Leander Kahney's Blog, page 1492

Watch This Hilarious Rap Video Made By Apple Store Employees [Video]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaQrr3rlNyk

An interesting music video by Apple Store employees was floating around the internet yesterday, but the video was eventually pulled. (It was that good.)

Now, the video has been re-uploaded to YouTube for all to see. The rap outlines Apple's customer support steps of service that new retail employees have to learn.

A gold start to anyone that can sit through the whole song.

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Apple And Users Reporting iCloud Outages, Are You Affected? [Updated]

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For the past hour or so it appears that iCloud has been undergoing widespread outages, with many users unable to log into their email accounts and iCloud.com.

Apple has acknowledged the problem, and is working to restore iCloud to its full glory once again.

The iCloud system status webpage gives up to date information on Apple's cloud service. Here's the most recent message:

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While iCloud is down, you may not be able to use your email address, Photo Stream, or other iCloud services. In the Mail app, you'll probably get prompts to re-enter your password. Just wait a little bit and everything should be back to normal.

We will update this page when there's word that iCloud has been fully restored. In the meantime, is iCloud down for you?

Update: As of 15:29 PST, iCloud is back online.

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Apple And Users Reporting iCloud Outages, Are You Affected?

[image error]

For the past hour or so it appears that iCloud has been undergoing widespread outages, with many users unable to log into their email accounts and iCloud.com.

Apple has acknowledged the problem, and is working to restore iCloud to its full glory once again.

The iCloud system status webpage gives up to date information on Apple's cloud service. Here's the most recent message:

[image error]

While iCloud is down, you may not be able to use your email address, Photo Stream, or other iCloud services. In the Mail app, you'll probably get prompts to re-enter your password. Just wait a little bit and everything should be back to normal.

We will update this page when there's word that iCloud has been fully restored. In the meantime, is iCloud down for you?

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The iPhone 5 Was Canned At The Last Minute, Instead We Got The iPhone 4S [Rumor]

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An iPhone 5 concept prototype by benm.at

Business Insider claims to have information on an iPhone 5 prototype from a source that "spent about two weeks" with the device. Citing several details about the alleged prototype, the source says that Apple ended up ditching the iPhone 5 at the last minute. Instead, the iPhone 4S was released as an incremental update to the product line.

While even Business Insider notes that its source has not been completely verified, the provided details do stack up nicely with the rumors we were all hearing leading up the iPhone 4S announcement.

Well, it turns out the "iPhone 5″ – or at least, a fully redesigned iPhone – was real and it was scrapped only months before the iPhone 4S was announced.

We've been told this by an industry source who has been right about future Apple products in the past.

Apparently, Apple was actually working on the revolutionary iPhone prototype that several mainstream outlets were suggesting existed prior to the 4S. The iPhone 5 prototype in question allegedly had a 4-inch diagonal screen, aluminum back, touch-based home button, tapered design, incredible performance, and a 10 megapixel camera.

Siri was supposedly called "Assistant," which lines up perfectly with another report that pegged the same name for Apple's new voice technology. According to the unnamed source, the prototype also featured "a nicer screen with better colors," but the device had a "messed up" color profile while in testing.

Our source said that Apple engineers he knows thought until about three months before the iPhone 4S was released, that a new fully re-designed iPhone was going to be Apple's next big announcement.

Why did Apple can the iPhone 5 leading up to the announcement? Steve Jobs didn't like the screen size.

He says the rumor among Apple employees is that Steve Jobs was unhappy with the bigger screen because it "fragmented" iPhones, Apple's big argument against Android is the way all the different phones from different manufactureres fragment that operating system.

All of the specs mentioned by the source have been rumored before, so it's not a stretch to assume that Apple has at least been working on an iPhone with some of these features. Some have called the iPhone 4S a rushed product, and it's definitely odd that Apple would wait nearly two years to release an iPhone that's barely different from the iPhone 4.

In all of this speculation, it's important to remember that Apple is a company that plans its products years in advance. Was the iPhone 4S always the backup plan while Apple was testing the iPhone 5? Is a radical device like the purposed iPhone 5 prototype still coming? Who knows.

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Phil Schiller's Title Gets Tweaked To Senior Vice President for Worldwide Marketing

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Apple has given one of its executives a slight title change, as noted by The Next Web. Former Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller is now the SVP of Worldwide Marketing.

By dropping the "Product" from Schiller's official title, Apple could be signaling a number of things. While the change may be for simple cosmetic reasons, it could also indicate the restructuring that's been taking place in Apple's executive cabinet during recent months.

Ron Johnson, Apple's former head of retail, recently left the company for the job of CEO at JC Penney. (It's been rumored that Johnson is tapping former Apple executives to join him at his new venture.) It's not illogical to assume that Schiller's title could reflect new responsibilities he must undertake in the light of Johnson's departure.

