Mike Wehner

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Stories By Mike Wehner

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    Apps
    Apps By Mike Wehner

    SoundCloud's iPad gets an extreme makeover, kills audio recording

    If you're a SoundCloud fan who previously found the iPad experience to be a bit lacking in the features department you'll be happy to see today's update brings virtually every feature of the desktop version to your tablet. Unfortunately, it also kills off a feature that you'd probably consider to be the most basic for an app that revolves around sharing music, podcasts, and the like: audio recording. Along with being able to create and share playlists, build a collection of content, and browse an endless vault of all types of audio SoundCloud has seen fit to remove the ability to record tracks of your own from within the app. Instead, the company encourages users to seek out one of the many third party options that allow you to upload directly to SoundCloud, which seems a little bit odd.

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    Smartphones
    Smartphones By Mike Wehner

    The iPhone case that might get you killed

    You've already seen an iPhone case that could get you arrested -- and if not, feel free to check it out -- but there's an even more potentially hazardous smartphone cover out there. This "Gun Grip Case" is about as extreme as it gets if you're looking to cause a stir by chatting on your iPhone in public, and aside from the novelty value there's really no other reason anyone would want to carry this thing around. When in full view there's really nothing about this case that is intimidating, but the danger comes in sliding it into your pocket, where the hand grip and trigger would likely remain exposed. Oh, and when you're gripping the case to chat on your phone it also looks like you're trying to hide a handgun on the side of your head, which is probably not the best idea either. Whatever you do, don't attempt to take your phone out of your pocket if law enforcement calls you out, or things might end very badly for you.

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    Apps
    Apps By Mike Wehner

    Fiksu report shows staggering App Store growth

    December is always a big month for Apple and, by extension, the developers on the App Store, but December 2014 was a special kind of crazy. According to a new report by analytics and marketing firm Fiksu, downloads on Apple's digital marketplace skyrocketed 44% over the year prior, marking the third consecutive month of record-breaking sales. These numbers are the side effects of record-breaking iPhone sales and an overall increase in demand for apps. Fiksu also notes that across the top 200 free apps on the App Store the daily download volume averaged out to 9.2 million for the last month of 2014. The company's cost-per-app-launch index is showing iOS remains the more expensive platform on which to launch an app -- due to competition and the investment in marketing -- but as the sales figures show, making it to a top spot is insanely lucrative.

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    Apps
    Apps By Mike Wehner

    App devs made more money than the box office last year

    Mobile apps have become an absolutely massive business in just a few years, and sometimes it can be difficult to truly grasp how fast the industry is growing. This little tidbit, courtesy of Asymco's Horace Dediu, is a great data point to help put it in perspective: In 2014, iOS app developers as a whole made more money than the movie industry did off of box office receipts. According to Apple's latest brag rag, the company paid out a whopping $10 billion to app developers last year which puts it a good deal above Hollywood's box office earnings for the same time period. Based on Apple's 30 percent "take" of each app sale, that puts App Store billings at about $14.3 billion. It's important to note that box office intake doesn't accurately capture the entirely of the Hollywood economy, which extends to retail sales, streaming, licensing, and many other revenue-generating products and services. But as Dediu points out, Apple's payout is only a portion of the overall app economy as well, and when you add competing platforms, licensing for products, and other revenue to the top, apps are likely still bigger than the overall Hollywood picture. [Image via Asymco]

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    Cybersecurity
    Cybersecurity By Mike Wehner

    iPad thieves accidentally send their faces and names to victim's iCloud

    Apple's iCloud had a rough time in 2014, after being implicated in the leaks of a whole bunch of dirty celeb selfies, but it's starting off 2015 on the right foot by helping to nab some iPad thieves in Texas. After stealing an iPad and a number of other pricey items from someone's truck, the dimwitted suspects got a little bit sloppy, and now they're being hunted down with the help of a video recorded on the very iPad they stole. After selling some of the stolen items for a good bit of cash, the thieves hit up a local Burger King and shot a brief video of themselves with their hard earned cash. With the iPad's HD camera their faces are easily identifiable and the pair even went so far as to reveal each other's names while bragging about the cash that they made. What they didn't count on was that the video would be auto-uploaded to the iCloud, where the iPad's true owner would see it and immediately hand it over to the police. The two have been identified and it's just a matter of time before justice is paid.

