High-resolution photos of what may be components from Apple's next-generation iPhone have leaked to the Internet, with multi-colored SIM trays adding to rumors that the so-called "iPhone 5S" will be available in more than just black and white.  ...

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Apple will be eventually closing its One Stockton Street store -- which has been a flagship venue among the San Francisco stores -- and moving it about three blocks away, adjacent to Union Square. The new store will feature an updated design with a more glass-centric design, somewhat reminiscent of the Upper West Side store in New York City. It will also be about 45 percent larger than the current location and increase its staff from 350 to 400....  ...

Parental Controls on iOS are extremely helpful for parents of iOS-device-using kids. They allow a parent to block in-app purchases, restrict explicit content on the device and block apps that are not needed for younger children (Mail, Safari, etc.).

Setting up these restrictions requires a special 4-digit PIN that only needs to be entered when a parent makes changes to the parental control settings. Because the code is entered so infrequently, it is easy to forget the password, especially if you set up restrictions in haste and don't take the time to record the code in your favorite password keeper. This happened to me recently, and I will give you a few tips on what to do if you find yourself in this unfortunate situation.

Assess and Review

If you realize that you have forgotten your parental control password, don't panic. The first thing you should do...

When in doubt, offer some additional competition.

Per AppleInsider, Google on Wednesday introduced its long-anticipated Spotify competitor: Google Play Music All Access, a “uniquely Google approach” to subscription music service.

Google engineering director Chris Yerga announced the new music service during the keynote for the search giant’s annual Google I/O developer conference. As was previously rumored, the streaming service is similar to popular music service Spotify, but it also adds elements similar to Internet radio service Pandora.

“We set out to build a music service that didn’t just give you access to the world of music,” Yerga said, “but also helped guide you...

In the race for third mobile platform, there’s a new favorite: Windows Phone.

According to new research from IDC, Microsoft’s mobile operating system accounted for 3.2 percent of global smartphone shipments in the first quarter. That’s a significant gain from the OS’s performance in the first quarter of 2012, which saw it capture a market share of 2 percent. And it was enough for Windows Phone to unseat BlackBerry from its third-place spot and claim the rank for its own.

Admittedly, ousting BlackBerry wasn’t exactly a difficult task. In the first quarter, the struggling handset maker saw its share of global smartphone shipments halved year over year. In Q1 of 2012, it claimed a 6.4 percent share. This year, BlackBerry managed to snag only 2.9 percent.

An unfortunate loss of momentum for BlackBerry, though one that’s not entirely attributable to the ascension of other platforms...

JellyBus, the makers of popular iOS image editing software PicsPlayPro, recently launched a collage making app, Moldiv, and packed it full of features that'll appeal to creative types who are looking to throw together a beautiful collage.

The first thing you notice about Modiv is the large number of frames available at your fingertips. There are 80 free frames and 60 premiums that you can buy as a pack via a US$1.99. Moldiv's basic frames provide you with a variety of columnar and angular layouts that are sufficient for most users.

The next thing you notice about Modiv is how easy it is to use. Tap on your frame to select your photo layout and then tap on a section to add a photo. You can pull the photo from your photo gallery or take a new one using the camera. Once you add in your photos, you can spend a few minutes tweaking...

There’s some cool stuff coming out of Google IO 2013 and this is no exception.

Per Android Central, Google has announced that new features will be coming to the Google Maps for iPhone later this summer and, what’s more, it’ll be getting an iPad-specific interface as well.

Albeit unconfirmed at this point, the new version could also incorporate Google’s new five-point rating system, integrated Google Offers, and more.

Also interesting, Google Maps in the browser will be using WebGL, which could be interesting depending on how it’s implemented.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

Swedish headphone maker Jays has announced its new a-Jays Five ($100) earphones. The in-ear earphones feature a custom driver and flat, tangle-free cables. A redesigned three-button remote is thinner than previous Jays remotes, and the microphone with built-in echo cancellation won’t degrade over time, according to the company.

It’s a long haul to OS X 10.8.4, but it’s getting closer…

Per 9to5Mac, a week following the previous build, Apple has released build 12E52 of the OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.4 beta to developers. Apple, once again, asks developers to focus on WiFi, Graphics Drivers, and Safari.

We previously noted that 10.8.4 includes support for Mac computers with 802.11ac WiFi chips.

While 10.8.4 is a minor update to OS X Mountain Lion, Apple also has a major...

EA’s making itself slightly less obnoxious by axing its unpopular “Online Pass” program.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Shipments of Windows Phone devices have overtaken those of BlackBerry phones for the first time, according to a report. Numbers from IDC places the Microsoft mobile operating system in third place, still a considerable away behind iOS and Android shipments, which are said to make up 92.3-percent of all shipments when combined....  ...

