Many Apple fans were hoping the company’s first timepiece would ship to stores in time for the holidays, but with the release slated for ‘early 2015’, a new report claims you’ll be lucky if you even get to Digital Touch your lover on Valentines Day.
The Information reports that even Apple employees and partners were expecting to see the Apple Watch in 2014, but complications with the project have pushed its release to mid-February at the earliest.
Nearly half of iPhone and iPad users have already upgraded to iOS 8 in the first week, but if you’re looking for stability, you might want to stay for a few weeks more.
Crash analytics data from Crittercism found that iOS 8’s crash rate is 78 percent higher than that seen on iOS 7, with an average crash rate of 3.56% across all devices.
Apple has cemented its place atop the American Customer Satisfaction Index, a sort of Michelin guide for customer service, for the eleventh straight year.
In a new report released by ACSI, Apple continued its lead over big name rivals such as Dell, Acer, Hewlett-Packard and the catch-all “All Others” when it comes to satisfaction with computing devices — including desktops, laptops and tablets. Scores are based on everything from pre-sale customer expectations, to perceived value and quality, customer complaint incidents and overall consumer loyalty.
The difference between an iPhone 5, and iPhone 6, and an iPhone 6 Plus sounds like it would obvious, but it’s not: a 4.7-inch iPhone 6 has a 38% bigger screen than an iPhone 5, and the 5.5-inch iPhone Plus has a screen that is almost 89% larger than the 4-inch iPhone 5s. The point is, it can be hard to mentally visualize the difference between a 4-inch iPhone, a 4.7-inch iPhone, and a 5.5-inch iPhone.
Apple knows this. That’s why in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, Cupertino’s advertising department has taken out a full page ad, showing the actual size of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. All you need to do to see how much bigger an iPhone 6 is over your current phone is place it next to the magazine.
Very simple, but also very brilliant. For the iPhone 6, Apple’s selling size, not speed, and this is a great way to make it relatable to everyone. Nicely done, Apple.
Source: Mac Observer
Former Guns N’ Roses lead guitarist Slash has praised U2’s poorly received iTunes album giveaway as a clever marketing strategy.
“There’s a lot less opportunities in the record business to get a deal and get a record out there, and there’s not a lot of radio play for it,” he told Ultimate Classic Rock magazine.
Describing the music business in 2014 as “like the wild, wild west,” he continued that this was “one of those kind of tactics that only U2 could really get away with doing.”
With its improved lens, sensors and image stabilization, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus offer the best camera seen yet on an Apple handset. But one of the biggest changes was one that took place behind the scenes of iOS 8, with an API allowing third-party developers to have precise control over the workings of the iOS camera functions.
The result is more professional photo apps, which are transforming your most-used camera into your best one.
One of these new breed of photo apps is Little Pixels’ Manual custom exposure tool. Giving you a powerful camera app with full control over each image, the app lets users quickly and easily adjust all the parameters of their images, including focus, white balance, and exposure. If you’re looking for a guide on how to manually focus an iPhone camera, you can refer to this detailed tutorial on iPhone camera manual controls.
The Pulsar might have been the reality of digital watches around the time that Apple started, but what was predicted by the age’s futurists? The 1979 Usborne book Future Cities: Homes & Living Into the 21st Century describes the arrival of "wrist-phones" or “ristos.” These devices, the authors predicted, would work with cellphones and GPS equipment.
"City dwellers of tomorrow could have a small gadget of enormous benefit — a wristwatch radio-telephone,” the book notes. "With a wristwatch radio, you could talk to anyone, wherever you happened to be.... If you were late for an appointment, it would be easy to let the other people know.... It ought to be impossible to get lost in tomorrow's world, in a city or out of it.... The wrist-phone can provide guidance back to the nearest town.” Pretty accurate, no?
Picture: EDC Publishing
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is a 10 million unit selling wrecking ball — and Samsung is running scared.
Trying to boost its falling mobile sales, Samsung announced on Wednesday that its new Galaxy Note 4 smartphone will go on sale in China and South Korea as early as this Friday, with the handset available on all mobile carriers in both countries by the end of the month.
For those keeping track, that’s before much of the rest of the world, including the U.S.
Why are China and South Korea getting Samsung’s flagship handset before nearly everyone else? Because the iPhone 6 isn’t available in these markets yet, which has caused a mad dash for the South Korean company to try and get in there first — particularly since the massive iPhone 6 and 6 Plus has now neutralized Samsung’s big-screen differentiator.
New figures released by app analytics firm App Annie show that mobile users are more likely than ever to pay for music services by way of in-app purchases.
Looking at figures from August, streaming music offerings from Spotify, Pandora and Beats Music were among the top earning apps in terms of revenue.
President Obama, sadly, does not have an iPhone 6. But he totally wants one, leading him to openly lust after Apple’s newest handset in a meeting Tuesday at the United Nations.
Apple has made big improvements to the iPhone camera with each successive release, and while the iPhone 6 didn’t get a huge new sensor, the redesigned 8MP sensor is better than any camera Apple’s ever made.
To see just how well the iPhone 6 stacks up against every other iPhone camera Apple’s released, Lisa Bettany took the same shots with the original iPhone, 3G, 3Gs, 4, 4s, 5, 5c, 5s and iPhone 6 and found that along with the faster shooting and focus, images taken with the iPhone have greater detail and are significantly better in low-light.