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    Apple
    Apple By Mike Wehner

    BlackBerry CEO demands Apple make iMessage cross-platform

    BlackBerry is doing its best to mount a comeback in the face of overwhelming competition from iOS and Android devices. The BlackBerry Classic is a step in the right direction, but the fact remains that app support is a huge problem, and porting apps to BlackBerry's platform just isn't a high priority for, well, basically anyone. But rather than letting the market dictate what devices are the most important to support, BlackBerry CEO John Chen is hoping regulators will step in and force companies like Apple to make its exclusive apps available on all platforms. No, I'm not kidding -- Chen wants Apple to make iMessage a standalone app on non-Apple platforms, including BlackBerry. Chen even goes so far as to say companies like Apple and Netflix are "discriminating against BlackBerry customers" by failing to make their services available universally across all platforms. Of course, Chen is in a great position to make such accusations thanks to the fact that BlackBerry brought its once-exclusive BBM messaging service to iOS and Android in 2013. That said, it's hard to imagine BBM would have ventured across the aisle if BlackBerry wasn't horrifically desperate for the tech crowd to consider BlackBerry a legitimate option whatsoever, so take Chen's perceived openness with a massive boulder of salt.

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    Apps
    Apps By Mike Wehner

    You can now take every Khan Academy course via the iPad

    Your iPad just became an even more powerful learning tool than it already was, and you can thank Khan Academy for that. The non-profit education hub just brought its entire catalog of over 150,000 courses to Apple's tablet, meaning you can spend the rest of your life learning things you never realized you needed to know. Khan Academy has had an iOS app for a while, but the experience it offered was somewhat watered down compared to its desktop counterpart. By expanding the app to include the full compliment of lessons, it's definitely going to appeal to a lot more would-be students. A new handwriting recognition feature has also been added which will let you scribble down notes and have them checked for accuracy by the app. Just don't expect your iPhone version of the app to be this awesome, as the current update is iPad-exclusive for the time being. [via The Verge]

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    Apps
    Apps By Mike Wehner

    This photo app charges $20 for 24 photos, seriously

    Nobody just takes one photo of something anymore. With iPhones in our pockets it's easy to capture every angle, take burst photos so you can pick and choose, and then toss an obnoxious filter on it so it looks like something that was taken in the 1930s. Despite all that -- or perhaps because of it -- one app is trying to take us all back to our roots, where pushing that capture button was an irreversible and you simply had to live with the results. It's called WhiteAlbum, and it's probably the most expensive photography app ever. The idea here is that you're paying for every photograph, and you're paying quite a bit. A digital "pack" of 24 photos costs a whopping $20. That might sound totally unreasonable, but you're not just getting the digital versions here; every time you complete an album you'll get premium paper versions of your work sent directly to your door, and the shipping is already taken care of. It's a pretty cool idea, especially if you're a fan of physical photos as opposed to a massive digital camera roll. The app has only been out for a couple of weeks but the reviews are already overwhelmingly positive, which should give hope to any photo buff who longs for the more permanent days of yore. [via Wired]

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    Streaming
    Streaming By Mike Wehner

    NBC will let iOS users stream the Super Bowl with no cable account

    If you have an iOS device you're going to be treated to a full day of Super Bowl XLIX coverage thanks to NBC's new streaming promotion it's appropriately calling "Super Stream Sunday." NBC announced the plans today, which include the full live stream of the NFL's season finale along with pre-game coverage that will start at noon EST on Sunday, February 1st and finally wrap up some 11 hours later. All the content will be streamed via the NBC Sports Live Extra app, which has had a bit of a rough go on the App Store since its debut back in 2012. The app holds an overall App Store rating of just two stars with over 20,000 ratings. Most reviewers have taken issue with spotty compatibility on various devices and issues with the ability to log in under certain cable providers. Thankfully, the Super Stream Sunday content will not require you to have a cable provider account, so it's a total free-for-all.

