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iPhone - page 181

Police bust fake iPhone factory in China

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China iPhone sales
Tim Cook meets with Apple Store employees in China.
Photo: Apple

Apple business may be soaring in China, but not all of it is the legit kind!

According to a new report, police in Beijing have busted a factory which produced in excess of 41,000 fake iPhones, with a market value of around $19 million.

Siri vs. Google Now: Who wins the AI cat fight?

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Fight!
Fight!

Friday-Night-Fights-bug-2Every mobile platform now ships with its very own virtual assistant, and while they all offer a similar set of basic features, Google Now and Siri are way ahead of their rivals. Google Now knows what you want and when you want it, but Siri has sass and personality, and is about to get a whole lot better with the help of Proactive.

If you were to pit the two against each other in a virtual ring, which one would come out wearing the belt? Join us as we find out in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac!

Cure your iPhone addiction with NoPhone, a useless plastic rectangle

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Never leave home without a chunk of useless plastic again.
Never leave home without a chunk of useless plastic again.
Photo: NoPhone

Do you mediate every bit of your experience through the cold display of your iPhone? Do you film concerts, text during dates, and spend more time looking at your screen than into the eyes of the people you’re hanging out with?

Are you addicted to your iPhone?

NoPhone may have the solution for you. In what seems to be a rather tongue-in-cheek product page, NoPhone touts its thin, light, wireless design. Which makes sense for a smartphone-shaped hunk of plastic.

Kahney’s Korner: Apple’s 5 most important products of all time

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Leander Kahney counts down Apple's greatest hits.
Leander Kahney counts down Apple's greatest hits.
Photo: Cult of Mac

What vaulted Apple from its humble Silicon Valley origins to the absolute top of the business world? From its first desktop computer in 1976 to today’s category-crushing Apple Watch, the company is intensely focused on creating technology that will delight the masses.

That vision is best exemplified by Apple’s five most important products, which I’ve rounded up in this week’s edition of Kahney’s Korner. Some made the list for reasons that might surprise you.

Pac-Man hits mobile with a-maze-ing Championship Edition

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Get ready to spend your time chomping dots and eating ghosts with this amazing version of arcade classic Pac-Man, one of the most recognizable games of the past 35 years.

Designed by the original Pac-Man creator Tōru Iwatani, Championship Edition (CE) came out for the Xbox 360 in 2007, and it was the best ever remake of the arcade original.

Now Pac-Man CE DX, an improved version of the game that released onto Xbox 360 in 2010, is here for your iPhone or Android smartphone, and I’m betting you’ll spend some serious time playing it.

How to get rid of old iCloud backups on your iPhone

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Clean up iCloud to make room for bigger backups.
Clean up iCloud to make room for bigger backups.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

If you’ve been using iCloud to back up your iOS devices for a while like I have, chances are you’ve got a few older backup files crufting up your iCloud storage space.

If you want to maximize the space on your iCloud account, you might want to delete some of these older iCloud backups to make room for more.

Here’s how to do that.

Wafer-thin iPhone 7 concept combines elegance with ugliness

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iPhone 7 concept by Mesut G Designs
Can you even see this unofficial iPhone 7?
Photo: Mesut G Design

We aren’t going to find out what the next iPhone looks like until Apple shows us (probably in September), but that isn’t stopping designers from dreaming up some concepts.

Here’s a pretty bold one that imagines the next Apple smartphone as a mix between a Samsung Galaxy Edge and a Club Cracker. You can check it out in the video below.

It’s nuts how far the original iPhone was ahead of the competition

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It's nuts how far the original iPhone was ahead of the competition.
It's nuts how far the original iPhone was ahead of the competition.
Photo: CNET

It seems like just yesterday in many ways that Apple released the first iPhone, but it was actually the better part of a decade ago. Even so, it took the better part of that “better part of a decade” for the competition to catch up, as this great video, showing the evolution of smartphones, shows.

Apple earnings (and forecast) fall short of Wall Street estimates

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Apple beat Wall Street's expectations, again.
Apple beat its own guidance but missed Wall Street's fevered expectations.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s earnings fell just shy of Wall Street’s expectations for third-quarter revenue despite continued strong sales of the iPhone 6, which helped the company bring in $49.6 billion in gross revenue and $10.7 billion in profit.

