Before you can properly understand Apple News, it’s important to know its history. Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976. In 1977, Apple’s sales were growing with the success of its early computers. Within a few years, Jobs and Wozniak hired designers and a production line crew. Apple went public in 1980 and was an instant success. Over the next few years, Apple shipped new computers featuring new graphical user interfaces, such as the original Macintosh in 1984. As the market for personal computers expanded through the 1990s, Apple lost market share to the cheaper Microsoft Windows on PC clones. Eventually, Wozniak and Jobs both left Apple. Jobs would go on to found NeXT and would return to Apple when NeXT was acquired in the late 90s. Apple then began a journey to the great second act in the history of the business world.
Since the release of the iPod in 2001, Apple has become a major player once again in the technology industry. After releasing the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010, and the Apple Watch in 2015, Apple is now one of the largest companies in the world. Apple’s worldwide annual revenue totaled $274.5 billion for its 2020 fiscal year.
Today, Apple operates retail stores all across the world, has a growing services division, and an ever-expanding hardware lineup. The technology industry follows Apple news to see where the company is headed in the future.
Miller has a long list of epic hacks in his recent past: In 2007, he was the first to fully compromise the iPhone through its web browser. Six months later he won the Pwn2Own hacking competition in Vancouver by compromising a Macbook Air in two minutes. In 2009, he revealed a technique that would have allowed an attacker to hijack iPhones via text message, virally spreading from phone to phone. He’s found a method of infecting Macbooks with malware via their power adapter, and had his Apple developer license revoked for successfully sneaking an iOS app past Apple’s safeguards. Most recently he’s shifted his focus to Android, defeating Google’s “Bouncer” program for detecting malware in the Android Market and using near-field communications chips to wirelessly compromise Samsung and Nokia phones just by waving another device near them.
AT&T just ran out of Sept. 21 stock for the iPhone 5. The delivery page has now pushed sales to “14-21 business days,” which equals almost three to five weeks. Verizon ran out of stock earlier today, but it is hard to determine if this shows demand per carrier since AT&T is such a big legacy iPhone carrier and Apple obviously gave it a lot more stock than others.
Both big carriers have downsides: AT&T will not run FaceTime unless you buy a Mobile Share plan, while Verizon will run FaceTime on all of its iPhones—but new customers must sign up for a Mobile Share plan (no matter what). In addition, the CDMA version of the iPhone, which Verizon and Sprint both carry, will not support simultaneous talk and data. Speaking of Sprint, it is still advertising ship dates of Sept. 21.
The iCloud outage, which began Tuesday and affected roughly 2 percent of Apple’s 200 Million iCloud users, now appears to be over. However, some iCloud users wrote to tell us that Apple just dumped all of their email into the Inbox with 12/31/69 dates and jumbled Subject lines. One reader’s email now looks like this:
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An excerpt from his frustrated email is below. I hate to say this about a company that makes the best hardware and OS software in the world, but it would be hard to trust my junkmail to iCloud at this point.
For Australians wondering why turn-by-turn is not turned on in iOS Maps, or when it will turn on for that matter, a forwarded email from Apple Senior Vice President of iOS Scott Forstall may shed some light. The email is in response to the question of whether or not turn-by-turn “will be switched on for us Aussies in the near future?” Forstall responded:
Australia is definitely important to us. We first need to make sure our data is exceptional and qualified before turning on turn-by-turn.
Forstall’s reply seems to indicate it will pop up very soon.
Unlike Verizon’s lineup of LTE Android smartphones, we just confirmed with the carrier that the new iPhone 5 would not support simultaneous voice and data over its LTE network.
A Verizon spokesperson told us:
“The iPhone 5 was designed to allow customers to place a voice call on the Verizon Wireless network, while simultaneously letting customers access the Internet over the WiFi.”
We confirmed with AT&T, however, that the feature will work on its GSM model of the iPhone 5. AT&T told us:
“AT&T customers can talk and surf simultaneously on the new iPhone 5.”
J.D.Power and Associates is out with a 2012 U.S. Tablet Satisfaction Study and Apple is at the top of the list for customer satisfaction in four areas. Amazon is close behind:
The study measures tablet owner satisfaction among those who have owned their tablet for less than two years. Satisfaction is measured across five key factors. In order of importance, they are: performance (26%), ease of operation (22%), styling and design (19%), features (17%), and price (16%).
Apple ranks highest, achieving a score of 848, and performs well in four factors: performance; ease of operation; styling and design; and features. Amazon (841) closely follows Apple in the rankings and performs particularly well in the price factor.
TechCrunch did a panel at the Disrupt conference of ‘some folks’ who got to play with the iPhone 5 after Apple’s event. The running themes were the new iPhone’s light weight, the panoramic camera, and comparison to Android.
While Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller notably left out U.S. carriers when talking about the iPhone 5’s enhanced wideband audio at Apple’s event yesterday, we get clarification today from at least Sprint that the feature will not be supported. PhoneScoop reported that Sprint’s “HD Voice” service works on CDMA x1 technology, while the iPhone 5 and many other carriers around the world use WCDMA networks for the feature. Apple said the wideband audio feature would be available through 20 carriers at launch, but it only mentioned Deutsche Telekom and Orange.
A few apps updated, went on sale, or made announcements recently, and 9to5Mac gathered the most noteworthy ones in our regular round up below. Today’s crop includes game and productivity app updates, an Angry Birds game sale, and promo codes for an iPhone 5-optimized GPS app. Per usual, we will continue to update this list throughout the day.
Mass production of the screens for the iPhone 5, which Apple unveiled Wednesday, began earlier this week at Sharp’s factory in central Japan, the person said…That Sharp has started delivering screens could ease concerns about whether Apple will have enough components to meet global demand for the new iPhone. Sharp is one of the three suppliers of the screens, the others being Japan Display Inc. and South Korea’s LG Display Co…
The next-generation iPhone launched today and some trade-in values are already slumping by $50 or more, so now is the absolute last minute to start exchanging those soon-to-be old models to earn some extra cash for the new iPhone 5. 9to5Mac compiled a list of reliable places to help you trade an ‘ole dusty iPhone for cash or credit—up to $460 in some cases!
Online gadget resellers are experiencing a huge smartphone trade-in surge, as we reported yesterday, but they warned 9to5Mac that today’s attractive prices would not maintain with the iPhone 5 shipping in less than two weeks.
Gazelle, which is one such website that noticed the ballooning amount of trade-ins, said it witnessed a 1,550 percent increase in Web traffic following today’s Apple announcement.
“We’ve had around a 75 percent increase in offers presented since yesterday,” Gazelle Chief Gadget Officer Anthony Scarsella told 9to5Mac. “Last year, prices declined 25 percent in the week following the announcement. We expect something similar to this.”
Before browsing the options below, take a moment to identify the condition, features, and model of the swappable iPhone. This will help determine its potential value, because most online programs use a survey to calculate the iPhone’s estimate. Moreover, it is prudent to act now, as retailers will likely drop their prices as the launch date draws nearer.
We told you they were coming: Apple officially unveiled its new “EarPods” earlier today. The company explained during this morning’s media event that the EarPods are three years in the making. Apple has yet to post the video of the full iPhone 5/iPod event, but now we get a look at a video played during the presentation. It features Jony Ive explaining the process of creating the new earbuds. In addition to the engineering process described by Ives above, Apple explained on its website that it tested over 100 prototypes to make the EarPods more durable and stable than its previous-generation earphones:
Apple engineers asked more than 600 people to test over 100 iterations of the Apple EarPods. Testers ran on treadmills in extreme heat and extreme cold. They performed various cardio workouts. They were even asked to shake their heads side to side, up and down. The result: Apple EarPods provide stronger protection from sweat and water, and they’re remarkably stable in the ear. Which means they stay in, even when you’re on the go.
