MacRumors

The recently refreshed 2015 MacBook Air can drive 4K external displays at a refresh rate of 60Hz, as confirmed by Ars Technica. The report claims that Intel's new Broadwell processors with integrated Intel HD Graphics 6000 support 4K output at 60Hz using a DisplayPort 1.2 cable, whereas previous-generation notebooks with Haswell processors were limited to lower resolutions at 30Hz.

Apple's tech specs page for the new MacBook Air lists the notebook as capable of supporting one external display at up to 2,560×1,600 pixels, which clearly is not the case. Apple may be electing not to advertise 4K support for the new MacBook Air on purpose, however, as performance can still be somewhat laggy or jerky and the company has a shortlist of supported displays and configurations.

"Given that the Air is using one of Intel’s integrated GPUs, general OS X user interface performance isn’t too bad while driving the Air’s internal display alongside the 4K display. Dropped frames are clearly visible when entering into Full Screen mode or using Mission Control, and of course you’ll never want to try playing games or doing heavy 3D work at native resolution. But things are more than smooth enough for desktop use."

The new Thunderbolt 2 port included on the refreshed MacBook Air and MacBook Pro is compatible with the DisplayPort 1.2 spec, meaning that Single-Stream Transport is possible using one cable. Meanwhile, 4K over HDMI remains restricted to a 24Hz refresh rate due to the limitations of the current 1.4 spec. Multi-Stream Transport should also be possible using DisplayPort 1.2, although the number of displays will be limited and performance will likely be impacted.

Update: Apple has now updated its tech specs page for the new MacBook Air to note that it supports external displays up to 3840 by 2160.

Flexibits today launched the much-anticipated Fantastical 2 for Mac, a completely new app that overhauls the existing Fantastical for Mac app and introduces a long list of new features.

Flexibits CEO Michael Simmons spoke with MacRumors about the new Fantastical 2 update for Mac, and he told us that while the original Fantastical app reinvented calendar apps, the new update reinvents Fantastical. The Flexibits team took everything they learned from Fantastical 2 for iOS and brought it over to the Mac.

To begin with, Fantastical 2 has been designed from the ground up to fit in with the Yosemite aesthetic, adopting a flat design, simple outlines, cleaner fonts, and brighter, bolder colors with two available color themes. It's also adopted many Yosemite-only features like a Notification Center widget, Handoff, and Action and Share Extensions.

The biggest change to Fantastical 2 is the introduction of a full calendar window. The original Fantastical Mac app was housed in the Mac's menu bar in a mini window, forcing users to open the built-in Calendar app if they needed access to a desktop calendar, but Fantastical 2 is a full-featured calendar app that combines that original menu bar calendar with a complete calendar window.

The new calendar window includes Day, Week, Month and Year views on the right, along with a left-hand menu bar that shows the current month and a list of upcoming tasks. Reminders and events are separated in the new version of Fantastical, and a toggle button at the bottom of the calendar window will switch the view from events to a list of reminders. Reminders can be added to Fantastical by prefacing entries with "todo," "task," or "reminder," and can be location-based with dates and time information attached.

Fantastical 2 continues to offer the same menu bar mini calendar window (now re-positionable), featuring the new design and the same toggle to switch between a list of upcoming events and a list of reminders. There's also a new Notification Center widget that displays a list of events for the day.

In addition to offering existing features like natural language parsing, deeply customizable alerts, automatic alarms, Reminder integration, and quick search tools, Fantastical 2 for Mac adds a powerful feature called Calendar Sets. Most people use several calendars with Fantastical, and with the new Mac app, it's possible to group different calendars into separate sets and switch between them using an easily accessible toggle at the bottom of the calendar window.

With Calendar Sets, work calendars and home calendars can be grouped together, and it's even possible to add geofencing to have calendar sets swap automatically depending on your physical location. Fantastical 2 for Mac also includes Japanese support for the first time, with full Japanese-language parsing, a feature that's also coming to iPhone and iPad in the next few months. It's also fully localized in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The app's language parsing engine is more robust, better understanding repeating events and offering more options for adding alerts.

