AppleMagazine #153

PayPal, Apple and others are betting on billions in mobile payments. But so far, trying to use my phone to pay at restaurants and retailers has been frustrating. It's easier just to pull out my plastic credit card than to figure out which card works with which app and which app works with which store. In theory, mobile-payment services such as Google Wallet are easy to use. You simply download an app and enter your card information. With Apple Pay, you can even snap a picture of the card or use the one you already use with Apple's iTunes. Then, when you're ready to pay, you typically hold your phone near the store's payment terminal. The transaction is authorized through a special wireless chip embedded in many Android phones and…

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is getting some unsolicited advice on how to turn around the long-struggling Internet company, just like some of her predecessors who tangled with investors dissatisfied with management's performance. In a letter Friday, activist investor Jeffrey Smith urged Yahoo Inc. to buy another fallen Internet star, AOL Inc. and take steps to reduce the future taxes on the company's lucrative stake in China's Alibaba Group. He also chastised Mayer for spending $1.3 billion to acquire an Internet blogging service and more than two dozen other startups during the past two years with little to show in return so far. To bolster his arguments, Smith says he has built a "significant" stake in Yahoo through Starboard Value LP. The size of the stake wasn't quantified in the letter…

JOURNALISTS INVITED INTO APPLE'S TESTING LABS We should have expected it... the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have barely had the time to get into people's hands, and yet they're already subject to a pretty big controversy. You might remember the 'antennagate' scandal that affected iPhone 4, and which probably didn't even warrant 'scandal' status in the grand scheme of things. Well, what has quickly become known as 'bendgate' might be in the same category of non-issue. Yes, believe it or not... some people are complaining that their new iPhone bends when they have it in their pocket. With the larger of the two new models measuring over six inches in length, one might have imagined them to be more susceptible to bending than the smaller iPhones of years…

European skies may soon be alive with the sound of small talk with new safety rules allowing the use of all portable electronics, including cell phones, at any time during flights. Under the guidelines issued Friday by the European Aviation Safety Agency, European airlines can allow passengers to use electronics during the entire flight, without putting them into "airplane mode." "We're basically opening the door where, in theory, you'll be able to continue making your phone call through the gate throughout the flight ... like you would on a train," spokesman llias Maragakis told The Associated Press. Standing in the way is the difficulty of getting a cell phone signal at high altitudes, and also how passengers will react to the thought of sitting next to a chatterbox across the…

MAIN SLATE SELECTION NOW CHOSEN Who doesn't appreciate a film festival? If you're a cinema fanatic, you've always had a good choice of such events here in America, with the Sundance and Toronto festivals being the perfect place to discover what you'll be chomping on popcorn to for the year ahead. However, let's not forget another of the must-see events in this vein, the New York Film Festival. It's back on the streets of the Big Apple from September 26 to October 12, for its 52nd running - so what better time to reflect on the delights of an event that has been described by Indiewire as "the grand daddy of American festivals"? Indeed, it's been running since 1963, with the showcased films being selected by the city's Film Society…

A renowned technology hub that is home to some of the country's top universities, Boston is emerging as an unlikely battleground for webbased businesses like Airbnb and Uber, with some saying more regulations are needed to prevent the upstarts from disrupting communities and more established industries. Boston, prompted by the arrival of the mobile app Haystack, recently banned services that allow people to offer their public parking spaces for sale. Now the City Council is considering restrictions on ride-sharing services like Über, Lyft and Sidecar and lodging websites like Airbnb, HomeAway and FlipKey, which allow users to book short-term stays in private residences. Across the river in Cambridge, home to Harvard and MIT, officials have been trying for years to restrict rideshares. From New York to San Francisco, cities have…