The video looks at how Apple customers are using its technology and third-party apps to make a difference in communities around the world. The first example features an interview with Okari Denzil, a community health nurse in Lwala, Kenya.
I've never considered myself a visitor to this community. I'm a son of this community, I work here, this is my home. I have the opportunity as a community health nurse to ensure that there is health care available to this very rural setting. This is my goal.
I try to see 5-6 clients a day. Talking about those mothers who need prenatal care, mothers who are ready to deliver, mothers who have young babies at home.
We sit down with them and talk about how to ensure that we give the babies the best start in life. I also have an opportunity to ensure that the wellbeing of the entire family is taken care of.
We use Skyscape to diagnose and prevent any complications from setting in. The iPad is a resourceful tool. It's a doctor, it's a nurse, it's a public health officer in my bag.
During Monday's WWDC keynote, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, mentioned that iOS 7 would add 1,500 new APIs to Apple's SDK, including iBeacons, MFi game controllers, and new multitasking options.
These APIs reveal promising new features that developers will be able to incorporate into future app and hardware releases, offering new gaming technology, new location tracking options, and more. Here's a closer look at a few of the most notable APIs:
iBeacons - According to MacWorld, iBeacons are designed to use the Bluetooth Low Energy profile for microlocation, allowing iOS devices to use Bluetooth 4.0 devices to access location data.
AirDrop from Activity Sheet - Apps will be able to incorporate AirDrop support, giving users the ability to share photos, documents and more with friends from within an app.
Apple Maps - iOS 7 will let developers include additional mapping features in apps, including 3D viewing experiences, direction related route information and map-based images.
MFi Game Controllers - iOS 7 includes support for MFi "Made for iPhone" Apple Certified hardware game controllers, which will allow manufacturers to create dedicated iOS gaming controllers, turning the iPhone and the iPad into gaming machines on par with handheld gaming systems. Apps will be able to be designed around the Game Controller framework, allowing for seamless connectivity. Our sister site TouchArcadehas shared an image from Apple's developer library detailing a reference design of both a standalone controller and an iPhone enclosure.
Sprite Kit - The Sprite Kit framework is designed to allow developers to create high-performing 2D games, controlling sprite attributes like position, size, rotation, gravity, and mass. It includes built-in support for physics to make animations look realistic and it also includes particle systems for additional game effects.
Game Center - iOS 7 adds new turn-based gaming modes (including simultaneous turns, chats, and trades) along with new methods for player authentication and secure game score transmission. This feature is likely designed to cut down on hacked Game Center scores from jailbroken devices.
Multitasking and Background Downloads - Apple's new multitasking APIs are designed to allow apps to update and download content in the background at intelligently scheduled times. For example, a Twitter app might incorporate this functionality, downloading new content in the background while the phone is not otherwise in use, staying up to date without unnecessarily draining battery. Push notifications can also initiate content downloads.
Inter-App Audio - With Inter-App Audio, apps are able to share audio streams with other apps, an API that will make it even easier to use Apple's iDevices to create music.
60-fps Video Capture - iOS 7 will allow apps to capture video at up to 60 frames per second.
Peer-to-Peer Connectivity - This data transmission API is designed to allow users to discover nearby devices and initiate direct communication without Internet connectivity.
Apple has a slew of other APIs available for developers, which should bring a lot of changes to apps when iOS 7 is released. For additional information on iOS 7, we detailed many of the upcoming features and we also explored some of the hidden tidbits.
The plaintiffs have also sued President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, NSA Director Keith Alexander, the NSA itself, the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as Facebook, Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Skype, AOL, Yahoo, PalTalk, AT&T and Sprint -- and all the CEO's of those companies personally.
As one of the largest companies in the world, Apple is routinely sued over a wide variety of issues. The company has a large legal teams to handle these lawsuits, though the sheer number of defendants in this case could make for interesting court filings.
