Sprint Announces New Data-Heavy Family Share Pack Plan With Incentives for New Subscribers

Sprint today announced the debut of a new Sprint Family Share Pack plan, aiming to draw customers by offering significant amounts of data. Sprint's new plan provides customers with 20GB of shared data, which is double the amount that Sprint offered with its previous Framily plans.



For a limited time, customers who switch to Sprint will get the 20GB of shared data plus an additional 2GB of data per line for $100 per month until the end of 2015, with support for up to 10 lines (including a waived $15/month device fee). That equates to 40GB of shared data for 10 lines, up from the 1GB per line Sprint originally offered under its Framily plans.

The Sprint Family Share Pack, offering double the high-speed shareable data for smartphones, basic phones, tablets and mobile broadband devices, will be available starting Aug. 22. For example you can get four lines and 20GB of data for $160 compared to 10GB of data for the same price from AT&T or Verizon.



But wait, there's more. To kick off Sprint's "new day for data" campaign, Sprint is offering a limited-time promotion for the Sprint Family Share Pack: For a family with up to 10 lines, get 20GB of Shared Data and Unlimited Talk & Text for only $100 a month through 2015 – and, as an added bonus, customers will get an additional 2GB per line for up to 10 lines. For a family of four, that's a savings of $60 per month better than AT&T’s and Verizon’s current pricing through 2015; double the data of Verizon; and more than double the high-speed data of AT&T and T-Mobile.

To further sweeten the deal and attract new users, Sprint is offering up to $350 (via Visa Prepaid Card) to cover early termination fees for users switching from other carriers. Sprint's device fees are still applicable, requiring both Easy Pay users and those who sign up for subsidized phones to pay device fees in the range of $15 to $25 (minus the $15 discount).



While the promotional $100/month price is only for new customers, existing Sprint subscribers can get 20GB of shared data for up to 10 lines for $160 per month. Current subscribers cannot, however, get the 2GB of bonus data being offered to new customers.



Sprint's website also promises to bring more "great announcements" in the near future. Sprint's new CEO, Marcelo Claure, has pledged to bring more disruptive pricing to Sprint following its failed merger with T-Mobile.



Sprint's new plans will be available beginning on Friday, August 22.

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Posted in 2014 at 11:34PM, August 18

Flappy Bird Creator Set to Release New 'Swing Copters' Game This Thursday [iOS Blog]

Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen is preparing to launch a new iOS game in the near future, called Swing Copters. Previewed exclusively by our sister site TouchArcade, Swing Copters adopts the ultra tough Flappy Bird-style gameplay, adding new mechanics and a fresh skin.



In Swing Copters, players are tasked with navigating platforms with swinging hammers while climbing upwards towards the sky, a deviation from the original side-scrolling gameplay in Flappy Bird. According to TouchArcade editor-in-chief Eli Hodapp, Swing Copters emulates the "one more try" gameplay of Flappy Bird while being even more "brutally difficult."

That five point run that I busted out at the start? That's the best I've done so far, and that two minutes worth of video is basically my magnum opus as of this writing. Swing Copters is hard. Just getting through the gates themselves would be tricky enough, but adding in the swinging hammer things below them is just ridiculous, particularly as you're desperately trying to control your guy as he wildly swings from one direction to the other.



...But, like Flappy Bird, I love it. It feels like it's got all the same qualities that made Flappy Bird so sticky for me. Once you see even the smallest bit of success in the game, you can't help but play again, and again, and again, always trying to (in my case, anyway) top that amazing five point flight.

Back in March, Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen promised that the once popular game that spawned thousands of clones would return to the App Store in August. It is unclear whether Swing Copters is Nguyen's replacement for Flappy Bird or if Flappy Bird will also return to the App Store at some point.



Flappy Bird's incredible success in early 2014 prompted Nguyen to pull the game from the App Store in February, after the attention and media requests became overwhelming. At the height of its popularity, Flappy Bird was generating upwards of $50,000 per day. Nguyen also expressed concern over the response he was getting from parents and children, causing him to believe the game was simply too addictive. One woman reportedly told him he was "distracting the children of the world."



Nguyen has said that he would ensure that any future version of Flappy Bird would be "less addictive." He also suggested it would include multiplayer gameplay, but Swing Copters does not appear to include multiplayer capabilities at this time.



Swing Copters is set to be released this Thursday, August 21. The game will be a free download with a $0.99 in-app purchase to remove ads.

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Posted in 2014 at 06:31PM, August 18

Elon Musk engineers the most elaborte ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ contraption we’ve yet seen

Given his engineering chops, we shouldn't be surprised that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk concocted the most elaborate contraption we've yet seen for an "Ice Bucket Challenge" video.

