Jordan manages the internal Partner Program for sponsorships and partnerships across the 9to5 network’s media brands including 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, Electrek.co, SpaceExplored and DroneDJ.com.
When Microsoft launched its Office for iPad apps last month, one of the most requested missing features was printing support. Just over a month later, today the company announced in a blog post that it’s updating the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint iPad apps with support for printing in addition to other new features and fixes.
Your top request is here! You can now print Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations to an AirPrintTM printer. In Word for iPad, you can choose to print a document with or without markup. In Excel, print a selected range, a single worksheet or an entire spreadsheet. Of course, you can select the pages or slides you want to print.
In addition to printing, the company also announced that its updated PowerPoint with SmartGuides, the tool that allows users to easily “align pictures, shapes, and textboxes as you move them around on a slide.” You’ll also find other new features for Excel, as well as fixes and improvements in the other apps: Expand Expanding Close
Yahoo released an interesting update to its Yahoo Mail app for iPhone today. In version 3.0, Yahoo is integrating many of its other services including weather, sports scores, stocks, images, news, and web search directly into the mail app. The goal is to provide users one easy place to access all their content from Yahoo, but it’s unclear what that means for the future of Yahoo’s other iOS apps for each of the services. The feature is currently only available to iPhone users running iOS 7 and up.
When you’re finished reading and replying to your email, see what’s happening in the world by tapping on the News icon. From celebrity gossip to the latest political news, you’ll find it in your personalized, visually rich news stream.
Let’s head over to the Today icon. Here’s where you’ll find a snapshot of the information you care about most every day and search — from your local weather to a news digest to the latest stock quotes and sports scores you care about.
The updated app provides new three new tabs along the bottom— Mail, News, and Today— with Mail bringing you to your inbox, News providing a stream of all stories from Yahoo, and Today providing an overview of weather, trending content, scores, and access to web search. While I have a feeling that some might not be too happy about their Mail app being bombarded with all this new content, Yahoo has done a pretty good job of keeping it out of the way if you only ever want to see your inbox.
– Feature updates for iPhone iOS7+. Your Yahoo Mail app is now enhanced with news, search, and snapshots of the weather, sports scores, stocks, and News Digest. Access the info you need, all in one app.
– Performance improvements
– Bug fixes
Both Samsung and Apple have slipped in smartphone marketshare globally during the first quarter of 2014 according to the latest numbers from research firm Strategy Analytics. While global smartphone shipments grew 33 percent to 285 million units in Q1 compared to 213.9 million in the same quarter last year, Apple and Samsung collectively dropped from over 50 percent of the market to 47 percent. The report cites strong growth of “second-tier smartphone brands” such as Huwaei and Lenovo and lack of entry-level devices in markets abroad from Apple as the main contributors to slowed growth for Samsung and Apple. As for Apple on its own: Expand Expanding Close
FreedomPop, the carrier offering free and cheap data plans on Sprint’s network, today announced it will start selling the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4 on its free wireless plan offering 200 voice minutes, 500 text messages and 500 MBs of data per month. Previously the plan was only available to select Android devices after launching last year with an outdated HTC device. In addition the company is launching a new iOS app that offers free voice, text, and voicemail to iPhone customers on any carrier: Expand Expanding Close
The first set of eye glasses with embedded iBeacon Bluetooth LE technology and certified under Apple’s Made-for-iPhone/iPad/iPod (MFi) program are coming soon. We’ve seen a growing number of companies embracing iBeacons by using the protocol: personalized retail experiences, in-store advertising, audience interaction at events, as well as apps that let you setup your own iBeacons at home and work. Now, a company called Tzukuri is about to launch a crowd funding project for the new eye glasses that use an embedded iBeacon to track lost glasses with accuracy to the nearest foot. They also use solar power, so charging is never an issue, and the company has big plans for using the product as a standalone iBeacon when on store shelves. Expand Expanding Close
A local news report last night from Denver’s 9News reveals a scheme setup at Apple stores in Colorado that saw iPhone traffickers convincing people in need of quick cash to sign contracts and hand-over subsidized iPhones. The traffickers would turn around and sell the unlocked iPhones for full retail, off-contract prices, but in exchange their unknowing accomplice is stuck with the monthly payments or faces ruined credit. The report also claims that Apple store employees appeared to be in on the scheme. Expand Expanding Close
Reuters reports today that Apple, Google, Adobe, and Intel have settled in the long running antitrust lawsuit filed by employees alleging the companies entered into agreements to not hire employees from one another. Apple previously settled out of court in a lawsuit brought on by the Department of Justice for the same practices, but the class-action suit from employees settled today was given the go ahead last year.
Four major tech companies including Apple and Google have agreed to settle a large antitrust lawsuit over no-hire agreements in Silicon Valley, according to a court filing on Thursday.
The lawsuits have exposed many emails between Steve Jobs, Google executives and others showing the companies regularly discussed agreements in place to prevent hires from the other companies.
“This is an excellent resolution of the case that will benefit class members. We look forward to presenting it to the Court and making the terms available,” stated Dermody, Co-Lead Counsel for the Plaintiff Class.
The trial for the lawsuit was scheduled to take place next month in May, but Reuters says Apple today settled along with the three other companies. Unfortunately there aren’t any details yet on exactly what Apple and others agreed to in the settlement. The terms of the deal will remain confidential until next month when the plaintiffs file settlement papers.
Update: Reuters now reports that the total paid between all the companies is $324 million, a significant sum of money putting Apple’s share in the neighborhood of $100M since it is the biggest company involved. Divided between the 64,000 plaintiffs however, the total stretches to just over $5000 per person. Expand Expanding Close
Ebay has pushed out a notable update to its main iPhone and iPad apps today that include a number of new features and updated designs. Most notably, the iPad now includes an in-store pickup option that shows a “Free In-Store Pickup” option under the “Shop Locally” search filter to show items from local merchants available for purchase.” That feature was previously limited to the iPhone. To go along with the new in-store pickup option on iPad, you can also now save your in-store pickup orders directly to Apple’s Passbook app.
For the iPad app, eBay says it’s also added a new selling landing page, smarter search results, and “more current shipping tracking”:
When something is on the way, where is it? We’ve updated our tracking capabilities to provide more timely status updates from within the app. Pull to refresh and get the latest info.
On the iPhone, users will noticed an updated Home page that provides quick access to Watched items, Feed and eBay Deals, and the updated app also includes larger photos, product reviews for many items, the ability to attach photos to messages, and support for selling from Austria and Netherlands.
• Updated Home page includes Watched items, Feed and eBay Deals!
• Larger photos on search and item pages
• Product reviews now included for many items in the eBay catalog
• You can now attach photos to messages
• Selling support added for Austria and Netherlands
• Save your in-store pick up order details to iPhone’s Passbook
• Brazilian Portuguese language support
• Speed improvements and Bug fixes
Following the introduction of OS X Mavericks and Apple’s new naming scheme inspired by locations in California, there has been much speculation about which famous California destination might be the name of future releases. Today, French blog Consomac has discovered trademark filings for other California locations that appear to be linked to Apple.
The site found trademarks for Yosemite, Redwood, Mammoth, California, Big Sur, and Pacific, all of which are registered by one of two shell companies, Yosemite Research LLC and Coast Research LLC. While that wouldn’t normally be enough evidence to assume Apple is behind the filings, the site also found the trademarks include protection for operating systems and connections to Apple through the lawyers that filed the application. From the translated report: Expand Expanding Close
J.D. Power, which previously awarded the iPhone highest in consumer satisfaction for smartphones eight years in a row, today released a report that puts Apple on top for customer satisfaction by carrier. While measure four key metrics— performance, physical design, features, and ease of operation— across the four major carriers, J.D. Power found Apple and the iPhone’s overall score ranked #1 for Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. However, in most cases, it’s only beating Samsung by a small margin.
The report also shared some stats on overall satisfaction for carriers and the most requested features for new devices from consumers: Expand Expanding Close
Apple just announced its second quarter results for 2014 with revenue for the quarter coming in at $45.6 billion. That’s compared to the guidance it previously provided of $42 – $44 billion and estimates by analysts averaging approximately $43.5B. Apple’s $45.6 billion in revenue reported today is also up from the $43.6 billion in revenue in the year ago quarter.
Break down of device sales for Q2 2014 include 43.7m million iPhones, 16.3 million iPads, and 4.1 million Macs. Compare that to an average of 38M iPhones, 19.3M iPads, 4M Macs, and 3M iPods predicted by the analysts leading up to today. In the same quarter last year, Apple sold 37.4 million iPhones, 19.5 million iPads, just under 4 million Macs, and 5.6 million iPods.
It also reported net quarterly profit of $10.2 billion, or $11.62 per diluted share in contrast to quarterly net profit of $9.5 billion, or $10.09 per diluted share in the same quarter last year.
“We’re very proud of our quarterly results, especially our strong iPhone sales and record revenue from services,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’re eagerly looking forward to introducing more new products and services that only Apple could bring to market.”
“We generated $13.5 billion in cash flow from operations and returned almost $21 billion in cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases during the March quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “That brings cumulative payments under our capital return program to $66 billion.”
Apple is providing guidance for its next quarter of revenue between $36 billion and $38 billion.
The question of the day for Tim Cook and other Apple executives on today’s call will surely be the new product categories that Cook previously said were coming across 2014 and have yet to make an appearance in the first quarter. With Apple’s WWDC developer conference just around the corner, we’ll have to wait and see if Cook gives us any clues of what’s to come during the call today at 2:00 p.m. PST/5:00 p.m. EST. Stay tuned to our live blog for coverage.
The IMDb app for iPhone and iPad was updated today with a few notable new features. You can now view TV listings directly within the app, but the feature is initially limited to users in the US. Also new, listings will now tell you if the content is available on Amazon Prime and provide a link to starting playing a title directly in the Amazon Instant Video app (as pictured to the right).
Other new features in version 4.2 of the app include a redesigned showtimes page for iPhone and showtimes for upcoming movies being released in theatres directly from the title page.
• US TV listings! See when and where you can watch things, wherever you are in the US.
• Amazon Prime availability! You can now tell at a glance when a title is available on Amazon Prime. If you have the Amazon Instant Video app installed already, tap to play!
• New showtimes page design on iPhone.
• For a movie coming out Friday (or any other day in the future and we know about it), you can get its showtimes right from the title page!
• Bug fixes, including a weird bug where your ratings history would show your most recently rated titles twice.
Apple is making it easy for anyone, not just those part of its paid developer program, to access beta builds of OS X and in the process submit feedback to Apple. As noted by The Loop, Apple is kicking off a new OS X Beta Seed Program today for all customers that will allow anyone with an Apple ID to install beta builds of OS X starting with the latest OS X 10.9.3 build released yesterday.
The OS X Beta Seed Program gives users the opportunity to run pre-release software. Test-drive beta software and provide quality and usability feedback that will help make OS X even better.The OS X Beta Seed Program gives users the opportunity to run pre-release software. Test-drive beta software and provide quality and usability feedback that will help make OS X even better.
You can sign up for the program here and Apple says it will provide a Beta Access Utility for Mac that will give pre-release access to the OS X betas via the Mac App Store Updates panel (as pictured below). Expand Expanding Close
Logitech is introducing three new products for iPad users including a new lineup of protective cases and an updated version of its Ultrathin keyboard cover for iPad Air and iPad mini.
The new Logitech Ultrathin keyboard cover (pictured above) introduces a thinner and lighter design at 6.4 mm thick and two-thirds of the weight of the iPad itself. It comes with a magnetic clip in the same “high-grade aluminum construction and matching finish” that securely attaches the case to your iPad and allows for multiple viewing angles. It’s arriving for $99.99 for iPad Air and $89.99 for iPad mini in the U.S. and EU next month.
Also announced today are the three protective cases pictured above including the Big Bang for iPad Air & iPad mini ($99/$79), the flexible Hinge for iPad Air and mini that allows for 15 to 65-degree viewing angels ($59/$49), and the Logitech Turnaround for iPad Air and mini ($59/$49), a case that lets you rotate your iPad between landscape and portrait mode.
Following our report earlier this month that Apple was preparing to deliver a bug fix in an upcoming iOS 7.1.1 update, today the update is going live as an over-the-air update for iOS users. Apple’s release notes say the update includes “improvements, bug fixes and security updates” including enhancements to Touch ID fingerprint recognition and fixes for keyboard responsiveness and Bluetooth keyboards used with VoiceOver:
This update contains improvements, bug fixes and security updates, including:
Further improvements to Touch ID fingerprint recognition
Fixes a bug that could impact keyboard responsiveness
Fixes an issue when using Bluetooth keyboards with VoiceOver enabled
For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website:
Recode’s Walt Mossberg is out with an interesting piece today taking a look at Apple after Steve Jobs and revisiting Tim Cook’s promise of new product categories across 2014. While comparing Apple and its product releases to movie studios— big blockbuster hits followed by sequels that often make more money— Walt says Apple execs have told him “impressive new products” are indeed on the way.
But I think the most useful way of thinking about Apple is to see it as a movie studio. Studios release blockbuster franchise movies every few years, and then try to live off a series of sequels until the next big, successful franchise. We are in the early stages of one such project right now: On May 2, Columbia Pictures will release “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” the first of what may be several sequels to the original 2012 film, that was itself a reboot of an earlier series.
Just because these things are sequels doesn’t mean they’re bad, or even worse than the originals. Sometimes, as with “The Godfather Part II,” the sequel is considered by many to be even better than the original. (Of course, sometimes — as with “The Godfather Part III,” a sequel may be reviled as so bad that it’s unworthy of the series.)… And sequels can make more money — sometimes much, much more — than the originals.