This and the Verizon class action will serve to unify all political and social persuasions in our great nation to wage a second American revolution, one that is peaceful and legal – but pursued with great resolve and force. Government dishonesty and tyranny against the people have reached historic proportions during the last three administrations in particular, and the time has come for We the People to rise up and reclaim control of our nation. If not, the government will control us and this will mark the end of individual liberties. The American people can thus use these class actions to 'man the barricades of freedom' against the establishment government despots and their corporate enablers who seek to enslave them through coercive abuses of their privacy. This Orwellian power grab can only be intended to blackmail the masses into submission in order that these modern day greedy tyrants achieve their corrupt ends.
This isn't the only class action lawsuit filed or planned over the PRISM disclosures. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has said he will file a lawsuit against the Obama administration over what he says are "unconstitutional" surveillance programs. Paul wants to get the customers of all the offending companies to join a class action suit and take it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The American Civil Liberties Union has also filed a lawsuit, though it is focusing on the Government itself rather than the alleged corporate partners. The suit alleges that the Government's tracking of phone records violates Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
It's important to note that both Rand Paul and the ACLU are, at least to this point, primarily speaking out about Verizon Business Network Services giving call logs to the NSA for millions of calls both within the United States and abroad. However, both the Verizon/NSA issue and the Apple-related PRISM allegations were revealed on the same day last week and are largely seen as connected in the eyes of most critics.
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the comment thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All MacRumors 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.
Monday evening following Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, Pixar's Michael Johnson hosted a fundraising event for the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, where he serves as a board member.
As noted by The Mac Observer, one particularly interesting part of the event was a display of Steve Jobs' personal NeXTcube, loaned for the event by Pixar.
Speakers this year included Wil Shipley, Andrew Stone, and Dr. "Wave" Johnson, and James Dempsey performed two songs from his catalogue of catchily-written, Objective C-focused tunes.
There was also some NeXT gear on display, and this year that included the NeXT Cube used by Steve Jobs mentioned above. While the folks on hand - many of whom knew and worked closely with Mr. Jobs - might have considered such an artifact old hat, I thought it was very cool and figured many of you would, too.
The NeXT cube arrived as the NeXT Computer in 1988, with the machine quickly gaining the informal "cube" name due to its design based on a one-foot magnesium cube. The Cube name became official in 1990 with the release of an updated version named NeXTcube.
Publishers Weekly reports (via paidContent) that testimony from Apple executive Keith Moerer in the ongoing e-book price fixing trial has revealed that Apple holds approximately 20% of the e-book market in the United States, roughly double many of the previous estimates made by third parties.
The government also focused on the relative success of the iBookstore asking Moerer what marketshare the store held in the months after launch (about 20% Moerer said) and what its marketshare was after several years of operation and adding Random House in 2011 (also about 20%).
Beyond the market share claim, Moerer pointed to strong growth of the iBookstore in vigorously challenging the U.S. government's assertion that Apple's e-book effort has been a failure.
The government called the iBookstore “a failure,” and charged that “Apple pricing was unfair to consumers,” and that “Apple sold fewer books because of the higher price caps.” Moerer challenged that characterization, “I disagree. E-book sales grew 100% last year at the iBookstore and it had over 100 million customers.” The government countered that “when you drop prices you sell more books,” and Moerer said, “sometimes, yes.”
But the government bluntly said, “Apple forgot to focus on customers that’s why the iBookstore is a failure.” Moerer: “that’s not true.”
Testimony in the case is now in its second week, with Apple senior vice president for Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue scheduled to take the stand tomorrow.
As noted by Life On My Mobile, the first beta version of iOS 7 includes a system for warning users when they are using unauthorized cables or accessories with their devices. The software does not, however, prevent the cables or accessories from functioning.
Apple has added a warning when you plug an unauthorized charge / sync Lightning cable into your iPhone 5. The popup message states “This cable or accessory is not certified and may not work reliably with this iPhone.”
Unauthorized Lightning cables and docks quickly entered the market after the new connector standard was introduced in the iPhone 5, driven by shortages of Apple's official Lightning cables and slow progress in bringing official third-party manufacturers on board. Availability of certified Lightning cables and accessories has since broaden significantly through Apple's MFi Program, but unauthorized parts remain on the market.
