Apple has hired Nike design director Ben Shaffer, according to a report. Shaffer was Studio Director of Nike’s research and development lab, and he played a key role in developing the company’s lightweight Flyknit shoe; some reports have suggested, perhaps erroneously, that he was involved in the FuelBand as…

Last weekend, Apple sold nine million new iPhones, blowing away analyst expectations and setting a launch weekend record in the process. In fact, the nine million tally nearly doubles Apple's previous iPhone launch record.

Suffice it to say, the iPhone 5s and 5c are bonafide hits and, once again, Apple is struggling to manufacture iPhones fast enough to meet demand. Considering that many pundits and analysts recently expressed supreme confidence that Apple had peaked and was prepped for a decline, that's not too shabby.

Now you would assume that even Apple's most vehement critics wouldn't be so bold as to turn a blind eye to nine million units sold in just three days, right?

And yet, as sure as the sun rises in the east, pundits from two mainstream publications attempted to turn Apple's overwhelmingly successful iPhone 5s and 5c launch into...

MacPractice has announced the release of a 64-bit release MacPractice 4.4 to new purchasers of MacPractice MD, DDS, DC and 20/20. Providing doctors with client-oriented practice management, the latest version features new revenue cycle management tools, enhanced insurance verification, supplementary Internet backup, digital imaging integrations, third party cloud EMR/EHR options, and expanded connectivity for providers as well as their patients. Requiring Mac OS X Mountain Lion or later, MacPractice 4.4 also introduces Time Clock and Inventory Tracking. Inventory Tracking works with bar code r...
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This is just magical. I think Abrams should bring this guy on board as a technical advisor in charge of proper use of the force.

The Federal Patent Court of Germany has determined that Apple's patent for a "Portable electronic device for photo management" is invalid due to the fact that Steve Jobs himself showed off the feature months before the patent was filed. The portion of the patent that has become an issue has to deal with the "bounce-back" effect that occurs when photos are dragged around the screen.

According to the German court, the fact that Jobs showed off this feature on-stage during the January 2007 iPhone debut event constitutes pre-filing disclosure which, in Europe, makes it impossible to patent. In the United States, the 2007 presentation was protected by the 12-month grace period built into the patent law, but such protection does not exist in...

Thought this was fascinating. Since July 1, 2010, Professor Staffan Normark has been the permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and one hell of a cold-caller. He’s the one who calls folks to tell them they’ve won a Nobel Prize.

Sometimes the subjects of his research have an inkling that it could be their time; but when their phone rings, they try not to let themselves believe it. Serge Haroche (physics, 2012) was out walking with his wife when he saw a Swedish code appear on his mobile. “I realised it was real and it’s, you know, really overwhelming,” he says. “I was lucky—I was in the street and passing near a bench, so I was able to sit down immediately.”

Pretty cool job.

∞ Read this...

The iPhone 5s and 5c is flying off the retail shelves, and soon it'll be expanding its reach. Yesterday we reported that smaller regional carriers would start selling the new iPhones on October 1. Today Virgin Mobile has announced it will get in on the action starting October 1 as well, via two posts on Twitter.

iPhone 5s is coming to Virgin Mobile on 10/1. http://t.co/xXVf5YAy8h pic.twitter.com/hVXsZcRKm8

- Virgin Mobile USA (@virginmobileusa) September 27, 2013

iPhone 5c is coming to Virgin Mobile on 10/1. http://t.co/xXVf5YAy8h...

Earlier this week PDFpen launched a new iOS app that can be used to turn images of documents into searchable PDF files by using OCR. Scan+ can scan documents directly from the device's camera, or alternative be used to scan images stored in the photo library. Multiple images can also be combined into a single multi-page document and quickly sent to a number of cloud storage services, including Dropbox, Evernote, and Google Drive....
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For app developers and bloggers, it's very instructive to have an idea of what has changed in the user interface of an app. App developers can look back and see how both the "look and feel" and steps required to perform a workflow have changed, while bloggers and other writers can use the information to update books or write posts about upgrades. Fortunately for both parties, there's a website called UX Archive run by two French developers (one of whom has moved to the Bay Area) and an American that plans to be an online museum of sorts, exhibiting the changes in app user interfaces and workflows over time.

The site neatly divides the screenshots by app and task, so you can narrow down a search to just one particular task -- like creating, deleting, recording, sharing or uploading -- in one specific app. While there aren't a tremendous number of apps and versions currently archived (I counted 60 apps, with only a few showing the...

Delta will distribute Microsoft Surface 2 tablets to its pilots and not Nokia’s “Sirius” tablet as originally planned. The move comes in the wake of a deal to distribute Nokia Lumia 820 smart phones to nearly 19,000 flight attendants.

Note to self: Never fly Delta.

