Mountain Lion continues Lion’s tradition of spontaneously force-quitting applications. Fortunately, there’s a magic wand that lets you turn off this reprehensible behavior.
Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.
http://tidbits.com/article/13174?rss
The Apple TV’s selection of video content just improved, thanks to the addition of the Hulu Plus subscription service. For $7.99 per month, you can now stream “current and classic TV programming on demand from hundreds of content partners.” Apple TV-competitors like Roku and smart TVs have supported Hulu for some time, so Apple TV is late to the game, perhaps due to Apple not wanting competition for iTunes Store sales, or because of Hulu not wanting to give Apple a cut of its subscription fees. Apparently, Apple and Hulu have now come to some mutually beneficial understanding.
Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.
http://blog.hulu.com/2012/07/31/hulu-plus-arrives-on-apple-tv/
Everyone knows what Apple Stores look like: gleaming monoliths of glass and stainless steel. But what about the employees-only areas? We’ve collected some rare photos of the parts of Apple Stores that the public never gets to see.
The part of Apple Stores known as “back-of-house” may not be as exciting as the retail floor or as impressive as Apple HQ in California, but it’s off limits to the public. And like so much of Apple’s internal workings, that forbidden quality makes it fascinating because of what it reveals about how Apple Stores work. Let’s take a look at some of the different areas in the back-of-house.
The Genius Room
In every Apple Store back-of-house, there is a very important room designated as the Genius Room. As you’ve probably guessed, the Genius Room is the repair room. It’s where the Genius Bar workers take your computer, phone, or tablet to repair it while you wait. In general, the Genius Room has desks, lots of shelves, several working Macs, and dozens of bins holding tools and spare parts.
Apple Store Genius Room – in 5th Ave. store in New York City
Apple Store Genius Room – in 5th Ave. store in New York City
Shelves holding spare parts in Apple Store Genius Room – in 5th Ave. store in New York City
Apple Store Genius Room – in Oakbrook Terrace, IL
Apple Store Genius Room
Employee Break Room
Like most retail stores, there’s a small area in the back of Apple Stores where employees can take their breaks, if they want to stay on the premises. Also like most retail stores, the break room is nothing fancy, with a few sparse pieces of furniture and little more. On the plus side, there are iMacs for employees to use while eating lunch (or whatever).
Apple Store Employee Break Room – in Albany, NY
Apple Store Employee Break Room – in Wellington, FL
Storage
Some for-sale items are kept on the retail floor, in semi-concealed cabinets under those trademark wood tables. But the majority of products that are sold through Apple Stores come from the back-of-house, more specifically from the storage or warehouse area. These storage areas vary in size according to the size of the store, with bigger stores like the 5th Avenue glass cube in New York laying claim to large warehouse spaces rigged with complex, movable shelves. Each shelf’s contents are meticulously cataloged, each piece of inventory carefully tracked. [All of the photos in this section -- and a few elsewhere -- come from the excellent ifoAppleStore.com, which covers all aspects of Apple Store-related news.]
Apple Store back-of-house storage – in 5th Ave. store in New York City
Apple Store back-of-house storage – in 5th Ave. store in New York City
Apple Store back-of-house storage – in 5th Ave. store in New York City
Apple Store back-of-house locked cage storage for highest-value products – in 5th Ave. store in New York City
Supplies
Every retail store needs supplies for cleaning, demo products, and other miscellaneous items. Apple Stores keep their supplies in back-of-house bins that are just as neatly organized as you’d expect.
Apple Stores supply bins
Apple Stores – close-up look at back-of-house supply bins
Briefing Room
Some larger Apple Stores have dedicated rooms just for business customers. Part lounge, part meeting room, this private area of the store isn’t technically part of the “back-of-house,” but since it’s off-limits to the public, I thought it was worth including here.
Apple Store Briefing Room – in Covent Garden Store, London
Just outside the Apple Store Briefing Room – in Covent Garden Store, London
In case you had any doubt that this is the Amsterdam Apple Store’s Briefing Room, they conveniently wrote it on those huge flatscreens
The Briefing Room at the Amsterdam Apple Store is such a big deal, it has its own lobby
The Uptown store in Minneapolis has a “rooftop” Briefing Room
Off to one side of the rooftop Briefing Room in the Uptown Minneapolis store is an external door leading to the store’s ultra-exclusive zen garden on the roof
Other
Here’s a pair of miscellaneous pictures from Apple Stores back-of-house.
