Adding to the mounting pile of iPad mini rumors, a report from the Far East on Friday claims Apple supplier LG is preparing to ship millions of panels bound for a rumored Retina display version of the device, suggesting the tablet may see a fourth quarter launch.  ...

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 July 18, 2013 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 18 Jul 2013 23:59:00 EST. Please see our...

MacNN readers and staffers have reported receiving invitations from Apple to try out the iWork for iCloud beta, and may expand the program to all those with an iCloud account. The online version of the three iWork apps -- Pages, Numbers and Keynote -- is not believed to be intended to replace the local Mac and iOS versions, but instead complement them with a way to use the programs from any online device -- including, for the first time, Windows computers. Our reviews of the apps found them to be superb implementations of the latest web technologies.... ...

After a two and a half year absence, multi-format video player VLC is set to return to iOS. The new VLC app has already gone live in some regions, but should be in all stores, including the US store, by 11PM EST. Once the app goes live, you can download it here.

A version of VLC was removed from the App Store in January of 2011 because of complaints from one of VLC's lead contributors who alleged that version of VLC for iOS violated the GPL license. The new version of VLC, released today, is licensed under Mozilla Public License v2, which is applicable to apps distributed on the App Store.

Here's some of VLC iOS features:

• Wi-Fi Upload: Allows users to upload files directly to the iOS version of VLC through a web browser on the PC or Mac.
• Dropbox...

In a substantial upgrade to both free and premium level iPhone and iPad apps, note syncing service Evernote adds synced shortcuts, integration with Skitch for marking up images and PDFs, and a new related notes tool.  ...

Microsoft reported earnings on Thursday, and included in the bad news was the fact the company wrote down US$900 million related to its failed Surface tablet strategy. While Wall Street is focused most closely on the company's miss, it's the Surface debacle that is emblematic of Big Redmond's central problem, the lack of product vision, something I've been harping about for a while.

Newly-released sales figures of the iPhone on Verizon in the calendar second quarter of 2013 may foretell surprising success for Apple in its core iPhone business, says UBS analyst Maynard Um. The analysis, which relies on Verizon maintaining about the same average of total iPhone sales as it has for the past year and a half, projects that Apple may have sold as many as 34.7 million iPhones between April 1 and June 30 this year, what Apple calls its fiscal third quarter. Wall Street consensus on Apple's Q3 iPhone sales calls for only 26.5 million units sold.... ...

Evernote for iOS has been updated to Version 5.4 this evening, bringing Skitch integration and sync-able shortcuts to the universal app. The handy note-taking and document organization app is free in the App Store.

What’s new in Version 5.4:

- Add Shortcuts on your iOS device; sync to access them anywhere
- Mark up images, PDFs, and entire notes with Skitch integration
- See notes you recently viewed along the bottom of any note

Visit 9to5Mac to find more special coverage of Apps, Evernote, and Skitch.

What do you think? ...

Apple released AirPort Utility 6.3.1 on Thursday, an update that fixes an issue, "where AirPort base stations may not appear in AirPort Utility." The patch notes don't include any other specifics.

Apple has issued a software update it says will fix the scattered issues that arose last month with the computer maker’s newest MacBook Air model.

The problems, which appeared not to be widespread among MacBook Air owners, had to do with the super-slim laptop’s ability to maintain a consistent Wi-Fi connection.

As I wrote last month, for some Air users the issues were fixed by updating the firmware on older models of at-home Wi-Fi routers, according to Apple forums. Others suggested the problems were in the software of the laptop.

“Updating the firmware and changing the router channel to WPA-2 has helped so now it only drops WiFi maybe once or twice a day instead of every 5 minutes,”...

While you can preview all of the stories from the most recent issue online, I made one article freely available for everyone to read. This issue I chose Patrick Rhone’s “Part of the Crowd.”

Enjoy.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Apple has released the MacBook Air (Mid 2013) Software Update 1.0 to address a number of issues the new Haswell MacBook Airs have had since their launch last month. According to the release notes:

This update is recommended for MacBook Air (mid 2013) models.

This update fixes an issue that in rare instances may cause an intermittent loss in wireless connectivity, an issue with Adobe Photoshop which may cause occasional screen flickering, and an issue which may cause audio volume to fluctuate during video playback.

Almost immediately after the new MacBook Air's release, screen flickering while in Photoshop was reported in user forums, followed shortly after by Wi-Fi connection issues, and then just last week, volume fluctuation issues. If this update does indeed fix all issues it will be a nice hat trick for Apple and their newest laptop, which has garnered rave reviews for its...

While the iWork for iCloud beta has been available for developers and those who logged in with the current beta software for about a month now, it looks like Apple has begun inviting non-developers to the online document editing program. Tipsters have sent us in emails from the company asking them to try out the services and send in feedback.

