Fitbit wants Google’s help to turn its fitness trackers into health monitors. The wearables maker will use Google’s cloud solutions to tie directly to users’ electronic medical records.
The real goal, of course, is to help Fitbit be more competitive with arch-rival Apple Watch.
Analysts have been extremely pessimistic about the iPhone X, with almost daily predictions that Apple’s top-of-the-line model was a flop. And they were all dead wrong. Tim Cook just said the iPhone X has been Apple’s best-selling model for every week since it launched, and that sales of all the company’s phones grew last quarter.
How did the analysts get it so wrong? Here’s what probably happened.
A small company that makes dual cameras for cellphones claims Apple is infringing on several of its patents. The Israeli startup says it showed Apple prototypes for a miniature telephone lens, and Apple used them to create its own.
According to Corephotonics, the iPhone X, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone 7 Plus all use technology for which it holds patents.
Microsoft has good news for users of Mac, iPad, and iPhone: there are improvements in Office 365 for all of you.
Word for Mac now uses neural machine translation to convert text between 11 different languages. This AI system is intended to produce more accurate results.
You’ve had a couple of cold ones, then head to your car. Suddenly, your iPhone starts shrieking out an alert. It’s telling you that you’re too impaired to get behind the wheel.
This is the goal of AlcoGait, which uses a smarthone’s built-in sensors to monitor the way the user is walking. AI is used to detect if the person’s gait indicates they’re not up to driving.
A couple of new renders and a video from a reliable source show what might be the next-generation iPhone SE. The device shown looks a lot like the earlier version, but updated with some of Apple’s newest tech.
Most notably, the Home button is gone, being replaced by a screen cutout with Face ID sensors.
A job post shows Apple is hiring an engineer to lead a team designing 5G modems. This may be mean that the company is going to stop outsourcing these wireless chips.
Apple currently sources its LTE modems from Qualcomm, but there have been reports that it’s working with Intel on next-generation modems. Maybe the iPhone maker decided to kick Intel to the curb too.
Do you get your iPhone service from Sprint? Not for much longer. The third and fourth largest U.S. carriers just announced they’re merging. But the plan to join Sprint and T-Mobile is already drawing significant criticism.
The combined company will be called T-Mobile, and will be headed by John Legere, T-Mobile’s current CEO. That’s assuming the $59 billion deal gets approved by government regulators.
Just about all of us have a few classic Apple devices we just can’t bear to get rid of. But Hap Plain takes it to the next level. And beyond. He collects and sells Apple prototypes for top dollar.
He has about 258. And his collection is a more than just a history of the company. It’s a testament all the effort needed to create the great Apple desktops, PDAs, and phones of the past.
There’s been a lot of pessimism about the iPhone X lately, but a market research firm says that this device was the top selling smartphone in the world by a wide margin in February.
The company also says Apple had all four of the best selling smartphones globally that month.
The good news is that someone managed to create an iOS 11.3 jailbreak. The bad news is that the person who managed the trick probably won’t turn it into anything the general public can use.
While this once would have left a significant percentage of the iPhone community tearing its hair out, these days jailbreaking is almost dead.
Microsoft released Office 2019 Preview today, with the full release expected later this year. This early version is only for Windows, though a macOS edition will be out “in the coming months,” according to the company.
This version of the giant productivity suite is for those who don’t want to pay a monthly fee for Office 365.
Shipments of iPhone in China increased 32 percent in the first quarter of this year. This was during a period when the overall Chinese handset market declined.
Many Chinese see Apple devices as status symbols and pick them over local brands that cost significantly less.
Say goodbye to 3D Touch. A very reliable analyst predicts one of the iPhones coming in autumn won’t have this pressure-sensitive technology, and none of the 2019 devices will.
Ming-Chi Kuo says it’s all because Apple is changing the components of its displays to make them lighter and less likely to break.
The Opera Touch web browser tries to solve one problem: people want to use their phone one-handed, but searching the Web takes both hands. The whole focus of this just released app is one-handed searching and browsing.
Also announced today was Opera Flow, a simple method for synchronizing the new mobile browser with this company’s desktop one.
Spotify objects to Apple collecting a share of all the subscription fees paid by iOS users. A law proposed today in European Union would force Apple and Spotify into mediation on this issue.
And it’s not just Spotify. Under the proposal, Apple, Google, and other tech giants would have to appoint mediators in all their disagreements with smaller companies.
Microsoft’s head of marketing says his company is no longer interested in battling with Apple. This is surely a shocking statement to anyone who remembers the days when these two brawled relentlessly. But those days are over.
The change was brought about by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who accepted the need to bring his company’s products to whatever devices could run them, not just Windows.
Apple’s CEO and the President of the United States took a meeting today in the Oval Office. Trade was at the top of the agenda for Tim Cook and Trump, as the President and China’s leaders increasingly put tariffs on each other’s products.
Cook was already in Washington to attend a White House formal dinner last night to honor the French President.
In the streaming music battle, the competition is between Spotify and Apple Music. Google Play Music is barely a blip, with 4 percent of the U.S. market.
But the situation is more complex than that. Google’s YouTube video service actually dominates streaming music, though it isn’t supposed to be in that business at all.
According to unconfirmed reports, Google plan is to merge its music service with another, and also turn millions of free YouTube listeners into paying customers.
In case you’ve been living in a cave in Wakanda, tomorrow is the premiere of Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War movie. Super-fans can celebrate with new Avengers iPhone cases from OtterBox.
These feature characters from Marvel’s highly anticipated movie, including Iron Man, Black Panther, Captain America and Thanos. Plus, there’s one that combines multiple images from this blockbuster superhero team-up flick.
The fact that the HomePod isn’t selling well means that Apple has probably missed its chance to ever be a significant part of the smart speaker market, according to analysts from Deutsche Bank.
Sales of inexpensive rival devices are exploding, while Apple’s very pricy offering sits on the shelf. That may lock customers into non-Apple solutions.
Google today joined the movement replacing the gun emoji with a water pistol. A number of other companies already made the same move amid a growing awareness of gun violence.
Apple started this trend several years ago when it exchanged the pistol emoji for a harmless pool toy in iOS 10.
President Donald Trump held his first White House state dinner tonight since moving into the Oval Office, and Apple CEO Tim Cook was on the guest list.
The left-leaning Cook might have felt very much in the minority. Trump didn’t invite a single Democratic member of Congress to the dinner, but arch-conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch was in attendance.
Several weeks after the release of macOS 10.13.4, today came a security update that patches some holes in this High Sierra version. This isn’t so critical that it has to be installed right now, but Apple says “This update is recommended for all macOS High Sierra users.”
There’re also security fixes for Safari 11.1, which was introduced recently too.
A court case to determine if Apple owes the European Union about €13 billion will begin in about six months. The trial will determine if Ireland gave Apple illegal tax incentives.
The two are actually appealing a decision by the European Commission made in 2016 that Ireland is effectively a tax haven.