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    Apple
    Apple By Mike Wehner

    Apple cozies up to U.S. government with increased lobbying

    With personal devices getting more powerful every day and the launch of a wearable on the horizon, Apple is reportedly ramping up its presence in Washington in order to help calm any concerns. Bloomberg reports that Tim Cook's photo op with Orrin Hatch in December was just a small sample of Apple's ramped-up focus on making nice with the powers-that-be. Apple has never been a huge player in Washington, at least when compared to other large tech firms, but their efforts have been expanded a bit as of late. This is seen as a response to increased scrutiny over potential privacy issues, and Apple's hiring last year of Amber Cottle, former Democratic Staff Director on the Senate Finance Committee, seems to already be paying dividends.

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    Apps
    Apps By Mike Wehner

    If this alleged Google Calendar iOS app isn't real, it should be

    Google's recently reinvented Calendar app on Android left many counting down the days for the eventual iOS iteration, and if The Next Web's allegedly leaked screenshots of the iPhone version are anything close to real, it's looking quite nice. It should be no surprise that the supposed iOS version closely mimics its Android counterpart, with a clean aesthetic, the ability to add photos and map details to events, and full integration with other Google apps. We know a Google Calendar app is coming, and given that, these images aren't exactly a stretch, so if it doesn't look exactly like this, you can probably bet on something very, very close.

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    Cybersecurity
    Cybersecurity By Mike Wehner

    New Snowden doc details how British intelligence tracked iPhone users

    Before Apple decided that it wanted to do away with the UDID system, it was one of the best tools British intelligence agents had to track iPhone users across various services, according to a new document (PDF) leaked by Edward Snowden and published in Der Spiegel. The report, dated November 2010, details how "the iPhone Unique Device Identifier (UDID) can be used for target tracking and can be used to correlate with end point machines and target phone," the report's summer notes. Britian's GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) discovered that by watching for a specific device's UDID to pop up via a compromised computer or web browser and further nail down an individual's patterns and common locations. The UDID system essentially left a trail of digital breadcrumbs that could easily be tracked with the GCHQ's systems. The full report is of course very technical but definitely worth a read anyway, as it offers an interesting glimpse of the behind-the-curtain work to crack mobile tracking.

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    Apple
    Apple By Mike Wehner

    Apple patented a self-repairing material, because of course they did

    Just days after LG's G Flex phone showed off its ability to heal from minor scratches and scuffs, a similar patent has surfaced that shows Apple's take on such a feature. The patent, which was filed in 2014 and published this week, describes a method of "reducing appearance of physical damage on cosmetic surfaces," which sounds like a pretty spot-on description of what LG's G Flex phone does. The surface treatment described in the patent would fill in scratches automatically whenever light physical damage occurs, reducing the visibility of scratches and gouges over a short period of time. Such a treatment would of course be perfectly at home on an iOS device, as scratches and scuffs are always a giant pain in the rear end when they show up on your pricey smartphone or tablet, but we'll have to wait and see if Apple intends on actually implementing such a feature in the future.

