Apple appears to be on the move again, this time leasing a seven-building campus in Sunnyvale, California with plans to house nearly 1,500 employees there. According to The San Jose Mercury News, the Sunnyvale Crossing deal will offer Apple 290,000 square feet of space on top of the enormous "spaceship" campus already under construction in Cupertino, which adds another 2.8 million square feet of space... no pun intended. Now here's a quick look at what else made headlines yesterday!
Apple Issues Security Fixes for OS X Safari
If your browser of choice is Apple's own Safari, head over to Software Updates and grab a free cup of security fixes, courtesy of Safari 7.0.4 for OS X Mavericks or Safari 6.1.4 for OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion. According to MacRumors, both patches address "a significant memory corruption issue in the WebKit engine" that powers the web browser, as well as how unicode characters are handled to avoid a potential exploit. The updates can be found waiting for you in the Mac App Store's Updates tab.
Notifyr App Sends iOS Notifications to Your Mac
We've seen all kinds of interesting uses for Bluetooth LE, the latest of which comes in the form of an iPhone app called Notifyr, which uses the technology to send push notifications from the iOS device straight to a connected Mac. And it's not limited to certain apps — Notifyr works with all of them, although the free Mac preference pane is capable of muting notifications from those you don't want. The $3.99 app works with most Macs manufactured since 2011, and requires OS X Mavericks; downloading the free preferences pane from the company's website will throw back a warning if your system isn't compatible prior to purchasing Notifyr from the App Store.
Spotify Touts 10M Paid Subscribers, More Than 40M Moochers
Even as rumors abound that Apple may soon scoop up Beats Electronics and its Beats Music streaming service, Spotify announced Wednesday a "special milestone" of 10 million paying subscribers across 56 markets. That's roughly 25 percent of its total user base, which now exceeds 40 million active users worldwide. "We’re incredibly grateful to the thousands of artists and millions of music fans around the world who have helped us reach this point," the brief blog post reads, which includes an expansive infographic that reveals all the usual minutiae, including just how many playlists the subscriber base have created (1.5 billion, and counting.)
Facebook Adds Shazam-Style Recognition of Music, Movies, TV
Facebook announced Wednesday that it's getting into the audio recognition business with a new feature baked into the core social networking mobile app that allows users to identify music, movies and TV shows just by listening to a brief sample. If that sounds familiar, that's because it's the core business of Shazam, who appears to now be a competitor in this space. Facebook will require users to turn the new discovery feature on, which can then be used to post status updates. Shared music will throw up a 30-second preview, while TV shows will post the specific season and episode details, without any spoilers. The recognition feature will launch on both iOS and Android apps "in the coming weeks."
eBay Asks Users to Change Passwords Following Cyberattack
eBay Inc. announced Wednesday that the online auctioneer has become the last victim of a cyberattack, resulting in more than 145 million customers being prompted to change their passwords. The e-tailer stresses there is "no evidence of the compromise resulting in unauthorized activity for eBay users," which took place in late February and March and involved "encrypted passwords and other non-financial data." Thankfully, the security breach did not involve payment subsidiary PayPal, who spent a good chunk of the deal hitting social networks to let customers know their accounts are safe and sound.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter