The Apple TV has gained four new channels: ABC News, PBS Kids, AOL On, and Willow TV. Unlike the Watch ABC app, which requires a cable or satellite subscription, the ABC News app is free to all. PBS Kids is free, but requires online activation. AOL On is also free, but the Willow TV app, which features live cricket broadcasts, costs $15 a month. Finally, the Flickr app has been redesigned to allow account logins and offer vastly better photo discovery.
The classic SimCity 4 has come back to the Mac, bringing the ultimate city simulator to a new generation of Mac users. And, thankfully, we finally have the necessary hardware to give SimCity the performance necessary to enjoy the game fully.
There are lots of lousy accessories for Apple users on the market, but Josh Centers has found six that are actually worth space in your house.
HomeKit in iOS 8 promises to unify all of your connected home devices, but how would you control them while away from home? Christopher Breen of Macworld suggests that the Apple TV might be the home gateway to HomeKit, with an upgraded model serving as a smart hub for home automation.
Amazon has announced the Fire Phone, and while it sports some impressive specs and a few unusual features, what really sets it apart is how it makes buying from Amazon easier than ever before.
In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that “abstract ideas” are not patentable. While this decision doesn’t completely eliminate software patents, it does require that such patents rely on “concrete improvements or new designs, not an aggregation of existing steps.”
Handoff will be one of the coolest features of OS X Yosemite and iOS 8, letting you seamlessly transition between workflows on the two platforms, but unfortunately for owners of older Macs, it will require Bluetooth 4.0, which excludes Macs built before 2011, and even many built later. Peter Cohen of iMore explains how to check which version of Bluetooth your Mac has. If your Mac isn’t compatible with Handoff, a USB dongle that provides Bluetooth 4.0 may enable Handoff by Yosemite’s release.
Apple has introduced a new, cheaper iMac, but do its tradeoffs outweigh its lower price?
If you own a Synology NAS device and haven’t updated recently, you should. Attackers are taking advantage of an older vulnerability (patched in February 2014) to mine the Dogecoin virtual currency (an offshoot of Bitcoin that originally began as a joke). One German attacker managed to mine over $600,000 of Dogecoin from Synology boxes. It’s yet another reason why you shouldn’t enable remote administration on your devices unless absolutely necessary.
Google-owned YouTube is preparing to launch a music subscription service, and it’s threatening to yank existing music videos from labels that don’t join. YouTube argues that it cannot allow music to exist on its free tier that isn’t also available on its paid service. Affected artists would include Adele, Arctic Monkeys, and Vampire Weekend.
Apple has settled with U.S. attorneys general and customers over conspiring with publishers to fix ebook prices, avoiding a trial that could have cost the company up to $840 million in claims. Meanwhile, Apple is still appealing the September 2013 ruling of U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote that placed a number of restrictions on the way Apple sells ebooks.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball has posted an extensive analysis of Apple in the wake of this year’s WWDC keynote, focusing on Tim Cook’s comment that “only Apple” can offer a completely seamless experience between devices. Gruber argues that the only “new” Apple is the one Steve Jobs established in 1997, that the company’s recent post-Jobs renaissance is a case of the company growing up, and that Tim Cook is the right CEO to guide Apple in this phase. “Jobs was a great CEO for leading Apple to become big. But Cook is a great CEO for leading Apple now that it is big, to allow the company to take advantage of its size and success,” Gruber said.
We’ve often suggested that a revised Apple TV could be a competitive gaming device, and Ben Thompson of Stratechery agrees. He makes the point that while game consoles were a good deal in the 1980s, when personal computers were much more expensive, the price of consoles has risen as the price of PCs has plummeted. He also argues that Apple could revise a gaming-capable Apple TV annually, outpacing traditional game consoles, which typically have a lifespan of 5 to 10 years.
It has been over a year since the first documents were released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealing the agency’s secret mass surveillance programs. Join Josh Centers as he takes you on a tour of what has happened since our last look at the ongoing situation.
If you use the Twitter client/service TweetDeck, you should log out and log back in to block a security vulnerability that quickly spiraled out of control last week, resulting in a torrent of out-of-control retweets. Twitter took TweetDeck offline until the bug could be fixed, but all should be well now.