After Apple launched the iPhone 4 back in 2010 it did not take long for users to complain over the antenna issues, Apple responded to this by offering all users a free Apple iPhone 4 bumper. 2 year later on Apple have only started offering financial compensation, Apple have started offering $15 compensation to users, unfortunately this is only happening in America at the moment. Out of all of the American owners of the iPhone 4 approximately 25 million customers are eligible for the $15 settlement. Apple have said:

“Apple will provide a $15 cash payment to Class Members who send in a valid claim form. The claim form will require you to declare that you: (a) experienced antenna or reception issues with your iPhone 4; (b) were unable to return your iPhone 4 without incurring any costs; (c) were unwilling to use a case or free bumper for your iPhone 4; and (d) completed certain troubleshooting steps or are unable to complete the troubleshooting steps because you no longer own your iPhone 4.”

Apple are still currently offering the free bumpers to those who do not want the $15 settlement, if you no longer own your iPhone 4 you can still claim the $15 settlement. You can request your free bumper from the link below. Users who are eligible for the $15 settlement have until 28th August 2012 to file their claim form, the final decision will be make by courts on 13th July 2012. If you do not want to be apart of the court claims procedure you can remove your details from the claim action group at the link below.

Free Bumper: Apple

Remove Yourself From Claim Action Group: iPhone 4 Settlement

Source: Mac Rumors

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Australian owners of the new iPad have been offered refund by Apple over the use of “4G” with the advertising of the new iPad. 4G LTE uses different frequency bands depending on which country you are in, because of this the 4G feature advertised by Apple will not work in Austrilia but will work in America and Canada. ABC News have reported that Apple are now sending emails out to customers offering them a full refund if they felt they were misled. Apple are also clarifying 4G coverage at the point of sale to stop further issues.

Europe has also got onto the complaint wagon with the Swedish Consumer Agency planning on investigating this issue as well. The English Advertising Standards Authority have also had many complaint from unhappy customers, the English Advertising Standards Authority has said: “We are aware of the news from Australia regarding the iPad 4G marketing claim,” an ASA spokeswoman told us. “Without going through due process we can’t say whether the (UK) ad is likely to be problematic. If anyone has concerns about the iPad ad then they can lodge a complaint with us and we will establish whether or not there is a problem under the Code.”

Source: Mac Rumors

Source: Mac Rumors

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A few weeks back we reported about the winner of Apple’s 25 Billion App downloads, Fu Chunli. She won the $10,000 iTunes store voucher by downloading the free App Where’s My Water, she was not aware of the contest or that she had won until Apple contacted her. Fu Chunli had only had an iPhone for about a month before she one the competition, at first thought that it was a hoax when Apple called her but realised after her friends told her and she received an email from Apple that she had actually won.

Fu Chunli took a visit to Apple’s Chinese headquarters in Beijing, she was flown at Apple’s expense. The $10,000 prize was given to her at an Apple Store rather than at the Apple headquarters, she was then given training on her iPhone and the App Store as well as a play with other devices at the Apple Store.

Source: Mac Rumors

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“The weakness is caused due to an error within the handling of URLs when using javascript’s window.open() method. This can be exploited to potentially trick users into supplying sensitive information to a malicious web site, because information displayed in the address bar can be constructed in a certain way, which may lead users to believe that they’re visiting another web site than the displayed web site.”

MajorSecurity informed Apple of the security issue three weeks ago, the news has only become accessible to every in the last few days. We are expecting Apple to release a fix in the next few days. You can see this issue yourself if you go to the link below on any iDevice running iOS 5.1 and use the Safari browser.

Test: Safari iOS 5.1 Security Issue

Source: MajorSecurity

Via: Mac Rumors

The pricing for Photoshop CS6 will remain the same as Photoshop CS5, prices start at $699 for the basic version and they go up to $999 for Photoshop CS6 Extended. The Photoshop CS6 free Beta is only alavable in English and Japaneese at the moment but the final release will include all language already in Photoshop CS5. The video below shows the improved Content-Aware tool that allows users to choose the source for the content.

