Alongside its fancy new MacBook Pros, Apple is new selling a fancy new external GPU for anyone who needs extra graphics processing power for their MacBook.
Created in partnership with film and broadcast company Blackmagic, the Blackmagic eGPU is a $699 powerhouse standalone unit that comprises an MD Radeon Pro 580 graphics card with 8GB of DDR5 RAM.
Apple just updated its MacBook Pro line, ramping up performance and adding various advanced features. Phil Schiller, Apple’s marketing VP, calls the new Apple laptops “the fastest and most powerful notebook we’ve ever made.”
The new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models boast 8th-generation “Coffee Lake” Intel Core processors, with 6-core CPUs in the 15-inch model and quad-core CPUs on the 13-inch model.
Siri has plenty of problems, but it just got one more: a lawsuit claiming Apple’s technology is infringing on patents belonging to another company.
The company in question, Advanced Voice Recognition Systems, is suing Apple for infringing on its previously held patent “Speech Recognition and Transcription Among Users Having Heterogeneous Protocols.”
Apple’s allegedly offending products include *deep breath* the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, HomePod, and Apple TV. Everything that runs Siri, basically!
A couple of months back, an announcement regarding Apple’s plans to build a new HQ in Raleigh, North Carolina were supposedly “imminent” and a “done deal.”
Things have remained quiet since then, however, and now a new report quotes North Carolina governor Roy Cooper as saying that he is “hopeful” Apple will pick the area, but admitting that they have yet to hear one way or the other.
Austria is set to become one of the next countries to get Apple Pay, months after Apple opened its first official Apple Store in the country.
A report describing the availability is relatively light on details, although it suggests that Bank Austria, one of the country’s biggest banks, will be among the initial card issuers.
Sometimes software bugs can be awfully revealing. This week, a security researcher noted how an iPhone-crashing bug occurred whenever some users used the Taiwanese flag emoji in iOS 11.3.
The bug is seemingly an abortive attempt to acquiesce to China’s rules for tech companies to follow, which includes its refusal to accept Taiwan as an independent country. While Apple hasn’t commented on the case, this isn’t the first time it has caved to China’s requests.
An Apple employee who downloaded blueprints for its self-driving car circuit board and then attempted to flee with them to China has been arrested.
Xiaolang Zhang supposedly told Apple of his plans to join a Chinese self-driving car startup, Xiaopeng Motors, shortly before booking his flight. He was arrested on July 7 after going through the security gates at San Jose airport.
Former Game of Thrones and current Aquaman actor Jason Momoa is set to star in another new Apple original series.
Called See, the show is an epic, world-building drama that’s set in the future. Momoa will play the lead role of Baba Voss, described by trade magazine Variety as, “a fearless warrior, leader and guardian.” So a totally different type of role for Momoa, then!
Paper’s great for some things, but when it comes to reading and taking notes, the traditional medium is mediocre at best. And when iPad apps try to replicate paper, things get even worse.
“It doesn’t work,” said Craig Tashman, developer of the LiquidText PDF Reader app, which Apple showcased in an iPad ad this week. “They end up inheriting the deficiencies of paper without really inheriting the things that make it work.”
Tashman talked with Cult of Mac about his quest to reinvent paper, and the massive benefit of having a $945 billion tech giant giving an indie developer some props.
Snapchat is building its focus on augmented reality Lenses, by giving users the ability to download those created by other users. This follows on from a feature Snap added at the end of last year, giving users the ability to build their own Lenses.
Last year, only Apple’s OLED iPhone X was the recipient of the edge-to-edge infinite display. Owners of the regular iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, meanwhile, had to endure the indignity of the old fashioned iPhone design, complete with bezel.
That appears set to change with the 2018-era iPhone refresh, however. And a new report reveals the technology that will make it all possible.
An Apple a day may keep the doctor away, but that doesn’t mean you should use an Apple Watch to safeguard against ill effects while binging on massive amounts of drugs.
According to a new report, medical experts are concerned that some drug users, particularly people taking cocaine, are using their Apple Watches and other wearables to monitor their heart rate while imbibing.
Apple will drop the iPhone X and iPhone SE from its list of available products this year, a new report claims. The reason? To help push a super cycle for the next-gen iPhone handsets that Apple supposedly believes will be, “far larger than normal cycles.”
