Algoriddim has made its realtime video mixing app Vjay free for both the iPhone and iPad, presumably for a limited time. The apps are normally $9.99 and $2.99 for the iPad and iPhone respectively.
Mix and scratch your favorite music videos from iTunes or combine songs from your music library with personal video footage into an interactive audio visual experience. Or use your iPad's built-in camera to create your very own music video live. vjay lets you get creative with your content, display directly to a TV, stream wirelessly via Apple TV, or record your performances live to share on your favorite social channels.
In addition to the change in price, the latest software update for Vjay added a couple new features including 'Key-Lock' that allows users to change the tempo of audio and video without affecting pitch. However, Key-Lock only works on the iPad 4 and the iPhone 5.
Update: Vjay is Apple's 'Free App of the Week'.
Vjay is currently a free download for the iPad and iPhone from the App Store. [Direct Links: iPhone, iPad]
Facebook today hosted a press event at its Menlo Park campus to unveil new video capturing capabilities for image sharing product Instagram, which Facebook acquired back in April of last year.
As expected, Instagram will now support short video uploads, positioning it as a serious competitor for Twitter's Vine, which allows users to capture six seconds of video footage.
To use the new video capabilities, users will tap on the capture button, which adds a new video icon to activate video mode. Holding down on the video icon will allow users to take up to 15 seconds of footage, more than double the time that Vine permits.
As with Vine, Instagram users can capture collages of video, taking a few seconds of footage at a time before moving on to a different angle or shot. Instagram also includes simple editing tools, allowing users to remove unwanted clips.
In addition to intuitive editing tools, Video for Instagram includes 13 new custom filters that have been specially designed for video plus “Cinema,” which is cinematic stabilization for videos that will “change video forever.” In an on-stage demonstration, Cinema provided sample videos with a noted improvement in stability, heavily cutting down on motion blur.
Unlike Vine videos, Instagram videos play just once right inside the Instagram feed and do not loop. Videos will have a cover photo and will be displayed alongside photos.
While on stage, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom also revealed some usage statistics. Instagram now has 130 million active members that use Instagram every month, and those users have shared more than 16 billion photos. The service also receives more than a billion likes per day.
The newly updated Instagram 4.0 with video is available now on the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today published an Apple patent application (via AppleInsider) filed in February of this year which addresses a system for packaging fingerprint sensors alongside conductive bezels in a single structure. The bezels deliver a small amount of electrical current to the user's finger, allowing the fingerprint to be read by the sensor.
The present disclosure is related to integrated circuit packaging, and more specifically to methods and apparatus for integrally molding a die and one or more bezel structures, with portions of each exposed or at most thinly covered, for fingerprint sensors and the like. [...]
Traditionally, the bezel and the encapsulated die have each been separate elements, brought together in the process of assembling or packaging the sensor apparatus. That is, the bezel and die are not encapsulated together.
Fingerprint sensor package with sensor die (14/16) and conductive bezels (18)
The patent application goes on to describe some of the issues with previous fingerprint sensor assembly methods:
Current fingerprint sensor structures require a number of discrete assembly steps. As the number of discrete elements and manufacturing steps increase, manufacturing cost increases and the potential for faulty or inaccurate assembly that negatively affects product consistency and yield losses increase. Discrete element sub-assembly is also a more time consuming process than integrated manufacturing. As in the general art of IC production, there is significant, ongoing commercial pressure to reduce cost, number of components, and number and complexity of manufacturing steps, and size of the completed structure.
Furthermore, the separate bezel and encapsulated die structures are often undesirably large final devices. Further still, it is desired that the bezel be as physically close to the sensors as possible to optimize the sensitivity of the sensor.
Cross section of finger on integrated sensor package
While the patent application was filed in February of this year, it actually appears to date much further back, as it is a continuation of a previous patent application filed in March 2010 and originally assigned to UPEK, Inc. That company was a 2004 spinoff of STMicroelectronics' fingerprint biometrics business. UPEK merged with AuthenTec in September 2010, and Apple ultimately gained the rights to the intellectual property when it acquired AuthenTec last year. Only one of the three inventors on the patent, Giovanni Gozzini, continues to work for Apple today.
Apple has been rumored to be adding a fingerprint sensor to its upcoming iPhone 5S as a differentiating feature compared to the iPhone 5. Rumors and speculation about Apple's interest in fingerprint sensor technology have been driven largely by its acquisition of Authentec, although evidence of the company's interest in fingerprint recognition dates back considerably further.
