Innehållsförteckning för #162 från AppleMagazine

Samsung retained the chief of its mobile business in an annual executive reshuffle announced Monday despite a steep decline in mobile profit. The extent of this year’s reshuffle was the smallest in recent years, showing how Samsung is opting for stability in its executive ranks in the absence of chairman Lee Kun-hee who was hospitalized in May after a heart attack. Samsung spokesman Lee June said that Shin Jongkyun, president of mobile communications at Samsung Electronics Co., has made a significant contribution to Samsung’s rise to world’s top mobile phone maker. Some analysts expected Shin to step down to take responsibility for Samsung’s failure to respond quickly enough to the rise of Chinese smartphone makers and Apple’s new iPhones. Samsung’s third-quarter mobile profit fell to just one quarter of the…

A year ago, Amazon.com workers like 34-yearold Rejinaldo Rosales hiked miles of aisles each shift to “pick” each item a customer ordered and prepare it for shipping. Now the e-commerce giant boasts that it has boosted efficiency - and given workers’ legs a break - by deploying more than 15,000 wheeled robots to crisscross the floors of its biggest warehouses and deliver stacks of toys, books and other products to employees. “We pick two to three times faster than we used to,” Rosales said during a short break from sorting merchandise into bins at Amazon’s massive distribution center in Tracy, California, about 60 miles east of San Francisco. “It’s made the job a lot easier.” Amazon.com Inc., which faces its single biggest day of online shopping on Monday, has invested…

Advances in technology present sports enthusiasts with plenty of options to train better and smarter. High-level gear and biometric-analysis software are no longer limited to elite professional athletes. The weekender can now use some tech-sawy approaches to get better, perhaps, at a multitude of sports. Practice makes perfect, but technology can make practice better: HEXOSKIN SHIRT ($400): I felt like Batman in his form-fitting bat suit. It’s a snug, black sleeveless shirt with a brain. Two bandage-width strips containing sewn-in sensors run across the chest and abdomen areas. They were held tight against my body by adjustable straps. A rechargeable pack about the size of a mint tin fits nicely near my waist. Once I started working out, the weirdness subsided and the hard work and perspiration took over. The…

In the more than two decades since world leaders first got together to try to solve global warming, life on Earth has changed, not just the climate. It’s gotten hotter, more polluted with heat-trapping gases, more crowded and just downright wilder. The numbers are stark. Carbon dioxide emissions: up 60 percent. Global temperature: up six-tenths of a degree. Population: up 1.7 billion people. Sea level: up 3 inches. U.S. extreme weather: up 30 percent. Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica: down 4.9 trillion tons of ice. “Simply put, we are rapidly remaking the planet and beginning to suffer the consequences,” says Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. Diplomats from more than 190 nations opened talks Monday at a United Nations global warming conference in Lima,…

Chip maker Cypress Semiconductor is buying flash memory product maker Spansion in an allstock deal worth $1.59 billion. Spansion stockholders will get 2.457 shares of Cypress stock for every Spansion share they own. Shareholders of each side will own about 50 percent of the new company which will keep the name Cypress Semiconductor Corp. The companies valued the deal at $4 billion. They expect it to close in the first half of 2015, and they expect to cut annual costs by $135 million within three years. Cypress President and CEO TJ. Rodgers will be CEO of the combined company which is expected to have $2 billion in annual revenue. Spansion Chairman Ray Bingham will be non-executive chairman. Cypress shares rose 82 cents, or 7.9 percent, at $11.25 in aftermarket trading.…

It’s a robot unlike any other: inspired by the world’s fastest land animal, controlled by video game technology and packing nifty sensors -including one used to maneuver drones, satellites and ballistic missiles. The robot, called the cheetah, can run on batteries at speeds of more than 10 mph, jump about 16 inches high, land safely and continue galloping for at least 15 minutes - all while using less power than a microwave oven. It’s the creation of researchers at the Massachusetts of Technology, who had to design key elements from scratch because of a lack of or shortcomings in existing technology. That includes powerful, lightweight motors; electronics that control power for its 12 motors; and an algorithm that determines the amount of force a leg should exert during the split…