Here’s a comparison of back-lit photos:
Apple has acquired Prss, a Dutch company that lets users easily create magazines for iPad and iPhone by way of a simple drag-and-drop interface, for selling in Apple’s Newsstand and other services like Kiosk.
An inside source first reported the acquisition, before Apple confirmed it. Company co-founder Michel Elings recently moved to the Bay Area, alongside other members of the Prss team — indicating that a deal might have been made over the summer.
Prss’s service shut down in July, and has not been active since then.
Ron Johnson revolutionized the retail shopping world when he left Target in 2000 to join Apple and design the entire Apple Store shopping experience with Steve Jobs.
Now, coming off a 17-month stint as the CEO of JC Penney, Ron is ready to reinvent shopping all over again, by getting rid of stores completely.
Apple isn’t shutting down Beats Music service, the stream music service it bought in May, but the company isn’t planning to keep the brand name around much longer, reports Recode’s John Paczkowski who says Apple’s rebranding of the streaming music service could come as early as next year.
Apple Pay is threatening to put mobile payments companies like Square and PayPal out of business when it launches next month, but according to Square co-founder Jack Dorsey, Apple Pay isn’t actually a threat to his company.
Dorsey revealed yesterday that Square is hoping to use Apple Pay to its advantage by building a new register for sellers that accepts Apple Pay and pretty much every other form of payment you can slide across a counter.
Bend-Gate is slowly taking over the Internet this morning as Apple fans discover the startling fact that when pressure is applied to an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus frame, it bends – just like every other smartphone ever made of metal.
The bending problem has been reported by a number of iPhone 6 owners who pocketed their big iPhone 6 only to retrieve it later with a significant curve in the frame. Some sites are deeming the new iPhones “more fragile than expected,” but the truth is we’ve seen this problem almost every year.
In fact, last year ran we an article titled “iPhone 5s Bending in People’s Pockets.” Any phone made of metal is still subject to the laws of physics, but to reiterate that this isn’t exactly a problem exclusive to the iPhone 6, here’s a look at other Android and Apple phones that have bending problems.
Apple consolidated the lineup of CarPlay partners on its website Tuesday morning and left off mention of 2014 availability, leading some Apple fans to conclude that launch of the iOS-in-your-car functionality would be delayed. However, Cult of Mac has learned that there was no hidden reason behind the site change this morning, and that CarPlay is still on track.
Sources at Apple told us speculation that “Apple is no longer promising CarPlay support from any auto manufacturer this year as it has done since its debut in March” is far off and inaccurate. CarPlay has been supported since iOS 7.1 and many manufacturers are still on track to roll out CarPlay integration this year.
In fact, you can already spot CarPlay in the wild.
Mojang, the Microsoft-owned developer behind hit game Minecraft, has a new game coming to the iPad. And good news! It’ll be getting a price drop across all platforms when it does.
From the iPhone to the iPad, immediate reactions are always mixed on new Apple products, as the public struggles to wrap its head around Cupertino’s next bold idea. And so we hear a lot of warrantless criticism until the product actually lands on shelves.
One refrain we’re hearing a lot from Apple Watch critics is that Jony Ive may have dropped the ball with the Apple Watch design. The problem? To these critics, the Apple Watch’s casing looks shockingly thick.
As it turns out, though, this is largely an optical illusion. The Apple Watch isn’t really any thicker than a Rolex.
Almost half of all iOS users are using the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, according to figures released by Cupertino on its App Store Distribution page.
The figures show that as of September 21, 46 percent of users had upgraded to iOS 8, slightly down from the 49 percent of users on iOS 7. A tiny minority (just 5 percent) of users are still using earlier firmware versions.
Apple has debuted two new ads, featuring the combined vocal talents of Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon, to advertise its iPhone 6 and 6 Plus handsets.
When you sell 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices in your first weekend on sale, it doesn’t just disrupt other smartphone companies, but notebook manufacturers as well.
According to a new report from Digitimes, notebook sales took a massive hit in August due to customers waiting on Apple’s new handsets. Since sales of the iPhone 6 family devices will most likely continue through the fourth quarter, many notebook vendors are reducing their orders from manufacturers to avoid unsold inventory piling up.
Despite KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo’s usually excellent track record on Apple predictions, he messed up his last prediction that the iPad Air 2 would make its appearance at Apple’s iPhone 6 launch event two weeks ago.
Obviously, that didn’t happen. But if you’re eager for an iPad Air boasting an A8 chip, a new report corroborates a rumor we’ve heard before: it’s coming in October. Don’t wait for an A8 iPad mini though: it’s at least three months away.
The iPhone 6 may be on the verge of officially going on sale in China, according to a top government regulator speaking on Tuesday.
As one of Apple’s most promising markets (which may one day even overtake the U.S. in terms of sales), the disappointing lack of iPhone 6 in China was the result of Apple incurring challenges receiving regulatory approval from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are the biggest iPhones yet. But that comes with a drawback: Since they have bigger batteries than any iPhone ever, they also take longer to charge.
But here’s a killer trick. You can use a 12-watt iPad charger to juice up the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in half the time when compared to the 5-watt iPhone charger your device ships with by default.