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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 October 11, 2013 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 11 Oct 2013 16:15:00 EST. Please see our...

Yelp updated its iOS app today with a slightly tweaked UI that makes it easier for users to quickly post reviews, photos and check-in at locations. The app is getting rid of its old Home tab and now by default loads up the “Nearby” tab. In addition, the the tab in the middle along the bottom of the app now launches quick access to Check In, Review, and Photo buttons (as pictured above).

The updated app also includes “larger notification photos, better scrolling performance, updated icons and animations.”

What’s New in Version 7.2.0

New in v7.2
- We said...

The most recent iOS update of Instagram removes an option to disable automatic video playback, users have discovered. The change wasn't mentioned in release notes. Without the toggle, video clips will attempt to play immediately whenever they appear in a feed; they do begin muted, however, and preloading can be limited to Wi-Fi....
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Cyrus Lee at ZDNet reports that iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s units bought in Hong Kong will not be supported by the Apple warranty for China. It seems that the iPhone 5s model numbers for devices sold in Hong Kong are different than the model numbers sold in the rest of China, as are the iPhone 5c model numbers.

The prices in Hong Kong are lower than the prices in China, so Lee expects this potential service and warranty problem will not affect where Chinese consumers purchase their new iPhones.

This information came through an employee at a Shanghai Apple store and the original source is a NetEase report written in Chinese, a beat covered by Cyrus Lee. He also writes that the gold iPhone 5s is popular with Chinese consumers, but availability is limited.

[via...

It was mentioned in the Vanity Fair article we linked to the other day, but here are some pictures of the Ive-designed desk.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Unlike standard font collections, smart collections will dynamically update based on search criteria.

Later this month, on October 25, Apple's latest smartphones will land in the Netherlands, and if you're a customer of KPN, one of the country's wireless providers, you'll be happy to hear that its network will indeed support 4G on both the iPhone 5s and 5c. KPN is currently leading the way in 4G in the Netherlands, using a variety of bands for its network, which should cover roughly 80 percent of the country by the end of the year.

While 4G compatibility is typically a given in many countries, KPN's 4G network originally wasn't compatible with the iPhone 5 due to its use of an unsupported band. Now that the iPhone 5s and 5c have launched with support of KPN's 800MHz band, the groundwork is set for plenty of high-speed iPhone fun.

[via ZDNet...

Consultant Alicia Katz Pollock was called in to help a user whose cursor was jumping around inexplicably in a Microsoft Word 2011 document. The solution may feel random, but should be welcome if you’re suffering from a similar problem.

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.

New photos from the San Jose Mercury News today reveal additional details about Apple’s new campus, slated to be completed sometime in either 2015 or 2016. A scale model of the planned building was shown to The Mercury News by Apple’s CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, located at an office on the 175-acre site of Apple’s planned campus. According to Oppenheimer:

 ”The concept of the building is collaboration and fluidity. It’ll provide a...

Apple today has changed its iPhone 5s shipping estimates in the United States (and other countries such as China, Canada, and Australia), to note that the phones will ship in 2-3 weeks. Previously, Apple said that phones would ship in October. The high-end of the new quoted time will put some phones in the range of shipping during the first week of November…

In addition to noticing the shipping estimate change on Apple’s website, we have heard from a number of iPhone 5s buyers who have ordered iPhone 5s devices from Apple in the past day or so. These readers have been quoted delivery estimates ranging from the...

Some users with the new iPhone 5s are getting a very Windows-like 'blue screen of death'. There have been several reports on the Apple support boards talking about it, and even a sample video.

It seems the problem arises when using the iWork apps: Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Reports say the problem happens when the Home button gets a double tap to exit an iWork app. The result, in some cases, is a blue screen and then a reboot of the phone.

I could not duplicate the problem with any of the iWork apps on my 5s, but it's clear some users are experiencing this frustrating bug.

Like any new release, iOS 7 hasn't been trouble free. Apple is already working on a nasty...

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Earlier in the week, TUAW featured a post about a special, one-of-a-kind Leica M camera that was designed by Apple's Jony Ive and his close friend, designer Marc Newson. The camera was created for Product (Red) and a charity auction that's scheduled for November 23 at Sotheby's in New York. Vanity Fair's Paul Goldberger interviewed the two designers about design, the auction and their friendship, revealing some fascinating stories and facts.

Ive and Newson have been good friends for years; their families actually spend time together each July at Britain's Goodwood Festival of Speed. While Ive has become well-known as the designer of Apple's mass-market products, Newson is best known for some of his more rare and handcrafted works like 1986's "Lockheed Lounge." One single example...

Images emerged on Friday of a custom aluminum desk co-designed by Apple's Jony Ive for Bono's Product(RED) charity auction, showing that Ive's minimalist aesthetic carries through even in furniture design.
   ...

This week at Apple's online store find a selection of refurbished Mac Pros at discounted prices, up to $850 off. First up is the Mac Pro with a 2.8GHz Intel Quad-Core Xeon processor, 3GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive, which has been reduced by $680 to $1,819. Priced at $2,069 is the Mac Pro with a 3.2GHz Intel Quad-Core Xeon processor, 3GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive....
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At Dell.com this week, save $50 on the Alienware 17-inch aluminum notebook computer which carries a list price of $1,499, but is cut to $1,449 when coupon code "2M66J?BPVPP$F3" is used at checkout. That's about $150 less than the lowest price offered anywhere else. This computer features a 2.4GHz Intel Quad-Core Haswell processor, 8GB of RAM and a 750GB hard drive with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M 2GB video card and comes with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit pre-installed. A one year warranty on parts and labor is included from Dell....
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These people need a punch in the face.

[Via Jim Coudal]

∞ Read this on The Loop

Stocks of the iPhone 5s at US Apple Stores have declined substantially in the past two weeks, says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. The data was compiled using Apple's Personal Pickup availability tracker. "Supply of the iPhone 5S has declined in the US from 27% of total SKU's available two weeks ago to 6% over the past week, based on our checks of 60 Apple stores. Separately, the percent of stores that had at least one SKU declined from 90% two weeks ago to 40% over the past week," Munster writes....
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Doctor Who, the legendary British sci-fi series, turns 50 this year, but the BBC never expected it to last so long, and it foolishly destroyed or recorded over many of the early episodes. Fortunately, two lost stories, “The Enemy of the World” and “The Web of Fear”, were found in Nigeria, remastered, and have been released exclusively on iTunes — to be seen for the first time in over 40 years. The two stories are available for $9.99 a piece and feature Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor and feature Nicholas Courtney’s first appearance as the beloved Colonel (later Brigadier) Lethbridge-Stewart. Unfortunately, episode 3 of “Web of Fear” is still missing, though the serial features a reconstructed episode with audio and still images. There are still 27 Doctor Who stories that are partially or entirely missing.

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet....

Image: abcnews.com

KGI’s Mingchi Kuo, an analyst with a solid track-record, and the man who came closest (almost) to calling opening weekend sales of the iPhone, now believes Apple shipped ‘just’ 11.4M iPhone 5c handsets in September, rather than the 17M he had earlier forecast, reports Business Insider.

Kuo is now estimating Apple shipped 11.4 million 5Cs in the September quarter, a 33% drop from his original estimate. He also says he expects 5C sales to be just 10.4 million units for the December quarter, a 10% sequential drop...

Recur! The Reverse To-Do List is list maker app that turns things around by keeping track of the things you've done instead of the things you need to do.

Created by the developer behind CARROT, Recur! lets you create a to-do list for the things that you've done. You can track anything from exercises to the number of books you've read. The app is basic in its features and allows you to add to the counter every time you complete a task. There is no history tracking for each task, so you can only see the timestamp from when you last completed a task. You can also set an alarm to remind you to do the task again.

Recur! integrates into the CARROT To-do list, which is handy for those who use that app to track their to-do list. Recur!, though, is not CARROT enabled and does not have the personality of its list-tracing cousin.

...

With rumors of an Apple smartwatch running hot and heavy, analysts are offering thier take on just what might be up -- or at the end of -- the company's sleeve. Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Brian White thinks the mythical watch isn't about being a smartwatch at all, and instead is a wrist top remote for managing music, TV, home automation, and more.