Fantastical 2 for Mac's natural language parsing engine has been updated to be even more friendly and flexible. The parsing engine now understands expressive repeating events such as third Thursday of every month, every weekend, last weekday of the month, and more. Plus, users can now add alerts by ending their natural language input with phrases such as "remind me tomorrow at 3PM", "alert 1 hour before", or "alarm 3PM."

Fantastical 2 for Mac is Yosemite-only because it incorporates several Yosemite features. When a user has an iPhone or an iPad with Fantastical for iOS installed, it's possible to switch off between the iOS and Mac versions of the app with Handoff. With the new extensions, it's possible to highlight text in Safari, for example, and send it automatically to Fantastical with a link, or to add events directly from within apps like Evernote.

Fantastical 2, which is an all-new app, can be downloaded from the Mac App Store beginning today for $39.99. The app will be priced at $49.99 in the future, but it's currently being offered at a discount to celebrate its launch. [Direct Link]

Apple has acquired database company FoundationDB, reports TechCrunch. FoundationDB is a company that "develops scalable and fault tolerant databases that support multiple data models." A notice on the company's site says that it has ceased to offer downloads after deciding to "evolve [the] company mission."

According to TechCrunch, FoundationDB may have been an attractive purchase for Apple due to its ability to handle ACID-compliant transactions quickly and its strong scalability. A company blog post suggested it could achieve 54 billion writes per hour at a cost-per-write of 3 nanodollars.

FoundationDB's attractiveness came in the speed at which it handled ACID-compliant transactions and coupled that with strong scalability. FoundationDB hosted a booth at TechCrunch Disrupt 2012, where we first wrote about its approach to a modern NoSQL database and its 'NoSQL, YesACID' motto. FoundationDB's latest engine, which was covered by TC Columnist Jon Evans late last year, scaled up 14.4 million random writes per second.

TechCrunch describes FoundationDB as a "fast, affordable and durable database company" that may have been acquired to boost Apple's server-side technologies for the App Store, iTunes Connect, iTunes in the Cloud, or another service.

Apple confirmed the acquisition with the standard statement that it gives on purchases: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

When Apple acquired Beats Electronics, several companies that had deals and partnerships with the headphone company were forced to sever their agreements, including Hewlett-Packard (HP).

At the time of the acquisition, HP was selling laptops with "Beats Audio" branded speakers, through a partnership with Beats that was originally established in 2011. HP was only allowed to continue development on products using Beats Audio technologies through the end of 2014, leaving the company without an audio partner and without the "cool" factor Beats brought to the partnership.

Ahead of the end of its partnership with Beats, HP began using its own in-house audio solution and ceased using Beats branding and logos, but it was unclear if that solution was based on Beats audio technology, as suggested by PCWorld.

At the launch of the recent HP Spectre X360 last month, an HP executive declined to tell the IDG News Service whether the homegrown technology was influenced by Beats, or if it had Beats amplifiers in them. HP has excellent in-house technology to boost audio in PCs, said Mike Nash, vice president of product management for consumer personal systems, at the time.

Though there may have been some remaining ties to Beats in HP products, HP today signaled its readiness to move on from the Beats brand by inking a deal with a new audio partner -- Bang & Olufsen.

HP will use Bang & Olufsen audio technology in its PCs, tablets, and other accessories, with "custom tuned" audio for different PC models. Beginning this spring, HP PCs with Bang & Olufsen branding will start shipping to consumers. Like it did with its Beats partnership, HP will add Bang & Olufsen stickers and logos to the PCs, highlighting the new audio technology. CNET shared HP's thoughts on the new partnership.

"We've certainly spent a lot of time working on audio with Beats over the years. I think certainly a lot of learnings both ways in that relationship," Mike Nash, an HP personal-computer and printing vice president, said on a call with reporters Tuesday, soon after the deal was announced. "The opportunity now is to take everything we already know and combine that with some new expertise ... as part of our partnership with Bang & Olufsen."