Back in June, Best Buy ran a single day promotion that allowed iPhone 4 and 4S owners to upgrade their phones to the iPhone 5. The company toldUSA Today that it was the most successful day ever for its trade-in program and as a result, Best Buy plans to launch the campaign again on Friday, June 21.
Customers will be able to trade in a working iPhone 4 or 4S, earning a credit of up to $150, which can then be put towards the purchase of an iPhone 5, which is priced at $149.99 for the 16GB version. The discounted price includes a $50 instant rebate that will last until the end of the promotion, on June 29.
Prices include a two-year contract with Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint. Phones that carry a trade-in value over $150 will have the remaining value applied to a gift card, and the credit applied will depend on the phone's condition. Trade-ins over $150 cannot be applied to a higher capacity iPhone.
The promotion, which will begin on June 21 and last for nine days, is only good in Best Buy Stores or Best Buy Mobile locations.
As it has in prior years, Apple is offering free summer camps for kids 8-12 at its retail stores, this year focusing on filmmaking with iMovie. The classes span three days, 90 minutes per day, with an introduction to the basics of movie making, GarageBand on the iPad, iMovie on the Mac, and then a film festival on the third day to screen movies for family and friends. The screenings are optional.
Apple also provides an optional, one-hour Parents Workshop on the first day that teaches parents how to set up parental controls on Apple devices.
At Apple Camp, kids ages 8-12 learn how to shoot their own footage, create an original song in GarageBand on an iPad, and put it all together in iMovie on a Mac. This free workshop, held at Apple Retail Stores, spans three days and ends with campers debuting their masterpieces at the Apple Camp Film Festival. Space is limited and workshops fill up quickly, so sign up now for a super-creative adventure.
The first groups begin in mid-July, running through early-August. Some stores are already filling slots, but others have wide-open availability.
Apple and TBWA Media Arts Lab have won a Grand Prix for Press award at the Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity, one of the most prestigious awards in advertising.
The award is for the iPad mini campaign where Apple put actual covers of magazines on a life-size mockup of the mini to show how magazines could be read on the device. The ads ran on the back of the magazine from which they took their cover. A number of publications received the treatment.
AdAgereports that Apple won largely because, according to category judge Marcello Serpa, "we were looking at a piece that makes print, the category itself, a hero."
Apple's iPad Mini campaign by TBWA Media Arts Lab won the Grand Prix in press, a category that the tablet once seemed designed to kill but now is offering what jury president Marcello Serpa described as redemption by enabling readership of print products.
[…]
Why it won: "It has a kind of guerrilla feeling," Mr. Serpa said. "It's a product that goes inside the media and says I'm going to kill you, [then] I'm going to save you. Let's embrace. It's redemption."
Gizmodo reports on a growing number of complaints from owners of Apple's newly updated MacBook Air regarding Wi-Fi performance issues. The issues are being documented in Apple's support forums and a few users in our own forums have also seen similar problems.
The problems they’re seeing sound eerily similar to those we’re experiencing with our machines: Wi-Fi will initially connect, but after a minute or two the connection will stop working, and a total reboot is needed to be able to connect again. [...]
An anonymous source at one of Apple’s retail stores in London has also told me they’ve had “well above average” complaints and returns (in a few cases) of Airs owing to Wi-Fi issues.
It is not uncommon for users to raise issues following the launch of new hardware as they put machines through their paces and discover differences in their behavior. Some of these issues are more significant and widespread than others, however, and Apple generally addresses many of the most significant ones with subsequent software or firmware updates.
Apple's new MacBook Air adopts the latest 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard, offering faster connectivity and bandwidth. Apple's new AirPort Extreme base stations also offer better signal strength by taking advantage of beamforming to focus their Wi-Fi signals toward connected 802.11ac devices such as the new MacBook Air.
Last month, J.P. Morgan analysts made their case for why Apple will position its rumored lower-cost iPhone as a "mid-end" device priced in the range of $350-$400 without subsidies, addressing a relatively sparse segment of the market while still maintaining the ability to offer a quality user experience.
Mac Otakara now points to a pair of reports from the China Times including claims from Pegatron chairman T.H. Tung supporting that notion. Pegatron has been said to be the primary assembler for the lower-cost iPhone, with Foxconn focused on the iPhone 5S.
