Apple's plan to take out a loan for its $60 billion stock buyback is about saving taxes, notes the Washington Post. Although the company has $145 billion in cash reserves, roughly two-thirds of that is situated outside the US, and Apple has so far avoided repatriating the money in order to bypass a 35 percent tax rate. Taking out a loan for $60 billion means the company must still pay interest, but this is offset by not having to pay out dividends on the shares it's reclaiming....  ...

CommandQ is a Mac utility that stops you from accidentally quitting apps when using the keyboard shortcut "⌘" (or command) and "Q".

Unfortunately, we are all susceptible to moments of human error. This means, with the ⌘ + Q shortcut, we sometimes quit apps we don't mean to. Perhaps when we're meaning to hit ⌘ and W or ⌘ and the TAB key. I know I've done it too many times to count!

Thankfully, there's an app for that! CommandQ is a Mac utility app that stops apps from quitting unless you press and hold down the ⌘ + Q shortcut for a short period of time. This gives you a moment to catchup with your mistake and let go before the app quits. It's a straightforward concept, but has the potential to save you a lot of frustration and stress.

CommandQ lets you customize the period of time it takes for ⌘ + Q to take effect, from half a second to two seconds. You can...

Apple released a new iPhone commercial on Thursday that's takes a slightly different approach at showing off its smartphone, but still does what the company's ads are targeting: Eliciting an emotional response.

I am not a fan of the Apple EarPods that come with the iPhone 5, so when id America sent a pair of their new Metropolitan In-Ear Headphones (US$29.95) I was eager to give them a try.

My main complaint with the EarPods is that they refuse to stay in my ears, preferring instead to pop out at inopportune times during important phone calls. Then again, I've never been fond of in-ear headphones either, since they're usually quite uncomfortable. But my frustration with the EarPods was enough to make me give the Metropolitans a try.

Design and Functionality

The headphones come with four sets of tips -- one made out of memory foam, the other three made of a rubber material. I tried the memory foam tips first, basically treating them like the pair of memory foam earplugs I own -- squishing them down, inserting them into my ear canal, and then letting them expand to fit.

The memory foam...

You know those email addresses that you've sent to in the past? The ones that you misspelled or no longer need? Well, you can prevent your iOS 6 device from offering them as suggestions when you're composing, just like you can on your Mac. We're pretty excited about this, as now we can get rid of all of those ".con" addresses we've accidentally emailed over the years. Hey, we never claimed to be rocket scientists.

Photo: Tagscape.com

Detailed tests of the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4 screens by display calibration and testing specialist DisplayMate has declared the result a draw.

The detailed test results cover color gamut and accuracy, brightness, power efficiency and performance in high ambient lighting. DisplayMate compared the S4′s OLED screen to the LCD screen of the iPhone 5, highlighting the strengths & weaknesses of each and overall declaring it a tie.

The iPhone 5 is now more than half way through its product cycle, which is important to keep in mind for our comparison. However, high-end LCDs like the iPhone 5 are a very mature and refined display technology, so other than screen size, resolution, and the Pixels Per...

So, Android’s seemingly inexorable ascension over the iPhone? Not quite so inexorable anymore. Apple’s smartphone continues to gain share over devices running Google’s mobile OS in the U.S.; so much so that, according to the Yankee Group, iPhone ownership in the U.S. will exceed Android ownership by 2015. The reason: Platform loyalty.

Yankee Group surveyed 16,000 consumers over the past 12 months regarding which smartphones they own and which they intend to buy within the next six months. And, broadly, it found what you’d expect. About half of smartphone owners use an Android handset, while 30 percent use an iPhone. Of respondents who intend to buy a new smartphone within the next six months, 42 percent say they plan to buy an Android phone. Another 42 percent plan to purchase an iPhone. Again, about what you’d expect from the Google-Apple smartphone duopoly, with one exception: Buying intention versus...

Fingerprints may do more than smudge the screen of the next iPhone. They may be holding up its production. There reportedly has been some grumbling in Apple's supply chain due to delays in getting the next iPhone on the assembly line. Production originally scheduled for June may have to be pushed back. Contributing to the delay is a new feature in the handset that allows it to read fingerprints. It seems Apple is having trouble finding a coating for the phone that works with the fingerprint sensor.

