It’s looking like it might be a dreary quarter for Apple. Not only has iPhone growth pretty much leveled off, but most Wall Street analysts believe that when Apple announces its quarterly numbers, iPad sales will have actually declined year over year. Is Wall Street wrong?
It’s not often that a company announces that they’ve figured out a way to make people stop paying for a piece of hardware by purposely making it obsolete, but that’s just what Sonos has done.
Sonos has just announced that thanks to clever programming, they have figured out a way to make their $50 Sonos Bridge device — a gadget that plugs into your router to allows you to stream music in perfect sync to the Sonos speakers throughout your house — completely obsolete.
As a guy running upwards of seven miles a day to get in shape for his imminent nuptials, Runkeeper is my favorite exercise tracking app, but you have to consciously remember to use it. But Runkeeper now has a new trick up its sleeve: Breeze, an activity tracker that taps into your iPhone 5s’s M7 motion processor to subtly guide you into living a more active life.
If you’ve ever wanted to play Blizzard Entertainment’s wildly successful MMO World of Warcraft on your iPad, you just got your wish. Uh, kind of. After debuting on Mac and PC, Hearthstone: Heroes Of Warcraft has now been released on App Stores worldwide. But it’s actually a lot more like Magic: The Gathering than the MMO you’d expect.
In the past, when Apple has grown the screen of an iOS device — for example, with the transition from the iPhone 4s to the iPhone 5 — Apple has taken pains to keep the pixel density the same. The Retina Display on the iPhone 5 is 326 pixels per inch, just like the iPhone 4s. This makes it easier for developers and helps prevent the widespread fragmentation seen in the Android operating system.
With many rumors pegging the forthcoming iPhone 6 as having a much bigger 4.7-inch display, a practical issue presents itself: what would that mean for resolution and pixel-density? If Apple increases the display size, will they increase the resolution to compete with the likes of HTC and Samsung’s 1080p Android smartphones? And if so, what does that mean for app developers?
Apple’s incoming SVP of Retail, Angela Ahrendts, is one of Cupertino’s most widely anticipated hires in ages. The CEO of popular fashion chain Burberry, Ahrendts is so well-suited to lead Apple’s retail ambitions, and such a powerhouse executive in her own right, that many have wondered if Tim Cook is planning to have her replace him as CEO when he retires.
But when is Ahrendts going to join Apple officially? She was originally expected this month, but it’s now looking like she might push her start until June.
Why? Why else. Money.
In November 2013, Apple acquired PrimeSense, a 3-D technology sensing company that could hint at the ability for future iPhones, iPads and Macs to have a Kinect-like ability to sense where users are and react to their movements.
Given the acquisition, you’d think Apple would be the first company to use one of PrimeSense’s hot 3-D imaging systems-on-a-chip, maybe in the iPhone 6, but no. Google has beaten Apple to the punch, using PrimeSense’s Capri PS1200 3-D imaging SoC in the experimental Project Tango device, the world’s first motion-sensing smartphone.
Some materials have integrity. Consider aluminum, Jony Ive’s material of choice, and then compare it to plastic. Under the skin, plastic feels wholly artificial, a lump of congealed and polished chemicals; in feel and smell, there’s something unnatural and slightly impure about it. But aluminum feels clean. It has texture. It isn’t just a facade: It is true to itself, right on down through.
Another material with integrity is wood. It is true to itself, from the veneer to the grain. It has texture. It is clean. And it has history. Wood actually picks up the oils from your hands, and develops a patina. And because of its innate qualities, wood pairs exquisitely with Jony Ive’s chosen material of integrity: aluminum.
Which brings us to Twelve South’s latest product, the BookArc möd. An organic, well-crafted version of the accessory maker’s popular BookArc stand, it is a laptop dock that offers every bit as much integrity as the MacBook it is meant to house… both different and complementary at once.
Hot on the heels of this morning’s leak of the alleged front panel of the 4.7-inch iPhone 6, a new photo purportedly shows the battery of Apple’s next-gen smartphone. The image seems to support rumors of a larger iPhone, requiring a larger battery.
We’ve heard multiple reports that Apple will release a larger-screen iPhone 6 (possibly in two different sizes), but who really wants a bigger iPhone with a larger screen anyway? Actually, a lot of people: as much as 40% of prospective smartphone buyers are chomping at the bit for a bigger iPhone.
Slowly but surely, the worldwide PC market is drying up. In the first quarter, a recent report from IDC says that worldwide PC shipments have slipped 4.4% year-over years. And not even Apple has proven immune to the wasting away of the PC market, but they’re still making up for it on other ways.
When we think about the iWatch, we tend to think of a little smartphone that you wear on your wrist, or at least a bit of technology, but if the latest reports are anything to go by, Apple’s iWatch play is going to much bigger than that: with the iWatch, Apple intends to do nothing less than conquer the world of fashion, becoming just as synonymous with luxury watches as Rolex. But how?
