John Brownlee - page 23

Over the past week, two new leaks from abroad have given us new details about what accessories will be coming with the iPhone 6. The first leak suggested that the iPhone 6 would ship with a Lightning cable with a fully reversible USB plug; the second leak — which came just this morning — suggested that the iPhone charger was also getting a redesign.

We now have video of both the new fully reversible Lightning cable and the new iPhone 6 charger in action. They look great, but unfortunately, there’s at least one disappointment: while the charger will indeed ship with the iPhone 6, our source says that USB Lightning cable won’t be available until next year.

In a new blog post, famed ex-Apple executive Jean-Louise Gassée has given his thoughts on the recent IBM and Apple strategic alliance. And while Gassée notes that most strategic alliances don’t work, he thinks the Apple/IBM one will work out… in favor of Apple, that is.

For years now, the tiny 5-watt charger that has shipped with the iPhone has gone more or less unchanged. But according to a new report out of China, this fall, Apple will ship a new, squatter charger with the release of the iPhone 6.

At this point, thanks to myriad leaked parts, we have a pretty good idea what the iPhone 6 will look like. One question some of us still have, though, is what the antenna panes of the rear shells we’ve been seeing so far will actually look like.

On the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s, the cellular antenna peeks out of two glass antenna panes, installed specially for just that purpose in the aluminum rear shell. The rear shell leaks we’ve seen so far suggest that the iPhone 6 will keep the antenna panes, but they may not actually be made of glass. Other leaks have suggested the opposite, indicating that the iPhone 6 might look more like the iPhone 5 and 5s in the back than previously thought.

Hedging his bets, iPhone conceptualist Martin Hajek has created renders comparing both possibilities. Check them out after the jump. For my money, the glass antenna panes look infinitely better. What do you think Apple will go with?

Secret, the iPhone app that is supposed to let users share secrets anonymously, is nowhere nearly as anonymous as it first appears. But an upcoming update to the app is looking to beef up the app’s anonymity, by banning real names, preventing users from uploading images on their Camera Roll, and the addition of a new polling feature.

With the iPhone 6 set to come in two separate display sizes — a 4.7-inch model, and a 5.5-model — Apple needs to increase the iPhone’s resolution to keep up. But what will the new resolutions be? Up until now, Apple has stuck with 326 pixels-per-inch for all Retina iPhones, but will larger iPhones require higher pixel densities.

Pulling out a spreadsheet, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber worked out the math for what he thinks the resolutions of the iPhone 6 will be. Using the Pythagorean Theorem, Gruber says that he thinks the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 will keep the current iPhone’s 326 pixels-per-inch, but the 5.5-inch model will have an astonishing 461 pixels-per-inch, making it practically Super Retina.

It’s that time of year again! The weeks before a new iPhone launch are always marked by big box retailers trying to clear their stock of the soon-to-be-older models at steep discounts.

Right now, that big box retailer is Walmart, who is discounting the 16GB iPhone 5c to just $0.97, and the 16GB iPhone 5s to $79, with a two-year contract.

In the latest of a seemingly endless number of schematic leaks, a pair of documents obtained by GeekBar indicate that the next iPhone 6 might not come in the usual 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB varieties.

Rather, it’ll come in three flavors. 16GB. 64GB. And 128GB. But surprisingly, no 32GB.

Like most of Samsung’s products, the upcoming Galaxy Alpha is already getting a lot of flack amongst Apple fans for being a ripoff of Apple’s upcoming iPhone 6.

Armed with his super-realistic 3-D render of what we believe the next iPhone will look like, our favorite Apple-obsessed conceptual modeler decided to put a render of the iPhone 6 next to a render of the Galaxy Alpha and see how similar they really were.

And how similar are they? You can judge for yourself after the jump, but in my opinion, up until now, the only thing Samsung hadn’t stolen from Apple for its Galaxy smartphones was the quality of materials used to manufacture them. Looks like even that’s not true anymore.

Apple’s iTunes store has increasingly become the place where today’s top blockbusters make their home debut, premiering on your iPhone, Mac, or Apple TV as much as a week before their DVD releases.

But with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Apple is getting one of its biggest jumps on the competition yet. The comic book political thriller is debuting on the iTunes Store three whole weeks before its Blu-Ray or DVD debut.

Sprint has seen better days. Now existing as the distant fourth wireless carrier in America, it needs a win to score customers back.

Sprint’s recently announced new “Framily” plans might just be that win. They not only let you feel like you have a speech impediment everytime you say the word ‘Framily’, but they offer twice as much data as the likes of AT&T and Verizon, for about the same price.

First Phil Schiller dumped a bucket of ice cold water on his head, challenging Tim Cook to do the same. Then Tim Cook accepted the challenge, dousing himself at an Apple HQ beer bash to help raise money to fight Lou Gehrig’s disease.

We all thought it was over. But we forgot about Dre.

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably interested in trying a standing desk… but not quite so committed to the idea of standing all day that you’d be willing to throw out your office chair.

