Refurbished 128 GB iPad Models Begin Appearing in Apple Online Store.

Late last week, Apple’s online store for refurbished products began offering 128 GB fourth-generation iPad models for the first time. Wi-Fi models in black and white are currently being quoted shipping times of 5-7 business days with pricing set at $679, a discount of $120 from brand-new units.

The only cellular model currently available through the refurbished store is the white AT&T model, which carries an identical 5-7 business day shipping estimate and is priced at $789, a $140 discount compared to brand-new pricing.

Apple launched the 128 GB fourth-generation iPad in early February, several months after the release of lower-capacity models that saw updated internals and a move to Apple’s new Lightning connector.

The fifth-generation iPad is expected to debut as soon as next month with a redesigned body taking design cues from the iPad mini, giving the full-size iPad a significantly narrower and thinner profile.

Source: Mac Rumors.

Tim Cook thanks Apple employees, gives them Thanksgiving week off.

Apple CEO Tim Cook knows that the company wouldn’t be in the enviable financial state it’s in right now if it wasn’t for the hard work and dedication of its employees. Cook today sent a company-wide email to employees thanking them for that work and letting them know that they’ll get some extra paid time off during the Thanksgiving holidays.

Apple is shutting down on November 25, 26 and 27 so that employees can have the entire week off. While retail and AppleCare employees will still be working those days during the all-important buildup to Black Friday, they’ll get that extra paid time off at a later date along with employees at international locations.

Cook’s full email to employees can be read in its entirety below.

Team-

It’s been an exciting summer. For the first time, we’ve launched two new iPhone product lines. iOS 7 was created from a deep collaboration between our design and engineering teams, bringing to our customers a stunning new user interface and amazing new features. We unveiled OS X Mavericks and the most powerful Mac ever. The App Store celebrated a new milestone – 50 billion downloads. And we continued to express our love for music with iTunes Radio and the iTunes Festival.

I had the opportunity to visit a few of our stores during the iPhone launch. There is no better place to see and feel why Apple is special. The best products on Earth. Energy. Enthusiasm. The best customers in the world. Passionate team members focused on enriching people’s lives. Innovative products that serve humanity’s deepest values and highest aspirations.

And I am proud to tell you that Apple is also a force for good in our world beyond our products. Whether it’s improving working conditions or the environment, standing up for human rights, helping eliminate AIDS, or reinventing education, Apple is making a substantial contribution to society.

None of this would have been possible without you. Our most important resource is not our money, our intellectual property, or any capital asset. Our most important resource – our soul – is our people.

I realize many of you worked tirelessly to bring us this far. I know it required great personal sacrifice.

In recognition of your incredible efforts and achievements, I’m happy to announce that we’re extending the Thanksgiving holiday this year. We will shut down with pay on November 25, 26, and 27 so our teams can have the whole week off. Retail, AppleCare and a few other teams will need to work that week so we can continue to serve our customers, but will receive the same number of days off at an alternate time. Please check with your manager for details. Our international teams will schedule the vacation days at a time that is best suited for their specific country.

I hope you find the extra time restful and relaxing. You deserve it. Details will be available on AppleWeb soon.

I am exceedingly proud of all of you. I am in awe of what you’ve accomplished and couldn’t be more excited about the future. Enjoy the time away!

SlowCam brings slow motion video to older iPhones.

If you were feeling bad about not having an iPhone 5s and that cool slow-mo feature, you can now get close with a new US$1.99 app calledSlowCam. The app records to your iPhone storage, then quickly renders it to your camera roll. Rendering of one video clip can take place while you are recording another. An iPhone 5/5c can capture video at 60 FPS, the new iPhone 5s at 120 FPS, and even the older iPhone 4 captures at 30 FPS. The app requires iOS 7.

To get going, you tap and hold the ‘slow motion’ button on screen. Taking your finger off the button gives you regular speed, then pressing and holding again slows things down. Great, for example, at recording a high dive from a diving board. Regular speed as the diver climbs the ladder, slow-mo for the dive.

There is a zoom feature, but I stay away from digital zoom like the plague as it kills image quality. You can tap the screen to set exposure and focus together or separately.

I tried the app on my iPhone 5s, and of course the quality looked just like the Apple built-in slow-mo app. On an iPhone 5, the slow-mo looked almost as good, but the frame rate was reduced.

