Samsung may have been ordered to pay Apple $290 million in patent infringement damages, but one thing the tech company hasn’t managed to steal is Apple’s knack for good advertizing.
In a holiday season in which Apple has released its effective and genuinely tear-jerking “Misunderstood” iPhone ad, the best Samsung can manage is a Galaxy Gear smart watch commercial that would have looked cheesy in 1982 — which is where we presume the creative team behind this campaign must have been summoned from.
A new book called Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution by Fred Vogelstein revealed the mechanism by which Apple influenced the direction of Android — shock and awe.
Yes, the introduction of the iPhone changed the direction of smartphones. But I don’t think it’s going to happen again in the wearables market. Here’s why.
Today the Chinese site C Technology published a report saying that Apple’s rumored iWatch is coming next October and will have wireless charging. C Technology has gotten stuff wrong about Apple in the past, but it has also leaked parts for future products that ended up panning out.
The point isn’t C Technology’s track record, but what its latest report says about the iWatch: no one has any real clue what Apple is up to.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Apple a patent, describing a means of manufacturing curved touchscreens.
The patent, which was filed back in November 2010, may lend credibility to the rumors that Apple is working on an iWatch with curved glass display to fit users’ wrists, as reported earlier this year.
During the Apple vs. Samsung patent trial, Apple industrial designers revealed that the company had a “strong interest” in featuring a curved glass display for its iPhone as far back as the first generation model — although it abandoned the idea at the time for reasons of cost.
If you’ve been meaning to treat yourself to a Pebble smartwatch and you haven’t already blown all of your savings on other Black Friday deals, then you might be interested to know that you can now get $20 off the device for one day only.
While everyone seems certain that Apple is working on some sort of wearable, exact details on the mysterious ‘iWatch’ remain allusive. Publications like The New York Timeshave said Apple is working on a watch with a curved glass display, and Tim Cook has hinted that the wrist is “profoundly interesting” for wearables.
The latest rumor on the iWatch is that Apple is developing two sizes: a larger display to market towards men, and a slightly smaller display for women.
A Google smartwatch powered by Android with built-in Google Now is in the late stages of development, according to people familiar with the matter, who have been speaking to The Wall Street Journal. Google is now in talks with Asian suppliers, which could begin mass producing the device “within months.”
There have been many wearables and quantified-health applications over the past few years, but most have steered clear of proclaiming themselves medical devices. Some of the rumors about the iWatch (such as the fact that it will be able to listen to the sound blood makes as it flows through arteries, and use this to predict heart attacks) may sound a bit too good to be true. But the number of
biosensor and biomedical engineers Apple has snapped up recently makes us think the iWatch could be a device that crosses over firmly into the "medical monitoring" category.
According to one recent report, a reason for the long delay before launch is that Apple is awaiting certification from the Food and Drug Administration to get the iWatch approved as medical equipment. Given Apple's recent announcement of the Health app for iOS 8 to collect and show data on calorie consumption, sleep activity, blood oxygen levels and more, plus the conspicuous absence of a health-tracking fitness band in Apple's last iPhone 5s ad, the idea that the iWatch will be geared toward health seems as close to a foregone conclusion as you get for a device that hasn't even been officially announced yet.
With all of Apple’s sales numbers save iPhone either flatlining or declining, calls are louder than ever for Apple to release a revolutionary device in an all new product category. People want the iWatch, and so does Apple.
A new rumor says that final manufacturing plans for the mythical wristmounted iDevice are underway, and LG is likely to be the main provider of Apple’s new iWatch OLED display.
Over the past couple of months we’ve seen tons of concept designers dream up ideas of what Apple’s smartwatch might look like, but this concept iWatch GIF by Thomas Bogner is one of the best ideas we’ve seen yet.
Tim Cook revealed in an internal email to employees today that he’s had his sights set on Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts for quite sometime, and while Ahrendts’ work at Burberry is what won her the spot, new details about Ahrendts suggest that her affinity for watches has been an added bonus for Apple as it prepares to launch the iWatch.
According to former WSJ reporter Jessica Lessin, people who know Ahrendts say she is a “watch lady” and took a particular interest in the watch retailing space of Burberry’s stores:
What exactly is the iWatch going to be? A tiny smartphone screen on your wrist that shows you notifications? The Pebble watch shows that such an approach can be popular, but it’s not going to set the world on fire the way we expect from Apple.
So what will it be? One analyst has an interesting theory: it’ll be a home automation gateway that controls all the smart objects in your house.
NPD DisplaySearch is one of the more reputable sources of supply-chain chatter there is, and they are currently making some bold predictions when it comes to Apple’s future iOS device line-up, from the iPhone 6, Retina MacBook Air, Apple HDTV and iWatch. Not only do they say that Apple is intending on announcing a retina iPad mini later this month (fingers crossed), but they say a larger iPhone is a certainty. In fact, they think every Apple display will improve across the board.
Samsung’s Galaxy Gear has been on sale for a number of weeks now, but today the South Korean company lifted its embargo on reviews. If you’ve been trying to decide whether or not you should spend hundreds of dollars on one, then, now’s the time to find out.
To make things a little easier for you, we’ve put together a roundup of the biggest and best reviews so you don’t have to trawl through them yourself.
The M7 Motion Coprocessor (MoCoPro?) in the iPhone 5s is something of a mystery beast. It’s function is clear – it is an always-on low-power chip that processes data from the accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass in your iPhone – but its eventual purpose is still a little unclear. So why don’t we do some speculation?
Apple is becoming a victim of its own success. It’s been several years since the company launched the iPad and revolutionized yet another product category, but we haven’t seen anything truly groundbreaking since then. Sure, we’ve had the iPad mini, the Retina MacBook Pro, and the awesome new iMac, but they’re all variations or improvements on existing products.
Now the world is clamoring for something completely new — something that’ll take off just like the iPod, iPhone and iPad.
Some reports suggest it will be the Apple “iTV,” the company first television set, which is said to be in development inside the company’s Cupertino headquarters. But it’s more likely that Apple’s immediate concern is with the “iWatch,” a smartwatch powered by iOS that will bring all kinds of crazy-cool technology to your wrist.
I had suspicions Apple might be working on its own watch when it redesigned the iPod nano last year. A lot of fans used the tiny nano as a watch thanks to third-party strap accessories, and it seemed like its form factor and design were changed for a reason — to make way for something new.
We’ve been reading iWatch rumors for the past few months, so it’s time to put them all together and establish what we think we know about the iWatch so far.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is one to shy away from sharing his opinions on the state of Apple, but rather than giving a speech on the advice he would impart to Tim Cook, Woz recently shared his Apple product wishlist, which includes wearable computers and bigger displays.
During a recent interview with Reuters, Woz says that he wants Apple to make an iWatch that is as complete in functionality as the current iPhone. The wishlist also includes larger screens on the iPhone, more customizations, and a happy room full of Dreamers thinking up how to change the world with a product that you wouldn’t call a phone.
Federico Ciccarese is an Italian designer whose Apple concepts have been seen on Cult of Mac many times. He has hit it out of the park with his most recent creation, the rumored iWatch running iOS 7. This is definitely the best looking iWatch concept we’ve seen to date.
The most vocal and active iPhone and Android fans scoff at the notion that Moto X is the new iPhone. But it’s true.
The iPhone used to represent the most elegant, innovative and fun-to-use smartphone for everybody. That status has now been taken by Motorola’s new “Google phone,” the Moto X.
We first heard that Samsung may be planning to announce its new “Galaxy Gear” smartwatch at its September 4 Galaxy Note III eventearlier this month, but the rumor just got even stronger after it was confirmed by Bloomberg’s reliable sources.
They claim that the South Korean electronics giant will unveil a “wristwatch-like smartphone” powered by Android that will go head-to-head with the new Sony SmartWatch 2, and a potentially competing product from Apple, one of Samsung’s biggest rivals.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster might be a bit of a laughing stock when it comes to the so-called Apple HDTV, but he’s still one of the go-to soothsayers for investors looking for an early heads-up on what Apple might do next. In a new report, Munster is making a rather strange claim: he says that Apple’s low-budget iPhone 5C will ship without Siri.
2013 is, so far, what might be considered a year of regrouping for Apple. The company has seen huge success in the PC, smartphone and tablet markets, but it’s also pushed those about as far as they can go: Incremental improvements, not revolutions, are what we can expect for the Mac, iPhone and iPad from here on out. Meanwhile, the next big thing — the iWatch, the iTV, whatever — is still on the horizon.
To outsiders, it looks like Apple has stalled. Far from it. You only need to look at the changes Apple is making with iOS 7 to see that Cupertino isn’t standing still, and the company has signalled that it is committed to the future of OS X for at least the next 10 years. That said, all the products Apple is set to announce next month — the iPhone 5S, the iPhone 5C, the iPad mini 2 and the iPad 5 — are just sequels to what it’s already done.
People are getting impatient for the next major Apple revolution. And it’s not just outsiders. A new report suggests that Apple’s own board of directors is “deeply concerned” about Cupertino’s perceived slackening in the pace of innovation.
For iOS users, the Pebble Smartwatch has largely existed as an exercise in frustration. While Android users can tie the Pebble Smartwatch into their smartphone’s central nervous system in all kinds of ways, the feature set of the e-ink proto-iWatch has been comparatively worse.
Case in point? Pebble Smartwatch owners who have an iPhone in their pocket couldn’t even get email notifications on the face of their watch. That’s a big deal: getting notified of new emails is seemingly one of the big things you’d want a second screen on your wrist to do. Luckily, that’s being rectified.
Apple has bought a company which specializes in low-energy chips that are ideally suited for devices like fitness trackers. The rumor mill is saying that Apple is working on an iWatch to release by the end of 2014, and this small acquisition is likely another way to bring in more expertise for the project.
This week on The CultCast: Logic Pro gets Pro’er with new features and iPad controls; Google Maps finally comes to iPad; Apple hunts for iWatch engineers; more iPad Mini retina rumors; Apple slangin’ TV deals with studios to kill commercials; we dish great computing tips on Tips Ahoooy!
Have a few laughs and get caught up on this week’s best Apple stories. Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin.
Apple has had an exclusive contract to use the next-gen Liquidmetal alloy for almost three years now. Theoretically, Liquidmetal could allow Apple to realize thinner, lighter, more resilient devices… but the Liquidmetal fabrication process is hard to work with, which is why, so far, we’ve only seen one actual Liquidmetal Apple product: the SIM removal tool that ships with every iPhone!
But it looks like Apple might have finally cracked the problem. And they are eyeing Liquid Metal for use in the iWatch.
