iPhone - page 162

Apple’s executive team is optimistic about the company’s future, despite a bleak earnings call. And why wouldn’t they be? Apple’s slump brought in more money than most other tech companies out there.

Read all about the positive spin in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, along with a trick to making your iOS folders look round with no jailbreak required, a frank appraisal of the Apple Watch one year in, 8 killer Instagram tips, the world’s biggest Apple Museum and much, much more.

Here are the top stories for this week.

Apple just reported its worst quarter in 13 years.

Right now, that’s just a small blemish on an otherwise darn near perfect record. But the concern is that it could signal the start of a much greater decline, ushering in an era in which Cupertino is no longer the overwhelmingly dominant force in all things shiny and aluminum.

Should Tim Cook and Co. really be worried about declining demand, and should fans be worried about Apple’s future? Or will our favorite gadget maker be back with a bang?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we throw hands (not literally) over these topics and more!

Apple’s VP of Marketing Phil Schiller has revealed that pretty much everyone pronounces Apple’s product names completely wrong — and they don’t even know it.

Saying the plural form of “iPhone” seems like a fairly straightforward deal. It’s “iPhones,” right?

Not so, says Schiller, who unleashed a tweetstorm lecture on the official way to tell your friends that you own lots of Apple smartphones.

The feds may not have paid quite as much money as we previously thought to unlock the iPhone at the center of the San Bernardino shooting case — with a new report claiming that it was less than the $1.3 million+ sum widely reported in the media last week.

After this week’s disappointing earnings report — which saw Apple’s profits decline year-over-year for the first time since 2003 — many people are speculating on when they can expect to see the iPhone decline turn around.

The answer? Certainly not this quarter, according to a new report which suggests that iPhone shipments are likely to fall to around 40 million units (compared to 51.19 million units) in the next three month period.

The dimensions of the iPhone 7 Pro will be exactly the same as the iPhone 6 Plus, according to an alleged leaked schematic from Asia, but the new device will feature a couple of major physical changes.

Apple is supposedly planning to include a dual-lens camera on the iPhone 7 Pro and, if these drawings are genuine, we might now know what the high0tech camera sensor on the back will look like once it’s released later this fall.

Take a peek:

We’ve been using Night Shift on our iPhones and iPads since it launched with iOS 9.3. We aren’t sure if it actually promotes good sleep, but we figure that lowering the amount of blue light that hits us after the sun goes down can’t be a bad idea. The only problem we’ve had with it is pretty simple, though: You can’t use it while Low Power Mode is on.

Low Power Mode is another cool feature; it turns off high-consumption stuff like Siri’s hands-free mode, mail fetch, and automatic downloads to stretch your battery life out until you can get your ailing iPhone to a charger. We assume that the reason you can’t run both simultaneously is that Night Shift is a juice-chugger, but we still miss it when our battery hits a critical low at night. But it is possible to have them both on at once. You just have to trick Siri a little.

Here’s how to do it.

Apple earnings calls are usually a time for celebration and gloating, but for the first time in over a decade the company is poised to post declining profits.

Tim Cook warned Wall Street that this would likely happen due to declining iPhone sales. Have we really reached “peak iPhone”?

Analysts and reporters will be grilling Cook and Apple CFO Luca Maestri during today’s Q2 2016 earnings call. Investors will be looking for signs that Apple still has room to grow. And Cult of Mac will be right here, liveblogging the entire Apple earnings call — and translating the financial gibberish — when the big event starts at 2 p.m. Pacific.

Get in on the action below:

Apple’s 13 years of astonishing growth is likely to come to a close today, with the company predicted to report its first quarterly revenue decline since 2003 — well before the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch were even faint glimmers in Apple execs’ eyes.

The company is expected to reveal that March quarter sales fell 10 percent year-over-year to around $52 billion. Apple first warned that sales would fall in its forecast back in January, although today we’ll find out the extent of that slide.

Apple is reportedly helping in the hunt for two 14-year-old boys who disappeared at sea last year, after one of their iPhones was discovered in non-working condition.

Both Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen were last seen on July 24. After their disappearance, the Coast Guard carried out an extensive eight-day search in the Atlantic, spanning 50,000 nautical miles, but the boys were never found. However, last month their boat was discovered 100 miles off the coast of Bermuda — with Austin’s iPhone on board.

Apple’s push to become a great company for large companies as well as consumers is getting a big boost this week with the hiring of former Box employee Karen Appleton who has joined the company in an enterprise-focused role.

Appleton revealed last week that she was leaving Box after working with the company since 2007 as employee number 8, but she hasn’t said what exactly she will be doing for Apple.

The closing of the iBook Store and iTunes movies in China might be the country’s first steps toward shutting Apple out, according to a leading expert on global political risks for corporations. 

