If you’re thinking of selling or trading in your current iPhone ahead of the iPhone 6S’s release, you probably know that you’ll need to wipe your device before a buyer can use it free and clear. Prepping an iPhone for resale used to be almost as easy as hitting a “reset” button in the iPhone’s settings menu. But over the past few years, the process has become more complex thanks to new security, wallet, and cloud-dependent features such as Activation Lock, Apple Pay and iTunes in the Cloud. Completely removing all of your personal items from your iPhone — and your iPhone from Apple’s servers — requires extra work.

Today, I’m going to walk you through the process of thoroughly scrubbing your iPhone prior to resale. There are 9 steps to take to make sure your device is cleaned up and ready to sell to its next owner. Here they are…

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Apple releases at least one new iPhone every year, and the coverage has become predictable: reviews (accurately) herald “the best iPhone yet,” typically based on “small but important changes that refine the user experience.” Based on everything we know about the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, you can expect the same narrative again this year — starting with the obligatory sigh of similarity that precedes the review of every S model, and ending with the common recommendation to “go buy one unless you can wait until next year.”

For professional reasons, I’ve owned every iPhone since the original 2007 model, and upgraded every single year regardless of how small or large the differences were between models. This year, for the first time, I sold off my current-generation iPhone to maximize the cash I’d get towards the purchase of a new model, and as an experiment, I went back to using the iPhone 5s (updated to iOS 9) to see whether any of the differences really mattered. After a week with the old iPhone, I can’t wait for a new one: there are a lot of reasons to prefer Apple’s bigger, better 6-series phones. So if you’re on the fence about going from any iPhone 4/4S or 5/5s/5c to a new iPhone 6S, trust me, you’ll want to get ready to upgrade now…

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Swatch, apparently threatened by Apple’s recent forays into watchmaking, has taken another legal step seemingly aimed at tweaking Cupertino: registration of two “One More Thing” trademarks, a catch phrase famously associated with former Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote speeches.
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Update: In the year since we posted this, we’ve decided to seek out the best partner and do the trade ins ourselves. After doing a lot of research, we’ve decided to work with Myphonesunlimited who consistently offer the best prices for iPhones, iPads and other Apple, Windows and Android devices. Go check them out.

Apple releases new iPhones every fall, guaranteeing that a massive number of old iPhones will be traded in or sold. The rush will dramatically change the market for used iPhones, so I wanted to help you stay ahead of the curve and get the best deal possible. Having just sold my own iPhone 6 Plus to upgrade to a newer model, I have some strong opinions about your smartest options.

Below, I’ve put together a guide to some of the iPhone selling and trade-in options you should consider. There’s no single “right” answer, since some options trade greater convenience for lower prices, and others have higher prices but greater risks or hassles. You can choose the one that’s best for your needs, but whatever you do, make your choice before iPhone values begin to fall…

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Everyone knew the iPad Air 2’s marquee features — a thinner, lighter body, Touch ID, a gold color option and much faster A8X processor — but fewer people realized that Apple also made subtle changes to the new tablet’s screen, not only improving its visibility outdoors but also changing the way it registered touch input. All of the tweaks added up to a noticeably better user experience, but one category of accessories unexpectedly wound up broken: digital styluses. As it turns out, fine-tipped styluses use tiny electrical pulses to trick touchscreens into thinking they’re fingers, and the pulses needed to be recalibrated to work reliably with the iPad Air 2’s new screen. Adonit was the first to release an iPad Air 2-compatible digital stylus, the $75 Jot Script 2 (reviewed here), and now there’s a second, more affordable option.

Lynktec is one of several stylus makers that have sought a middle ground between expensive $80-$100 Bluetooth styluses and entry-level $20-$30 styluses that lack electronic hardware. The second-generation Rechargeable Apex Stylus ($60) is, like its predecessor, a mostly silver pen with a battery inside and a shirt clip on its edge. It loses the plasticky black top and bottom in favor of a more thoroughly metallic appearance, retaining five rubber finger grips near its tip for comfort. And while it keeps the 2mm polymer writing tip of the original Rechargeable Apex, it’s now backed by electronic circuitry that works properly with the iPad Air 2, as well as all earlier iPads and iPhones…

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I’m a daily Apple TV user, and that fact apparently puts me in the minority: even when the Apple TV’s price dropped to nearly iPod shuffle levels, it didn’t take off like Apple’s iPads or iPhones. From what I’ve gathered, many people think the little black box can’t do much. And it’s amazing to me that most people can’t describe what the Apple TV can do, even though it’s been available for years.

Adding an App Store to the Apple TV — a place to download games, new channels, and apps — has seemed for years like a no-brainer for everyone… except Apple. Blame the hardware, the software, or protracted negotiations with potential partners, but after years of waiting, it just hasn’t happened. Calling this a missed opportunity would be an understatement: video games alone generate tens of billions of dollars of revenue annually, and well over half of them are now sold digitally. Thankfully, 9to5Mac’s Mark Gurman reports, Apple will finally bring both iOS 9 and an App Store to the Apple TV this year.

The big question on my mind is how Apple plans to monetize the new Apple TV, particularly given its potential as a gaming console. Prior-generation Apple TVs failed to thrive at $99 (or even $69) price points, which is the same range where Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Ouya and others have struggled to match the market share of PlayStations, Wiis, and Xboxes. Moreover, Apple’s customers have shown little interest in paying ridiculous prices for iOS game controllers, so the hardware upside appears to be somewhat limited for Apple. There is, of course, a logical solution: Apple should accept the lessons it has learned about Apple TV and game accessory pricing, compensating for relatively low hardware profits by selling massive quantities of affordable software…

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“Bigger and better” has been a safe sequel strategy for years, but “smaller, lighter, and slightly more affordable” sequels began to take off when Apple debuted the iPod mini and iPod nano a decade ago. Anker relied upon “bigger and better” for its insanely powerful 25,600mAh Astro E7 battery, and now is using “smaller and lighter” with PowerCore 20100 ($40), a sequel with nearly 80% of Astro E7’s power. But Anker’s diverging from Apple’s formula on one key point: PowerCore 20100 sells for only 50% of Astro E7’s price. It’s still capable of recharging many iPads twice, which is more than enough portable energy for most people. Given its more manageable size and excellent price point, it’s likely to be an even bigger hit than its predecessor.

Anker has also released a “you’ll never need another USB charging port again” solution called PowerPort 10 ($40, shown above). PowerPort 10 steps up from Anker’s excellent 60W 6-Port USB Charger (reviewed here), which was recently renamed PowerPort 6. For only $4 more than PowerPort 6, PowerPort 10 gives you 4 additional USB ports for charging. Ten ports is enough for a family full of iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch users to simultaneously recharge all their devices. The only hitch: PowerPort 10 has the same 60W power output as PowerPort 6, the details of which I’ll explain further in the review below…

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Less than a month from now, Apple is expected to officially unveil its new A9 chip. This will be the ninth A-Series processor including the original A4, which powered the first iPad, iPhone 4, fourth-generation iPod touch, and second-generation Apple TV. It’s hard to overstate the importance of the A-series chips to Apple’s devices, as they’ve helped the company to achieve everything from major processing leaps to impressive power efficiency and — often taken for granted — guaranteed UI smoothness for every year’s newly-launched devices.

