Apple is continuing to provide credible reasons that it may be working on an electric vehicle, as a new report suggests that Cupertino is in the midst of hiring away battery experts from major companies involved with the car industry.
The latest company to be allegedly targeted? None other than longtime Apple rival, Samsung.
One possible challenge with a vehicle packed full of connected components is what happens when you're out of range of the Internet. That problem could be partially solved by technology described in a 2003 patent (the oldest on this list, although it was only published in 2012). The patent describes a mesh network capable of keeping a car running in such a scenario.
Apple has since explored mesh networks beginning with iOS 7, becoming one of the first mainstream consumer tech companies to do so.
Martin Scorsese’s iPad ad wasn’t the only Apple-related spot at last night’s Oscars. In addition, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak popped up in an advert for Cadillac, in which he was described as “a college dropout [who invented] the personal computer.”
Selective history notwithstanding (the Programma 101, Micral N and Altair all have claims to being the first personal computers, while the Commodore PET was the first mass-market model), the ad is particularly interesting given the recent news about a possible Apple Car.
Check out the ad after the jump:
Apple plans to open two new data centers in Europe, its biggest European project to date. Located in Ireland and Denmark, the twin data centers will power the company’s online services including the iTunes Store, App Store, iMessage, Maps and Siri for local customers.
Apple has once again been named Fortune’s “most admired” company. Having won for the past seven years in a row — and then proceeded to shatter its own records throughout 2014 — it’s no surprise that Cupertino would take the no. 1 spot, but it’s yet another reminder of Apple’s current sustained dominance.
Google, meanwhile, increased its position by one place, versus last year, to take the no. 2 spot, while Amazon fell back a couple of places to no. 4. Microsoft, IBM and Facebook all failed to make the top 10.
Apple may be a tech giant with more spare cash than a dozen Scrooge McDucks, but it does spare a thought for the little guy every now and then.
Late last year, the company launched a new portal called Apple Maps Connect, designed to allow businesses to add or edit listings within Apple Maps. Initially available for U.S. businesses only, last month it expanded to the U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore — and now it may be set to arrive in French and German-speaking countries, too.
Apple may be about to invest $1.7 billion in a new factory for Japan Display, primarily dedicated to building smartphone screens for Cupertino.
The proposed plant would be located in Ishikawa, Japan, and is set to start operations in 2016. While it will reportedly also produce panels for other companies, its main purpose (hence the Apple investment) would be to produce iPhone displays.
Right from the start, Apple has had one foot firmly in the education market. Today the conversation tends to be about getting iPads into schools around the world, but as far back as the 1980s Apple was cultivating relationships in the higher-education market — where it picked up some of its most loyal evangelists.
A newly published interview Steve Jobs gave to the Chronicle of Higher Education back in 1998 offers some pretty intriguing tidbits about Jobs’ approach to learning and his plans for Apple going into the new millennium.
If you’re interested in Jobs interviews (and what Apple fan isn’t?), this was recorded at an interesting time — shortly after Jobs returned to Apple, before it had released the iMac, aka the product that helped start turning the company around. It’s definitely worth a listen.
Always dreamed of playing Apple’s lovable cofounder Steve Wozniak on-screen, but think you missed out on the chance when Hollywood comedian Seth Rogen was cast in the role for the upcoming Aaron Sorkin/Danny Boyle Steve Jobs biopic? Well, there may be time yet — provided you’re based in the Bay Area and are available for filming next Tuesday, February 24.
According to a casting call posted on the industry website projectcasting.com, Rogen is in need of a body double for anyone who bears a physical resemblance to the funny man actor. You could even pick up a cool $162 plus overtime for doing so.
The ad reads as follows:
Thanks primarily to the memories of its botched sapphire production efforts, Apple’s not had the best of luck so far with Mesa, Arizona — although politicians in the state are desperate to keep it there.
Under a new Senate Bill put forward this week, Apple could receive between one and two decades’ worth of tax breaks for its planned Mesa data center. The tax breaks, introduced by State senator Jeff Dial, would relate to Apple primarily because of its plans to power the facility with 100 percent renewable energy.
Anyone wanting to see what productivity tools would look like on an iPad with stylus need look no further than Microsoft’s updated OneNote iOS app.
Having just updated its OneNote app for Mac, the iPad app adds OCR scanning of text within images, alongside the neat ability to add handwritten notes — either using your finger or, better still, a third-party stylus. While this feature has previously been available for the Windows and Android versions of the OneNote app, this is the first time iPad users can get in on the fun.
Given their focus on gorgeous design and parallel rise, fall and ascent to global dominance narratives, it’s perhaps no surprise to hear that I love Lego almost as much as I do Apple products. With hundreds of sets in total — and a reported 62 bricks for every single person on Earth — picking out the greatest Lego sets of all time is tough to do.
Not all of the ones on the list below are easy to get hold of (eBay is your best bet!), but if you’re looking for a fun challenge and great way of gobbling up your spare cash before the Apple Watch arrives, you can’t do any better.
Ready to get building?
Apple hasn’t yet announced prices for its 18-karat-gold Apple Watch Edition timepieces, but if you think the top-of-the-range wearable is going to cost anything under $5,000, you’ve got another thing coming.
Greg Koenig, co-founder of Luma Labs, recently performed a calculation to find out an approximate figure for the gold content of the forthcoming 42mm gold Apple Watch. While Koenig notes that his guess is a “very rough estimate,” it still makes for interesting eye-watering (iWatering?) reading.
His guess? 29.16 grams — which translates to $853.82 at today’s gold prices. And that’s without even taking the electronics into account.
Given that Apple can’t make an iPhone with a battery life of more than (best case scenario) a couple of days, how would it ever manage with a far more power-intensive technology like, say, an electric car?