Which is why I’m so interested in the Lift. Now on Kickstarter, it’s a gorgeous and elegant wooden desk gadget that allows you to convert your existing desk to and from a standing desk at will.

Recently, a clever little Pokemon clone called Micromon shot to the top of the App Store bestseller list. If the success of Micromon proved anything, it’s that an official Pokemon game would be very well received if it came to the App Store.

If that’s something that appeals to you, good news. A version of the Pokemon online trading card game is coming to the iPad sometime soon.

Last week, we told you about shots that had leaked from within Foxconn, which reportedly showed new Lightning cables developed by Apple that featured fully reversible USB connectors.

We were excited, but there was only one problem: the images seemed a little sketchy. But a new image from reliable leaker Sonny Dickson‘s Twitter feed indicates that the reversible USB plug is indeed coming to new Lightning cables, perhaps as early as the iPhone 6.

Amongst Cupertino’s many other accomplishments, you can now chalk up Emmy Award Winner. Apple has just won the Most Outstanding Commercial of the Year award for its wonderful iPhone 5s ad, “Misunderstood.”

Love Lego? Love iOS? Prepare to get your chocolate in your peanut butter.

Lego has just started selling Lego Fusion, a series of toys that blend everyone’s favorite plastic bricks with iOS gaming.

With Yosemite, OS X is getting its biggest visual overhaul yet, courtesy of Apple design head Jony Ive. But not everything is changing. Case in point: OS X’s File Inspector function.

Shown when you right click on a file in Finder and click ‘Get Info,’ Inspector shows you the nitty-gritty details of a file: it’s size, what file it is set to open with, it’s permissions, and so on. But in Yosemite, it looks pretty much as it ever did.

On Behance, user Ramotion has come up with a Yosemite-inspired redesign of OS X’s ‘Get Info’ menu that makes it more useful, intuitive, attractive, and flexible, especially when dealing with multiple files.

It’s gorgeous work, fitting of OS X Yosemite’s slick new design ethos as a whole. Take a look at the complete concept below.

With the next-gen USB 3.1 standard now heading into production, the USB connectors of the future will be a lot more like Lightning. Featuring small, reversible connectors, the new USB Type-C cable will be particularly well suited to syncing and charging smartphones and tablets… again, just like Lightning.

But new images said to come from within Foxconn show that Apple isn’t done innovating with Lightning just yet, and that we won’t have to wait until USB Type-C to become ubiquitous to have fully-reversible USB Lightning cables. The shots are purportedly of a fully-reversible USB connector for Apple’s next Lightning cable. In other words, instead of having to plug the Lightning cable into your computer in one specific orientation, you could do it either way.

One sad limitation of Instagram is you can’t post photos to the service from your Mac, only your iPhone. It’s by design, of course — Instagram wants to be a more spontaneous photo hosting service than the likes of Flickr — but it can make things annoying when you want to give a more polished shot the Instagram treatment.

Things are about to get a little easier. You still can’t post photos directly from your Mac, but you can make it easier to get them on your iPhone or iPad. Younity, a service that gives you access to your computer’s files through a personal cloud with no syncing necessary, has just added support for publishing Instagram files directly from the service.

Do you hate the fact that Facebook is forcing you to install the Facebook Messenger app if you want to send or access messages on your iPhone or iPad?

We do too. But luckily, it turns out that right now, there’s an easy way to get around the restrictions and access your Facebook Messages through the vanilla Facebook app again. But better move on it: Facebook’s not likely to let this loophole stay open for long.

In the past, the chemicals benzene and n-hexane, which are chemicals that make your iPhone screen so shiny, have been said to cause health problems for factory workers breathing in the fume.

But Apple has just announced that as of the iPhone 6, these complaints will be a thing of the past, as they are banning the use of the chemicals across their entire assembly line.

If you’ve been on the Internet at all over the last few days, you’ve probably heard about the Ice Bucket Challenge. The idea is simple. Someone challenges you online to dump a bucket of ice water all over your head. If you choose not to do so within 24 hours, you are asked to donate $100 to a charity to fight Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Speaking as an observer, I can say conclusively that the Ice Bucket Challenge is best when accepted by buxom 19-year-olds in string bikinis. But watching Apple’s Senior Vice President Of Marketing dumping a bucket of ice water on his head? Definitely a close second.

It’s hard to know what to make of an app update that promises to “cut crash rates in half.” If you’re a glass-half-full kind of guy, you’re happy with the increased stability. If you’re a glass-half-empty guy, though, you wonder why the hell they can’t get around to fixing the other 50 percent of unexpected software crashes.

I’m sort of a glass-half-empty kind of guy, at least when it comes to Facebook. So when they announce that their latest update to the Facebook for iPhone and iPad app has “solved a long-term mobile debugging problem and reduced the crash rate for people using the Facebook for iOS app by more than 50%,” I wonder why the hell a multibillion dollar corporation can’t fix the other half.

Hey guys, guess what? Twitter’s about to get a hell of a lot more annoying. Video ads in your stream are entering beta!