Photoshop CS6 Free Beta Download: Mac OS X (DMG, 984 MB)

Photoshop CS6 Free Beta Download: Microsoft Windows (ZIP, 1.7 GB)

New Features

Brushes
- HUD brush resize and hardness can now change opacity
- Increase brush size to 5000px
- Change color dynamics to per stroke instead of per tip (user option for old behavior)
- Brightness/contrast slider for textures when painting
- Brush projection for static tips
- Brush cursor reflects brush dynamics for round and captured tips

Eyedropper
- Show the sample size popup for the various eyedropper tools (black point, white point,
etc.)
- Add ignore adjustment layers options bar item for the eyedropper
- New mode for eyedropper to select layers current and below

File formats
- Read common stereo image pair formats (JPS, PNS) Allow for more bit depths in TIFF files
- Read BIGTIFF format
- Give the user choices regarding how they want transparency treated in OpenEXR on file open

Grammar
- Policed throughout app
- Use consistent grammar style in the title of dialog windows (no commands such as “Choose a color:”)

Layers
- Add a contextual menu item that deletes a layer effect not just disables it
- Add dither options to Layer Styles for Gradient Overlay and Gradient Stroke
- Allow 00 or Shift 00 to work when setting layer/fill opacity (previously no way to get 0%)
- Add bicubic sharper & bicubic smoother options when free transforming layers
- Allow changing of blend modes for multiple layers at once
- Allow locking of multiple layers
- CMD+J to duplicate layers and layer group
- Allow changing color labels to multiple layers at once
- Layer tooltips to include layer name (if defined)
- Opt+click on toggle arrows (groups and effects) in layer panel should close all targets
- Show blend if/Blending Effects badge on layer
- Show correct opacity and blend mode values for hidden layers
- Tab goes to next layer on inline layer rename, SHIFT + TAB goes to previous
- New command to raster layer effect into layer, merging the selected layers into themselves
- Reorder effects in the layers palette to match the Z-­­order style/blend mode (bottom most effects in termsof blending order, drop shadow is below the other effects

Liquify
- Resize Liquify brush with shortcuts
- Increase maximum Liquify brush size Add option to load last mesh

Presets
- Add new document presets for common devices (e.g. iPhone, iPad, etc.)
- Add new Gradient Map presets for toning and split-­­toning
- Sticky reorganization of tool presets (changes persist after re-launch) Add Contact Sheet II as an Automation option

SDK
- Add the ability to return an array of guides in a document from the scripting SDK
- Add ability to access tool name associated with the tool preset name via scripting
Selections
- Make the marquee, lasso, and mask panel feather values support decimal places like the feather dialog
- Remember feather radius when showing dialog for selection from a path

Transform
- Improve dragging of vector curves
- Don’t hide smart object icon when transforming a layer
- Rotate 90 with even x odd pixel dimension to be smooth (bjango.com)
- Undo or disable auto -­­rotate on open

UI
- Remove the app bar and reduce the drag/app bar over 30%
- [Windows] New/open document to context click on a document tab (has always been on Mac, now Windows too)
- Add “Don’t show again” checkbox to Purge warnings

Miscellaneous
- Enable Split Channels for documents with layers
- Select Hex field by default and allow clipboard pastes with # in contents (i.e. #fffffff)
- Increased GPU stability by prequalifying GPUs on the fly before use
- Auto-­­select the best resample method based on the type of resize
- Enable Invert and Threshold adjustments for masks in 32 -­­bit
- Hold SHIFT during startup to disable 3rd party plugins
- Add warning message that 16 -­­bit images cannot display their file size in the Save as JPEG dialog
- Add command to insert “lorem ipsum” for type

Source: Engadget
Source: Mac Rumors

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Scammers have started to targeted Apple billing accounts, I received a very suspicious E-Mail this morning supposedly from Apple Customer Support (appleid@apple.com) asking me to update my billing information, this was odd since my card does not expire until 2013 and I bought a few Apps yesterday. It was obvious that this was a scam so I decided to see what effort they had put into it so I followed the link, the answer was not very much effort at all.

