Innehållsförteckning för #174 från AppleMagazine

If you’ve recently purchased a laptop computer made by Lenovo, you may want to hear this: Experts say the world’s biggest computer maker shipped laptops with pre-installed software that could let hackers steal passwords or other sensitive information when you use the web to shop, pay bills or check email. Lenovo said Thursday that it has disabled the offending software, known as Superfish, and will provide customers with a tool that permanently removes the program from their computers. The company initially said its own investigation didn’t find “any evidence to substantiate security concerns.” But it later removed that sentence from a statement on its website. The problem affects an unknown number of computers: Lenovo said it shipped “some” laptops with Superfish between September and December last year, before it stopped…

YouTube is going to release a mobile app that will only show video clips suitable for young children to help parents control what their kids are watching on the Internet. The YouTube for Kids app, scheduled to be released for Android devices on Monday features thousands of kid-focused channels that provide both entertainment and education. The content is mostly meant for children two to eight years old. Clips are selected by computer algorithms and human review. Although YouTube doesn’t permit pornographic videos or most other clips containing nudity, a wide range of salacious, violent and crude material is available on the site. That prompted many parents to ask YouTube for a “family-friendly” version of its service, said Shimrit Ben-Yair, a product manager for the kids’ app. The concept is similar…

BIRDMAN, MOORE AND REDMAYNE AMONG BIG WINNERS Another late February evening, another Academy Awards ceremony at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre... and another set of winners. The 87th Oscars wasn’t exactly the most unpredictable one we’ve ever had as far as the winners list was concerned, but there were still plenty of aspects of the big night that excited, stimulated and gave food for thought. Let’s get the obvious headlines out of the way. It turned out to be the Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu co-written and directed Birdman that claimed the all-important Best Picture gong. The story of a faded former superhero actor trying to reinvent himself on Broadway - as played by erstwhile Batman Michael Keaton - tied with The Grand Budapest Hotel for the most awards won on the night, with…

iOS #01 - Minecraft - Pocket Edition By Mojang Category: Games / Price: $6.99 Requires iOS 5.1.1 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #02 - Trivia Crack (Ad Free) By Etermax Category: Games / Price: $2.99 Requires iOS 6.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #03 - Heads Up! By Warner Bros. Category: Games / Price: $0.99 Requires iOS 6.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #04 - Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 By Scott Cawthon Category: Games / Price: $2.99 Requires iOS 5.1 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.…

Apple is investing 1.7 billion euros ($1.92 billion) in high-tech data centers in Denmark and Ireland that will be powered by renewable energy, in its largest such project in Europe to date, the company said Monday. The hubs, to begin operations in 2017, will power data for Apple Inc.’s online services, including iTunes Store, App Store, !Message, Maps and Siri voice services. Apple said it has increased operations in Europe, spending more than 7.8 billion euros on European companies and suppliers last year and supporting some 670,000 jobs in the region. Its own employees grew by 2,000 and number 18,300 people in 19 European countries. The technology giant joins Microsoft, Google and Facebook in building data centers in northern Europe, where the colder climate helps save on equipment cooling costs.…

For years, parents of babies who seem likely to develop a peanut allergy have gone to extremes to keep them away from peanut-based foods. Now a major study suggests that is exactly the wrong thing to do. Exposing infants like these to peanuts before age 1 actually helped prevent a peanut allergy lowering that risk by as much as 81 percent, doctors found. Instead of provoking an allergy, early exposure seemed to help build tolerance. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the results “without precedent” and said in a statement that they “have the potential to transform how we approach food allergy prevention.” His agency helped fund the study, the largest and most rigorous test of this concept. Results were published online…

A little-known war museum outside Boston is drawing back the curtain on a key secret of “The Imitation Game” giving visitors a rare chance to use the complex Nazi Enigma coding machines at the center of the Oscar-nominated film. The Museum of World War II’s new exhibit “The Most Secret Top Secret: The German Enigma Code Machines” is billed as the largest public display of the encryption machines, which the Nazis used for nearly every level of military communication, from the mundane to the top secret. Among the nine machines in the exhibit are two that visitors can use to encrypt and decrypt their own messages. Museum founder and historian Kenneth Rendell says only the National Security Agency has more Enigma coding machines. The NSA owns more than 50 and…

That phone app keeping track of your exercise and meals might keep you out of the hospital one day. Why give your doctors permission to incorporate data from fitness trackers and health apps into electronic patient records? Well, they might spot signs of an ailment sooner and suggest behavioral changes or medication before you land in the emergency room. They also might be able to monitor how you’re healing from surgery or whether you’re following a treatment regimen. “Right now we only see our patients for about a 15-minute visit in the office, and it’s a very constricted view,” said Dr. Lauren Koniaris, a specialist in pulmonary critical care at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. “This really globalizes the view of their health status, so that we’re really…