Even as HP moves on to Bang & Olufsen, the company is permitted to continue to sell its remaining stock of Beats-branded laptops through the end of 2015, so Bang & Olufsen-branded HP products may sit on store shelves beside those with Beats Audio technology.

Apple today seeded the fourth beta of iOS 8.3 to developers, nearly two weeks after seeding the third iOS 8.3 beta and more than a month and a half after releasing the first iOS 8.3 beta. Today's beta is also available for public beta testers.

The beta, build 12F61, is available as an over-the-air download and through the iOS Developer Center. Apple has also released Xcode 6.3 beta 4.

Previous iOS 8.3 betas have included features like a new emoji picker and all new diversified emoji and skin tone modifiers, new country flag emoji and updated emoji icons to represent the iPhone, iMac, and Apple Watch.

Along with those emoji changes, iOS 8.3 brings wireless CarPlay connectivity, support for Google 2-step verification, Apple Pay for the China UnionPay network, several new Siri languages, filters for Messages, a UI change for the space bar in Safari, and more. We've been tracking all the iOS 8.3 changes in our iOS 8 Features Roundup.

What's new in iOS 8.3 beta 4:

iCloud Photo Library - iCloud Photo Library's beta label has been removed again. It has been removed and re-added in past iOS 8.3 betas, so it is not clear whether the service will be out of beta when iOS 8.3 launches.

Messages filtering - An earlier beta introduced filtering in Messages, allowing users to separate messages received from friends and those received from strangers into two categories. In beta 4, the category for iMessages sent from those who are not in a user's contact list has been renamed to "Unknown Sender."

Following its March 9 media event where it introduced "Force Touch" trackpad technology for the new 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro and upcoming 12-inch MacBook, Apple opened up the feature to third-party developers by delivering developer APIs starting with the third beta of OS X 10.10.3. The APIs will allow developers to support the ability of Force Touch trackpads to sense multiple levels of pressure and perform different actions depending on how hard the trackpad is being pressed.

Apple has already taken steps to build Force Touch support into its own apps, as outlined in a support document. At the simplest level, the new Force Touch trackpads support a new "Force click" functionality, which allows a user to click on an item and then press a bit harder to activate a secondary function such as pulling up Dictionary or Wikipedia entires on selected text in Mail or Safari, a map preview when selecting an address, or Quick Look previews of files when selecting icons.

Beyond the single-level Force click, the new Force Touch trackpad also supports more advanced features through sensing multiple levels of pressure, allowing users to accelerate zooming in and out of maps or vary the speed of fast forward and rewind in QuickTime and iMovie. iMovie also supports "bumpy pixels" in which the trackpad gives subtle vibrational feedback during the editing process to let the user know when the end of a dragged clip has been reached or when cropped clips are in proper alignment.

While Force Touch is currently limited to the new 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, the feature looks set to expand throughout Apple's product lineups, with the company's other notebooks gaining the technology as update cycles allow and the Apple Watch supporting it as a key interface mechanism at launch. Apple is also rumored to be bringing Force Touch to the iPhone later this year.

On the Mac side, Ten One Design today announced an update to Inklet, its popular third-party drawing software, that will bring "enhanced pressure control" to MacBooks with the new Force Touch trackpad. The company believes it is the first Mac developer to launch support for Force Touch.

Through Inklet's software, users have been able to draw and edit images within applications like Pixelmator and Photoshop for a while, by determining "stylus pressure" to differentiate between when to use thin and thick lines. Ten One Design notes that the introduction of the Force Touch trackpad makes its app not only more precise in designating pressure sensitivities, but more reliable as well.

We think Inklet is the first 3rd party application to support the Apple’s new Force Touch trackpads. This means you’ll have amazing pressure control on newer machines, and in a pinch you can even use your finger.

Having a trackpad capable of measuring force is a big deal. Even though Inklet has always been capable of determining stylus pressure, this update makes measuring pressure simpler and more reliable. Kudos to the team at Apple who designed this precise and useful instrument.

