Luke Dormehl - page 314

Updated security measures in iOS 8 make it impossible for Apple to give your data to the cops — even if the company wanted to.

Previously Apple could access a significant amount of data on any iOS device, which it would do if law enforcement approached the company with a seized device and a valid search warrant. Apple’s stronger encryption and updated privacy policy now mean it can no longer pull data from devices that have the latest version of the mobile OS installed.

“On devices running iOS 8, your personal data such as photos, messages (including attachments), email, contacts, call history, iTunes content, notes, and reminders is placed under the protection of your passcode,” Apple notes on its website. “Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data. So it’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8.”

Back at this year’s WWDC, Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney got up and demoed Epic Zen Garden, an impressive upcoming iOS 8 game which used Apple’s new Metal technology to great effect.

Leap forward a few months, and the free game has finally arrived on iOS — bringing console-quality graphics to users with the latest iPhones, courtesy of Metal and the Unreal Engine 4.

Did we mention it might be the most impressive zen garden game yet?

Massive iPhone 6 and 6 Plus preorders mean that Apple fans in India are going to have to wait a bit longer to get their hands on the company’s next generation handsets.

Originally Apple said that the iPhone 6 family of devices would go on sale September 26, only for that date to quickly slip to October 17, and now again back to mid-November.

Apple has been steadily working to improve its Apple Maps service since its disastrous debut a couple of years ago, and a new patent application published Thursday further cements that.

According to the application, filed in March last year, future iOS devices may scour through your data to warn you of traffic congestion on routes you are predicted to be likely to travel.

These journeys could be learned by your iPhone or Apple Watch by way of a smart artificial intelligence “machine-learning engine,” based on the frequency of previous destinations (say, regular appointments), location of events in a user’s calendar, location of events which users hold electronic tickets for, and addresses gathered by analyzing messages in the form of texts or emails.

Apple is reportedly aiming to sell upwards of 50 million Apple Watches in 2015.

The news comes via a new report from Digitimes, which claims that Apple has placed orders for shipments of up to five million AMOLED panels per month throughout the year. These screens will be used as the innovative touch-sensitive display for Apple’s wearables debut.

The Apple Watch Sport may start at a mere $349, but the product line’s price point could well soar from there!

According to Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber, Apple’s 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition may sell for as much as $4,999.

“Most people think I’m joking when I say the gold ones are going to start at $5,000,” Gruber writes in a new blog post. “I couldn’t be more serious.”

Motoring experts in the UK have warned that individuals using their Apple Watch while driving will face the same penalties as those caught using a mobile phone.

The words of caution come from road safety charity the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM), reportedly backed up by the country’s Department of Transport.

In the United Kingdom, this would mean that a driver caught using their Apple Watch while driving faces a £100 ($163) fine and three penalty points on their license.

“An Apple Watch has the potential to be just as distracting as any other smartphone device, indeed more so if you have to take you hand off the wheel to interact with it,” an IAM spokesperson told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

There may only have been one Steve Jobs, but a recent article from Fast Company draws some interesting parallels between Jobs and Nest CEO, Tony Fadell — previously known as the Apple employee most synonymous with the iPod.

Alongside his obsessive focus on perfection and simplicity, the article notes that Fadell even lives in the same same neighborhood that Jobs once did.

One interesting passage that stands out describes Fadell’s Jobsian approach to management at Nest:

Apple might have smashed its record for preorders with the iPhone 6, but according to a new report from Credit Suisse analysts, profit margins are actually down for the device.

The reason for this is that Apple’s quite literally giving users more for their money: an all-around bigger iPhone which still costs just $649 for its base model.

Production for Apple, however, is considerably more expensive — with the biggest costs being the larger display, improved camera, bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS chips.

Apple’s expansion into China is one of the biggest stories of 2014, which is why it’s a surprise to hear that the company’s long-awaited iPhone 6 may not be available there at all this year.

According to a Bloomberg report — citing Chinese business paper 21st Century Herald — the delay is the result of Apple failing to come to an agreement with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The New York Times had previously reported that the iPhone 6 was being held up due to lack of approval from Chinese regulators.

Apple supplier Foxconn Electronics is reportedly considering legal action against U.K. newspaper The Daily Mail over claims that cleaning agents used in Foxconn’s Shenzhen factory may be to blame for multiple Foxconn employees developing leukaemia.

In its recent report, The Daily Mail says that Apple is investigating Foxconn after a cluster of leukaemia-related deaths among young workers at Foxconn.

At least 13 workers in their late teens and early 20s have been diagnosed with leukaemia at the factory since 2010. Five of these employees have since died, with families and a labour welfare group claiming the disease was caused by exposure to dangerous chemicals used to clean electrical panels.

While cellphones have come a long way in a very short time — from the Wall Street bricks of the 1980s, to the gorgeous iPhone 6 devices of today — a new article from Wired argues that innovation takes place much more slowly in watch land: something that could spell trouble for Apple.

With insights from watch and clock historian Alexis McCrossen, the article notes that attempts to reinvent the watch have historically proven difficult, with a key example being the world’s very first electronic watch: the $2,100 Pulsar 1 from 1972.