The Mac Observer Spin:
Apple may or may not be working on a smartwatch. It may or may not be a home automation remote control. What we really know for sure right now is that analysts are all frantically trying to figure out just what Apple is working on, and that Samsung jumped the gun with a weak entrance into the smartwatch market in hopes of beating Apple.

The day you never thought would arrive may finally be here.

Of course, it still depends on how you look at the data…

According to Asymco’s Horace Dediu, over the last five years, Post-PC devices have displaced conventional Windows PCs so rapidly that Microsoft’s dominance over personal computing has plummeted from roughly 90 percent share to less than a third.

The data highlights in implosion of growth that has sapped Worldwide PC shipments starting with at the launch of Apple’s iPad in 2010.

While PC shipments have stagnated over the past five years, Apple’s sales of iPhone and iPads and the estimated shipments of Android-based devices...

If there’s a new iPhone handset popularity contest going on, the iPhone 5s is currently the winner.

Per AppleInsider, three weeks after the latest iPhones went on sale in the U.S., availability of the iPhone 5s has actually declined while Apple prepares for greater international roll-out.

Analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray has been checking inventory levels of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c since they went on sale Sept. 21. In a note to investors released on Friday, he indicated that supply of the iPhone 5s went from 27 percent availability two weeks...

Kirk McElhearn talks you through the details of your iCloud backup. Well worth a read.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Barence writes "Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth claims Apple will follow Ubuntu's lead and converge the iPhone and MacBook product lines. Speaking to PC Pro to mark the upcoming launch of Ubuntu 13.10, Shuttleworth said that the failed Ubuntu Edge smartphone — an attempt to bridge mobile and desktop computing devices — had set an example that others will follow. 'We've seen a very interested ripple go through the industry, and an uptick in interest in convergence,' Shuttleworth added. 'People are saying yes, mobile processors are catching up with the desktop. When Apple announced the iPhone 5s, it called the processor "desktop-class," and I don't think that was an accident – it was sending what we think is a very clear signal that it will converge the iPhone and the MacBook Air.'"

...

In my house, we make a lot of movies. We are always on the lookout for clever techniques we can incorporate into our own projects. Here are two videos I just love and wanted to share.

This first one seems impossible and real. But it can’t be real, can it?

This second video shows you some tricks you can use to make movies like the first one (be sure to follow the headline link for a bit more background). Watching this second one inspires me, makes me think I could make the first one with some clever editing. Great stuff!

3 Tricks For Your Impossibly Small Film Crew from Vimeo Video School on Vimeo.

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U.S. District Court Judge Sue Robinson handed Google a big win this week when she dismissed the class action lawsuit alleging the Internet search giant was bypassing Safari's privacy settings. According to the Judge, Google did actually did circumvent the browser privacy settings, but that the plaintiffs didn't show they had been harmed by the action.

Another object co-designed by Apple's Sir Jonathan Ive has appeared ahead of a charity auction, but rather than a gadget, this time it is furniture. The (RED) Desk by Jony Ive and Marc Newson will, like the one-off Leica M Rangefinder designed by the duo, will be auctioned off by Sotheby's in New York on November 23rd for the Product (RED) charity, with proceeds set to be used to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria in Africa....
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Two recently recovered story lines from the wildly popular Doctor Who TV series were released on the iTunes Store on Thursday, making them available for the first time in 45 years. The story arcs, "The Enemy of the World," and "The Web of Fear," both feature Patrick Troughton as The Doctor. "The Enemy of the World" let Troughton play both The Doctor and the story's villian, and "The Web of Fear" gave us the first appearance of Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart -- a character that later became a regular on the series. Completely recovering both stories was a special find since so many of the early Doctor Who episodes were presumed lost thanks the BBC's practice of reusing the video tapes all of its shows were recorded on. "The Enemy of the World" and "The Web of Fear" are priced at US$9.99 each.

Jonathan Ive you know. One of his best friends, Marc Newson, might not be quite as familiar a name to you. Newson is also a world-class designer. The two are collaborating for the first time for an auction to benefit Bono’s Product (Red) anti-H.I.V. campaign. Vanity Fair interviewed them both.

