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Apple Launches 2014 Back To School Promotion

Apple has launched its annual Back To School promotion today, giving qualifying education customers extra credit when buying a Mac, iPhone, or iPad. As in previous years, Apple’s promotion allows customers to receive $100 of extra credit when purchasing a Mac, and $50 when buying an iPhone or iPad. Apple is giving away Apple Store Gift Cards, which can be used for Apple Store purchases (unlike iTunes gift cards for digital purchases given away in previous years).

The 2014 Back To School promotion runs until September 9 and qualifying customers in the US include “faculty, staff, students, and parents” of any public or private K12 and higher education institution. Apple published a PDF document on its website with further details on eligible customers and products available in the promotion.

For more details on gift cards and educational pricing, you can check out Apple’s official page for Back To School 2014. The promotion is live today in the US and international markets including Canada, the UK, and several European countries.

Apple Announces Q3 2014 Conference Call for July 22

Apple’s third quarter earnings report and conference call will take place on July 22nd, 2014, according to an Investor Relations update on Apple’s website first noted by setteBIT. Apple will provide a live audio webcast of the call.

Apple plans to conduct a conference call to discuss financial results of its third fiscal quarter on Tuesday, July 22, 2014 at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET.

In the second quarter of 2014, Apple posted revenue of $45.6 billion and sold 16.4 million iPads, 43.7 million iPhones, and 4.1 million Macs, earning a quarterly net profit of $10.2 billion.

For Q3 2014, Apple set its guidance at revenue between $36 billion and $38 billion, with gross margin between 37 percent and 38 percent. Apple didn’t release major new products since their Q2 earnings call, but updated its MacBook Air line with faster processors and announced its acquisition of Beats Electronics and Beats Music for a total of $3 billion. The company also recently introduced a new entry-level iMac and upgraded its low-end iPod touch, but, more notably, held its annual WWDC in San Francisco where they announced iOS 8, OS X Yosemite, and a variety of new technologies that will launch this Fall. Apple is rumored to introduce new versions of the iPhone, iPad, as well as a wearable device later this year.

In the year-ago quarter, Apple posted revenue of $35.3 billion. The company sold 14.6 million iPads, 31.2 million iPhones, and 3.8 million Macs, earning a quarterly net profit of $6.9 billion.

We will provide live updates from the conference call on our site’s homepage on July 22nd starting at 2 PM PT.

Spotify for iOS Adds Offline Search for Downloaded Music→

Released today, version 1.3 of Spotify for iOS adds a seemingly obvious feature that, however, was missing from the app: search for downloaded music when in offline mode. Spotify recently revamped their apps to include an iTunes-like organization system called Your Music, and the improved search feature will look for songs cached on your device when the app is offline.

As an aside (and speaking of Launch Center Pro), here’s the action I’ve been using to quickly search for songs on Spotify without navigating to the search screen every time. It’s a huge timesaver and it works with offline search as well.

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Apple Releases OS X 10.9.4 with WiFi Fixes, Safari 7.0.5

Following the release of iOS 7.1.2, Apple also pushed OS X 10.9.4 to Software Update, bringing WiFi-related fixes and Safari 7.0.5 to Mavericks users.

The new version includes a fix for a bug that prevented Macs from automaticallty reconnecting to known WiFi networks and improves the reliability of wake from sleep. An issue that caused “the background or Apple logo to appear incorrectly on startup” has been fixed, and an updated version of Safari (7.0.5) is bundled with the update as well.

OS X 10.9.4 is available now from Software Update through the Mac App Store. You can find the direct download links below.

Apple Releases iOS 7.1.2

Apple released iOS 7.1.2 today, bringing a variety of bug fixes to iPhone and iPad users. The update, available over-the-air, improves iBeacon stability and connectivity (issues with the iBeacon APIs had been reported by a variety of hardware makers and app developers over the past few months), corrects a problem with the data protection class of Mail attachments (first reported in May), and includes fixes for third-party accessories.

Apple released the first major update to iOS 7, version 7.1, in March. iOS 7.1.2 is available now through Software Update on iOS and OS X (via iTunes).

Simple Percentage Calculations with OffOf

I was recently looking for a simple percentage calculator for iPhone and I came across OffOf, an app developed by Daeo Corp. and available for free on the App Store.

As the name suggests, OffOf lets you calculate the percentage off an amount or the percentage of an amount. While this operation is possible with any calculator, OffOf has a visual interface with buttons to switch calculation types with a single tap. If you want to calculate how much a $50 t-shirt is going to cost you at “25% off”, select the Off button, tap percentage and enter a number, then tap Amount and the app will calculate it in real time. On the other hand, if you have to know how much the 20% of 135 corresponds to, you can choose the Of type and let the app calculate it for you with no additional manual operations.

My main concern with OffOf is that, in an effort to provide a colorful iOS 7 design (reminiscent of Numerical), it’s hard to distinguish the selection state for the Percentage and Amount fields. The app uses a white highlight for numbers in those areas, but I find it hard to parse when compared to the light gray used for the non-selected state. It’s a minor problem, but it confused me when I started using the app.

OffOf won’t become a hit among calculator power users, but, for me, is solves a common problem, and it’s free on the App Store.

Aptonic - Dropzone 3 [Sponsor]→

Dropzone is a productivity tool that enhances drag and drop on your Mac. Drag files onto the menu item and a beautifully designed and animated grid of all your actions opens. Share with services such as AirDrop, Imgur, FTP, Amazon S3, Facebook, Twitter and many others. Move and copy files, launch applications and even develop your own actions using the powerful Ruby based scripting API.

Dropzone 3 is a huge update to the app that takes Dropzone to a whole new level. You can now add actions to your grid faster thanks to the new quick add menu or by dropping folders or apps onto the ‘Add to Grid’ area. Quickly reorganise your actions using drag and drop and delete them by holding the option key. The new in-grid progress bars let you keep track of task progress. Also see how tasks are progressing at a glance in the new animated menu item.

Drop Bar is another great new feature - Drag files you know you’ll need later onto the Drop Bar area of the grid to stash them tempororily. Drag stacks on top of each other to combine them. You can even drag a stack onto another Dropzone action.

In Dropzone 3, the developer API has undergone a major overhaul. You can now duplicate existing actions and tweak them to your liking. A new bundle system lets you distribute needed libraries or tools along with your action. Actions can now be auto-updated as they are improved. With a little Ruby knowledge you’ll be thinking of your own uses in no time - check out the developer documentation here.

Our thanks to Aptonic for sponsoring MacStories this week.

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Redeeming App Store Promo Codes with Launch Center Pro

Yes, that promo code has been used.

Yes, that promo code has been used.

I was taking a look at my Launch Center Pro action library over the weekend, and I realized that I didn’t have a shortcut to quickly redeem App Store promo codes.

Whether it’s a promo code for an app pitch or a gift card I need to redeem on my iTunes account, I constantly find myself opening the App Store app, scrolling to the bottom, tapping Redeem, pasting the code, and confirming everything with my password. But we’re not prehistoric iPhone users, and this can be automated. And even better, the tweaks introduced in Launch Center Pro 2.3.1 make the process seamless yet flexible.

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