Apple’s iBeacon tech has been a boon for retail stores looking to advertise deals to customers on a per-location basis, but according to the a new report, retail is only smallest market iBeacons have tapped into.
In five years a swarm of 60 million iBeacons and other Bluetooth LE beacons will have invaded the US market, says a report from ABI Research, all thanks to new applications in everything from enterprise, hospital management, smart homes and personal device tracking:
iTunes U is making it more simple for students and teachers to connect with a 2.0 update that brings new course creation and discussion features to Apple’s popular educational app.
After being announced last month by Apple, iTunes U received its largest update in over a year this morning that allows iTunes U users to participate in private discussions on their course, posts, or assignments, while also giving teachers more tools to manage their classes while on the go.
Apple’s semi-secret Factory Clearance store on eBay is back.
Last year Apple used a discreet eBay Store to push out deals on MacBooks, iMacs, and iPods at cheaper prices than the Refurbished Apple Store, but this year’s shop is dedicated to clearing inventory of all the remaining iPhone 5 units at the cheapest price on the web.
Steve Jobs has an enormous reputation for eking out every last drop of performance from his talented employees, but even in the early days of Apple, that maniacal drive for success came with the huge trade-off of driving away his closest friends that built the Macintosh with him.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak gave a brief interview with the Milwaukee Business Journal claiming his relationship with Jobs has been portrayed inaccurately by the media. The Apple co-founders have always been friends and Woz says the two never had an argument, but Woz can’t say the same for the other top engineers at Apple.
If you’re anything like me, losing your iPhone is nearly a weekly occurrence. Kevin Whitney has the same problem, except when the Oklahoma farmer lost his iPhone it traveled halfway across the world.
Whitney accidentally dropped his iPhone into a grain pit last October and watched it shoot up the elevator and disappear into a bin full of 280,000 pounds of grain. Luckily for him, the lost iPhone full of family photos found its way to an incredibly nice person in Japan.
We got our first taste of the flexibility of the iPhone 6’s new sapphire glass display this morning, but in a new video posted by YouTuber Marques Brownlee, Apple’s super-tough new display is subjected to a brutal scratch test and comes away completely unscathed.
To test Sapphire glass’ durability, Marques stabs an alleged 4.7-inch iPhone 6 sapphire display repeatedly with a knife after a quick key scratch test yields no results. Both tests fail to make a dent on the display panel, but your mouth will drop when you see him forcefully try to bend the display with his foot.
Check out how insanely durable your iPhone 6 will be in the video below:
The iPhone 6 is poised to become the thinnest, lightest iPhone Apple’s ever made, but all that thinning might mean the iPhone still won’t be able to hold a charge for more than 10 hours.
Eight iterations of iPhones have been released and we’d love to see true all-day battery life added to the features list, but according to a report on the the iPhone 6’s battery, the thinification of the iPhone 6 means it will see minimal battery gains when it launches this fall.
After taking a three week break Apple has released the refinements for iOS 8 in its newest beta available to developers today. Most of iOS 8’s major features were announced at WWDC, but Apple has been slowly and refining the UI of the new OS ahead of its fall release.
Major new features don’t make an appearance in today’s update, but Apple has added a number of setting toggles, tiny UI tweaks, new wallpapers, and flipped the switch on iCloud Drive.
Here’s a rundown of all the new tweaks and features added in iOS 8 beta 3:
Along with the new iOS 8 beta 3 release this morning, Apple has also seeded the third preview build of OS X 10.10 to developers.
We’re still waiting for Apple to open up the beta program to the public as promised at WWDC, but for now only developers can grab the new OS X Yosemite Preview 3 from the Mac Dev Center. You can also scoop up the update via the Mac App Store or by clicking Software Update under the Apple menu.
Other beta releases this morning included Xcode 6 beta 3, Apple Configurator 1.7 beta, and new builds of Find My iPhone and Find My friends.
Yosemite brings a revamped UI to OS X along with a host of new features aimed at making your iPhone and Mac work smarter together. No official word from Apple on what’s inside the new preview but we’ll let you know what we find as soon as its installed.
Apple has released the newest beta version of iOS 8 to developers this morning, three weeks after the release of that last major update.
iOS 8 beta 3 can be downloaded via an over the air update. Developers can also pick it up from the iOS Dev Center or from the direct download links posted below.
We’re still downloading the update on our devices and will let you know what we new goodies we find. In the meantime, get to downloading:
The iPhone 6’s sapphire glass display could be the secret weapon that gives your device ultimate durability. Apple’s Sapphire glass factory has been busy spitting out displays for the iPhone and iPad (and maybe even the iWatch), and now thanks to Sonny Dickson, we’ve got a little taste of its flexibility.
In a stress test video of an alleged 4.7-inch iPhone 6 display, the screen is subject to some limited stress tests, coming away unbroken. Along with some bending action, the hands-on video shows the panel’s measurements and compares it to the iPhone 5s screen size.
Check out the full video below:
We get slammed 24/7 with new Apple rumors. Some are accurate, most are not. To give you a clue about what’s really coming out of Cupertino in the future, we’re busting out our rumor debunker each week to blow up the nonsense
This week we’ve officially entered peak iPhone 6 rumor season. We’ve heard everything from possible launch dates, new names for the iPhablet, and engineering tricks Apple might use to shrink the iPhone 6 to minuscule proportions. There’s also some whispers of Siri getting and upgrade and new iWatch features, but you’ll have to step up to our crystal ball to find see which of these are bangers, and which are bound to be duds.
Independence Day is finally here, which means your extra-long weekend is probably stuffed with BBQs, pool parties, and explosions so big you could see them from Mars.
We're out enjoying the celebration America's birthday, but between all the partying and family fun, we've got a selection of our favorite patriotic books, music and movies queued up for everyone to enjoy over the weekend. Here's the patriotic media will keep our 4th of July celebration rocking hard into the weekend.
Your favorite not in our list? Drop us your top 4th of July hits in comments
Given that a large proportion of Silicon Valley is made up of sci-fi geeks, it’s no surprise that over the years tech has focused on bringing to life many of the once outlandish concepts seen in movies, TV series and comic books.
With the Apple Watch bringing several more of these to life -- Dick Tracy’s 2-Way Wrist Radio among them -- we thought the time was right to run down our 8 favorite sci-fi gadgets we’d love to see turn into actual products, as outlandish as some of them might be.
After all, you never know when Bill Gates is going to be scanning a blog, looking for ways to unload his fortune.
Scan right to check out the rest of the gallery.
(Picture: Dick Tracy)
The iWatch is coming. No one really know what it will do yet, but Steven Milunovich, UBS’ top Apple analyst, claims that if Apple has its way, you’ll use the iWatch mostly to send voice messages back and forth with your friends, like Dick Tracy’s 2-Way Wrist Radio.
Because voice messaging is so huge among smartphone users in China, Milunovich says sending voice messages will be one of iWatch’s biggest features along with fitness. And even though it sounds a little silly that voice messages would be the main draws for iWatch, he just met with Tim Cook who couldn’t stop talking about it.
Apple’s first foray into wearables is expected to be revealed this October, but Apple’s not the only tech giant preparing a smartwatch for this fall: New rumors claim Microsoft has plans for its own wearable, only it won’t look anything like the big bulky bands we just saw at Google I/O.
We first got wind that Microsoft was readying its own iPhone-friendly smartwatch last month, but a report from Tom’s Hardware sheds new light on what the device will look like when it hits the market with an ungodly number of sensors.
The Los Angeles Unified School District decided to blow its entire $1 billion tech budget on an iPad for every student last year, but after security hacks and supply issues got the program off to a rocky start, the district has decided to adjust course and let on a few challengers.
Officials at the U.S.’s second-largest school district have decided to allow a group of high schools to choose between six devices instead of the iPad, effectively putting distribution of Apple’s tablet on hold district-wide.