We’d like to invite you to be one of the first to try it, so we’re giving you early access to the iWork for iCloud beta. All you have to do is sign in to iCloud on a Mac or a PC using the current version of Safari, Chrome or Internet Explorer. Then just click on Pages, Numbers, or Keynote and you’re off.

Users that have received the invitation don’t need to visit beta.icloud.com – they can just use the regular icloud....

New update promises to fix issues with Wi-Fi, screen flickering while using Adobe's Photoshop software, as well as an audio problem.

Originally posted at News - Apple

From 9to5toys.com:

Best Buy is having a significant College Student sale this week on...

Big box electronics retailer Best Buy on Thursday cut the price of select 13-inch MacBook Pro models for its Back-to-School promotion, offering a savings of $300 for students and $200 for regular customers during the ten-day sale.  ...

The world of Apple-themed drink coolers isn't exactly a bustling industry. In fact, I'm not sure I've actually seen one before today. Nevertheless, this adorably retro Mac-shapped box is called the MaCool and it's begging to hold your cold beverages.

The MaCool is the brainchild of Scott Sefan, a Mac fan from Florida who clearly thinks that taking an old Apple desktop to the beach is a fantastic idea. According to its Kickstarter page, the MaCool can hold up to 8 cans and ice, though in the product shots it appears as though a 12-pack would fit without issue. You can currently pre-order via the funding campaign for $39, though the price will jump to $59 after the "early adopter" pledge slots are filled.

Kickstart this retro Mac cooler, so you can have it before it's cool originally appeared on...

It’s only the middle of July, but Best Buy is already kicking off back-to-school season by reducing the price of two of its best-selling MacBook Pro models by $200. The 13.1-inch MacBook Pro with a 500 gigabyte hard drive and 4GB of memory now costs $1,000, while the 13.1-inch model with a 750GB hard drive and 8GB of memory is $1,300. Students who register on Best Buy’s Student Deals site with their “.edu” email address will get an additional $100 in savings. The MacBook promotion starts today, and will end July 27.

New Trent, a California-based designer of mobile accessories, released its Airbender Mini, a rugged case for the iPad Mini yesterday. Complete with an integrated screen protector, aluminum arm, and built-in Bluetooth keyboard, users can effectively use their iPad mini for watching movies, FaceTime chatting, gaming or checking e-mails while still protecting it. The Airbender Mini's body is hardshell, composed of polycarbonate thermoplastic. At 0.4 inches, the inset Bluetooth keyboard attaches via the durable aluminum arm, allowing the case to rotate 360 degrees for landscape or portrait viewing... ...

In a blog post put together by the mobile analytics firm Flurry, the company takes a look at pricing on the App Store and comes away with some interesting results.

By analyzing mobile analytics across 350,000 apps and covering a time-frame of four years, Flurry found that the percentage of apps available for free has risen steadily since 2010.

Today, 90% of apps are available for free while 6% are available for just $0.99. Compare that to 2011 when 80% of apps were free and 15% of apps were available for $0.99.

Flurry attributes the percentage increase of free apps to the fact that customers "want free content more than they want to avoid ads or to have the absolute highest quality content possible."

That sentiment undoubtedly rings true for many users. As a personal example, I'm still rockin' the free version of Words With Friends because the ads aren't...

Just like so many other things you can do on your Mac, Apple has given us more than one way to control the system volume. They also gave us a couple cool tricks for controlling exactly how you adjust the audio level. Want to learn how? Watch our Video Quick Tip to learn more.

Seriously, something has to be done with these clowns.

∞ Read this on The Loop

It'll be some time before Tim Cook is ready to step down as Apple's CEO, but John Martellaro, always thinking ahead, has some thoughts on the process for selecting the next Apple CEO. The analysis, in fact, applies to any corporation.

An update’s an update.

OnyX, Titanium Software’s popular freeware multifunction utility for Mac OS X, has been updated to version 2.7.2. The new version, a 22.1 megabyte download, adds the following fixes and changes:
- Deleting the Fonts Cache improved.

- Deleting the Applications Cache improved.

- Deleting the temporary items improved.

- New option: Turn On/Turn Off the startup sound.

- New option: Show/hide Quartz Debug’s hidden options.

- New option: Show/hide the desktop icons.

- New option: Modify the default save location of new documents.

- Turn on Dashboard and its widgets option corrected.

- Turn on Mission Control option corrected.

- Bug when restoring default options corrected.

OnyX 2.7.2 requires an Intel-based processor and OS X 10.8 or later to...

iPhone activation figures from Verizon, the largest carrier in the U.S., suggest that Apple could have sold as many as 34.7 million iPhones in the just-concluded June quarter.  ...