Rendering of lower-cost iPhone in colors from iPhone 4 bumpers (Source: Mac Otakara)
According to the first report [Google translation] from the China Times, Tung addressed the iPhone at a meeting of the company's shareholders, expressing his displeasure with reports referring to the lower-cost iPhone as "cheap" and noting that the "price is still high". Tung apparently believes that attaching the "cheap" description to the lower-cost iPhone gives the impression of a low-value feature phone rather than the full-featured smartphone it will actually be.
A second report [Google translation] quotes Tung as saying that Pegatron's factories remain busy with nonstop production. The company has been reported to be undertaking a significant expansion of its workforce for the second half of this year, presumably to support production of the lower-cost iPhone. China Times indicates that Pegatron is ramping up for shipments of 13-15 million units of the device during the third quarter.
Apple's lower-cost iPhone is expected to launch around the same time as the iPhone 5S, with September being the most commonly cited timeframe. The lower-cost iPhone is said to be very similar to the iPhone 5/5S but with a slightly thicker plastic shell that will be available in a number of colors.
As we noted last week, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference came and went without seeing the introduction of updated MacBook Pro models, to the surprise and disappointment of many observers.
As with the Mac Pro, this MacBook Pro appears under a code name of "AAPLJ44,1" and appears to correspond to a 13" MacBook Pro, and while it is not exactly clear whether it refers to a Retina or non-Retina model, the two machines would perform roughly equally when using the same processor. Apple has, however, been rumored to be phasing out the non-Retina models, and if true this result would seem to point to a new Haswell-based Retina MacBook Pro.
The machine shown in the benchmark results is running a dual-core Intel Core i5-4258U processor running at 2.4 GHz with 8 GB of RAM and a Boot ROM dated June 5. Like the Mac Pro, this MacBook Pro is running a special build of OS X Mavericks, termed Build 13A2050.
Primate Labs' John Poole has put together a graphic showing how the Geekbench performance of this new machine compares to that of other recent 13-inch MacBook Pro models, revealing a 5-8% boost in performance compared to the previous low-end models while running at a lower clock speed.
As seen in the MacBook Air released last week, one of the major benefits to Intel's new Haswell platform is reduced energy consumption, with Apple choosing to offer only a modest boost in performance while bringing massive increases in battery life that see the new 13-inch MacBook Air reaching 12 hours or more of battery life.
It has been unclear exactly how Apple will prioritize battery life and performance in the MacBook Pro, but it appears that the company may be pursuing a similar strategy to that seen in the MacBook Air, boosting performance only slightly while pushing much of the energy savings into increased battery life.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro currently offers 7 hours of battery life, and while Apple may not be able to duplicate the 80% increase in battery life seen with the MacBook Air's switch to Haswell due to other power-hungry components such as the MacBook Pro's Retina display, the company may still be able to offer substantial battery life improvements in its new machines.
While Apple offered a sneak peek at its dramatically redesigned Mac Pro at its Worldwide Developers Conference, the new machine is not scheduled to launch until "later this year" and the company has yet to reveal detailed specs and pricing information.
But if a new Geekbench result is authentic, it appears that the new machine is already starting to show up in public benchmarking databases. Rather than showing up as a "MacPro6,1" as would be expected for Apple's next-generation Mac Pro, the new machine is dubbed "AAPLJ90,1", perhaps a reference to a J90 code name following Apple's usual format.
Also supporting the authenticity of the entry is the listing of a custom build of OS X Mavericks, 13A2054, running on the machine. The listed motherboard ID is also one which was discovered in OS X Mavericks as corresponding to the new Mac Pro.
The machine in question is running a single 12-core processor from the upcoming Ivy Bridge-E family, specifically the Xeon E5-2697 v2 running at 2.7 GHz. It is also equipped with 64 GB of RAM.
A comparison of this new Mac Pro entry with Apple's current high-end 12-core Mac Pro running a pair of 3.06 GHz Westmere processors reveals improved performance on Geekbench benchmarks by most measures, ranging from slight improvements for certain tasks to substantial improvements for others.
We chatted with John Poole of Primate Labs, who highlighted the substantial improvements in many single-core measures and in memory performance, suggesting that lower multi-core scores later in the Integer Performance testing run could be indicative of thermal issues.
Poole notes that with a public launch of the new Mac Pro likely still many months away, it is entirely possible that Apple is still ironing out both software and hardware issues on the new Mac Pro and that the company's work could lead to even more substantial performance gains once those issues are addressed.