As ever, take this with a grain of salt, but a new rumor from Taiwan’s Industrial & Commercial Times claims the iPhone 6 will come in two flavors: a 4.7-inch version and a 5.5-inch version. But one of those devices could launch well outside Apple’s customary September window.
Well, here’s one major way in which the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S5 is superior to the iPhone 5s: if you boil it in hot water for two minutes, it’ll still work, while the iPhone 5s will crap out within about 30 seconds.
Steve Ballmer. A total doofus, right? The man who said the iPhone was destined to be a failure, who thought the iPad was a dud, who stood in the way of Office being released for the iPad long after it was clear that Windows 8 was a total bust.
Okay, sure, Microsoft’s sweatiest ex-CEO was a bit of an idiot. But to be fair to the man, he did make his amends before he was forced out by incumbent CEO Satya Nadella. In fact, Ballmer’s last oleaginous act as CEO appears to have been greenlighting the release of Office for iPad.
A new report by Barclay’s chip analyst Blayne Curtis suggests the iWatch could boast an ultraviolet light sensor.
According to Curtis, Texas-based Silicon Labs has come up with “the industry’s first digital ultraviolet index sensors,” which could land the company an iWatch contract.
A new report out of China says that Apple’s long-awaited iWatch could debut as early as summer this year, sometime after WWDC, and ship 65M units to start. But how far can it be trusted?
Does your iPhone battery constantly drain from 100% to nearly 0%? You might think the battery is to blame, but there could be a far more dastardly culprit: Facebook.
In the past, when anyone has talked about the possibility of a low-cost iPhone aimed at the budget market, most have assumed that Apple would essentially take the iPod touch — currently the cheapest iOS device, after subsidies, which saves on cost in a number of key regards like screen quality, speed, storage and more — and graft some cellular modems onto it. Yet when Apple unveiled the iPhone 5c, what they showed was a smartphone that was essentially an iPhone 5 in a plastic shell. In other words, a last-gen iPhone that was cheaper for Apple to make, but not necessarily to buy.
Yet according to new court documents coming out of the latest Apple vs. Samsung case, such a vision for the ‘cheap’ iPhone was not always meant to be. In fact, Steve Jobs himself believed that the budget iPhone should be based off of the iPod touch.
Sick of waiting for your iPhone to finish charging? By 2017, your iPhone could completely charge from 0% to 100% in just 5 minutes, in a portable, consumer-friendly package that will make long charging times a thing of the past.
Apple is awarded a lot of patents, many of which it never does much more than sit on top of. After all, in the high stakes (and highly litigious) world of mobile, it’s better to patent a potential innovation than let a potential enemy do so.
Even so, today was a banner day for Apple. In just a single day, Apple was granted a whopping fifty-one different patents, ranging from older products like the unibody MacBook Pro to some much wilder stuff, like a possible 3D Apple TV remote control system.
Historically, Greenpeace hasn’t been very happy with Apple. In the past, they have scored Apple last in reports on green-friendly data centers, called the iCloud one of the dirtiest things on the planet, and called Apple less green friendly than Dell, HP and Nokia.
But things have seemingly changed. In a new report on renewable energy used by major Internet companies, Apple came out at 100%, thanks to the wind farms and solar arrays that now allow Apple’s data centers to run on 100% renewable energy. What’s the dirtiest thing on the planet now?
When Apple starts sniffing around, looking to buy a company, it’s time to pay attention. That goes double if they make chips. Back in 2008, Apple purchased P.A. Semi, a low-powered chipmaker, whose acquisition soon paved the way for an entire series of revolutionary ARM based chips. And recently, Apple purchased a low-energy chip maker who could help power the iWatch.
Now Apple’s out to do it again, this time with Renesas SP, if reports can be believed. But what for?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1yW4n17lhc
When we originally posted about winocm’s magic iPad 2 that could boot between iOS 5, iOS 6 and iOS 7 at will, we said that “the elite skills necessary to hack your iPad to dual boot operating systems is beyond the ability of most of us mortals, and it’s unlikely winocm will ever make this process friendly for the everyman.”
Then, just yesterday, we took it all back: winocm was going to release the hack that allowed him to dual boot operating systems on his iPad. Schizo-iPads would soon be available to everyone! We were wrong!
Today, though, winocm has released his hack, and guess what? It’s a bunch of github code that you need to have “elite skills… beyond the ability of most of us mortals” to install… definitely not a “process friendly for the everyman.”
If you’re a big fan of Rdio — after Spotify, the other major streaming music subscription service, which just happens to have much better iOS apps — and you also have a Google Chromecast, good news: Rdio for iOS now supports Google’s streaming HDTV dongle.