With the iPhone 6S just around the corner, we’ve started to receive tips purporting to reveal how much better the A9 will perform than the A8 processors found in the latest iPhones, iPad Air 2, and iPod touch. While we wouldn’t characterize the numbers we’ve seen as reliable, they led us to look back at the history of A-series chips, and consider what can reasonably be expected from the A9. Read on for our thoughts…

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Continuing its push to make solid-state drives (SSDs) the dominant storage medium of next-generation computers, Samsung has revealed the PM1633a, a 15.36TB SSD that is believed to be the world’s highest-capacity hard drive. More amazingly, notes an Ars Technica report, that incredible capacity — over 120 times the storage of an entry-level MacBook Air or MacBook Pro — fits within a compact 2.5″ hard drive enclosure.
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Apple plans to relocate its main Chicago, Illinois retail store from its current location at 679 North Michigan Avenue to a newer flagship space at the edge of the Chicago River, reports Crain’s Chicago Business. According to the report, Apple will likely build “a new glass structure” in front of a 35-story office building as an entry to the Apple Store, with most of the store “below ground” in a design resembling the iconic Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City.
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A new report suggests that Apple is playing A9 chip makers Samsung and TSMC against one another in the lead up to the launch of new iPhones, attempting to extract last-minute price reductions for its next-generation processors. According to the report from Digitimes, which has a mixed track record regarding upcoming Apple products, Apple is requesting lower prices from both companies. Though TSMC is “inclined to refuse,” Samsung has agreed to discount the chips, offering Apple “almost-free backend services” in an effort to “grab the majority of A9 chip orders.”

The report suggests that Apple is leveraging the novelty of the FinFET chip manufacturing process to extract concessions from TSMC, which has relatively few FinFET chip orders from other customers. A claimed reduction in Apple’s demand from 30,000 wafers per month to under 20,000 wafers would leave TSMC to make up a significant difference between Apple’s original order and the Taiwanese company’s FinFET production capacity. The impact on Apple’s upcoming A9X, which was believed to be handled by TSMC, is unclear…

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Every time Apple is expected to release an S-series iPhone — the 3GS, the 4S, the 5s, and now the 6S — pundits rush to discount the value of each anticipated new feature, claiming that it won’t be enough to boost iPhone sales. Yet historically, every prediction of iPhone sales peaks or declines has been wrong: each iPhone, whether a big “tick” or small “tock” on Apple’s upgrade schedule, has outsold its predecessors. Even without form factor or screen changes, speed sold the iPhone 3GS, Siri boosted the 4S, and Touch ID and camera improvements helped the 5s. (In S years, improved distribution, new color options, and price and capacity tweaks have made a big difference, too.)

This week, analysts and pundits have co-opted my colleague Mark Gurman’s scoop that Force Touch on the iPhone 6S will be used for shortcuts across iOS, suggesting that Force Touch isn’t going to be exciting enough to make people upgrade. That’s true, but also so obvious as to be ridiculous: Apple certainly won’t pitch a pressure-sensitive screen as the iPhone 6S’s marquee new feature. Force Touch debuted in the Apple Watch, but it’s not even mentioned on the first Apple Watch page on Apple.com, instead showing up in the fifth paragraph of the “Technology” page. It’s similarly found only paragraphs down on the page of the 12″ MacBook where it made its Mac debut.

With the notable exception of the iPad mini 3, Apple never releases new devices with only one new feature to hook customers. Even a month before it’s announced, it’s a virtual certainty that the iPhone 6S will arrive with camera improvements and faster processors, most likely a new color option, and Force Touch as one of many small but nice additions. So long as Apple gets distribution and international pricing right, the iPhone 6S is going to do just fine…

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When I wrote a series of How-To guides showing how easy it was to swap old Mac hard disks for new solid state drives (SSDs), I focused on raw upgrades — slow mechanical drives for fast chip-based ones. The reason was simple: put an SSD in your Mac instead of the old hard disk, and you’ll be blown away by the speed increases. But as several readers have noted, there is another way to add an SSD to your Mac: you can keep your old hard drive, and instead replace the Mac’s CD/DVD optical drive, also known as a SuperDrive.

Swapping a SuperDrive for an SSD has a mix of pros and cons. It’s typically a little easier and less expensive to replace the SuperDrive than a stock hard drive, and you’ll always wind up with more internal storage than you started with. But you also lose CD/DVD reading and writing abilities — things fewer people care about these days — and you’ll need to set up your Mac to properly take advantage of the SSD. Read on for the details…

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Following last week’s leak of a substantially complete iPhone 6S display assembly, another screen has slipped out into the wild, where it has been placed alongside and compared against the same part from the iPhone 6 (shown above at left). European part and accessory vendor MacManiack shared this image, the photos in the gallery below, and a YouTube video contrasting the components.

