Apple Seeds OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 Build 14C81f to Developers [Mac Blog]

Apple today seeded the third beta of OS X 10.10.2 Yosemite to developers, just over two weeks after seeing the second 10.10.2 beta and over a month after releasing OS X 10.10.1 to the public.



The new beta, build 14C81f, is available through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store and through the Mac Dev Center.





Like OS X 10.10.1, as a minor update, OS X 10.10.2 is likely to bring bug fixes and performance improvements to the operating system. OS X 10.10.1 introduced several reliability enhancements, including improvements to Wi-Fi, but many users have still been reporting issues with Wi-Fi stability in Yosemite.



In the release notes for the third 10.10.2 beta, Apple asks developers to focus on Wi-Fi, indicating the update may fix some of the lingering Wi-Fi problems. Apple also asks developers to focus on Mail and VoiceOver.

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Posted in 2014 at 06:11PM, December 12

Side-by-side comparison shows Google may have designed a cleaner watch UI than Apple

One thing that Apple has always done exceptionally well is to make clean, intuitive user interfaces that don't overload you with too many unnecessary distractions. That's why it's somewhat surprising to see, at least at first glance, that Apple's Watch UI looks much busier and cluttered compared with the more minimal approach taken by Google with Android Wear.

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Posted in 2014 at 06:11PM, September 11

Apple to Open New Retail Store in Basel, Switzerland on July 12 [Mac Blog]

Apple will open its newest retail store in Basel, Switzerland on Saturday, July 12 at Freie Strasse, a shopping area famous in Basel. The shopping street has a number of high end stores and restaurants, with Apple opening at building number 47.





The Basel store will join three other Apple retail locations in Switzerland, located in Geneva, Zurich, and Wallisellen. The store, which has been under construction for quite a few months, is said to be approximately 900 square meters and three stories.



Apple's new Basel Apple Store will open at 10 a.m. local time on Saturday, where employees will likely hand out T-shirts to the first customers. The store has already begun accepting reservations for workshops and Genius Bar appointments.

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Posted in 2014 at 06:11PM, July 08

Apple Announces iOS 8 with Interactive Notifications, QuickType, More [iOS Blog]

Apple announced iOS 8 at the keynote event of its annual Worldwide Developers Conference today. iOS 8 gets revamped notification features, an upgrade to the keyboard's auto-correct functionality, and the rumored health tracking feature and companion app, called HealthKit.








Interactive notification lets users pull down notifications and interact with them to respond to text messages or other actions without leaving the current open app, or complete actions from notifications shown on the lock screen.



A new feature in the iOS keyboard, called QuickType, adds predictive typing suggestions that adapt to the current context. QuickType learns each users habits and language while protecting privacy.



Messages gets the ability to name conversation threads, add and remove people from group conversations, allow users to leave group conversations. Users can also share their location right within Messages and quickly send audio messages and add them to images, and create video messages without using the Camera app.



HealthKit is a new feature that will gather and consolidate users' health information from multiple sources and apps, such as those from Nike and Fitbit.

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Posted in 2014 at 06:11PM, June 02

Apple debuts HealthKit service and Health app for iOS 8

Apple has really hit its stride now during its big WWDC 2014 keynote, and the company just announced HealthKit and an associated Health app.

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Posted in 2014 at 06:11PM, June 02

Get ready, Xbox fans: Microsoft has so much planned, it can’t fit it all into E3

As exciting as last year's E3 was for the video game industry, next-gen game reveals were a bit sparse. The consoles stole the spotlight while the software took a backseat, but now that the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are out on the market, games are bound to take center stage once again. In fact, according to Microsoft's Phil Spencer, Microsoft is having to cut stuff out of its 90 minute press conference already.

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Posted in 2014 at 06:11PM, March 24

The biggest threat to Google: It has no idea what you’re doing on mobile apps

Google has definitely benefited from the rise of the mobile web, especially since its Android platform is now by far the most widely used mobile operating system in the world. However, the mobile web has also shown itself to be disruptive to Google's traditional search business mostly because it's having trouble collecting data on what users are doing when they're looking at mobile applications.

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Posted in 2014 at 06:11PM, March 10