∞ Read this on The Loop

There's more than meets the eye in Apple's new Messages application for iOS 7, with a few key features hidden away, some of which are only accessible with touchscreen gestures.
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Apple has lured away top Nike design director Ben Shaffer, according to a source at Nike with knowledge of the details behind Shaffer’s departure. At Nike, Shaffer was the Studio Director of the Innovation Kitchen. This is Nike’s research and development lab where new product designs are created. Under Shaffer’s lead, Nike was named the most innovative company in 2013 by Fast Company. Nike’s Innovation Kitchen has been connected to wearable products like the popular Nike Fuel Band, and most recently, the Flyknit shoe.

With Apple’s continued...

A set of schematics being used by case manufacturers shows the exact dimensions of the fifth-generation iPad, AppleInsider claims. The tablet is expected to be 169.48mm wide, or 15mm narrower than the fourth-gen model. Height has been reduced only slightly from 241.3 to 240mm, but thickness has also been shaved down, from 9.55mm to 7.5....
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This week in the MacNN forums, Clinically Insane member "subego" asks "Does iMessage Suck?" and follows up with some arguments about why it doesn't. Grizzled Veteran "jmiddel" just upgraded to iOS 7, and is wondering if there is a way to make the Dock background transparent on an iPhone 4S....
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Seemingly not a week goes by without hearing some new story about a patent troll mysteriously emerging out of the woodwork, with questionable second-hand patents in hand, and suing a smorgasbord of tech companies for patent infringement. While the Obama Administration has taken steps to potentially reduce the drain on the tech economy stemming from frivolous patent lawsuits, there's no denying that patent trolls are still able to earn ill-gotten fortunes in patent troll friendly courts around the country.

Now, Apple and 13 other companies recently signed their name to a letter sent to European officials expressing their concern that the patent troll problem may soon sprout up in Europe in light of plans to implement a unified patent system across most of Europe....

Two firms buoyed by the success of iOS devices ? Evernote and Adonit ? have teamed to make a premium stylus that will bring precision writing to the iPad.
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Virgin Mobile will carry Apple’s iPhone 5c and 5s starting Oct. 1. The carrier announced the news through its official Twitter account. Virgin Mobile didn’t start selling the iPhone 5 until June of this year. A number of regional carriers will also begin carrying the new iPhones…

Lifestyle guru Martha Stewart apparently invoked the wrath of Apple public relations Thursday night with a series of tweets about a shattered iPad. Stewart initially tweeted, “I just dropped my iPad on the ground and shattered two glass corners. What to do? does one call Apple to come and…

This is very smart.

In a bid to make the ballpark experience more engaging for fans, Major League Baseball plans to roll out Apple’s new iBeacons technology to deliver targeted information and offers based on a fan’s location within the park, according to a new report.

Plan on seeing this in place at the beginning of next season. Brilliant!

∞ Read this on The Loop

The Tokyo District Court ordered Apple to pay 330 million yen (about $3.35 million) to Norihiko Saito for infringing on the Japanese inventor’s click wheel controller patent. Saito’s company applied for the patent in 1998, before Apple used a click wheel in its iPod. Saito sought 10 billion yen in…

With Apple’s iBeacon technology starting to see some real-world applications, we thought this would be a good time to take a brief look at what it is and what we might expect from it in future … 

The one-sentence summary is that you can think of iBeacon as like GPS for indoor locations, your phone able to pick up the iBeacon transmissions and work out where it is with a high degree of accuracy. You could, for example, drive into an iBeacon-equipped underground parking garage, park your car there and then have an iPhone app direct you back to your exact parking space when you’re done shopping.

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Virgin Mobile will begin selling the iPhone 5c and 5s starting October 1—the earliest the company has ever begun sales during an iPhone’s product cycle.

The company made its announcement on Friday, just a week after the phones went on sale at major wireless carriers, and just three months after Virgin began selling the iPhone 5. Similarly, the company didn’t begin offering the iPhone 4 and 4s until June of 2012, just as the 5 was getting ready to market.

Virgin Mobile’s earlier arrival during this iPhone generation may signal changes to the pre-paid wireless market. In both of the previous years, the company followed Cricket in offering the phones with pre-paid plans—by just a month in 2012, but by a full nine months for...

A Chinese site, DoNews, is claiming to have photos of a gold-colored second-generation iPad mini with a Touch ID sensor. The authenticity of the photos is difficult to determine, but it's widely anticipated that Apple will bring the Touch ID technology to other devices as soon as it can, and the iPhone 5s is available in gold, silver, and space gray shades. Despite its luxurious look, gold is believed to be an easier color to produce than the black/space gray tones Apple has used since the iPhone 5....
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Sprint-owned pre-paid carrier Virgin Mobile is today teasing iPhone 5S and 5C availability. The carrier didn’t offer a price or dates but we can make some educated assumptions based on previous rollouts.

