Civilization: Beyond Earth Coming to Mac This Fall [Mac Blog]

2K Games today announced that Civilization: Beyond Earth, the next entry in the popular Civilization strategy game franchise, is coming to the Mac alongside releases Windows and Linux this fall.

Set in a science-fiction-themed future, the game will allow players to select one of eight different expedition sponsors that are looking to colonize alien planets in order to establish a new civilization. Similar to previous titles in the series, gameplay will center around building large armies and structures as well as researching advanced technologies. Civilization: Beyond Earth also features an enhanced quest system, unit customization, and support for up to 8 players in multiplayer.

As part of an expedition sent to find a home beyond Earth, you will write the next chapter for humanity as you lead your people into a new frontier and create a new civilization in space. Explore and colonize an alien planet, research new technologies, amass mighty armies, build incredible Wonders and shape the face of your new world. As you embark on your journey you must make critical decisions. From your choice of sponsor and the make-up of your colony, to the ultimate path you choose for your civilization, every decision opens up new possibilities.

The past two titles in the series, Civilization V and Civilization IV, were also released for Mac in 2010 and 2006, respectively. Those titles were developed with the help of Aspyr, which has published multiple major gaming titles for the Mac, including Bioshock Infinite, Borderlands 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and SimCity 4. Currently, it is unknown whether Aspyr will help develop Civilization: Beyond Earth for Mac or if the series’ original developer, Firaxis Games will work on the port.

– Civilization IV can be downloaded from the Mac App Store, Aspyr’s GameAgent digital store, and Steam for $19.99.
– Civilization V can be downloaded from the Mac App Store, Aspyr’s GameAgent digital store, and Steam for $29.99.

Branding Agency CEO Karl Heiselman to Join Apple’s Marketing Team [Mac Blog]

Karl Heiselman, Global CEO of branding agency Wolff Olins is set to leave his position to join Apple in a marketing communications role, reports Ad Age. The move comes as Apple works to double the size of its in-house creative design team as competition from Samsung and Android heats up.

Mr. Heiselman confirmed by email that he accepted “an exciting new role at Apple after 14 fantastic years at Wolff Olins,” but referred further questions to Apple. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Wolff Olins describes itself as a “brand and innovation firm for the future,” specializing in helping leaders reinvent their business or category. The company claims multiple high-profile clients, including AOL, Mercedes-Benz, Target, DoCoMo, and Apple’s charity partner (Product) RED.

Heiselman’s expertise in brand innovation could come in handy at a time when Apple is aiming to bolster its brand image. The company began working to boost its in-house design team numbers back in September and has also recently partnered with four new advertising agencies.

Apple has faced increasing pressure from competitors like Samsung over the course of 2013, with the company reportedly being unhappy with Samsung’s “The Next Big Thing” advertising campaign. Its growing in-house design team and its new partnerships come as it prepares to release a multitude of new products later in 2014, including the iPhone 6, the iWatch, revamped MacBooks including a new ultrathin 12-inch MacBook Air, a lower-cost iMac, updated iPads, and a new Apple TV set-top box.

Heiselman previously worked for Apple as a design contractor in the early 1990s, before Steve Jobs took over the company. It’s unclear what his exact role will be at Apple after his return.

Amazon May Launch Smartphone with 3D Capabilities in September

Amazon is gearing up to release its long-rumored smartphone later this year to directly compete with offerings from Apple and Samsung, reports The Wall Street Journal. According to the report, the company has been showing off prototypes of its handsets to developers in San Francisco and Seattle in recent weeks, with Amazon likely announcing the phone by the end of June and launching it by the end of September.

The people said Amazon hopes to distinguish its phone in a crowded market with a screen capable of displaying seemingly three-dimensional images without special glasses, these people said. They said the phone would employ retina-tracking technology embedded in four front-facing cameras, or sensors, to make some images appear to be 3-D, similar to a hologram, the people said.

Rumors of the phone first surfaced in July of 2012, where it was reported that the company was working with Foxconn on the device. Last May, another report noted that the smartphone would join other products to complement Amazon’s popular line of Kindle tablets and E-readers.

The news comes as Apple is expected to ship its next-generation iPhone later this year, which may come in two different sizes: 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches. Recent reports have noted that the 4.7 inch version will ship in the third quarter of 2014, while the larger version may ship later due to production issues.

Along with a larger screen, both models of the iPhone 6 are expected to include a faster A8 processor, Touch ID fingerprint sensor, 1GB of RAM, and camera improvements in the form of optical image stabilization.

