StackSocial Offers 'Ultra-Premium' Bundle of 8 Mac Apps for $39.99 [Mac Blog]

StackSocial began offering eight Mac apps in its "Ultra-Premium" bundle today, which includes Cultured Code's Things 2, an Apple Design Award winner, and Realmac Software's Typed, which was just released in December. The bundle is priced at $44.99, but StackSocial is offering MacRumors readers a $5 discount with coupon code MRULTRA5, bringing the price down to $39.99.





The total retail value of all eight apps is $469, so the bundle at $39.99 offers a significant savings compared to buying each app individually. The apps included are:



- ScreenFlow 5 ($99.99) - screen recording tool

- Things 2 ($49) - task manager

- Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth ($49.99) - turn-based strategy game

- ProSoft Data Rescue 4 ($99.99) - data recovery utility

- ExpanDrive 4 ($49.95) - directly access files stored in many popular cloud services

- AfterShot Pro 2 ($79.95) - photo editor

- Typed ($24.95) - text editor

- Snapselect ($24.99) - photo sorter for finding and eliminating duplicate and similar photos



Civilization: Beyond Earth was originally announced for Mac last April and debuted in the Mac App Store in November. ScreenFlow previously won an Apple Design Award several years ago.



The Ultra-Premium Bundle is available until March 5.



MacRumors is an affiliate partner of StackSocial.

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Posted in 2015 at 09:06PM, February 18

Samsung Acquires Apple Pay Rival LoopPay

Samsung today announced plans to purchase LoopPay, in an effort to compete with Apple's Apple Pay payments service. The two companies were in previously talks over a potential partnership in December for a payment system that would rival Apple Pay.



LoopPay's technology stores payment information from a credit or debit card's magnetic stripe, transmitting payment details to card readers in lieu of a physical card. Because it works over a magnetic field, LoopPay is compatible with 90 percent of existing card readers and does not require merchants to support NFC as Apple Pay does.





Currently, LoopPay works through an app and a standalone hardware device (a case is one of the company's most popular LoopPay offerings), but Samsung may build the technology directly into phones in the future. With LoopPay's technology, upcoming Samsung devices may be able to replace credit cards much in the same way Apple Pay does, with Samsung customers able to wave their phones at payment terminals instead of swiping a card.



According to Samsung, LoopPay will provide the company's customers with a "seamless, safe, and reliable" mobile wallet solution. LoopPay already markets itself as an alternative to Apple Pay, and it's likely Samsung will build upon the technology to create a payment service that even more closely mirrors Apple's offering.

"This acquisition accelerates our vision to drive and lead innovation in the world of mobile commerce. Our goal has always been to build the smartest, most secure, user-friendly mobile wallet experience, and we are delighted to welcome LoopPay to take us closer to this goal," said JK Shin, President and Head of IT and Mobile Division at Samsung Electronics.

The current version of LoopPay doesn't have the same security features that Apple Pay offers, like tokenization, but it does have some benefits, including the ability to store IDs, loyalty, and membership cards along with payment cards.

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Posted in 2015 at 09:01PM, February 18

Little Caesars’ latest pizza may leave no survivors

Here at BGR, we absolutely love writing about fast food, particularly if it looks simultaneously revolting and delicious. This is why we were pleased as punch this week to stumble upon an amazing new creation from pizza chain Little Caesars: A deep dish pizza whose outer crust is wrapped in a ridiculous three feet worth of bacon.

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Posted in 2015 at 08:45PM, February 18

PowerSkin Pop'n 3 Video Review: An Attachable Battery Pack for iPhones [iOS Blog]

There are a lot of battery cases and external battery packs available for Apple's iPhone, but PowerSkin's newest offering, the Pop'n 3, is a fairly unique solution that offers the versatility of an external battery pack with the convenience of a battery case.



It's an external battery pack much like the Mophie Powerstation Plus, but it has a suction cup system that allows it to stick to the back of the iPhone, which means the iPhone can still be used as normal for the most part while charging is taking place.



We went hands-on with the PowerSkin Pop'n 3 battery pack and we thought the suction cup system was a handy feature. The suction cups themselves were a bit weak, but an added sticky pad in the middle of the battery pack assures that it sticks firmly to the iPhone.






We also liked the built-in Lightning cable that's just the right length for charging, and the LED indicator that let us know how much charge was left. The Pop'n 3 works best with an iPhone with no case, but it'll also stick to flat, smooth cases.



The Pop'n 3 battery pack has a 4,000 mAh battery inside, which is enough to charge the iPhone 6's 1,810 mAh battery to full twice over, and enough to give the iPhone 6 Plus with its 2,915 mAh battery 1.5 charges. It's only suitable for the iPhone, though -- it won't be enough to fully charge the 7,340 mAh battery of the iPad Air 2.



