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Apple tore apart 100 rival devices to build its perfect phone

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Fadell
Tony Fadell spills the beans on the original iPhone's creation.
Photo: Nest

iPhone turns 10 As Apple scrambled to create the first iPhone, the company’s engineers tore apart literally dozens of rival products to work out what made them tick, according to a new interview with former Apple exec Tony Fadell.

He may be best known today as the founder of Nest, but Fadell was one of the fathers of the iPhone — which, if you haven’t heard, celebrates its 10th birthday this week. Fadell reveals more about Apple’s reverse engineering efforts in an interview with Wired U.K..

Cult of Mac is collaborating with Wired U.K. all this week for an in-depth look at the iPhone’s first decade — and the device’s lasting impact.

How the iPhone revolutionized photography

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iPhone photo shoot
Fashion photographer Georges Antoni uses the iPhone 7 Plus on Portrait mode to photograph Margaret Zhang for the June cover story of Elle Australia.
Photo: Bauer Media Australia/YouTube

iPhone turns 10When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, no one imagined that in 10 short years it would become the world’s most popular camera and herald a new era of visual communication.

Yet we are witnessing the death of point-and-shoots, the explosion of massive social networks devoted to pics and videos, and the rise of perhaps the most popular photo style of all time — the selfie.

Just consider that we are expected to take 1 trillion pictures this year alone. That’s a million million photos.

Here’s a brief overview of some of the ways the iPhone was transformed photography forever.

Tim Cook meets Indian PM to talk local Apple stores

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India Apple Stores
The closest thing India currently has to an Apple Store.
Photo: Lawrence Sinclair/Flickr CC

Tim Cook met with the prime minister of India over the weekend, concerning permission to open official Apple stores in the country.

This is something Apple has been chasing for some time now, but has yet to get off the ground. However, with Apple now officially selling iPhones that have been made in India, the hope is that it has sufficient leverage to get permission to open retail stores.

iPhone 8’s new display could hold back launch sales

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iPhone leak
iPhone 8's OLED display is reportedly causing Apple headaches.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

iPhone 8 production has reportedly hit another roadblock, with the problem this time being the OLED panels Apple is using for its next-gen handsets.

The use of OLED panels, instead of the LCD screens used on current iPhones, has been heavily rumored as one of the biggest selling points of the new iPhone for quite some time. A report earlier this year claimed that Apple will snap up 14 percent of all OLED panels produced in 2017 for the iPhone 8.

Antitrust investigators slam Google with $2.7 billion fine

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Google
The E.U. regulators are hitting out at Google.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Google has been fined 2.4 billion euros ($2.7 billion) by European Union regulators for reportedly skewing its search results in a way that hurts smaller shopping search services.

In addition to the massive fine, Google has been told that if it doesn’t stop its “illegal” suppression of rival price comparison services within 90 days, the European Commission will fine it up to 5 percent of its daily revenue.

Apple acquires German company that may hold key to AR future

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SensoMotoric Instruments
SensoMotoric Instruments eye-tracking glasses.
Photo: SensoMotoric Instruments

Apple may have just made a key acquisition that could help the company create a truly revolutionary augmented reality headset. According to a new report, German eye-tracking company SensoMotoric Instruments has been purchased by an Apple shell company, giving the iPhone-maker access the company’s trove of patents related to eye-tracking glasses and other systems.

Money to burn? Buy an original iPhone for $20,000

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2G iPhone on eBay
A 2G iPhone never opened and under glass. How much would you pay?
Photo: Discount Depot/eBay

iPhone-turns-10 When the iPhone launched in 2007, the tech world went into conniptions about the device’s price tag. At a time when carriers offered most cellphones for free, the iPhone’s $500 starting price seemed downright crazy.

Well, guess how much an original iPhone costs now?

10 times Apple learned from massive iPhone mistakes

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iPhone 7 red
iPhone 8 rumors haven't had an impact yet, either.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

iPhone turns 10 It might be the most successful smartphone on the planet, but the iPhone didn’t become what it is today without some failures along the way.