In an effort that is part connoisseurship, part creativity, and part curatorship, the two designers have assembled a group of more than 40 objects that will be auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York on November 23 to benefit Product (Red), the eccentrically punctuated charity set up by Bono and Bobby Shriver in 2006 to support international efforts to fight the H.I.V. epidemic in Africa. Two one-of-a-kind pieces—a metal desk and a special Leica camera—were designed by Ive and Newson in collaboration, specially for the auction. Several others, like a customized Steinway grand piano and a Georg Jensen silver pitcher, are variations on existing objects that Ive and Newson both liked and got...

Whenever there is a new operating system, it’s not surprising to see apps crash at a somewhat higher rate, given all the changes.

But one of the interesting things in Apple’s latest iPhone transition is that apps appear to be crashing at a much higher rate on the new iPhone 5s as on either the iPhone 5c or the iPhone 5. In its look at hundreds of millions of app launches since the debut of the latest iPhones, Crittercism says that programs crash about two percent on the iPhone 5s, as compared to just under one percent on both the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5.

“Anytime there is new hardware or software release, we see issues,” Crittercism CEO Andrew Levy said in an interview. “Inevitably, over time, those issues get resolved.”

Levy said that perhaps the...

Home automation image: insideci.co.uk

There are a couple of analyst rumors doing the rounds at present that are best described as … questionable.

First, we have Brian White claim (via VentureBeat) that the key focus of the long-rumored iWatch is as a control for home automation systems.

As an Apple supplier, our contact offered insight into the “iWatch” and described this potential new device as much more than an extension of your iPhone but as a multi-purpose gateway in allowing consumers to control their home (i.e., heating/cooling, lights, audio, video, etc.)

You may recall that Mr White is a man who likes his remotes: he predicted back in April that the...

BlackBerry’s mounting misfortune is its rivals’ gain. Not only are competing smartphone makers picking up market-share points from the foundering company, they’re poaching employees, as well.

On Sept. 26, not a week after BlackBerry preannounced a horrific shortfall in second-fiscal-quarter earnings, and plans to sack 4,500 employees, Apple invited a number of BlackBerry employees to a recruitment event in Cambridge, Ontario — a 15-minute drive from the Canadian company’s Waterloo headquarters.

“If you are interested in working on the world’s most advanced mobile devices and operating systems as well as alongside other amazing, talented and passionate engineers then Apple may have opportunities for you,” reads an invitation sent via LinkedIn to some BlackBerry employees.

Held at the Cambridge Hotel and...

The BBC has discovered 11 "Doctor Who" episodes from the late 1960s in Nigeria. Nine of those episodes were originally lost after the BBC junked the original tapes in the '60s. The newly discovered episodes have been released as iTunes exclusives as part of Doctor Who's 50th anniversary.

The episodes make up two Second Doctor serials: "The Enemy of the World" and "The Web of Fear," which originally aired during the series' original fifth season in 1967 and 1968. The Doctor during this time was Patrick Troughton, with Frasier Himes and Deborah Watling playing companions Jamie and Victoria. One episode of "The Web of Fear" is still missing but was reconstructed using episode stills.

"The Enemy of...

Adoption of the Google TV platform trails Apple's Apple TV device by a wide margin, and now the search company may be ready to rebrand its television offerings under the Android name in an effort to spark consumer interest.
  ...

Fans of Doctor Who are celebrating the recovery of nine previously-thought-lost 1960s episodes of the classic sci-fi fantasy show, with the recovered material already exclusively available on iTunes less than a day after the find was publicly announced. This is the first time that newly-rediscovered episodes of the pioneering BBC space drama have been made available in digital form before being broadcast or made available on DVD, and come just over a month ahead of the show's 50th birthday....
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A Delaware judge has dismissed a class-action lawsuit filed by users of Apple's Safari browser, finding that the plaintiffs could not prove that the search giant had caused any real harm when it circumvented Apple's security measures in order to store cookies in the browser.
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It's that time of year: a new Windows release is coming, with Mac virtualization application updates in tow. You'd think there's only so much you could do with a program that hosts another OS, but these new updates are surprising for their innovation. With the previous release of VMware Fusion 5 Professional, VMware started differentiating its products from Parallels by tapping its established, IT-oriented features. On the other hand, Parallels is pushing closer Mac integration and better 3D graphics support. The latest releases seem to be in much the same vein, but that's enough talking around these releases—let's dive in.

