Smartphone shipments surpassed a record 1.43 billion units in 2015, according to the latest figures from IDC, and 22.7 percent of them carried the Samsung logo. Despite falling Galaxy sales, the South Korean company still shifted 93.3 million more devices than Apple.
If you’re the proud owner of a two-prong Apple AC wall plug adapter, as included in the Apple World Travel Adapter Kit, you may have a trip to the Apple Store in your immediate future.
That’s because Apple has announced a voluntary recall of adapters designed for use in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Continental Europe, New Zealand and South Korea, after certain models were found to break and put users at risk of electrical shocks.
Sometimes a good idea can advance technology without an app or motherboard. Photographer Ruoguo Zhou proved that last year with a hunk of plastic called SLOPES, an indispensable accessory for GoPro users that cradles the camera and provides 20 different angles for shooting.
Zhou again applies simple geometry to plastic with his new device, the Pano5+1, a tripod (or water bottle) head that allows the GoPro shooter to create seamless spherical or cylindrical panorama photographs.
Apple could get back in the stereo game with a speaker system capable of finding the “sweet spot” in a particular room and modifying its sound accordingly.
Despite the noise being made about big multinationals using loopholes to avoid paying tax, Apple’s Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri has made it clear how much he thinks Apple owes as part of the European Union’s ongoing investigation.
“My estimate is zero,” he told the Financial Times. “I mean, if there is a fair outcome of the investigation, it should be zero.”
Don’t spend it all at once, E.U.!
Apple Store retail guru Angela Ahrendts says that the secret behind Apple’s success is its culture, telling an interviewer that, “The company was built to change people’s lives.”
The dedication to keeping not just customers, but also employees, feeling like they’re part of a greater mission is paying off in a big way, too — with Ahrendts noting that last year Apple Stores had their highest employee retention rate in history, with 81 percent of people staying put.
The iPad Air 3 may boast a 4K display, as well as up to 4GB of RAM and improved battery life.
Given that the current iPad Air has a resolution of 2048 x 1536, a 4K display would come close to doubling its predecessor’s image quality.
The rest of the PC industry may be crashing, but Apple expects Mac sales to remain relatively stable in 2016 — with sources in the supply chain claiming that Mac-series product shipments are likely to remain around the 20 million unit mark this year.
A Twitter user has shared surprising details of the first firmware update for Logitech’s Create iPad Pro keyboard, which he was prompted to install after grabbing the iOS 9.3 beta 2 seed.
The Logitech update appears to fix a nagging keyboard lag experienced by some users, but that’s not even the coolest part: It looks like the iOS beta pushed the firmware update to the Logitech Create through the iPad Pro’s Smart Connector.
Facebook is planning to roll out its new “Reactions” icons in the next few weeks, making it possible for us all to react a bit more subtly and carefully to our friends and family on Facebook.
It appears we won’t have to wait much longer to see what the next-generation iPad Air will look like.
Apple plans to unveil the iPad Air 3 at a special event in March, according to a new report, which claims new Apple Watch hardware will also get some stage time during the keynote.
Following up Monday’s release of iOS 9.3 beta 2 to developers, Apple’s continued its plan to get its latest mobile operating system into the hands of public beta testers as well.
This morning sees the provision of iOS 9.3 public beta 2, which brings with it a new Control Center button to toggle Night Shift — the feature that decreases sleep-disturbing blue light on your iPhone.
Apple is officially moving into San Jose.
The company received unanimous approval from the San Jose city council this week to develop on property it has leased in North San Jose for the next 15 years. The council approved Apple to build up to 4.15 million square feet of space, but what Apple plans to do with it is still a mystery.
Apple’s senior director of real estate development, Kristina Raspe, told the city council that the company still doesn’t have any firm plans on how the space will be used.
Good news for iOS users who prefer Chrome: Google’s browser is now as fast as mobile Safari.
Chrome has switched to the WKWebView engine, which first became a feature in 2014 with iOS 8, allowing third-party browsers access to the same rendering engine as Safari.
Samsung is reportedly planning to launch its own upgrade program to give Galaxy smartphone fans an easy and more affordable route to its latest devices.
The move would be a direct response to Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program, and could prevent long-time users from making the switch to iOS.
Apple continues to get a better foothold in China, despite a slowdown in the country’s smartphone market.
According to the latest smartphone sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, in the month of December Apple regained its status as China’s most sought-after smartphone brand, with a sales share of 27 percent for urban China.
A number of iOS and OS X users around the globe were confronted with a strange glitch this morning, when the simple act of tapping or typing into the Safari address bar instantly caused the Apple browser to crash.
These days, Apple is known for its impeccable design sensibilities. Less than 20 years ago, though, that wasn’t the case. Case in point? These awesomely retro, fluorescently hideous in-store demos made to help sell the Macintosh in 1997.
As rumors swirl that Apple is considering subscription-only content for its News app, Microsoft is also looking to get in on the iOS news game. On Tuesday, they released a new app called News Pro, which boasts the tagline “hyper-relevant news for your work.”
Remember that iPad Pro tribute to departed public television legend Bob Ross that we posted back in December? We liked it, and it looks like Adobe did too… which is why they decided to rip-off the idea wholesale to promote Adobe Photoshop Sketch.
Ever since it unveiled the iPhone 5s and 5c in 2013, Apple has split its iPhone launch lineup in two each year. According to well-connected KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, however, Apple may further subdivide its iPhones — with not one but two iPhone 7 Plus variants set to arrive this September.
In a Wednesday note to investors, Kuo claims that Apple will launch one 5.5-inch handset with the regular iSight camera, while a second, rarer version will sport a dual-camera design for higher-definition images.
The Apple Watch has displaced Rolex on a list of luxury global brands, as measured by analytics firm NetBase, measuring social media mentions and consumer sentiment from more than 700 million posts between 2014 and 2015.
The Apple Watch took the no. 1 place in the list’s “watches” category — made all the more impressive by the fact that it was the only smartwatch featured. Other watchmakers it outranked included Tag Heuer, Richemont, Curren and Patek Phillippe.
Compared to tech companies whose PR departments act like celebrity hangers-on, bigging you up and laughing at your jokes to win favor, Apple’s uber-succesful public relations department is more like the movie Mean Girls in its approach to those not on its wanted list.
And with the proposed new hiring of a former Apple communications wizard, it seems that Twitter’s looking to get in on the Cupertino-style action.
Although there are ways of messaging people with the Apple Watch — either with Siri dictation, or using pre-written responses and emojis — as far as I know, no-one has yet come up with the perfect method for typing and sending messages from the device itself, without needing to whip out your iPhone to help do so.
That’s exactly the problem Patryk Laurent, cognitive scientist working at the Brain Corporation in San Diego — and an avid Apple Watch fan — has set out out to solve. His solution is a nifty homemade app, which allows users to input their messages using Morse code.
Yes, it’s every bit as geeky and awesome as it sounds.
Siri’s latest trick has it setting the tempo for the Internet’s beatboxing magic.
Apple’s digital assistant may not be the best beatboxer on its own, but it can provide the backdrop for some more talented people. And those people have found a way to get Siri to lay it down so that they can spit hot fire and record it for our entertainment.
All it takes is a little math.