Apple's Lightning connectors use several chips to manage dynamic pin assignment for the diminutive connector, chips which also allow Apple to recognize whether the connectors come from authorized channels.
While iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks drew most of the attention at this week's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, another one of Apple's introductions also generated a significant amount of discussion and controversy: redesigned AirPort Extreme and AirPort Time Capsule Wi-Fi base stations.
The new vertical designs take up considerably more volume than their predecessors, although footprints have been reduced to just 3.85 inches square. The new base stations include support for the latest 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard, and Apple has increased the number of antennas from three to six. The vertical design is intended to optimize range and signal strength by elevating the antennas, while also helping the base stations offer beamforming, which automatically finds 802.11ac devices and targets Wi-Fi signals toward those devices for optimum performance.
The teardown experts at iFixit have obtained one of the new AirPort Extreme units and have torn it apart to examine its internals. Given that the AirPort Extreme and AirPort Time Capsule have identical external designs, it should be no surprise that the AirPort Extreme contains space for a hard drive, although it appears that users will not be able to build their own Time Capsules by simply adding hard drives to their AirPort Extremes.
We free the top cover, only to find...3.5″ of empty space. While the AirPort Extreme doesn’t come equipped with storage, we dug up a standard 3.5″ SATA hard drive, just to test it out. Perfecto!...Except we can’t find any connectors where we’d plug in the hard drive, only empty spaces on the logic board—so chances of DIY AirPort Extreme to Time Capsule upgrades are slim.
Looking further, iFixit found the usual array of chips on the logic board, and was also able to trace the antenna cable up through the center of the device to a large plate at the top which serves to distribute the Wi-Fi signals. And overall, iFixit gives the AirPort Extreme a repairability score of 8 out of 10, citing standard Torx screws, a relative lack of glue, and modular components as positives and slightly difficult prying to open, difficult fan access, and breakage-prone connectors as negatives.
Apple's new AirPort Extreme is priced at $199, while the AirPort Time Capsule base stations incorporating hard drives for wireless backup storage are priced at $299 for 2 TB and $399 for 3 TB.
The Wrap reports that Ashton Kutcher's film "Jobs" will now debut on August 16 in the United States. The film, which premiered at the Sundance Music Festival in late January to mixed reviews, had been scheduled for an April 19 wide release, but was delayed.
Five Star Institute's Mark Hulme financed and produced the movie, which Open Road acquired in a service release deal prior to this year's Sundance Film Festival, where "Jobs" was the closing night film. Both sides decided to wait and create proper buzz before releasing "Jobs" rather than rush the movie out so soon after Sundance.
By opening after most summer blockbusters (Sony's "Elysium" is the last major title on Aug. 9) rather than mid-April, "Jobs" now stands a better chance to succeed and distinguish itself in the marketplace.
"Jobs", which stars Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs and Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak, is one of several Jobs-related films in the works or already released. Back in April, rumor site Funny or Die released a rather poorly received "iSteve" comedy film starring Justin Long, who had played the "Mac" character in Apple's long-running "Mac vs. PC" ad campaign.
A third film is being written by Aaron Sorkin and is the official adaptation of Jobs' authorized biography by Walter Isaacson. The film, which is still in the early stages of development, is planned to encompass three 30-minute scenes showing Jobs backstage just prior to the launches of the original Mac, NeXT, and the iPod.
The teardown experts at iFixit have just taken apart the new 13-inch Mid-2013 MacBook Air that was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote yesterday, and while there aren't too many drastic changes in the internals there are a few differences that are worth noting.
The team found that the PCIe-based SSD module from Samsung is smaller than the previous model's Toshiba SATA module, which also means that the drive is not compatible with previous MacBook Air models. As noted earlier by AnandTech, the read/write speeds of the flash storage approach 800 MB/s.