Beyond Force Touch support, Inklet's update also bring "improved pressure response" to MacBooks with the traditional multi-touch trackpad, along with the usual minor bug fixes. The company says Inklet will prompt users to update the app "sometime within the next three days", although users wanting to check out the new features sooner can hasten the process with the "Check for Updates" prompt in the Inklet menu.

Those yet to download the software can do so for $24.95 for the base app, or $34.90 for the app bundled with the company's Pogo stylus, from Inklet's official website.

Apple added three new TV channels to the Apple TV set-top box on Tuesday in the United States: TED, Tastemade and Young Hollywood. The three new channels bring non-profit TED Talks and a wide selection of premium food, travel and celebrity programming to the Apple TV and should be available beginning today. The new channels arrive just over three months after the additions of UFC, The Scene, Fusion and Daily Motion.

TED Talks given by the non-profit organization are hosted by guest speakers that cover a wide range of influential topics, including science, religion, technology, education and more. Meanwhile, Tastemade provides hundreds of episodes of premium food and travel programming, and Young Hollywood delivers the latest celebrity-related programming including entertainment news and exclusive interviews.

Apple is expected to announce its next-generation Apple TV alongside a full-fledged streaming TV service at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The new A8-based set-top box will reportedly feature both an App Store and Siri, in addition to a redesigned remote control and significantly higher internal storage than the current 8GB model. Notably absent from today's update is upcoming on-demand service HBO Now, set to debut in April for $14.99 per month.

Apple's much-rumored streaming TV service would consist of a lightweight package of about 25 channels for between $30 to $40 per month, anchored by networks such as ABC, CBS and Fox. The service will be available on several devices, including the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV, with other potential channels in the lineup including Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, MTV, Comedy Central, FX and Nickelodeon.

Apple TV has been discounted to $69 in the United States.

Italian regulators have completed an investigation into allegations that Apple failed to pay €879 million ($964 million) in corporate taxes, according to Reuters. The report states that, under Italian law, prosecutors can now ask a judge to bring the case to trial. Apple claims that it has paid all necessary taxes in countries that it operates and is confident that the process will be resolved.

The investigations accuse Apple of booking profits generated in Italy through an Irish subsidiary in an effort to lower its taxable income base and save nearly €900 million from 2008 through 2013. Apple argues that it's "one of the largest tax payers in the world and paid every euro of tax it owed wherever it did business," and believes that the allegations against its employees are without merit.

It said the Italian tax authorities had audited Apple’s Italian operations in 2007, 2008 and 2009 and confirmed it was in full compliance with the OECD documentation and transparency requirements.

"These new allegations against our employees are completely without merit and we’re confident this process will reach the same conclusion," it said.

Apple is one of several multinational tech companies, including Amazon and Google, that have faced corporate tax investigations in the United States and Europe. The U.S. Senate accused Apple of avoiding billions in income taxes in May 2013, while the European Union accused the company of receiving illegal state aid from Ireland after completing a formal investigation into its questionable tax practices in the country last year.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

The most recent iOS 8.3 beta was seeded to developers on March 12, but even though its been in the hands of testers for over a week, people are still discovering hidden features. Over the weekend, two new iOS 8.3 features were found, including an update to Siri and an update to app purchase settings.

With the iOS 8.3 beta 3 installed, users can now ask Siri to make phone calls using the iPhone's speaker. If you ask Siri to "Call [name] on speaker," the call will be made via speakerphone, enhancing Siri's hands-free capabilities. If you make the same request in iOS 8.2, Siri ignores the "on speaker" part and places the call as normal.

The new feature makes it possible to activate Siri while plugged in by saying "Hey Siri" and make a phone call, all without needing to touch the phone or put on a headset for hands-free operation.

In the Settings menu of an iOS device running iOS 8.3 beta 3, there's a new option under iTunes & App Store labeled "Password Settings." In this section, there is an option to change the password settings for purchases and in-app purchases, choosing options to either "Always Require" a password when making a purchase, or to "Require After 15 Minutes."

