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Now you can charge your Lightning device without worrying about knots and tangles! Ventev's Charging Data Cable provides 6 feet of convenient charging and syncing. It supports a rapid 2.1A charging rate and can be used with any standard USB port on your PC, laptop or charging adapter. Yours today for $16.95 [/url] Continue reading...

PhotoSweeper has just been bumped to version 2.0, introducing a new UI and some notable improvements. PhotoSweeper is an app built for people who capture hundreds of photos on their iPhone and/or actual cameras. The app helps you clean up unwanted duplicate photos from your Mac, saving yourself time from hunting down and manually clearing everything out. Here's the full list of changes pulled from the App Store: Pixel-perfect user interface looking gorgeous on Yosemite User-friendly comparison settings to easily find duplicates, similar photos, series of shots New View Results modes that allow you to compare and mark photos better with just a click Auto-lock f…

Ed: Welcome to iMore's new author spotlight column. Every Friday, we'll be bringing you the perspective and charm of the best and brightest minds in the Apple community. To start us off, we're thrilled to have the one, the only, the incomparable Jason Snell. After spending 17 years at the same company, last fall I set out on my own for the first time. I've spent years writing and speaking about the inevitability of change, and how we have to embrace it. But as human beings we're wired to prefer routines and dislike change — and I'm no different. These days I don't have a commute (other than to walk through a door). I'm not responsible for a staff of a few dozen peop…

Telltale Games has released the second episode of its Game of Thrones adventure game series. It's titled "The Lost Lords" and can be downloaded as an in-app purchase for $4.99 from within the Game of Thrones app for the iPhone and iPad, and can also be downloaded for the Mac if you have bought a Season Pass for the game. Here's a summary of The Lost Lords: House Forrester is in disarray. Their liege lord and his heir are dead, and Ironrath is occupied by Whitehill soldiers. The survival of the family depends upon those who are left. Placed at King's Landing, the epicenter of intrigue, Mira Forrester must weigh her loyalty to Margaery Tyrell against the needs of…

One of OS X Yosemite's new Continuity features is the ability to accept (and make) phone calls when your iPhone is nearby. Call Relay is an incredibly useful feature, but when all of your devices ring with the same ringtone, it can get distracting. Here's how to give your Mac a distinct ringtone. When it's activated, Call Relay makes your Mac an extension of your iPhone. You can take and make calls using the FaceTime application on your Mac, saving you from having to dive for your phone every time it rings. By default, the Mac uses the "Opening" ringtone whenever you get an incoming call. But you can change that, just like you can change the ringtone on your phone…

iCloud Drive lets you store all your files up on Apple's servers and sync them across all your devices, including iPhone, iPad, and Mac. While you can let iCloud create files for you and drop files where it thinks they belong, you can also create your own folders and move any of your files into them. All you need is a Mac. How to manually create folders and move files to iCloud Drive in OS X Yosemite Launch the Finder. Click on iCloud Drive off in the left hand navigation. Create a folder just like you would in any other place on your Mac. Drag and drop files or create new ones just like you would anywhere else. You'll see iCloud start copying the files over to…

Last weekend a customer asked me for help installing software on his new Mac. When I told him he'd have to buy it, he responded, "You're techies. Can't you just do what my friends do and bootleg it?" I told him if he asked me that again I'd tell him to leave the store. I take software piracy very seriously. And so should you. Software piracy isn't a joke. It's a plague against the people in this industry who try very hard, under very difficult circumstances, to make a living by developing useful, fun software for people. It's easy to convince yourself that your desire to use software is more important than the developer's need to get paid for their efforts. …

After hearing various rumblings on such an agreement in recent days, it looks like Sprint has struck a deal with RadioShack that would see the carrier expanding into 1,750 RadioShack locations. According to the press release, the deal will "establish co-branded stores that will exclusively sell mobile devices across Sprint's brand portfolio as well as RadioShack products, services and accessories." From Sprint: Under the terms of the new agreement, Sprint would effectively operate a store within a RadioShack store, occupying approximately one third of the retail space of each location. Sprint employees will sell mobile devices and plans on all Sprint brands inc…

Lightroom, the free photo editing app from Adobe, has been updated for the iPhone and iPad. The new 1.3 version includes some features that Adobe says will make editing images faster, along with a quicker way to find photos. Here's a break down of what's been added and what's been fixed in this 1.3 update: New Features: Edit images faster by copying image adjustments and pasting them onto another photo Easily find your favorite images ! The new Segmented view in Collections gives you a different way to view and engage with your photos. Want to pass your device around the family to look at your photos? With Presentation Mode, you can do that without worryin…