After nearly a decade in legal wrangling, a billion-dollar class-action lawsuit over Apple’s iPod music players heads to trial on Tuesday in a California federal court. A key witness will be none other than the company’s legendary late founder Steve Jobs, who will be heard in a videotaped deposition. Attorneys for consumers and electronics retailers claim Apple Inc. used software in its iTunes store that forced would-be song buyers to use iPods instead of cheaper music players made by rivals. The software is no longer used, but the plaintiffs argue that it inflated the prices of millions of iPods sold between 2006 and 2009 - to the tune of $350 million. Under federal antitrust law, the tech giant could be ordered to pay three times that amount if the jury…

iOS #01 - Candy Crush Soda Saga By King.com Limited Category: Games Requires iOS 5.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #02 - 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. #03 - 2 Cars By Ketchapp Category: Games Requires iOS 6.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #04 - Heads Up! By Warner Bros. Category: Games Requires iOS 6.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #05 - iTunes U By Apple Category: Education Requires…

The November Man Based on Bill Granger’s novel There Are No Spies, this spy action thriller charts the emergence from retirement of the highly trained and extremely dangerous ex-CIA agent Peter Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan). His is a very personal mission, in which he looks to protect a valuable witness who could expose the truth behind a conspiracy dating back decades. FIVE FACTS: 1. There Are No Spies is canonically the seventh installment in The November Man novel series, published in 1987. 2. Other cast members include Luke Bracey, Olga Kurylenko, Eliza Taylor and Caterina Scorsone. 3. Brosnan was rumored to be considering an adaptation of The November Man as long ago as 2005, following his retirement from the role of James Bond. 4. Kurylenko rose to fame by playing Bond…

IBM has engineered a way for everyone to join the fight against Ebola - by donating processing time on their personal computers, phones or tablets to researchers. IBM has teamed with scientists at Scripps Research Institute in southern California on a project that aims to combine the power of thousands of small computers, to each attack tiny pieces of a larger medical puzzle that might otherwise require a supercomputer to solve. “This could let us do in months what it would otherwise take years and years to do,” said Erica Ollmann Saphire, a biomedical researcher at Scripps. The idea isn’t new: Several universities and research institutes have used so-called distributed computing to tackle complex problems. For the last 10 years IBM has sponsored a project called World Community Grid, in…

What’s your image of Jennifer Aniston? We suspect that whatever appears in your head - whether you immediately picture her longtime role as Rachel Green in the venerable sitcom Friends or instead something from her multitude of movie roles - is all makeup and bubbly personality. You’re less likely to imagine a careworn woman addicted to prescription painkillers - and yet, that role is precisely what has sparked talk of a first Oscar nomination. We are, of course, referring to Cake, the drama that premiered in the Special Presentations section of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and in which she is joined by such talents as Adriana Barraza, Felicity Huffman, William H. Macy and Anna Kendrick, with Daniel Barnz on directorial duties. It is a talented cast and…

IT’S ALL ABOUT HOMEKIT It’s been a busy year for fans of all things Apple - that’s for sure. We’ve had the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iOS 8, OS X Yosemite, new iPads, iMacs and even the long-rumored Watch - or its unveiling, anyway. But do you know what else broke cover from the Cupertino stable this year? That’s right: HomeKit. What’s HomeKit, we hear you say? For those who managed to lose sight of it amid the excitement of the other hardware and software announcements that have besieged us this year, HomeKit is a set of tools that will enable the creation of sophisticated iOS apps capable of integrating with and controlling various leading connected home devices. What it isn’t - contrary to earlier reports - is a…

iOS #01 - 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. #02 - MEGA MAN X By CAPCOM Category: Games / Price: $4.99 Requires iOS 4.3 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. #03 - Five Nights at Freddy’s 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. #04 - 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. #05 - Monument Valley By ustwo™…

SHADYXV Various Artists Released in honor of the 15th anniversary of Eminem’s Shady Records label, SHADYXV showcases a combination of greatest hits and new material from the likes of Slaughterhouse, Bad Meets Evil, D12 and Yelawolf, as well as the label’s founder, Marshall Bruce Mathers III himself. The album features all past and current members of the label. FIVE FACTS: 1. Eminem was the best-selling artist of the 2000s in the United States. 2. Shady Records was founded by Eminem and his manager Paul Rosenberg in 1999. 3. It followed the critical and commercial success of the former’s breakthrough album, The Slim Shady LP. 4. Previous members of the label include 50 Cent, Obie Trice, Bobby Creekwater, Ca$his and Stat Quo. 5. The album cover depicts a black and red…

Physicist Stephen Hawking has warned that the rise of artificial intelligence could see the human race become extinct. In an interview with the BBC, the scientist said that while “primitive forms” of artificial intelligence have proved useful, if the technology is developed to a level that can surpass humans, it “could spell the end of the human race.” He said that advanced artificial intelligence would “take off on its own, and redesign itself at an ever increasing rate.” Human biological evolution will not be able to compete and “would be superseded,” he said in the interview Tuesday.…