Washington Post columnist Allan Sloan observes that Apple’s plan to buy back $60b of its own stock will reduce the company’s tax bill by more than the cost of the loans it will take out to fund the share repurchase program.

If you’re wondering why a company with a cash balance of $145b would need to borrow $60b, it’s all about tax …

//

Around two-thirds of that cash hoard is held by Apple subsidiaries outside the USA, and if Apple brought the cash back home it would have to pay 35% corporation tax. Borrowing the money means Apple pays interest, but the tax saving more than cancels this out, points out...

As I write this paragraph, I’m enjoying a playlist that I created from among the thousands of songs on my iPhone, and it’s no big deal. It wasn’t always so simple: Once upon a time, crafting the perfect playlist for your MP3 player felt like an epic project. You had to rip the songs from a CD onto your computer, find sources—legitimate and otherwise—for tracks you didn’t own, and then hope everything was in the right format to play on your portable device. Apple changed all that, thanks to a series of musical moves right at the dawn of the 21st century—not the least of which was the launch of the iTunes Music Store.

It was only ten years ago—on April 28, 2003—that Apple opened the iTunes Store (then called the iTunes Music Store) and changed the way we buy music. The store arrived with just 200,000 tracks; in the ensuing decade, that library has grown to more than 35 million songs, from the Beatles to Jay-Z. You can even download those tracks over your phone if you want—...

According to market research firm IDC, worldwide smartphone shipments outpaced those of feature phones for the first time ever during the first quarter of 2013, while Apple's iPhone saw its marketshare dip to below 20 percent.  ...

The first calendar quarter of the year has seen a sea change in the cellphone industry: for the first time worldwide, smartphones made up the majority of phones sold. While the definition of "smartphone" varies -- particularly at lower price points -- the general definition is a device that can run an operating system giving it computer-like abilities beyond what a "feature phone" is capable of. According to industry analyst IDC, a total of 419 million smartphones were sold in the first three months of the year, 51.6 percent of which were smartphones.... ...

Last year, AT&T rolled out a test phase of its new Digital Life home automation and security suite. Starting today, the company will be rolling out the final product in 15 markets. The system is launching in Atlanta, Austin, Texas, Boulder, Colo., Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Riverside, Calif., San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis and select areas of the New York and New Jersey metropolitan area. The company says that it hopes to reach 50 markets by the end of this year.

The home automation system includes many facets, though security seems to be the aspect that AT&T is promoting the most.

The foundation of AT&T Digital Life is complete home security with 24/7 professional...

If you obsess over your website traffic and bemoan the fact that Google doesn't have a decent iOS Analytics client, then you should take a moment to check out Quicklytics. Quicklytics pulls your Google Analytics data and gives you a detailed look at your realtime website traffic in just a few taps.

The iPad version of the app has an attractive, split-pane layout that places the most commonly checked statistics at the top of the screen in portrait view or on the left in landscape. This section includes a graph and six smaller panes that show metrics like pageviews, visits, goals value and more. Tapping on the pane changes the graph, which now shows the data for the metric you just selected. Tap and hold on one of these panes, and you can change the metric. It's an intuitive layout that...

The big deal with Popcap's latest big entry into the App Store, Bookworm Heroes, is that it's social. It's a version of the company's popular wordfinding game given a social twist, so that you can play against your friends, neighbors, or just random people online. But here's the thing I most don't like about Bookworm Heroes: It's social.

Yes, the thing that might most appeal to you about this one is the thing that makes it least appealing. Bookworm Heroes isn't a bad game. If you love the Bookworm series (the first version of the game has been on the App Store for a while), Heroes shows off the same polish and excellent gameplay that the other titles offer. But Heroes is only social, which means that to play, you've got to wait for your opponent to pass a turn back. And if you don't have anyone else interested in playing...

Various tweets and blog posts from developers who tried -- and failed -- to snap up Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) tickets in the scant two minutes they were available from Apple this morning indicate that the company is contacting some of those turned away to offer some tickets to the event. The "second chance" calls are unlikely to be made to all developers, and so the company has already announced that videos of all the sessions will be made available to registered developers as the conference progresses.... ...

Previously only available to Chromebook users, Google announced today on its Chrome blog that Mac and Windows users will now have the ability to open Microsoft Office files directly within Chrome. The functionality works for users running the latest Chrome Beta and requires installation of the Chrome Office Viewer (Beta) extension.