Despite there being “very similar hopes to those swirling around the Apple Watch” the article points out that “a decade later, most watch-buyers were still expecting the same kind of analog features they’d wanted for years.”

Tim Cook may have been on the receiving end of welcoming notes from other watchmakers now the Apple Watch has been announced, but not every note has been so friendly.

On Monday, the office of Connecticut attorney general George Jepsen revealed that he had sent an open letter to Tim Cook noting concerns about the privacy implications of Apple Watch, particularly related to the handling of health data.

Call alerts are all well and good but — even on the Apple Watch, when they’re being delivered directly to your wrist — it’s likely that there will be situations when users won’t be aware of them, and could miss important calls or alerts as a result.

Apple’s trying to crack that problem with a new patent published Tuesday, describing a “Self adapting alert device” that would vary the volume or style of user notifications to your iPhone or Apple Watch depending on where you are at the time.

We’d heard that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were receiving record preorders, but what exactly does this mean in terms of numbers?

According to a new press release from Apple, the total number of pre-orders for the iPhone 6 family of devices is in excess of a whopping 4 million units — twice the number of pre-orders of the iPhone 5.

“iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are better in every way, and we are thrilled customers love them as much as we do,” Tim Cook is quoted as saying. “Pre-orders for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus set a new record for Apple, and we can’t wait to get our best iPhones yet into the hands of customers starting this Friday.”

Apple is copying Samsung — and Samsung’s none too happy about it.

No, this isn’t some alternate universe timeline, but the narrative according to Samsung’s latest ad for the Galaxy Note 4.

Particularly on the back of the recent iCloud account hacking scandal, smartphone security is something a lot of people are paying more attention to.

With that in mind, a London-based designer recently launched an intriguing Kickstarter campaign, to create a clothing label aimed at raising awareness about high-tech security.

The clothes are all cleverly constructed around a removable waterproof stealth pocket, made from police-grade shielding fabrics, designed to securely block all Cell, WiFi, GPS and RFID signals to ~100 dB.

Tools like hands-free kits and Siri might mean that you don’t have to have your face constantly buried in your iPhone, but for most people the reality is that using a smartphone suggests your focus is not entirely on the real world around you.

Tackling this problem head-on is a place called Foreigner Street in Chongqing city, China, which has installed a special walking lane for smartphone users — just as might be the case with a cycle lane elsewhere.

Apple goes to some pretty crazy lengths to ensure secrecy for its various projects, and it expects a similar commitment from its partners.

According to a New York Times article, prior to releasing Apple Pay, the key players (which included Apple and banks such as JP Morgan Chase) referred to each other by code-names after rumors of Apple’s interest in mobile payments surfaced in early 2013.

Excessive demand might mean that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus won’t make it into your hands until October in some cases — but users waiting for iPhone 6 accessories could be delayed even longer.

According to sources who spoke with Cult of Mac, many smaller, non-Apple companies are currently unable to get the necessary Lightning connectors and authentication chips needed to manufacture products because Apple has snapped up all the available inventory.

Many MFi part distributors won’t give any estimates on availability, which means both manufacturers and end users could be in for a wait before regular shipments of related iPhone and iPad accessories resume.

If you’re desperately waiting for Cupertino to unleash an ultra high-resolution monitor you might not have to wait much longer, according to a report stating that Apple plans to release 27-inch 5K3K high-resolution iMac models by the end of 2014.

Monitors built to the 5K3K specification have a reported 5120 x 2880 resolution. The report suggests that the new iMac models, along with competing products from other manufacturers, are expected to kick off a new wave of demand for Ultra HD monitors in the marketplace.

While Uber and Lyft are the most prominent example of smartphones disrupting the taxi industry, a new app feature from Hailo is hoping to shake up both companies by letting Hailo users pay for journeys using their iPhone — even when they’re in a non-Hailo booked taxi.

The feature is called “Pay with Hailo” and uses Apple’s iBeacon technology to automatically recognize taxis, with users given the option to connect and pay for a journey automatically as soon as they set foot inside a vehicle. Even if the driver doesn’t have an iBeacon set up in their cab, it’s still possible to pay the fare by choosing their name from a list inside the app.

Of all the people to appear onstage at Tuesday’s Apple keynote, U.S. game developers Super Evil Megacorp were among the most memorable — thanks partly to co-founder Tommy Krul’s decision to wear a fetching infinity scarf.

What followed were Internet memes, parody Twitter accounts — and a whole lot of buzz for Vainglory, the team’s hyper-competitive multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game that was called into action to help show off the graphical prowess of the iPhone 6.

As an example of the ever-thinning gap between console and iOS games, Vainglory knocked the demo out of the park, leaving fans salivating at the prospect of next-gen gaming on Apple’s new handset.

It also left people wondering about the origins of the fantastically named Super Evil Megacorp.

From books to phones, Apple’s named everything with the same “i” moniker since 1998. With the Apple Watch and Apple Pay, however, it looks like that convention is set to change. 

Cult of Mac reached out to Ken Segall — the former Apple employee who started the tradition with the original iMac — for his surprising reaction to Apple ditching his naming convention for new product categories.