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.
Given how constrained supplies of the iPhone 6 Plus have been, it should come as no surprise that Apple’s biggest smartphone isn’t being used the most right now.
While Apple won’t say how many of each model it’s sold, mobile analytics data shows that iPhone 6 sales are outpacing 6 Plus sales more than seven to one.
Apple’s first timepiece isn’t expected to hit stores until early 2015, but if you live in certain parts of Silicon Valley, you just might see Apple Watch dangling on a few lucky wrists.
Reports of Apple Watch sightings have started to hit Twitter with Apple engineer’s seen rocking the sport edition while waiting to be whisked to the mothership on a bus.
While the rest of us waited to get an iPhone 6 over launch weekend, an elite few were anticipating an exclusive variant: a custom 24-karat gold version of Apple’s next-generation handset.
The waiting list of exclusive customers includes music industry heavy hitters, boxing champ Floyd Mayweather Jr., Russian oligarchs and practically every royal family member in the United Arab Emirates — people for whom nothing short of a gold iPhone 6 is acceptable.
“Believe you me, we have a lot of very big-name clients, but we don’t like to publicly reveal their names,” says creator Amjad Ali. “As a British company, we just don’t think it’s the polite thing to do.”
Apple’s $3 billion acquisition of Beats Electronic was supposedly anchored by the killer music service Tim Cook has touted in recent interviews, but according to a report from TechCrunch, Apple’s brand new music streaming service is already scheduled to be shutdown.
One of the less frequent—yet just as persistent—rumors in the Apple universe is the notion of 12-inch MacBook Air with a completely redesigned exterior.
Much like how Apple has gone back to the rounded design of the original iPhone with the 6 and 6 Plus, reports have claimed that this new MacBook will feature a fanless, clamshell-like design in the three main iPhone colors: Space Grey, Silver, and Gold. Now more details about the unannounced laptop have emerged.
The Ukrainie-based indie band Brunettes Shoot Blondes have created a clever music video that uses iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, and even an iPod nano to tell a fascinating animated love story.
The video for the band’s single, ‘Knock Knock’, uses 14 different Apple screens in the delightfully elaborate dance of iDevices that probably took a million takes to pull off successfully. The entire video is playing on the screens in real-time and required pinpoint accuracy to pull off. It’s kind of like a lo-fi version of OK Go’s Rube Goldberg machine videos, only all Apple.
Watch it below:
The display rating experts at DisplayMate got intimately acquainted with Apple’s bigger than big display over the weekend, and after thorough testing, the LCD experts pronounced Apple’s 5.5-inch display the best performing LCD display they’ve ever tested on a smartphone.
The iPhone 6 did pretty well too in their iPhone 6 Display Technology Shootout report released this morning.
Here’s the rave review they gave the iPhone 6 Plus display:
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are the thinnest iPhones Apple’s ever made, but all that design perfection is slightly tainted by the protruding camera that makes it annoying to use the smartphone on a flat surface.
Slapping on a case fixes the problem, but for those wanting to revel in the beauty of a nude iPhone 6, the PeripateticPandas have come up with an ingenious – though somewhat impractical – solution: Introduce your shiny new 6 to a grinding machine.
Checkout the horrific how-to video below: