Luke Dormehl - page 67

A recent online conference dedicated to Apple’s much-maligned Newton drew dozens of fans from around the world — including Steve Wozniak and other Apple alumni.

After the 2020 Worldwide Online Newton Conference — the first gathering dedicated to the groundbreaking PDA in a decade — event organizer and Newton superfan Paweł Piotrowski marveled at the lasting impact of the handheld, which Apple discontinued almost 25 years ago.

“It is unbelievable that this old technology still connects people who make friendships because of their shared love of a small green device,” Piotrowski, who works as a college lecturer and live-stream technician in Edinburgh, Scotland, told Cult of Mac. “I’m glad this conference was able to build on that.”

Most of the world might be tightening its belt as the economy stumbles thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, but don’t count Facebook among them! According to a report first published Friday by Axios, the social media giant is buying GIF-making and sharing website Giphy for an enormous $400 million.

Mario Kart Tour version 2.1.0 has arrived in the App Store, bringing a slew of new features to Nintendo’s popular kart-racing title.

The update went live on Thursday. Its biggest new addition is the presence of a Team Races mode, allowing players to form into four separate teams for races. This adds an extra bit of zip to the game’s multiplayer mode, which went live for players everywhere in March.

Apple’s next entry level iPad, shipping later this year, will boast an A12 chip, according to Apple leaker @L0vetodream.

While the message, posted on Twitter, is short on details, L0vetodream has previously carved out a decent track record for making Apple “predictions.”

Apple A-series chipmaker TSMC announced Friday its intentions to build and run a new semiconductor fabrication plant in the U.S.

The new plant will be built in Arizona, with “support from the U.S. federal government and the State of Arizona,” a report published Friday by Digitimes claims. It will use TSMC’s 5-nanometer process to manufacture up to 20,000 semiconductor wafers per month. The iPhone 12 is widely expected to boast 5nm chips.

President Donald Trump’s on again/off again friendship with Apple could switch to “off again” if he institutes proposed taxes on American companies that produce goods outside the United States.

Intended as an incentive to boost U.S. manufacturing, this would nonetheless hurt Apple — which produces the overwhelming majority of its devices overseas, mainly in China.

Episode six of Defending Jacob debuted on Apple TV+ Friday, providing fans with another episode of the compelling crime drama to enjoy as the week comes to a close.

Titled “Wishful Thinking,” Apple’s preview for the episode reads as follows: “Andy and Klein explore two last-ditch efforts to prove Jacob’s innocence.”

Albanian-Italian Apple fan and 24-year-old designer Xhakomo Doda went back to the past for his latest concept, showing one possible direction Apple could take when it eventually releases a redesigned iMac. All the way back to 2002, specifically.

Doda’s iMac G4 New Edition is, as its name suggests, a refreshed take on Apple’s iMac G4: the sunflower-inspired iMac with a floating display on an adjustable arm. And it’s pretty darn stunning.

Which country has the largest number of active mobile phones per person? You might be surprised.

According to employee advocate platform PostBeyond, China, the United Arab Emirates, the Seychelles, Montenegro, and Thailand have the greatest number of mobile phones per person. The United States, meanwhile, is all the way down the list at number 54. The numbers are based on World Bank data.

Users are complaining that Apple’s Magic Keyboard drains the battery of their iPad Pro at a shockingly fast rate.

Some claim that their iPad Pro battery level drops by up to a quarter in just a couple of hours while using the Magic Keyboard for typing. Others say their tablet burns through battery life even when the iPad Pro is idle with the Magic Keyboard attached.

The FBI has served Apple with a warrant to gain information stored on U.S. Senator Richard Burr’s iCloud account. The Justice Department is investigating Burr for stock transactions that he made before the coronavirus pandemic decimated the stock market earlier this year.

Any pro wrasslin’ fans out there are likely to be happy with the latest injection of new characters for the popular iOS game The King of Fighters Allstar — which revealed Wednesday that it is adding a host of current and former WWE wrestlers to its character roster.

Check out the new character trailer below.

Cynthia Hogan, Apple’s vice president for public policy and government affairs, has resigned from the company, Axios reported Wednesday.

Apple confirmed the departure, which will take place next month. Hogan, who has a background serving as counsel to Joe Biden in the White House and Senate, is helping Biden to pick his running mate for this year’s presidential race.

