On September 19, BlackBerry Ltd. announced that it was going to cut up to 40 percent of its workforce "across all departments." Now comes word via the Financial Post that Apple was quick to set up a recruitment drive about 12 miles away from the company's headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario.

In the Cambridge Hotel and Conference Centre on Sept. 26, located in Cambridge, Ont. on the outskirts of the Kitchener-Waterloo region where BlackBerry was born, the iPhone maker invited local talent with the aim of luring them to their Silicon Valley operations.

The report further relays that invitations sent out to prospective employees indicated that most positions will be based out of Cupertino, noting that "relocation and immigration assistance will be...

Designers Jonathan Ive and Marc Newson talk about their trade in a new issue of Vanity Fair. The pair were recently involved in selecting or designing over 40 objects -- such as a custom Leica M camera -- for an upcoming auction benefiting Bono's Product (RED) charity. "We are both fanatical in terms of care and attention to things people don't see immediately," says Ive, better known as Apple's senior VP of design. "It's like finishing the back of a drawer. Nobody's going to see it, but you do it anyway. Products are a form of communication ó they demonstrate your value system, what you ca...
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LivingPlug has released its latest electrical outlet accessory, the Inlet. Installed over a conventional home outlet, Inlet extends its utility with the inclusion of three tamper-resistant electrical outlets, as well as a 2.1a USB port for device charging. A 'UnPlug' button is also included, which allows users to stop energy loss from devices that are connected, but not in use. An optional anchor screw is included, for parents to secure the Inlet more permanently to the standard outlet so children cannot access the non-tamper resistant wall outlets underneath. Able to cover a duplex outlet ent...
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Today, Apple has issued a firmware update (via MacRumors) for the latest MacBook Air models. The update focuses on fixes revolving Boot Camp and the installation of Windows:

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.

Earlier this month, Apple issued a pair of updates that focus on fixing...

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 10, 2013 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 15:15:00 EST. Please see our...

Visitors to China are often perplexed to find that they can't access Twitter, Facebook or other sites. The reason isn't that they don't have access to cellular or WiFi networks; instead, it's state censorship and surveillance courtesy of the Golden Shield Project, aka "The Great Firewall of China." Roman Loyola at TechHive recently visited Beijing and used the trip as a research opportunity to see how visitors with iPhones can bypass the Great Firewall and tweet their trip to friends back home.

It turns out to be somewhat easy; you just need to have an unlocked GSM iPhone and then purchase a SIM card when you arrive in China. Before you leave, though, you also need to sign up for a virtual private network (VPN) service. Loyola highlights two in particular --...

On September 26th, Apple hosted a recruitment event aimed explicitly at BlackBerry workers, says Canada's Financial Post. The event took place at the Cambridge Hotel and Conference Centre in Cambridge, Ontario, a little over 14 miles from BlackBerry's Waterloo headquarters. To attract people the company is said to have sent out invitations to BlackBerry employees via LinkedIn....
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Less than a week after BlackBerry announced plans to slash 40 percent of its workforce, Apple hosted a recruitment drive near the company's corporate headquarters in Canada.
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Touchpad vendor Synaptics has announced plans to acquire Validity Sensors, a primary remaining fingerprint sensor vendor following Apple's acquisition of AuthenTec last year, and a reported supplier involved in Samsung's delayed efforts to match the iPhone's Touch ID fingerprint sensing technology.
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This past September, Apple released iTunes Radio in the United States, marking the company's first foray into the world of music streaming. But what about the rest of the world? What about our friends in the Great White North? The answer seemingly came earlier this week when we reported that Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand would be getting the service sometime in 2014.

But then something strange happened earlier today. Reports started coming in on Twitter that iTunes Radio was suddenly available for some Canadian and UK customers before being quickly removed.

9to5Mac was able to confirm first hand that the service was available in Canada, while readers wrote in via Twitter to say they had...

If you are selling or donating your old Mac, be sure to secure your data and properly set it up for the new owners.

Bose is taking on Sonos by making a version of its SoundLink speakers that are designed for home use. The SoundTouch range of wireless home audio speakers consists of three speakers that all connect over an existing Wi-Fi network, and are able to pull audio from song libraries on the local network as well as over the Internet....
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The nation?s largest electronics buy-back service saw nearly a twofold jump in the number of customers who locked in cash offers to sell their old iPads immediately after Apple leaked the Oct. 22 date for this year?s iPad introductions to a major media publication.
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It's time to save some of that hard-earned cash with our Daily Deals, featuring exclusive TUAW Deals, a handy list from Dealnews and our own hand-picked iOS and OS X selections.