Our long national iCloud photo-syncing nightmare is almost over: Apple's put out some new information about Photos for Mac, OS X Yosemite's official successor to iPhoto, and released an early private beta inside OS X 10.10.3 for developers. When can you expect to see Photos arrive on your own computer? What's changed from iPhoto? What's stayed the same? Read on. When is it coming out? Apple's website and marketing materials say "Spring 2015," which technically means any time before June. But we're thinking April sounds like a good target for the official OS X 10.10.3 and Photos app release. That said, you may not have to wait until spring to get your paws…

Apple released 10.10.3 to developers today, offering up the first release of Photos for Mac, the long-awaited replacement for iPhoto. It's not available publicly yet — only to registered developers and others with access to Apple's development builds of OS X Yosemite, at this hour. But something's caught the eye of developers who have downloaded it. Jason Snell, writing for Six Colors: Today Apple dropped Photos for Mac via a developer release, and some developers are reporting signs that Apple has built this new app using something called UXKit, which sits above the Mac's familiar AppKit frameworks and strongly resembles UIKit on iOS. UIKit is a programming fr…

The top five carriers in the United States will on Feb. 11 implement new unlocking procedures for smartphones, tablets, and other cellular devices sold on their networks. The new unlocking standards were set forth by the CTIA in late 2013 and, though a voluntary commitment by the carriers, define the conditions under which carriers must unlock your devices — and it's all looking good for the consumer. Once you've paid off your phone, you'll probably be able to get it unlocked, and it'll be even easier with future smartphones. Here are the broad strokes of what you need to know: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and Verizon will all adopt these standards …

The all new Photos app for Mac, which Apple first announced and showed off at WWDC 2014, is now available as a developer beta, included in OS X 10.10.3. The new Photos app has been made to replace the current iPhoto software for Mac. Apple has also posted more info on the new Photos app, which will be officially released sometime later this spring. Apple The beautiful all-new design of the Photos app uses Moments, Collections, and Years views to automatically organize your photos and videos by time and location. With dramatically more screen space devoted to your photos, you can easily scan your entire library at a glance and quickly find the content you're looki…

Welcome back to another edition of Weekend Reading, with stories about empowering ads that debuted during Sunday’s big game, a very cool update to Microsoft Research’s Image Composite Editor and how cloud computing is being used to accelerate research that could lead to breakthroughs in treating cancer and other diseases. Football’s biggest game of the year is famous for its commercials, and this year a pair from Microsoft stood out. As a stalwart Seattle fan, it’ll be hard for me to watch the highlight reels from Sunday’s big game for a long time, but two 60-second ads from Microsoft are worth seeing over and over again. One is focused on Estella Pyfrom, 78, who cashe…

Mail Pilot version 2.0 is now available for both iPhone and iPad and includes a lot of refinements and new features that make your inbox even easier to manage. With the addition of iCloud sync, better gestures, and enhanced navigation, Mail Pilot 2 transforms your emails into individual tasks so you can get things done even faster. If you've used Mail Pilot prior to the new version, you'll still feel right at home. The overall experience is more refined, more mature even. Mail Pilot 2 supports a few different color schemes, all of which are tasteful and beautiful. The most important feature remains easy access to the inbox — you'e only ever one downward swipe away. Y…

Transformers: Battle Tactics, the latest game in the long running "Robots in Disguise" franchise, is now available for the iPhone and iPad from the App Store. Players can control teams of Autobots and Decepticons in turn-based combat. The free-to-play game contains a single player campaign plus online multiplayer battles with over 75 Transformers to choose from. Here's a list of its features: Compete in live real-time PVP showdowns with players from around the globe while earning rare TRANSFORMERS characters, valuable resources, and prestige at the top of the leaderboards Collect iconic TRANSFORMERS characters while teaming up AUTOBOT and DECEPTICON characters s…

Castro, the podcast player app by Supertop, is bold but minimalist by design. It also makes use of gestures for several of its more handy features. If you've been using Castro but haven't poked around enough to find them yet, here's what you need to know. $3.99 - Download now Scrubbing lets you quickly move your way through a show so, at the touch of a finger, you can swipe from the beginning to just exactly the time code you want to listen from. In Castro, you scrub forward by touching and holding the grabber on the bottom left and dragging to the right. You scrub backwards by touching and holding the grabber on the bottom right and dragging left. Combined, t…

