Innehållsförteckning för #149 från AppleMagazine

Sony is trying to woo Japanese game fans to the PlayStation 4 home console that went on sale in November in the U.S. and Europe, but didn’t arrive at stores here until February. Atsushi Morita, appointed head of Sony Computer Entertainment's Japan operations effective Monday acknowledged the momentum for the PlayStation 4 in Japan wasn't catching up with the West, although its cumulative global sales reached 10 million recently, the fastest pace for any game console. The PS4 accounts for 78 percent of the home-console market in Japan, thrashing Microsoft Corp. of the U.S. and local competitor Nintendo Co., but Tokyo-based Sony Corp. won't give a regional breakdown of recent sales. Microsoft's Xbox One is set to go on sale in Japan Thursday, also much later than its November sale…

Home Depot may be the latest retailer to suffer a major credit card data breach. The Atlanta-based home improvement retailer told The Associated Press Tuesday that it is working with both banks and law enforcement to investigate "unusual activity" that would point to a hack. "Protecting our customers' information is something we take extremely seriously, and we are aggressively gathering facts at this point while working to protect customers/' said Paula Drake, a spokeswoman at Home Depot, declining to elaborate. She said the retailer would notify customers immediately if it confirms a breach. Shares of Home Depot Inc. fell $1.88, or 2 percent, to close at $91.15. Hackers have broken security walls for many retailers in recent months, including Target, grocery store chain Supervalu, PR Chang's and the thrift store…

The theft of nude photographs from celebrities' online accounts has thrown a spotlight on the security of cloud computing, a system used by a growing number of Americans to store personal information over the Internet. On Tuesday, Apple acknowledged the security breakdown and blamed it on intruders who were able to figure out usernames and passwords and bypass other safeguards. The company said it found no evidence of a widespread problem in its iCIoud or Find my iPhone services. But the theft of the photos raises questions about the protection of data stored beyond a person's own computer or mobile device. If celebrities' photos aren't safe, then whose are? Some key questions and answers about files that are stored remotely: Q: What is the cloud? A: The cloud is a…

Draft Day NFL Draft Day is a day capable of forever transforming the lives of athletes and the fortunes of football teams... so why not immortalize it in a sports drama film starring Kevin Costner as Sonny Weaver Jr., the General Manager of the Cleveland Browns? When his team acquires the number one draft pick, he faces the biggest decision of his life. FIVE FACTS: 1. Draft Day was directed by Ivan Reitman. 2. Other cast members include Jennifer Garner, Denis Leary, Frank Langella and Tom Welling. 3. The script was number one on The Blacklist in 2012, making it the (then) favorite unproduced script by Hollywood executives. 4. The film was initially meant to be based around the Buffalo Bills, but lower production costs in Ohio prompted a switch…

Foreigners who want to buy Alibaba Group shares in the Chinese e-commerce giant’s U.S. public offering will need to get comfortable with an unusual business structure. Alibaba's online and mobile commerce businesses will be controlled by a "variable interest entity," an arrangement meant to allow investors to buy into Internet and other businesses in which Beijing bans or limits foreign ownership. Used since the 1990s by Internet operators such as Baidu Inc. and Sina Corp., VIEs are based on contracts that say an offshore entity in the Cayman Islands or another corporate haven will control a Chinese company. Foreign shareholders get a stake in that offshore vehicle and profits but no ownership of the Chinese company. "The VIE structure is the only way at present to play this game," said…

Netflix Inc. has struck a deal with Warner Bros. Worldwide Television Distribution to run the television series “Gotham” worldwide following its first season. The highly anticipated show, which will start its initial season on Fox on Sept. 22, occurs in Batman's Gotham City and depicts an orphaned Bruce Wayne and future Commissioner James Gordon. Stars include Ben McKenzie and Jada Pinkett Smith. Warner Bros. Worldwide Television Distribution said that the deal is unique because it's licensed on a multi-territory basis. The company typically licenses programming country by country. Terms weren't disclosed. Each season of "Gotham" will be available to Netflix members starting next year, once its initial broadcast is complete in each country. Shares of Netflix added $7.65, or 1.6 percent, to $484.25 in premarket trading Wednesday.…

Imagine using your phone to snap a photo of the cool pair of sunglasses your friend is wearing and instantly receiving a slew of information about the shades along with a link to order them. It's a great idea - but it doesn't quite work. Though many companies are trying to make “visual search” a reality, this seemingly simple notion remains elusive. Take Amazon, which made visual search a key feature in its new Fire smartphone. The e-commerce company says the feature, known as Firefly, can recognize 100 million items. It’s similar to a Flow feature Amazon has on its apps for other phones. So far, Firefly can reliably make out labels of products such as Altoids or Celestial Seasonings tea. That makes it easy to buy items such as…