Apple CEO Tim Cook has apparently been scheduled to testify before the United States Senate next Tuesday in an investigation into corporations moving funds into offshore accounts to reduce their tax liability. Mr. Cook will be speaking before the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and while Apple has an estimated US$100 billion outside the United States, the hearing isn't being used to charge the company with any wrongdoing.

The Mac Observer Spin:
It's a safe bet that Apple made sure it isn't violating any tax laws before it started moving money outside of the United States, so the Senate subcommittee is most likely looking for information it can use to push for changes that make it easier for the government to take a cut of that cash.

“Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.”

That is the line that the DOJ is using in its e-book case against Apple. However, when you look at it in context with the rest of the comments Jobs made, it’s pretty innocuous.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Brandon Ashmore from Mentor, Ohio hit the App Store lottery yesterday by downloading the 50 billionth app to be served by Apple's App Store. Namely, it was Say The Same Thing by Space Inch that allowed Brandon to collect his prize, and what a prize it is: an App Store gift card with US$10,000 on it. Have fun spending that, Brandon!

Apple announces 50 billionth app download, contest winner originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 16 May 2013 08:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Our latest title, Michael E. Cohen’s “Take Control of PDFpen 6,” explains precisely what you can do with PDFpen 6 and its big brother, PDFpenPro 6, and with the mobile versions, PDFpen for iPad and PDFpen for iPhone.

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.

Just last week we gave you our rundown on the latest features to Pixelmator that landed in the 2.2 Blueberry update and were quite impressed how far the inexpensive Photoshop alternative has come. It appears we weren’t the only ones as the developers have just informed us that the new version reached 500,000 downloads since last Thursday making it the company’s most successful release ever:

“Pixelmator 2.2 downloads have surpassed the previous record downloads and topped half a million making it the most successful release in our history,” said Saulius Dailide of the...

Apple's iPhone 5 is getting another battery-boosting accessory from mophie, as the company announced the availability of the juice pack plus, which boosts the battery life of Apple's newest handset by 120 percent.   ...

A teenage girl alone in a remote farmhouse; an absent father, a boyfriend off at college... and a locked door that conceals a tragic secret. These are the creepy, chilling tropes on display in Haunting Melissa, a serialized video horror story delivered in the form of an iOS app available today on the App Store. Watching the first episode is free, and then you'll wait -- and pay -- to keep going with the narrative.

Haunting Melissa, and the underlying Hooked Digital Media content management platform that drives the serialized episode releases, is the brainchild of Hollywood producer Neal Edelstein. Edelstein has some serious scares on his resume: he produced The Ring and The Ring 2. He describes the Haunting Melissa experience as "a ghost...

Brandon Ashmore, who calls Mentor, Ohio, home, is having a very good day. Apple on Thursday announced that Ashmore downloaded the 50 billionth app from the App Store.

As part of Apple’s promotion for the historic download, this makes Ashmore the lucky winner of an iTunes gift card worth a cool $10,000. The app Ashmore downloaded to win the prize was Space Inch’s new Say the Same Thing, a fun (and free) game for the iPhone in which two players collaborate to find common words by free association—like the old “think of a word” game you used to play as a kid, but with smartphones.

Apple itself has much to celebrate, of course, as the App Store now counts some 850 thousand apps—almost half of which...

After passing the 50 billionth app downloaded yesterday, Apple on Thursday announced the winner of the download and the app that was downloaded.

Apple today has officially announced the winner of its $10,000 iTunes gift card giveaway in a press release after reaching 50 billion app downloads yesterday.

And the app that marked the 50 billionth download goes to: Say the Same Thing by Space Inch, LLC. Lucky winner Brandon Ashmore from Mentor, Ohio will be receiving a $10,000 App Store gift card for his download.

Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue provided the following statement:

“Apple would...

Gains made by Google's Android platform chipped away at the smartphone market share of Apple's iOS in the first quarter of 2013, while Microsoft's slow-growing Windows Phone managed to surpass BlackBerry in the battle for third place.  ...

As if you needed any further reminding that phone and tablet games are where it’s at, take a look at the new portable gaming report that IDC and App Annie are releasing today.

The report, obtained in advance by AllThingsD, shows just how different the new generation of mobile games is from the gaming-only devices that previously reigned supreme. For context, back in Q4 2012, total consumer spending on games for iOS and Android devices surpassed spending on “gaming-optimized handhelds” (that is, Sony’s PSP and Vita, and Nintendo’s DS, DSi and 3DS).