If you are interested in slow motion videos and don’t have a 5s, SlowCam will do the trick. It’s not going to raise the native frame rate of your iPhone, but it does a nice job of rendering a clean video.

As I said, the app requires iOS 7 and is optimized for the iPhone 5, 5c and 5s. That means to get slow-mo you’ll need at least an iPhone 4. Owners with older phones will get no satisfaction.

Source: TUAW.

OS X Concept imagines a more iOS 7 style Mac operating system.

Over the past year, the number of designers trying their hands at mocking up digital renders of what they would like see in Apple hardware and software has increased dramatically. Such an increase in volume has a tendency to build up the noise. Thankfully, this does have a positive effect. It makes the really good ones stand our more. One of the best, and most realistic concepts I’ve seen to date comes from Edgar Rios. The artist has come up with his idea of what OS X could look like if Apple decided to take the iOS 7 approach with Macs.

Above is the Finder window design. Which – instead of featuring translucent bars – features a translucent background to the entire window. The main body is less opaque than the side bar, and it definitely has an iOS 7 feel to it. Even the small, click-able ‘x’, ‘-’ and ‘+’ icons in the top left corner have been given a new splash of color to make them more vibrant. Across the whole concept Rios has changed the coloring to match the vividness of iOS 7, and changed the default app icons to match.

Perhaps my favorite feature is the redesign of Notification Center and the addition of Control Center.

I love the usefulness of the ‘Today’ view in Notification Center. And much like it did with iOS, it moves Notification Center from being a never-visited UI, to being one of the most used elements of the platform. I love the features included in Control Center in the concept too. Having a translucent bar come in to shot at the left side of the screen, featuring screen brightness settings, AirDrop and AirPlay would be fantastic.

I’ve highlighted a couple of key design features in this article, but you really should check out the entire concept over at Behance.net. It’s easily one of the best concepts I’ve seen, and one which I could imagine becoming a reality.

Sadly, just because I can imagine it, doesn’t mean it will ever be a reality. Apple has been moving some features from iOS to Mac over the past 2-3 years, but, I don’t think it’ll ever blur the lines so much that the two become indistinguishable.

Source: TodaysiPhone.

Is your iTunes Store app crashing after updating to iOS 7? Here’s how to fix it!

We’ve seen a few readers complaining that after upgrading to iOS 7 the iTunes Store app on their iPhone or iPad won’t launch and just crashes immediately after trying to open it. From what we’ve managed to dig up, you aren’t alone in having the issue but fortunately, there are a few solutions that seem to be working for people.

Here they are:

Quit the iTunes Store app and try relaunching it

1. Double tap the Home button on your iPhone or iPad to bring up the multitasking section.
2. Find the iTunes Store app and swipe up in order to quit it.
3. Now relaunch the app and see if it still crashes.

If the app is still crashing, keep reading. If the iTunes Store app now works, that’s it.

Enter iTunes through the Music app instead

1. Launch the Music app on your iPhone or iPad that’s having the problem.
2. In the upper left hand corner, tap on Store.

You should be re-routed to the iTunes Store app. This time, it should load just fine. You should only have to do this one time and find that after loading it through the Music app, the iTunes Store app loads fine on its own. If it doesn’t or it’s still crashing, continue on.

Change your Cookie settings

1. Launch the Settings app from your iPhone or iPad.
2. Scroll down and tap on Safari.
3. Under the Privacy & Security section, tap on Block Cookies.
4. Make sure that From third parties and advertisers is selected.

People that have it set to Always seem to be the ones having trouble connecting to the iTunes Store app for some reason.

Source: iMore.

Weekend Wallpaper: Breaking Bad.

We needed to celebrate the series finale of Breaking Bad that will aired in a few hours, and that was the inspiration behind it. If you follow the show you will understand the illustration.

Desktop Version

iPad Version

iPhone Version

Resolutions:

• 2880x1800px
• 2560x1440px
• 1920x1200px
• 1680x1050px
• 1440x900px
• 1280x1024px
• 1280x800px
• 1024x768px
• iPhone
• iPhone 5
• iPad

Shazam for iOS 7.