Since launching last week, Yo has mostly been a joke of an app with $1 million in funding, a horrifically bad security hole and the best Games of Thrones-themed clone to ever hit the App Store.
Somehow it’s already amassed one million users even though all you’ve been able to do in the app until now is toss Yo!s from one screen to another, but thanks to the addition of IFTTT integration, Yo could actually be pretty useful – if everyone hasn’t deleted it yet.
For many people, Siri has been more of a nuisance than an empowering personal assistant since debuting on the iPhone 4s in 2011. Sure, she’s received some upgrades and is getting even more in iOS 8, but fancy new features mean nothing if she can’t understand what you’re saying.
Siri’s favoriting line, “Sorry I didn’t get that,” might soon be a thing of the past though as a report from Wired says the time is ripe for Apple to unleash a neural-net-boosted Siri.
The iPhone 6 will be the thinnest phone Apple’s every created, but it may come at big price for suppliers.
In order to save up space on the iPhone 6, supply chain sources at China Times say Apple is only using one brightness enhancement film (BEF) for the backlit LCD display. Apple used two films in previous iPhones. Reducing it to just one will allow Jony Ive to make a super thin iPhone, but getting the supplies will be tough.
WWDC came and went without a single mention of new hardware, which means the Apple rumor mill is going nuts for every little juicy detail about new iPhones, MacBook Airs, and even the tiny Touch ID.
Once again, we’re donning our finest gypsy apparel and stepping behind the crystal ball to divine the truth behind this week’s most plausible and impossible rumors to see what Jony Ive is really cooking up on the Design Lab kitchen table.
Come see which rumors are guaranteed to materialize and which are about to vanish like ghosts. Stare into our crystal ball to see past the rumors and into the future…
Verizon Wireless is having massive issues with its systems across the country today that has spurred a horde of frustrated customers to take to Twitter after the outage has blocked new phone activation for the past 24 hours.
Current issues with Verizon’s payment and upgrade systems aren’t affecting calls or data, but The Verge reports that Verizon and its retail stores have confirmed there’s a major issue they’re working to resolve, leaving new iPhone purchasers trapped with an error message until its fixed.
Apple gave developers an early preview of its upcoming Photos app this month at WWDC, but what it didn’t tell anyone is that new app for iOS will also overthrow Apple’s iPhoto and Aperture apps for OS X.
A new Photos app for OS X isn’t expected to land on Macs until next year, but in a statement released to The Loop, Apple says it has already stopped development on its professional photography application, Aperture.
Here’s the official statement:
Rather than slogging through a lake of reviews to find something you’re just going to put down after 10 minutes, Cult of Mac has waded through the iTunes store to compile a list of the best new books, movies and music to come out this week so you don't have to get it yourself.
This week we've found massive guitar riffs from the world's best metal band, Scarlett Johansson as a alien seductress, and the ultimate exploration novel that will get you in the mood for a summer adventure.
Enjoy!
Apple’s constantly evolving set of Apple Store policies cracked down on apps earlier this month that incentivize users to watch crappy video ads for certain rewards. Two weeks later and Apple has already reversed course.
Developers who monetize their apps by offering rewards for sharing to social sites or viewing videos ads were sent packing by Apple’s Review Team, but according to a report from TechCrunch, Apple had a change of heart and is allowing those apps back in the App Store, but there’s a catch.
Tim Cook and Craig Federighi took a few swipes at Android during WWDC’s keynote, but now that Google is readying its hype machine for Google I/O tomorrow, Sundar Pichai, the head of Android, tossed a few jabs Apple’s way in an interview with Bloomberg this morning.
Pichai noted that all the data points to people adopting Android faster than any other operating system, but the dude’s so gosh darn nice, he couldn’t insult Apple without flattering them in the same breath.
Addressing Tim Cook’s comments that Android is a “toxic hell stew of vulnerabilities,” Pichai said it’s difficult to compare the two, because iOS is like the $100,000 Mercedes Benz of mobile platforms, and Android is like your cheap ass Honda Civic, taking over the world one delicious dessert fueled update at a time.