Midnight Star, the free-to-play sci-fi first person shooter from developer Industrial Toys, is now available to download for the iPhone and iPad worldwide. The game got a soft launch in a few countries starting in July before today's wider release. Industrial Toys was founded by Alex Seropian, who previously was a co-founder of Bungie, the creators of the Halo first person shooter series. Here's a summary of the game and its features: Set 120 years into our future, Midnight Star takes players aboard the MSRV-Joplin, a research vessel newly outfitted with military weaponry to explore a mysterious signal coming from within our Solar System. When disaster strikes,…

When you switch to the Mac, it can feel disorienting at first. That's especially true if you've used Windows PCs for years. Adjusting to the Mac doesn't take long, but if you're used to finding certain applications, files, and system settings on Windows, it helps to quickly pick up their OS X equivalents. Here's a short glossary with all the essentials. Alt key: The Mac equivalent is the option key, which may be marked alt as well. Close button: The close button on Windows and OS X work very differently. The X, or close button on a Windows app will stop all processes associated with an app. The red close button on the Mac will only close that app's active window. To …

This how-to is part of our iOS Help feature, where every week I try and help you fix the problems you're having with your iPhones and iPads. If you have a question or need help with something iOS related that you just can't figure out, I encourage you to drop a question in our iMore forums or email ioshelp@imore.com! This week's question comes to us from William: My keyboard shortcuts no longer sync with my iPad. Any ideas how to fix this? William, you definitely aren't the only person having issues with keyboard shortcuts, particularly after updating to iOS 8. Whether they're just not syncing or you find them disappearing from a particular device altoget…

There are a ton of veritable sketching, drawing, and handwriting apps out and about on the App Store, but the one that holds a special place in my dock is FiftyThree's Paper. The app's won many a convert for its excellent drawing tools, previously encumbered by an $8 in-app purchase; as of Thursday, however, those tools are now completely free for everyone and anyone to scribble to their heart's content. FiftyThree doesn't give detailed reasoning behind its decision, published in a blog post earlier this morning, though the company does note that it hopes to grow its Mix platform and overall usage of the app: At FiftyThree, we built Paper to remove barriers to …

Following its preliminary publication, Sprint has today shared its final report for Q3 2014. The US carrier managed to bag just short of one million new connections, boasting "significant progress on building a consistent and reliable network". It's not all good news, however. As the recent Super Bowl ad teaser revealed, the company hopes you're watching. First, the good stuff. The report shows the total new connections up 42 percent year-on-year, adding 30,000 postpaid, 410,000 prepaid and 527,000 wholesale (via Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile brands) customers in the quarter alone. The postpaid gross additions is the highest in three years and 4G LTE coverage has re…

April will mark the one year anniversary of Apple's SVP of Retail and Online, Angela Ahrendts, joining the company, and it sounds like the training wheels are off and the retail veteran is ready to start making her mark on the company. Amidst new stores launched and announced, and ongoing rumors of new outfits, new designs, and new areas for the Apple Watch, we decided to put together our own thoughts on Apple Retail, both where it is today and where it looks to be heading tomorrow. On the styling Ren: As a former Apple Retail survivor, I can't help but have an odd fondness for the wooden, glass, and steel architecture of the stores. But I'd be foolish to insist…

Apple is currently rolling out its HealthKit service, with 14 of the top 23 hospitals polled in the US stating that they are already in the first stages of pilot programs built on the solution. Reuters noted that while Apple is ahead of Samsung and Google in reaching out to hospitals and deploying its health services, hospitals were also eager to try out Google Fit. According to the Reuters report: Apple has recruited informal industry advisors, including Rana and John Halamka, chief information officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, to discuss health data privacy and for introductions to the industry. The company said it had an …

Big iOS updates, bigger app bundles, and 16GB devices have many an iPhone and iPad user tearing their hair out when it comes to doing just about anything. But there's a better way than manually deleting images on your phone or removing apps — it just requires a nearby Mac. We've published a few how-tos on finding storage offenders and removing data from your phone, but on-phone removal can be clunky and frustrating. iTunes is worse: App sync is frustrating and outdated, with the program often hanging or glitching when you least want it to. For those who want a speedier solution, however, there's a new app beta on the block and it's called PhoneExpander. The fre…