In addition to saving you time, the Chrome Office Viewer also protects you from malware delivered via Office files. Just like with web pages and PDFs, we’ve added a specialized sandbox to impede attackers who use compromised Office files...

Samsung Electronics today announced quarterly revenues of 52.87 trillion won ($47.6 billion) for the first quarter ended March 31 -- a six percent decrease from the previous quarter. Consolidated operating profit for the quarter reached 8.78 trillion won ($7.9 billion), representing a one percent decline quarter-over-quarter. Samsung estimates revenues hit 52 trillion won ($46.8 billion) with operating profit of 8.7 trillion won ($7.8 billion)....  ...

Residents of Germany's capital city, Berlin, will have their very own Apple Store to visit starting next Friday. On May 3, 2013, the Apple Store Kurfürstendamm Berlin will open at 5 PM local time. If past is prelude, early arrivals at the opening can expect clapping and cheering employees, a countdown, and free t-shirts.

The store is scheduled to have regular open hours of 10 AM to 8 PM Monday through Saturday, closed on Sundays. During the opening weekend the store has special hours -- on Friday, May 3, it will be open from 5 PM to 10 PM local time, on May 4 it will be open from 10 AM until 10 PM, and on Sunday, May 5 the store will be open from 1 PM until 6 PM.

The store is located in a renovated historic building on the Kurfürstendamm, not far from the Zoologischer Garten Berlin, the U2 oder S-Bahn "Zoo Station" or the U1 Uhlandstrasse station. The facility is the 11th Apple Store in Germany.

...

Betaworks, the company that rescued the faltering Digg, has now acquired Instapaper, says a report in TechCrunch. The news originated from an email sent by Betaworks founder and CEO John Borthwick and was confirmed by Instapaper founder Marco Arment. Arment writes on his blog,

I'm happy to announce that I've sold a majority stake in Instapaper to Betaworks. We've structured the deal with Instapaper's health and longevity as the top priority, with incentives to keep it going well into the future. I will continue advising the project indefinitely, while Betaworks will take over its operations, expand its staff, and develop it further.

Borthwick says that Instapaper is a "perfect fit" with Digg and the company's upcoming Digg Reader. He also confirms that Betaworks plans to expand the...

I remain a big fan of Slayin, a little game that got released on the App Store a while ago, that compresses a full fantasy-style RPG into a fascinating little endless game. I think the game's mechanics (where you simply move back and forth across the screen, holding your weapon out in front of you, as you kill monsters and collect money and XP) are my favorite part about it, but the soundtrack's good as well. And now, composer Matt Creamer has released the Slayin soundtrack for download over on Bandcamp, where it's now available for you to listen to and download directly.

The in-game theme is a particularly excellent piece of 8-bit music, but almost everything there is good, and there are even some unreleased tracks for real Slayin fans to check out. The price is name-your-own, so technically you could grab it for free...

As she did in the first Apple vs. Samsung patent trial, Judge Lucy Koh is again requiring the companies to narrow their claims and limit the scope of their arguments against each other as both firms prepare for a second patent trial on different patent infringement arguments than those in the first trial, which Apple won handily but is currently on appeal. The order, which was issued late on Wednesday, comes ahead of some possible summary judgement rulings that could leave either Apple or Samsung with fewer patents to argue over.... ...

News broke Thursday morning that it took all of two minutes to sell out tickets for Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). Many were left out in the cold by the insanely fast sellout, but Appsterdam announced on Thursday AltWWDC, a free alternative to the real thing that will be held just down the street from the Moscone Center.

Circadia is a great game that I wrote about a little over a year ago -- it's put together by a developer named Kurt Bieg, and until now, it's basically just been sitting on the App Store waiting to be found. But Bieg has just put out a nice solid update for the game, and that gives me another chance to recommend it to you.

The game is simple and ingenious -- it's musical, but the music of it is what you make yourself rather than the pop songs that you'll find in Rock Band or other music titles. Beig says in the latest App Store update that the game has reached 100,000 downloads, and that's a great number for a little title like this. He's updated the title to make it work with the iPhone 5, and there's also a new "infinity mode," featuring randomly generated levels that you can play anytime you like. There are...

It was announced on Thursday that Popular web page saving and syncing app Instapaper has been acquired by Betaworks, the same firm that purchased Digg in 2012.   ...

Marco Arment announced on Thursday that he has sold Instapaper to Betaworks. In a blog post, Mr. Arment said that Instapaper had grown to a point where it needed more resources—more people—to continue to grow.

As the Northern Hemisphere of the planet wakes up from winter, accessory manufacturers are coming to life with some new or revised products. One of those companies, Just Mobile, has released a crop of accessories that can help to organize your workspace and protect your iPhone 5. There's the AluCup (a sturdy dock for your iPhone or iPad mini, US$29.95), the AluFrame iPhone 5 case ($69.95), and that place to neatly store your headphones -- the HeadStand ($49.95).

You'll have an opportunity to win one of these hardy aluminum accessories, so be sure to check them out and then enter the giveaway.

Design

The AluCup is a delightfully simple dock for your iPhone or iPad tha's made of a machined aluminum cylinder sliced at an angle, lined with a...

Reduces memory memory usage and provides several form-related improvements and fixes. ($59.95/$99.95 new, free update, 49.4/50.2 MB)

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Marco Arment:

I’m happy to announce that I’ve sold a majority stake in Instapaper to Betaworks. We’ve structured the deal with Instapaper’s health and longevity as the top priority, with incentives to keep it going well into the future. I will continue advising the project indefinitely, while Betaworks will take over its operations, expand its staff, and develop it further.

Wow.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Daniel Jalkut offers some tips on how Apple can improve WWDC so it benefits all developers. While I don’t disagree with the premise, I still think holding the conference is important for developers and Apple.

∞ Read this on The Loop

This looks very interesting. The possibilities go far beyond controlling guitar software.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Amazon today announced financial results for its first quarter that ended March 31. The company reports that net sales increased 22 percent to $16.07 billion in the first quarter, compared with $13.18 billion a year ago. Despite the increased sales, net income decreased 37 percent to $82 million in the first quarter, or $0.18 per share, compared with $130 million, or $0.28 per share in the first quarter of 2012....  ...

Twitter has updated its Twitter for Mac client, and you can see all of the new changes on the official company blog. The biggest update is that you now get a camera icon when you're composing a tweet, which makes it easier than ever to share pictures straight from your desktop (other Twitter clients have had this for a while, and you could always drag pictures over, but this is a clearer way to do this anyway). The app has also added Retina display support, which is nice, and there are now 14 more languages: Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, and Turkish.

As always, the app is available for free directly from the Mac App Store. Twitter says to keep an eye out for more changes as well, so it's working hard on...

alphadogg writes "The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference sold out in just two minutes today, blowing away last year's record of two hours. Tickets went on sale today at 10 a.m. PDT, as was announced yesterday, when Apple said its event would be held June 10-14 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Apple WWDC runs neck-and-neck with the annual Google I/O event in the race for hottest tech show. The Google event, slated for May 15-17 at Moscone Center, sold out in 45 minutes this year. While transferring tickets for WWDC is generally not allowed, an ambitious eBay seller is attempting to get $10K for the $1,600 ticket."

...

Apple CEO Tim Cook has offered up a coffee meeting for a charity auction benefitting the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. Estimated to go for US$50,000, the auction earned 54 bids in just the first few hours and is sitting at $190,000 as of this writing.

Originally slated for launch next month, the Leap Motion controller will now see public release at the end of July, with the company saying a larger and longer beta testing period is needed to ensure a quality product.  ...

The shipping date for the Leap Motion 3D Motion Controller has been delayed from May 13th until July 22, says the company's CEO. Michael Buckwald revealed the information during a conference call earlier today. "There's nothing catastrophically wrong," he explained, "we're very proud of the product Ö if we'd tried very hard we would have been able to ship the product [on the original date] but we wouldn't have had the time to do the iteration and testing that we would want to do otherwise."...  ...

@bsetter iPad is in the works and desktop is on our roadmap!—
Mailbox (@mailbox) April 25, 2013

After some controversy for the popular Mailbox iOS app earlier this week, some good news for Mailbox users comes today in the form of confirmation of new features and an iPad app coming soon.

As noted in the tweets above and below, the Mailbox devs have publicly confirmed in a number of recent tweets that and iPad version of the app is currently “in the works” and expected to launch soon. We also learn that desktop and Android versions of the app are on the company’s roadmap, while iCloud support, landscape typing, alias support, and “Send as” features are also on the list for future updates:

@...

