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The dwarf planet named after the Roman goddess of motherly relationships will soon have a new friend. And scientists and space-exploration geeks here on Earth can’t wait for that friend, the space probe Dawn, to start dishing.

Dawn, launched in 2007 to visit two bodies within the asteroid belt past Mars, is scheduled to enter an orbit of the dwarf planet Ceres on March 6. Ceres is the largest mass in the asteroid belt and has an icy mantle that may harbor an internal ocean of water under its surface. Talk of water on a planetary body always leads to questions of life.

Ceres has long been a curiosity to astronomers and space observers, and its status — is it an asteroid? a dwarf planet? — has been hotly debated ever since its discovery in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi.

Never mind all that. What’s that white spot?

Snapchat is taking Stories, its concept that lets you see the world through your friends’ perspectives, to a new level today. By collaborating with the likes of Vice, Comedy Central, Yahoo News, and National Geographic, Snapchat’s new Discover feature brings you the news in the form of a story.

The ephemeral social network says it’s taking aim at social media companies who “tell us what to read based on what’s most recent or most popular” (like Facebook).

Discover stories are created by editorial teams and refreshed every 24 hours. Unlike Stories, Discover content also supports long form journalism, making it a huge threat to Facebook and Twitter as the top place to find and read your news.

Here’s how to use Discover:

Apple took the top spot for smartphone sales in China last quarter for the first time in the company’s history, reports financial research firm Canalys.

To accomplish the stunning feat, Apple leapfrogged Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi, thanks to the sales of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Apple is also selling more iPhones in China now than it is in the United States, even though the iPhone costs nearly double its nearest competitor. Canalys credits this to Apple tapping into trends like larger screens and LTE.

Four months down the line, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus still feel like new devices, but that’s not stopping enthusiastic, design-minded techies from creating concept showing how they hope Apple’s next generation iPhone will look.

This concept, created by Netherlands-based graphic designer Yasser Farahi, shows a sleeker iPhone with thinner bezel and profile, and a few of the less popular design features of the iPhone 6 taken out. Most enticing of all is Farahi’s dream of wireless charging: a technology which has been often rumored over the years, but not as of yet implemented by Apple.

Given that Farahi has chosen to name it the iPhone 7, this particular model would likely arrive in 2016, since this year will probably see the iPhone 6s, with the majority of changes being under the hood. Personally, I’m not mad keen on some of Farahi’s subdued color choices, but it’s still a tantalizing glimpse at what we could have to look forward to next year.

Check out more pictures, and a video, after the jump.

Post-Apple Pay, everyone is looking to Cupertino when it comes to innovation in the mobile payment sector. eBay is no different — with the online auction company starting up a new division, designed especially to develop payment-related technology.

And wouldn’t you know it? It’s filling it with ex-Apple folk.

Five years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced the iPad. A giant screen with one button, the iPad represented possibly the purest distillation of Jobs’ tech dreams. Yet at the time it was met with derision. “I got about 800 messages in the last 24 hours,” Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “Most of them are complaining…. It knocks you back a bit.”

Half a decade and multiple iterations on, the iPad is an established part of Apple’s ecosystem. While it’s had its ups and downs, nobody’s flooding Apple’s inbox with iPad-related hate mail anymore.

So what were people complaining about? We hopped in our time machine to take a look at the original criticisms — and what, if anything, Apple’s done about them in the years since.

What is it with Apple and the gaming-related patents as of late?

Just weeks after the publishing of an Apple patent showing a concealed gaming joystick capable of being hidden in future iPhones, today the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office has revealed another Apple invention related to a snap-on gaming controller for iOS devices.

As with the joystick patent, the idea here is to allow gamers to fully capitalize on the present golden age of iOS gaming, without having to block parts of the screen using their fingers for multitouch controls.

When Tim Cook unveiled Apple Pay last year, the company hailed it as a simple contactless payment solution that also brings extra security to credit cards. Except according to one report, Apple Pay is actually making it easier for scammers to commit credit fraud.

