Hey, cool. We get to offer you a deal on PDFpen 8 for Mac from Smile Software. This software is an all-purpose PDF reader and editor. You can edit text, add images, redact information, export to Microsoft Word format, and a lot more. PDFpen 8 is priced at $74.95, but you can get it through our deal for just $37.
Perseus Smart Mirror Interfaces to Your iPhone
The Perseus smart mirror is a Kickstarter project. It’s a hybrid mirror and display of the home screen of your smartphone via Wi-Fi. The developers explain: “Imagine this: a weather alert pops up while you are brushing your teeth and reminds you to bring your umbrella. As you adjust your hair, a text message from your boss appears at the bottom of the screen. Best of all, there’s no need to put down that hair product – the mirror is controlled through simple voice recognition menus…. It looks like something right out of a sci-fi movie.” It really does. This Kickstarter project is almost halfway to its funding goal, and delivery is expected in April 2017. Early bird slots are filled, but you can get in now for US$219.
Apple Patches Pangu Jailbreak Exploit with iOS 9.3.4
Apple released iOS 9.3.4 on Thursday, only a couple weeks after rolling out iOS 9.3.3. This surprise update shuts down the Pangu jailbreak, and the credit card and PayPal security breaches that came along with it.
TMO Daily Observations 2016-08-04: Stolen iPhone Phishing Scam, Watch the Olympics Online
As if having your iPhone stolen isn’t enough, now the bad guys are trying to get you to give up your iCloud login, too. John Martellaro joins Jeff Gamet look at this latest phishing scam, and to share tips on how to avoid falling victim to these schemes. They also share some tips on how to watch the Rio summer Olympics without a cable TV subscription.
Apple Helped Drive Uber Out of China
Uber and Didi were locked in a battle to outspend each other in China in hopes of becoming the dominant name in the ride sharing market. When Apple invested US$1 billion in Didi, however, Uber knew that strategy wouldn’t work and agreed to a deal where Didi bought out its Chinese operations.
Study Ranks the Best, Worst U.S. Cities for Smartphone Connections
Mobile data and voice connections can be a fickle thing, and a new report from RootMetrics shows just how true that is. The report ranks 125 U.S. cities for wireless reliability, speed, data, call, and text performance, and it turns out the best place for smartphone owners to live is Lansing, Michigan. The worst is Hudson Valley, New York. San Francisco came in at 58, well below Chicago (5), Kansas City (11), and Boston (17). Denver was near the bottom of the list at 119, which sounds about right based on our experiences. You can check out the full report and see how your metro area stacks up at the RootMetrics website.
Edit Playlist Columns in iTunes 12.4 and Later
Every update to iTunes seems to refine a useful feature out of the interface, and as I created a new playlist in iTunes this morning I found yet another. All new Playlists are stuck in “Playlist” view, which has a limited selection of columns and no obvious way to customize them. No worries, you can still customize them, you just have to change your View first. We’ll show you how.
How to Watch the Olympics for Cable Cutters
With the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics only days away, it’s time to plan out which event’s you’ll watch. If you don’t have a cable TV subscription, that’s OK because there are plenty of other ways to get your Olympics fix.
ACM 371: iPad Pro (Surface) Ad, Siri's Shortcomings, Apple's Big Developer Payout
Bryan and Jeff discuss Apple’s commercial that embraces many of the things Microsoft has used to tout Surface Pro. They also talk about Apple’s remarkable success with the App Store, as well as some of Siri’s shortcomings.
A Computer with Lights, Get Inside, See What's Happening
It’s 10 meters long and 2 meters high. It’s made of discrete transistors and LEDs. You can actually see what’s going on. Is it a real working computer? Yes. Can you program it? Yes. Why was it made? The developer, James Newman, says, “Computers are quite opaque, looking at them it’s impossible to see how they work. What I would like to do is get inside and see what’s going on. Trouble is we can’t shrink down small enough to walk inside a silicon chip. But we can go the other way; we can build the thing big enough that we can walk inside it. Not only that we can also put LEDs on everything so we can actually SEE the data moving and the logic happening.” Behold, the Megaprocessor