We all know the iPhone is a huge part of Apple’s business, but how huge? A new chart shows that if it were a standalone company, the iPhone would have greater revenues than some of the most iconic businesses on Earth.
Earlier this morning in the Cult of Mac chatroom, Killian told me that “iOS 7 as a whole is little more than a lick of paint.” He was baiting me of course (I hope so anyway, or I have some punishment to administer), but it’s a common enough view. However, as we shall see, there’s plenty going on under the hood too.
Exhibit A: Mail app now lets you look right inside ZIP attachments and open the individual documents direct.
Warning: Sarcasm follows.
“Are you drinking enough water?” asks BluFit. Well are you? This is how to tell:
If the answer to the above question is “yes,” then you should drink some water.
I’m kidding, of course: BluFit is in fact a totally legit gadget that makes it easy to track how much water you drink. What is it? It’s a water bottle that connects wirelessly to an app on your iPhone.
Seriously.
Strava Run, the fitness-tracking app that records your runs and lets you compete against strangers who have use the same routes, might be the first fitness app to take advantage of the M7 Motion Coprocessor (MoCoPro) in the iPhone 5S.
Now the app will not only run for longer thanks to saved battery power, it’s more accurate too.
Here’s an idea to file in your Evernote app under “Why didn’t anyone do this before?”: Evernote Post-It notes. That’s right; Evernote has teamed up with 3M to offer multi-colored, Evernote-branded sticky notes which can be scanned into the app to save, well, forever.
There’s a funny fact in the world of iOS apps: Whereas one-man shop can manage to have a radically new version of its app available day and date with a big iOS update, giant software companies seem to take years to get things done. Spotify took (literally) years to come up with a ho-hum iPad app, and Instagram still isn’t on the iPad. One can only assume it will never be designed for the tablet.
And speaking of Instagram, this new iOS “update” is a sham.
Vesper, the iPhone note-taking app made by the all-star team of Brent “NetNewsWire” Simmons and John “Daring Fireball” Gruber, was already pretty iOS 7-friendly at launch a few months back. Now it has received an actual proper iOS 7 update, and it’s even better.
Bloomberg Businessweek is back with another extended interview from its big Apple cover story of Tim Cook, Jony Ive, and Craig Federighi. After publishing the original story, a full transcript of the interview with Cook was published online over the past weekend. Now the same thing has been done for Jony Ive and Craig Federighi, who spoke to Businessweek week together about their roles at Apple.
To set the stage, this interview took place a day after the iPhone 5S and 5C launch event. I met Ive and Federighi in a ground-floor conference room in one of the buildings on Apple’s campus in Cupertino, Calif. Federighi was first to arrive, followed by Ive. In case you’re wondering, they’re both nice—not standoffish, not chilly, just nice. Federighi asked me if I had used Apple products and for how long, which began a conversations about carwash wages and an Apple IIC. Ive complimented my messenger bag, which, I must admit, I was sort of psyched about.
There are plenty of great quotes that make this interview worth a read for any Apple fan.
Source: Bloomberg Businessweek
Apple has announced this year’s iOS Tech Talks schedule for App Store developers. Talks will take place in 6 cities around the world throughout the end of the year. The sessions are intended to give devs “in-depth guidance about developing for iOS 7” from Apple engineers, and each city has two separate sessions for app and game devs.
Instagram for iOS 7 is finally here. Today the app received its first big update for Apple’s new OS, and the interface has been given a fresh coat of paint to match the iOS 7 aesthetic.
Looks like Apple’s Maps app is in the spotlight again, as it is directing folks directly across a taxiway where airplanes take off in Fairbanks, Alaska. The Alaska Dispatch reports that at least two out-of-town drivers relying on Apple’s navigation system for turn-by-turn directions to the Fairbanks International Airport (FAI) were directed across the runway to the airport ramp side of the passenger terminal.
That could be pretty dangerous if a plane was taking off or landing.
A fake iOS 7 advert that promises iPhones will become waterproof after being updated to Apple’s latest software has reportedly fooled owners into destroying their beloved smartphones.
The poster, which went viral on social media sites after iOS 7 was made available to the public last week, claims the update “prevents any damage to your iPhone’s delicate circuitry” when it is exposed to water. Surprisingly, some believed it.
I got married earlier this month, but my new wife has already threatened to divorce me due to my newfound obsession with GTA V. I’ve only had it since Saturday, but I literally can’t put it down. I’m not the only one, of course; the game has been a massive success so far, with $800 million made on launch day alone.
If you’ve been playing it, you may have noticed their are a number of references to Apple and its devices within the game, one of which is iFruit, and iPhone clone used by Michael De Santa, one of the game’s main characters. And now you, too, can have your own iFruit with this awesome iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s conversion kit for just $13.
AppleCare+ subscribers can now get repairs and replacements for their iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches while they’re abroad following recent changes to the service. Subscribers were previously required to contact Apple in their home country, but now they can pop into any Apple retail store in territories where AppleCare+ is sold.
Apple silently snuck up on us all yesterday with new 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMacs, but short of upgrading them with Haswell processors, what has really changed? As is their custom, everyone’s favorite gadget dissectors over at iFixIt have torn apart their new iMacs to find out.
Back in May, we reported upon a seemingly ridiculous rumor that Apple would release a 12.9-inch ‘iPad Maxi’ in early 2014. We dismissed the report pretty much outright, saying that not only did we think that Apple would avoid naming a tablet that had already been ridiculed at launch for sounding too much like a feminine hygiene product after a Maxipad, but pointing out that the iPad mini was outselling the iPad since debut. People want a smaller tablet, not a bigger one.
We assumed that was the last we would hear of the rumor, but we were wrong. The 12+ inch iPad rumor is back with a vengeance… and now it has a manufacturing partner.
Do you want an iPhone 5s, but can’t have one, whether because of Apple’s extreme devices shortages, an unsympathetic carrier who won’t let you upgrade early, or a lack of the dosh? Never fear: the iPhone 5s conversion kit is here!
If Apple made a notebook (a paper notebook, with paper pages) then it would probably look something like the Baron Fig notebook: The design is understated, obvious even, but it’s chock-full of tiny details that should make it a pleasure to use.
Nothing makes Microsoft happier than seeing an iPhone user ditch their device for a Windows Phone smartphone. In fact, the company will even buy your iPhone off you if you promise to make the switch.
Starting this Friday, you’ll be able to take your old iPhone 4s or iPhone 5 into select Microsoft stores across the U.S. and Canada and receive a minimum of $200 in-store credit for a new Windows Phone device. The move comes weeks after Microsoft kicked off an iPad trade-in program to encourage consumers to switch to its Surface tablet.
Oh, man, this is an invention likely to make it impossible for me to ever leave the house. It’s called the Brewbot, and it’s an iPhone controlled machine which brews “high quality craft beers” without leaving your armchair.
Is nothing sacred? I had thought that paper airplanes might be the last holdout for fully-analog toys. After all, all you need is a sheet of paper, a pair of functioning hands and a place to throw stuff. Even in jail these things can be found, and while your first attempts might not fly so well, the joy of the game is in the tuning and improving of your designs.
But now even that simple pleasure has been ruined by technology: the PowerUp 3.0 iPhone-Controlled Paper Airplane is a thing which will soon be available.
Up until today, my page scanner of choice has been Scanner Pro from Readdle, a universal app which uses the iPhone/iPad camera to snap pictures of your documents and send them off to any and every cloud service.
But after today, my new favorite might just be the new PDFPen Scan+, a universal app from Smile Software that not only scans but turns your images into searchable PDFs using OCR.
While we’re all looking over here at the big, bulky, ruggedized mounts that let us carry our iPhones on our bike handlebars, over there in Austria they’re making a minimal mount that you can leave on the bike or carry in your pocket. It’s called the Finn, and according to at least two of my German friends, it’s excellent.
Cult of Mac reader Rishi Kaneria e-mailed to tell us about his amazing slow-motion video, shot on – you guessed it – the iPhone 5S, at 120fps. Not bad, huh?
Apple is expected to unveil the fifth-gen iPad and second-gen iPad mini at an October event, and we’ve been seeing part leaks for the devices since the beginning of this year. Now that the iPhone 5s has come out with different color variations, it looks like Apple will be bringing a new look to the iPad as well.
Fresh parts from prolific leaker Sonny Dickson have hit the web, and they show what is believed to be the next iPad in “Space Grey.”