Having experienced declining iPhone sales in the Asia Pacific region, Apple is confident that the iPhone X will help turn things around — although local retailers are still fearing the worst.

According to a new report, iPhone X pre-orders have exceeded one million units in China, representing more than 1/6 of the total 5.5 million+ units supposedly already demanded by customers. Those kind of brisk sales are good for Apple, but sources in the Taiwanese retail channels think that this kind of “phenomenal demand” could soon fade away.

Does it seem strange that Apple would release two markedly different iPhone models, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus and the radically different iPhone X, in the same year? If so, a new interview with Apple executives may help explain it: it wasn’t Apple’s original plan.

According to Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, the company originally planned to deliver the iPhone X in 2018, a full twelve months later than it wound up introducing it. However, “with a lot of hard work, talent, grit, and determination we were able to deliver them this year.”

Anybody who thinks Apple can’t innovate should look in awe at the fecal hurricane whipped up by the company’s unorthodox iPhone X marketing plan.

By giving popular YouTubers early access to the next-gen iPhone, and allowing them to “scoop” the old-school journalists traditionally granted such preferential treatment, Cupertino upended the typical review cycle.

Apple apparently bruised a few fragile egos in the process. Frankly, it’s hilarious watching the ensuing media meltdown.

Apple Watch Series 3 owners can now get all the features they were promised from Apple’s new wearable at launch, thanks to a new watchOS update that brings some big new additions.

After months of testing, watchOS 4.1 was released to the public this morning. The update adds a number of performance improvements and changes, including LTE streaming for Apple Music.

This post is brought to you by Wondershare.

Losing iPhone contacts can be quite a nuisance. You have to collect contact details from all the important people in your life again. You can never recover some old contacts, and if you lose your business contacts that’s even worse.

However, if you’ve accidentally deleted your iPhone contacts, all hope isn’t lost. There are three convenient means of recovering deleted contacts on iPhone.

The 2018 iPhone won’t come with a rear-facing TrueDepth camera, according to one of the most accurate Apple analysts in the business.

KGI Securities analyst Ming Chi-Kuo sent investors a note today that the array of sensors that power Face ID and animoji will stay at the front of iPhones, for now.

iOS 11.1 is now available to all after more than a month of beta testing. The update brings a whole host of new emoji characters, new features, and improvements.

Apple has rejected updates to two popular iOS apps that attempted to provide users with a handy new shortcut on iPad.

The creators of Luna Display and Astropad devised a method of using the iPad’s front-facing camera as a button. Sadly, the shortcut did not go down well in Cupertino.

Apple has reportedly bought a California startup that developed new image sensor technology that could boost the iPhone’s photo and video capability.

A news website that covers the digital imaging space reported on Apple acquisitions of InVisage, citing unnamed sources that said the deal was completed in July. Some former InVisage employees are already working in Cupertino, according to the report.

Super Mario Run was the hottest game on iOS for months after it hit the App Store. It has now been downloaded more than 200 million times on mobile, and yet, the title is yet to reach “an acceptable profit point,” Nintendo says.

That’s bad news for fans of Nintendo’s mobile games.

Apple has denied that it ever considered embedding its Touch ID sensor into the display for its iPhone X, before running into problems and adopting Face ID instead.

In an interview with  Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, Riccio “flatly counters the narrative” that Apple ever considered using Touch ID for its tenth anniversary iPhone.

Apple’s latest firmware for the unreleased HomePod revealed a new set of sounds that the smart speaker will use to indicate various user interactions.

The new tones for the Siri-powered speaker sound different from the ones leaked in a previous firmware build. They also serve different purposes. While the sounds are simple, they are quite lovely — and worthy of a $350 speaker.

Take a listen:

Is Apple building up a massive centralized archive of bra pictures belonging to its female users? To invoke Betteridge’s law about attention-grabbing headlines that end with a question mark, no, it’s not.

The internet went crazy yesterday after a tweet from one internet user pointed out that typing “brassiere” into the Photos app search bar of her iPhone brought up what appeared to be a folder showing various images of her in a state of undress. As it turns out, though, that’s not exactly the case.

As reality gets weirder, our ideas about the future get weirder still. The cyberpunk genre deals with ideas about what would happen when humans became enmeshed with computer networks. Now that that’s happening, the genre is asking new questions, like, what if you could hack people’s fears?

iPhone X’s 5.8-inch Super Retina HD display is the largest screen Apple has ever packed into a smartphone. That means using it with one hand could prove difficult. Fortunately, Reachability is still baked in — even without that physical Home button.

Here’s how you enable and use it.

Fusing tech and fashion is the cornerstone of Rilee & Lo, designers of stylish stainless steel accessories for Apple Watch. We recently reviewed their beautiful Apple Watch bands, which proved to be a hit with readers.

Taking Rilee & Lo’s fashion ethos a step further, and at customer request, we’ve added something a little different to Cult of Mac’s Watch Store — stacking bracelets!

On trend this fall, stacking bracelets are everywhere — it’s not uncommon to see women with two, three and four bracelets adorning their wrists in different styles, textures and colors. Made from the same stainless steel as its gender-neutral Apple Watch bands, Rilee & Lo’s stacking bracelets are a comfortable, easy way to punctuate any outfit. Check them out in the Watch Store.

Face ID on the iPhone X is so accurate, not even identical twins can fool it.

Reviewers now have their hands on the device ahead of its launch on Friday, which means we’re finding out new things about its awesome new features. Its Touch ID replacement isn’t perfect, it seems, but it’s darn impressive.

The first wave of iPhone X impressions and reviews have started to emerge, offering a glimpse of what tech reviewers make of Apple’s next-gen smartphone.

The verdict? The 10th anniversary iPhone is a seriously impressive handset, and quite possibly Apple’s best ever — although one or two reservations remain. Check out our roundup of some of the most interesting observations below.

From lavishing employees with stock options to offering inspirational speeches to just plain yelling at folks, Steve Jobs had plenty of methods he could use to drive people to do their best work.

When it came to developing the original Macintosh, however, he had another ace up his sleeve: he bought them a crazy expensive piano. And, from the look of things, it lives on at Apple.

With the legal battles between Apple and Qualcomm showing no signs of coming to a close, a new report claims that Apple is working to develop new iPhones and iPads for 2018 which don’t make use of any Qualcomm chips whatsoever.

While Apple (obviously) hasn’t made any announcements yet, it is said to be looking at chips made by Intel and MediaTek. The reason for the lack of Qualcomm’s chips could be a mutual decision, due to Apple not wanting to continue to work with Qualcomm, and Qualcomm withholding the necessary testing software for its latest chips.

WhatsApp, one of the world’s most popular messaging apps, now lets you unsend messages — albeit with a time limit. And not just on your phone, either. If you delete a message, it will be removed from the conversation for anyone who is participating.

That’s great news for folks who are prone to sending messages to groups instead of individuals, or who decide that a late-night photo drunk-texted to the boss was less of a bonding moment and more of a potential-firing moment. Here’s how to undelete your messages in WhatsApp.

Apple is giving developers advance notice to get their apps ready for the HomePod experience.

Along with releasing new firmware for the unreleased HomePod smart speaker, Apple also notified developers that iOS 11.2 adds SiriKit for HomePod as a way to integrate voice-only experiences into the app.

Apple CEO Tim Cook along with Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg met with Chinese President Xi Jinping today as Apple prepares to launch the iPhone X in the country this week.

The two tech CEOs were on hand at the annual gathering of advisers to Beijing’s Tsinghua University business school, where Xi spoke to business leaders and other officials.

Apple hasn’t even started to sell its new HomePod smart speaker yet, but it just came out with a new firmware update for people already testing the device.

Apple surprised developers today with the release of the first beta for iOS 11.2.

iOS 11.2 beta 1 was seeded to developers even though iOS 11.1 still hasn’t been released to the public. The update comes with a number of new features as well as bug fixes and performance improvements.