Apple’s first major product event of the year is set to take place on Tuesday, September 10th. There was WWDC in June, but this time around will be all about the iPhone, Apple’s crown jewel.

The event will be held in Apple’s Town Hall auditorium at its Cupertino headquarters, which is a venue that was last used for the debut of the iPhone 4S in 2011. The iPhone 5S is expected this year, and like the 4S was to the 4, the device will look nearly identical to the iPhone 5 and focus on internal improvements. For the first time in Apple’s history, the rumor mill is predicting the unveiling of not one, but two new iPhone models at once, with the second being the iPhone 5C.

Here’s everything to expect from Apple’s September 10th iPhone event:

A newly discovered Apple patent reveals how the iPhone’s redesigned Home button will work as a fingerprint scanner.

It’s widely rumored the iPhone 5S will include a fingerprint scanner built into the Home button. But putting a fingerprint scanner into the Home button presents Apple with a problem. The Home button is used as the primary navigation device. Pressing the Home button quits apps and returns the user to the Home screen. If the fingerprint Home button is used as an authentication device, to conduct a secure online purchase say, the user needs to avoid accidentally pressing it. The last thing they want is to quit the browser and be returned to the Home screen.

The solution is a capacitive ring built around the Home button that detects the user’s finger without a button press.

This article first appeared in Cult of Mac’s weekly Newsstand magazine. Check it out here.

Apple takes color very seriously. You might say the Cupertino company is obsessed with it. Sir Jonathan Ive, the head of industrial design, is most famous for his restrained approach to color.

After the first iPod in 2001, most of Apple’s products come in plain colors: black, white or silvery aluminum. But behind the scenes, his design department has long created prototypes in a dizzying array of hues, including hot pink. Some prototypes are mocked up in up to 64 different shades.

“You can imagine a Crayola box with 64 colors in it,” Gautum Baksi, a former Apple engineer who worked closely with Jony Ive’s industrial design group (IDg), told Cult of Mac. “They’ll go through the gamut of making prototypes of all 64 to iterate until they find the ones that they want.”

https://youtu.be/0sJDQt3XwSw

We think of Steve Jobs as one of the most media-savvy guys around, but as this video shows, the first time he appeared on camera, he thought he was going to puke.

Way back in 1978, a very young Jobs appeared on San Francisco news station KGO-TV to talk about the Apple II. The footage of the interview itself seems to have been lost by time, so we don’t really know how he did, but the prep footage of his interview still exists… and boy, is he new at this.

It’s kind of endearing. He’s totally amazed to be on television at all. In fact, he says he’s “deathly ill, actually, and ready to throw up at any moment.” Was he actually sick, or just nervous to the point of vomiting?

Via: Mental Floss

Shazam, Shazam Encore, and Shazam RED for iOS have today been updated with a number of new features and improvements. In addition to faster recognition on older iOS devices, and improved recognition in “difficult” environments, the release also brings Twitter previews and new TV experiences for those in the United States.

Can’t make it to this year’s iTunes Festival in London? Don’t worry — you’ll be able to enjoy the whole thing live from the comfort of your armchair. Apple has today updated its official iTunes Festival London app to add video streaming for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

Three years ago, Tim Cook very memorably said that although Apple was selling $40 billion worth of products every year (that number has since more than quadrupled), all of Apple’s products could fit on a dining room table. That amazing quote was slightly disingenuous — many of Apple’s products are virtual, and take up no physical space at all — but it still made a point: Apple chooses what it does so carefully that everything has its place. What Cupertino doesn’t do is just as important as what it does.

It’s all interesting food for thought, to be sure, but what if we took Tim Cook’s table metaphor and broke it down? For every foot of table, how much money does Apple make on each product?

This morning TiVo unveiled its newest lineup of DVRs, and rather than trying to kick your iOS device out of the living room, the new DVRs will stream TV straight to your iPad or iPhone, even if you’re not at home.

The most vocal and active iPhone and Android fans scoff at the notion that Moto X is the new iPhone. But it’s true.

The iPhone used to represent the most elegant, innovative and fun-to-use smartphone for everybody. That status has now been taken by Motorola’s new “Google phone,” the Moto X.

Apple doesn’t buy other companies very often, so when it does, there’s usually a very strategic reason. When it was reported that Apple had acquired Matcha a couple days ago, the reason seemed obvious.

Matcha was a small startup that specialized in aggregating programming guides from sources like Netflix and Hulu into a nice interface. Apple has been getting more serious about maturing the Apple TV, so the two seemed to fit like a glove.

But according to a recent report, Apple wanted Matcha for something else.