Apple Declines to Invest in Intellectual Ventures’ Patent Buying Fund [Mac Blog]

After collaborating with patent buying company Intellectual Ventures to purchase Kodak patents in 2012, Apple is now rebuffing offers by IV to invest in is latest patent acquisition fund, reports Reuters. Though both Apple and Intel have declined to participate, rivals Microsoft and Sony have been persuaded to contribute to a new round of patent buying.

“Microsoft and Sony’s investments give IV a fresh war chest to buy new patents,” said Kevin Jakel, chief executive of Unified Patents, which advises tech companies on alternatives to patent aggregators like IV.

Intellectual Ventures is one of the top five patent owners in the U.S. and has a portfolio of over 70,000 patents and intellectual property assets. The company has raised $6 billion for patents and is courting investors like Apple to raise an additional $3 billion.

Microsoft, Sony, Apple and Intel have invested in Intellectual Ventures in the past, giving them access to IV’s patent holdings and a portion of the royalties it collects. Apple didn’t comment on its recent decision not to invest in IV, but one intellectual property expert believes it is not related to the company’s recent efforts to influence patent legislation in the U.S.

“Amy Landers, an intellectual property professor at University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, said Apple and Intel’s decision on IV’s latest fund was probably unrelated to the political debate on patent reform.

“The companies that are not investing in the fund have probably just found better uses for their money,” Landers said.

Apple recently joined the new Partnership for American Innovation, a patent reform lobbying group that includes DuPont, Ford, General Electric, IBM, Microsoft and Pfizer. The group is opposing recent patent reform legislation that they claim may hurt actual innovations that need patent protection.

Alleged iPhone 6 Cases Surface, Apparently Based on Recent Design Drawings

A photo reportedly showing cases designed for the larger iPhone 6 has been posted by Mobile Fun (via Nowhereelse.fr [Google Translate]. While exact sizes are not apparent from the photo and no comparison with existing iPhone cases sizes is shown, the cases are said to be for 4.7-inch and 5.7-inch iPhone 6 models, consistent with design drawings published by Japanese magazine MacFan late last month.

Most sources have been reporting that the larger iPhone 6 will carry a 5.5-inch display, although the MacFan drawings and a few other sources have continued to point to a 5.7-inch display.

It is not entirely clear whether these cases are based on the same design drawings or come from another source, but they do appear to be very consistent with the drawings. Like the drawings and our renderings based on them, the cases include a hole for a button on the left side of the top edge of the device. This has been presumed to be the power button for the iPhone 6, which would be a change from its current location on the right side of the top edge.

Side (1) and top (2) button cutouts (Annotated by Nowhereelse.fr)
The cases also include a cutout along the right side of the case, a feature that is also shown in the design drawings. The purpose of the cutout is unknown, but it is possible that this could in fact be the power button given that analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed earlier this week that the power button would move to the side of the device. If this is indeed the case, then the function of the top button on the iPhone 6 drawings becomes unknown.

Apple’s Former Safari Chief Don Melton Reflects on Steve Jobs

Don Melton has a long history with Steve Jobs and Apple, working at NeXT and then moving to Apple where he is known for his work on Safari and WebKit. To commemorate Steve Jobs’ birthday earlier this year, Melton recounted his memorable encounters with Jobs in a post he recently published on his blog.

Melton was not a confidant of Jobs, just an employee who had the opportunity to be around the Apple co-founder on occasion. Jobs likely thought of Melton as the “Safari Guy” and knew Melton’s real name, which was considered an honor.

Melton recounts the first time he met Steve Jobs at a NeXT presentation in the late 80s that unfortunately was scheduled during everyone’s lunch break. Like many encounters with Jobs, Melton remembered Jobs’ demeanor, but not a word of what he said.

Obviously he wanted us to quiet down. You could tell because he paused several times for us to hush ourselves. And out of respect, awe, and probably some fear, we all tried our best to do so. But, dammit, the room was now packed and that many people just swallowing food makes a lot of noise. Sitting so close, I felt especially self-conscious.

Who the hell scheduled him to speak at that time? Knucklehead. It’s entirely possible that person was taken out later and shot.

Anyway, I do remember Steve’s seriousness and apparent impatience that day. But not a thing he said.

Melton paints Jobs not as a “mercurial ogre or cartoon autocrat,” but as a very busy CEO with little time for “yes men,” timid employees or those who didn’t know what they were doing.

Steve expected excellence. Which is why he so often got it.

He knew when something was right, but he didn’t always tell you what he wanted when it wasn’t. And he was very clear when he didn’t like it. Some misinterpreted this behavior as being overly critical, but it was actually time-saving clarity, albeit uncomfortable on occasion.

Melton has several interesting tidbits about his work on Safari, including Jobs’ distaste for the stand-alone bookmarks window in the web browser and the decision to add a page load indication into Safari’s address bar, a design decision that eventually hurt Safari’s reputation because the “in-your-face progress bar made it seem slower to the user.”

Beyond his work persona, Melton also shares some stories about the personal side of Jobs, the real man who has children and, at one point, a cranky new puppy. Melton ends his story with his somber memories of Steve in his final years, dealing with a disease that “had ravaged him.” Melton’s piece is long, but worth a read for his insight into a corporate leader who was intense, but also real.

Apple Blocks Bloom.fm iAd Advertising Ahead of U.K. iTunes Radio Launch

London-based streaming-music service Bloom.fm says it has been blocked from advertising on Apple’s iAd network because it is a threat to the Cupertino company’s iTunes radio, reports CNET. Similar to iTunes Radio, Bloom.fm offers genre and artist-based streaming radio stations with a library of over 22 million tracks.

“We were surprised at Apple’s decision to ban us from their iAd network as their iTunes Radio service isn’t even available in the UK,” the spokesman told CNET. “Bloom.fm gives you 22 million tracks for £1 a month — the price of a single download on iTunes — so I can see why they’d want to protect their business.”

Apple may be blocking Bloom.fm as it prepares to launch its iTunes Radio service in the U.K. The service debuted in the U.S. alongside the release of iOS 7 last fall and was recently extended to Australia. It is expected to debut in the U.K. sometime in early 2014.

Over the past several months, some iPhone owners in the U.K. have reported intermittent connections to the iTunes Radio service, suggesting Apple is in the final stages of preparing the product for an imminent launch. Bringing iTunes Radio to countries worldwide is a top priority for Apple, says senior vice president of Internet software and services Eddy Cue, who confirmed the company plans to offer the service “in more than 100 countries.”

Apple Confirms ‘Heartbleed’ Security Issue Did Not Affect Apple Software and ‘Key Services’

Apple today released a statement to Re/code confirming that iOS, OS X and “key web services” were unaffected by the widely publicized security flaw known as Heartbleed which was disclosed earlier this week.

“Apple takes security very seriously. iOS and OS X never incorporated the vulnerable software and key web-based services were not affected,” an Apple spokesperson told Re/code.

Heartbleed was a security flaw in the popular open-source software OpenSSL which helps provide secure connections between clients and servers. Due the ubiquity of OpenSSL, Heartbleed is believed to have affected approximately 66% of the internet.

Security blogger Bruce Schneier describes the issue as “catastrophic” and on “the scale of 1 to 10, this is an 11.” The flaw allowed servers to leak server memory to a malicious attacker, allowing hackers to extract login/password and other private data from a server. Users are recommended to change their passwords on all services that may have been affected. Mashable provides a list of services where you should change your password. Fortunately, MacRumors Forums were unaffected by the security flaw.

iMovie for Mac Updated With Minor Feature Upgrades and General Improvements [Mac Blog]

Apple has updated its iMovie for Mac video editing package, adding a few minor improvements and fixing issues related to sharing, search and some foreign languages.

The update adds the ability to sort events in the sidebar by date, change the font, size and color of new titles introduced in iMovie 10, and the ability to double-click an transition in the timeline to adjust its duration. All small additions, but welcome ones for some users.

What’s new in iMovie 10.0.3

• Option to sort events in the sidebar by date
• Change the font, size, and color of new titles introduced in iMovie version 10
• Double-click a transition in the timeline to adjust its duration
• Crop and rotate clips in events
• Add speed effects using the Adjustments Bar
• Option to smoothly transition in and out of speed effects
• Fixes issues that could cause iMovie to quit unexpectedly
• Resolves issues that could cause sharing to fail
• Improves reliability of search when using partial or multiple search terms
• General usability improvements on computers using certain languages

Apple also released an update to Xcode coding app that fixes a few issues.

iMovie is available from the Mac App Store for $14.99, though it is included free for many users with their Mac purchase. [Direct Link]

Xcode is a free download from the Mac App Store. [Direct Link]

iPhone 6 Roundup Update

Our iPhone 6 roundup has been updated with the latest information. All signs now point to 4.7″ and 5.5″ screen sizes for the iPhone 6. The 4.7″ model is expected around September of this year, while the 5.5″ model may be delayed until the very end of the year. Apple’s new sapphire crystal display may be in limited supply, however, and may only ship on the high end (64GB 5.5″ iPhone 6) model.

Read full roundup for details.