Weekly Mobile News Roundup – 1 August 2014

Once again the week is coming to an end and that means it’s time for a roundup of the past weeks news!

Apple promoting tax-free holiday purchases in the US  – Apple will cut sales tax charges for purchases made in-store and online during the tax-free holiday, which in most states is August 1 to August 3.

Denmark’s Brain+ puts learning back into games  – Now a Danish app launched globally helps out its users with attention, memory, problem solving and planning by putting out challenging minigames developed by brain scientists from the University of Copenhagen.

Russian government requests Apple source code – The recent revelations that Apple has included backdoors into iOS devices may have lead to an interesting development in the company’s relationship with Russia. According to Reuters the Russian government has asked Apple Inc to turn over its source code to confirm its products aren’t being used to spy on Russian operations.

Behold Apple’s hilariously AWFUL fashion line of 1986  – You know, I watched that whole movie about Steve Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher a few weeks ago, and not once did the movie address Apple’s 1986 attempt to show the fashion world how it’s done.

Apple Confirms Massive Layoffs at Beats – Trent Reznor, Ian Rogers, and female-beating billionaire Dr. Dre will all keep their jobs. But Apple is now in the process of ‘transitioning’ roughly 200 Beats employees into the unemployment line, according to details confirmed by the company this morning.

Yep, Apple’s ‘Stickers’ Ad Gave MacBook Sticker Sellers a Huge Boost  – When Apple published their new ‘Stickers’ ad for the MacBook Air last week, I presumed it would be a boon for sellers of MacBook stickers and decals. So earlier this week I decided to reach out to a few sellers of MacBook stickers and decals to see what kind of impact the ad from Apple has had on their store visits and sales.

To-do app Wunderlist gets a fresh coat of paint and real-time sync – The folks at 6Wunderkinder have been quite busy as of late, releasing version 3 of the Wunderlist productivity app on top of Pro and Business options for power users. Keeping up the pace, this third installment of the to-do list manager rolls out with over 60 improvements in tow.

‘BadUSB’ malware lives in USB firmware to remain undetected, unfixable  – A pair of researchers has discovered a flaw in the USB protocol’s basic architecture that allows for malware to be programed into a device’s firmware, making it nearly undetectable and impossible to patch.

Ten travel apps that you WILL actually use  – With a stampede of travel apps on the market, it’s hard to wade through the tide of pretenders to find the one or two truly special ones that you’ll actually use on the road.

5 tips to make your Mac the best college wingman ever  – Transitioning to the college lifestyle can be awkward at first. Being away from home, having a heavy workload and still wanting to hangout with friends can be a lot to manage all at once.

Apple’s CDN reportedly goes live w/ 10x current capacity, deals in place w/ Comcast, others  – A report today from Streamingmedia.com points to evidence that Apple’s new Content Delivery Network is now live in at least the U.S. and Europe.

Microsoft’s Office for iPad Apps Gain New Picture Tools, Third-Party Fonts, and Ability to Send Files as PDFs  – Microsoft’s Office for iPad apps, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint received a major update today that adds several new user-requested features to each app. All three apps have gained the ability to export files as PDFs, and each one has also gained new Picture Tools that let users crop to focus on the right part of an image.