Even before the device made its much-anticipated debut in 2007, Apple overcame big missteps and mistakes. It tried putting iTunes on other phones. It believed we didn’t need native apps. It entered into embarrassing partnerships with big bands.

As Cult of Mac looks back over the iPhone’s history to celebrate the device’s 10th anniversary, in collaboration with Wired UK, 10 big failures stick out like a sore thumb.

‘Apple should pull the plug’: 10 iPhone predictions from 2007

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iPhone predictions from 2007
They must have been holding their crystal balls wrong.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

iPhone turns 10 Predicting the future is tough, even for the experts. That’s the only lesson we can learn from looking back at these horribly misguided iPhone predictions that greeted the device at its launch 10 years ago.

Before most people had even wrapped their fingers around Apple’s first-gen smartphone, tech pundits, analysts and competing CEOs were already writing off the iPhone as a disaster similar to Apple’s previous excursions into video game consoles and the like.

Here are just a few of the laughable reactions that greeted the iPhone in 2007.

Apple seeds revised betas of iOS 11 and tvOS 11

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iOS 11 Control Center
A new version of iOS 11 beta 2 is out.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Revised beta builds of iOS 11 beta 2 and tvOS 11 beta 2 have been seeded to developers by Apple this morning, just five days after the previous versions of the betas were made available.

Along with the new updated betas for iOS 11 and tvOS 11, Apple also dropped a new Apple Watch beta in the form of watchOS 3.2.3 beta 4.

Steve Jobs Theater lights up in new Apple Park drone video

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Steve Jobs Theater
It's nearly showtime at Steve Jobs Theater.
Photo: Duncan Sinfield

The lobby of the Steve Jobs Theater at the new Apple Park campus looks nearly ready to host Apple events. Crews are working around the clock to finish the new Apple headquarters and the entire site is finally starting to come together now that landscaping is almost done.

A new drone video reveals there’s still some work to go on the theater and the main spaceship building, but road striping and landscaping are well underway. The video includes an incredible shot of the theater lit up at night with Apple Park in the background.

Check it out:

Birth of the iPhone: How Apple turned clunky prototypes into a truly magical device

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iPhone 2G prototype
iPhone 2G prototype
Photo: Jim Abeles/Flickr CC

iPhone turns 10 The world had never seen anything like the iPhone when Apple launched the device on June 29, 2007. But the touchscreen device that blew everyone’s minds immediately didn’t come about so easily.

The iPhone was the result of years of arduous work by Apple’s industrial designers. They labored over a long string of prototypes and CAD designs in their quest to produce the ultimate smartphone.

This excerpt from my book Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products offers an inside account of the iPhone’s birth.

First ‘Assembled in India’ iPhones go on sale

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iPhone assembled in India
Coming soon with a 2?
Photo: Indian Express

Apple’s first iPhone SE units manufactured in India are now on sale in the country.

“Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in India,” reads the tagline on the back. Despite being made locally, the devices cost exactly the same as those shipped from China.

AR demos show how iPhone can be transformed into a working tape measure

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AR Measure
Flashy? No. Useful? You bet!
Photo: AR Measure

Not convinced about how augmented reality has the opportunity to improve our apps? Then check out a couple of neat demos of Apple’s ARKit, the AR toolkit Apple showed off at WWDC to allow “fast and stable motion tracking” for augmented reality apps.

Between them, they depict how you’ll soon be able to use your iPhone as a tape measure by pointing your device at an object or scene, tapping two points on it, and then accurately measuring the distance between them.

Check them out below.

6 things we learned from the creation of iPhone documentary

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iPhone doc
Scott Forstall and others chip in to tell their iPhone war stories.
Photo: WSJ

If you hadn’t heard by now, this week marks the tenth anniversary of a little device called the iPhone going on sale. To celebrate, the Wall Street Journal has created a new mini-documentary, entitled Behind the Glass, detailing the making of Apple’s breakthrough smartphone.

Courtesy of interviews with former Apple execs Tony Fadell, Scott Forstall and Greg Christie, here are the top factoids we learned from it.

