If you’re an app-maker looking to rake in the money, you’re better off creating apps for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus than you are for smaller-screened phones, according to a new study.
Analysts at IHS claim that the larger screen size of the iPhone 6 family devices correlate with higher engagement in the form of increased minutes of app usage — in turn leading to more revenue through in-app purchases and advertising.
NASA’s unmanned Antares rocket exploded at launch above Wallops Island, Virginia, yesterday on route to dropping off supplies at the International Space Station.
A lesser casualty of that explosion? One rocket watcher’s iPad, which was blown to smithereens by the explosion.
But don’t worry. Cupertino did the right thing: They replaced it.
By now you’ve probably seen the HP Sprout computer, an oddly-named, yet undeniably original desktop computer/tablet/projector combination that allows users to scan physical items and then manipulate them on screen using their fingers.
One day after the $1,899 system got the tech world talking, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has published a continuation patent application from Apple — originally granted in 2011 — describing a very similar-sounding 3D imaging and display system.
Beats Music may have Apple’s support behind it, but it’s still got a long way to go before it tops the crowded online marketplace.
According to new figures from app analytics firm App Annie, Beats is currently trailing industry leaders Pandora and Spotify. In September, both of those services racked up more downloads and earned more revenue than Beats, across both the App Store and Google Play.
Beats was the ninth most downloaded music app in September, with once again Pandora and Spotify taking the lead — but also the likes of Shazam, SoundCloud and even Apple’s own GarageBand receiving more downloads.
Samsung may ship more devices, but there’s no doubt that Apple is winning the war.
That’s the takeaway from Samsung’s latest earnings report, which stated that the Korean smartphone maker’s Q3 operating profits were just $3.8 billion, a 60 percent drop over last year.
And things are even worse in the mobile division, which dropped 73.9 percent year-over-year.
Now compare those numbers to Apple.
In a beautifully written personal essay, Apple CEO Tim Cook has just come out as gay, finally confirming rumors that have circulated since he took over as Steve Jobs’ replacement in 2011.
With China, India and Korea all representing growing markets, Apple’s expanding into more countries than ever here in 2014. One place you’d be forgiven for not expecting Tim Cook and co. to show up in, however, is Iran.
It seems that this assumption may be wrong, though, as according to the Wall Street Journal, Apple is in preliminary contact with U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, as well as Iranian distributors, about possibly entering the country should Western sanctions ease sufficiently.
Buoyed by expectation-defying earnings, Apple Pay, and an apparently insatiable demand for the iPhone 6, AAPL stock closed Wednesday at a new all-time split-adjusted high of $107.3.
Apple was trading at $92 at the time of the 7-to-1 split, which means that its current value is up by more than 10% since the division earlier this year. According to Google Finance, Apple ended the day with a market cap of $626 billion, and $629.67 billion as per Yahoo Finance.
Apple has kept quiet on why its sapphire supplier suddenly went bankrupt, but after weeks of court wrangling, GT Advanced Technology’s COO has filed a revised declaration that reveals why Apple’s dream of sapphire iPhones went up in smoke in less than a year.
GTAT COO Daniel Squiller, says that the original plan was for Apple to buy 2,600 sapphire furnaces and other equipment that GTAT would then operate. However, after months of negotiations, the deal was changed so that GTAT would borrow up to $578 million from Apple to purchase furnace components and assemble furnaces that would be used to grow sapphire for Apple.
The company admits the deal came with huge risk for GTAT while shielding Apple, but because it had the potential to be revolutionary to GTAT’s business, they went ahead with it. Then everything went horrible wrong.
When you live in Apple’s world as a third-party developer, you are required to play by Apple’s rules. And sometimes those rules are subject to sudden change.
James Thomson, the developer behind the scientific calculator app PCalc, was notified today by Apple that his iOS 8 widget must be removed. The reason? A new stipulation that iOS widgets cannot perform calculations.
The reasoning behind Apple’s decision may never be known by Thomson or anyone outside the company, and that’s just the point. The App Store is Apple’s kingdom to rule, for better or worse.
Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige took to the stage at a special event at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood Tuesday to talk about the next slate of blockbuster films the company is planning to release over the next few years. The full docket, with projected dates, is as follows:
· 5/1/15 – Avengers: Age of Ultron
· 7/17/15 – Ant-Man
· 5/6/16 – Captain America: Civil War
· 11/4/16 – Doctor Strange
· 5/5/17 – Guardians of the Galaxy 2
· 7/28/17 – Thor: Ragnarok
· 11/3/17 – Black Panther
· 5/4/18 – Avengers: Infinity War Part I
· 7/6/18 – Captain Marvel
· 11/2/18 – Inhumans
· 5/3/19 – Avengers: Infinity War Part II
While most of us are clear on who The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy are, there are some lesser-known characters getting the full movie spotlight that you may not be aware of. Here’s how they fit into the larger Marvel cinematic universe.
Apple Pay’s biggest competitor backed by major retailers has been hacked before it even launched.
Retailers like Walmart, BestBuy, Gap, and CVS are waging a war against Apple Pay with their own mobile wallet solution, CurrentC, but the pending doom of their QR-code solution is looking even more obvious now, as the company just alerted customers that they’ve been hacked.
Customers who signed up to use CurrentC were notified today via email that hackers have “obtained the email addresses of some of you.”
Email addresses were the only information the hackers stole (because CurrentC isn’t even out yet), but we doubt this is going to make shoppers eager to share their social security number and bank account info with MCX’s partners, once the app launches next year.
Here’s the email:
One of my favorite games for the iPhone is Game Dev Story, an adorable and addictive game by Kairosoft that puts the player in the role of managing a team of video game developers.
Something about Noodlecake Games’s upcoming title, Bitcoin Billionaire, reminds me a lot of Game Dev Story. But befitting a game by the creators of Super Stickman Golf, it looks a lot funnier.
Following our report yesterday revealing several leaked shots for the next version of Microsoft Office for Mac, we’re hearing confirmation that not only are the shots legitimate, but that Office for Mac could be here sooner than you think.
iPhone owners who can’t wait for the Apple Watch can now change their home screens to a fresh interface inspired by Apple’s wearable UI, thanks to a hack for jailbroken devices.
This new tweak replaces the existing iOS look and feel — which has remained conceptually unchanged since the debut of the iPhone back in 2007 — with circular, bubble-looking icons that users can zoom in and out of to find their apps easier.
While the mod started out as nothing more than a concept, another developer has taken the idea and run with it, constructing a tweak called WatchSpring that replaces a jailbroken iOS 8 device’s SpringBoard with a working Apple Watch-style home screen.
Here’s how you get hold of it.
If there’s one thing Apple knows how to make, it’s money. Even so, the iPad Air 2 is one of the best value tablets Apple has ever made.
Even though it costs Apple roughly the same amount to make an iPad Air 2 as it did to make a first-gen iPad Air, Apple’s margins have actually gone down slightly on the superslim, A8X-powered tablet.
A proposed change in U.S. regulations could have massive implications when it comes to bringing about the kind of integrated Apple television set Steve Jobs talked about producing.
Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler has proposed a revision of rules that would afford Internet streaming services the same treatment as traditional cable and satellite television companies when it comes to negotiating with channel operators like HBO.
If the change is made, online providers would gain “access to programming owned by cable operators” and be able to negotiate licensing deals with content providers like HBO or local TV stations. Wheeler says the move would “encourage new video alternatives by opening up access to content previously locked on cable channels,” similar to the way regulatory changes in the ’90s enabled satellite TV to compete with cable operators.
Although iOS 8 got off to a slower start than iOS 7, it’s finally starting to rebound. New numbers suggest that over half of all customers have upgraded to iOS 8. But all’s not well yet. In fact, iOS 8 uptake is pretty much stagnant.
Christian Bale might seem like the perfect actor to play Steve Jobs. Like the Apple founder, Bale is a perfectionist who cares so deeply about his craft that he can come across like a raging lunatic.
Bale, who will star in Danny Boyle’s upcoming biopic about Jobs, might be the best hope yet for a riveting onscreen representation of Apple’s late leader. But for many Apple fans, a 1999 TV movie remains the definitive depiction of Jobs.
That movie is Pirates of Silicon Valley, which tells the story of Apple versus Microsoft during a 20-year stretch starting in the late-1970s. With Pirates of Silicon Valley turning 15 this year, Cult of Mac spoke with its director, Martyn Burke, about Noah Wyle (who plays Jobs in the film), threatened lawsuits, and the miraculous way Jobs spun a potentially disastrous bit of PR into good press.
Particularly as Apple extends its tentacles overseas into new markets like China and India, many pundits have suggested that Cupertino needs to make low-cost iPhones to compete with lower-end Android devices.
So will it? According to Apple’s product marketing executive Greg Joswiak the answer is a resounding, emphatic “hell no!”
It’s not like bagging a burrito at Taco Bell takes a long time, but the fast-food chain’s hot new mobile app makes ordering unbelievably fast and frictionless.
The app promises that you’ll be able to order anything off the menu, pay for it, and have it prepared for you when you arrive. Not quite revolutionary, but a deliberate stab at modernizing the drive-thru experience. Order from your iPhone, and you get to skip the line.
It’s not every day that I get to write about Taco Bell, so I jumped at the opportunity to give it a test drive. Here’s my experience with the Taco Bell app from start to finish:
A number of users have experienced graphics issues with their 2011 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pro models, and following a Facebook group and change.org petition which have gathered a collected 25,000 names, law firm Whitfield Bryson & Mason LLP has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple on behalf of affected consumers.
“I’ve been involved with a number of lawsuits with Apple, going back decades, and I’m not aware of one that affected so many people, that Apple refused to do anything about,” says Gary E. Mason, the Managing Partner of Whitfield Bryson & Mason, speaking with Cult of Mac. “At the very least these consumers are entitled to a discount on a new laptop to help them transition to a serviceable device.”
Mason says that while only tens of thousands of customers have come forward so far, the affected number of consumers could be in the hundreds of thousands.
The Federal Trade Commission is finally going after AT&T for throttling customer’s data speeds, by filing an official complaint that the company has lowered speeds on LTE up to 95% on unlimited data plans.
FTC chairwoman Edith Ramirez expounded on the lawsuit today stating, “the issue is simple: Unlimited means unlimited.” The FTC also alleges that AT&T engaged in unfair or deceptive acts and practices that affected commerce. And they’ve got the numbers to back up their lawsuit, with claims that AT&T illegally capped users’ data speeds at 128 Kbps.
Here’s AT&T’s response to the lawsuit:
Apple’s mission to replace your wallet with Apple Pay began just last week with support from more than 200,000 stores in the United States, but some merchants have already launched a war against the new payment platform.
Over the weekend, CVS and Rite Aid stores blocked Apple Pay access at their registers, marking the first counterattack in what will likely be a fierce battle to own your digital wallet. Apple Pay’s growth is unprecedented, but the anti-Apple Pay group is backed by a superhero-size team of retail megastores conspiring to make debit and credit card fees extinct. They’ll stop at nothing to see it happen, even it means hurting Apple (or themselves) in the process.
Here’s everything you need to know about the war on Apple Pay and why it’s doomed to fail.