The Apple Watch isn’t even out yet, and already it’s picking up some fairly high profile cheerleaders.
Not long after T-Mobile CEO John Legere jumped on the Apple Watch bandwagon by predicting the device will “mark the tipping point when wearables go from niche to mainstream,” MailOnline North American CEO Jon Steinberg has announced his Apple fandom, too — by viciously trashing the competition.
Check out his comments after the jump:
A lot has changed at Apple in the years since Steve Jobs died. While much of it is good (record-breaking iPhone sales, work on the new Apple campus, the stock-split leading to new share price highs), it’s unavoidable that one or two (or, indeed, 7) things would slip through the cracks, which Apple’s notoriously perfectionist late CEO would have hated.
The recent publishing of a patent for an iOS stylus — an accessory Jobs was vocal about opposing — got us thinking about other aspects of Apple, circa 2015, that likely would have rubbed the company’s late CEO the wrong way.
Here’s what we came up with.
LAS VEGAS — With its wide base and gently sloping sides, the Archt one speaker looks a little like an egg pod from Alien or the business end of a bomb.
Its outer shell is sleek black plastic, with a flat ring around the top that gives it a space-age feel. If the killer looks aren’t enough to grab your attention, the speaker’s ground-thumping bass will.
“It gets really loud,” Archt CEO Evan Foo told Cult of Mac.
While the all-in-one wireless speaker is certainly loud — it was ballsy enough to cut through the background noise here at the International CES trade show — the goal is to deliver CD-quality sound, no matter the source of the audio.
The so-called Bendgate incident might have done Apple no favors in 2014, but according to a new patent published today, Cupertino is far from done when it comes to flexible iPhones — this time, purposely so.
Apple’s newly-granted patent covers an invention related to flexible housing for future iOS devices. As described, these devices would be capable of being bent or even folded with no damage to the internal components.
To pull this off, Apple would likely ditch the milled aluminium used in current iPhones for more easily deformable materials such as soft plastics and fiber composites able to withstand repeated flexing.
Call it a ripoff artist that rides on Apple’s coattails if you want, but Xiaomi continues to go from strength to strength in its position as the world’s third-largest phone manufacturer.
Having recently announced a new valuation of $46 billion — making it the most valuable tech startup in existence — China-based smartphone maker Xiaomi Technology recently announced that its sales revenue leaped up by more than 100 percent in 2014, as the company sold a massive 61.1 million smartphones to customers.
Love it or hate it, those are some pretty big numbers!
The Apple blogosphere was ablaze yesterday with reports that the ripoff artists at Xiaomi had come up with the Chinese company’s most brazen copycat product yet. A supposedly leaked image showed a MacBook Air lookalike that was virtually indistinguishable from Cupertino’s offering with the exception of a Xiaomi logo.
Well, the picture is a fake, according to a Xiaomi representative.
While it’s great to hear that Apple’s intellectual property is upheld in this instance, however, it’s still less than ideal for Xiaomi for one very simple reason: just how believable the rumor was.
Apple hasn’t built a device requiring a stylus since the heyday of the Newton in the 1990s, largely because Steve Jobs hated them. But a new patent published today suggests that Apple could be changing its mind — or is making a conscious effort to lead rivals and copycats astray.
Described as a “communicating stylus,” the patent describes a stylus featuring built-in accelerometers, wireless transmission, and storage — with the aim of sending hand-written notes and drawings from one device to another.
Xiaomi is known for “borrowing” many aspects of Apple’s identity, and here’s one more to add to the list: its sky high valuation.
Having just announced the raising of an extra $1.1 billion in funding, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi announced on Monday that it is now valued at a whopping $46 billion — making it worth more than any other tech startup.
“This round of funding is an affirmation of Xiaomi’s achievements in more than four years of business and a prelude to a new stage of development,” founder Lei Jun wrote on Monday.
Foxconn might get in on Apple’s sapphire business for future iPhones, according to a source speaking with Cult of Mac.
While Foxconn has no actual experience growing sapphire, it is reportedly very interested in the material, and has been actively pursuing various sapphire related patents over the past several years.
Foxconn’s array of sapphire patents include LCD displays with sapphire, protective sapphire covers, methods of sapphire growth, as well as a laser process to cut sapphire substrates to eliminate the need for grinding and polishing.
Features like Handoff demonstrate just how useful it is to be able to chop and change tasks between different Apple devices, perhaps starting an email on your iPad and continuing it on your Mac.
A similar thing may soon be possible with your Apple TV, as a patent published today shows how Apple has invented a way of carrying out a sort-of reverse AirPlay: sending content from your Apple TV to your iOS device, rather than the other way around.
The big advantage of the concept is that it would allow remote viewing of Apple TV, whether this means having a TV show follow you from room-to-room, or tuning into your Apple TV while you’re away from home.