Perhaps even worse for AAPL, the company’s fourth-quarter revenue forecast fell short of analysts’ best guesstimates.

The SHOTBOX puts a well-lit iPhone photo studio on your table

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Product shots, documents and photographs can easily be documented with your smartphone camera in this collapsable tabletop studio, known as the SHOTBOX.
Product shots, documents and photographs can easily be documented with your smartphone camera in this collapsable tabletop studio, known as the SHOTBOX.
Photo: SHOTBOX

Give Aaron Johnson the chance to give you his elevator pitch and he just might convince you that you need a tabletop photo studio.

But even if you accept his points, you probably don’t have studio know-how or the room for the lights, the tripod, backdrops and a ladder.

Johnson answers with the SHOTBOX, a collapsable tabletop studio with seamless diffused lighting with a setup that can have you camera-ready in seconds. The SHOTBOX is designed for iPhone and other smartphone users who want to make simple product pictures, digitize family photos and copy documents.

Filters for iPhone up for new ownership shortly after launch

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filters-iphone-app - 2
Filters goes up for sale after just four months in the App Store.
Photo: George Tinari/Cult of Mac

Not long after debuting to a pretty successful launch, Filters for iPhone is up for sale. Developer Mike Rundle explains that he has a full-time job plus children to feed and his little side project of love deserves more attention than he can give. His asking price? $10,000.

Handy running accessory charges your iPhone (and could save your life)

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Keep yourself and your iPhone alive with the BSEEN Boost Pack.
Keep yourself and your iPhone alive with the BSEEN Boost Pack.
Photo: Trident Design

You can charge your smartphone while cycling or running with an accessory also designed to keep you alive on the road.

Sounds like a lot to ask of a battery pack, but the Boost Pack by BSEEN does both with a rather simple design.

The Boost is a belt pack with an LED light panel that stays lit or flashes. It also holds your smartphone and a lightweight 4000 mAH rechargeable travel battery pack to keep your phone charged.

Amazon employee steals $12,500 of iPhones, iPads and other devices

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Amazon
Amazon Prime Crime doesn't pay.
Photo: Torley/Flickr CC

A 21-year-old Amazon employee in India has been arrested for allegedly stealing $12,500 worth of electronics — including numerous Apple devices — while working in the packing department of the company’s warehouse.

Pramod Bhamble placed orders himself, but instead of packing the correct products, he stuffed the container full of the equivalent weight of iPhones, iPads, cameras and high-end watches before mailing the order to his home.

Nice rear: iPhone 6s Plus housing leaks

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iphone-6s-plus-leak
Here's the rear housing for the iPhone 6s with a few observable design tweaks.
Photo: Future Supplier

Ahead of a probable announcement in September, it looks like we can already get a sneak peak at the iPhone 6s Plus – or at least the back of it. The rear housing leaked and there are plenty of photos to gaze at and of course scrutinize for months to come. Some very small differences in the casing have already garnered some attention.

Numbskull thief takes identifying selfie while robbing an iPhone

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Heading
May as well have sent a confession via iMessage.
Photo: Los Angeles Police Department

iPhone cameras are getting better and better all the time, with the upcoming iPhone 6s reportedly set to receive one of the bigger camera upgrades in recent memory.

While most of us are happy about this, we’re assuming the guy pictured above is cursing the day Apple decided to include a front-facing camera on its handsets — since it’s caught him in the act of robbing an iPhone, and now gives the police a perfect mugshot it can use for identification purposes.

This chair wants to rock you to a fully charged iPhone

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Rock your way to a full charge.
Rock your way to a full charge.
Photo: UC Berkeley

Four undergraduate students at UC Berkeley created a rocking chair called the Volta that stores kinetic energy from an attached pendulum.

At first, the team thought such a chair would be a novelty, a student project that had rocking chair users see how much energy they could generate from rocking back and forth.

Of course, once chair sitters interacted with the smartphone app that tracked the energy they were producing, they wanted a USB port to keep their iPhone charged up.

Solar-powered iPhones would be a sunny proposition for Apple

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Heading
Better than mains charging, surely.
Photo: Lilttleskittle/Flickr CC

Whether you’re talking about an iPhone or a MacBook, extending battery life is one of the biggest challenges faced by both engineers and users.