Much like Twitterrific’s update for iOS 7, Shazam has spruced up their app with flattened, descriptive wiry icons and simple color palettes that make the app feel at home on Apple’s new OS. Perhaps the only noticeable difference is that Shazam asks for Microphone access, a new requirement as of iOS 7, so that it can listen to what’s playing in the background to identify songs. It’s visually a nice update, but much of it is the same as before. It’s cleaner and more focused, with nice looking fades and animations as you switch between tabs.

The features added to iOS 7 revolve around social maps and Facebook. Eh. I don’t know how Shazam feels about people like me, but I’m not so intent on sharing songs with friends and seeing what people are listening to around me. I said the same thing when I took a look at the revamped iPad app earlier in the year, and I feel somewhat alienated since the only thing I really want to use Shazam for is ID’ing tracks playing at over loudspeakers, on the radio, or when some remixed version of a song pops up on a livestream somewhere. The social stuff… I don’t want any part of it. It’s cool. It’s just not for me.

Shazam currently sells a free version of Shazam, complete with advertisements that you can remove with an in-app purchase. For a few bucks you can straight up buy a version of Shazam with a darker blue icon free of ads. And then there’s a product RED version of the app that looks cool, and also removes ads. I’d rather see a single version of Shazam that’s free, with Lifetime (or Encore) as an IAP and RED as an optional theme, which you could also pay for. It’d remove a lot of the confusion about which version is which on the App Store. Regardless, if you’d like to give Shazam a try (the ID stuff is amazing — why don’t you have it?), you can download one of the following variants from the App Store:

•  Shazam: Free
• Shazam Encore: $6.99
• (Shazam)RED: $6.99

Apple reportedly cutting Samsung’s share of next iPhone chip production.

Like every iPhone processor before it, the A8 chip in Apple’s next flagship phone will still be made by Samsung, but according to Korean daily Hankyung, the majority of the manufacturing will be handled by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC). Citing industry sources, the newspaper reported Sunday that TSMC will be responsible for 60 to 70 percent of the manufacturing of the A8 processor, with the remainder going to Samsung. The South Korea-based company has reportedly signed a deal to manufacture the chip, though it the contract is estimated to cover just 30 to 40 percent of total production for the A8.

A report published last week revealed that Samsung manufactured the A7 processor in the recently released iPhone 5S, though recent reports have indicated that Apple is looking to lessen its dependence upon its rival amid ongoing legal battles and the race for smartphone supremacy. The company signed a deal with TSMC in June to begin chip production in 2014, though Apple was expected to rely on Samsung for the majority of manufacturing through next year. Today’s report suggests that within Apple’s supply chain, the transition is already underway.

Source: The Verge.

Dropbox for Mac adds ‘Import from iPhoto,’ more features.

Dropbox has released version 2.4 of its OS X desktop client that adds a number of new features including the ability to import photos directly from iPhoto into your Dropbox. The “Import from iPhoto” feature is only supported with iPhoto 7.0 or later. The feature prompts a notification to appear in the Dropbox menu if you have photos in your iPhoto library. You can then set iPhoto Events to be imported automatically into a folder called “Photos from iPhoto” with subfolders for each event.

In addition to the Import from iPhoto even, Dropbox 2.4 also adds:

• Screenshot to Dropbox: any screenshots taken on your Mac will be automatically saved in your Dropbox.
• Move to Dropbox: a contextual menu item that will show up for most files or folders outside of your Dropbox enabling you to quickly move them to your Dropbox.
• Support for OS X 10.9 Mavericks.
• Much faster upload/download speeds for large files.

Dropbox 2.4 can be downloaded here.

Source: TUAW.

Turn Your iPhone Into An ‘iFruit’ With This GTA 5 Skin.

If you’re reading this, chances are fairly high you’ve spent some time playing Grand Theft Auto 5. (As you should) If you have, you’re probably familiar with the Apple knockoff company in the game “iFruit”. Well if your characters’ iFruit phones have been making you jealous, you can now have one of your very own.

MobileFun is selling its own custom “iFruit Conversion” skins, which are designed to make your iPhone 5 or 5S look like the iFruit phones from GTA 5. The skin’s simply a black case with the “iFruit” name and logo on the back, but it could definitely be a cool thing to have if you’re a fan of the game.

The case costs $12.99 and is only available for the iPhone 5 or 5S. (Sorry new 5C owners) It’s also only available in black. (Sorry gold aficionados) You can order it online right here.

Source: Macgasm.