Luke Dormehl - page 323

Someone looking for a meme worthy video could do worse than overlaying the soundtrack of a Savannah wildlife documentary with footage of tech companies vying for users to buy their next big smartphone.

Just like a lion feeds first, while the scavengers hang around and wait for scraps of spare meat to show up, so a new report from Digitimes claims non-Apple smartphone vendors looking to release high-end models in the second half of 2014 are getting increasingly worried that there aren’t going to be enough component supplies available. The reason? Component makers are all working on the iPhone 6.

And that’s just the start of it.

Spend any time watching trailers for new iOS games, and quickly you’ll find that one merges into the other: all stock music, quick gameplay snapshots, and (if the title’s any good) a stream of title cards reading things like “Brilliant” and “You’ve Never Seen Anything Like This Before.”

Inventive platformer Leo’s Fortune has just received a new trailer and, wouldn’t you know it, it’s every bit as original as you’d hope for from the recipient of a 2014 Apple Design Award. In fact, dare we say it, it’s worth watching even if iOS gaming isn’t really your bag.

While Apple is making money hand over fist today, it’s not that long ago (OK, 37 years) that it was a new business with the same cash-flow problems faced by all small companies.

To help speed up its business transactions, Apple today will officially sign up to a new White House initiative called SupplierPay, a voluntary program in which companies commit to pay small suppliers faster, or else aid them in getting access to lower-cost capital.

The rumormill is reaching a fever pitch when it comes to Apple’s upcoming iPhone 6, and one of the hottest new reports concerns the handset’s alleged A8 chip.

While we’ve been seeing a new A-series processor each year, there’s still been no definite confirmation that Apple plans to include the A8 chip in its next generation devices, especially since developers have yet to push the A7 to its limits.

With that being said, the Chinese media is claiming that the A8 will not only happen, but that it will blow the current A7 out of the water: boasting frequencies of 2.0 GHz or more per core (compared to the 1.3Ghz A7 SoC found in the iPhone 5s and Retina iPad mini, or the 1.4 GHz found in the iPad Air).

Here’s one to file in the “exciting, but most likely not happening” category.

A new Chinese media report suggests that one of the iPhone 6’s “secret weapons” could be the inclusion of advanced haptic feedback technology. Sources claim that the tactile feedback linear motor would be capable of producing different types of subtle vibration depending on the app being used, and could even emit different vibrations depending on the part of the touch screen that is being pressed at the time, or how hard it is being pressed.

The iPhone 6 is one of the most eagerly anticipated iPhone refreshes in years, but just how anticipated it is might surprise you.

Taiwan’s Business Weekly is reporting that Apple has orders at least 68 million units of its new iPhone. To put that in perspective, if true this is twice as large as the order Apple placed for the iPhone 5.

Shares in the Oregon-based Pixelworks, which designs and produces semiconductors for superior digital-video displays, have surged on the back of reports that the company could be working on Apple’s long-awaited TV set.

According to a research analyst for Seeking Alpha, Apple accounted for 14 percent of Pixelworks’ first-quarter revenue this year, and the company may be using its latest Iris graphics chips — which provide “two to four times the pixels and quality of current offerings while drawing less power” — in its next generation iPad and iPhone 6 devices.

That’s not the most exciting possibility according to Seeking Alpha, though, which states that Pixelworks has obtained mass-production qualifications for a system-on-chip designed for larger screen devices, being developed with an unnamed partner. Pixelworks CEO Bruce Walicek recently claimed that his company is working on a significantly large project to develop a high-tech display, which could turn out to be the Apple TV.

Remember back in the early 2000s when Apple opening a brick-and-mortar store in prime real estate locations seemed as crazy a gamble as Apple deciding to create its own mobile phone? Very few people would admit so now — particularly Apple’s rivals like Samsung and Microsoft which have followed the Apple Store example with their own surprisingly similar retail outfits.

In an attempt to stop others from copying the slick, high fashion minimalism of its Apple Stores, Apple has secured a court ruling allowing it to register the layout of its retail stores in the European Union as a trade mark — extending the intellectual property status that it already carries in the U.S.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) has reportedly started shipping its first batch of iPhone and iPad microprocessors to Apple, according to sources familiar with the matter.

By making microprocessors for Apple, TSMC is taking over a role previously carried out by Samsung. Some skeptics had previously suggested that TSMC — which is the world’s biggest contract chipmaker in terms of revenue — wouldn’t be able to deliver the complex chips to Apple’s satisfaction.

A Beijing court has ruled against Apple, upholding the validity of a patent for a “type of instant messaging chat bot system” held by a Chinese company.

Zhizhen Internet Technology sued Apple back in 2012, claiming that virtual assistant Siri was infringing on the Chinese company’s patented idea for a so-called Xiaoi Bot. The Chinese bot was patented in 2004 — two years before the first Siri-related patent filing was made.

Tuesday’s Beijing court ruling paves the way for Zhizhen to continue its case against Apple for intellectual property infringement. Apple’s defense? That it never heard of Zhizhen’s technology prior to creating Siri.

As you can see from the exclusive “making of” feature I wrote a few months back, I’m a massive fan of Monument Valley, the surrealistic M.C. Escher-inspired iOS puzzle game that rocked the App Store earlier this year.

A recent winner of Apple’s Design Awards at WWDC, Monument Valley is a triumph of isometric design, in which you guide a white-clad princess through a series of impossible structures in a game Apple describes as “akin to a walk through a museum or listening to a music album.”

