Kelly Hodgkins

Increased consumer interest in NFC mobile payments related to Apple's recent launch of its Apple Pay mobile payment service appears to be having benefits for other services as well, reports Ars Technica. A major beneficiary of this new consumer awareness of mobile transactions is Google Wallet, which reportedly has seen a marked increase in usage over the past few months. NFC-based mobile...

As part of ongoing efforts to improve its Prime subscription plan, Amazon today announced a new unlimited photo storage option for its Amazon Prime members. The option is part of the retailer's Cloud Drive service that allows customers to store their files in Amazon's cloud. "This time of year in particular, families are capturing thousands of photos of holiday parties, family gatherings and...

Microsoft and Dropbox today announced a partnership that will bring Dropbox support to Microsoft's suite of Office mobile apps. Microsoft will add this new Dropbox feature in upcoming versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint for the iPhone and iPad. The new Dropbox integration would allow Office users to open, edit and share files that are stored in Dropbox. After adding a Dropbox account to...

A number of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners have been reporting an issue with the device that causes it to crash and remain stuck in a boot loop following a restart. The issue appears to primarily affect 128 GB models, particularly those with larger app libraries, and some suggest it may be a hardware problem associated with the increased storage available on that device. While the exact cause of...

Starting this week, travelers on select Southwest Airlines flights will be able to listen to music streamed via Apple's Beats Music service. The airline today announced this new Beats Music option and provided a live demonstration onboard a 737 emblazoned with the Beats Music logo. Southwest adopted Beats Music in response to growing consumer interest in streaming music. "Southwest connects ...

Audio expert Peter Eastty of Oxford Digital Limited has left the company he co-founded to work for Apple. According to his LinkedIn profile, Eastty joined Apple in September of this year as the Director of SoC (System on Chip) Audio Processing. Eastty's career in digital audio spans more than 40 years, including oversight of a pioneering digital audio team at Solid State Logic, a 13-year...

Apple design chief Jony Ive on Thursday was honored by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in an event that celebrated Ive's 2014 Bay Area Treasure Award. The award, bestowed by the Modern Art Council (MAC), recognizes creative individuals who have influenced visual culture. "Ive is our generation’s most innovative and influential figure in the field of industrial design—no other...

Apple continues to rank among the world's top tablet manufacturers both in customer satisfaction and shipments, according to reports released today by J.D Power and IDC, although the company is showing some signs of weakness as lower-cost competitors gain momentum and consumers look for more innovation in Apple's tablet lineup. Apple fell slightly behind Amazon in J.D. Power's semiannual customer ...

Apple bought Beats Music to improve its standing in the streaming music marketplace, but the Cupertino company has its work cut out if it wants to compete with high-profile rivals Spotify and Pandora. According to App Annie metrics cited by CNET, Beats Music continues to trail its rivals in two important App Store metrics -- downloads and revenue. In the App Annie download rankings, Beats...

Irish firm Probendi is seeking to capitalize on Apple's announcement of the Apple Watch earlier this year by using its existing "iWatch" trademark in Europe to launch its own smartwatch device. Probendi director Daniele Di Salvo confirmed in a recent RTE Radio interview that the company will "absolutely push ahead" with its plans to build a smartwatch device that will compete with the Apple...

Apple had the consumer in mind when it added a multi-carrier SIM card to its new iPads, said Apple vice president of iPhone, iPod and iOS product marketing Greg Joswiak in a recent Re/code interview (via Fierce Wireless). But that motivation does not mean the Apple SIM will be making its way to the iPhone any time soon, as Joswiak noted most consumers go directly to their carriers to buy iPhones, ...

Apple is pushing NFC in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus for Apple Pay, but the company may have bigger plans for the wireless technology beyond mobile payments. A report from The Information claims Apple has been in talks with technology providers about using NFC for building security access and public transit ticketing. The Apple representatives have talked to technology providers like HID Global and...

With recent moves by pharmacy chains CVS and Rite Aid to disable Apple Pay or even NFC payments entirely at their stores, a separate mobile payments initiative backed by these and other major retailers is gaining significant attention. This consortium of merchants, which includes Best Buy, Walmart, Lowe's, and many more, is known as Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) and is developing a mobile...

Apple's new Apple SIM card in the iPad Air 2 and the Retina iPad mini 3 is designed to be universal, usable across a variety of wireless carriers in the US and UK, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and UK's EE. According to user reports in the MacRumors forums and on Twitter, however, AT&T is not supporting this interchangeability and is locking the SIM included with cellular models of the...

Apple's digital music sales continue to spiral downward, falling more than 13 percent worldwide thus far in 2014, reports The Wall Street Journal. Last year, digital music sales dropped for the first time since iTunes opened in 2003, falling 5.7 percent year-over-year. This continued decline is likely one of the reasons behind Apple's $3 billion acquisition of Beats Electronics and Beats...

Earlier this week, a teardown analysis of the iPad Air 2 by iFixit surprisingly revealed the presence of a near field communications (NFC) controller chip that is identical to the one inside the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Apple never advertised the Air 2 as having NFC, and the tablet doesn't support contactless Apple Pay payments, so the inclusion of this chip is somewhat puzzling. In a new article, ...

According to reports on Twitter, Reddit and MacRumors forums, Amazon's Visa Rewards card is now compatible with Apple Pay. Amazon reportedly enabled the feature today, moving quickly to bring the mobile payments service to consumers who were disappointed in Amazon for not supporting Apple Pay at launch. Apple Pay launched on Monday with support from a large number of credit card companies...

Tim Cook was optimistic about Apple's relationship with China following a meeting with top Chinese government officials in Beijing on Wednesday to discuss data privacy and security. Cook told China's Xinhua news agency (Via Reuters) that he had "very open" talks with a senior official. Chinese vice premier Ma Kai, a member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, met with the CEO of the...

A growing number of Apple Pay users are angry with retailer Rite Aid following the reported disabling of the mobile payment service within the past 24 hours. Apple Pay should technically be compatible with any point-of-sale systems supporting NFC technology, but customers who made successful Apple Pay payments earlier this week have found their payments were being denied yesterday and today. ...

Apple's Power Mac G5 has a distinctive aluminum design that was disruptive when it launched in 2003. Inspired by this milestone in design, designer Klaus Geiger has "upcycled" this aging Apple hardware into furniture because the machines are "simply too good to be disposed of." (via DesignBoom) As part of a project aptly titled "Benchmarc", Geiger has carefully created a sitting bench using ...