While Mossberg has had relative success with Apple’s sequel products in recent years— despite a few hiccups with Maps and iOS 7— he claims “Apple executives have assured me that the second half of 2014 will have impressive new products.” Whether that includes a new game-changing product or “franchise” category remains to be seen.
Google announced today that it’s about to bring SMS for iPhone and a new Calendar Glassware to Google Glass users following an update to KitKat and the introduction of new features earlier this month. First up, iPhone users will now be able to receive text messages on Glass but, as Google points out, they “won’t be able to reply from Glass due to some limitations with iOS.”
SMS for iPhone – iOS fans, by popular demand you can now get texts from your friends on Glass. Get started by going to your iPhone’s Bluetooth settings and turning on “Show Notifications” for your paired Glass. When you receive a new text message, it will appear as a notification on Glass. Keep in mind that you won’t be able to reply from Glass due to some limitations with iOS. (Android fans, don’t feel left out – you’ve got SMS on Glass already.)
The support for SMS is a feature that Glass users have long had access to when paired to an Android device. You’ll begin receiving notifications as long as the “Show Notifications” option for your paired Glass is selected from Bluetooth settings.
Ahead of Earth Day celebrations planned for tomorrow, Apple today has completely revamped its environmental site with new stats alongside announcements for initiatives planned for the year to come. It also gave an interview with its new head of environmental issues Lisa Jackson. If you don’t want to dig through and read the multiple pages in Apple’s updated report, below we’ve put together a roundup of all the numbers and initiatives Apple announced today: Expand Expanding Close
Wired has an interesting profile today on Lisa Jackson, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency who joined Apple in June last year to oversee environmental issues. The publication joined Jackson as she traveled to Apple’s new data center outside of Reno, Nevada, and through the interview offers some interesting insight into what Jackson is trying to accomplish at Apple. The interview with Jackson is landing just as Apple is set to celebrate Earth Day tomorrow and make some new environmental related announcements:
The teams Jackson works with at Apple tackle product related issues such as the materials which make up Apple’s devices (they must require minimal energy to extract, be as recyclable as possible, and be free of conflict minerals); the packaging that strives for the X-ray thin-ness of an iPad side view; and the manufacturing process, where Apple attempts to suppress the wasteful instincts of suppliers and partners in countries like China. Spending a day with Jackson entails considerable discussion of progress the company has made in these domains, as well as an acknowledgement of what needs to be done. (She agrees with Greenpeace that there’s plenty of work to do in China.)
Since last checking in, Jackson said Apple is approaching its goal of powering all its facilities on 100 percent renewable energy. It’s now at 94 percent renewable energy in its data centres and corporate campuses. That’s up from the 75 percent it reported on its renewable energy website just a couple days ago and 35 percent in 2010. Apple’s next goal for renewable energy will be for its retail stores and it’s about to announce it’s already powering 120 of its over 400 stores with renewable energy. All the locations are in the U.S. and include some of its flagship locations like the Fifth Avenue store and Palo Alto. Expand Expanding Close
This latest iWatch concept goes completely overboard. Instead of just imagining what Apple’s much rumored iWatch would look like, ifyoucouldseethefuture.com…
Facebook released a big update today to its recently released Paper mobile app. The app, which provides a full Facebook experience alongside a news reader-style collection of content from around the web, today integrates birthdays and events from Facebook via the app’s “notifications globe” icon.
Version 1.1 also introduces the ability to add photos in comments, and updates from Groups:
Don’t miss posts from your favorite groups. Swipe down to open the Main Menu. Tap the More Options icon to the right of the Search box. When you see your groups, check the new unread counts to catch up on the posts you’ve missed.
Also new in the updated Paper app is new navigation buttons for stories and 9 new “article covers” with news from sources including Fox News, Bloomberg News, Mashable, FT, kottke, Popular Science, The Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair and Hacker News. Facebook also noted that the app now includes basic accessibility features in all sections and that it’s “working to extend accessibility throughout the app.”
Google announced today on its Chrome blog that Major League Baseball is adding support for its $35 Chromecast streaming stick through the MLB At Bat app for Android and iOS. That means that users with the app and an MLB.TV Premium subscription will be able to stream live and on-demand video content from the app (or from a browser tab in Chrome through MLB’s site) to a Chromecast connected TV. You’ll also be able to use the phone or tablet you’re streaming from as a second-screen experience to “check scores, stats and news” while watching the game on the bigger screen: Expand Expanding Close
The 
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