Few brands stir the passions like Apple. Be it a rumor, stock speculation, a glowing gadget review or a president’s bombastic tweet, Apple, its devices and the people who make them always seem to be part of a conversation.
So to curate the best quotes about Apple for 2018 is as daunting as choosing your favorite word in the dictionary. There are so many — and best is a matter of taste. How do you pick?
The iPhone XR is the best single-camera smartphone on the market.
Well, it was for about two weeks. The XR now shares the mantle with Google’s Pixel 3.
Google’s new flagship handset achieved the same ranking as the iPhone XR by the engineers who test mobile phone cameras for DxOMark Image Labs.
Apple may have been late to the smart speaker game but its HomePod is showing signs it could one day outperform them all.
But only if Apple gives Siri the power.
In Loup Ventures annual smart speaker comparisons, Google Assistant understood all 800 questions and answered nearly 88 percent of them correctly. In its first Loup Ventures test, the HomePod with Siri at the helm misunderstood just three questions and managed to answer correctly nearly 75 percent of its queries.
At the beginning of each summer, coastal cities in Greece spend thousands of dollars cleaning up dead seagrass that washes up on the country’s beaches. Tourism officials see it as an eyesore and are more than happy to send tons of it to local landfills.
But to Greek startup Phee, the dead leaves of the vascular sea plant known as Posidonia oceanica make beautiful iPhone and iPad cases.
A new MacOS app gives photographers a speedy way to create web galleries from the Photos library.
How fast? That depends on how fast you can click on a folder.
Mark Rober already served the citizens of planet Earth by helping build the Curiosity rover currently roaming Mars. Now add holiday hero to his engineering credentials.
The ex-NASA engineer designed a series of revenge-bait packages that looked like HomePods — but showered unsuspecting thieves with glitter and deadly doses of fart spray.
A 4-year-old boy in England used Siri to call for help after his pregnant mom collapsed, according to reports.
Beau Austin, who reportedly loved talking to digital assistants on devices, called out to Siri on his mother’s iPhone to dial 999. He then told the operator “my mummy’s sick,” adding they were alone.
We watch with both horror and fascination those videos where someone rips apart the latest Apple gadget to see how it is built.
But one member of the r/iPhone thread on Reddit took the dismantling of his iPhone 4 in a different direction: He artfully arranged the pieces for a framed keepsake.
Even amid the three-quarters of a million residents of Winnipeg, Canada, Rocky Bergen felt alone when it came to his love of vintage computers.
But thanks to his papercraft models of classic machines like the Apple II, Bergen has connected with folks in places as far away as Italy and Sweden.
Apple marketing set an even higher bar in the advertising industry this year and is closing out 2018 with three commercials in Adweek’s Top 25 Best Ads of the Year.
Adweek listed “Welcome Home,” Apple’s HomePod ad directed by Spike Jonze, as second-best. Nike’s “Believe in Something. Even If it Means Sacrificing Everything” was the top ad, featuring polarizing quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
A customer brought an idea to his iPhone provider in Russia: What if you could make the iPhone and Apple Watch into one device?
The client now has his iPhone-watch mashup and you can, too, for $21,130.
The iPhone XR received the highest rating ever for a single-cam smartphone tested by image lab DxOMark.
Apple’s budget option for 2018 held its own against the more-expensive iPhone XS Max in a number of categories. Its score of 101 comes in just four points below that of the iPhone XS Max. And it’s three points better than the Google Pixel 2.
The last time I tried to use touchscreen gloves, I had made the decision to just never use my phone outdoors in the dead of winter. The damn things just weren’t warm.
I’m recalling this from my home in Minnesota, where this week’s lows are forecast to dip below zero for the first time this winter and I am wearing touchscreen gloves.
Luminar, Skylum Software’s all-in-one photo editing program, will soon add more tools so photographers spend less time using it.
That may sound strange, but photographers would rather spend time behind the camera than in front of the computer. Skylum, formerly called Macphun, exists to make the complex tools for editing user-friendly.
A piece of a well-known story about Steve Jobs’ disdain for giving autographs goes on the auction block Thursday.
At the 2006 opening of an Apple Store in New York City, the Apple co-founder initially refused the request of a man in a wheelchair who had hoped Jobs would sign his copy of the premiere issue of Macworld magazine.
Jobs, according to witnesses, was joking when he said no. He eventually acquiesced and signed the magazine, “To Matt” followed by “steven jobs.” (He rarely used capital letters when signing his name.)
Steve Jobs’ hands-on approach to just about every project at Apple is part of his legend.
Ron Johnson, Apple’s first head of retail, offers fascinating detail about Jobs and the work leading up to the first Apple Store during a recent episode of the Gimlet podcast Without Fail hosted by Andy Blumberg.
Jobs was demanding and described by many as often difficult to work with. But Johnson says working with Jobs was a “gift.”
Instant gratification, the kind you get from a selfie, used to come on a thin sheet of iron.
A tintype photo was novel and relatively immediate in the late 19th century. Have your picture made then wait while the photographer developed the image. After a few minutes, you had a photo to share.
Users of the TinType app by Hipstamatic have been bringing that distinctive and, at times, haunting aesthetic to portraits and selfies since 2012.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had little time or interest in signing autographs for fans.
But if you are in possession of the rare exception, you have a signature considered the most valuable, according to a guide that tracks the values of the most sought-after autographs.
The iPhone turned in a “flat” third quarter while Chinese brands Huawei and Xiaomi droves sales in their home country to grow their shares of the global smartphone market.
The smartphone market grew by 1.4 percent to reach 389 units. Take Huawei and Xiaomi out of the equation, and global sales would have declined by 5.2 percent, according to the research firm Gartner, Inc.
Apple continues to put more of its smartwatches on the wrists of customers thanks largely these days to a reduced price on its Series 3 model.
Apple sold more than 4 million Apple Watches in the third quarter, a 54 percent increase in year-over-year growth.
Google and Samsung have smartphones many critics say are as good or better than the latest iPhones.
But making a device to rival Apple’s isn’t the hard part. Getting iPhone users to switch is.
Google acknowledges this in a series of video ads launched this week to convince brand loyalists to switch to its newest and well-reviewed flagship, the Pixel 3.
Instagram will be more accessible to the visually impaired thanks to new changes the photo-sharing platform launched today.
“With more than 285 million people in the world who have visual impairments, we know there are many people who could benefit from a more accessible Instagram,” the company wrote on its Info Center page announcing two new tools.
Caviar, a Russian company that tricks out iPhones in gold and precious gems, has an Apple Watch Series 4 “for those who cannot be surprised easily.”
So let’s see if that’s you. How does $43,850 strike you?
The headline may have ruined the surprise, but you might be startled once you learn the details that got the watch to that price point.
The late Jim Morrison had a lot to say during his short life. He poured his ideas into salient psychedelic rock music and imparted prophetic wisdom during interviews with the press.
Oslo-based adman Jason Kinsella set out to prove that some of Morrison’s thoughts on the power of media are truer now than some 50 years ago.
A translation app widely used in China appears to censor politically touchy terms, such as “Tiananmen” or “ Taiwan independence.” It even refuses the name of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
However, the app’s censoring of those forbidden phrases happens only on Android. The iOS version answers the query on all three.