While very few differences between the components are worth noting, the iPhone 6S part again appears to have a place for the much-rumored Force Touch/haptic feedback component introduced in the Apple Watch. MacManiack claims that at least part of the “Touch ID home button is integrated in the LCD and digitizer connector,” and points out that the connectors are different on the parts. Two galleries showing the parts in much greater detail follow…

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Early in the life of the Apple Watch, offering a single, nicely-designed stand was enough for most developers; our guide to the best Apple Watch Stands compiles many such options. Just Mobile’s first entry was the aluminum, tube-shaped TimeStand, which I reviewed last month, and now the company’s back with a second and entirely different stand called the Lounge Dock ($40). Lounge Dock addresses TimeStand’s most conspicuous omission, adding support for watchOS 2.0’s upcoming Nightstand Mode, while adapting Just Mobile’s classic iPhone and iPod stand Lounge for a smaller Apple device.

Unlike TimeStand, which machined a single piece of aluminum into a tube-like stand, Lounge Dock is a multi-piece design connecting a silver metal base to a silver metal arm and a black plastic Apple Watch holder. Just Mobile’s primary pitch is that the plastic holder pivots, letting you adjust the Apple Watch’s screen angle for easier viewing while charging. If that’s appealing to you, or you want to use your Apple Watch as a small bedside clock with Nightstand Mode, you might like this new design…

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After a series of relatively small beta-to-beta updates, Apple’s release today of the fifth beta of watchOS 2.0 contains a series of legitimately interesting new features. One of the additions is a brand new Timelapse watch face featuring the Eiffel Tower in Paris, bringing to six the total number of time-lapse videos, as well as a considerable change in Timelapse’s behavior.

Apple has also added a new option to keep the screen awake for 70 seconds after it’s tapped (versus a default setting of 15 seconds), and a new Quick Play feature to speed up music playback through a connected iPhone. More details on what’s new in watchOS 2.0 Beta 5 are below…
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Although early beta releases of iOS 9 featured relatively little new eye candy for potential upgraders, today’s release of iOS 9 beta 5 includes a welcome surprise: a large collection of colorful new wallpapers. The images range from colorful desert dunes to several different colors of feathers, plants, planets, and multi-colored explosions. They’re all packed with detail, showing off the photorealistic rendering abilities and vivid color palettes of Retina displays. Many (but not all) of iOS 8’s wallpaper images have been removed from the collection, and the blue/green tidal wave image originally included with iOS 9 betas has disappeared.

A gallery with some of the new wallpapers is below…
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I’m not a fan of hyperbole, nor am I the type of reviewer who long ago ran out of new synonyms for the word “great.” In fact, I could count the number of truly stellar products I’ve tested in the past year on one or two hands. So when I say that Enblue Technology’s new Premium One W3 ($135, also sold in $65 W1 and $115 W2 forms) is the best stand I’ve yet seen for the Apple Watch, and quite possibly the best multi-Apple device stand I’ve ever tested, that isn’t idle gushing. Yes, the Premium One stands are expensive. No, they are not perfect. But having seen a lot of companies try and fail to do what this German developer has accomplished, I’m certainly very impressed.

Each Premium One stand uses nicely machined aluminum dotted with small plastic pads to hold and charge your Apple Watch. The entry-level W1 model is Watch-only, while the mid-range W2 holds a Watch and iPhone, and the top-of-line W3 is a Watch, iPhone, and iPad charging station — the most elegant multi-device charger I’ve seen since Apple introduced Lightning connectors. It’s ideal for minimalists, and amazingly, completely case-compatible. If the price doesn’t bother you, and you want to charge your Apple Watch along with other devices, this should be at or near the top of your shopping list…

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