News - page 1520

The iPhone 5S fingerprint sensor is officially confirmed. Apple just took the wraps off “Touch ID,” a capacitive sensor that is built into the home button.

Like the rumors have said all along, Touch ID is embedded into the device’s home button, which is now made of sapphire crystal. Apple’s Phil Schiller described the fingerprint as the “key you have with you everywhere you go” during the keynote.

Touch ID will be used for authenticating not only device passwords, but iTunes Store purchases with the user’s Apple ID.

Apple brought Donald Mustard, co-founder of ChAIR entertainment, up on stage today at the iPhone keynote in Cupertino. Mustard talked about the incredible performance of the new 64-bit A7 chip, saying the new iPhone 5s was five times as fast as the original iPhone 5.

The demo onstage was reported by live-bloggers as stutter-free and gorgeous. Mustard said that the conclusion to the Infinity Blade Trilogy, Infinity Blade III, has huge areas to explore, each one larger than the original size of the entire original Infinity Blade game itself.

Infinity Blade III will be available alongside the iPhone 5s when it releases. Last year’s game got canned, so hopefully it actually ships this time.

Image: Techcrunch

Not only did Apple toss a desktop-quality 64-bit A7 processor into the iPhone 5S, but the company is introducing a new M7 motion coprocessor that works alongside the A7 processor to measure motion data, accelerometer, and gestural data.

A new CoreMotion API is also being introduced for developers to take advantage of the chip’s data to provide better information in health and fitness applications.

The iPhone 5s is here, and it’s a powerhouse. Today Phil Schiller announced that the 5s features a brand new A7 chip built on 64-bit architecture, making the iPhone the first smartphone ever to go 64-bit.

We’re talking an insane amount of power here. To put the specs into perspective, Apple is claiming that the 5s delivers 56x faster graphics and 40x faster CPU than the original iPhone. The 5s is a “huge leap forward in mobile computing performance,” said Schiller at today’s keynote.

Today Apple’s Phil Schiller announced the new iPhone 5s in three colors: silver, gold, and a new “space gray.” The 5s comes with the same design as the iPhone 5, but it sports a tweaked home button with Touch ID. A new 64-bit A7 chip gives it 56% better graphics performance, and a drastically improved camera.

Apple’s Phil Schiller today announced that the iPhone 5 has been replaced by, you guessed it, the iPhone 5c. The tagline is, “more fun, more colorful.” Colors come in white, green, blue, red, and yellow.

The iPhone 5c is finally here. It’s plastic. Colorful. And will come with some rubber cases as well to protect its tough plastic exterior from scratches and other damage. The soft, matte texture of the case is a contrast to the bright, glossy back of the phone.

Not only will the cases come with a hole for your camera, but the bottom exposes the color of your iPhone with some circular cutouts that make it look like a cheese-grater. Final price: $29.

Source: Apple

Along with the announcement that iOS 7 will launch on September 18th, Apple is making its iWork productivity suite of apps free to all iOS device owners.

At today’s keynote, Tim Cook said that all the apps will be downloaded with one touch when a user sets up a new iOS 7 device. Keynote, Pages, Numbers, iPhoto, and iMovie are part of the free bundle.

At today’s Apple event it was announced that iOS 7 will be officially released to the public next week on Wednesday, September 18th. The download will be free for everyone, and it will be available on iPhone and iPad, despite rumors that the iPad version would be delayed until October.

Compatible devices are iPhone 4 and up, iPad 2 and up, and the 5th gen iPod touch.

iOS 7 was originally previewed at WWDC in June, and the software has undergone several betas throughout the summer. A final developer GM is expected to drop before the public release next week.

Our good pal Tim Cook and his merry band of Apple geniuses are 30 minutes away from taking the stage at the Mothership. It’s a ton of stress presenting at an Apple keynote, but Tim Fortune Cookie has been relaxing in his golden lair, sharping his claws, and waiting to announce the seven new iPhone colors, including his favorite, goooooooold!

We’ll be liveblogging the entire event, so get ready for an avalanche of Apple news as Cook and the gang unleash the iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S upon the world.

Source: Twitter

Around 200 of the media and tech journalism elites are gathered at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California today for the unveiling of new iPhones. The majority of planet earth will never have the opportunity to attend an Apple press event in person, but that doesn’t mean you can’t live vicariously through those who do go.