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Mike Wehner

    This iPhone bowling game uses Apple TV

    When the Wii first came out there was just one game that people needed to see before they realized they wanted one: Wii Sports. Of all the sports minigames included in Wii Sports the most popular was bowling, and now iOS gamers who have adopted the Apple TV can mimic that experience with a motion-controlled bowling game of their very own. It's called Bowling Central, and it's a great example of how the Apple TV could become a gaming device even without game apps of its own. Using the AirPlay functionality of the Apple TV you can boot up the game on your iPhone, toss the bowling balls down the virtual lane using the smartphone and watch the action play out of the screen in front of you. It's a pretty slick little setup, and I wish more games would consider doing things like this. I know there are a few, but seriously, let's get the ball rolling. No pun intended (ok, maybe a little). [via Cult of Mac]

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    News
    News By Mike Wehner

    This iPod prototype will set you back $4,495

    Prices on classic iPods saw a bit of a spike once Apple silently put an axe in the beloved media player but you might need to take out a loan if you're hoping to bring home this particular piece of Apple history. Currently up for bids on eBay is a supposed 4th generation iPod test unit, complete with its tracking stickers still in place. The iPod, which is currently priced at a hefty US$4,495, is engraved with the letters "DVTS" which, according to the seller, stand for "Design Verification Testing." The labels affixed to the unit supposedly helped to track the iPod's progress through assembly and testing. The photos included on the listing show that the iPod is functional, but even if it is a prototype test unit, at the end of the day it's just a 4th generation iPod, and an extremely beat-up one at that.

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    Apple
    Apple By Mike Wehner

    Apple just patented the best smartphone gaming feature, and it'll probably never use it

    The worst part about keeping an eye on new tech patents is knowing in your heart that most of these new ideas -- especially some of the most off-the-wall amazing ones -- will probably never see the light of day. Such is the case with a new Apple patent for a hidden built-in joystick that would turn every iOS device into a much more capable piece of gaming hardware. The patent is kind of genius in that it describes a joystick that is hidden in a device's home button. The small analog stick would act as a normal home button while the device is in its standard mode, but once sufficient force is applied it would pop out via a spring and rise above the face of the phone so that it could be used as an input device for gaming. It would then sink back into the phone with another push. The patent was originally filed way back in July of 2013, and was just published today, but as we've seen so many times before, chances are this isn't something Apple is actually planning on building into a retail device any time soon. Which is a shame, because it's downright awesome. [via Patently Apple]

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    Apple
    Apple By Mike Wehner

    Apple makes the new Mac mini suck a little less

    Apple made a lot of mistakes with the newest iteration of the Mac mini. Soldered RAM, a unimpressive lineup of processors, and the removal of some of great options that have graced previous versions like ability to configure it with as much as 2TB of storage. That last injustice has unceremoniously been corrected, albeit in a slightly different manner. Unlike the previous mini that allowed for a pair of 1TB drives to be configured, the new version has added a 2TB Fusion Drive option which brings the total price of the computer up US$100. In order to actually choose this option you'll need to select the most capable mini, which comes with a 2.8GHz i5 by default, and -- with the 2TB drive equipped -- will hit your wallet for $1,099. [via MacRumors]

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    Apple
    Apple By Mike Wehner

    Apple is suing another tech company, drink!

    With Apple's Samsung troubles winding down and a potential settlement reached in that whole anti-poaching brouhaha, the company's legal staff obviously needed something else to work on. Apple was happy to oblige and has now set its sights on Swedish tech firm Ericsson. Apple's suit centers on Ericsson's massive collection of wireless patents and, more specifically, the claim that Ericsson's LTE patents are not a crucial part of the wireless standard and do not warrant the hefty royalty payments that the company has been collecting. At present, the royalties for Ericsson's LTE patents are calculated based on the overall price of a device, be it a phone or tablet. Apple's hope is to get that changed, and to have the royalty percentage calculated based only on the value of the specific hardware component that actually uses that technology, which would bring the fee per-device down quite a bit. The case was filed in Northern California, and is still in its preliminary stages, so there will most definitely be further news on this as it progresses.

