'Continuity Activation Tool' for Adding Handoff to Older Macs Now Supports Bluetooth 4.0 Dongles

A new update to the community-built "Continuity Activation Tool" for OS X Yosemite brings Bluetooth 4.0 USB dongle support, allowing users of some older model Macs to enable Handoff and other Bluetooth-related Continuity features on their machines without upgrading internal hardware. The tool does, however, come with some caveats users should be aware of before attempting to activate these features.



Apple's introduction of Continuity alongside OS X Yosemite promised a suite of features that interweave Mac and iOS devices without any hassle. Unfortunately for Macs old enough to not include Bluetooth 4.0 (and even a few older models that do include it), several of the features are officially unsupported on their machines and these users haven't been able to experience Continuity in its full form.





Addressing this issue, enterprising members of the MacRumors forums banded together to discuss the issue, leading to the creation of a "Continuity Activation Tool." Users with Apple devices unable to directly access the new feature could follow a set of instructions that would enable Bluetooth-linked Continuity features such as Handoff and Instant Hotspot to work on Macs previously unable to support the features.



While only the software patch was required for the mid-2011 MacBook Air and Mac mini, other older Macs that didn't have Bluetooth 4.0, required a more difficult and set-up process involving the installation of completely new wireless cards.



This week, however, Continuity Activation Tool 2.0 has launched, bringing support for Bluetooth 4.0 USB dongles and thus allowing many of these older Macs without Bluetooth 4.0 to be more easily upgraded to support full Continuity. The update makes the process not only much easier, but far cheaper for the average user.





Creator dokterdok makes a few important notes regarding Bluetooth 4.0 dongles and the Continuity Activation Tool, mainly remarking on dongles best used for the tool and those to steer clear of completely.

A few important notes about using CAT with USB Bluetooth 4.0 dongles:



-Bluetooth 4.0 dongles based on the Cambridge Silicon Radio CSR8510 A10 chip (e.g. Inatek Nano) are not compatible with CAT.

-The recommendation is to look for dongles based on the Broadcom BCM20702 chip, which are similar to the ones used by Apple in their Continuity compatible Macs. A few examples: Asus BT400, IOGEAR GBU521, GMYLE, and many others.

-Instant Hotspot currently doesn't work reliably when using a dongle. This is a known issue, no workarounds have been identified yet.

-Atheros Wi-Fi AirPort cards will prevent Continuity from working even when adding a Bluetooth 4.0 dongle. The System Diagnostic feature of CAT tells which Wi-Fi brand is active. There are no workarounds and no patch is expected to change this, an AirPort card upgrade is required.

As previously reported, most MacRumors forum users have found the tool to work successfully on Macs released circa-2011, but not much has been tested yet on the new Bluetooth 4.0 dongle update. MacRumors has successfully enabled Handoff on a 2010 MacBook Air using the tool and an IOGEAR Bluetooth 4.0 dongle, although it did require several reboots and logouts/logins from iCloud on both the Mac and iOS devices before it began working.



Due to the fact the Continuity Activation Tool requires the disabling of certain security protections like kext signing, and that it needs to sift and move through low-level files in your computer, users should be aware of what they are downloading and exercise caution in doing so. If still interested, users can download the updated Continuity Activation Tool from Github and, after opening the downloaded app, follow the on-screen instructions to get the feature up and running on an older model Mac.



Future Apple software updates may also replace the patches applied by Continuity Activation Tool, thereby breaking Handoff after updating. Reapplying the patch using the tool after updates will, however, restore the functionality.

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Posted in 2014 at 06:22PM, December 17

Hands-On With Olloclip's New 4-in-1 Photo Lens for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus [iOS Blog]

Back in October, Olloclip announced a new 4-in-1 Photo Lens designed to fit the iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus. While it was available for pre-order at the time, the new lens has now begun shipping out to customers and will arrive in stores shortly, ahead of the Black Friday shopping holiday.



Like its previous products, Olloclip's 4-in-1 Photo Lens adds four lens attachments to the iPhone's camera, offering two lenses that extend the field of view -- wide angle and fisheye -- and two that capture up-close macro shots.



The new Olloclip 4-in-1 Photo Lens is the company's most unique product offering to date, as it is the first Olloclip lens that is able to work with both the front and rear-facing cameras. Previous Olloclip lenses designed for earlier iPhones were only functional with the rear camera or front camera, but with the growing focus on selfies, Olloclip opted to make its new product more versatile.

What's in the Box

Included in the box is one Olloclip 4-in1 Photo Lens attachment with fisheye, wide-angle, 10x macro, and 15x macro lenses, plus accessories like three interchangeable carrying clips, lens caps, a carrying pouch, two removable inserts to fit either the iPhone 6 or the iPhone 6 Plus, and a lanyard for carrying the 4-in-1 Photo Lens when not in use.