Apple Pay’s security problem has nothing to do with Touch ID, NFC, Apple’s secure element, or stolen iPhones. All of that is locked down as tightly as Apple advertised. The problem, according to an unconfirmed report from DropLabs, is that Apple Pay is so easy to use, fraudsters don’t even have to create a physical fake card anymore.

Five years ago today, on January 27 2010, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco — giving the world its first glimpse of the so-called “Jesus tablet.”

Although not Apple’s first venture into the tablet market (that would be 1993’s Newton MessagePad 100), the iPad was the first tablet Apple had released while Jobs was running the show. And, boy, was it great!

When looking at the iPad, at first the temptation was to think of it as a giant iPhone. That’s not the case, however. In reality, Apple began work on its tablet before its now-iconic smartphone. For Jobs, the idea went back to 2002 and a conversation he had with a boastful Microsoft engineer, who bragged about a stylus-based tablet computer. A patent application from Apple followed in March 2004, with Jobs and Jony Ive as two of the inventors named.

Things have come a long way since then, but it’s worth re-watching Jobs’ original iPad introduction — just for a reminder of how much Apple’s revolutionary device has meant in the half-decade since.

Check out the video after the jump:

The biggest snowstorm to ever hit New York City is pounding the Northeast today, and it doesn’t look like the blizzard is going to let up any time soon.

More than 2 feet of snow are expected to hit the area. NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has already canceled school for tomorrow and the state announced all highways will be closed by midnight tonight. But before you hole up with your loved ones for the next few days, make sure to download these eight apps that will help you make it out alive.

Apple Pay has already invaded MLB stadiums and NBA games, but next up on the list of major sports to accept Apple’s contactless payments system will be golfers.

The city of Phoenix is gearing up to host the Super Bowl this week, but the PGA is hoping to steal a little thunder with the revelation this morning that Apple Pay will make its first ever debut on the golf course at the 2015 Waste Management Phoenix Open this week.

Apple acquired TestFlight maker Burtsly last year and quickly added it to iOS in an effort to improve the iOS beta testing experience for both developers and testers. Now Apple plans to close the independent site TestFlightapp.com to Android users and everyone else, forcing iPhone and iPad owners to only test apps through the official TestFlight iOS app.

Apple is set to announce record-breaking earnings tomorrow for its 2014 holiday quarter. Apple projected making $63.5 billion to $66.5 billion in revenue, but Wall Street’s consensus is that the company will blow past its own guidance and report revenue closer to $68 billion.

That’s about $20 billion more than Google’s last three quarters of revenue combined.

Growth will likely be fueled by strong iPhone sales, although the Mac is also projected to reach record sales.

A rare phaser pistol from the original Star Trek television series is “set to stun” when it goes on the auction block next month in Los Angeles.

It is made of fiberglass and one of only two known phasers to have survived the 1960s television series, which starred William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy as the leaders of the starship Enterprise.

The phaser could fetch more than $60,000, according to the website Luxurylaunches.com when it hits the block Feb. 21 during a Star Trek auction by Propworx.

China may have been a bit late to the iPhone 6 party due to a drawn-out regulatory approval period, but it seems the wait was worth it — both for Chinese customers and Tim Cook’s wallet.

Ahead of what should be a blockbuster earnings call for Apple on January 27, UBS analysts are predicting that the holiday season will be the quarter in which China finally sold more iPhones than the U.S.

Over the weekend, we showed you sexy new renders that showed the rumored new 12-inch MacBook Air and iPad Pro side-by-side. Designed by render artist extraordinaire Martin Hajek, it gave us our best look yet at what Apple’s next big products could look like.

But in the renders we saw, Hajek’s iPad Pro was missing at least one critical ingredient: the plus-size tablet’s rumored stylus accessory. Now Hajek’s back, giving us his notion of what a Jony Ive-designed stylus could look like.