As for price, Virgin usually offers the iPhone at the same price as Apple does unsubsidized – so $549 for iPhone 5C and $649 for iPhone 5S – though Walmart and Target both offered discounts at launch. The killer feature of Virgin however is the $30 unlimited text/data plans they offer on iPhones (with 300 talk minutes and registration of bank billing). T-Mobile offers the same $30 unlimited already but only offers 100 minutes with that plan (the...

Slow release ultra capacitor technology, assuming it successfully makes its way to market, should be a real boon for small devices. Filling an ultra capacitor with power is like filling a glass of water. Happens in seconds, not hours.

But using capacitors to provide a steady flow of energy is something new. Still, like other capacitors, the new ones can be recharged quickly. The remote control can recharge in five minutes and run for many hours, maybe even days, depending on how often it is used to change channels, Mr. Sund said. And unlike the lithium-ion batteries used in phones, laptops and, now cars, capacitors do not lose storage space with age.

Doesn’t seem to be any barriers for remote controls and cameras. Key is, can they make this technology small enough to squeeze into an iPhone, yet still have it carry enough power to be useful.

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Grantland:

Twenty years ago, people talked about Myst the same way they talked about The Sopranos during its first season: as one of those rare works that irrevocably changed its medium. It certainly felt like nothing in gaming would or could be the same after it.

If you remember the game, you remember that feeling of landing on Myst Island for the first time, staggeringly bereft of information in a way that felt like some kind of reverse epiphany, left with no option but to start exploring.

People who had never gamed before in their lives bought new computers so they could play Myst.

I remember playing Myst and being dumbfounded, confused, exhilarated, frustrated and fascinated all at the same time.

...

BBC News:

In the early hours of the 26th of September in 1983, the Soviet Union’s early-warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the United States. The protocol for the Soviet military would have been to retaliate with a nuclear attack of its own.

But duty officer Stanislav Petrov – whose job it was to register apparent enemy missile launches – decided not to report them to his superiors, and instead dismissed them as a false alarm.

His decision may have saved the world.

Chilling story and terrifying to think what might have happened.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Major League Baseball's iOS developer for the MLB app, Marc Abramson, has told Mashable that MLB will be using iOS 7's iBeacons protocol to turn the MLB.com At the Ballpark app into an interactive guide to stadiums. iBeacons are a new Core Location API in iOS 7 that allows any iOS device with a Bluetooth 4.0 chip (BLE) to know where it is in relation to other BLE devices. iBeacons pick up the micro-location of other iBeacon devices, thereby allowing an app on your phone to know where you are on a hyper-local level.

Mashable says MLB has been working closely with Apple on iBeacons integration since February. As Mashable reports:

By loading the free [MLB.com] app when you get off the subway and head towards the stadium, it immediately knows you are at Citi Field. It populates a ballpark guide with information specific to the stadium, so if you...

Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer may be on his way out soon, but he's not leaving without taking a few more swipes at Apple, Amazon, and Google.
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In a bid to make the ballpark experience more engaging for fans, Major League Baseball plans to roll out Apple's new iBeacons technology to deliver targeted information and offers based on a fan's location within the park, according to a new report.
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Netflix has announced that it is rolling out "Super HD" videos to all compatible devices, including the third-generation Apple TV. The Super HD higher bit rate stream applies less compression to the 1080p image, so the image looks crisper and sharper than a typical 1080p image. In a blog post announcing the move, Netflix said:

All Netflix members, regardless of their Internet service provider (ISP), now have access to the highest quality HD streams available on Netflix.

This means that the great TV shows and movies on Netflix will look even better on HD screens with a higher bit rate stream, Super HD, that applies less compression to the 1080p image.

We initially rolled out Super HD in January only through ISPs with a direct connection to Netflix. Based on the performance data we've seen, and in response to member requests, we are now expanding availability to give all...

The BBC has released a new version of its iPlayer Desktop for Mac and PC that offers improved downloads of BBC television programs. BBC iPlayer Downloads, which now no longer uses Adobe AIR nor offers Windows Media files for security and cost reasons, will let users download shows from the on-demand service for later viewing, with users able to cue a download of a show in the client using links on the iPlayer website itself. Existing BBC iPlayer downloads will continue to work until their scheduled expiry dates....
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The best scanner is the one you have with you: with PDFpen Scan+ from Smile, your iPhone or iPad camera can become a pocket scanner, complete with OCR. However, the OCR feature could use some improvement.