Design

While the body of the lens attachment is made of plastic, the lenses themselves are high quality and constructed from aluminum and glass. The 4-in-1 Photo Lens uses a dual lens design, with one lens that fits over the rear camera and one that fits over the front camera. As with all Olloclip lenses, the new 4-in-1 Photo Lens can only be used with a bare iPhone as it cannot fit over a case.



There are two separate plastic inserts, one for the iPhone 6 and one for the iPhone 6 Plus. The Olloclip comes with the iPhone 6 insert installed, so iPhone 6 Plus users will need to slide out the existing plastic insert to attach the one designed for the iPhone 6 Plus. The 4-in-1 Photo Lens needs two separate inserts to ensure a good fit, as the iPhone 6 is 6.9mm thick while the iPhone 6 Plus is 7.1mm thick.



Once the insert is installed, attaching the lens to an iPhone is simple and quick, with Olloclip's instructions directing users to slide the attachment over the protruding rear-facing camera. The lens slides on easily over the protruding lens of the iPhone and locks into place due to cutouts in the plastic.





On the iPhone 6, when the rear-facing lens is installed over the rear camera, the front-facing lens covers the front camera as well, allowing the Olloclip 4-in-1 Photo Lens to be used in either direction. On the iPhone 6 Plus, the sizing is somewhat different, so switching between the front-facing and rear-facing Olloclip lenses requires some slight repositioning of the accessory.



The 4-in-1 Photo Lens must be tilted to the left slightly to accurately fit over the front-facing camera iPhone 6 Plus camera, and tilted back to the right to fit over the rear-facing camera. Because of the need to reposition, it can sometimes take a few seconds of adjusting get a solid fit that will result in clear images.

Lenses

Olloclip's 4-in-1 Photo Lens comes with a fisheye lens for creating wide-angle fisheye photos, a wide-angle lens that extends the field of view for capturing landscapes, and two macro lenses at 10x and 15x.



Because of its dual-camera design, the Photo Lens has a 10x macro lens at one end and a 15x macro lens at the other end, which are converted into a wide-angle and fisheye lenses, respectively, when additional lens attachments are screwed on.





Like all of Olloclip's products, each of the four lenses produces crisp photos that are as clear as the photos that come from the standard iPhone camera. The 10x and 15x macro lenses are useful for taking ultra close shots of small objects, with the 15x version naturally producing more magnification. The two macro lenses are really only useful on the rear-facing camera, however, as the lens needs to be very close to the subject to capture a clear image.



The wide-angle lens and the fisheye lens can be used with both the front-facing and rear-facing cameras, and when used on the front-facing camera for selfies, both greatly extend the field of view to allow more of a subject's surroundings into the image. The fisheye produces the standard fisheye distortion making it useful for stylized images, while the wide-angle simply extends the field of view. Capturing a group photo with the front-facing camera is much easier with the Olloclip attached, for example.



On the rear-facing cameras, the two lenses function in the same way, extending the field of view of the existing iPhone camera. The wide-angle lens can allow the iPhone to capture much more of a landscape, while the fisheye offers a complete 180 degree field of view.

Image Examples

Raspberry macro at 10x on left, at 15x on right





Field of view without wide-angle lens on left, with wide-angle lens on right





Fisheye lens, indoor on left, outdoor on right

Accessories

In addition to allowing the accessory to fit over both the front and rear cameras of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the new Olloclip's lengthwise design also improves its portability. Olloclip ships the accessory with three carrying clips, which let the 4-in-1 Photo Lens to be attached to a lanyard, a set of keys, a backpack, and more whenever it's not in use.





The carrying clips snap right into the 4-in-1 Photo Lens, and when capturing a photo, it's a simple process to snap out the carrying clip and attach it to the iPhone. There are also two lens caps to keep the lenses from being scratched, and a small pouch available for storage when using macro capabilities.

How to Buy

The Olloclip 4-in-1 Photo Lens can be purchased from the Olloclip website for $79.99. It's available in several color combinations, including Silver/Black, Gold/White, Red/Black, Space Gray/Black, and Silver/White.

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Posted in 2014 at 06:22PM, November 20

Pandora and Spotify Lead App Store Music Rankings as Beats Continues to Lag [iOS Blog]

Apple bought Beats Music to improve its standing in the streaming music marketplace, but the Cupertino company has its work cut out if it wants to compete with high-profile rivals Spotify and Pandora. According to App Annie metrics cited by CNET , Beats Music continues to trail its rivals in two important App Store metrics -- downloads and revenue.