TUAW's Daily Deals

The SuperStacked Mac Bundle [On sale for $19, down from $98]

It's another big mac bundle form TUAW Deals with an emphasis on entrepreneurs, designers, and developers. Pricing starts at $35, but will increase by $1 each day. The bundle contains the following apps and services:

• xScope ($30) - A indispensable UI tool for designers and developers - 5 Star App Store Review
• Painter Lite ($69) - Ease into the world of digital art
• ColorSchemer Studio 2 ($50) - Professional color matching app for Mac
• CSS Hat ($30) - Instantly turn Photoshop layer styles to CSS3
• ...

The once-mighty have fallen. Nokia's Symbian smartphone OS was, not too many years ago, the platform of choice. Now, says Daniel Eran Dilger at AppleInsider, the company is being sold off for scrap. He relates how a Finnish journalist for Helsingin Sanomat wrote a letter to the company in 2008 noting that a recently acquired Nokia E51 smartphone was almost impossible to use compared to an iPod touch purchased after seeing a friend's device.

Journalist Lauri Malkavaara's missive to Nokia stated that "I ordered my own iPod touch, turned it on, and knew immediately how to use it. I have used the device now on a daily basis for over six months, and I have not even thought about any manuals. The logic of the device opens up right away. It is no wonder that it is a huge success all over the world."

Malkavaara then went on to describe...

T-mobile has announced that it will roll out free 2G data coverage in over 100 countries, reports AllThingsD. The move is in an effort to make the carrier more attractive to frequent travelers -- and address an issue common with US carriers: high data roaming charges. As AllThingsD reports:

"There's just so many pieces of data that suggest to us this is a huge issue and pain point, but also a huge opportunity," T-Mobile CEO John Legere said in an interview, noting that Americans take 55 million international trips per year. However, he said, 40 percent of customers turn off their phones to avoid high charges, while many others get stuck with high bills when they return.

Under T-Mobile's new plans, which don't carry an extra fee, T-Mobile offers unlimited 2G data and texting in 100 countries, with voice calls in those same places costing 20 cents per minute...

Earlier this week, we reported on some details and photos of the one-off Leica camera designed by Apple’s Jony Ive and Marc Newson for the Product(RED) campaign. Leica originally shared some interesting tidbits about the functionality and development process of the camera, but now, Vanity Fair has published an extensive interview with Ive and Newson about the process. The report provides an interesting look into Apple PR’s process of organizing interviews of its executives:

We were meeting in the Royal Suite partly because Ive was staying in a more conventional room down the hall, but just as much, I suspect, because that is how Apple does...

You may not always need to access your Windows computer from your Mac or iOS device, but when you do, you might have turned to Austria’s HLW Software, which offered mobile clients for both Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and the Virtual Network Computing (VNC) standard.

Earlier this week, though, the Vienna-based company announced that it had discontinued the iOS, Android, and Mac versions of iTap mobile (along with the rest of its apps), and advised users to instead await official solutions from Microsoft itself, which it said would be “available in app stores later this month.”

That timing seemed more than fortuitous, so we reached out to Microsoft; a spokesperson for the company told us that “Microsoft did acquire specific IP assets from HLW Software Development GmbH (HLW). This was used as a base for development, on top of which we implemented, amongst other things: RDP 8, RemoteApp support,...

Apple yesterday announced that both the iPhone 5s and 5c will be launching in more than 25 countries on Friday, October 25. Just one week later, more than a dozen additional countries will be getting the iPhone treatment as well.

You can check out a full list of those countries over here. While the list includes countries from all across the globe, from Albania to Moldova and everything in between, one country conspicuously missing from the iPhone launch festivities is Brazil.

That, however, may soon change.

ZDNet is reporting that the Brazilian National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) recently granted the requisite authorization for Apple to sell its new iPhone lineup in the country.

The new Apple...

You've got the look!

This week's roundup of new and updated iOS apps includes new ways to make images—both still and video—look great. Now, everything you produce will have a professional sheen.

U-verse

Good news for subscribers to AT&T U-verse: Live TV is now available through the company’s iOS apps. This week’s update to the app—which already featured video-on-demand options—also features a number of bug fixes and a small update to the user interface. But it’s the ability to watch your favorite shows in real time on your iPad or iPhone that should geneate the most joy among the app’s users.

Cameo

Cameo for iPhone is kind of a cross between Vine and other, more extensive video-editing apps: You can only shoot six seconds of video at a time, but you can...

The iPhone 5s has a cool feature in the Camera app that lets you capture slow motion video, and it works really well. What doesn't work so well -- or at least isn't very obvious -- is how to get that slo-mo video off of your iPhone. Read on to learn how.

Given all the focus on females in top leadership in tech recently — due to the worthy (and it is most certainly that, no matter how much some misguided people might say it is not) debate over the lack of a woman director on the soon-to-IPOed Twitter board — it’s worth a gander at Fortune magazine’s annual list of 50 powerful women in business.