But the real bombshell is in the new report, which covers Q1 2013: In that quarter, consumer spending on Sony’s and Nintendo’s handhelds declined significantly, while iOS and Google Play spending both increased, also significantly. Combined, the phone and tablet crowd spent nearly three times as much on games as...

Hot on the heels of iPhone 5 promotions from T-Mobile and Verizon, AT&T appears to have thrown its hat into the ring with reports that existing, upgrade-eligible customers are being targeted in a new email. The email offers special trade-in pricing for used iPhone 4S models, promising up to $200 in credit towards the cost of an iPhone 5 -- effectively cancelling out the up-front cost of moving up. Appleinsider reports that the email may be only a regional promotion instead of national.... ...

Swedish audio maker JAYS has released the latest version of its popular a-JAYS Five series earphones. Unlike the previous model that came in one edition, the new lineup comes in three discrete models, each individually tailored to iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices. Each of the three models features its own three-button remote that supports all the remote functionality of each type of smartphone running each OS....  ...

FreeCiv is one of my favorite open source projects out there. Civilization is one of my favorite games, and FreeCiv is an open source version that you can download and play for free. The latest update of the game has added an HTML 5 version, which means that you can now load up and play FreeCiv right in any compatible browser. And that includes mobile Safari, which means you can now navigate to play.freeciv.org on one of your iOS devices, and play the game at will.

Pretty excellent. There is no version of FreeCiv in the App Store, unfortunately, though there has been a port to Android just recently. And Civilization Revolution has been available on both iPad and iPhone for a while now -- it's a simpler, more accessible...

America's number two wireless telecom and Apple partner carrier AT&T recently started sending out promotional emails to certain iPhone 4S owners on its network, saying that they can take advantage of special trade-in pricing that effectively negates the upfront cost of a 16-gigabyte iPhone 5.  ...

US Department of Justice filings in the e-book price-fixing case against Apple reveal an exchange between former Apple CEO Steve Jobs and News Corporation/HarperCollins' James Murdoch, notes AllThingsD. In the course of a Jobs-penned email, which dates back to January 2010, the CEO explains why Apple is proposing to tie e-book prices to hardcover ones. "We simply don't think the e-book market can be successful with pricing higher than $12.99 or $14.99," Jobs writes....  ...

Political is reporting that Tim Cook is set to testify at a Senate hearing next week that is investigating the offshore tax practices of American corporations:

Apple CEO Tim Cook is expected to testify at the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation's hearing Tuesday, POLITICO has learned.

Apple has been under fire for its tax practices. The company recently avoided paying as much as $9.2 billion in taxes by buying back stock with debt instead of offshore cash, Bloomberg reported. Apple has a reported $100 billion in offshore funds.

The hearing is part of the panel's continued examination of how companies shift profits offshore and how that impacts the tax code. Representatives from Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard testified in September 2012 in a hearing on the same topic.

Tax avoidance by big corporations is (finally) become a hot topic in the US. Here in the...

From 9to5Toys.com:

Today, Mophie introduced a bigger, badder iPhone 5 battery case called the Juice Pack Plus ($120) which contains a 2100mAh battery pack. That’s 120% of the iPhone 5 battery’s size and can double its life. The cases come in White, Black and Product (Red). Mophie previously had a 2000mAh Juice Pack Plus for iPhone 4/4S (...

If the OS X system language changes to one you don't understand, you may have to navigate to the system preferences and revert the changes by using visual landmarks.

Apple's competitors have been busy, so this week Jeff and Bryan take a look at Google's just announced music streaming service, new online photo editing and storage features, updated Hangouts options, HTC's stumble with its Facebook Phone, and BlackBerry's decision to offer its Messenger service on the iPhone and Android devices.

Jim and Dan talk about Google’s recent announcement including Google Play Music All Access and changes the changes coming to Google+, Larry Page’s voice issues, the release of The Loop magazine app, and the issues that arise when launching such an app.

Sponsored by Hover (use code DANSENTME for 10% off), Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME5 for 30% off), and Shopify.

∞ Read this on The Loop

An anonymous reader writes "Back in April 2012, the U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and a number of publishers for allegedly colluding to raise the price of e-books on the iBookstore. As part of its investigation into Apple's actions, the Justice Department collected evidence which it claims demonstrates that Apple was the 'ringmaster' in a price fixing conspiracy. Specifically, the Justice Department claims that Apple wielded its power in the mobile app market to coerce publishers to agree to Apple's terms for iBookstore pricing."

...

Digital game marketplace Steam has added a new feature -- in-game Steam Trading Cards. Steam Trading Cards are virtual cards earned by playing games on Steam. Sets of cards can be turned into game badges and tradable Steam community items, including discounts on titles or downloadable content, profile graphics, and custom game-related emoticons....  ...

