Apple Adds High-End 15″ Retina MacBook Pro to List of Macs Supporting Dell’s 5K Display

Apple has updated a support document on its website to reflect that the high-end 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, equipped with AMD Radeon R9 M370X graphics, is capable of driving Dell’s dual-cable UP2715K 27-inch 5K display. Apple initially released OS X 10.10.3 in April with support for the dual-cable 5K monitor on the Retina 5K iMac and 2013 Mac Pro, but no notebooks supported the display at the time.

Dual-Cable Displays

Some displays with resolutions higher than 4K require two DisplayPort cables to connect the display at full resolution. With OS X Yosemite v10.10.3 or later, the Dell UP2715K 27-inch 5K display is supported on the following Mac computers:

Mac Pro (Late 2013)
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014 and later)
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) with AMD Radeon R9 M370X

Dell’s dual-cable 5K display requires more bandwidth than is currently supported over a current single DisplayPort cable, so it uses a dual-cable solution that takes up two Thunderbolt ports on a Mac. The availability of Intel’s Skylake platform with DisplayPort 1.3 support later this year will enable Apple to update Macs with support for external 5K displays that function over a single cable, at which point the company could theoretically release a 5K Thunderbolt Display.

Apple initially listed the high-end 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro with AMD Radeon graphics as capable of supporting an ultra-wide display with up to 5,120-by-2,160 resolution at 60Hz, but has since updated the notebook’s technical specifications to reflect its ability to drive a single external display at up to 5,120-by-2,880 resolution.

Apple Store in Upper East Side of Manhattan Opens June 13

Apple overnight added signage to its upcoming retail location in the Upper East Side of Manhattan that confirms the store will open on June 13. The new store will be located at 940 Madison Avenue, on the corner of 74th Street, and remains under construction ahead of opening. The new store will be Apple’s seventh retail location in New York City alongside Fifth Avenue, Grand Central, SoHo, Upper West Side, West 14th Street and Staten Island stores.

Apple Store in Upper East Side at 74th Street and Madison Avenue (Instagram/Krystyl)
Apple updated its retail store list today to reflect the new Upper East Side location, with store hours listed as 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM Eastern on Monday through Saturday and 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM Eastern on Sunday. Apple likely opted for earlier closing times than some other New York City locations to please Upper East Side residents that have voiced their opposition against the store and large crowds that it could attract.

The upcoming store at 940 Madison Avenue will occupy a former banking complex built in 1921 that most recently housed luxury retailer VBH. The building itself offers a large amount of space, featuring a 4,000 square-foot ground level and 1,000 square-foot mezzanine. Apple leased the building nearly one year ago and the site has been under renovation since at least October 2014.

Readdle Debuts New ‘Spark’ Email App for iPhone and Apple Watch [iOS Blog]

Readdle, the company behind popular apps like Scanner Pro and Documents 5, today introduced a new email client for the iPhone and the Apple Watch, called Spark. Spark is designed to make it easy for users to sort through, organize, and reply to email messages by categorizing them by sender and importance.

In Spark‘s Smart Inbox, email messages are arranged so that personal emails sent by actual people are shown ahead of those sent by automated services, making it easier to get to important messages first. A full list of unsorted emails can be accessed by tapping a small toggle at the top of the screen or by choosing the regular inbox option from Spark‘s sidebar, which also houses pinned emails, sent emails, drafts, trash, archived emails, and attachments.

Pinned emails are a useful Spark feature that lets an important message be pinned to the top of the Smart Inbox so it remains in view even after it’s read. In Gmail, pinning is the same as starring a message. Emails can be pinned with a simple swipe to the left, while a further left swipe deletes an email. A right swipe also has two functions: marking as unread or archiving.

Spark can be heavily personalized to meet each individual’s email needs. Swipes, mentioned above, can be customized to perform different functions, and there’s also a built-in widget feature. Widgets are accessible via a button at the bottom of the screen and add additional features to Spark, like a Calendar, a folder for pinned emails, or a folder for snoozed emails. In the future, widgets will be able to do things like group Amazon purchase emails or offer weather information.

Spark uses a natural language search feature, so users can search for specific email messages with queries like “from John with PDF attachment,” and it integrates with several cloud services for saving and sending attachments. Spark also includes a few other useful features that speed up email management like smart notifications, fast signatures, a list of attachments you’ve received, and the ability to quickly save a message as a PDF.

One of Spark‘s best features, however, may be its included Apple Watch app. Spark delivers Apple Watch notifications whenever an important email is received (it’s customizable to send a notification with every email), and it’s fairly accurate when determining what’s important. Tapping one of these notifications opens up the Spark app on the Apple Watch, with tools to snooze, archive, delete or reply to an email.

The app supports quick pre-written replies like “Thanks,” and it lets users reply to emails via dictation, which is handy for managing emails from the wrist. There’s also a useful main view that displays emails organized into categories based on who they were sent by or whether they were pinned.

According to Readdle, Spark is the most ambitious product they’ve worked on, and their goal is to make it better than any other email client available. In its current iteration, Spark not entirely free from bugs, but as it can be downloaded at no cost, it’s worth checking out to see if it fits into your workflow.

Spark will be free on the App Store and should be rolling out soon.

Todoist for Apple Watch Released With Glance View, Task Notifications and More [iOS Blog]

Todoist today announced the release of Todoist for Apple Watch, after nearly four months of extensive testing and development. The new app brings several task management features of Todoist for iPhone, iPad and Mac to the wrist, with a Glance view for quickly viewing tasks and a Main view that provides access to your Inbox, Today view, Projects, Filters and Labels.