...Apple's claim of "up to 2x faster" floating point performance may be optimistic. The new "Ivy Bridge" Xeon processor in the new Mac Pro has instructions that can process twice the amount of data as the "Westmere" Xeon processors in the current Mac Pro. The problem is that only certain kinds of software can take advantage of these instructions.
Apple has launched an iPhone repair pilot program for Apple Certified Service Providers in Canada that will allow certain certified centers to offer iPhone repairs after store technicians have completed Apple-required iOS Certification.
According to a tipster, the third party service sites will be able to offer repairs for the battery, camera, speaker, and more, after the program launches in the next few weeks. In addition to passing an iOS Qualification exam, Service Provider technicians have also been required to attend several training sessions to learn how to disassemble the iPhone.
While the program is currently limited to Canada, it seems reasonable to suspect that it may roll out to other countries in the future should the test run prove successful.
Documents given out to technicians suggest that Apple is aiming to provide a quality alternate repair option for its customers in Canada, while cutting down on unauthorized Apple repairs.
Program Overview – Goals 1. Provide APR with authorization to provide iPhone repair service to walk in customers as alternate channel 2. Provide same service level for iPhone as our Apple Retail Stores 3. Reduce proliferation of unauthorized repair centres and third party parts
Apple has furnished its Apple Certified Service Providers with a detailed set of rules and requirements that must be met, including troubleshooting all cases and providing same day service with a maximum of six hours in turn around time for devices with a warranty.
Out of warranty requests follow similar rules, with a 12-hour deadline for potential repairs. While the documentation estimates that the majority of repairs will be replacements, it requires each repair location to hit a Same Unit Repair rate of 10% or higher.
In early June, Apple began offering in-house iPhone 5 display replacements in an effort to cut down on repair costs. The company is also planning to offer additional same device repairs later this year, which could save more than $1 billion per year.
Apple's move to allow Apple Certified Service Providers to offer iPhone repairs is likely part of the same initiative, designed to cut down on overall repair costs while providing greater convenience to customers who might otherwise seek out unauthorized repairs. Even in the United States, few Certified Repair centers are able to offer iPhone service at this time, which could change as Apple continues to expand its repair options.
Update: According to a tipster, Apple's Canadian test run is an expansion of a beta test that began in the United States last year. Approximately 20 Apple Authorized Service Providers are able to execute iPhone repairs and offer unit swaps in the U.S.
Both the black and white varieties sold between September 2008 and June 2012 -- unit numbers MC-MBOOK13B and MC-MBOOK13W -- have been recalled and Best Buy will give customers replacements or a Best Buy gift card. Best Buy did note that they were not the only company to sell the batteries.
After receiving reports from customers of these lithium ion batteries overheating when charging, we believe the right thing to do is to contact our customers and ask them to return the product for replacement or for a Best Buy gift card. While we are only one of many companies that may have sold these batteries, we feel they are a potential fire and burn hazard and want to keep our customers safe.
In an interview with design magazine Dezeen, German industrial designer Richard Sapper revealed that he was once recruited by Steve Jobs to do design work for Apple. The interview doesn't specify when the recruitment happened, but it could have been in the early 80's when Apple was just starting out, or in the mid-90's after Jobs returned to the company.
Jobs once wanted to hire me to do the design of Apple [computers] but the circumstances weren't right because I didn't want to move to California and I had very interesting work here that I didn't want to abandon. Also, at that time Apple was not a great company, it was just a small computer company. They were doing interesting things so I was very interested, of course, but I had an exclusivity contract with IBM.
The 81-year old Sapper has been designing products for nearly 60 years, including lamps, phones, radios, coffee makers and an IBM ThinkPad notebook.
Parallels has posted instructions on how to install the developer release of OS X Mavericks into its virtualization software. Installing the beta in a virtual machine allows developers to test their software in a secure environment on production machines, without endangering their day-to-day work.
As you may have heard, Apple has released to its Developer Community a preview of the next version of OS X: OS X Mavericks. What is the easiest way to use a new operating system, especially a early preview of an operating system currently still under development? In a virtual machine in Parallels Desktop, of course. So, the Engineering team at Parallels has released Knowledge Base articles about installing OS X Mavericks in Parallels Desktop 8 and about installing Parallels Desktop 8 on a Mac that is running OS X Mavericks:
The company notes that users cannot install Mavericks into a clean virtual machine, but they can upgrade an already existing OS X virtual machine to Mavericks with only a few minor changes.