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Apple's new iOS 7 is making people sick -- literally -- based on complaints that have begun appearing on Apple forums. "The zoom animations everywhere on the new iOS 7 are literally making me nauseous and giving me a headache," wrote Ensorceled on one forum. "It's exactly how I used to get car sick if I tried to read in the car." The interface makes generous use of animation. As folders and apps are opened and closed, the screen zooms in and out. When moving among apps, transitions zoom and slide. Full screen slides are common.

Chinese site DoNews has posted two photos of what it claims is a champagne-colored iPad Mini 2 with Touch ID fingerprint sensor.

Concept photos and outright hoaxes are commonplace in the run-up to an anticipated product launch (we debunked one of these just yesterday), so there is no telling whether or not these are the real deal, but it’s obviously logical to expect Apple to release both the iPad 5 and iPad Mini 2 in the same colour schemes as the iPhone 5s. It’s also pretty likely that both will be fitted with the Touch ID fingerprint sensor (shown below...

Each time Apple introduces a new iPhone model, we get many questions about compatiblity: Will the accessories you already own—cases, speakers, chargers, and the like—work with the new model? In some years, such as when Apple replaced the iPhone 4 with the iPhone 4S, there are few physical and electrical differences, so almost everything works. Other times, Apple changes both the size and the electronics of the phone: The iPhone 5, for example, had both a different shape and a completely different charge/sync connector.

This year, we get a little bit of both, as Apple has introduced both the iPhone 5s, which is nearly identical on the outside to last year’s model while being significantly upgraded on the inside, and the iPhone 5c, which uses a completely new exterior design while retaining the guts of the iPhone 5. How well will your current iOS accessories work with...

Forget iTunes Radio, thin fonts, and multitasking. The most important new thing about iOS 7 might be that your friendly neighborhood police officer loves it.

That’s right: In New York and elsewhere around the country, law enforcement officials are actively encouraging iPhone and iPad users to upgrade to Apple’s new mobile operating system. Why? Because the new Activation Lock feature in iOS 7 makes the phone very difficult to use or to wipe and resell if it gets stolen. Police and prosecutors hope that this technological development will lead to a reduction in smartphone thefts.

Law enforcement officials joined forces to pressure smartphone manufacturers to improve device security.

“Finding technical solutions that will...

In an ironic twist to Apple's ongoing worldwide legal battles, a German patent court on Thursday invalidated an Apple property asserted against Google and Samsung because a video of Steve Jobs presenting the feature onstage predates the filing, and is thus considered prior art in the country.
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Staples will be able to purchase iPads and iPod products from office-supply retail giant Staples through its online store as early as the beginning of October, sources familiar with the matter say. The agreement, following a deal earlier this year that let Staples sell Apple accessories for iPhones, iPods and other products was successful enough to warrant the expansion. The company hopes to begin selling iPads in stores directly in early 2014....
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Stir, a Los Angeles-based startup including former Apple and Disney engineers, announced today the launch of their first product, the Stir Kinetic Desk. Designed with the express purpose of promoting movement during work, the Stir Kinetic Desk combines the best features of connected hardware with learning, health-tracking software to create a new work experience based on motion, health and inspiration....
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A report on Thursday claims Apple may not be planning to release a Retina display iPad mini alongside an expected next-generation "iPad 5" next month, citing low manufacturing volumes unsuitable for mass shipments.
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Apple on Thursday sent out an email to authors and publishers that announced a number of new features geared toward content producers in the iBookstore. Among the changes is support for versioning, allowing readers to be automatically notified when a book they've purchased has been updated with a new version. Also included in the updates are new catalog reports, updated documentation, a rise in the pixel limit for book images and more....
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Adds a new file format with faster opening and saving of images, plus makes many improvements to effects. ($14.99 new, free update, 41.6 MB)

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Although the media tended to focus on the high demand for the groundbreaking iPhone 5s -- and early reports have claimed that the 5s outsold the colorful iPhone 5c by a factor of 3:1 -- a well-connected analyst told his clients he believes the ratio of sales between the 5s and 5c was closer to 1:1, with only a slight favoring of the higher-end model. Apple has not broken down sales by model, but reported that nine million new iPhones were sold over the opening weekend....
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The Office of Fair Trading (OFT), a regulator in the United Kingdom, has asked app developers not to create products for children that heavily encourages in-app purchases. The report, stemming from an investigation that commenced in April, lists eight principles that developers should follow to avoid pressuring younger users into making such purchases....
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Apple and Staples have struck a deal for the United States office supply retail chain to sell both iPads and iPods beginning next month, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. This person says that several versions of both the iPad and iPod will be available via the Staples Online Store in the U.S. for the first time beginning as soon as October 1st. Staples currently sells the iPad via its website in Canada.

The source says that the recent Apple and Staples’ distribution deal for accessories, like Apple’s Magic Mouse, the Apple TV, keyboards, and AirPort wireless routers, was a testbed to see if Apple products...