From Apple's official bio of Schiller:

Philip Schiller is Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing and reports to Apple's CEO. Schiller is a member of Apple's Executive Team. Since rejoining Apple in April 1997 Schiller has helped the company create the best computers in the world with the Mac, lead the digital music revolution with iPod and iTunes, reinvent mobile phones with iPhone and the App Store, and define the future of mobile computing with iPad.

Schiller has been at the forefront of Apple for years, and he now serves alongside CEO Tim Cook and the 7 other SVPs, including the newly-added Eddy Cue. Apple has yet to announce a replacement for Ron Johnson and the company's retail division.

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Another iTunes Match Reset Set For Tomorrow, Apple Still Preparing For Public Launch

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Apple has sent out an email to developers saying that yet another iTunes Match reset is scheduled to take place tomorrow at 10 AM PST. Developers that are currently testing iTunes Match will have their libraries erased as Apple readies its servers for the public launch of its music streaming service.

Apple missed its previous deadline for the public launch of iTunes Match at the end of October, and there's still no ETA on when the cloud service will be made available to everyone.

What's interesting about this most recent reset is that Apple said "as we prepare for the launch of iTunes Match," hinting that the launch is indeed imminent.

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Apple: iOS 5.0.1 Didn't Fix All Of The Battery Issues, We're Still Working On It

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Apple has issued a statement to AllThingsD saying that, while iOS 5.0.1 did addresses issues regarding poor battery performance for iOS devices, battery life bugs still need to be fixed.

After iPhone 4S owners started heavily complaining about poor battery life on iOS 5.0, Apple issued two developer betas before pushing iOS 5.0.1 to all devices yesterday.

Here's what Apple had to say about iOS 5.0.1:

"The recent iOS software update addressed many of the battery issues that some customers experienced on their iOS 5 devices," the company said in a statement. "We continue to investigate a few remaining issues."

Another iOS update will presumably be made available soon to correct more bugs that have remained present in the latest iOS version.

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Your iPhone 5 Could Be Crazy Thin Thanks To New Nano-SIMs

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One of the first handset makers to really embrace the microSIM format was Apple. By reducing a standard SIM card size to about half the size of a normal sized SIM, Apple was able to deliver the iPhone 4, its thinnest smartphone yet. Could an advance in SIM technology help Apple make the iPhone 5 even thinner? Enter the nano-SIM.

Created by G&D — the same German-based company that produced the world's first SIM card — the nano-SIM is a third smaller than the microSIM used in the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. It's not just smaller though, it's also 15% thinner, and like the microSIM before it, fully backwards compatible with an adapter.

In the tightly packed interiors of our favorite devices, every millimeter counts and can lead to thinner, sexier designs and better battery life… both things that Apple has a history of prioritizing in their devices. Don't be surprised to see a nano-SIM in a future iPhone… that is, if Apple doesn't get their way with reprogrammable SIM modules instead.

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Are You Telepathic? Incredible Hack Gives Siri The Ability To Read People's Minds [Video]

No matter how hard you concentrate and how far you extend your pineal gland, Siri can only understand what you say to it, not read your mind? But what if it could?

That question is no longer a hypothetical. The guys behind Project Black Mirror have just figured out a way to imbue Siri with telepathic abilities… kind of.

Using a home-built rig made up of an Arduino prototyping platform, a MacBook Pro, an iPhone 4S and ECG pads to help capture the subject's analog brain waves, the Project Black Mirror hackers have figured out a way to turn brain waves into synthesized speech which is then input into Siri using the microphone jack.

In the video above, all the guys manage to do is place a call using Siri. I suspect that there isn't much psychic grammar being used here, and that you can't just think to Siri that you'd like to call your mother without first programming the MacBook Pro interpreter to understand the entire brain wave as "call my mother."

Still, this project is in the very earliest stages of development, so possibly, given enough time, Siri will be able to do more complicated tasks, like Wolfram Alpha calculations, just by thinking them at it. Wouldn't it be awesome to have that ability in the iPhone 5?

[via iDownloadBlog]

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Get iOS 5 Style Notifications On Your OS X Desktop Right Now With This Gorgeous Growl Theme

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Oooh, this is pretty. MacThemes forum user SkyJohn has created a theme for Growl that emulates iOS 5 style notifications. It's not a perfect fit, but it does exhibit the same cube animation you see when you get a notification under iOS 5 on your iPhone or iPad.

Don't have Growl? The popular notification system for the Mac is now available for $1.99 on the Mac App Store. You can also download an older free version, but be warned: because of the changes Apple will be instituting to Mac App Store apps early next year, the free version of Growl will not work with sandboxed Mac App Store apps.

For a look at how sandboxing can affect your Mac apps, check out our editorial here.

[via MacStories]

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