After releasing OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.4 to the public in early June, Apple has seeded the first beta of OS X 10.8.5, Build 12F9, to developers. According to 9to5Mac, Apple has also seeded the 10.8.5 beta to its Retail Team.
Apple also released a developer preview of OS X Mavericks last week, which is expected to be released to the public this fall.
The update is available through the software update tool in the Mac App Store and Apple's Developer Page.
Firaxis and 2K Games’ XCOM: Enemy Unknown is already available in several App Stores around the world and will hit the U.S. App Store later tonight. The game, which was first released for the Mac in April, is a re-imagined version of the classic 1994 title X-Com: UFO Defense.
The iOS version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a port of the full game that was originally designed for consoles and computers, with a few minor interface tweaks to make it suitable for a touchscreen. Essentially, it’s a complete console game at fraction of the price. Our sister site TouchArcade has posted a full review of XCOM, noting that the controls are intuitive and well-suited to the game.
You can break down Enemy Unknown into two distinct parts, the latter of which would make a great iPad game all on its own. There’s the tactical, turn-based shooter part that has you assigning a group of marines to, most of the time, engage alien activity. With touch gestures, taps, and clicks on the UI, you command each marine in battle, slowly creeping into a fog of war that veils the alien threat. There’s several different classes of dude and all have their own unique abilities.
Snipers, for instance, can fire from a distance that a basic bullet-spewing Heavy would have a zero percent change of hitting from. Most fights boil down to insanely tactical skirmishes, which hinge on your ability to set up, and bunker down into, smart firing positions with each dude covering the other. As alien bad guys lumber or scuttle into the picture, your commander-ness will be tested; enemies are smart and lethal: you will lose guys. This is just the harsh reality of XCOM.
The Lytro Light Field Camera, which was released in late 2011, is designed to capture refocusable images, allowing the perspective of the picture to be changed at will. Today Lytro announced that it has turned on a hidden Wi-Fi feature in the camera to go alongside the release of a new Lytro app.
Pssst. We're letting you in on a little secret. That Lytro camera you own has a little wireless chip inside. And, as of today, we are turning it on for the first time to give you a great new capability – wireless uploading and sharing!
Introducing the Lytro Mobile app. If you own an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch device, you can now experience and share light field pictures on the go. The app communicates with your Lytro camera, whose wireless capabilities can be activated with a free software update, and lets you preview and upload pictures to Lytro.com using either a cellular or Wi-Fi network.
With the Lytro app, Lytro users can wirelessly upload images taken with the camera to share, while non-Lytro users can explore the device's Perspective Shift functionality. Pictures from the app can be shared to Lytro.com, Facebook, or Twitter, and living pictures can be saved to the camera roll as animated GIFs.
Lytro owners can activate the new Wi-Fi functionality through a firmware update.
Lytro is an iPhone-only app that can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
DisplaySearch analyst Richard Shim is going back on statements he made back in May, when he said the next model of the iPad mini -- expected this fall -- would come equipped with a Retina display and an updated processor. In an added twist, before he made that statement, Shim said the Retina iPad mini would not ship before 2014.
Apple is expected to refresh its iPad mini in the second half of the year. The new iPad mini will continue to use a 7.9-inch display with a 1024×768 resolution, but it will use the iOS 7 operating system and an A6 processor, in a slimmer design than the current generation. Another iPad mini is also planned for production but not until early 2014. That device is expected to feature a QXGA (2048×1536) resolution display and the iOS 7 operating system.
It's unclear which DisplaySearch report is correct, though it's widely expected that Apple will ship a Retina-display equipped iPad mini at some point.
More notably, Shim does expect the iPad mini update this fall to bring a thinner case, regardless of whether it has a Retina display or not. Apple CEO Tim Cook did warn analysts and other Apple watchers to take rumors from the Apple supply chain with a grain of salt.
Apple is expected to introduce new versions of the iPhone, iPad mini and iPad this fall.
Biggest design overhaul since iOS 7 with Liquid Glass, plus new Apple Intelligence features and improvements to Messages, Phone, Safari, Shortcuts, and more. Developer beta available now ahead of public beta in July.
Biggest design overhaul since iOS 7 with Liquid Glass, plus new Apple Intelligence features and improvements to Messages, Phone, Safari, Shortcuts, and more. Developer beta available now ahead of public beta in July.
Algoriddim has made its realtime video mixing app Vjay free for both the iPhone and iPad, presumably for a limited time. The apps are normally $9.99 and $2.99 for the iPad and iPhone respectively.
Best Buy has 
