The iPad might be the king of tablets when it comes to quality, but it is no longer the king when it comes to sales.
A new report from research firm Strategy Analytics says that the iPad is now being outsold by so-called Brand X tablets: generic tablets sold under any brand name that isn’t Apple or Samsung.
It’s not often that Google incontrovertibly one-ups Apple on anything but search, but the company just scored a small but sizable advantage over Cupertino in at least one regard: music storage space.
Google expanded its Google Play Music service Wednesday to match, store and stream 50,000 tracks, twice what Apple allows iTunes Match paid users. Even better for listeners with large libraries? Google Play Music is free.
For a long time, Apple Maps was a laughing stock. Then it started getting better. Apple ironed out the glitches, began updating Apple Maps every day, and introduced Flyover, which gave you a 3-D view of major cities as they would look from the sky.
Now it’s taken that technology one step further in an effort to win the mapping war versus Google: Apple Maps is going real-time.
Thanks to a new update, London’s Big Ben clock tower will now show the real time, while the iconic London Eye will rotate. Those are the only real-time updates we’ve spotted so far, but Apple is reportedly looking to add more moving elements to cities over the following year.
On the consumer side, Apple couldn’t be hotter in China: not only taking the top spot for smartphone sales in the country for the first time ever, but also beating out the likes of Gucci and Chanel to be named China’s favorite luxury brand.
It is on the more official side of the equation where Apple is struggling, however. In what commentators are calling a response to widespread Western cyber-surveillance, the Chinese government has dropped Apple products from its list of approved state purchases.
On May 17, Tim Cook will be giving the commencement address to the 2015 graduating class of George Washington University. He will also be awarded a honorary doctorate of public service.
It will be the Apple CEO’s second time giving such a speech after addressing his alma mater Auburn University in 2010.
Samsung is expected to unveil its new flagship Galaxy S6 smartphone at Mobile World Congress next month, but some leaked images from the XDA developer forums might have just spoiled their big reveal.
The set of images of an alleged Samsung prototype show is a big departure from the other Galaxy devices with rounded edges that make it look more like the iPhone 6. The bottom of the leaked Galaxy S6 looks almost identical to the iPhone 6 bottom.
Here’s the bottom of the iPhone 6 for comparison:
Tim Cook is currently visiting Israel in conjunction with Apple opening a new office in Herzliya. As part of the trip, he met with the president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin.
The two leaders showed great respect for each other during a chat at the president’s residence. Along with recognizing an Israeli Apple VP in attendance with Cook, Rivlin thanked the Apple CEO repeatedly for “what you are doing for all humanity.” Cook talked about Apple’s love for Israel as an “ally for the U.S.” and a “place to do business.” Cook also praised Rivlin’s work to “bridge the gap” between nationalities and religions in the Middle East.
Ben Marcus attracts attention whenever he flies his quadcopter and sometimes he lets the curious take the controls.
During those exchanges, many say this: That’s cool, but what about the privacy issues?
Marcus sensed that the concern about camera-outfitted drones unknowingly hovering over our lives was real enough that it could stunt the potential applications of drones.
So he started a company that will let people restrict their own air space.
NoFlyZone launched on Feb. 10 and already has more than 20,000 homeowners signed up to request drone pilots steer clear of their property.
If you plan on seeing Focus starring Will Smith and Margot Robbie this weekend, you will be watching the first major studio film edited entirely with Final Cut Pro X.
Originally criticized as “iMovie Pro” for its incredibly simplistic interface and feature set, Final Cut Pro X has managed to start wooing Hollywood filmmakers by slowly adding back missed tools along with new ones. Now the directors behind Focus think it’s the future of movie editing.
Photographer and book publisher Rick Smolan was 25 when he made the best picture of his young career while on assignment in Australia. It was a group of aboriginal children playing in golden light with a balloon on a red dirt runway.
But when he looked down at his camera, he realized the shot would be grossly underexposed. Sure enough, when the Kodachrome 25 slides came back, the frame was dark and murky.
“I stuck the slide in a safe deposit box because I knew someday someone would invent something to save that picture,” Smolan, who created the Day in the Life photo book series and America 24/7, told Cult of Mac.
We’re still waiting for the final pricing details on the Apple Watch, but if recent reports that Apple plans to sell one million gold Edition units a month are true, Apple Watch could wreak havoc on gold prices and do who knows what to the global economy.
Josh Center at TidBits has done some math on Apple Watch and estimates that if production rumors are correct, Apple will be bidding for a third of the world’s annual gold supply to make enough gold watches to meet demand.
To put those numbers in perspective, Apple needs so much gold it could turn the all 7,000 metric tons of gold stored at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — you know, the one from the plot of Die Hard 3 — into gold watches in less than a decade.
Get ready to watch the epic slow burn in the official trailer for the upcoming conclusion to Rocksteady’s Arkham video game series, Batman: Arkham Knight. Scarecrow is uniting all of Batman’s enemies — Penguin, Two-Face, the Riddler, Harley Quinn, Poison, Ivy, and the Arkham Knight — to take Gotham City and take down The Bat.
Sure, there’s a little bit of Bane-like incomprehensibility in the Scarecrow’s voice-over, and (barring a miracle) the Joker won’t be in town this time around, but this game is looking pretty amazing. The in-game shots of Batman plunging down the skyscrapers of Gotham City, the brutal combat animations, and the just plain high-resolution glory of the fictional city and it’s lone hero make us want to play Batman: Arkham Knight right now.
Check out the epic trailer for the June 2, 2015 game below.
Apple can be an incredibly demanding company to work for, but just getting in the door is nearly impossible.
