In a U.K. industry first, two major banks in the United Kingdom are finally adding Touch ID identification to their iOS apps.
RBS and NatWest customers must activate the feature using their existing security information, but can use Touch ID after that. As with the Touch ID login on iPhone, users who get three failed login attempts to their banking services will have to re-enter their passcodes.
You’d think one patent-infringement lawsuit would be enough, but Ryan Seacrest’s iPhone case startup clearly didn’t get the message after its last courtroom tangle with BlackBerry.
The new Typo Keyboard for the iPhone 6 was supposed to have fixed any infringement issues committed by its predecessor, but that is apparently not the case. This week BlackBerry filed another lawsuit against Typo, claiming the case maker “slavishly copied” its keyboard design “down to the smallest detail.”
Any way you slice it, the iPhone 6 has been a phenomenal hit for Apple: the kind of record-shattering sales phenomenon that would seem once-in-a-lifetime, were it not for the fact that Apple will probably beat its own record within a couple of years.
As is well known by now, between the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Apple sold a whopping 10 million units in just the first weekend of its next generation handset: a gigantic increase versus the 5,000,000 units the iPhone 5 sold in its first few days, or the paltry 525,000 that Apple managed to sell of its original iPhone back in 2007.
If you’re like me, these numbers are kind of hard to imagine in real-world sales terms. Fortunately, a new webpage aims to put these figures in context, by breaking down exactly how many handsets Apple sold every second of its iPhone opening weekends.
The bigger the screen, the more data you use. That’s the maxim that anyone looking to min-max their data plan every month should follow if they want to keep their bills low.
One of the big selling points of wearable devices is that they will be able to help us keep track of various fitness metrics.
However, a new report claims smartphones are just as good (if not slightly better) at tracking physical activity as the most popular wearables on the market.
iOS 8.2 hasn’t even been released to the public yet, but Apple is already moving on to the next version. The first beta build of iOS 8.3 was seeded to developers this morning while iOS 8.2 beta 5 is still being tested.
The software update was made available today in the iOS Dev Center. Along with iOS 8.3, Apple has also released a beta build of Xcode 6.3 that includes Swift 1.2. The release notes don’t mention any new features, but we’ll tell you about all the goodies we find as soon as it’s installed on our iPhones.
In the meantime, here are the direct download links:
What me, worry? Not Corning. The Gorilla Glass maker has just unveiled a new type of glass which they say is just as hard (and therefore unscratchable) as sapphire. They’re calling it Project Phire. Go figure.
An app manipulation farm sounds like someplace developers would go for a weekend retreat, complete with chiropractor sessions. In fact — according to a photo which has gone viral on social media in China — it’s a place where devs can pay for their apps’ download numbers to be artificially inflated.
Why would anyone want to do this? Simply put: because more downloads (perhaps accompanied by positive reviews) enhances apps’ chart position, thereby raising their discoverability level, and hopefully prompting people to download them.
The photo in question appears to show a worker at one such place, sitting in front of what look like around 100 iPhone 5c units. Reports claim that her job is download, install, and uninstall specific apps repeatedly to boost their App Store rankings. Another similar table can be seen opposite her.
The image is accompanied by a second one, showing the alleged prices being charged to get your app to the top of the App Store rankings. Here’s how much you need to pay to secure a no. 1 rated app for yourself:
Anyone holding onto the mistaken belief that Apple waited too long to launch a big-screen iPhone got their correction during Apple’s recent earnings call, when the company revealed it shipped a massive 74.5 million iPhones during the last three months of 2014 — representing more than half of Apple’s total revenue for the quarter.
iPhone 6 mania isn’t going away anytime soon, either, according to estimates provided by sources in Apple’s supply chain. Based on orders received, manufacturers reportedly expect Apple to ship more than 50 million additional iPhones by the end of March.
Tim Cook told investors he’s optimistic that the iPhone 6 still has legs, mostly because it has the highest Android switcher rate the company has seen in over three years.
The bigger screen was supposed to cause an avalanche of Android switchers, but according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, most of them must have come from outside the U.S.
Take a lot at their analysis of the last three years of new iPhone buyers: