Innehållsförteckning för #136 från AppleMagazine

Apple CEO Tim Cook looked like he wanted to dance Wednesday as he discussed his company's $3 billion acquisition of Beats Electronics. The deal, by far the most expensive in Apple's 38-year history, will give the iPhone and iPod maker a line of trendy headphones known for their hip appearance and thumping bass sound. But Cook seems most excited about the potential of Beat's still nascent music-streaming service, which currently has more than 250,000 subscribers. That's paltry compared to the more than 10 million people subscribing to Spotify's rival streaming service, Cook is confident that will change once Beats has access to the data that Apple Inc. has accumulated while selling more than 35 billion songs to more than 800 million iTunes accounts during the past 13 years. COMBINING MATH…

The 3D rendering software behind films such as Toy Story Monsters Ine and Harry Potter is to be given away free for non-commercial use. RenderMan, which is developed by Pixar, has faced increased competition from rival animation rendering programmes such as VRay and Arnold. Although Pixar, which is owned by Disney produces its own films, it licenses RenderMan to rival studios. The company has also cut the price of its software for commercial use. In a statement, the firm said it would release a free version of RenderMan "without any functional limitations, watermarking, or time restrictions". "Non-commercial RenderMan will be freely available for students, institutions, researchers, developers, and for personal use," it added. Ian Dean, editor of computer graphics magazine 3D World, told the BBC the move "could be seen…

iOS #01 – Stay In The Line By Barry Wyckoff Category: Games Requires iOS 6.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #02 – Elevate - Brain Training By Elevate, Inc. Category: Education Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #03 – Piano Tiles By HU WEN ZENG Category: Games Requires iOS 5.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #04 – Toilet Time - Mini Games to Play in the Bathroom By Tapps Tecnologia da Informação Ltda. Category: Games Requires iOS 5.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #05…

Lone Survivor Written and directed by Peter Berg and starring Mark Wahl berg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster and Eric Bana, Lone Survivor is set during the Afghanistan war and dramatically retells the failed United States Navy SEALs counter-insurgent mission Operation Red Wings. It is based on the 2007 nonfiction book of the same name by Marcus Luttrell and Patrick Robinson. FIVE FACTS: 1. Berg first became aware of the book Lone Survivor in 2007 while he was filming Hancock. 2. Mark Wahlberg plays Marcus Luttrell, while Taylor Kitsch takes the role of Lieutenant Michael P. "Murph" Murphy and Emile Hirsch stars as Danny Dietz. 3. According to writer and director Peter Berg/This story is about working together for something bigger than our ego, bigger than our individuality. It's…

Google is offering a new extension for its Chrome web browser that will let users encrypt their emails making snooping more difficult for the NSA. The extension, called End-to-End, is based on open source encryption standard, OpenPGP, and will enable users to encrypt an email from the time it leaves their computers until it is decrypted by the recipient. The tool will require that both the recipient and sender use End-to-End or some other encryption tool to send emails. "It's important that the government not overstep," Eric Grosse, Google's chief of security, said in an interview last week, "we don't want any government breaking the security of the Internet." The new tool will make it more difficult for the National Security Agency or other agencies to collect collect information from…

Xbox users have reason to cheer as the console is offering 45 new apps, including Twitter and HBO GO, and will be coming soon to the Xbox One and Xbox 360. The list also includes ShowTime Anytime, Comedy Central, and Major League Gaming among other popular apps. With the addition of these apps, Xbox will now have a suite of 225 apps that will be available come the end of this holiday season. Apps will be integrated into the Xbox system, such as the Twitter app that will be optimized for the big screen and will also be included in the TV listing section of OneGuide so that users can see which shows others are tweeting about. "Today as we announce new commitments from dozens of our partners, including deep…

Sony Corp. is pulling the plug on its hand-held PlayStation Portable video game machine after 10 years. The Japanese electronics and entertainment company has been pushing the successor machine, PlayStation Vita. Tokyo-based Sony said Tuesday that PSP shipments ended in North America in January, will end in Japan this month and later this year in Europe. Discounts on Vita and downloads are offered to Japanese PSP owners, but are still undecided for those overseas. More than 76 million PSP machines were sold, as of two years ago, the last time a tally was taken. The PSP went on sale in December 2004. Machines devoted to games are struggling against the popularity of smartphones and other devices. Sony reported a $1.3 billion loss for last fiscal year and is expecting to…

Apps accepting payments made with virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, could soon appear Apple's app store. The firm has changed its policy for apps to allow software developers to use "approved virtual currencies". Apple has yet to publish a list of which virtual currencies it considers to be "approved". Many have taken this to mean that the Bitcoin cyber-cash system will soon be included in Apple apps as it is the most widely used virtual currency. The policy change marks a significant shift for Apple, which before now has been aggressive in its policing of apps that use virtual currencies. In late 2013 and early 2014 Apple took action against apps that used virtual cash even though many of the programs had been available on the store for months. Some…

iOS #01– Blek By Denis Mikan 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. #02 – 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. #03 – A Dark Room By Amirali Rajan Category: Games / Price: $0.99 Requires iOS 7.0 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 5.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. #05 – AfterLight By Simon…