Though a minor update for some users, Apple’s Apple Store app (free) has been updated to version 2.6 — the app now lets users receive notifications noting when they’re eligible for upgrade pricing on a new iPhone. Sega’s unpredictable history of…

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has ordered T-Mobile to change “deceptive advertising” that promised no contracts for customers, notably coinciding with the carrier’s long-awaited announcement of iPhone availability. The Attorney General’s Office said the company “failed to disclose that customers who purchase a phone using the 24-month payment…

We went hands on with the Leap Motion controller a couple times already and we were quite looking forward to the potential for gesture controlled apps that it offers devs. Back in February the company announced that it would be ready to ship the device by May 19 with pre-orders available through BestBuy, but today Leap Motion announced its gesture controller would be pushed back over two months until July 22nd.

Leap said the decision behind the delay is to allow more time for testing (via TNW):

“There’s nothing catastrophically wrong,” Buckwald added, “we’re very proud of the product...

Fotopedia Reporter is a unique, free iPad app that I would describe as a socially aware, digital coffee table book that lets you see and share photos that tell stories. The stories can be travel photos, landscapes, a restaurant visit, or a dive trip. Anything that would be of interest to others that you know or don't know.

To help you get started, the app provides some attractive designs. Your creation can be shared on Facebook or Twitter, or you can email a web link and it can be viewed in a browser. You can view others' projects and leave comments. Of course, you don't have to be a contributor, you can just browse the many stories and photos submitted.

One question I had to the developers was the issue of rights. The answer is that people who publish photos choose their license type (all rights reserved, creative commons or public domain) and the poster retains the rights. The...

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

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Daily Update for April 25, 2013 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:45:00 EST. Please see our...

T-Mobile's newly-launched "Uncarrier" plans are seeing some resistance from judicial channels. Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has demanded T-Mobile correct "deceptive advertising" that promised customers no annual contracts not requiring the user to "serve a two-year sentence," despite having what the office calls hidden charges for early termination of a new device plan that amounts to the same two-year contractual obligation.... ...

Google has released a beta Office Viewer extension for the Mac and Windows editions of Chrome. The add-on requires either the Chrome 27 beta or the latest Canary release, but enables viewing Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files within Chrome instead of separately. To protect against trojan attacks the extension is sandboxed, limiting the reach of any malicious code hackers might insert into a document....  ...

As expected, WWDC 2013 tickets sold out in record time. If you are one of the many disappointed developers locked out of Apple's premier developer event yet again, take heart. The folks behind Appsterdam and a number of other developer events are organizing AltWWDC this year, a free 5-day event that will be held in San Francisco June 10 - 14, 2013.

Appsterdam's Mike Lee, TUAW editor-in-chief Victor Agreda, our very own wizard Brett Terpstra, Brent Simmons, Saul Mora, and Steve "Scotty" Scott are among the confirmed speakers at the event, which is sponsored by 360|Conferences, Hidden Memory and Server Density.

Read the press release below for...

WWDC sold out in just minutes this year. As iOS developer Josh Avant put it, "Next year, tickets are going to sell out before they even go on sale."

Many developers were greeted by server errors, failed purchases, and the "Sorry, tickets are sold out" banner.

Others like Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software were able to place an order. In the end Jalkut decided to cancel his ticket, stating, he was "[v]ery conflicted, but it ended up feeling too exclusive for me."

In a move that was seen as a boost to fairness, developers were given a day's warning about sale time. This enabled people around the globe to set their alarms and schedule their visit to Apple's developer site.

Unfortunately,...

In a sign that perhaps, on occasion, pigs do fly, Twitter has announced an update to its official OS X client, Twitter for Mac, bringing it to version 2.2.

The new release comes with a number of new features, including a slightly tweaked user interface, support for Macs with Retina displays, and the ability for users to upload and share photos along with their tweets. The app now also supports fourteen new languages, including Italian, French, German, Dutch, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and more.

The good news doesn’t stop there, though: It seems that this is more than just a one-time event. Twitter developer Ben Sandofsky has announced—in a tweet, of course—that he will now be working on the company’s OS X client full-time,...

What if you could just swipe sideways to switch between apps on your iPad?  Well, you can!  John Martellaro shows you how to perform this most innocent of finger gestures.