The report, from analysts John Donovan and Steve Mullane from research firm BlueFin Research Partners, suggests that Apple is planning to build a combined 91 million units of its three 2018-era iPhones, which they think will be named the iPhone 9, iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Plus.
The smart speaker install base will approach 100 million units by the end of 2018 — but Apple will make up only a tiny piece of the market.
At least, that’s according to analysts at Canalys, who forecast how things are shaping up for the various Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod devices currently winding their way into kitchens and living rooms around the world. Their take home message? That, unless something big changes, Apple is kinda screwed!
The iPad is an extraordinarily versatile productivity tool, and Apple is keen to showcase that fact in a series of stylish new ads. The 15-second spots demonstrate the way that Apple’s tablet — alongside the Apple Pencil — can be used to make it easier to deal with your paperwork or computing on the move.
Check them out below.
A group of hooded thieves snatched $19,000 worth of iPhones from a New York Apple Store late last week.
Five men were recorded on CCTV during the raid at the store in Huntington Station, NY. Police are offering $5,000 for any information that will allow them to apprehend the criminals.
Remember the bemused reaction you had to the selfie stick the first time you saw one? Remember how that feeling gradually changed to begrudging acceptance as they became standard issue over the months that followed?
Get ready for the next creation in that line of “are they kidding?” thinking: the iPhone foot mount for the person who doesn’t want pockets in their clothing. They’ll be everywhere in 2019. Maybe.
Chinese smartphone manufacturer and occasional Apple tribute act Xiaomi has made its debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange — officially making it the world’s third largest phonemaker.
Xiaomi is one of the world’s most hotly anticipated stock market listings, having risen to prominence in developing markets, such as China. CEO Lei Jun, who was present at the company’s IPO launch today, has admitted that his founding the company was heavily inspired by the story of Steve Jobs.
Apple’s AirPower charging pad is still M.I.A., but if you’re looking for an innovative and awe-inspiring wireless charging option, look no further than a new Kickstarter campaign.
Called Gloo, it’s a sleek bottle-shaped wireless charging station that doubles up as a multicolored ambient light source you control with your iPhone.
The first Battleheart game, a superb pick-up-and-play RPG perfectly suited for iOS, launched way back in 2011. Now a fully fledged sequel, Battleheart 2 is finally set to debut on iOS in the next couple of weeks — and you can pre-order it right now.
Check out the trailer for the game below, and prepare to get excited!
Apple’s heated battle with Qualcomm is continuing and, as part of it, the company wants a legally sanctioned block to be placed on import iPhones featuring Intel chips.
However, a group of Apple consumers is striking back, arguing that any kind of an import ban would, “freeze out Intel’s nascent challenge to Qualcomm’s illegal monopoly” and “injure competition in a market already suffering from Qualcomm’s anticompetitive behavior.”
The superb Death Road to Canada is about to get even better. A madcap mix of randomly-generated zombie survival RPG, action game, and text-based interactive fiction game, this bonkers title is one of my favorite iOS games out there.
One of the things that makes it so good? The fact that its developers have released a constant stream of updates since its launch in March 2017. Far from simple bug fixes, these updates have given player a slew of new content to put them through their paces. Here’s what the latest “Gizzard” update adds to the formula:
Are you a computer history nerd? Want to hear 32-year-old Steve Jobs ruminating after the future of computing, or Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak talk phone phreaking and the birth of the Apple II?
If so, you’ll almost certainly be happy to hear about an amazing new archive of classic computer industry footage which just emerged online. Created in the 1980s by the U.K.’s BBC public broadcasting company, the footage comes from something called The Computer Literacy Project, aimed at inspiring a generation of people to code.
Apple is reportedly set to add another OLED display producer for the iPhone, helping Apple reduce its reliance on current OLED manufacturer Samsung.
For extra displays, Apple will turn to South Korean company LG Display, which will initially supply between 2-4 million screens. While this is a small number by Apple’s standards, it will work to ramp up its capacity to produce more in the future.
Apple still hasn’t revealed exactly how it plans to make its original video content available to customers.
However, a new report suggests that Apple may take a page out of Amazon’s playbook by launching a single Amazon Prime-style subscription package, compiling Apple Music, a magazine subscription service, and its original TV shows into one.