It seems that this is exactly the question being asked in Cupertino — and the attempt to answer it has landed Apple with a new lawsuit, filed earlier this month in Massachusetts federal court.
As per the complaint, back in June last year, Apple reportedly began an “aggressive campaign” to poach top engineers from the electric car battery maker A123 Systems. The engineers were responsible for performing critical development and testing activities on cutting-edge electric vehicle batteries.
John Hayward-Mayhew is one of the most prolific iOS developers ever to peddle a blackjack game. Over the past four years, the 25-year-old entrepreneur flooded the App Store with an astonishing 600 separate apps — everything from endless runners such as Dangerous Caveman Bum Runner to dentistry games like Emergency Dentist Race — raking in close to $1 million in the process.
The most miraculous part of all? He can’t even code.
But by taking advantage of one of the App Store’s great weaknesses, and borrowing a game plan from one of Hollywood’s most unusual impresarios, he’s built a one-man gaming empire.
Apple Pay is less than six months old, and already it’s taking over the mobile payment world. The latest convert? Early adopter Staples, which announced yesterday that it is already seeing 30 percent of all purchases made through its iOS app made using Apple Pay.
“Right now it’s the number one payment method for us in our iOS apps,” said Prat Vemana, vice president of mobile commerce for the stationary company, speaking during a panel discussion hosted in Seattle on Tuesday.
While most people are excited about the possibility that Apple might build a car to take on Tesla, former CEO of General Motors, Dan Akerson, has some warning words for Tim Cook: namely that Apple should steer clear of getting into the automotive industry.
“If I were an Apple shareholder, I wouldn’t be very happy,” Akerson told Bloomberg. “I would be highly suspect of the long-term prospect of getting into a low-margin, heavy-manufacturing.”
Well, if anyone would know, it’s the ex-head of beleaguered GM.
In a U.K. industry first, two major banks in the United Kingdom are finally adding Touch ID identification to their iOS apps.
RBS and NatWest customers must activate the feature using their existing security information, but can use Touch ID after that. As with the Touch ID login on iPhone, users who get three failed login attempts to their banking services will have to re-enter their passcodes.
Apple may have sold 10 million+ handsets in the first weekend of the iPhone 6 going on sale, but don’t expect those kind of numbers for the Apple Watch.
Despite being eagerly-anticipated by both fans and the press, Apple has reportedly asked its suppliers in Asia to manufacture a total of 5-6 million units of its three Apple Watch models for the device’s upcoming launch in April. Of these, half are expected to be the entry-level Apple Watch Sport model, one third will likely be the mid-level device, and the remaining ones will be the ultra-luxurious models — including the 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition.
Any way you slice it, the iPhone 6 has been a phenomenal hit for Apple: the kind of record-shattering sales phenomenon that would seem once-in-a-lifetime, were it not for the fact that Apple will probably beat its own record within a couple of years.
As is well known by now, between the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Apple sold a whopping 10 million units in just the first weekend of its next generation handset: a gigantic increase versus the 5,000,000 units the iPhone 5 sold in its first few days, or the paltry 525,000 that Apple managed to sell of its original iPhone back in 2007.
If you’re like me, these numbers are kind of hard to imagine in real-world sales terms. Fortunately, a new webpage aims to put these figures in context, by breaking down exactly how many handsets Apple sold every second of its iPhone opening weekends.
The Apple Watch might have been four years in the making and the most Jony Ive-centric Apple product yet — but the company didn’t get everything it was wishing for from the device.
According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, Apple originally wanted its smartwatch to focus far more prominently on health-related innovations, only to be forced to go in another direction midway through the project.
If Apple had had its way, the Apple Watch would have boasted smart sensors capable of tracking blood pressure, heart rate and even stress levels — but despite hiring top people from the biosensor industry, the technology didn’t work quite as well as had been hoped.
The recent New Yorker profile of Jony Ive revealed how he was the driving force behind the Apple Watch, and how he felt the “the obvious and right place” for wearable tech was the wrist — and not the face, as Google tried with its Google Glass project.
In the same story, Tim Cook offered his dim appraisal of Glass, saying that, “We always thought that glasses were not a smart move, from a point of view that people would not really want to wear them. They were intrusive, instead of pushing technology to the background, as we’ve always believed.”
While the two disses may read like potshots at an Apple rival, a patent published today reveals that — yes — Apple has indeed tried virtual reality goggles, roughly three years before settling on the Apple Watch form factor. Here’s what it came up with.
If there’s one thing today’s New Yorker profile of Jony Ive hammers home, it’s how important the Apple Watch is to Apple’s design guru. The 16,000-word story reveals how Ive pushed the Apple Watch as a project, shortly after Steve Jobs’ death, when Apple was under pressure to come up with its next insanely great idea.
Here’s all the ways
As rumors of an Apple car start to gain speed, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has run the figures to find out what kind of business proposition automobiles could be for a company that tends to steer clear of small or low-margin markets.
His verdict? If Apple cars were even a “moderate success,” Tim Cook and pals could be looking at an extra $50 billion per year in revenues. To put that figure in context, it would be an increase of 23 percent on top of the already impressive cash-generating machine that was Apple in 2015.
Remind us to remortgage our homes to buy AAPL stock!
In what may be the longest magazine feature yet dedicated to Apple’s industrial design guru, the New Yorker has just published a sprawling 16,000 word profile of Jony Ive — taking readers from his early meetings with Steve Jobs up to the present day.
It’s jam-packed with fascinating tidbits about Ive, his secretive design studio, and Apple’s past and future. While I’d thoroughly recommend reading the whole article, here are the details that really leaped out: