In a weekend report to investors, reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities reiterates that Apple is planning two OLED iPhones and one LCD model for this year. The two OLED models, he says, be 5.8- and 6.5-inches in size, while the LCD model will be 6.1-inches.
This differs from a report last week suggesting that Apple is leaning toward two LCD iPhones and a single larger OLED model for its 2018-era iPhones.
A game in which you stick to surfaces in order to capture slices of pizza, while avoiding enemies? Yep, it’s another oddball (but brilliant) iOS puzzle game.
That’s just one of the picks we’ve highlighted for this week’s “Awesome Apps” roundup. We’ve also got major upgrades of Logic Pro X and Apple’s educational Swift Playgrounds, and a Friday the 13th title which really shouldn’t work, but totally does. Check out our picks below.
With Apple Park now completed, Apple employees are finally moving into the company’s brand new sprawling campus — although it won’t happen all at once.
Given the size of the building, which can hold 12,000 employees, the city of Cupertino has issued Apple a series of temporary occupancy permits allowing employees to move into selected parts of the main building.
Apple has given its Clip app for iOS a minor upgrade, celebrating Chinese New Year, which takes place next month.
The app’s update includes a commemorative Chinese New Year label and poster, along with minor updates for improved stability when recording Selfie Scenes on iPhone X, and a fix for an issue that caused the “Top Secret poster” to animate incorrectly during playback.
Apple may be rethinking plans for the ratio of OLED to LCD iPhones for 2018, a new report claims.
Apple is reportedly developing four next-gen iPhone project simultaneously: a 5.7- to 5.8-inch LCD device, a 6.0- to 6.1-inch LCD device, a 6.0- to 6.1-inch OLED device, and a 6.4- to 6.5-inch OLED device. However, only three of these are likely to ship to users. The question, therefore, is which three.
Apple Watch Series 3 with cellular capabilities is coming to two new locations, Hong Kong and Singapore, Apple has confirmed.
In Singapore, the Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE will be carried by Singtel, while those in Hong Kong will be able to choose between 1O1O and csl3 as their carrier. Apple has updated its website to show the addition of the two new markets, which brings the total number of markets with Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE to 12.
Twitter wants to make it easier for people to post videos to its app, and it’s reportedly planning to take some inspiration from Snapchat in order to do so.
According to a new report, citing sources familiar with the matter, Twitter is currently working on a tool that will let users more easily utilize their camera to take and share video clips, showing what is happening around them.
Ahead of Apple’s first ever Apple Store opening South Korea, the company has shared pictures of its spectacular new Seoul store online.
Located on the south of the Han River, in the heart of the upmarket Gangnam district, the store boasts a 25-foot glass facade, stunning 6K video wall, and a tree-lined interior that is designed to blur the line between street and store. It opens this Saturday.
Google can no longer innovate, claims departing 13-year company vet Steve Yegge in a long Medium post this week.
Yegge puts Google on blast for what he perceives as the four biggest problems facing the company today. How many of them hold true for Apple as well?
A big increase in the number of exciting-sounding job openings for designers and engineers at Apple’s new Apple Park campus suggests that some exciting projects are underway.
According to a new report, based on data from Apple’s HR website, Apple began hiring a whole lot more designers in October, with openings jumping from an average of 40 or less to a peak of 70 new positions. While the company hires new engineers all the time, this uptick in hiring suggests that Apple is bringing in a whole lot more creative folks than they have in a long while.
Primary Data, an enterprise storage startup which employed Steve Wozniak as its chief scientist, appears to have shut down. At time of writing, the company’s Twitter and Facebook appear to be down, although its webpage is still working. Its operating status is described as “closed.”
Apple’s ARKit augmented reality platform just got better thanks to ARKit 1.5, which has rolled out to developers in beta.
The upgrade adds a big new feature to AR developers’ toolset: wall detection. Previous versions of ARKit only focused on horizontal plane detection, meaning that it only able to detect floors for objects to be placed onto. With the new upgrade, AR developers will now be able to add walls into the mix — for instance, creating a game in which you throw darts at a wall-mounted board.
Tim Cook talked up the audio quality of Apple’s HomePod smart speaker during a recent interview, while taking a shot at the competition.
“We think one thing that was missing from this market was a quality audio experience, a very immersive audio experience,” Cook said. “Music deserves that kind of quality as opposed to some kind of squeaky sound.”
The European Commission has fined Qualcomm 997 million euros ($1.2 billion) for abusing its market dominance in LTE baseband chipsets, supposedly paying Apple billions of dollars in order to secure their business and stop Apple buying chips from rivals.
Such practice is illegal under EU antitrust laws.
Apple ramped up its lobbying spend in 2017, shelling out $7 million to battle many of the regulations and proposed new laws issued by the Trump administration.
Under Tim Cook, amount spent by Apple on lobbying efforts has more than doubled. However, while last year’s figure was a personal record for the company, it is less than many other big tech giants spent. During the same period, Google spent $18 million on lobbying efforts, while Amazon spent $12.8 million, and Facebook spent $11.5 million.
Grid Autosport, the iOS “console-quality” AAA racing game, just got even better, courtesy of an update.
It adds additional control options, including better car handling for people playing the game with MFi controllers. It also lets you switch off haptic feedback, as well as fixing bugs and making a couple of additional tweaks.
Despite seemingly dropping plans for a sapphire display for the iPhone, Apple continues to be haunted by its brief venture into manufacturing using the material.
In addition to Apple’s sapphire supplier GT Advanced Technologies going bankrupt several years back, this week Apple was handed a lawsuit by manufacturer Hebei Hengbo Fine Ceramic Material. The company claims to have fallen out with Apple over terms for a contract involving high purity alumina melt stock, a material used as part of the sapphire process.
Tim Cook sure racks up the air miles! This week, Apple’s CEO visited Canada, where he made a surprise appearance at a downtown Toronto Apple Store, and took in a Maple Leafs game for good measure.
Incredibly, this is Cook’s first ever visit to Canada since assuming the role of Apple CEO back in August 2011.
Another Wall Street analyst has downgraded Apple shares, based on fears that iPhone demand is getting weaker. Atlantic Equities has lowered its rating on Apple from “overweight” to “neutral” on account of their predictions that Apple will be reporting disappointing sales for the March quarter.
“[We see] signs that iPhone demand is starting to soften, limited visibility into the potential for future iPhone cycles and emerging challenges to the smartphone’s dominance at the centre of consumer technology,” the firm wrote in a note to clients.
New icons uncovered in the latest iOS 11.2.5 developer build confirm that, yes, HomePod owners will be able to disable the microphone on Apple’s smart speaker should so they wish to do so.
Given Apple’s privacy-conscious policies, and the fact that rival speakers made by Amazon and Google allow the same to be done, it’s no surprise that Apple would make that an option on HomePod. Still, it could help ease fears among customers concerned about the risk of housing an “always listening” speaker in their homes.
Tim Cook will give the commencement address for Duke University’s graduating class on May 13, 2018.
Cook is a 1988 MBA graduate of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, as well as a member of the university’s Board of Trustees. Cook has previously given successful, inspirational and funny commencement addresses at MIT, Auburn University (which he attended before Duke), and George Washington University.
Check out the Duke University announcement video, featuring a whole lot of animojis, below.
California’s historic Hearst cattle ranch is being used as a hybrid solar farm to provide power for Apple — partly thanks to Steve Jobs.
The Hearst ranch takes up 150,000 acres, split across two properties, on the border of San Luis Obispo County in central California. The land has been used for raising cattle since 1865, but are now also being used as the home of a 2,900-acre solar farm, which is providing energy to power the Apple Park campus.
Apple debuted a new ad for the iPhone X over the weekend. The 30-second commercial advertises the iPhone X’s Portrait Lighting selfie feature, and includes narration from the iconic boxing heavyweight champion and social activist Muhammad Ali.
Check it out below.
A futuristic, sci-fi rhythm game called Cytus II is just of one of our picks for this week’s “Awesome Apps of the Week.”
In addition, we’ve got a great music transcription app, a frantic explosion-driven platformer, and… Microsoft Office? Check out our selections below.
Apple has topped Fortune’s annual list of the world’s admired companies for a record eleventh year in a row.
Other tech companies in the top 10 include Amazon (which retained its no. 2 position), Alphabet (at no. 3), and Microsoft (no. 7). Berkshire Hathaway, Starbucks, Disney, Southwest Airlines, FedEx, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. rounded off the rest of the list.