Here’s what it’s like to wait in line for hours at attend an Apple event as a member of the media:

Apple is going to introduce the iPhone 5S and 5C in less than two hours, and the last-minute leaks are coming in fast. It looks like there could be a leather case announced for the 5S today, according to packaging that has leaked out of China.

We already shared a great wallpaper based off Apple’s invite for today’s iPhone 5S/5C event, and now the same designer has created a pack of wallpapers that experiment with the colors in the invite. There are four variations that are available to download for free for all iOS devices. They look great in iOS 7. You can download them at the source link below.

Apple put up banners yesterday at Town Hall, the on-campus venue where the keynote will be held, that feature the same multi-hued dot design seen in the media invite. Keep your browser locked to Cult of Mac, and we’ll have the latest Apple news throughout the day. Today’s keynote kicks off at 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. EST.

Source: Surenix

If you were hoping to spend some cash on the Apple online store this morning, you’re going to have to wait a little while. It’s just gone down ahead of today’s press event in Cupertino, and when it comes back up, we expect it to be populated by at least two new iPhones, and possibly new iPods and a new Apple TV as well.

Apple has been targeted by a class action lawsuit for falsely advertising a Season Pass for the final season of Breaking Bad. The season was split into two parts, but those who purchased a Season Pass were angered when they discovered that the eight episodes included in the second part were not included, and that they would have to pay extra to get them.

With Apple set to unveil new iPhones today, we’re probably about a week away from a widescale release of iOS 7, which will mean that Apple’s seventh-generation operating system will end up dropping about a year after iOS 6. So 365 days later, how is iOS 6 doing?

Really well. In fact, according to data released by Chitika Insights, really well: it’s installed on 92% of all iOS devices.

Opera, the Norwegian web browser company that announced earlier this year that it was throwing in the towel on its own web-rendering technology and shifting to WebKit across all products has just released a new iPad browser: Coast.

According to Opera, Coast is “the browser your iPad deserves.”

It’s looking increasingly likely that when Apple takes the stage today at the official iPhone launch event today that they will actually be unveiling seven new iPhone colors.

It’s new iPhone announcement day! That customarily means a number of last-minute bombshells and leaks in the hours before the event, and this year is no exception: documentation for the new iPhone 5S has leaked out, giving us a closer look at the redesigned home button with fingerprint sensor… or, as Apple is calling it, the Touch ID sensor.

UPDATE [We said the case is available for the iPhone 5, which it isn’t.]

BikeConsole addresses the single biggest problem with using your iPhone as your in-bike computer: battery life. The iPhone clearly makes for an awesome brain for your bike, with maps, GPS and all manner of bike and fitness apps available, but leaving it running up there with the GPS and screen burning is a great way to kill your battery, fast.

So the BikeConsole does the obvious thing: it adds a battery.

NoteCube is another one of the “new generation” of note-taking apps, started by Q Branch’s Vesper, which are ultra-clean (in the iOS7 style) and work with pictures (the other one being Whitespace).

The USP of NoteCube is that it syncs with Evernote, which means that a) it actually syncs, unlike the other two apps, and b) it gets access to Evernote’s neat text recognition in photographs.

If you happen to have a bunch of Four Thirds lenses lying around, and your in the market for a new camera, then Olympus has you covered: The new OM-D E-M1 is an SLR-style body which will accept old Four Thirds lenses, as well as new Micro Four Thirds lenses. And more importantly, they actually work, and focus at a decent speed.

The iPhone 5S has already been expected to feature a fingerprint sensor for months, and now The Wall Street Journal has corroborated the rumor less than 24 hours ahead of Apple’s planned unveiling of the device tomorrow.

For those of us waiting for a hardcore iPad version of massively online battle arena (MOBA) game like League of Legends or Defense of the Ancients, Open Feint founder Jason Citron might have the solution. His latest gaming company, Hammer & Chisel, has been hard at work creating the tablet-only MOBA, Fates Forever.

We spoke with Citron a while back about the development challenge of a more core game for iPads. Citron calls this one a “reinterpretation of the world’s most popular hardcore game,” Riot Games’ League of Legends, for tablets like the iPad.

Check out the video below.

We’ve already explained why the iPhone 5S will probably feature a redesigned home button with a fingerprint sensor, and now concept designer Martin Hajek has given the idea a proper treatment in Photoshop.

Hajek consistently makes some of the best Apple concepts around, and these are no different. His imagining of the ring around the home button looks great, and while the actual product may not look exactly the same, the concept gives a nice visual representation of what is being rumored.