The gigantic Apple Store in Sydney plays host to so many live musical performances and other local events that it has its own Green Room.
One clever sleuth snuck close enough to the back-of-house area at this Toronto Apple Store, when it was still under construction, to snap a pic. Visible on the left are employee lockers, and on the right, what appear to be movable inventory shelves (like those seen above).
And then… there’s this. Late in 2011, footage leaked out of an unidentified Apple Store that appeared to be a training video for new employees. There was some confusion over whether or not Apple sanctioned the video — made all the more awkward because it features a lame rap song using Apple’s employee rules for its lyrics — but it was ultimately proven to be a personal project recorded by an employee of the store. All traces of the video seem to have been yanked from the Net since then, but a handful of screengrabs provide a few final glimpses into Apple Stores’ back-of-house.
Screengrab from a fake training video filmed in an Apple Store back-of-house
Screengrab from a fake training video filmed in an Apple Store back-of-house
Screengrab from a fake training video filmed in an Apple Store back-of-house
http://www.applegazette.com/apple-store/apple-stores-back-of-house/
Remember the first time you heard your phone’s digital music on a docking station? Or in the car? Aaaaaahhhh, the clear sound was a treat for the ears. And it was so convenient to take your tunes with you, wherever. But our use for our smartphones, and now tablets, grows every day. What used to be a music and communication device is now our main browser and email checker. Not to mention what we accomplish with apps. We can’t put the devices down!
As cool as the days of docking stations have been, these days it is not so simple to leave your phone plugged in for hours just to hear tunes. Inevitably you need to look up a contact, play a game or check a website. Exeter Science & Entertainment (ESE) is here to solve the problem. Their CoolStream Bluetooth Receiver turns your 30 pin connector for your iPhone or iPad docking station or A/V cable into a Bluetooth docking station. Use it for iPhones, iPads, Android phones and any other Bluetooth enabled device. So yes, if your car has Bluetooth and appropriate plug, use it in the car. It has a wireless connection up to 30 feet and automatically detects 5V (home) or 12V (car) power supply. The CoolStream is available on Amazon.com for just $39.99.
Keep your phone in your hand or your pad on the desk while streaming your favorite content to your dock. Just plug, pair and play with the CoolStream Bluetooth Receiver.
[ “Bluetooth-itize” Your Docking Station copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/coolest-gadgets/jdZL/~3/6fjmXHAzttg/
If you don’t live in an overly techy city like San Francisco or New York, you probably haven’t experienced what it’s like to walk into a store that doesn’t have a cash register. You know, those bulky, ugly machines that rings you up and swipes your credit card or spits out cash.
If you’ve visited an Apple store, you know how wonderful it can be to complete your purchase with a Genius anywhere in the store. They carry iPhones that have a special point-of-purchase rig that doesn’t require you to “meet them at the register.”
AT&T, which of course is a carrier partner with Apple, is taking a cue from Apple’s retail stores and plans on going completely iPad for its own stores, 9to5Mac reports.
The full rollout might take years, but until then, AT&T employees will be using an iPhone to take orders, using a variant of iOS meant specifically for retailers. In its current iteration, you can’t purchase full plans or phones.
Here’s what 9to5Mac reported, as it got a confirmation from AT&T itself:
An AT&T spokesperson confirmed to us that current mobile systems in its retail store are limited to accessory purchases and certain account changes. AT&T also confirmed that the new iPads, which we described, will feature expanded functionality.
Since these iDevices are connected to the Internet, there’s no reason to have big bulky machines, since all of the information a sales person needs can be pulled down from the cloud on-demand. A service like Square wouldn’t fit AT&T’s needs, as having a device to process orders isn’t just about the order itself. Checking on the stock of an item is something Apple employees do often using their handy iPhone.
The great part about these systems is that you can opt to get an email copy of your receipt which makes record keeping a snap. It also saves paper, which is always a plus.
Have you bought things from someone using Square or another iDevice based purchasing system? Tell us how it went in the comments.