Firmly pressing using Force Touch brings up an option to add tasks using the Apple Watch’s built-in Voice Command dictation, and tasks can be categorized into the main Inbox, assigned to a project or given a timestamp of today, tomorrow or no date. Filters and labels provide additional layers of categorization for your to-do lists, with the latter requiring Todoist Premium for $33 per year.

Todoist for Apple Watch also features notifications for new comments on shared tasks, when you are invited to a new project, when you are near a certain location or at the exact date and time when a task is due. Tapping on a notification will bring you to the full app, where you can view or edit the task at hand.

Todoist for Apple Watch is free on the App Store.

Powerful Image Editing App ‘Pixelmator’ Expands to the iPhone [iOS Blog]

Back in October, popular Mac image editing app Pixelmator was brought to iOS in the form of an iPad app, and as of today, that iOS app is being expanded to the iPhone. Pixelmator for iOS is now a universal app, giving iPhone users a way to edit their images with Pixelmator‘s powerful image editing tools for the first time.

iPhone support is an important step in Pixelmator‘s evolution and will let the company reach a much wider customer base. For many people, the iPhone has largely replaced point and shoot cameras. Image sharing site Flickr, for example, lists Apple’s iPhones as the top three most popular cameras.

There are already a wealth of image editing apps available for the iPhone, but Pixelmator sets itself apart with a solid set of tools packaged in an accessible interface and iCloud interconnectivity with the Pixelmator Mac app.

Pixelmator for iPhone offers the same tools available in the iPad app, so those who have used the previous version of the app will be familiar with its capabilities. On the iPhone, Pixelmator‘s photo editing tools are likely to be the most useful, letting users adjust colors, fix lighting, add filters, crop, straighten, and distort photographs.

There are also powerful retouching tools that can be used to remove unwanted objects from images, much like in the Mac app. Tools have granular adjustments for making minor tweaks to the look of a photo, and there are brush-on effects in the “Retouch” menu that let users paint on image-correcting adjustments with a finger.

Pixelmator can also be used by artists and mobile designers to create original paintings, drawings, and compositions directly on the iPhone. It has support for more than 100 brushes and it includes a color picker and an eyedropper for managing colors. There’s a smear tool for softening image edges, and a wet-painting feature for creating watercolor images. Pixelmator also includes support for words, shapes, and layers, with non-destructive layer styles and blending modes.

Like the previous iPad version, the new Pixelmator has support for iOS 8 features like iCloud Drive, Extensions, and Handoff. Images created on the iPhone will sync to the iPad and the Mac automatically, and it’s also possible to begin an image on one device and switch over to another using Handoff. A Photos extension mades Pixelmator‘s editing tools available directly in the Photos app.

The iPhone app is being included in the existing Pixelmator app as an update, so all consumers who have previously purchased Pixelmator for iPad can download the new iPhone app at no charge.

Pixelmator for iOS can be downloaded from the App Store for $4.99. [Direct Link]

Apple Store app offers same-day delivery in select locations

The Apple Store app now offers same-day delivery service through Postmates, the same company bringing Big Macs to New York City homes and Starbucks coffee to households and offices in several US cities. To be clear, the two companies have been working together long before this, and you can actually order Apple products from Postmates’ iOS app if you live in one of the many locations where the company operates. This new on-demand delivery option, however, is available only to San Francisco Bay Area residents willing to pay a fee to get their items ASAP.

So long as you live in the region and what you’re buying is available from a nearby store, you’ll see an option that says “Delivers Today within x hours.” The value of “x” varies and could be an hour or four, based on the examples we’ve seen. After you order, you’ll get notifications containing the package’s estimated delivery time and tracking number, though you can track it live directly on the Apple Store app. Cupertino hasn’t officially announced the service yet, but the driver that dropped off Mac Rumor’s order said it’s brand new and has just begun today.

[Image credit: Shutterstock / 1000 Words]

Filed under: Mobile, Apple

Comments

Via: TechCrunch

Target Plans to Offer Apple Pay After Chip-and-PIN Card Upgrade

Target CEO Brian Cornell spoke at Re/code‘s Code Conference in Palos Verdes, California today, where he confirmed that the company plans to offer in-store support for Apple Pay in the future. According to Cornell, while he’d love to have Apple Pay available “right now,” support will not be coming until Target upgrades its system to support integrated circuit credit cards to comply with new standards.

Integrated circuit cards (or chip-and-PIN cards) replace the magnetic stripe on a credit card or debit card with an embedded microchip. The microchip communicates with a supported point-of-sale system and transactions are authenticated through a PIN instead of a signature.

Chip-and-PIN cards are already used in many countries around the world because they’re believed to be more secure than traditional credit cards. In the United States, retailers are being encouraged to adopt point-of-sale systems that support chip-and-PIN cards by the end of 2015. As of October 2015, the four major credit card companies in the U.S. are introducing policies that will cause retailers who don’t support chip-and-PIN transactions to be responsible for any fraudulent charges made with chip-and-PIN cards.

Target is especially eager to move to a more secure transaction system following a major data breach in late 2013 that saw hackers obtaining payment information for approximately 40 million of its customers. The move is a major transition for Target, and Cornell says he doesn’t want to “distract the team” with work on other payment systems.

“Our focus is on getting chip-and-PIN in place in time for the holidays,” Cornell said at the second annual Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. “Down the line we want to accept all the types of payments that our guests want. But this decision was all about focus. … It is a major undertaking to convert to chip-and-PIN, and I decided that we can’t distract the team.”

Cornell says he has met with Apple CEO Tim Cook, and once the chip-and-PIN transition is completed, Target will be “open-minded” about supporting additional payment systems like Apple Pay. Target already supports Apple Pay in its iOS app.