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WordPress gets a Mac app alongside completely rebuilt, open-source WordPress.com

wordpress-macbook

Today online publishing platform WordPress, which powers approximately 25% of websites on the Internet (this site included), is getting a major redesign with a completely rebuilt wordpress.com and the introduction of a new Mac app. We’ve been getting a taste of the improvements incrementally over the last year, but today is the company’s official launch.
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GitHub repository for installing Apple Watch ‘San Francisco’ font on Mac removed after takedown notice

Apple Watch Font GitHub

When Apple released WatchKit in November giving developers time to prepare apps for the upcoming Apple Watch, it included the custom San Francisco font displayed on the Watch. Shortly after, instructions appeared on GitHub showing how to install the San Francisco font from the Apple Watch onto a Mac with OS X Yosemite since Apple changed the system font from Lucida Grande to Helvetica.

Unfortunately (but unsurprisingly), it appears that someone (Apple?) has forced that project to be removed from GitHub citing copyright issues since Apple owns the San Francisco font and distributes it only for use with Apple Watch, due out in April.

Apple Watch font takedown

The page now reads: “This repository is currently disabled due to a DMCA takedown notice.” A copy of the apparent takedown notice shared here is available below:


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How to use the Apple Watch font as the system font on OS X Yosemite

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As part of the WatchKit resources, which can be freely downloaded by anyone at Apple’s website, the company released the font it uses on Apple Watch, called San Francisco.

With Yosemite, Apple changed the system font from Lucida Grande to Helvetica, the font used on iOS. This caused some backlash amongst the designer community who detested the change of typeface. The Apple Watch font has been widely praised, leading some people to speculate whether it will become the default on iOS or OS X anytime soon. A user on GitHub has posted instructions on how to try out San Francisco on your Mac today, with some basic changes.


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Flashlight alpha app for Mac could show us the future of Spotlight

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flashlight

Spotlight, the search tool built into OS X, got a lot smarter in Yosemite – but one developer thinks it could go a whole lot further. He’s developed Flashlight, an app that extends the capabilities of Spotlight to include weather animations and Wolfram Alpha searches.

More interestingly, he’s intending it to act as an unofficial API other developers can use to add functionality to Spotlight … 
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Vulnerability in Find My Phone service and weak passwords may explain alleged celebrity photo leaks

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celebrity-hack

The Next Web is reporting that a vulnerability in the Find My Phone service may have allowed attackers to brute-force passwords in order to access the iCloud accounts of celebrities.

The vulnerability allegedly discovered in the Find my iPhone service appears to have allowed attackers to use this method to guess passwords repeatedly without any sort of lockout or alert to the target. Once the password has been eventually matched, the attacker can then use it to access other iCloud functions freely.

A tool to exploit the weakness was uploaded to Github, where it remained for two days before being shared on Hacker News … 
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Sunrise Calendar announces new Mac client with offline mode, third-party app integration

Just a few weeks after rolling out a major update its iOS apps, Sunrise Calendar today announced the first version of Sunrise for Mac. Sunrise for Mac includes a variety of features and capabilities, many of which are similar to what you’d find in the company’s iOS apps. On OS X, the app takes almost all of its design cues from the iOS client with color-coded events, although the team notes that the Mac client was built “specifically for the desktop.”


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Flappy Bird recreated in Swift, Apple’s programming language announced just hours ago

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Okay, it may just be Flappy Bird, the addictive game that once took over the news cycle for days and still threatens to return again some day, but the thing here is it was written in Apple’s new programming language for developers called Swift. What’s so special about that? Swift was only announced yesterday, less than 24 hours ago, so what this simple Flappy Bird clone really means is Swift is off to a good start given its only a few hours old. You can view the code for the Swift version of Flappy Bird by Nate Murray on Github, and read more about Apple’s new programming language Swift on iBooks.

Facebook releases ‘Tweaks’ tool to help devs iterate on their apps faster

Tweaks

Facebook has today open-sourced its rapid prototyping tool ‘Tweaks’, a framework that helps application developers quickly iterate on their projects and test out different possibilities for their iOS apps.

The best way to improve an app is to use it every day. Even when ideas can be tested out in advance — for example, with Origami — it can still take some time with the app to see how it works in practice.

Occasionally, it’s perfect the first try. Sometimes, the idea doesn’t work at all. But often, it just needs a few minor adjustments. That last case is where Tweaks fits in. Tweaks makes those small adjustments easy: with no code changes and no computer, you can try out different options and decide which works best.

Tweaks makes it really simple for developers to adjust parameters and properties in their application and then test them out in realtime. This is particularly useful for rapid user interface development, which often consists of merely tweaking parameters (like colors or durations) than any involved work.  Normally, developers have to recompile application binaries in order to change animation curves, durations or other parameters. This is relatively slow and inefficient.


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Twitter announces IPA to support engineers, also calms ‘Pull-to-Refresh’ patent poachers

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Engineer support (almost) never tasted so good. 

Twitter just announced a little agreement that subsequently guarantees it would never pursue other companies that poach its “pull-to-refresh” patented feature, which is duplicated across a slue of iOS and Android applications.

 

The micro blogging service unveiled the “Innovator’s Patent Agreement” today that assures the world it will not use its patents against competitors, while allowing engineers to keep control over their patents.

“The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended,” explained Twitter in a bog post.

The IPA will affect every patent issued to Twitter engineers in the past and going forward:


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