Xiaomi CEO and co-founder Lei Jun has been caught posting a message using his trusty iPhone rather than one of his company’s smartphones.

In a recent post on Weibo, which is China’s answer to Twitter, the Xiaomi exec recommended a series of books to his followers. But he also inadvertently advertised Apple — since the post reveals it was made with an iPhone.

Contact-tracing apps could play a key role in lifting border restrictions after the coronavirus pandemic — but don’t expect them to become a mandatory part of future travel. At least not in Europe.

In a European Commission document seen by Reuters, officials stress that such tools can be extremely useful “on a voluntary basis.” While the report, published Wednesday, doesn’t offer 100% confirmation, it does suggest that fears that contact-tracing apps could become a requirement of regular travel may be overblown.

The battle over decentralized versus centralized contact-tracing apps continues to rage. Some public health officials feel forced to adopt Google and Apple’s Exposure Notifications system — even if they don’t necessarily think it’s the right approach, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

Others are avoiding the system altogether, despite the fact that its privacy-first approach has been praised by privacy advocates.

Wall Street analysts are reportedly combing through Apple mobility data to get clues about when the economy might get moving again, a report for Bloomberg Quint, published Wednesday, claims.

Of all the services launched by Apple, its premium Apple News+ has seemingly made the least impact. And now Apple is reportedly pivoting to audio to try and raise user interest in its all-you-can-eat news and magazine subscription service.

That’s according to a report by DigiDay, published Wednesday. The publication claims that Apple has started asking publishers for permission to produce audio versions of its stories. These could be listened to like mini-podcasts or audio briefings.

For better or worse, Foxconn has long been the contract manufacturer most associated with Apple — but Apple is looking to reduce its reliance on the company, a report published Wednesday claims.

Nikkei Asian Review notes that Apple is pushing one of its Chinese AirPods assemblers to make a “major investment” in an iPhone and MacBook metal casing provider. This could help make it a viable alternative to Foxconn, the world’s biggest electronics contract manufacturer.

SteelSeries, the worldwide leader in gaming peripherals, announced its new Nimbus+ Wireless Gamepad Controller for Apple devices Tuesday.

The Nimbus+ improves on the original Nimbus controller by adding a plethora of new features. These include clickable joysticks, new Hall effect triggers, and an impressive 50-hour battery which should make it perfect for gaming during your weekly commute. Once those become a thing again.

Sometimes you have to trust your gut when you launch a new app, believing that if it’s good enough people are going to find out about it. Other times, the demand is so great that you quite literally can’t ignore the clamor.

This second scenario is the one that 34-year-old artist, designer, and programmer Cyril Diagne recently found himself in. After showing off one of the coolest AR demos seen in ages on Twitter, he was inundated with requests to turn the futuristic “copy and paste” demo into a real app. Less than two weeks later, Diagne has done exactly that.

Short-form video app Quibi has had a rough start since launching in April, and co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg says there’s only one thing he blames: COVID-19.

“I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” Katzenberg told the New York Times in a report published late Monday. Katzenberg said that the initial app downloads have not been “close to what we wanted.” Now Quibi is going to let iPhone users watch it on their TVs to try and make up some of the lost ground.

As the entertainment industry grinds to a halt during COVID-19 lockdown, Apple’s getting a whole lot of free publicity for the power of its iPhone camera. More and more productions are filming on the iPhone, with the latest being American Idol.

And Apple took a moment Monday to humblebrag about it.

Apple could underline its interest in MicroLED displays by investing close to $334 million in a dedicated MicroLED factory in Taiwan, a Tuesday report for the Economic Daily News claims.

MicroLED is another future display technology Apple has been actively investigating for some time. While it sounds similar to the MiniLED tech rumored to play a part in many future Apple devices, it is very different.

TikTok had another massively successful month on mobile in April, a Tuesday report by leading app analytics platform Sensor Tower claims.

According to the report, users spent more than $78 million, across both iOS and Android, on TikTok last month. TikTok ranked number one on the App Store’s list of Top Grossing apps for the month, followed by YouTube, and then Tinder. This list does not include games. TikTok’s user spending is up by 10x compared to April last year.