The DOJ wants to put Apple on ice for collusion on ebooks’ price. Elsewhere, if an iPhone button wiggles, is it more than just a niggle? And to get some relief, Siri asks you to please keep it brief. The remainders for Wednesday, May 15, 2013 like to rhyme all of the time.

U.S. Now Paints Apple as ‘Ringmaster’ in Its Lawsuit on ebook Price-Fixing (New York Times)

According to the Department of Justice, Apple masterminded the price-fixing scheme, cajoling and threatening the poor innocent publishers into its nefarious schemes. Supporting evidence includes emails from Apple execs to publishers, as well as a recording of ex-CEO Steve Jobs sitting in his office and laughing maniacally.

...

Apple is seeding yet another build of OS X 10.8.4 to developers, 12E52. As before there are no known issues, and Apple is still asking developers to concentrate testing on Safari, Wi-Fi, and graphics drivers. When it's finished v10.8.4 is primarily expected to be a maintenance update, although it does appear to include support for 802.11ac Wi-Fi....  ...

The United States Department of Justice has described Apple’s defense against allegations that it conspired to illegally fix e-book prices “unconvincing” and “untethered from both precedent and logic.”

Evidently, Apple feels much the same way about the DOJ’s charges.

In an 81-page April 26 filing that was made public today, Apple pointedly denied federal prosecutors’ accusations, saying the discussions they’ve painted as collusion were simply tough business negotiations and that their end result — an “agency” e-book pricing model where publishers, not retailers, set prices — made the e-book market more competitive, not less.

“Apple did not conspire to fix e-book prices,” the company said in its filing. “The evidence proves that Apple acted independently, to further its own legitimate business goals, in negotiating agency agreements with the publishers to enter the e-book market.”

A week following the previous build, Apple has released build 12E52 of the OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.4 beta to developers. Apple, once again, asks developers to focus on WiFi, Graphics Drivers, and Safari.

//

We previously noted that 10.8.4 includes support for Mac computers with 802.11ac WiFi chips.

While 10.8.4 is a minor update to OS X Mountain Lion, Apple also has a major release launching in the next couple of months. We ...

Statement by Apple spokesman Steve Dowling:

“Apple is one of the largest taxpayers in the United States, having paid $6 billion in federal corporate income tax in fiscal 2012,” Dowling said in a statement. “We also help create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S. by keeping our R&D in California and creating category-defining products like the iPhone, iPad and the app store, which has generated billions of dollars in sales for software developers.”

If they are going to ask Apple about its offshore money, they should ask the politicians too.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Apple CEO Tim Cook will reportedly give testimony to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation pertaining to how the company deals with taxes, a much debated topic as Apple is thought to have about $100 billion in offshore funds.  ...

Shortly before 5 p.m. ET, Apple officially hit the 50 billion app mark on the App Store. The grand prize for achieving this is a $10,000 gift card redeemable on the App Store and $500 App Store gift cards to the next 50 customers following that. We'll let you know the winners as soon as they're announced, and congratulations to Apple for hitting the milestone!

App Store hits 50 billion apps downloaded originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 15 May 2013 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | ...

Today at the Google I/O 2013 keynote, developers were treated to a long (3 hour) keynote that covered the gamut from Android developer tools to Google+. The most fascinating parts of the talk for those of us in the Apple world were the variety of features that will be available to iOS users (and those using Google products on the web) almost immediately.

My usual partner in crime, Shawn "Doc Rock" Boyd, and I will be getting together this afternoon for an hour of chat about these announcements and more. This week we're starting something a little different: you'll be able to watch today's show on the TUAW TV Live page. You wanted a wider video, you've got it.

Be sure to bookmark the page after you click the link below, because that's where we'll be every week from now on. Remember that you can watch previous episodes on our YouTube channel any time.

TUAW TV Live

The 50 billionth app has been downloaded from Apple’s App Store. The winner hasn’t been announced yet, but we’ll update the info when it comes out.

∞ Read this on The Loop

The App Store has officially surpassed 50 billion downloads, Apple has just announced. The company has yet, however, to reveal the winners of an associated contest. The person who downloaded the 50 billionth app will get a $10,000 App Store gift card; meanwhile, 50 runner-ups will each get a $500 card....   ...

Google announced several new features to the company's products and services at Google I/O 2013, its annual developer conference. In addition to music streaming All Access service, Google announced enhancements to Google+ for sharing photos, Maps features, and a FaceTime competitor being rolled into Google Hangouts.

Google made a number of iOS-related announcements today at its I/O Developers Conference, including several that have potentially far-reaching consequences for its iPhone and iPad applications. First, the company released its Hangouts app for iOS, a free messaging app that lets users share photos and make video calls across…