Animal Ambition: An Untamed Desire To Win (Deluxe) 50 Cent Animal Ambition is rapper 50 Cent's longawaited fifth studio album. It's certainly a well-supported project, guests including Trey Songz, Yo Gotti, Kidd Kidd and Jadakiss, and it's also already seen some solid chart action, with lead single "Don't Worry'Bout It" having peaked at number 42 on the US Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. FIVE FACTS: 1.50 Cent is the stage name of Curtis James Jackson III. 2. Jackson has said that Animal Ambition is "overall about prosperity, ambition, and has an entrepreneurial energy—it's all from a distorted perspective." 3. Other singles to have been released from the album so far include "Hold On", "Pilot" and "Smoke". 4. Featured producers on the project, meanwhile, include Jake One, Dr. Dre, Dawaun Parker…

When it comes to online video, people may not want to cut the cord. Instead, they want to take the cord with them. People are streaming broadcast television on their smartphones in record numbers, according to Adobe's state-ofthe-industry report on digital video viewing. Online video has reached record numbers, according to the report, compiled by Adobe Digital Index, the marketing and research arm of Adobe. Mobile video viewing went up 57 percent over the same time last year, and overall online video was up 43 percent, representing more than 35 billion viewings. Among the report's more interesting findings are that TV Everywhere — a term for authenticated viewing of broadcast shows from channels you subscribe to on your cable or satellite network — is approaching mainstream use and is growing…

EVERYTHING THAT YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW There are several reasons why you might not think Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference is worth making much of a fuss about. After all, we rarely get any new hardware announcements at these events, and this year, that might seem a particular shame, given all of the devices that have been rumored for a while to be on the verge of emerging from the Cupertino stable. Was it any different this year? Did we get any new iPads or iPods? What about the ever-elusive iWatch? Sadly, it's a "no" to all of those... after all, this is the developers conference, so you'd probably expect stuff to solely delight techies, anyway. The obscure stuff... not stuff that you or I might be interested in.…

NEW RELEASE CLOSES THE GAP YET MORE BETWEEN DESKTOP AND MOBILE Apple's annual developers' conference -the Worldwide Developers' Conference (WWDC), to provide its full name - is always worth keeping an extremely beady eye on, such is its history of debuting so many of the products and software updates that have been instrumental in the history of the Cupertino giant. Mind you, even if you never cast your eye anywhere near the technology blogs each June, you'd soon hear from others about what has been announced. In short, the WWDC most definitely is not of sole interest to developers. Sure enough, one big announcement was that of OS X 10.10 Yosemite, the follow-up to last year's OS X 10.9 Mavericks. What's the overall effect that's been achieved with the software…

The release date for the latest Batman video game, Arkham Knight, has been delayed until the beginning of 2015. The adventure, which is the third in a series, was initially scheduled to go on sale for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC platforms later this year. The postponement follows a spate of delays to other high-profile games, including Dying Light, Mad Max, Quantum Break and The Order: 1886. "If no-one is getting upset at your game being delayed, you know you have a problem" Ed Barton, Media analyst, Ovum They are all "next gen" games, which use the most complex visual effects. Mark Ward, a spokesman for Warner Bros Games - which owns the London-based developers of Batman, Rocksteady - said the decision to "extend the development of the game"…

It's the believe in diversity, self expression and individual design what motivated an Austrian designer and his Australian brother to set out and find a clean and flexible way to personalise your MacBook. After 3 years of research and development they invented the tabtag, a glowing, removable and reusable sticker for MacBooks. A tabtag uses the glowing apple on the MacBook in order to illuminate defined areas of designs, making them glow. Due to a special adhesive film and printing technique tabtags can be reused several times. According to mood or the occasion one can easily exchange their tabtags, keeping the used ones in their specially designed packaging for their next opportunity to glow on a Macbook. In case the adhesive side of this special sticker got dusty, you can…

The most common way for people to watch TV Everywhere content was with iOS apps. In fact, Adobe said, iOS appsjust passed the browser as the most popular portal to streaming TV. Browsers remained the second most popular way, and Android apps were third. In another interesting twist, though, Adobe said viewing on game consoles and so-called OTT (overthetop) devices increased by the highest percentage of any platform — 123 percent over last year. Granted, the amount of TV watched on those devices is still tiny: They havejust 6 percent of the TV Everywhere streaming market, but that's up from 1 percent last year. Gaffney said most of that growth was in game consoles, although the category also included devices like Apple TV, Roku and Chromecast. Adobe said the numbers…