Corrupt and new disks might not have a working Recovery partition, but there are still ways to access one and reinstall OS X, if needed.

One of my favorite new features in Keyboard Maestro 6 is the ability to click on links in web pages using either Safari or Google Chrome.

This new feature let me make an old macro (which was based around trying to click in the right place) a lot more efficient. I'm going to show you how I set this up. Although you probably won't be using this same web database system, chances are good that you could encounter something similar to it. My hope is that this will help people who are unfamiliar with Keyboard Maestro (or macro programs in general) understand how they might use automation to help make their computing lives a little easier.

"What can't be automated?"

Every week I log into EBSCO, a web database of journal articles. I put in my search terms or follow links from TextWeek - another site which has indexed articles by topic and links to EBSCO. That takes me to a summary page for...

A selection of videos on VLC 2.0 running on an iPad. VLC

After disappearing the better part of three years ago, the VLC media player app for iOS has made its triumphant return to Apple’s App Store. Its version number has been bumped to 2.0, and the app now includes features like Wi-Fi and Dropbox syncing as well as the ability to download files from the Web.

A version of VLC created by the company Applidium first made its debut on the App Store back in November 2010, but it was pulled in January 2011 due to a licensing dispute. All versions of VLC were then open-source and licensed under GPLv2; the App Store imposes its own licensing and DRM restrictions on apps. One of VLC’s original developers, Rémi Denis-Courmont, claimed that the licensing...

Apple is negotiating with "other big distributors" about Apple TV apps similar to the one it's working on with Time Warner, according to the New York Times. Sources involved in the talks explain that Apple is hoping to collect fees from distributors in return for improving their TV service. For cable providers, the deals would theoretically keep people paying for subscriptions, a worry in an age when services like Hulu, YouTube, and Netflix allow people to be free of cable or satellite packages....  ...

Share Bucket (free) enables you to annotate and upload screen captures. While it may not be the most original idea on the Mac App Store, it's certainly a welcome entry to the field. It offers simple, cloud-integrated sharing with a few minor growing pains.

Share Bucket supports Dropbox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive. You pick the destination and authenticate.

Menu bar-based options enable you to capture and annotate or to upload existing images to your account. Once uploaded, the app triggers notification center, so you always know when the material is ready to use. A URL awaits you on the system pasteboard.

A critical "Auto-upload" screenshots option in Preferences allows you to automatically shoot and upload. That's perfect for anyone who takes occasional screenshots and wants immediate gratification from a shareable asset.

Share Bucket did experience some issues during my...

Verizon today announced its earnings for Q2 2013. As expected, the carrier reported strong results with $5.2 billion in profit and $29.79 billion in revenue. Verizon added 1 million new customers and now has 100.1 million retail connections. The carrier also confirmed it activated 7.5 M smartphones, over half of which were iPhones. This brings Verizon's quarterly iPhone activations to approximately 3.87 million units, which is up from the 2.7 million it activated in the same quarter last year. It is right on par with the 4 million activations it reported in the opening quarter of 2013.

[Via...

As announced on the company blog, popular transportation app Uber will have ice cream trucks available from 11-5 in 33 cities tomorrow.

If you are lucky enough to live in one of the cities, you can pop open the app tomorrow and slide to the “Ice Cream” option. The ice cream isn’t cheap – around $4-5 per person and bundled together for five or six people – but the near-instant gratification and overall experience may make the high cost worth it.

For more information about Apps, Uber, and...

Always fascinating to see things like this.

Apple’s iPhone remains the dominant smartphone at Verizon.

Reporting second-quarter earnings on Thursday, Verizon said that once again it sold more iPhones than it did any other handset. The carrier sold 7.5 million smartphones during the period. Of those, 3.8 million — 51 percent — were iPhones. (Note: Verizon did not break down sales by model). This despite the launch of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 during the quarter.

That’s a decline from the quarter prior, in which Verizon sold 4.1 million iPhones, and those devices accounted for a 55.6 percent share of its smartphone sales. But on a year-over-year basis, it’s up significantly. The 3.8 million iPhones that Verizon activated in the just-reported quarter is 44 percent more than the 2.7 million iPhones it activated in the second quarter of 2012.

And that’s encouraging news, coming as it does ahead of Apple’s quarterly earnings report next...

OS X 10.8.5 is on its way.

Per MacNN, Apple is now seeding a fifth beta of OS X 10.8.5 to developers. The latest build, 12F23, is just a few version numbers advanced since the previous one, 12F20. That could mean that v10.8.5 will reach the public by the end of the month.

There are no known issues with 12F23. Apple is asking developers to continue testing components like graphics, Wi-Fi, wake-from-sleep functions, mobile device management, and PDF viewing and accessibility.

If you’ve gotten your hands on the new build and have any feedback to offer, please let us know in the comments.

