An appeals court just reversed the 2015 decision against Apple made in a patent-infringement lawsuit brought by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The original court ruled that the iPhone-maker owed the university $234 million for infringing on patented microchip technology in the iPhone and iPad.
Apple’s supposedly impenetrable security chip found inside iOS devices has been penetrated.
A hacker has released what is claimed to be a decryption key for the Secure Enclave Processor (SEP) that handles things like Touch ID and password verification. But we shouldn’t worry about the security of our Apple devices being compromised… yet.
Apple has been ordered to pay $506 million in damages after infringing a patent owned by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A U.S. judge ruled that the Cupertino company was guilty of using processor technology it did not own in its A-series chips for iPhone and iPad. The sum of damages is more than double that awarded by a jury last October.
This year’s iPhone upgrade won’t bring a new design, a sharper OLED display, or wireless charging. It probably won’t bring any significant improvement in performance over the iPhone 6s, either, according to these early A10 processor benchmarks.
The new iPad Pro packs Apple’s fastest chip ever, but it turns out the tablet is actually slower than the 12.9-inch version.
Both iPad Pros use the A9x processor. However, when Phil Schiller was gushing about the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro’s “grunt” during Monday’s iPhone SE keynote, he didn’t mention that Apple underclocked the new processor and reduced its horsepower.
Apple’s iPhone event is now just a matter of hours away, and if you’re hoping for some surprises, you should look away now. We already have a pretty solid idea what the iPhone 6 is going to look like, and thanks to some new Geekbench benchmarks, we now know what it’s going to have inside it, too.
The rumormill is reaching a fever pitch when it comes to Apple’s upcoming iPhone 6, and one of the hottest new reports concerns the handset’s alleged A8 chip.
While we’ve been seeing a new A-series processor each year, there’s still been no definite confirmation that Apple plans to include the A8 chip in its next generation devices, especially since developers have yet to push the A7 to its limits.
With that being said, the Chinese media is claiming that the A8 will not only happen, but that it will blow the current A7 out of the water: boasting frequencies of 2.0 GHz or more per core (compared to the 1.3Ghz A7 SoC found in the iPhone 5s and Retina iPad mini, or the 1.4 GHz found in the iPad Air).
Your smartphone and tablet will soon offer noticeably better performance than a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, thanks to NVIDIA’s new Tegra K1 processor, the successor to last year’s Tegra 4. The 192-core “Super Chip” will come in two versions, one of which is built upon a next-generation 64-bit Denver architecture and boasts clock speeds up to 2.5GHz.
Although reports have surfaced that Apple may be building a top secret $10 billion chip fab, right now, the vast majority of Apple’s A-series chips are made by Samsung. This is obviously not an ideal situation, as it gives Apple’s arch smartphone rival the advantage of knowing what the iPhone-maker is planning on doing next, at least from a silicon perspective.
It looks like Apple may soon be able to rely less on its nemesis when it comes to building chips, though. A new report says that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) will largely take over for Samsung in making iPhone and iPad chips in the future. And they’ll be pretty crazy advanced chips, too, at least if the rumors can be believed.
After Apple released the iPhone 5s with the A7, the world’s first 64-bit chip, ARM competitor Qualcomm made quite the fool of themselves about it. First, Qualcomm representative Anand Chandrasekher called a 64-bit ARM chip a “gimmick.” Then they ate their words, soft fired Chandrasekher, and announced their own 64-bit chip to ship in 2014.
If that seems like a disorganized, chaotic response, you’re right. But there’s a reason for that. According to a new report, Apple’s unveiling of the 64-bit A7 chip took the entire semiconductor industry with their pants down… and everyone’s now scrambling to catch up.
The Retina iPad mini suddenly went on sale this morning, and the device’s benchmarks have been posted online. Apple chose to put the same 64-bit A7 processor in the iPhone 5s, iPad Air, and new iPad mini. The result is a hardly noticeable change in performance across the three devices.
It’s finally here, folks — the iPad mini with Retina display is now available to order from the Apple online store. Prices start at $399 for a 16GB Wi-Fi model, which are currently shipping in 1-3 business days. Those equipped with LTE connectivity start at $529, and they’re shipping in 5-10 business days.
Twitterrific 5 for iOS has received a nice new update that adds a number of new features and user interface improvements. In addition to a redesigned profile layout, there’s a new pull-to-refresh animation, and users now have the ability to view profile banners by tapping on them.