Like most battery packs, the Pop'n 3 charges via micro-USB. Compared to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the Pop'n 3 is not quite as wide, allowing it to fit comfortably on the back of the phones. It's 2.36 inches wide, 4.41 inches tall, .49 inches thick, and it weighs 3.81 ounces. That's just over half the weight of the iPhone 6 Plus, so it's quite pocketable.



Compared to several other battery packs on the market, the Pop'n 3 is a bit less impressive when it comes to capacity, but its unique portability and its price point make up for the lack of juice.



The PowerSkin Pop'n 3 comes in three colors to match each of the iPhones and can be purchased from the PowerSkin website for $49.99.

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Posted in 2015 at 08:06PM, February 18

Former GM CEO on Apple Car: 'They Have No Idea What They're Getting Into'

Amid rumors that Apple is developing an electric vehicle, former General Motors CEO Dan Akerson has shared his opinion on Apple's plans, suggesting the Cupertino company avoid getting into a business with such low margins.



In an interview with Bloomberg , Akerson said that Apple may be underestimating the difficulty of operating in the car business, as it's hard to navigate regulatory and safety requirements. "A lot of people who don't ever operate in it don't understand and have a tendency to underestimate," he said

"They'd better think carefully if they want to get into the hard-core manufacturing," he said of Apple. "We take steel, raw steel, and turn it into car. They have no idea what they're getting into if they get into that."

According to Akerson, Apple should stick with the iPhone, which has much higher margins than a car and none of the issues with safety. As highlighted by Bloomberg, while Apple made $18 billion in December with a gross margin of 39.9 percent, GM made just $2 billion with a gross margin of 14 percent.



Akerson doesn't believe Apple should get into the car business, but he does admire Apple's entrance into the car infotainment arena with CarPlay. Speaking on his time as CEO of General Motors, Akerson said that he absolutely would have partnered with Apple. "I'd have turned over the infotainment and interconnectivity of every car."



News of Apple's electric car plans surfaced last week after The Wall Street Journal shared details on a secret project at the company. Apple is said to have hundreds of employees working on the car in a secret research lab near its Cupertino headquarters. The car, which is electric, could potentially resemble a minivan.

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Posted in 2015 at 07:12PM, February 18

Motorola exec rips Jony Ive’s boneheaded criticism of his company

Jony Ive is a brilliant designer but he's not immune from saying boneheaded things every now and then. 9to5Mac directs us to one particular passage in The New Yorker's massive Ive profile from earlier this week that has Motorola steaming mad.

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Posted in 2015 at 06:55PM, February 18

'GIF Finder' Pulled from App Store Over Copyright Issues With Disney Characters

GIF Finder creator Matt Cheetham today announced that his popular GIF curating app will be pulled from the App Store following a lengthy back-and-forth with Apple. Cheetham faced stonewalling from the company thanks mostly to a few copyright issues of Disney-related characters within the app.



Begun by Cheetham as a side project a few summers ago, the app used Tumblr and Imgur's APIs to discover and curate a collection of GIFs and images and distill them into categories or as search results for users to browse. It launched in 2012 and had nearly 90,000 downloads in the years since.




Image via iDownloadBlog


A recent update caused the app to crash on the iPad version when sharing a GIF, so Cheetham submitted an update to fix the issue. Instead of the usual okay from Apple, on January 25 he received a rejection notice for the update because the app "includes content or features that resemble various well-known, third-party marks, including Disney characters."

Thank you for your response. However, in order to proceed with your application, we require documentation demonstrating your right to use the images included in your app and/or metadata, specifically addressing your right to copyrighted images.



Otherwise, if you believe you can make the necessary changes to your application and/or metadata so that it does not infringe the rights of a third party, we encourage you to resubmit your revised application and/or metadata.

Cheetham pointed out that he doesn't directly own the images and proceeded to offer copyright, disclaimers, and links to the Tumblr and Imgur terms of service, but he admitted it "all has fallen on deaf ears." He ultimately relented, pulling the crash-prone app from the storefront upon Apple's repeated requests for documentary evidence of his ownership of the content.

At this point, I don't have the time or knowledge on how to fight this any further. I can't have an app in the store that I cannot support (and that crashes when attempting to use it's main function!), so today I am removing GIF Finder from sale and calling the project dead.



There's lots of other really great GIF Finding apps out there that are packed edge to edge with content from various API's. I wish them all the best with their next update and only hope they can continue to slip them in under the radar as I appear to have done for the last 3 years.

Apple and Disney's history is well-known, especially Steve Jobs' hand in the now Disney-owned Pixar Animation Studios, but Apple's crackdown on GIF Finder is unusual. GIF Finder has been in the App Store for three years without rousing attention and there are several other similar GIF apps in the App Store.



Apple has recently been enforcing App Store policies that it's been lenient about in the past, rejecting a number of apps that included screenshots of violence or guns, causing developers to modify the shots or remove the imagery all together before being able to update or release their apps at all.

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Posted in 2015 at 05:52PM, February 18