"Always Require" and "Require After 15 Minutes" are not new settings -- the options have previously been located within the Restrictions section of the Settings app -- but a user is required to select one in order to access a new password toggle setting, which lets users toggle the password requirement for free apps on and off. When toggled on, downloads labeled as "GET" in the App Store will not require a password.

Apple's new Password Settings are not functional right now, returning a "Cannot connect to iTunes Store" message when tapped, but it's likely they will be made available in a later beta ahead of the update's public release. The Password Settings menu can also be found under General --> Restrictions.

In addition to the newly discovered features listed above, iOS 8.3 adds quite a bit of new functionality to Apple's mobile operating system. Earlier betas have introduced a wireless CarPlay feature and several emoji changes, like a new emoji picker, diversified emoji with skin tone modifiers, new flags, and new icons for the watch, phone, and computer emoji, which now resemble an Apple Watch, an iPhone, and an iMac. Most notably, keyboard spacing has been changed to prevent users from hitting the period key when they meant to hit the space key when searching in Safari.

There's also support for Google two-factor authentication when adding Google accounts on iOS, Apple Pay support for China UnionPay, new Siri languages, filtering options for Messages, and more. We've been keeping a complete list of iOS 8.3 changes in our iOS 8 Features Roundup.

Many of us keep backups of our data on hard drives, using Apple's Time Machine, but how many of us keep multiple copies? And copies that are protected from not only disk failures, but also natural disaster? Estimates suggest 30 percent of people have never backed up their data, and the number of people who keep multiple backups is even lower.

With World Backup Day coming up, we teamed up with ioSafe and Synology to explore the consumer-oriented backup options they offer and to demonstrate the importance of keeping several copies of your data by simulating the effects of a house fire on the hardware.

If you're not familiar with ioSafe and Synology, ioSafe is best known for its disaster proof solutions, producing a range of hard drives that can withstand fire and water damage. Synology is known for its line of DiskStation NAS devices and for its DiskStation Manager software, which can be used for hassle-free backups, personal cloud storage, and more.

We traveled to Seattle to meet up with ioSafe and Synology to test out a Synology BeyondCloud NAS paired with an ioSafe Solo G3, a multi-backup solution that protects data from all kinds of damage, from hard drive failures to a house fire. We checked out some of the things you can do with the setup and then we set it all on fire.

If you want to jump right to the good stuff, aka the fire, watch the video below. We filmed everything so you could see how the ioSafe G3 held up and watch the data recovery process. After watching the video, you can read on for more details on how the Synology BeyondCloud and ioSafe G3 work together and what you can do with them.

Make sure to scroll down to the bottom of the post -- we're going to be giving away a complete backup solution consisting of a 3TB Synology DiskStation BeyondCloud NAS and a 3TB ioSafe Solo G3.

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Apple today seeded the fifth beta of OS X Yosemite to developers, almost a month after seeding the first OS X 10.10.3 beta and just a week after releasing the fourth beta to developers.

The new beta, build 14D113c, is available for registered developers through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store and through the Mac Dev Center. Yosemite Recovery Update 3.0 is also available.

With today's update, Apple has continued polishing the Photos for OS X app, and there are just two remaining known issues with the software, including an issue with favorites and a problem with missing thumbnails when restoring an Aperture-upgraded Photos library with Time Machine.

Earlier betas of OS X 10.10.3 have brought several new features to Yosemite, including the new Photos for OS X app. Designed to integrate with iCloud Photo Library, Photos for OS X is a replacement for both iPhoto and Aperture and is on track to see an early 2015 public launch. Reviews have suggested that while Photos is a suitable replacement for iPhoto, with more advanced tools and performance optimizations, it may leave professional users disappointed.

Along with the new Photos for OS X app, the first two OS X 10.10.3 betas introduced a redesigned emoji picker that consolidates emoji into a single page with clear labels, new diversified emoji and emoji skin tone modifiers, new flag emoji and updated emoji for the iPhone, iMac, and Apple Watch, and support for Google 2-step verification when setting up accounts in System Preferences.