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/08/03/att-plans-on-equipping-all-of-its-retail-stores-with-ipads-to-replace-bulky-cash-registers/
Tweetbot for Mac Alpha has been updated to version 0.6.3 with some fantastic new features, including the ability to pop out separate timeline windows and dock them together, crafting an interface that looks a lot like Tweetdeck.
To pop out a timeline, you click the small gear icon in the lower corner of the main Tweetbot window, choosing the ‘open in new window’ option. Whatever current timeline you’re looking at will be duplicated in a slimline new window without the user interface attached.
You can spawn several of these new windows if you like, and move them wherever you please, allowing you to monitor any portions of your feed that you want simultaneously. If you want to monitor a list, split out the lists window, choose a list, then hit the gear and pick ‘View List Tweets’ instead of followers.
If you’d like to create a large Tweetdeck-like interface that lets you move them all around at once, you’re in luck, because you can now dock the windows together. To do so, hover a window next to the right edge of the one previous and let go, they’ll snap right together. To pull a window off, move your cursor to the bottom of the rightmost timeline and grab the undocking handle, dragging it off and to the right.
Note that you can mix and match accounts by opening another account (click the profile image in the sidebar) and choosing to open one of its streams in a new window. Then dock it and return to your first account. Brilliant.
The multiple timeline support has been one of the main things keeping Tweetdeck alive as an option for many of us here at TNW, and this is the perfect excuse to get rid of it once and for all.
Design-wise, I personally love the much thinner top menu bar, which gives the interface a sleeker overall look. Greatly improved. You can also make each column a bit narrower than they were previously, if you prefer a slimmer window. In a nice touch, dragging on either side of a docked interface splits the growth between all columns at once, letting you resize them as one window.
Tweetbot also gets some notifications improvements, with alerts from all accounts now showing up in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, rather than just the one you’re viewing at the moment. Sound effects for new tweets, mentions and more are all up and running as well. Including a location also now works in 10.8.
A new Menu bar icon lets you keep track of new tweets, mentions and DMs for each of your logged-in accounts, and offers up a ‘New Tweet’ button, for those who like to keep their client window closed until they need it.
For those of you who don’t like Twitpic, you can now also use custom image, video and URL services like Milkshk and others.
The alpha of Tweetbot is free to Mac users, but will be a for-pay app when it is finally released. To snag the latest version of the beta, hit ‘check for updates’ under your Tweetbot menu or hit up the Tapbots site below.
http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/08/03/bye-bye-tweetdeck-tweetbot-for-macs-new-alpha-has-multiple-docking-timelines-a-menu-bar-icon-and-more/
Samsung will not be able to argue that Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey contains a device so much like the iPad that it renders Apple’s patents void, reports Ina Fried at All Things D. The ruling was issued by Judge Lucy Koh today as part of a variety of restrictions and notices with regards to what Samsung will and won’t be allowed to argue in the case.
The declaration, which was issued by Samsung back in August of 2011, was a still image taken from the 1968 film in which two astronauts are eating and using tablet computers. It relates to the D’889 Patent related to the rectangular design of the iPad, dominated by a screen.
Judge Koh says that Samsung cannot utilize that piece of evidence, although it can use the Fidler and Compaq tablets to argue its point. Both of those devices also predate the iPad, though they didn’t exist only in a sci-fi flick.
You can see the 2001 tablets ‘in action’ in the clip below:
Many of us who are fans of 2001, have drawn the comparison before. In fact, many films have shown off a tablet-like device that displays information to its users. One of the most famous is the PADD device in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Not to mention the appearance of a very ‘iPad-like’ device in the Jobs-owned Pixar production The Incredibles.
Koh also ruled out evidence related to 70′s British children’s sci-fi series The Tomorrow People.
The case is ongoing, with hearings starting Friday that will feature testimony from Apple’s Phil Schiller and possibly Scott Forstall. For more on the Apple v. Samsung trial, check out our roundup of the action so far and stay tuned to TNW’s Apple channel for more.
http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/08/02/judge-rules-out-samsungs-kubrick-did-the-ipad-before-apple-patent-defense/
A small update to the Apple Store app for iPhone was pushed out today, adding a nice new option for Mac purchasers. Withe version 2.3, you can now order up a Mac with Pages, Keynote and Numbers, Apple’s ‘iWork’ suite pre-installed.