China has already become the second largest market for Apple in terms of sales, but the iPhone-maker could find itself banned from the country just like Facebook due to its privacy strategy that has already come under fire from government regulators.

Typing with one hand on the gigantic iPhone 6s Plus just got a whole lot easier thanks to one of Apple’s biggest rivals.

Microsoft revealed today that its new one-handed keyboard app “Word Flow” for iOS is finally ready for primetime after a week in public beta, and it does a lot more than just one-handed typing.

Full details of the iPhone 7 aren’t expected to be revealed until early this Fall, but thanks to the Apple rumor mill we may already know two of the device’s biggest features, and they could be more major than expected.

Apple will supposedly make its next iPhone both waterproof and dustproof, according to  supply chain sources in China that also indicate the home button could get its biggest upgrade since the addition of Touch ID.

Faster processors, speedier memory, longer battery life and a rose gold finish — what more do we need from a new MacBook? We love Apple gear, but it’s possible we’re getting addicted to the “wow” factor.

Add that to Prince’s untimely death, and the dearth of streaming options for listening to his music, and we’ve got a lot to talk about. It’s all in this week’s free Cult of Mac Magazine, along with reviews of Amazon’s new Echo smart speakers and 12 awesome Apple Watch tricks that prove Cupertino’s wearable doesn’t need a “killer app.”

Here are this week’s top stories.

The Apple Watch celebrated its first birthday on Sunday and, while Apple has yet to publicly disclose sales figures, it seems that the company’s debut wearable device had quite the impressive debut year!

According to analysts, Apple likely sold around 12 million Apple Watches over the past year: around twice the number of iPhones it sold in the first twelve months of Apple’s breakthrough smartphone.

As the Apple supplier which came under fire a few years ago when one of its 15 year old workers died of pneumonia, iPhone manufacturer Pegatron has opened its doors to the media in an effort to show how much things have changed.

In the process, it sheds light on one of the hidden sides of iPhone production — and the means by which companies like Pegatron try and crack down on supply chain leaks about future Apple devices.

A billionaire serial entrepreneur from China, whose company LeEco offers an ecosystem of streaming video services, electric vehicles, television sets and smartphones, has lambasted Apple for failing to innovate — and says it is failing in China as a result.

“As an industry leader, Apple should be developing more cutting-edge products,” he said. “The iPhone was still a leader five years ago after being launched in 2008 but now the concept has fallen behind.”

Kind of funny considering that LeEco recently rushed to beat Apple to release a smartphone without a 3.5mm headphone jack!

Apple’s most recent keynotes have been a little… boring. Even die-hard fans have been left disappointed by the lack of action and surprises, but with WWDC 2016 right around the corner, many have high hopes that Apple’s about to buck that trend.

Apple’s keynote will offer our first sneak peeks at iOS 10 and the next big upgrades to OS X, watchOS, and tvOS — plus possible refreshes for Apple Watch and various Macs. Will these things make up for the lack of excitement?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we talk about (argue over) all things WWDC!

Apple is going hard on Earth Day. Company stores changed their Apple logos green. The App Store has a week-long green app promotion. And today the company has released not one, but two ads.

The second Earth Day video from Apple features Siri and Liam hanging out talking about kale smoothies until Apple’s digital assistant meets its demise.

Watch the new ad below:

Samsung couldn’t have wished for a better start for the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge.

Not only are sales shaping up to beat expectations, with an estimated 10 million sales during March alone, but according to the latest data, the new handsets helped Samsung crush Apple in smartphones shipments last quarter.

I’m willing to bet that you’ve misplaced your iPhone around the house before. I know I have; almost once a week I’m wondering where I set down that magical device. Is it in the bedroom? The kitchen? The (gasp) bathroom?

If you’ve got an Apple Watch, though, you can use its ping feature to find your iPhone with an audible sound, and even a flashing LED if you need it.

Here’s how.

It might be time to think twice about using your smartphone while it is charging.

Suhana Mohamad, a 30-year-old mother of two from Malaysia, was tragically killed by her handset after being electrocuted during a phone call.

A fresh new batch of Apple beta software is now available for developers two weeks after the company dropped its last big set of new software.

New beta builds of iOS 9.3.2, watchOS 2.2.1, tvOS 9.2.1 and OS X 10.11.5 can be found in the Apple developer center, bringing a bunch of new bug fixes, and hopefully some feature improvements as well. 

The more I grow to love photography with an iPhone, the more I miss certain things about conventional cameras. Get a grip, you say? A grip is one of the things I am talking about.

miggo, innovative makers of camera bags, straps and mounts, brings to Kickstarter the Pictar, an ergonomic camera grip for the iPhone that also shifts cumbersome menu functions to five programmable wheels and buttons right at the tip of your shooting finger.