According to a new patent application published today, one of the ways Apple is looking to solve this problem is by incorporating solar cells into its future trackpads, Magic Mice, wireless keyboards, and iPhones.

A way of cutting down — or possibly even removing — the need to continuously plug in our beloved Apple devices in order to keep them juiced up? Yes, please.

Pixelmator update brings desktop-class photo repair to iOS

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Paint away the stuff you don't want in your photos with ease.
Paint away the stuff you don't want in your photos with ease.
Photo: Pixelmator

If you’re looking for a best-in-class photo retouching and editing app, you can’t go wrong with Pixelmator, available both for Mac and iOS.

The mobile version is utterly fantastic, letting you engage in the same sort of high-end photo editing, painting, and graphic design that you find in the desktop version for a fraction of the price.

The new update, which came out on Tuesday, ramps up the photo Repair tool to something that’s five times as fast, and even more precise. There’s also a new Dynamic Touch system, which lets you use the tip of your finger for thin strokes and the pad of your finger for thicker lines.

You won’t see this kind of subtlety and power in any other photo app, especially for $4.99.

Man who charged his iPhone on train arrested for stealing electricity

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Heading
The man who was charged for charging.
Photo: CBS Interactive

We’ve heard about iPhone-related crime before, but here’s one that’s new: A U.K. man in London who was arrested by police after charging his iPhone on a train.

45-year-old artist Robin Lee was approached by a police community support officer on board the train last Friday, warned that he was “illegally extracting electricity.” When Lee arrived at his destination, police officers were waiting to arrest him.

Apple hoovers up 92 percent of smartphone profits

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Apple raked in the cash last quarter.
Newsflash -- Apple is making some major bank.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Anyone wanting an illustration of why smartphone unit sales are not the single most important metric for judging success should check out wealth management company Canaccord Genuity’s findings about Apple’s iPhone sales versus profits.

According to Canaccord Genuity, despite selling less than 20 percent of all smartphones, Apple rakes in a massive 92 percent of operating income. Samsung, by contrast, ekes out just 15 percent to take second place. Everyone else basically broke even or lost money.

Apple’s not forgetting about the iPhone 6 as it debuts 7 new ads

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Heading
If it's not an iPhone, it's not an iPhone.
Photo: Apple

With unparalleled numbers of orders from Apple, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus may be the handset everyone’s talking about right now, but don’t think that Cupertino has given up on its previous record-breaker, the iPhone 6.

The company has debuted not one, two, three, but seven new ads and commercial spots showing off Apple’s current-gen iPhones. Check them out below:

How to follow non-artist profiles in Apple Music Connect

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You'll see way more new music suggestions this way.
You'll see way more new music suggestions this way.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Apple Music Connect is like another version of Apple’s failed Ping service. It’s being promoted as a way to keep in touch with your favorite artists, but man is it impersonal.

My Connect page is full of bland PR-style stuff and links to buy music from artists I’m following. There’s just not enough quality posts in there to justify checking it each day.

Until now. Jonathan Poritsky has a fantastic idea over at his music blog: why not follow the folks on Apple Music who actually share and curate music? Follow Julie Adenuga, Zane Lowe, or any of the genre or curator profiles hidden in Apple Music.

These are the folks that are sharing amazing music. Here’s how to follow them.

Your future iPhone’s Apple logo may be more than just a pretty fruit

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That weird, random window on your Otter Box case may one day serve a purpose other than letting that part of your iPhone get scratched up.
Photo: Otterbox

That Apple logo on your iPhone sure is pretty, but it doesn’t do a whole lot other than remind you who made your phone in case you forget. It’s kind of lazy that way, really.

But a recently published patent suggests that Apple might put that shiny bobble to use in future models of its hardware.

How to get iOS 9’s News app outside the U.S.

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Get Apple's new News app right now, even if you're not in a
Get Apple's new News app right now, even if you're not in a "supported country."
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Those with an Apple developer account can download iOS 9 beta 3, and therefore experience Apple’s new Flipboard-style news app, News, right now.

The problem is, if you’re not in a supported country, like the U.S. or U.K., you may not see the News app in your beta 3 installation.

Luckily, there’s a quick and easy workaround that you can make happen right on your iOS device.