iPad users generated a massive 79.9% of North American tablet-based Web traffic over the month of September, according to a new report by Chitika Insights.
This number is down slightly from the 81% figure the iPad represented one year ago, although the iPad actually gained 1.9% points since July 2014 — the largest quarter-over-quarter usage share increase of any tablet brand out there.
From answering trolls online to busting out near-fluent Mandarin in front of a surprised audience, Mark Zuckerberg’s all about defying expectations these days. That trend continued yesterday, as he gave a reasonable (and even Steve Jobsian) answer about why Facebook moved messaging out of its main app and into a standalone Messenger one.
Telling the audience at his first public Q&A that, “I’m grateful for hard questions” and “it keeps us honest,” Zuck noted how:
In an interesting Wall Street Journal profile of Beats founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, the two music industry vets and current Apple employees describe their new $70m undergraduate academy at the University of Southern California as a training ground for future Apple and Beats employees.
“We wanted to build a school that we feel is what the entertainment industry needs right now,” Iovine is quoted as saying. “There’s a new kid in town, and he’s brought up on an iPad from one and a half years old. But the problem with some of the companies up north [in Silicon Valley] is that they really are culturally inept.”
“I’ve been shocked at the different species in Northern and Southern California—we don’t even speak the same language. The kid who’s going to have an advantage in the entertainment industry today is the kid who speaks both languages: technology and liberal arts. That’s what this school is about.”
From Klingon to GIF-based keyboards, we’re seeing some really interesting examples of new third-party keyboards with iOS 8.
Here’s a particularly exciting one, though: a keyboard which translates messages into other languages as you type. It does the opposite, too, which means that if you receive a text message in say, French, it can instantly translate it into English, or your choice of language. Neat, right?
Like many movie fans out there I couldn’t be more excited about the release of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, a spectacular-looking space epic from one of the greatest filmmakers working today. While I’m not going to get to see it until this weekend, its release gave me reason to revisit some of the best movie space epics in history — and dwell on a few of the worst, too.
Are you ready for a guide to both the best and worst the galaxy has to offer? Check out our picks after the hyper jump:
A CNN political commentator has hit back at reports that he was using an iPad on air, instead of the Microsoft Surface he was supposed to be using.
The gaffe occurred during the coverage for the 2014 Mid-Term elections, when it was revealed that CNN Anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper and others were furiously, err, tapping away at iPads behind the sold wall of Surface Pro 3s that Microsoft had issued the network.
Tapper doesn’t deny that he was using an iPad, but argues that he was just using it for tweeting, while happily using his Microsoft tablet for everything else.
“I liked [the Surface] fine, I just wanted to keep the screen up with exit polls,” Tapper argued on Twitter, branding the online response “idiotic” and a “false meme.”
The public release of OS X Yosemite rolled out three weeks ago, and since then Apple has been gradually bringing all of its own services in line with the look and feel of its new operating system.
Having previously tweaked the iTunes Store and its iWork suite, Apple is now updating the Mac App Store, adding the thinner fonts, simple white backdrop and gray separators synonymous with Yosemite.
As of now, only some tabs feature the newer design, while not everyone is seeing the redesign. Some users have reported not seeing it at all, others are seeing it intermittently, and yet others permanently. You can launch the Mac App Store from Yosemite to see if you currently reflect the update.
It’s been a great year for Apple in China, and to top it off the China Brand Research Center just released its China Brand Power Index for the year — placing Apple in the no 1 position over long-time rival Samsung.
While Samsung Electronics took home brand value prizes in both the TV and monitor categories, Apple roundly beat it in the all-important mobile category, which Samsung has occupied for the previous two years.
With today’s tech devices becoming obsolete so quickly, it’s easy to think older models are forgotten by their creators the moment a follow-up rolls off the factory floor.
While this may be true in some instances, it’s apparently not the case for Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. In a recent email exchange with a vintage computer expert, Woz revealed that almost 40 years after the Apple II shipped he still agonizes about ways it could have been improved.
If you’re searching for further evidence that music streaming is overtaking downloads, look no further than a new report claiming that over the last quarter European revenue from Spotify streams were 13% higher than revenues from iTunes downloads.
The report comes from Kobalt, a company that helps collect music royalties on behalf of thousands of big-name artist. Currently it only collects earnings from Spotify streams in Europe — which means it’s unknown if similar figures are true in the U.S.
This time last year, iTunes’ earnings were 32% higher than that of Spotify in Europe, although streaming revenues have tripled over the past two years.
The Nest Learning Thermostat is getting a whole lot smarter thanks to a new firmware update.
The biggest new feature in the update is an added Auto-Schedule mode, which learns new schedules and adapts more quickly to change — potentially saving you up to 6% on your heating and cooling bills.
A sketchy report from Business Korea claims that Apple might be facing an enormous iPhone 6 and 6 Plus recall due to an issue affecting the 128GB configuration models.
Particularly on iPhones with very large app libraries, some users are supposedly discovering that their new handsets crash and reboot for apparently no reason. This is said to be the result of the “controller IC of the TLC NAND flash.”
Apple may be blamed for hurting Finland with its success, but according to new figures from Australia’s Bureau of Statistics the popularity of the iPhone can help rescue economies, too.
Retail turnover in the country jumped 1.2% in September, compared to a minuscule 0.1% increase the month before. What could have prompted this?
“This figure was influenced by the release of the iPhone 6 during the month,” noted the Bureau of Statistics in its press release. “The increase in electrical and electronic goods retailing represents about half of the total Australian sales movement of 1.2 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms.”
Competition is heating up between Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to build Apple’s next generation A9 chips, according to a new report citing industry sources.
TSMC is currently manufacturing the majority of the A8 chips used in Apple’s latest iPhones, thanks to a deal inked in 2013. Samsung, however, is keen to reestablish its previous position as the sole provider of Apple’s A-series chips — and is willing to lower its quotes to do so.
Samsung is also pushing the fact that it can provide other services to Apple, including the manufacture of flash memory and backend services in-house.
Shortly after releasing the OS X 10.10.1 Yosemite beta to developers, Apple has followed up with the first developer build of iOS 8.1.1, comprising various bug performances and performance tweaks.
The bug fixes mean that iOS 8.1.1 performance is improved on both the iPad 2 and iPhone 4s, which are two of the oldest generation devices to support Apple’s latest mobile OS. There have also been minor tweaks to the Health App.
The beta release of iOS 8.1.1 comes roughly two weeks after Apple officially launched iOS 8.1 to the public. The biggest change in iOS 8.1 was Apple Pay, meaning that iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners can now use their Touch ID at NFC registers to pay for retail goods. The update also boasted SMS relays to your Mac, an Instant Hotspot feature, iCloud Photo Library to replace Photo Stream, and the return of Camera Roll.
Just weeks after a rare Apple-1 computer sold for record numbers at auction, another operational unit of Apple’s first ever computer is set to go under the gavel.
Christie’s is expecting the machine to fetch more than $500,000 at auction in December, which doesn’t seem unrealistic when you consider that the previous Apple-1 mentioned fetched a whopping $905,000.
A monument to Steve Jobs has been removed from St. Petersburg in the aftermath of Tim Cook publicly coming out as gay.
While Cook’s eloquent and poignant essay was largely greeted by celebrations online, in Russia it prompted bigoted comments from politician Vitaly Milonov, whose government has now insisted the Jobs statue be removed as further punishment.
Apple is reportedly planning an investor call for later today ahead of a possible bond sale, according to The Wall Street Journal.
This would be the third bond sale in the company’s history, and may be the first in which Apple issues bonds in euros rather than dollars.
In its earnings call in April, Apple acknowledged that the majority of its cash and securities are held offshore. Since repatriating this money would incur heavy U.S. taxation, it’s cheaper for Apple to raise money through bond sales. The euro in particular represents a very good deal, since it is currently at its lowest rate relative to dollar-denominated debt in six years.
Almost two decades after Apple shuttered its Newton MessagePad platform, a new video compares the device’s handwriting recognition to today’s touchscreen-based typing on the iPhone.
The fact that you had to plug your Newton into your Mac to manually transfer information makes it seem incredibly outdated. But the handwriting recognition, which was way ahead of its time in 1993, still impresses in terms of speed, as shown in the video below
Microsoft has been taking so many shots at Apple as of late that you could be forgiven for thinking we’ve slipped back through a wormhole to 1996. This tendency doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, either, if you go on Microsoft’s latest ad.
Called “Let’s dance,” the ad compares Lenovo’s Yoga 3 Pro convertible laptop to Apple’s MacBook Air, showing them side-by-side and comparing them on size and features. And, wouldn’t you know it, Microsoft’s preferred option comes out on top.
India is a huge growing market for the iPhone, but a trademark dispute brought by a local Indian company called iVoice Enterprises could throw a wrench in those plans — by attempting to bar Apple from using the handset name it made famous.
You see, as it turns out, back in early 2007 iVoice Enterprises tried to tap into what was then the start of India’s mobile revolution.
Their name for an affordable cellphone? iFon, phonetically pronounced “iPhone.”
One of the big pluses of iOS 8 has been the security measures Apple has taken, meaning that the company can no longer bypass security passwords to access your data if it’s requested by law enforcement. While viewed as a definite negative by the FBI, the emphasis on keeping user data safe has been a hit with customers.
A related feature has now been the subject of a court case in Virginia, however, with the judge ruling that cops can legally force suspects to manually unlock their iPhones using Touch ID.
PanguTeam’s iOS 8 jailbreak happened much quicker than many people expected, but for most users it wasn’t worth installing since its lack of Cydia meant that most users wouldn’t have the ability to find and install software packages.
That looks set to change tomorrow, however, as the PanguTeam has announced that it plans to release an updated stable version of the Pangu8 jailbreak, bundled along with Cydia. tomorrow with Cydia included.
For anyone who shoots a lot of videos, having the option to shoot at 60fps is one of the most satisfying parts of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, making your footage as silky smooth as a Barry White pickup line.
If your aim was to put up those videos online, however, until now there’s an excellent chance you were wasting your time, since YouTube was only equipped to handle 30fps.
Fortunately that’s now changed, courtesy of a YouTube update that brings 1080p 60fps to your monitor — provided that you’re using an appropriate browser, which according to my tests includes Safari and Chrome.
If you’re an app-maker looking to rake in the money, you’re better off creating apps for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus than you are for smaller-screened phones, according to a new study.
Analysts at IHS claim that the larger screen size of the iPhone 6 family devices correlate with higher engagement in the form of increased minutes of app usage — in turn leading to more revenue through in-app purchases and advertising.