After following the link in the E-Mail to “http://store.apple.com” which actually took me to “http://howelldental.com/bannerImages” I was presented with a very dodgy copy of the Apple Store log in page as shown below:

If you receive an email that is along the same lines as this or from the same E-Mail address (appleid@apple.com) ignore it and delete it straight away. Most people will see that the link to the Apple Store is dodgy and it is a bad copy of the Apple Store however this still might catch a few people out.

© TEKCORE UK LTD.

Filed under: Apple, Breaking, Computing, iTunes, News ]]> http://tekcore.co.uk/2012/03/23/scammers-targeting-apple-billing-accounts/feed/ 0 tekcoreuk Apple E-Mail Scam Dodgy Apple Store http://tekcore.co.uk/2012/03/21/zynga-buys-omgpop-the-creator-of-draw-something/ http://tekcore.co.uk/2012/03/21/zynga-buys-omgpop-the-creator-of-draw-something/#comments Wed, 21 Mar 2012 20:43:23 +0000 TEKCORE UK http://tekcore.co.uk/?p=3918 ]]>

Zynga has bought the company OMGPOP the creators behind the very popular cross platform game “Draw Something”. It has been reported but not confirmed that Zynga has paid $180 Million for the company plus $30 Million too keep the employees as well. “Draw Something” has been the top downloaded App for the last six weeks since its launch, so far it had had over 35 Million downloads. “Draw Something” is available for free with ad-support or an ad-free version for $0.99/£0.69. Zynga has said:

“OMGPOP brings to Zynga an incredible team of industry veterans and a community of highly engaged players. It’s a great industry example of creating games around the ethos of giving people a place to play, meet and make friends. OMGPOP’s existing mobile and platform games will not change. We fully support what they’ve built to date, and we’re going to work hard to give Draw Something and all of their games the resources and tools they need to grow and flourish.”

Source: Mac Rumors

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LoopInsight has reported that Apple’s iPhoto App for iOS has 1 million users, iPhoto was released 10 days ago; the same day as the new iPad. iPhoto is available for both iPad’s and iPhone’s from the App Store for $4.99/£2.99, this equates to a revenue of $4,990,000/£2,990,000. LoopInsight has said that:

“Apple told me today that its newest iOS app, iPhoto, hit 1 million users in less than 10 days after its release. It’s important to note that figure is users, not downloads. It’s quite possible that one user downloaded the app multiple times, but Apple isn’t counting those, only the unique users.”

Source: Mac Rumors

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We reported earlier about the heat issues users are experiencing with the new iPad, the issue varies between each customer and the Apps and Games they have installed and use, with Infinity Blade II and other resource intensive games being the Apps that affects the device the most. Apple have responded to the issues that have been reported by users and have said:

“The new iPad delivers a stunning Retina display, A5X chip, support for 4G LTE plus 10 hours of battery life, all while operating well within our thermal specifications,” Apple representative Trudy Muller, told The Loop. “If customers have any concerns they should contact AppleCare.”

Source: Mac Rumors

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Consumer Reports have done their own investigation after claims of the new iPad  is running a lot hotter than the iPad 2, after Consumer Reports had their device playing Infinity Blade II for 45 minutes their new iPad got to temperatures of 116 degrees Fahrenheit on both the front and back. Consumer Reports has said that:

“We ran our test while the new iPad was propped on the iPad Smart Cover, plugged in, and after it had run Infinity Blade II uninterrupted for about 45 minutes. The device’s 4G connection was not turned on, though its Wi-fi link was. The ambient room temperature was about 72 degrees. (Apple recommends not using the iPad in environments over 95 degrees.)

When unplugged, the back of the new iPad reached temperatures as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit. It was only when plugged in that it hit 116 degrees. The hottest areas weren’t evenly distributed throughout the iPad’s back, but were concentrated near one corner of the display as shown in the images taken from the rear of the device above.”

The Consumer Reports device interestingly also failed to charge when the game was running, the device then went on draining its battery until the game was closed. The device failing to charge seems to be due to it not being able to draw enough power to charge the device as well as power the Retina Display as well as the Processor. Infinity Blade II is a very CPU and GPU intensive game so users should not find an issue when playing less resource intensive games.

Source: Mac Rumors

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