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Posted in 2014 at 06:05PM, August 18

Yet another company is practically begging for an Apple lawsuit

Xiaomi is making the job of former Googler Hugo Barra more and more difficult when it comes to denying copycat claims that say Xiaomi products look too much like their Apple-made alter egos. After launching the Mi iPad a few months ago, which is basically a nearly identical iPad mini clone, Xiaomi is now releasing MIUI 6, its latest Android-based operating system that looks very much like iOS 7, TechCrunch reveals.

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Posted in 2014 at 05:00PM, August 18

Apple Releases OS X Yosemite Developer Preview 6

Apple today released a new version of OS X Yosemite to developers, two weeks after releasing the fifth Developer Preview and more than two months after unveiling the new desktop operating system at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference.



The update, build 14A3429f, can be downloaded from the Mac App Store and through the Mac Developer Center. Apple has also released Xcode 6 beta 6.





OS X Yosemite brings a flatter, more modern look to OS X, with an emphasis on translucency and redesigned dock, windows, and more. It also includes a multitude of new features, such as improved integration with iOS 8 through Continuity, a new "Today" view in Notification Center that offers integration with third-party apps, a retooled Spotlight search with new data sources, and several new features for apps like Mail, Safari, and Messages.



Over the course of the beta testing period, each Developer Preview has added new features and refined the look and performance of OS X Yosemite. DP 4, for example, added a revamped version of iTunes with a streamlined design and support for Family Sharing, while an earlier beta introduced a new Dark Mode.



Today's Developer Preview is limited to registered developers, but in late July, Apple made a version of OS X Yosemite available to the public as part of a wide-ranging beta test. The pre-release version of Yosemite available to those participating in the public beta program is not expected to receive as many updates as the developer version.

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Posted in 2014 at 05:03PM, August 18

Long-suffering Comcast customer gets his problem fixed only after his story goes viral on Reddit

Comcast has racked up an impressive tally of customer service horror stories that have gone viral on social media over just the last month. The latest such story involves a customer who tried in vain for 6 months to get assorted problems fixed and only really got Comcast's attention once his story hit the front page of Reddit.

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Posted in 2014 at 04:10PM, August 18

Apple Awarded Creative Arts Emmy for 'Misunderstood' Holiday Commercial [iOS Blog]

The Television Academy this weekend announced the winners for the 2014 Creative Arts Emmy Awards, recognizing the technical side of television in honoring the outstanding "behind-the-scenes crafts essential to television production." Apple was among the winners announced during a ceremony held Saturday night in Los Angeles.



Apple, along with Park Pictures production company and TBWA\Media Arts Lab ad agency, was awarded an Outstanding Commercial Emmy for its holiday "Misunderstood" advertisement. In the commercial, a family participates in a traditional Christmas celebration while a younger member records all of the activities on his iPhone. Chided for being on the sidelines, the misunderstood teen delights his family at the end of the commercial with a heart-warming montage of the holiday celebration streamed via AirPlay to the living room television.






The award was shared with Apple's longtime ad agency, TBWA\Media Arts Lab, which allegedly now has a rocky relationship with the Cupertino company. Emails from Apple's head of marketing Phil Schiller hint at discord between the ad agency and Apple's executives following a scathing criticism from The Wall Street Journal. A more recent rumor suggests Apple is ready to sever its ties to TBWA/Media Arts Lab, with Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine stepping in to help spearhead the company's future marketing campaigns.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:45PM, August 18

Rumored NFC Chip for iPhone 6 Highlighted in Claimed Schematic

Rumors of near field communications (NFC) support for the iPhone surface nearly every year, and this year's iPhone 6 rumors are no different, with reports split on whether the device will include the short-range communications technology frequently used for mobile payments. A couple of new reports do, however, come down on the side of NFC being included in the iPhone 6.



The first mention came in a separate leak showing a purported battery from Apple's 5.5-inch iPhone 6 late last week. That report from Taiwanese newspaper Apple Daily also mentioned in passing that the iPhone 6 will include a PN65V NFC chip from NXP, but offered no specific evidence in support of the claim.




NXP PN65 NFC chip from Nexus 7 (Source: iFixit)


But now Chinese repair firm GeekBar has shared what is said to be a wiring schematic for just such a chip to be included on the iPhone 6. NXP has been the rumored partner for NFC in the iPhone 6, and the company's PN65 NFC package is used in a number of Android mobile devices.




Claimed iPhone 6 schematic for NXP PN65V NFC chip


While GeekBar's interpretation of such schematics is questionable given a leak earlier today in which it claimed the iPhone 6 will contain only 1 GB of RAM as the schematic appears to be addressing NAND flash rather than DRAM, the appearance of a PN65V chip on the schematics seems straightforward if they are indeed legitimate.



Apple has been rumored for some time to be working on a mobile payments system, with a launch coming perhaps as soon as this year in partnership with Visa. Details on the system are unclear, but Apple has reportedly been taking a "go-slow" approach for a number of years as it has tried to figure out the best way to deploy such a system without simply competing with existing providers "all fighting over their piece of the pie."

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Posted in 2014 at 03:37PM, August 18