News

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) stock prices didn't move much last week, gaining about 1.6% after opening Monday at $123.88 and closing Friday at $125.90. Shares reached a high of $129.25 on Thursday which, coincidentally, was the same day the company replaced AT&T on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The big news of last week, though not yet official, is that Apple is working on a subscription TV service that analysts believe will debut in the fall and offer a bundle of about 25 channels for a price in the $30 - $40 per month range. The

The floodgates on Apple Watch accessories are about to open. The question on everyone's mind is where can I get more bands for Apple Watch? Monowear has already been funded on Kickstarter, and plans to launch an array of Apple Watch compatible bands "for every occasion".

Nylon, leather, mesh and metal link options will attach directly to Apple Watch in two sizes, 20mm and 22mm to accommodate the smaller and larger Apple Watch case sizes. Pricing on Kickstarter puts the nylon band starting at $45. At the top pledge level, $135 brings two Monowear watch bands in any material. The manufacturers will need two weeks of tooling after the Apple Watch is released to start producing a variety of different band styles.

A new beta version of TinyUmbrella has been released, to easily save SHSH blobs for jailbroken iOS 8 devices. The software has a long history in the community, previously used to facilitate downgrading to earlier (jailbreakable) versions of iOS. Apple has prevented this practice with its latest security procedures, including signing firmware. So why save SHSH blobs now?

The developer of TinyUmbrella, semaphore sees a future in SHSH blobs and has spent time and energy rewriting the firmware umbrella tool with the expectation that downgrading will once again be possible. Of course, this does not mean jailbroken devices can be upgraded at the moment. Updating iOS will result in a stock device, and the jailbreak will be lost.

Hot on the heels of Apple's HBO Now announcement comes a new report claiming Apple TV hardware will be refreshed this summer. The television world has been buzzing since Apple made an exclusive deal with HBO to stream its HBO Now service on Apple TV. Apple simultaneously dropped the price on its set top box device to $69, which is a $30 savings over the standard price.

Pointing to verbiage on Apple's website stating that Apple TV is "starting at $69", John Paczkowski expects a more expensive version to be announced at WWDC. Besides updated hardware the new Apple TV would include an app store, which requires an SDK and developers to create apps for the device.

Finally, the official Google Calendar app has arrived on the iOS App Store. Users of Google Calendar for work or pleasure will enjoy the fact that Google has released its own take on calendar functionality for iPhone and iPad users. The app has a pleasant user interface and facilitates interaction with a Google Calendar account on iOS without complicating the process.

The native iOS app streamlines what was previously available only as a mobile website on the iPhone. Various third-party apps made it possible to view and interact with Google Calendar, but the official Calendar app found on Android devices was not available for Apple users until now. Google Calendar meshes with Exchange calendars as well, and plays nice with Gmail events. This means emailed event details can automatically be converted into calendar events.