In public, the big smartphone competition may be between Apple and Samsung, but behind the scenes the faltering Samsung has another battle on its hands: with rival manufacturer TSMC over who gets to build the A9 processor for the next generation iPhone.

And while Samsung is decisively losing the battle to sell the most smartphones in the marketplace, the A9 chip orders could be one clash it is going to emerge victorious from!

In 2013, Twitter introduced a new policy that was designed to prevent third-party Twitter clients from gaining too much popularity. The design to the Twitter API basically capped the number of API “tokens” a third-party developer have. Each token is tied to a user, so the effect is that if a third-party Twitter client gets too popular, Twitter will stop allowing new users of that app into the service.

Over the weekend, it appears that Tapbot’s third-party Twitter app, Tweetbot for Mac, finally ran up against its token limit… and as of right now, has been pulled from the Mac App Store.

Given that Tim Cook thinks China will soon overtake the U.S. as Apple’s biggest market, it’s no surprise that Apple is taking its expansion into China seriously.

Amidst plans to open 25 new retail stores in the country by 2016, Apple has just released a new video showing a new mural outside its upcoming second Apple store in Chongqing, set to open at 10am local time on January 31.

The mural was created as a collaboration between international photographer and former engineer Navid Baraty (best known for these spectacular vertigo-inducing cityscapes) and artist Yangyang Pan.

Ever since Apple made the tactical error of giving everyone a free U2 album (#firstworldproblems), the company has been a tad on the, well, miserly side — with no Mac, iPad or iPhone discounts on Black Friday, and even the company’s customary 12 Days of Christmas giveaway canceled. Bah, humbug!

Clearly someone in Cupertino (head of retail Angela Ahrendts?) has woken up in a newly charitable mood, however, because Apple has just updated its iTunes Store app for both iOS and desktop with a new “Free on iTunes” curated section, which helps customers find content they can download without having to rack up any extra post-Christmas credit card bills.

Update: Downplaying reports about the size of its impending layoffs, IBM says it will let go of only “several thousand people,” not the much-larger number reported by Forbes. We’ve updated this story and its headline to reflect IBM’s statements.

Things aren’t going well for IBM. Six months into its partnership with Apple, Big Blue is reportedly preparing for the largest corporate layoff in history.

After nearly three years of quarterly revenue decline, IBM is preparing to ax a staggering 111,800 employees, according to Forbes. Saying it does not respond to “ridiculous” rumors, IBM says the layoffs will be much smaller than that. How the layoffs will affect the company’s business with Apple remains unclear.

This week: Why Apple Watch will win the wrist war, we snap a pic with Patrick Stewart but he’s not amused, the good and bad of a George Lucas-free Star Wars 7, Microsoft’s new HoloLens looks incredible, and we reveal some of our favorite apps and gear on an all-new Under Review.

Our thanks to Automatic for supporting this episode. Plug Automatic into your car’s data port, and their beautiful app will show you where you parked, learn how to save fuel with tips based on your actual driving, and even diagnose and turn off your car’s check engine light.

Full show notes after the click.

Although it’s a Windows game, I’ve never met anyone without a sweet spot for Minesweeper, the addictive little puzzle game that Microsoft debuted in Windows 3.1. Sadly, though, it never came to the Mac.

But if you love a good game of Minesweeper, we’ve got some great news. You can now play it right within Notification Center. Better act on it soon, though: Apple has a tendency to pull interesting iOS 8 widgets like this one.

The Apple Watch might be Cupertino’s most hotly anticipated product, but for my money, the two releases I’m most excited about this year are the 12-inch MacBook Air and the 12-inch iPad Pro. Outside of a few leaked images, though, we still have not seen either of these rumored devices in the flash.

Conceptual designer Martin Hajek is no stranger to turning rumors of upcoming Apple products into blisteringly sexy 3-D renders, and now he’s done it again with a series of renders showing the iPad Pro and 12-inch MacBook Air going head to head. Call it the battle of the 12-inchers, if you will!