A new kickstarter project:

“Of Beards and Men” is a labor of love for graphic designer and photographer Joseph D.R. OLeary. Over the past 18 months, he’s photographed 130+ bearded men. Each portrait is an exploration into that man’s passions, personality and unique individuality.

Why wasn’t I photographed?

∞ Read this on The Loop

When Apple goes buying components, it at least drops a hint as to what’s coming up in the product line.

Per 9to5Mac and DigiTimes, Apple has apparently been purchasing 55 and 65-inch Ultra HD TV panels from LG.

Apple has been rumored several times to be building a full fledged HDTV to go along with the much expected revamped AppleTV service coming in the the near future. The latest from the usual lineup of analysts points to a launch as early as...

If you’re a Verizon aficionado, this isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Per AppleInsider, in response to similar offerings from rivals AT&T and T-Mobile, Verizon on Thursday unveiled its new Edge smartphone upgrade program, offering subscribers the ability to upgrade to a new handset after six months.

Verizon Edge is pitched as a “flexible equipment payment plan,” allowing customers to spread the retail price of a new phone over a 24-month period. If users pay 50 percent of the retail cost of their smartphone, they can upgrade to a new phone in as soon as six months.

The new program is available for any smartphone that Verizon offers, including Apple’s iPhone lineup. Customers choose the phone they want along with a month-to-month service plan.

...

The latest version of Google Maps for iOS released yesterday brought a number of new features. The most notable addition is support for the iPad, but there's also a really cool easter egg Google added into the app. The easter egg allows you to cache maps for off-line use inside the app. It has actually been available in the Android version for a while, but this is the first time it has made its way to iOS.

To cache your maps for off-line use, first zoom in to the area of the map that you want to save. Be careful you aren't trying to cover an extremely large area or else this trick won't work. Once you've zoomed into an area you want to save for off-line use, tap on the search field and type "ok maps." Then tap the search button on the keyboard to start downloading your off-line map.

If you've zoomed in far enough, you'll then see the Google Maps icon briefly...

Oopsie.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Smith Micro has officially launched Manga Studio 5 EX, a new edition of its comics illustration software. The EX releases are more professionally-oriented than their non-EX counterparts. In the case of Studio 5, the core EX addition is a multi-page story layout module, which let people organize complete comic books....   ...

Apple, along with other tech companies such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, will reportedly publish a letter asking for increased transparency in U.S. government surveillance. The letter will ask government leaders to let service providers report on national security-related information requests with more detail. Faced with accusations of surreptitious data…

Joining similar offerings from rivals AT&T and T-Mobile, Verizon on Thursday unveiled its new Edge smartphone upgrade program, offering subscribers the ability to upgrade to a new handset after six months.   ...

There are a few snippets of AppleTV related news popping up today. The first we take with the usual grain of salt as it comes to us from the often unreliable DigiTimes. The publication has been reporting some more believable stories as of late, but today’s rumor of Apple purchasing 55 and 65-inch Ultra HD TV panels from LG seems to be more rumor than anything else.

Apple has of course been rumored several times to be building a full fledged HDTV to go along with the much expected revamped AppleTV service coming in the the near future. The latest from the usual lineup of analysts points to a launch as early as the end of this year or early 2014. LG and Sharp– two of Apple’s regular display suppliers– would be obvious choices to source...

While iPhone sales got off to a great start when the device was released in India this past November sales have cooled in the last few months. A new report from the Times of India shows that in the last quarter of 2012 Apple sold 230,000 iPhones in the country; by the end of the first quarter of 2013 that number had dropped to 120,000. Apple's market share in the country has fallen from 4.7% to 2.1%.

This sales drop comes despite Apple's increased advertising and promotions in the region, including discounts and monthly payment plans. Analysts point to the lack of new Apple products hitting the shelves as keeping the company from sustaining their initial buzz. Meanwhile Samsung, Apple's main rival, has met each discount and sale with their own...

Time Warner Cable is reportedly working on an application for the Apple TV set-top box that will allow cable subscribers to stream both live and on-demand shows without the need to have a dedicated cable box.   ...

Apple has allegedly hired a number of experts in the field non-intrusive medical sensors, ranging from vein mapping to glucose tracking, potentially revealing some of the company's interests in developing a wrist-worn smart accessory.  ...

The list of vendors opting out of Windows RT has added one more major manufacturer with news that Lenovo has dropped its IdeaPad Yoga 11. Windows RT has been plagued by a poor user reception with manufacturers either scrapping plans for Windows RT devices, slashing prices on models , or even cutting devices from their lineup altogether. Although Microsoft includes Office apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for free on Window RT devices, its inability to run legacy applications in desktop model, the conspicuous absence of Outlook and lack of Windows 8 ëmoderní apps has dampened... ...