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    Apple
    Apple By Mike Wehner

    Apple to shell out more cash in new anti-poaching settlement offer

    Apple, Google, Adobe and Intel have tossed a few extra bucks into the settlement pot in order to satisfy the terms of anti-poaching lawsuit that first got off the ground in 2013. The suit alleges that top tech companies, including Apple, lured employees away from certain companies while agreeing to keep their hands off of each other's personnel. An earlier offer of $324 million was rejected, and the new offer reportedly tops $415 million. The new amount will satisfy the demands of the plaintiffs but still requires the stamp approval from US District Judge Lucy H. Koh, who has been in charge of the case from the start. It's not clear how much each of the defendant companies stand to lose in the settlement, as the dollar amounts aren't broken down in any way.

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    Apps
    Apps By Mike Wehner

    Look at this tiny iOS keyboard, just look at it

    iOS-compatible Bluetooth keyboards are a dime a dozen these days, and it's hard to get excited about any kind of new typing accessory when so many of them look like direct clones of each other. The TextBlade is -- as its creator WayTools describes -- "an entirely new class of touch-typing device." It's hard to argue with that. The TextBlade is a tiny, fold-out, full-sized set of QWERTY keys that have full travel and mimic the mechanical feel of a desktop keyboard. The keys themselves are arranged on a pair of bars that magnetically connect to each other and the space bar section that doubles as the battery. WayTools claims a one-month battery life on a full charge and a quick-charge feature that offers three days of battery life with a charge of less than 10 minutes. The TextBlade is so far removed from anything I've seen before that at first I assumed it had to be a concept that was nowhere near a retail debut, but it's apparently available for order right now for delivery by March. We'll be attempting to get our hands on one ASAP for a review, so stay tuned.

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Mike Wehner

    Minecraft: Pocket Edition is officially 'hotter than the Sun'

    How popular is the mobile version of Minecraft? Pretty dang popular, according to developer Mojang's latest blog post. According to the company -- which, by the way, was recently acquired by Microsoft -- Minecraft: Pocket Edition is bigger than Texas, 23 times hotter than the Sun, and "more than the entire observable universe." Of course, if you're looking for actual statistics, Mojang has one of those, too: 30,000,000. That's the number of times the pint-sized version of the game has been purchased. Debuting long before the free-to-play trend became a "thing," Minecraft: Pocket Edition sells for a whopping US$6.99 on both the iOS App Store and Google Play, and has never really had any price adjustments, which means the game has generated around $210 million in revenue. That's a whole lot of cheddar, and with its lofty App Store ranking, it's probably going to keep bringing in the cash for a long, long time.

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    Computing
    Computing By Mike Wehner

    You can download North Korea's OS X ripoff right now

    Ever wanted to download an operating system dreamed up by a totalitarian government with heavy inspiration from OS X and take it for a spin? Thanks to the magic of the Internet, such a thing is possible today with the newly-leaked retail version of North Korea's Red Star OS 3.0, which resembles an antiquated version of OS X. Red Star OS 3.0 has revealed a number of interesting tidbits about the web of North Korea, including the fact that the entire country's internet service is set up like that of a small business, with all requests coming back to a central URL. If you're planning on booting up this OS X-alike it's recommended that you do so in a virtual box, as running it is purely for entertainment purposes. [Photo via WhiteHat Security]

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    Smartphones
    Smartphones By Mike Wehner

    This guy tried to smuggle 94 iPhones using only his body

    It's one thing to try to sneak a single prohibited item past customs when traveling -- don't do it, obviously, ever -- but it's another to try to get away with smuggling an entire Apple Store's worth of iPhones into a country using only your body. That's what officials at China's Futian Port discovered when they turned their attention to a man who had just arrived from Hong Kong, and was behaving strangely. The poor fellow apparently couldn't walk correctly, and appeared to be in some sort of distress. When officials scanned him they immediately saw the problem: iPhone body armor. When they asked him to remove his sweatshirt they discovered he was wearing dozens of iPhones around his abdomen, strapped to his thighs, and taped all the way down his legs. Hong Kong is well known as a hub for black market electronics, and had the man been able to successfully get all 94 iPhones into China their sale would have produced a nice chunk of change. [Photos via Sina]