As usual, it has a big group from tech, and mostly from Silicon Valley — pretty much the same group that was named last year — including IBM CEO Ginni Rometty at No. 1 for the second straight year, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg at No. 5, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer at No. 8, and Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman at No. 9. Also on the...

As previously announced by Tim Cook earlier this year, Apple is preparing to open its first retail store in Turkey with a new store currently under construction in Istanbul. The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has picked up around 21,000 square feet of space inside the Zorlu shopping center between Burberry and Louis Vuitton stores.

The store is expected to open in early 2014 and would make for the 13th country that Apple currently operates at least one retail store in. Apple now has over 400 retails stores worldwide and previously announced plans to open 30 new stores this year along with relocating 20 stores to bigger properties to accommodate customers.

(...

Fitbit is expanding its wristband fitness tracker lineup with the new Fitbit Force. The Force tracks your activities much like the Fitbit Flex, including steps taken, distance traveled, calories burned, and sleep patterns. Like the Fitbit One, it includes an altimeter for more accurate tracking the number of floors climbed, and uses Bluetooth 4.0 to wirelessly sync to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. It also sports an OLED display for showing more details about your daily activities. The Fitbit Force is prices at US$129.95 and will be available in the next couple weeks.

Developers who want to start experimenting with iBeacons don't need to wait for hardware to show up on the market or design their own. Radius Networks has published a quick "how-to" for developers that shows how an inexpensive Raspberry Pi and Bluetooth LE dongle can be set up in a few minutes for experimentation purposes.

The post, courtesy of James Nebeker and David Young, provides detailed step-by-step command-line instructions on setting up the RPi, downloading the necessary libraries, configuring the Bluetooth dongle, and creating the necessary start and stop scripts. And with that, you can start designing the future...

Launch Center Pro 2 <3

David Barnard’s Contrast (previously App Cubby) shipped a massive update to the quick shortcut app Launch Center Pro for iPhone today.

Launch Center Pro 2 delivers an iOS 7-inspired user interface and a gorgeous new icon as well as several new features including Dropbox backing up and restoring, various themes, action sharing, and more.

People often ask why anyone would need a separate app to do what their home screen does...

Just when you start to wonder what IK Multimedia is going to come up with next, they deliver a pedalboard to control your Mac and iOS music apps wirelessly.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Brazil's National Telecommunications Agency has completed the approval process that will allow Apple to sell its new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c in the country. The approval has come earlier than expected since the new iPhone models have been available in the United States for only three weeks, and Brazil's approval process often takes months.

The Mac Observer Spin:
Apple is aggressively pushing to get the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c into new markets as quickly as it can. Getting approval in Brazil means it'll be able to start sales in the country earlier than it has with previous product launches.

Dropcam on Thursday announced its new Dropcam Pro camera, adding sharper video, improved audio, greater zoom, a wider viewing angle, and support for both Bluetooth Low Energy and dual-band Wi-Fi to its ever-popopular wireless video monitoring system that works remotely with your iPhone, iPad and Mac.
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It’s the job postings that show where Apple’s headed…

Per The Unofficial Apple Weblog and Bloomberg, a new...

Do you have pets or family members you enjoy checking in on remotely? Or a home that makes you nervous when you're not physically in it, worrying about your stuff? When you think about ways to soothe your anxiety and keep an eye on the things you care about, the mountable, networked, USB powered, Wi-Fi connected cameras of Dropcam are there to help.

Today the camera and cloud video company is announcing its revamped, souped-up camera: Dropcam Pro. The improved unit takes the features of the older Dropcam HD (now renamed to just "Dropcam") and improves video, audio (two-way talk), wireless connectivity, night vision -- even adding Bluetooth LE support to position the Pro as a potential hub for the connected home. The iOS Dropcam apps have been revamped too, with direct setup for cameras and a Hollywood-style "zoom and enhance" mode that has to be seen to be believed....

Image: redorbit.com

Evernote, Adobe, even Apple … just a few of the companies who have found their user data compromised by hackers in recent times. The possibility of a hacker being able to access one of your web accounts is worrying enough – but if you use the same email address and password for almost all the websites you use, the risk becomes huge.

The first thing a hacker does when they get hold of a list of usernames and passwords is to use...

Turn-by-turn navigation in Apple's Maps app on the iPhone is a great feature, but changing the volume so you can better hear those directions hasn't been exactly an easy process -- at least it wasn't until iOS 7. Now changing the voice volume for Maps navigation is fairly simple. Read on and Michael Johnston will show you how.

Passwords stink. Password policies vary widely from the many sites you choose or have to use, and satisfying them all is hard, and hard to keep up with. That's why 1Password is an invaluable application ??and the new 1Password 4 qualifies as a worthy update.
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If you travel internationally, this is a game changer. Global roaming charges are outrageous. My hope is that this pushes other carriers to match T-Mobile.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Dropcam has been around since 2009, but only truly became a player in the app-enabled home security space early last year with the release of the Dropcam HD Wi-Fi video monitoring system. It separated itself from the normal cast of IP video cameras by offering an insanely easy setup process, beautiful software, and effortless mobile device integration (iOS/...

Is that word an Ikea furniture item or a death metal band from Norway?

∞ Read this on The Loop

If you are a Nirvana fan, these are a fantastic find.

Here we have three separate Nirvana interviews conducted by Sherry; all together, they add up to nearly an hour. The interviews catch Nirvana at three very different stages of their career. In November of 1990 Nirvana was riding the modest success of Bleach; in the summer of 1991 they were ready to release Nevermind and they knew they had something special on their hands; by 1992 they had already become superstars and were dealing with that. By the time the last interview rolled around, Nirvana had been named Metal Hammer’s “Best New Band,” which was just really amusing. Among other things, they discuss their willingness to pursue an idea that had been floated in 1991 of touring with Guns N’ Roses.

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US Mac sales fell year-on-year as part of the global decline in the PC market as consumers switch to tablets, phablets and smartphones – but the two major market analysts produced wildly differing estimates of the size of that fall.

IDC has a dramatic drop of 11.2 percent, from 2.14M in the third quarter of 2012 to 1.9M in the same quarter this year, while Gartner shows a much more modest decline of 2.3 percent from 2.2M (close to IDC’s number) to 2.1M. The only point on which both agree is this is the first Q3 decline in Mac sales since 2002, a quarter usually assisted by the back-to-school market …

The credibility of the numbers doesn’t improve when you look at overall US sales across manufacturers: down 0.2 percent according to IDC, while...

Apple's traditional autumn iPad announcement event is slated for Oct. 22 this year, and while we don't know exactly where the event will go down, it seems pretty clear to just about any Apple-watching newshound that Apple will announce new iPads with the new 64-bit A7 processor. Some are claiming Apple will slim down the current iPad, retaining the screen size, while others believe Apple will jam a Retina display into the iPad mini.

The popular language translation app iTranslate has been completely reimagined for iOS 7. Just like iOS 7, the app is heavily gesture-based. Because the new version features so many new gestures, a tutorial has been added that walks users through all of the new ways to interact with their translations.

Click to view slideshow.

At first glance, iTranslate does not feel as intuitive or as easy to use as the previous version. It takes a while to get acclimated to the changes, and to understand how to properly trigger the gestures, which can be a bit difficult at first. For example, when swiping, you have to swipe...

Alien Skin Software today announced its upcoming release of Snap Art 4, an artistic natural media application for photographers. Featuring a redesigned UI and improved speed, Snap Art 4 can render hundreds of styles and media, such as oil paint, pencil sketch, et cetera, to mimic the technique of human artists on a photo image. Emulating brush strokes and drawing lines, its masking tool can bring out extra detail in a photo. Snap Art is compatible for integration with many popular photography editing software tools, such as Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, and Apple Aperature, and can also be launc...
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Popular location-based social networking app Foursquare saw an update on Wednesday that brought a number of new features, including the ability to check which friends are nearby a user at a given time.
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Security-minded maintenance release closes an Excel-related vulnerability. (Free update, 113 MB)

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Now requires 10.6 Snow Leopard and an Intel processor. (Fee update, 19.8 MB)

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

[Update: service restored after five hours] In an unusual national disruption, Canadian cell carrier Rogers -- the country's largest carrier by subscriber base -- has suffered a near-countrywide failure of wireless voice communications, though 3G and LTE data appears to be unaffected. Between Rogers Wireless and its subsidiaries Fido and Chatr, the company controls about 34 percent of Canada's cell phone market. Customers from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Victoria, British Columbia say they have been without service for much of the evening, while some report partial service....
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Electronics retailer Best Buy appears on the verge of kicking off another trade-in program aimed at getting iPhone 5s and 5c customers through its doors, this time offering a minimum of $100 toward the purchase of one of Apple's two new phones in exchange for any working smartphone.
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In this week's episode of The Apple Context Machine podcast, Jeff and Bryan talk about what's in store for Apple's rumored October 22nd media event. They also dissect Microsoft's plans to bring Office to the iPad (two years too late) and look at Microsoft's prospects in the tablet industry. Rapid Fire topics include the Nest Protect, Qualcomm's mea culpa about Apple's A7 processor, and the new Samsung Galaxy Round. Good stuff!