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. #02 - FaceQ By erick kuo Category: Entertainment Requires iOS 6.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #03-Wipeout2 By Activision Publishing, Inc. Category: Games Requires iOS 6.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #04 - The Tower By Ketchapp Category: Games Requires iOS 4.3 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #05 - Madden NFL Mobile By Electronic Arts Category: Games Requires…

My Everything (Deluxe) Ariana Grande 21 year old actress and singer Ariana Grande may already be a veteran in the entertainment business, but her music career remains relatively young - My Everything is only her second studio album, following 2013’s Yours Truly. Nonetheless, it’s a more mature effort than her last, already producing the hit singles “Problem” and “Break Free”. FIVE FACTS: 1. Ariana Grande was born and raised in Boca Raton, Florida. 2. Her wide vocal range has led to comparisons with Mariah Carey. 3. “Problem” features Australian rapper Iggy Azalea and reached number two on the US Billboard Hot 100. 4. Grande commented while working on the album: “It’s an album that I want to do a little bit different. I don’t want it to sound like an…

Northeast Ohio is hardly ready to usurp Silicon Valley as a high-tech mecca, but a growing number of data centers are choosing to locate in and around Cleveland to take advantage of cheap power, an abundance of fiber-optic cable and one of the safest environments in the country for storing digital information. BYTEGRID, which got its start in northern Virginia, is investing millions to convert a small data center near downtown Cleveland into a large one capable of using enough electricity to power around 20,000 homes. At least one other company is looking for a site in Cleveland, and several more have established sites in the city and its suburbs. "One of the things that is attracting data centers to Cleveland is we have a lot of industries with a…

iPHONE 6, iWATCH AND SO MUCH MORE SPECULATED FOR SEPTEMBER 9 When the news emerged on Thursday that Apple had sent out invitations to a special event taking place from 10am on September 9, observers could be forgiven for initially thinking that it marked just another year at Cupertino. After all, for some years now, September has been when the Californian tech giant has debuted its latest iPhone, with recent updates of the smartphone being of the very much incremental, rather than revolutionary kind. Ah, but for those of us who looked closer at the invitation, one reason immediately becomes apparent for this not being "just another year": the fact that it's due to happen where it all began, the location of Steve Jobs' introduction of the original Mac some…

'EDM' FINALLY BREAKING THROUGH IN THE UNITED STATES Are you partial to a bit of EDM? Let's correct ourselves there: if you're into EDM, or electronic dance music to give it its full moniker, then "a bit" of it probably isn't good enough for you. For those in the United States who like to play as hard as they work, there's often nothing quite as fabulous as EDM. I EDM is a term applied to a broad range of percussive electronic dance music genres, generally produced for nightclubs and other dance-based entertainment environments. Of course, electronic dance music in general is nothing new. Some might say that it was truly born when legendary disco producer Giorgio Moroder and vocalist Donna Summer decided that a dance song could make perfect commercial…

iOS #01 - Heads Up! By Warner Bros. Category: Games / Price: $0.99 Requires iOS 5.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #02 - Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse By Disney Category: Games / Price: $0.99 Requires iOS 6.1 or later. Compatible with iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPad (3rd gen), iPad (4th gen), iPad mini, iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina display and iPod touch (5th gen). This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #03-Afterlight By Simon Filip Category: Photo & Video/ Price: $0.99 Requires iOS 5.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. .This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #04 - Sky Guide: View Stars Night or Day By Fifth Star…

Google Inc said a research team led by physicist John Martinis from the University of California Santa Barbara will join the company to start a project to build new quantum information processors based on superconducting electronics. The Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab is a collaboration between Google, NASA Ames Research Center and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) to study the application of quantum optimization related to artificial intelligence. “With an integrated hardware group, the Quantum Al team will now be able to implement and test new designs for quantum optimization and inference processors based on recent theoretical insights as well as our learnings from the D-Wave quantum annealing architecture," Google's director of engineering, Hartmut Neven, said on its research blog.…

Amazon.com says its chief financial officer, Thomas Szkutak, will retire after 12 years on the job in June 2015. The e-commerce site says he will be replaced by Brian Olsavsky, vice president of finance for the company's global consumer business. Szkutak and Olsavsky joined Amazon in 2002, Szkutak as CFO and Olsavsky vice president of finance. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said Szkutak helped the company expand into different product categories and geographies over the past 12 years, including Amazon Web Services remote computing services and the Kindle e-book reader. Amazon has long focused on spending to grow and expand into new areas. But that comes at the expense of profit: the company's most recent quarterly report in July showed a deeper-than-expected second quarter loss despite surging revenue.…