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    Apple
    Apple By Mike Wehner

    Apple TV is required for the ideal Apple smart home experience

    CES doesn't typically yield much info on Apple products, but the impending smart home push led some device manufacturers to bring their not-entirely-working HomeKit devices to the year's biggest consumer electronics show and a few tidbits of reliable info have emerged. As The Verge reports, Apple's tiny TV box-that-could, Apple TV, won't be mandatory for Siri voice control -- as long as you're on your home Wi-Fi network when issuing commands. However, anyone wanting to ready their home before arriving by whispering commands to Siri while on your way home from a rough day at work, you'll most definitely need an Apple TV in order to pull it off. Commanding HomeKit devices via the app will still work without Apple TV, regardless of whether you're actually at home or not. This little bullet point isn't likely going to be enough to get many more people to adopt an Apple TV specifically for away-from-home Siri smart home control, but for anyone who has already committed to Apple's vision of a home streaming box, it's a nice little bonus.

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    Smartphones
    Smartphones By Mike Wehner

    Super slo-mo skateboarding, brought to you by the iPhone 6

    If you haven't been using the super slo-mo feature on the iPhone 6 you've seriously been missing out. It's capable of slowing the world to half the speed of the slo-mo feature on the iPhone 5s, and it makes the frantic footwork of skateboarding look downright magical. Apple has used skateboarding to show off the feature in the past, but this footage from Braille Skateboarding puts that to shame.

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    Apple
    Apple By Mike Wehner

    You can totally buy a fake Apple Watch at CES

    Apple's gadgets always get barely functional clones, but it's rare that a company actually beats Apple to the punch with a low-quality version of a device that isn't even out yet. It's rarer still that such a gadget doesn't initially show up overseas, but instead debuts right here in the U.S., and at the country's biggest electronics expo, no less. That's exactly what Mashable's Karissa Bell discovered in a low-traffic hall at CES this year -- it's an Apple Watch, only not really, and it's already for sale. For $27, cash only. "The watch's screen only displays when it's turned on, and many of its icons are blatant ripoffs of Apple designs," Bell writes. "The pairing process took a few tries, but once connected to my iPhone 6, I was able to make phone calls and play music through the watch. It even vibrates when I get a call." The seller is promoting at as simply "Smart Watch," but there's no denying that it's a blatant Apple Watch clone. Hyperdon, the company that created the watch, claims it can last a whopping 180 hours before needing to be recharged, though that particular claim hasn't been confirmed. It actually pains me to say this, but for $27, a watch that forwards iOS notifications, plays music, and doesn't die within five minutes of putting it on your wrist is actually a surprisingly reasonable offering. Of course, decent build quality and any kind of support or updates are surely out of the question for that price point. [Photo via Mashable]

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    Streaming
    Streaming By Mike Wehner

    iOS users are still huge porn lovers

    A new end-of-the-year report by one of the web's most popular adult sites shows that iOS users are still totally in love with watching porn on the go. According to Pornhub's traffic data (SFW, I promise), over 40% of the visits coming from a mobile operating system come from Apple's iOS, putting it in second place behind Android (49%) and ahead of Windows (2%) and BlackBerry (1%). Second place might not seem like an indicator that iOS devotees are especially porn hungry, but when you consider that recent market share measurements put iOS at somewhere near 11% -- compared to Android's 84% -- it's clear that on a per-device basis, Apple's platform sees a lot more NSFW action. Pornhub's report doesn't separate tablet traffic from smartphone traffic on the OS level, but does note that just 11% of the site's visits come from tablets, while 45% come from smartphones, so Apple's iPad dominance certainly can't be used to fully explain the ratio of porn viewing on iOS. Perhaps the iPhone 6 Plus lends itself well to big screen viewing... You're a depraved bunch, and that's just fine.

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