Odds and ends Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Apple's 50 billionth app contest winner saved up five app purchases

by Steven Sande (May 17th, 2013)

Brandon Ashmore, a 21-year-old from Mentor, Ohio, has a lot to smile about as the winner of a US$10,000 gift card from Apple for being the person who downloaded the 50 billionth app from the App Store. Ashmore told NewsChannel5 in Cleveland that he ...

Rovio teams up with Sony for the Angry Birds movie, coming July 2016

by Mike Schramm (May 15th, 2013)

Rovio has announced, via tweet and then by news release, that it has lined up a deal and a date with Sony Pictures to distribute the upcoming Angry Birds movie. Rovio's been working on putting the frustrated fowl into a motion picture for a ...

Belkin WeMo rolls out IFTTT multi-device control

by Steven Sande (May 15th, 2013)

TUAW readers know of my affinity for Belkin WeMo home automation tools, whether I'm using them to get Siri to turn on the Christmas tree or keep my cat cool in the summer. Today Belkin announced IFTTT multi-device control for WeMo switches. What ...

NY State attorney general asks smartphone manufacturers to help combat theft

by Steven Sande (May 13th, 2013)

Smartphone thefts are running rampant -- especially in New York City -- so much that the practice of grabbing the expensive phones is being referred to as "Apple picking." Bloomberg announced yesterday that New York State Attorney General Eric T. ...

A glimpse of the future: 5G wireless technology in the labs now

by Steven Sande (May 13th, 2013)

Over the past few years, 4G LTE wireless networks that can handle download and upload speeds of up to 75 megabits per second (Mbps) have become increasingly more commonplace. Still, it takes a long time to download movies, and streaming video can ...

Caturday (late): Max and his Magic Trackpad

by Steven Sande (May 12th, 2013)

You thought you were going to get through another weekend without that TUAW classic Caturday? Well, you're wrong. Today's feline geek is Max, a six-month-old Singapura who loves to help his human, Sumner Paine, work on his 27" iMac. According to ...

Myth killer: iPad magnet effect on defibrillators wasn't "discovered" by a 14-year-old

by Steven Sande (May 10th, 2013)

Those magnets in every iPad that allow the Smart Cover and Smart Case to attach securely have the ability to accidentally shut off implanted heart defibrillators if the iPad happens to be lying on the patient's chest. According to a Bloomberg news ...

Fifth Avenue Apple Store experiences a water leak

by Mike Schramm (May 8th, 2013)

The Apple Store on New York's Fifth Avenue is a veritable marvel of engineering, with its glass cube leading down into an underground space. But putting the store underground like that makes it more vulnerable to water leaks, and sure enough, ...

The rising popularity of iPad as cash register

by Steven Sande (May 6th, 2013)

Over at Wired, writer Marcus Wohlson points out that the novelty of using an iPad or other mobile device as a cash register is beginning to disappear as that particular use case turns mainstream. The act of handing your credit card to an ...

Tennis player tweets out love for Samsung Galaxy S4... from his iPhone

by John-Michael Bond (Apr 30th, 2013)

Look, famous people. I don't think anyone believes you endorse the products you endorse because you believe in them. We know your motivation is fat stacks of cash, preferably high enough to reach the ceiling. But think of endorsements like method ...

Uber gets go-ahead for New York City e-hail service

by Michael Rose (Apr 28th, 2013)

Talk about magical and revolutionary: the manual and unpredictable task of hailing a taxi is being completely overturned by mobile devices. In many American cities, app vendors like Uber are disrupting the livery and taxi business by providing ...

Caturday: Herman helps adjust the Cinema Display

by Steven Sande (Apr 27th, 2013)

When you're coding, it's always nice to have a friendly helper ready to pop up at any moment and give you inspiration. In this case, Caturday model Herman the Birman seems to be imploring owner and TUAW reader Tom King to spend less coding and ...

Mike Doughty's musical 10th birthday gift to iTunes

by Kelly Guimont (Apr 25th, 2013)

Mike Doughty, a singer/songwriter (formerly of Soul Coughing) and now an indie artist, was asked by Yahoo Music to write a song celebrating 10 years of iTunes. Not content to put yet another spin on the standard birthday song, this became an ode ...

Inside Afghanistan's unofficial Apple Store

by John-Michael Bond (Apr 24th, 2013)

When a gap appears in the market, entrepreneurs will step in to fill it. A few years ago, we reported about a rash of unofficial Apple stores popping up, and being shut down, in China. Now Quartz is reporting about an unofficial Apple store in ...

Caturday: Cuteness alert!

by Steven Sande (Apr 20th, 2013)

Every once in a while, we see a Caturday submission of a cat photo that's so cute, it's almost dangerous in its intensity. That was the case when reader Kevin-Paul Deveau sent pictures of his three cats, all of whom are huge fans of watching ...

No Comment: Cool iPhone dominoes animation

by Erica Sadun (Apr 17th, 2013)

We don't care that the falling phones are CG animated; we don't even care that they have a hypothetical NFC patch on the back. This is a great video that put a smile on our faces. We offer it to you as today's No Comment. It's done by the same ...