Macs typically come with the iLife suite installed, but the business oriented iWork is a for-pay suite of apps. Nevertheless, it seems like a good idea to offer an option to have them ready to go when they hit a user’s doorstep. The iWork apps can be ordered up individually at $19.99 each while buying a Mac.
The Apple Store app has gotten some nice new location-oriented updates lately, with a better ability to recognize which store you’re in, and offer up services offered at that particular branch.
The app allows customers to use EasyPay to pay for items under about the $100 threshold, and various accessories. We spoke to an Apple Retail Store employee a few days ago about customers using the app and they said that very few were using it locally, though there were a few. Employees have access to a terminal app that allows them to keep track of EasyPay sales in store, but outside of that, there are very few checks against shoplifting.
Either way, the app is definitely getting more and more sophisticated, and the new iWork pre-installation options are a nice small addition.
http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/08/02/apple-store-app-now-lets-you-order-macs-with-pages-keynote-and-numbers-pre-installed/
The day has finally come, folks. Legendary designer Surenix has brought the benchmark iPhone jailbreak theme called “ayeco”n to the iPad. We showed you a sneak peek of ayecon for iPad last week, and the Winterboard theme is now available for everyone to get in Cydia. It look gorgeous.
Surenix explains his newest jailbreak theme:
ayecon for iOS, pronounced “icon” or “ai-con“, is the benchmark in iOS theming. ayecon was designed to utilize every single pixel in Apple’s Retina display to the max.
Apple has done an amazing job with their iOS’s look and feel and that’s where ayecon based itself from. Still keeping somewhat of the iOS look and feel but this time, adding more details that you thought never existed, brighter colours, crisp textures—everything.
In ayecon, every icon shares its own a little story and every detail’s surreal from the fabric texture to the brushed metal volume scrubber. ayecon comes preloaded with everything that you’d ever want in a theme from over 50+ icons plus auto-app mask to full system user interface modifications. Once you use this theme, converting back to stock just won’t be the same.
ayecon for iPad costs $2.99 for new customers and $1.99 for those who have already purchased ayecon for the iPhone. You can install ayecon on your jailbroken iPad by searching in Cydia. Make sure to have the free Winterboard jailbreak app installed first; you’ll need to enable ayecon in Winterboard before the changes take effect.
Check out the ayecon website for a closer look at the iconography and more info about the theme.
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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cultofmac/bFow/~3/5tXb_JFTg44/story01.htm
Time to update? You know it!
Popular and useful note-taking and synchronization app Evernote has just updated its Mac app to version 3.30. The new version adds new keyboard commands, a new premium user account, new user controls and LinkedIn support, which is also now available in the web-cased Evernote client. In addition, Evernote sports a handy slideshow option for notes that involve pictures. This will look really nice using Evernote’s new Retina display support.
While Evernote remains free and ad-supported, you can also purchase a premium account for $5 a month (or $45 per year), which will now give you the ability to switch between accounts without signing either one out. You’ll need to add the accounts to Evernote, but once added, Command-Control-A will switch between accounts easily.
The Mac version of Evernote also adds Command-Control-K to add a strikethrough style to highlighted text, and Command-Shift-D to insert a date into a note. The List view has gained a tag column, and the dev team promises improved stability for both Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion.
Evernote is a daily part of my workflow, allowing me to organize a ton of internet research, lists of tasks, and even shopping lists I can create on my Mac, sync, and then open on my iPhone when in the store. Being able to share notes on LinkedIn is just another extra plus to an already great app.
Here’s a full list of the new features:
– New Premium Feature: Switch between accounts from the Evernote menu
– Share notes to LinkedIn
– Added a Tag column to List View
– New keyboard shortcut for strikethrough: CMD+CTRL+K
– CMD+Shift+D inserts date when cursor is in title area
– Larger clickable area for Activity Stream items
– Select multiple lines and click the checkbox option to add checkboxes quickly
– Activity Feed now combines recent events
– New Retina-optimized icons for Preferences
– Fixed numerous Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion crashes and issues
– More consistent results when searches contain quotes
Source: Mac App Store
Via: MacNN
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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cultofmac/bFow/~3/_qeeJm0XWdU/story01.htm