The hiring process for Apple retail is fairly lengthy, but according to UX designer Luis Abreu, landing a job at the mothership in Cupertino is an even longer, more grueling process — which he just suffered through firsthand.
Apple Watch still isn’t available for the masses, but Apple is ramping up its marketing efforts among fashionistas with a multipage spread in the March issue of Vogue.
Multiple versions of the Apple Watch are shown across the seven-page ad, which includes closeups of the watch bands as well as full-size pictures of the entire device to give readers a better idea about whether Jony Ive’s timepiece will fit in with their wardrobes.
Take a look at some of the other ads below:
Despite angering iOS users by forcing their album, Songs of Innocence, onto every iPhone and iPad in the world, U2’s iTunes exclusivity bet is paying off big time.
Nearly one in four of all music users on iOS devices listened to U2 in January, which was nearly double the second most popular artist, Taylor Swift. The force-fed album debuted last fall but its impact is still visible five months later, according to Kantar’s latest survey of iOS users, which found that 23% of all music users on iOS listened to at least one U2 track in January.
Here’s the top 10 artists in January:
The Apple Watch reveal back in September was big on excitement, but short on details. Among those things that Apple failed to mention was whether or not Cupertino’s new smartwatch will be able to withstand liquids — making it suitable for, say, swimming or washing the dishes.
While we still don’t have a final, definitive answer on what is and is not advisable with the Apple Watch, Tim Cook shed a bit of light on the mystery during a Q&A session with staff at the Kurfürstendamm Apple Store in Berlin, Germany, where he is currently visiting. Cook said that that he wears his Apple Watch “even in the shower.”
From minor controversies like Antennagate to being kicked out of his own company and then returning triumphantly, Steve Jobs got out of plenty of tight squeezes in his life.
Now that he’s gone, it seems that that same spirit of near-misses and daring triumphs is left to Venus, Jobs’ 256-foot, $120 million super-yacht.
Having visited Montenegro, Palma, Gibraltar, Horta Azores and many other exotic locations since Jobs’ death in 2011, the yacht recently had a close call while passing through a bridge in Saint Martin, an island in the northeast Caribbean, approximately 185 miles east of Puerto Rico.
Check out the video after the jump.
Allen Zderad lost a career in science because of a degenerative eye disease. Now, science is allowing him to see his wife for the first time in 10 years.
The 68-year-old former chemist from Minnesota recently became the recipient of a “bionic eye” implant, a chip with electrodes implanted in his retina that interacts with a camera in Zderad’s glasses. The camera and wearable computer pack sends information to the electrodes, which then send the information on to the optic nerve.
Apple has been ordered to shell out $532.9 million to a patent troll after apparently infringing on intellectual property with iTunes features related to data storage and managing access through payment systems.
The fee was awarded by a Texas court, and was positioned between the $852 million Smartflash was seeking in damages and the $4.5 million Apple had argued for.
It was recently Chinese New Year, and to celebrate, thousands of people flocked to a well-known Buddhist temple in the country’s Guangdong province to make offerings.
One Apple super-fan apparently decided to eschew cash donations for something far more valuable, however: his new iPhone 6 Plus.
A shot of the man depositing the super-sized Apple smartphone in the temple’s donation box was featured in Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post. The saddest part? His generous offering was rejected.
Tonight, history is made as Modern Family becomes the first major TV show to ever air an episode shot almost entirely using Apple products — ranging from the iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2 to MacBook FaceTime cameras.
But while Apple products are famously easy to use, the episode itself contained numerous challenges: taking more than three months to complete, and a variety of nifty filmmaking tricks. To find out more details, BuzzFeed News reached out to the show’s executive producer and co-creator, Steve Levitan, to get some added insight about the challenges of making this unusual show.
The behind-the-scenes video is available to watch online, or download via iTunes.
When you’re a company the size of Apple, sometimes you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Having recently paved the way for racially diverse emoji by adding them to both Mac and iOS, Apple is now being attacked for the shade of yellow used for its Asian faces, which some critics claim is borderline racist.
Lenny Kravitz has designed a camera for Leica and you are going to need rock-star money to afford it.
Kravitz, whose life-long love for photography is evident by the Leica camera often slung on his shoulder, has collaborated with his favorite company to design a limited edition Leica M-P Correspondent digital rangefinder.
The “design” comes in the form of areas of the camera’s black enamel finish where the paint has been deliberately worn away to reveal flares of brass. It has the vintage appearance of a well-traveled workhorse that came from the bag of Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Grumpy Cat, T-Shirt-guy, Leave Brittany alone! Steve Jobs, Barack Obama, Bill Gates. Music videos, TV episodes, vlogs, and — of course — PewDiePie.
That’s just a small sampling of the amazing video compilation edit you can see right now on YouTube, created by Luc Bergeron, director and video editor for YouTube, to celebrate ten years of the Google-owned video portal.
Take a look at this amazing edit of 198 YouTube videos below and be ready to thrill to all the video memes you already know, plus a ton you might have missed.
Can you imagine a time without the ubiquitous video service, available on every video device you have, from your iPhone and iPad to Mac to smart TV? YouTube has re-defined the way we create and consume video from the moment it came into being, and we love this retrospective for reminding us.
David Sherry and Allie Lehman are not out to kill anything. But when they named their growing photo agency Death to Stock, they were sending out a pretty strong signal. Not with malice toward this segment of the photo industry, but a tongue-in-cheek invitation to any person who has ever had to create something using expensive, mediocre photography from a stock agency.
The name as well as the pictures they produce have caught the eye of more than 230,000 subscribers since Sherry and Lehman started the agency in Columbus, Ohio, in 2013.
The value of the company, Sherry said, is growing fast — in large part because they distribute the work free of charge.