Samsung SSD in Mid-2013 MacBook Air
When Apple announced the Haswell-based MacBook Airs yesterday, perhaps the main highlight of the introduction was the "all-day" battery life topping out at 12 hours for the 13-inch model. And while the processors are a large part of the claimed all-day battery life, iFixit found that the new Airs also sport batteries with increased capacity driven by higher voltages: increasing from a 7.3 V, 6700 mAh power battery to a 7.6 V 7150 mAh power battery.
Other changes that the iFixit team found include a redesigned AirPort card that provides 802.11ac Wi-Fi and an expanded heat sink covering both the CPU and platform controller hub (PCH), although the PCH does not have any thermal compound applied to assist with transferring heat to the heat sink.
The 11-inch MacBook Air starts at $999 with a 128 GB hard drive, while the 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $1099 with a 128 GB hard drive. Both lines are available at Apple's Online Store and at the company's retail outlets.
At yesterday's Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple unveiled its next generation operating system, OS X Mavericks. While Mavericks incorporates a number of significant changes like a redesigned Finder, a Safari overhaul, and new Compressed Memory settings, there are also a number of other, smaller changes that MacRumors forum readers and other sources have unearthed.
AppNap Settings - AppNap, which is designed to conserve battery by sending apps into a hibernation mode, can be disabled on a per app basis by developers.
New Activity Monitor - The Activity Monitor has been redesigned, offering new charts and graphs that show bytes/packets sent/received. It also includes a new energy tab that shows the energy impact of apps and includes a built-in system diagnostics tool.
Design Updates - Along with some app redesigns, Apple has removed much of the linen look that was introduced with Mountain Lion. Both Dashboard and the log-in screen have a new background. Launchpad folders also have a new translucent background, and Mavericks users will notice new fade in and fade out behaviors. Finally, Finder selections have new rounded corners and the dock has a new look.
Notification Center - The standard gray linen background has been removed from Notification Center, in favor of a plain, dark background. Notification Center also includes a new Messages sharing option, allowing users to send messages without opening the app. It functions similarly to current Facebook and Twitter integration.
Battery Status - The Battery dropdown menu has received a new category in Mavericks, displaying apps that are using a significant amount of power.
While the most obvious change in iOS 7 is the look and feel of the user interface, Apple's engineers have packed the update with numerous changes both big and small.
Here are a selection of changes noticed by folks in the MacRumors Forums and elsewhere.
Cellular Data Tracking by App - In Settings / Cellular, users can track cellular data usage on a per-app basis. Apps can have their cellular data access disabled individually as well.
Update Apps Manually - The App Store now updates apps automatically, but for users who prefer to handle things themselves, automatic updates can be disabled via a slider in Settings / iTunes & App Stores.
How to Get to Spotlight - Spotlight is now accessible from the home screen by swiping down from the middle of the screen. Additionally, in Settings / General / Spotlight Search, users can manually turn search result categories on and off, as well as change the order results are presented in.
Live Clock Icon - The clock icon provides the correct time, including a live second hand. The weather app does not update -- it is always partly cloudy.
Newsstand Has Permanent Icon - Newsstand's icon remains the same regardless of what publications are inside it. The app itself works similarly, though the design is substantially different. Newsstand can now be put inside a folder as well.
App Permission for Microphone Access - Apps are now required to ask permission to access the microphone, similar to how apps currently ask to access location data or the camera.
Skips in iTunes Radio - iTunes Radio listeners get 6 skips per station, regardless of if they are on the ad-supported or ad-free versions of the service. It is believed that the skips reset each hour.
Aside from the "all-day" battery life that comes alongside the upgrade to Intel's Haswell processors in the new MacBook Air, one of the other major improvements is the adoption of PCIe-based flash storage for much faster performance. The new PCIe flash will also be coming to Apple's radically redesigned Mac Pro later this year, and undoubtedly other Macs as well.
Available in capacities up to 512GB, this next-generation flash storage is up to 9x faster than a traditional 5400-rpm notebook hard drive. And it’s up to 45 percent faster than the flash storage in the previous-generation MacBook Air. So when you flip open MacBook Air, it’s ready to go right away. Even after a month in standby mode, the screen springs to life.
AnandTech has taken a closer look at flash storage performance and other benchmarks in the new MacBook Air, finding that read/write speeds are approaching 800 MB/s.
The drive in my system uses a Samsung controller, although I've heard that SanDisk will have a PCIe solution for Apple as well. A quick run through Quick Bench reveals peak sequential read/write performance of nearly 800MB/s.
This is a pretty big deal, as it is probably the first step towards PCIe storage in a mainstream consumer device that we've seen.
Beyond battery life and flash storage enhancements and the shift to Haswell, Apple's new MacBook Air brings several other enhancements as well, including faster 802.11ac Wi-Fi and dual microphones for reducing background noise.
One of the new iOS 7 features introduced by Craig Federighi at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote yesterday was Activation Lock, which aims to reduce the appeal of Apple devices to thieves by preventing stolen phones from being activated by new users.
There's one feature I want to talk about in a little more detail, which is Activation Lock. So, hundreds of millions of use Find My iPhone to find our phone when it's just lost in the couch, or maybe left at Starbucks, but also when it's been stolen. And now, with Activation Lock, if a thief tries to turn off Find My iPhone, or if they even wipe the device entirely, they will not be able to reactivate it because they don't know your iCloud user name and password. We think this is going to be a really powerful theft deterrent.
Apple's announcement comes just days before a summit scheduled by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón in which the officials are to meet with representatives of Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft to discuss issues related to mobile device theft. The officials have been pushing manufacturers and carriers to find ways to disable stolen devices in hopes of making them less desirable to thieves.
As noted by the Associated Press, Schneiderman and Gascón released a statement yesterday addressing Apple's activation lock and noting they are cautiously optimistic about the announcement while waiting to hear more details about how it works.
"We are appreciative of the gesture made by Apple to address smartphone theft. We reserve judgment on the activation lock feature until we can understand its actual functionality," the prosecutors said in a joint written statement. [...]
"We are hopeful that the cellphone industry will imbed persistent technology that is free to consumers that will make a phone inoperable once stolen, even if the device is off, the SIM card is removed or the phone is modified by a thief to avoid detection," the prosecutors said.
The summit is scheduled for this Thursday in New York City, and Apple will presumably share more information about Activation Lock with the officials at that time to help them understand its benefits and limitations.
As a part of iOS 7's major redesign, shown off at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference keynote yesterday, the company redesigned the icons of all of the core Apple apps, giving them a simpler and cleaner look.
9to5Macnotes that the icons for both the iOS 7 Maps app and the new Maps app coming in OS X Mavericks appear to show off the location of Apple's "Campus 2", frequently informally referred to as the "Spaceship" campus. Prior to iOS 7, the Maps icon featured Apple's current headquarters on Infinite Loop in Cupertino.
The icon design is greatly simplified, but does show a navigation route running just to the north of Interstate 280, corresponding to the location of Apple's Campus 2. Apple's Infinite Loop campus is located just south of Interstate 280, as is reflected in the current icon.
Campus 2, just a short distance away from Apple's current headquarters, is dominated by a circular 2,800,000 square foot 4-story building designed to hold 13,000 employees. It has a targeted completion date of 2016.
At the end of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote yesterday, CEO Tim Cook introduced a new TV ad focusing on how Apple's products and services enrich lives. The ad's tagline is "Designed by Apple in California", leveraging the statement displayed on every Apple product to make an emotional connection with consumers over the care the company puts into its products.
This is it. This is what matters. The experience of a product. How will it make someone feel? Will it make life better? Does it deserve to exist? We spend a lot of time on a few great things, until every idea we touch enhances each life it touches. You may rarely look at it, but you'll always feel it...this is our signature, and it means everything.
Bloomberg now reports that the ad is part of new campaign being launched by Apple and longtime advertising partner TBWA\Chiat\Day. The company's "Photos Every Day" and "Music Every Day" ads that have been running over the past several months are also part of the campaign.
After years of product-oriented ads that have failed to stem market-share losses to devices built on Google Inc.’s Android software, the campaign will emphasize the quality and reliability of Apple’s ecosystem of products, apps and content, said the people, who asked not to be named because the plans aren’t public. The company previewed one of the ads yesterday. Others will follow in coming months, one of the people said.
According to the report's sources, the summer campaign will not focus on any single product, instead promoting the overall brand and seamless integration of the Apple ecosystem.
Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook reorganized Apple last year to encourage collaboration among units so that Macs, iPhones and iPads work better together, and the planned ads will focus on how the products can simplify users’ lives, hearkening back to Apple’s roots, the people said.
Apple has also launched a new "Designed by Apple" page on its website, offering a longer version of the text from the new commercial, as well as hosting the company's "Intention" video that opened yesterday's keynote.
Sources indicate that TBWA\Chiat\Day has become somewhat frustrated by a lack of clarity from Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller about what direction the company's ads should take. Pressure has reportedly increased following waning consumer enthusiasm for Apple's ads, such as the "Genius" ads that briefly aired last year. The new campaign seeks to refocus Apple's advertising efforts on the company and its connections with users, hopefully bringing a stronger and more cohesive message.
With the introduction of its new Haswell-based MacBook Air models yesterday, Apple revealed a strong emphasis on battery life, pushing the rated operating time from five hours to nine hours on the 11-inch model and from seven hours to 12 hours on the 13-inch model.
Even with the focus on battery life, Apple was also able to bring some minor performance improvements, as seen in Geekbench 2 benchmarking results highlighted by Primate Labs. Overall, the new MacBook Air models performed 3-8% better than their previous-generation counterparts.
With Haswell, Intel's focus was on reducing power usage. Rather than improve performance by 25%, Intel improved performance by 10% while consuming 25% less power.
Apple then went a step further. Apple reduced power usage even more by selecting processors with lower frequencies. In the low-end Air, the frequency has been reduced to 1.3 GHz from 1.7 GHz, while in the high-end Air, the frequency has been reduced to 1.7 GHz from 2.0 GHz.
The new MacBook Air is available now through Apple's online store, although the company recommends waiting until tomorrow before trying to obtain one at any of its retail stores. Pricing begins at $999 for the 11-inch models, with the 13-inch models starting at $1099.
Apple has announced the winners of its annual Apple Design Awards at WWDC, highlighting an array of apps from utilities to games on both iOS and the Mac. Apple's Design Awards were created to recognize apps that "raise the bar in design, technology, and innovation."
This year's awards also include two apps from student developers. Finish is a streamlined task manager designed to help users organize to-dos into tasks, while mosaic.io allows users to display a photo mosaic across two or more iOS devices.
Finally, Apple highlighted three other student created apps which student scholarship applicants designed to describe their experience and background for a chance to win tickets to WWDC. Winners included Louis Harboe, Bryan Keller, and Puck Meerbug.
2012 winners of the Apple Design Awards included Jetpack Joyride, Paper, and Sketch.
Yelp today announced an update to their iOS app that redesigns the Nearby tab so it displays recommendations based on location, previous check-ins and more.
Our updated Nearby tab now offers suggestions based on your location, previous Yelp check-ins and reviews, and Yelp friends as well as other data like the time of day and even the weather. At Yelp, we have an entire community of reviewers that we rely on to suggest places you might not know about, as well as places that you and your friends love. Maybe you’ll discover something new, maybe you’ll understand what the neighborhood has to offer, or maybe you’ll be reminded of an old favorite.
On their blog Yelp shares a potential use case for the new feature, noting that checking the Nearby tab at lunch could have the app recommend a place nearby that has good lunch options or a place where lots of Yelpers have recently checked in and enjoyed.
The app also sees its Events also get a redesign, with the most popular events also getting a slot in the Nearby tab so users can keep up with local events.
Yelp is a universal update that can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Apple, and Tim Cook personally, have been 
Samsung SSD in Mid-2013 MacBook Air 
Aside from the "all-day" battery life that comes alongside the upgrade to Intel's Haswell processors in the 