Apple’s iPhone 5s became the world’s first smartphone with a 64-bit processor when it launched this September, but as you might expect, it’ll have plenty of competitors next year. Unsurprisingly, some of those will come from Samsung, which is already planning 64-bit chips and 16-megapixel cameras for its 2014 flagships, according to industry sources.
[Editor’s note: This review has been stickied to the top of Cult of Mac. Scroll down for more news.]
Let’s face it, we’ve been waiting for Apple to make drastic changes to the iPad since it released the third-generation device in early 2012. While it did introduce a high-resolution Retina display with that model, and it has made nice improvements in speed and other areas since then, we’ve all been clamoring for improvements to its design.
We’ve got those with the iPad Air — and a whole lot more. The new slate looks just like a larger version of the iPad mini. It maintains its 9.7-inch Retina display, but it has narrower bezels, a substantially thinner design — it is now just as thin as the iPad mini at 7.5mm — and it’s 28% lighter than its predecessor at just one pound.
In addition to that, we get Apple’s incredible 64-bit A7 processor that promises up to two times the power and graphics performance of the A6X, the new M7 motion coprocessor that made its debut in the iPhone 5s last month, and two W-Fi antennas with MIMO technology. And all of this will cost you just $100 more than the iPad 2.
If you picked up a new iPhone 5s this year, you’d better take good care of its home button, because you can no longer pick up a cheap replacement on eBay and fit it yourself. The repair experts at mendmyi have discovered that Apple pairs every Touch ID sensor with an A7 chip, and if you install a home button that doesn’t match up, Touch ID simply won’t work.
The fourth-generation iPad with its dual-core A6X processor was certainly no slouch, but it looks like one when you put it up against the new iPad Air. Thanks to that new 64-bit A7 chip, the iPad Air is an incredible 80% faster than its predecessor in Geekbench tests, and over five times than the iPad 2 (which is only $100 cheaper).
Pocket Casts, now my favorite podcast management client for iOS, now supports the new 64-bit A7 processor built into the iPhone 5s and the new iPads, thanks to its latest update that’s available to download today. The release also brings back the ability to skip back and forth between podcasts by tapping artwork, unplayed episode counts, podcast sorting, and more.
Last month, Qualcomm representative Anand Chandrasekher called Apple’s new 64-bit A7 chip a “gimmick.” It was a hugely stupid thing to say, leading to Qualcomm actually correcting Chandrasekher’s remarks. But it also might have killed Chandrasekher’s career, at least in part, as the former chief marketing officer seems to have been sent into exile within the company.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says he’s not interested in Apple’s new iPads because the neither model meets his needs. Woz didn’t get a chance to watch the keynote live because he was on a plane, but he caught up with the news when he landed and then emailed his wife to say, “nope, I don’t want one of those.”
Apple has told iPhone suppliers in China to cut iPhone 5c orders for the fourth quarter following lower than expected demand for the device, The Wall Street Journal reports. Foxconn has been asked to cut orders by one-third, while Pegatron will reduce its shipments by 20%, sources claim.
The end of the crop-frame camera is nigh, for anything except special markets at least. Sony’s new A7 and A7r are camera with full-frame sensors. That’s right: full-frame SLRs, only without the “R”. (But with an extra, different “R” in the A7R… Perhaps the R stands for “recycle”?).
Your swanky new iPhone 5s may be significantly faster than its predecessors, but it’s twice as likely to crash when running third-party apps as the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 5c. New research from Crittercism, a company that monitors mobile app performance, has found that apps crash around 2% on the iPhone 5s, but under 1% on its siblings.
Do you remember when a representative for mobile chip maker Qualcomm said that Apple’s 64-bit A7 chip was a “marketing gimmick?” It seemed pretty laughable even at the time. At some point, Qualcomm is going to start releasing 64-bit chips, at which point they’d have to eat these words.
Well, Qualcomm didn’t bother waiting to eat those words. They tied a bib on and tucked in, with Qualcomm now acknowledging that the comments were “inaccurate.”
Everyone knows that listening to podcasts is one of the most computationally complicated tasks you can possibly do. In fact, it was only a few years ago that anyone who wanted to listen to some anonymous Internet dork mouthbreathing his thoughts into a mic in low-fidelity audio had to purchase themselves a veritable supercomputer to accomplish the feat.
I kid, of course, but even in podcasting, every bit of performance helps. Which is why we’re happy to report that our favorite podcasting app, Instacast, has just hit version 4.1, adding support for the iPhone 5s’s 64-bit processor.