Lovers of emojis, the cute graphics that punctuate online writing and texts, will soon be able to pick from different skin tones and depictions of families with two moms or two dads on Apple devices. Apple Inc. has incorporated more diverse emojis into the developer version of the latest update to its mobile operating system. The iPhone and iPad maker has not said when the update will be available for all users Currently almost all the emojis depicting people or body parts, such as a fist or bicep, look white on Apple devices and other platforms. More cartoon-like faces that are smiling, crying, winking or suggestive of other emotions come in a shade of yellow reminiscent of “The Simpsons” characters. An Apple spokeswoman said Tuesday that the company is working…

Birdman Washed-up Hollywood actor Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), known for playing the superhero Birdman in blockbuster movies several decades earlier, attempts a comeback on Broadway. However, his path is littered with many obstacles - from an egotistical costar (Edward Norton) to nasty critics and his own self-doubt. FIVE FACTS: 1. The full title of the film is Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). 2. It was co-written, co-produced and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. 3. Keaton himself formerly played a superhero - in the Tim Burton Batman films. 4. Except for a few shots in the beginning and end, Birdman appears to be filmed in a single shot. 5. It was filmed in New York City in the spring of 2013. Whiplash Ambitious young jazz drummer Andrew Neiman (Miles…

For the second consecutive winter, bitter weather threatens to turn the surface of the Great Lakes into a vast, frozen plain. Nearly 81 percent of the lakes’ surface area was covered with ice, the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory reported Friday That was down slightly from more than 85 percent the previous day - a glitch that probably happened because strong winds broke apart some ice and created open spots detected by satellites, said George Leshkevich, a physical scientist with the lab in Ann Arbor. But with forecasts calling for frigid weather at least through the end of the month, the ice cover may keep expanding, he said. It’s grown rapidly as temperatures have plunged this month, nearly doubling over the past couple of weeks. Records show the lakes’…

REPORTS SUGGEST THAT CUPERTINO COULD RIVAL TESLA Apple has already been quite the game-changer in music and phones - two fields that it had little association with prior to the debut of iTunes and the iPhone respectively. So, is it necessarily far-fetched to suggest that the Californian giant could even become a car manufacturer? That has been the talk over the last few weeks, thanks to a series of reports. Much of the conjecture centers on an article in the Wall Street Journal that has shed considerable light on a supposed electric vehicle project, codenamed ‘Titan’. The suggestion is that Apple CEO Tim Cook already gave the nod to plans for an Apple-branded automobile more than a year ago, and that several hundred members of the Cupertino firm’s staff are…

More hospitals and doctors are starting to use data from fitness trackers and health apps to help treat patients. But they are moving cautiously. The technology has a lot of potential, but there are key challenges to work out: LIABILITY What if a patient’s data shows signs of an ailment, but no one notices? That’s the chief reason Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey is starting with only six patients and three doctors and is monitoring mainly lifestyle data, such as nutrition. It wants to add blood pressure, heart rate and other vital signs to its monitoring, but a hospital committee needs to sign off first. Doctors say that many patients already bring health data to visits, often as printouts that an office must then scan in. Getting data…

iOS #01 - Facebook Messenger By Facebook, Inc. Category: Social Networking Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus. #02 - Facebook By Facebook, Inc. Category: Social Networking Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus. #03 - YouTube By Google, Inc. Category: Photo & Video Requires iOS 6.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #04 - Instagram By Instagram, Inc. Category: Photo & Video Requires iOS 6.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6,…

First Kiss Kid Rock Rapper and singer-songwriter Kid Rock returns with his tenth studio album, his first since 2012’s Rebel Soul. This self-produced effort exhibits his career-long dexterity at jumping between old school hip hop, classic rock and country, from the melancholy country number “A Beer With Dad” to the Aerosmith-esque rocker “Ain’t Enough Whiskey”. FIVE FACTS: 1. Kid Rock is the stage name of Robert James Richie. 2. He is a five-time Grammy Award nominee. 3. His 1998 album Devil Without a Cause has been described by Allmusic as a “raprock masterpiece”. 4. His musical influences range from Warren Zevon and Jim Croce to Hank Williams, Jr. and Johnny Cash. 5. His song “Born Free” was Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s political campaign theme in 2012. Fan of a…

The Walt Disney Co. proved Sunday that its power doesn’t only come from Pixar. For the second year in a row, Disney Animation won an Academy Award for best animated feature, as “Big Hero 6” followed up last year’s “Frozen” win. The studio’s “Feast” also won for best animated short. Neither film is connected to the company’s Pixar unit, which Disney bought in 2006 for $7.4 billion in stock. Since then, the Disney Pixar combo had scooped up most animated feature Oscars (Paramount’s “Rango” won in 2011) with blockbusters including “Finding Nemo,” “Toy Story 3” and “Brave.” Pixar didn’t release a film in 2014. “Big Hero 6,” is Disney’s first animated film to take advantage of the company’s 2009 acquisition of Marvel. Based on a Marvel Comic, “Big Hero 6”…