Valve has now offered more information on what happened on Christmas Day, when some users of its Steam PC and Mac game download service viewed accounts on its web site other than its own. Valve said about 34,000 accounts were viewed in that fashion, due to a combination of a denial-of-service attack and an error from their web caching partner. Valve said the attack caused traffic on the Steam site to go up by 2000%: ”In response to this specific attack, caching rules managed by a Steam web caching partner were deployed in order to both minimize the impact on Steam Store servers and continue to route legitimate user traffic. During the second wave of this attack, a second caching configuration was deployed that incorrectly cached web traffic for authenticated users. This configuration error resulted in some users seeing Steam Store responses which were generated for other users. Incorrect Store responses varied from users seeing the front page of the Store displayed in the wron…

AT&T looks like it is finally close to getting rid of the old-fashioned two-year contract plan for buying smartphones. A new report, citing a leaked internal document from the wireless carrier, says that AT&T will no longer offer such contracts starting on January 8 for smartphones. The report from Engadget says that on that date, new and existing AT&T customers will have to pay the full price for a new phone upfront or pay for it using its AT&T Next installment plans. In addition, basic phones and ”Quick Messaging Devices” from the carrier will also be under these new purchase options. It’s not clear yet if products like tablets and smartwatches will also ditch two-year contracts. T-Mobile has already done away with two-year contracts for its smartphones, but Sprint still offers them for its products. Verizon customers with current contracts can also choose to continue with that kind of payment plan. Source: Engadget …

Twitter has delivered a major update to its Mac application, adding support for a number of the social network’s most recent features. Version 4.0 also brings along a refreshed look, along with a brand new dark theme. In addition to the new look, Twitter for Mac supports in-line video, group messages, and it even has its own Today widget. Check out everything you can expect from Twitter 4.0: Inline video playback – You’ll see videos play directly in your feed. GIFs support – See animations without leaving your timeline. Group Direct Messages – Create and receive private notes with up to 50 people. Mute – Silence specific accounts so you no longer see them in your feed. Today Center Widget – Get your Twitter Highlights right on your desktop. Dark Theme – Now you can see the world in black or white. Updated design – Get the latest improvements to icons, buttons, and interactions. Quote Tweet – Add your two cents to any Retweet. You can grab the Twitter update …

Amazon is currently hosting a deal on select Transcend storage products that can save you as much as 70% on the purchase. Whether you are looking for a microSD card or a full sized SD card, or want a solid-state drive for your computer, this deal has you covered. Some of the deals you can find are: microSD cards 16GB Transcend Class 10 microSD – $7 64GB Transcend Class 10 microSD – $14 128GB Transcend Class 10 microSD – $43 SD Cards 16GB Transcend Class 10 SD – $7 32GB Transcend Class 10 SD – $10 64GB Transcend Class 10 SD – $16 Solid-State Drives 128GB Transcend SSD – $50 256GB Transcend SSD – $63 512GB Transcend SSD – $111 1TB Transcend SSD – $245 Be sure to check out all of the deals on Transcend’s memory products at the link below. Save up to 70% at Amazon …

No company is perfect. Every peak brings with it a valley. And Apple had plenty of both this year. Apple shipped a stunning amount of products in 2015 and made an incredible amount of money doing it. Yet that kind of scale can create strain and that level of success can hide problems. Some will be aberrations that happen once and then seldom if ever again. Others, though, will hint at patterns, and at potentially larger issues both now and into the future. (And not, I’m not just talking about the appalling lack of hoodies at the Company Store…) Part of iMore’s mission over the last couple of years has been to explain, as best we can, why Apple does what it does. As we move into 2016, we’ll be putting greater emphasis on critique, as well: Not just why Apple might do something, but how it could be improved. Not mindless internet rage hate, mind you—that’s easy, and frankly, cheap. We’ll be doing the hard work. It’s something we’ve been doing in our in-depth reviews for a while, …

One of the principle marketing lines during the initial marketing of the Apple Watch was that it was an extremely precise timepiece, and now Apple’s Kevin Lynch has detailed why it’s so accurate. Using synchronized Network Time Servers communicating with GPS satellites, Apple sends time information to iPhones around the world, which in turn send that information to the Apple Watch, which corrects for communication time delay. There’s also specialized hardware inside the watch itself. From Mashable: Apple also designed the Apple Watch to be an exquisitely accurate timepiece, building in what’s known as a crystal temperature-control oscillator. Its job is to manage the vagaries of extreme temperatures, to compensate for drift and keep the Apple Watch time-accurate. Lynch actually told us that ”as a piece of hardware, [Apple Watch is] far more accurate as a timekeeping device than the iPhone,” said Lynch. It’s actually four times better, he noted. Lynch, Apple’s VP of Technology …

Microsoft’s latest iPhone-exclusive app is called, simply, Microsoft Selfie. As the name suggests, it’s designed to help people make their selfie photos better with automatic changes and different filters. The official description for the app states: Microsoft Selfie is a selfie and portrait enhancement application. The app takes age, gender, skin tone, lighting, and many other variables into account, applies different models automatically and finishes enhancement with just a single click. Users can transform average photos into more presentable portraits in seconds. Key features of this application are noise reduction, intelligent enhancement, automatic exposure and color theme. The app also includes 14 different photo filters, and a slider that can soften up the images as well. It should be noted that Microsoft Selfie is not just for photos on an iPhone’s camera roll; it can also be used with older photos that are stored on the devices. Free – Download now Via: Microsoft-…

Every time I come home for Christmas, my folks ask me to fix something technology-related in their home. They’re very intelligent people and generally good with Macs, but somehow I always end up having to troubleshoot something. (This Christmas: resetting their Ecobee3 thermostat to work with HomeKit.) Whether your family members are tech-savvy or not, everyone appreciates a little holiday help now and then. In that spirit, here are ten of my favorite no-brainer tips to pass along this season. (I recommend printing, framing, or otherwise stickying the first five.) Quit and restart Program slow? App freeze? iPad misbehaving? When in doubt, quitting and restarting is your friend. Most of the time, a simple File > Quit on the Mac or closing the app on iOS will do the trick, but here are a few other ways to shut down apps if you’re running into issues: Force Quit on the Mac: Command-Option-Escape. This forcefully shuts down the app in question — even if that app doesn’t ne…