Relive 10 years of amazing iPhone innovation

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iPhone evolution GIF
The iPhone sure has changed over the years.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

iPhone turns 10 The iPhone packed a lot into its first astonishing decade. Not only has the device itself evolved significantly since its promising-but-by-no-means-perfect beginnings, but it’s transformed Apple’s business — and many of our very lives — in the process.

All this week, Cult of Mac’s “iPhone Turns 10” series will look at the innovative device’s massive impact on worldwide culture. The iPhone, which launched on June 29, 2007, truly changed the world.

What iPhone milestones have passed since Steve Jobs introduced this stunning hybrid device, which combined a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device? Check out our handy guide to 10 years of iPhone history.

SEGA Forever, Twist, and awesome apps of the week

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Awesome Apps
'Appy weekend everyone!
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

SEGA unleashed some of its classic games for free on iOS this week, bringing a plethora of games from the Genesis era to the iPhone and iPad as part of its SEGA Forever series.

That’s just one of the picks we’ve highlighted for this week’s “Awesome Apps” roundup. We’ve also got a great Slack alternative, a nifty WhatsApp upgrade, and a puzzle game that’s sure to appeal to anyone who loves Tetris. Check out our choices below.

Former Apple product design engineer reveals how Apple runs its factories

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Instrumental CEO Anna-Katrina Shedletsky
Anna Katrina Shedletsky is a former Apple product design engineer who is using her experience to build AI that helps companies streamline manufacturing.
Photo: Instrumental

On this week’s Apple Chat (the podcast formerly known as Kahney’s Korner): I talk with former Apple product design engineer Anna-Katrina Shedletsky about her take on modern manufacturing and how AI will revolutionize factories. She introduces us to her new company, Instrumental, which is using machine learning to help manufacturers identify and fix problems on their assembly lines.

Using her hard-earned experience at Apple overseeing the production of the first Apple Watch and several generations of the iPod, Shedletsky says machine learning is coming fast to manufacturing. Amazingly, almost all consumer electronics products are still assembled by hand — including hundreds of millions of iPhones.

But that’s changing. Manufacturing is undergoing a huge sea change with the advance of robotics and AI.

Cult of Mac Magazine: Everything you need to know about HEIF, iOS 11 brings 5 different types of tap, and more!

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Cult of Mac Magazine
HEIF is the still-image version of the HVEC video format. Its main advantage for you and me is that photos saved in HEIF are roughly half the size of JPEGs, and of better quality.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

In this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, we’re going to tell you everything you need to know about HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format), Apple’s new photo format to replace JPEGs. Discover the many advantages HEIF has over JPEG.

Discover all the great ways to watch streaming soccer this summer on Apple TV with our handy list. Learn how to easily save lots of iMessage pictures and movies all at once toCult of Macthe iPhone Photos app.

And, save 20 percent off Dubai-based Ullu’s luxury Apple Watch bands only for the month of June! Check out lots of new arrivals in our Watch Store!

Click iTunes for a free subscription to Cult of Mac Magazine. Here are this week’s top stories.

The powerful iOS 11 features you haven’t heard of, this week on The CultCast

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iOS 11 WWDC Hero
This week we'll tell you about iOS 11's best lesser-known features.
Photo: Apple

This week on The CultCast: More of the powerful new iOS 11 features you’ve never heard of! Plus: The talented app that will harnesses the power of Apple’s new augmented reality features; Scott Forstall is back, and he’s sharing the bizarre story of how the original iPhone really came to be; and everything you need to know about HEIF, the JPEG-killing format Apple is adopting.

Our thanks to Blue Apron for supporting this episode. Blue Apron makes it easy to cook delicious meals at home. Get your first three meals free at BlueApron.com/CultCast.

Leaked dummy unit provides new look at iPhone 8

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iPhone 8 dummy
Is this our best look yet at the iPhone 8?
Photo: Benjamin Geskin

An iPhone 8 “dummy unit” made from leaked parts give us an early glimpse at what Apple’s next big upgrade might look like.

Its form is similar to that of recent handsets like the iPhone 7, but with a larger edge-to-edge display that will help it compete with rivals like the Galaxy S8.