the Apple Store with no Credit Cards:

  • First of all, one must open the iOS Apple Store or Mac App Store and click on Install App at the app that one wants
  • Click on Create Apple ID or if already logged, sign out from Apple Account
  • Confirm your Country or Region
  • In order to follow the procedure, agreeing with Terms and Conditions is a must and also filling out the Apple ID and Password creation page, setting this up for a new email address.
  • Select None at Provide a payment  and finish the settings

So feel free in downloading  free apps or updates to your favorite apps.