In the App Annie download rankings, Beats Music places ninth behind other music apps such as Shazam, GarageBand, SoundCloud and iHeartRadio. This lower ranking is undoubtedly affected by service pricing, as Beats Music requires a subscription while both Pandora and Spotify offer free, ad-supported options in their mobile apps.



By revenue, Apple's Beats Music benefits from its subscription model, ranking third behind market leaders Pandora Radio, which grabs the number one spot, and number two Spotify. The revenues measured in these metrics compromise only App Store payments to download the app and in-app purchases which include monthly subscription fees. It does not account for additional sources of revenue, such as advertising which is used extensively by Spotify and Pandora. Still, Beats is showing some improvement according to App Annie's statistics, moving up three spots on the revenue chart.



Apple purchased Beats Music as part of a larger $3 billion acquisition that also included Beats' popular line of audio products. Apple reportedly is planning to overhaul the Beats Music service with a refresh slated to debut early next year. The company allegedly also is in negotiations with music industry executives about slashing the monthly subscription cost, perhaps as much as in half to $5 per month.

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Posted in 2014 at 06:22PM, October 29

Apple Opening New Retail Stores in Florida and New Hampshire This Week [Mac Blog]

Apple is opening two new retail locations in Sarasota, Florida and Manchester, New Hampshire this week, with the Florida location opening on Thursday, October 16 and the New Hampshire location opening on Saturday, October 18.



Apple’s new Sarasota location, at the brand new $315 million University Town Center mall, will open on a Thursday rather than a Saturday as that day marks the grand opening of the shopping center. The University Town Center mall is an indoor facility that features an array of retail stores and restaurants.





The upcoming Sarasota Apple Store will be Apple’s 17th store in Florida, and its Thursday debut date falls on the same day as Apple’s media event where it is expected to introduce both new iPads and Retina iMacs.



Apple’s new store in Manchester, New Hampshire is located at the Mall of New Hampshire, a multi-story indoor shopping center that is home to 125 retail stores and restaurants. Occupying a space that spans about 6,800 square feet, the Apple store joins two other retail locations in New Hampshire, in Nashua and Salem.



Both stores will open at 10:00 a.m. local time and as is common with new store openings, employees will likely hand out T-shirts to the first customers to visit each new location. The Manchester store and the Sarasota store have both begun accepting reservations for workshops and Genius Bar appointments.

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Posted in 2014 at 06:22PM, October 13

iOS 8 Causing Widespread Bluetooth Connectivity Issues in Cars

iOS 8 has caused significant issues for some people who connect their phones to their cars and other devices via Bluetooth, according to numerous reports on the Apple Support forums and MacRumors' own user forums. MacRumors has also been receiving complaints on a near daily basis about the ongoing Bluetooth problems that iOS 8 users are seeing.



It appears that after upgrading to iOS 8 or purchasing a new iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, users have trouble pairing their phones to their car audio systems. The devices are seeing several different issues, refusing to pair entirely, neglecting to play audio over the speakers, or disconnecting when a call comes in.

Now when I am connected via bluetooth, I place a call, and it says it's going over bluetooth, but it doesn't interrupt my car's music, and the audio doesn't play over the speakers. The only way I can talk to the person is if I press the Audio button on the phone and select speakerphone or iPhone as if it wasn't connected to the car.

An ongoing thread on the MacRumors forums suggests that a wide range of different automobiles are having Bluetooth connectivity issues with devices running iOS 8 and iOS 8.0.2, including Hyundai, BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, Toyota, Ford, and more.





The Bluetooth pairing problems are not limited to automobiles, as iOS 8 users have also reported issues pairing with headphones, speakers, headsets, and more.



According to one iPhone 6 owner experiencing issues, Apple support is aware of a compatibility issue between the Bluetooth "used on the iPhone 6 and some car/navigation Bluetooth." Apple is said to be working on a fix for the issue, but in the meantime, some users have had temporary luck logging out of iCloud, forgetting connected Bluetooth devices, using the "Reset All Settings" and/or "Reset Network Settings" option on their iPhones and restarting, re-pairing their devices with their Bluetooth devices, and then logging back in to iCloud.



Attempting to use "Reset All Settings" should be done with caution, however, as some users have noticed that all of their iCloud Drive documents have gone missing after using the feature.



iOS 8 has not been Apple's most stable release. The operating system has seen several issues, including a major HealthKit bug that caused the company to pull all HealthKit-enabled apps just ahead of the public release of iOS 8 and a significant issue with the iOS 8.0.1 update, which disabled the cellular connection and Touch ID of many iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users.



iOS 8.0.2, released last week, fixed several major issues including the HealthKit bug, and Apple has plans to release another update in the near future, having already seeded iOS 8.1 to developers.

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Posted in 2014 at 06:22PM, October 01