Test Hardware

17-inch MacBook Pro 2.5GHz Sandy Bridge
• 16GB RAM
• 1GB Radeon 6770M
• OS X 10.9 Mavericks builds 13A584 through golden master

13-inch mid-2011 MacBook Air 1.7GHz Core i5
• 4GB RAM
• Intel HD 3000 384MB graphics
• OS X 10.8.4

Since both VMware and...

The iPad can do a lot of what we traditionally use our computers for, so it stands to reason that some folks would see their tablet as a suitable stand-in for a new PC. According to sales data from Gartner, Apple's tablet may have utterly crushed the growth of PC shipments worldwide. The data -- which is presented in graph form, courtesy of Statista -- appears to indicate that consumers are going with tablets rather than full-fledged computers, as the PC market is actually shrinking.

However, there's likely a lot more to this than simply the release of Apple's now iconic tablet. Yes, the iPad has certainly replaced a few PCs out there, but devices like smartphones and other, non-iPad tablets have done so, too. Overall, portable devices are more capable now than ever before, and for individuals who only used their home computers for email or web...

US District Judge Sue Robinson from the Delaware federal court has dismissed a class-action suit against Google, ruling that the class could not prove that Google's cookie deposition policies actually generated any harm. The plaintiffs, users of Apple's Safari and Microsoft's Internet Explorer alleged that Google had bypassed the respective firms' browser settings on cookie usage, and as a result were served targeted advertisements based on ill-gotten data from searches and web browsing habits....
 ...

Western Digital today expanded its storage solution portfolio with the introduction of the new WD Sentinel DS5100 and WD Sentinel DS6100 (S-series) ultra-compact network storage plus servers. The WD Sentinel S-series features Intel Xeon processors and are pre-installed with Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials....
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Today's iOS 7 video tip is for iPhone 5s owners who want to know more about Touch ID fingerprints. While the device simply stores fingerprints as "Fingerprint 1," "Fingerprint 2" and so on, you might want to know which finger corresponds to that title. We'll show you how, courtesy of the original written tip by Jeff Gamet of The Mac Observer.

You can then edit those titles so you know exactly what fingerprint data is stored in each file, or even delete a fingerprint from Touch ID.

As with all of our other video tips, this one can be set to full-screen for easier viewing.

iOS 7 video tip: Associating Touch ID fingerprints with fingers originally appeared on TUAW - The...

iOS app developer Jeremy Olson of Tapity has written an interesting article on how developers can survive selling apps and yep, paid apps are dead. (Tapity wrote Languages, Grades 3, and Hours, all available in the App Store.)

Olson cites anecdotal evidence that people are not buying apps in the quantities today as they did even a year ago. App downloads are healthy, but the ability to survive as an independent developer is in flux.

In-app purchases make up one revenue stream that has worked well for some, but there's still no guarantee of success. Olson cites a tweet from David Barnard of Contrast that lists "the four main factors that work together in a good IAP strategy: "massive download numbers, high conversion...

Our Apple hardware keeps getting more and more capable, and now we have an iPhone 5s with a desktop-class, 64-bit CPU. The massive data created by these modern devices can easily get out of control. All the while, Apple focuses on mobility and a smallish Mac Pro. Is the data management solution really in the cloud? What's the path forward to manage our enormous quantities of data?

Owners of the latest MacBook Air models, take note: Apple has just released an EFI firmware update that fixes those pesky problems when trying to use Windows 8 via Boot Camp. Here's what Apple says about the MacBook Air EFI Firmware Update 2.7:

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

This update addresses an issue which may cause a black screen to appear when installing Windows 7 or Windows 8 using Boot Camp Assistant if both an external optical drive and USB thumb drive are connected to the system. This update also ensures that the system will boot by default into OS X after installation of Windows 8.

Owners of the latest MacBook Air can get the firmware update by running Software Update on their Mac or by downloading it directly here.

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Today’s can’t miss deals:

50% off XCOM Enemy Unknown,...