Vignette app allows you to change all those ugly grey circles with initials into actual photographs. By searching Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Gravatar—no login required—Vignette will attempt to pair your contacts with their profile pictures on social media. After amassing all these images, using Vignette’s easy to use interface, you can select which avatar you’d like to use, or none at all. Once you’re all set, Vignette will write those updates to your contacts database on your phone. That means in Messages, Phone, and all of your other apps, you see beautiful images instead of ugly initials. Vignette is free to try, but in order to save the updates to your contact list, you will need to buy the one-time in-app purchase. Vignette app runs entirely on your phone; your contacts stay on your device and are never transmitted *anywhere*. Privacy is a critical factor to Vignette; your trust is important and will not be squandered. App Store: Free (Offers In-App Purchases)
Apple has been awarded the 2019 Creative Marketer of the Year by Cannes Lions, the world’s largest festival for advertising and creative communications.
Portland transit riders can now add the Hop Fastpass to Apple Wallet, which works with TriMet, C-Tran, and Portland Streetcar.
A report from the United Nations says that making virtual assistants like Siri have female voices by default is sexist.
As voice-powered technology reaches into communities that do not currently subscribe to Western gender stereotypes, including indigenous communities, the feminization of digital assistants may help gender biases to take hold and spread. Because Alexa, Cortana, Google Home and Siri are all female exclusively or female by default in most markets, women assume the role of digital attendant…
I think it’s a fair point.
In a WebKit post today, Apple has an idea to make online ads private. It’s called Privacy Preserving Ad Click Attribution.
Mobile network EE announced the launch of its 5G service – it will exclusively offer Harry Potter: Wizards United, but not Huawei devices.
Last May Apple had one AR job position open. It gradually increased to five by the end of 2018. Now, Apple AR hiring has increased to 33 open positions.
The hiring upswing is a clear sign that the Cupertino tech giant is looking to make AR a major part of its mobile iOS devices moving forward…Of the current 33 openings, the extreme majority — 30 — are located at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters.
The question we must always have for the high tech giants is embedded in this essay at the Internet Health Report:
“Are you going to harm humanity and, specifically, historically marginalized populations, or are you going to sort of get your act together and make some significant structural changes to ensure that what you create is safe and not harmful?”
Given the demonstrated proclivity of many high tech companies to, without adult supervision, create technologies that callously enrich them at our great expense, the above is a great question to ask. Every day. Of every technology.
Project Marzipan, bringing iOS apps to the Mac, is not a prelude to merging the OSes. It’s actually a protective measure for macOS.
Some 2016 13-inch MacBook Pro displays suffered problems with the backlight, and Apple will repair them under a new Backlight Service Program.
Apple will repair affected devices, which includes machines sold between October 2016 and February 2018, for free. Eligible models are listed below:
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Two Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
No other MacBook Pro models are included in the repair program at this time.
The new 8-core MacBook Pro brings with it an updated version of the butterfly keyboard. Additionally, the 2018 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air are being added to Apple’s Keyboard Service Program.
Apple has updated its official Keyboard Service Program support page with the 2018 and 2019 MacBooks. If you’ve been having issues with your 2018 MacBook Pro or MacBook Air keyboard or any MacBook notebook with a butterfly keyboard, get in touch with Apple Support to get the repair process started. Keep in mind you’ll likely be without your machine for a least a day, if not longer.
Apple and Huawei are caught in the trade war between China and the United States. There is a growing ‘Boycott Apple’ movement in China.
iMessage is the Apple social network. It might not be a Facebook killer, but it fares better than Ping and Apple Music Connect.
Andrew Orr and John Martellaro join host Kelly Guimont to talk about a social media database breach and a new wrinkle in consumer privacy.
I’m a big fan of MacStories and today Federico released what he calls an iPad manifesto. He writes about his experience using the iPad as his main computing device over seven years.
Seven years after I started (slowly) replacing my MacBook Air with an iPad, my life is different, but one principle still holds true: I never want to find myself forced to work on a computer that’s only effective at home, that can’t be held in my hands, or that can’t be customized for different setups. For this reason, the iPad Pro is the best computer for the kind of lifestyle I want.
We have a deal on a pair of Bang & Olufsen H4 Bluetooth Headphones. These over-the-ear headphones have on-device controls, and they’re made from leather, aluminum, polymer and steel. They have up to 19 hours of playback time, and they also come with a 1.2 m audio cable with 3.5 mm mini-jack as an alternative to wireless connectivity. They’re $179.99 through our deal, but coupon code WEEKEND15 brings the price down to $153 at checkout.
Today Apple updated the MacBook Pro line with faster 8th- and 9th-generation Intel Core processors with eight cores.
Back in November, Apple and Amazon cut a deal that allowed new and refurbished Apple products via the online retailer. The move was good for the two firms but, The Verge reported, a disaster for those already selling Apple products through the Amazon Marketplace. The deal meant they were banned from doing so, putting severe pressure on a number of businesses.
Companies that want to sell Apple products through Amazon now have to meet one of two requirements. The first is to purchase at least $2.5 million worth of refurbished inventory every 90 days from Apple itself or through a retailer with more than $5 billion in annual sales, like a wireless carrier or big-box retailers like Target or Walmart. The second is to reach out directly to Apple to become an authorized reseller. Apple has yet to make its reseller requirements known to the public, but to become an Apple-authorized provider of repairs requires a physical retail space for customers to enter. By cutting this deal, Apple and Amazon benefit while knocking out millions of dollars worth of business for small sellers.
The U.S relaxed restrictions on Huawei to avoid disruption to customers of the telecoms sector, Reuters reported. It is the latest development in the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China.
The U.S. Commerce Department blocked Huawei Technologies from buying U.S. goods last week, a major escalation in the trade war between the world’s two top economies, saying the firm was involved in activities contrary to national security. The two countries increased import tariffs on each other’s goods over the past two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump said China had reneged on earlier commitments made during months of negotiations. On Monday, the Commerce Department granted Huawei a license to buy U.S. goods until Aug. 19 to maintain existing telecoms networks and provide software updates to Huawei smartphones, a move intended to give telecom operators that rely on Huawei time to make other arrangements.
Lots of users have been having fun with the new gender altering filters on Snapchat. However, the Associated Press reported that the filters also provide comfort and support to some trans people exploring their gender identity.
“My gender’s not a costume,” says Bailey Coffman, a 31-year-old transgender woman from New York. “This story that I feel is very real. I lost a lot to be who I am, and I fought really hard for the body that I’m in….Some argue that the filter, which Snapchat calls a “lens,” could be a therapeutic tool that leads to self-discovery and even helps ease the transition of people struggling with gender identity once they see who they could become…