While the game was already a bargain at $3.99, it’s just been the recipient of a slashed pricetag — meaning that you can now pick it up for the bargain price of $1.99.

Don’t underestimate the power of having Apple on your side!

Not long after Foxconn announced record earnings thanks to its work on the iPhone, fellow Apple manufacturer Pegatron Corp is predicted to see consolidated revenues of $33.3 billion for 2014, mainly due to shipments of Apple’s next generation iPhone and iPad models.

UPDATE: Reuters didn’t use Tim Cook’s complete remarks, we’ve posted them here.

Apple should do more to improve accessibility for its apps, says an advocacy group, supported by members of the National Federation of the Blind.

“It’s time for Apple to step up or we will take the next step,” NFB of California board member Michael Hingson told Reuters. The advocacy group successfully sued Apple regarding iTunes back in 2008, with Apple paying out $250,000 and giving the service an accessibility-minded makeover as part of the settlement. While it may not reach the level of a repeat lawsuit, Hingson says that this could be “the only resort” to force Apple’s hand.

From its flexible but hard-as-nails Sapphire glass display, to its larger form factor, we’ve seen a lot of apparent leaks regarding the upcoming iPhone 6 — cluing us in on what we can expect from Apple’s next-generation smartphone. Now a new set of component pictures, including what seems to be a legitimate glimpse of the device’s previously-unseen SIM tray, appear to confirm the colors we should expect to be able to pick up our iPhone 6 devices in.

The images, first shown by the website Letem svetem Applem suggest that, like the current iPhone 5s, the new iPhone 6 will be available in Silver, Gold and Space Gray color configurations.

Uber has just poached one of Apple’s senior engineering manager, who worked on both the company’s Maps app and its iPhone software, says subscription website The Information.

The senior iOS engineer in question, Chris Blumenberg, was among the first engineers to work on the iPhone’s software — joining Apple in 2000 initially to help Microsoft port Internet Explorer and Office over to Mac OS X.

The Information editor Jessica Lessin claims that three sources familiar with Blumenberg’s jump to Uber confirmed the situation with her.

At the Wall Street Journal‘s D8 conference back in 2010, Steve Jobs predicted that tablets such as the iPad would eventually overtake the personal computer for the majority of people. Five years after he made that prediction, it seems as though it may be set to come true.

According to research firm Gartner, worldwide shipments of tablets will top the PC market by next year — with traditional PCs and laptops shipping a combined 317 million units in the year, while tablet shipments will top 320 million. This year, tablets ship in the region of 256 million, against 308 million PCs.

According to new research from market intelligence firm ABI Research, the iPhone was the world’s most popular smartphone in Q1 2014, leaving competitors in the dust as the top-selling handset globally.

Despite ripping off ideas, paying celebrities to endorse their products, and having a confusing matrix of dozens of smartphones on the market, Samsung was unable to capture the no. 1 spot from Cupertino — with Apple’s flagship iPhone 5s 16GB coming in at the premier position.

Has the iPhone done away with the good-old-fashioned celebrity autograph? The answer is a resounding “yes” according to pop singer and professional bitter-ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift. In a new op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Swift writes that:

The city of Claremont, North Carolina, has approved a new development that will allow Apple to build a new sustainable solar farm.

With an initial investment of $55 million, Apple’s latest solar farm will be a massive, 100-acre, 17.5-megawatt project, likely to take five years to complete.

Back on June 29, thousands of Apple employees and their families marched in the San Francisco Pride Parade, coming from all over the world to support LGBT rights and to celebrate Apple’s commitment to equality and diversity. Tim Cook and Apple environmental adviser Lisa P. Jackson were two of the prominent Apple employees to attend, while Apple gave out $1 iTunes gift cards to onlookers at the parade.

Most of us couldn’t have been any more excited for the iPhone and iPad. Then again, most of us aren’t the Finnish Prime Minister.

Speaking to Swedish financial newspaper Dagens Industri, Prime Minister Alexander Stubb has accused Apple’s late-founder Steve Jobs of crushing his country’s job market with two innovations that caught Finland completely off-guard.

“We had two pillars we stood on: one was the IT industry, the other one was the paper industry,” Stubb said — noting that both were affected by the arrival of Apple’s smartphone and tablet combo in the mid-2000s.

July 4th may be (sadly) over, but Apple’s latest mobile OS is all too happy to tell you when the national holiday might be. It could be lying, though.

iOS 7.1.2 features a bug in its Calendar app, which gives the wrong list of holidays in certain countries. The bug was first spotted by an iPad user in Lithuania, who claims that Apple has acknowledged the error.

It’s easy to poke fun at Microsoft when it comes up with its own knockoff version of an Apple’s long-awaited iWatch, iPad, iPhone, iPod, or pretty much any other innovation in the company’s history. However, when it comes up with its own ideas, it kind of makes us think that “thinking different” isn’t really in Microsoft’s DNA at all.

According to a recently filed patent application, Redmond’s latest Apple slaying idea is for something Apple hasn’t expressed any apparent interest in: a mood changing/health device in the form of a robotic butterfly. Yes, really.

The iPhone is far and away the most popular smartphone in the U.S., according to a new report by research firm ComScore. According to ComScore, 169 million cellphone users in the U.S. use smartphones — representing around 70 percent of all mobile users.

Of these, Apple can lay claim to 41.9 percent of users, while runner-up Samsung has captured 27.8 percent of the market. After Samsung, the numbers drop dramatically to 6.5 percent for LG, 6.3 percent for Motorola, and 5.1 percent for HTC.