Ben Lovejoy

Apple has added movie support to its iTunes in the Cloud service in 11 new European countries today, enabling customers in those countries to re-download content previously purchased from the iTunes store. The new countries include Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. As noted by French site iGen [Google translation], France...

GigaOM reports that Major League Baseball is expanding support for Apple's Passbook app, announcing that the digital tickets will be accepted at 13 stadiums this season, up from just four last season. MLB was one of Apple's launch partners for Passbook in September, with mobile tickets accepted by the New York Mets, San Francisco Giants and Kansas City Royals. They are being joined this...

Handset manufacturer HTC is seeking to streamline the process for iPhone users to switch to the forthcoming HTC One by enabling it to extract data from iPhone backup files, enabling automatic transfer of photos, videos, calendar entries and text messages to the handset, reports CNET Asia. Transfers will take place using a new version of HTC's Sync Manager software, which already allows music ...

iOS devices represented 77% of all mobile device activations in the enterprise market in the final quarter of 2012, with the top five slots all occupied by Apple devices, reports Good Technology's Device Activation Report. The company monitors smartphone and tablet devices activated among its enterprise clients, which include half of the Fortune 100. Apple devices occupied eight of the top ten ...

Ken Segall, the creative director behind the Think Different campaign and author of Insanely Simple, a book about his experiences of that time, has suggested Apple is losing its way in its current advertising approaches, with Samsung taking full advantage. In a blog entry on his website, Observatory, Segall argues that Apple has stuck to its product-based ads while Samsung has been investing...

iOS 6.1.2 is already used on more iOS devices in the U.S. and Canada than any other version of the operating system, with adoption rates hitting 35% in just six days, according to data from ad network Chitika. Chitika logged the iOS version used across tens of millions of browser sessions, revealing the dramatic uptake rate.As this latest update fixed a battery life issue ― a major phone...

Thalmic Labs has announced a $149 armband called MYO that detects motion and muscle movements to allow control of a Mac, PC, or other device using gestures (via The Next Web). The demo video shows someone scrolling by waving two fingers in the air (mimicking the standard OS X trackpad gesture), snapping fingers to start iTunes playing, rotating a fist to increase the volume, holding up a...

The Apple fan behind the Every Apple TV ad YouTube channel has created a new channel and blog with the self-explanatory title Every Steve Jobs video, offering a total of around 150 clips of varying lengths. The site's creator told MacRumors that he wanted to get them online in time for Steve Jobs' birthday on February 24. I'm a long time Apple enthusiast and throughout the years have...

The reality of the "post-PC era" predicted by Steve Jobs at the launch of the iPad 2 in 2011 can clearly be seen in a single graphic created by market intelligence company IDC in a report on what the firm refers to as the Smart Connected Device Market. (Legend omits smartphones shown in yellow) The chart shows the market share decline of both desktop PCs (from 23% in 2010 to just 12% in...

A newly-published patent application from Apple discovered by AppleInsider discloses a new "bracelet" accessory with a wraparound design where the screen would cover the entire outer surface. While the word "watch" is not used anywhere in the patent application, which was filed in August 2011, the "wearable video device" described in the document could clearly serve as an advanced wristwatch. ...

Streaming music service Spotify is reportedly in negotiations to make its free subscription tier available on smartphones and tablets, according to a report from The Verge.Spotify, the popular music subscription service, is due to meet in the coming weeks with its major counterparts in the record industry to renew their licensing agreements. The Verge has learned that managers at Spotify are...

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster late yesterday issued a new research note using average low-end smartphone pricing in emerging markets to argue that Apple's rumored lower-cost iPhone will launch in September with a price tag of around $199 unlocked. Munster examined smartphone pricing on 15 different models across six international markets (Germany, UK, France, China, Brazil and India)...

Back in November, research firm Strategy Analytics estimated that Samsung's Galaxy S III had topped the list of worldwide smartphone shipments for the third quarter of 2012, taking advantage of a lull in iPhone 4S sales ahead of the iPhone 5 launch to claim the crown. Unsurprisingly, the firm's latest figures published today find that Apple easily reclaimed the title for the fourth quarter of...

Pureinfotech links (via Neowin) to a YouTube video claiming to show a 'Hackintosh' Surface Pro running OS X Mountain Lion. The new Surface Pro tablet, which runs full Windows 8, launched earlier this month starting at $899. Comments on the YouTube video are largely skeptical, suggesting that it's simply a remote desktop connection to a Mac. However, there's no technical reason why a...

Taiwanese newspaper Economic Times reports [Google translation, via Mac Otakara] that Apple is lining up suppliers for its next-generation MacBook Air for launch in the third quarter of this year. According to the report, the MacBook Air will not only be receiving internal upgrades to Intel's new Haswell platform but also a "facelift" with new external features, including the possibility of a...

Former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée shares his perspective on Apple's rumored "iWatch", noting that the company likely has very ambitious plans for the device given its focus on continually pushing forward the concept of a "personal computer".[W]hat really floats their [boats], what hardens Apple’s resolve is designing, making, and selling large numbers of personal computers, from the...

Screenshots alleged to be of a forthcoming Samsung smartwatch have been posted on the Korean message board Ruliweb (via SlashGear), suggesting possible competition for the rumored Apple "iWatch". It is unclear whether the watch will be a self-contained product, or rely on a Bluetooth connection to a smartphone. The claimed code name of the project, Altius, is causing some confusion, as SamMo...

Dropbox has launched a new version of its iOS app, providing push notifications of shared folders for the first time. Previously, when waiting for someone to share a folder with you, you had to repeatedly open and close the app to check for its availability. The feature is likely to be most appreciated by business users, as Dropbox file-sharing has become a very popular way to work around...

Apple design chief Jonathan Ive has been awarded a gold badge by the BBC children's show Blue Peter, a show the British-born designer watched as a child and which encourages children to make things from ordinary household objects. Blue Peter is the world's longest-running children's television show, having been on the air for over 50 years. The show said that Ive was an "inspiration to...

With the Pebble smart watch now making its the way into the hands of Kickstarter backers who funded the project with over $10 million, users are looking for ways to increase the functionality of the device. As noted by iDownloadBlog, developer Conrad Kramer has created a new app for jailbroken iPhones that can push notifications from any Notification Center-enabled iOS app to Pebble. The...