The Apple Store has come back online following Apple’s media event that just wrapped up in San Francisco. We’ve gotten a look at several smaller products from Apple, and we’ve found one more. For the Euro-folk, Apple has released a Lightning to Micro USB adapter, available for £15.00 and shipping within three days. Presumably the fine men and women of Cupertino have made the adapter available to comply with certain regulations regarding the Micro-USB standard. [Apple Store]
– GPS: While the current iPod touch can in some cases determine fairly accurate location information based off of Wi-Fi access points, Kuo expects that the new iPod touch will incorporate built-in GPS in order to better capitalize on Apple’s new Maps app.
– Camera improvements: Kuo expects the iPod touch to adopt a FaceTime HD camera on the front, as well as a significantly upgraded 5-megapixel rear camera.
– Cross-device compatibility: The new iPod touch may be able to easily connect with iPad and Mac hardware to serve as a game controller or other accessory.
Kuo also believes that Apple will discontinue the fourth-generation iPod touch. We heard that is wrong and the current iPod touch will continue in a new 16 GB form. Given that—we cannot be too sure about the exact nature of the camera improvements he listed above (and view them as estimates). While we do expect improvements, possibly including a panorama mode, we cannot verify the 5-megapixel figure. We earlier predicted the same FaceTimeHD that Apple released on the iPad 3.
GPS would be a factor of the Broadcom Wi-Fi chip that is used. Typically, Apple’s iOS device GPS resides on the 3G/4G Broadcom baseband processor that is missing from iPods and Wi-Fi-only iPads. The current thinking is that GPS is not very useful without a data plan, but perhaps Apple is considering caching local maps data to the new Maps.app. Current iPod touch devices can triangulate their position based on Wi-Fi hotspots and through hotspotting on a GPS-equipped iPhone.
As for the Game controller angle, we are not sure it is an angle Apple will take. We have heard about some Bluetooth 4.0 opportunities, though.
Prominent iOS developer @Chronic seems to indicate in a series of tweets this morning that there is indeed NFC hardware in the iPhone 5 (or at least prototypes), but it perhaps is not set up to be used for payment systems.
Just as a note: The iPhone had the capability to use FM RX/TX radio for years, but Apple decided not to enable it for listening to radio stations or even broadcasting to your car stereo for whatever reason. This could be a similar situation.
We will not know for sure until the iPhone is torn down later this month.
MICGadget translates a report from the Shanghai Evening Post that sheds some more light on the Foxconn assembly plants. A reporter went undercover as one of the many people hired to build the iPhone 5. He (pictured right) kept a diary but was only able to stomach the work for a few weeks (reporters are lightweights when it comes to real work, trust me).
By my own calculations, I have to mark five iPhone plates every minute, at least. For every 10 hours, I have to accomplish 3,000 iPhone 5 back plates. There are total 4 production lines in charge of this process, 12 workers in every line. Each line can produce 36,000 iPhone 5 back plates in half a day, this is scary … I finally stopped working at 7 a.m. We were asked to gather again after work. The supervisor shout out loud in front of us: “Who wants to rest early at 5 a.m !? We are all here to earn money ! Let’s work harder !” I was thinking who on earth wants to work two extra hours overtime for only mere 27 yuan (USD$4) !?
There is not much here you have not heard before and unfortunately no tech specs. The bottom line is it is incredibly hard work with little wages under pretty bad working conditions, but it is voluntary, legal and people know what they are getting themselves into.
Alongside the information we have already posted about the new iPod touch, iPod nano, and iPod shuffle, we received possible code names for the devices. Like developer @chronic, we’re hearing that the new iPod touch has the internal codename of N78.
We also understand that the iPod nano is codenamed N31 and that the iPod shuffle is codenamed N12B. Like we posted last week, the new Shuffle and Nano will ship in 8 colors. We also understand that the new iPod touch will come in several variations, which we speculate points to colors other than black and white.
With the iPad mini launching next month, many, including us, have wondered what would happen to the iPod touch price point. Even with an iPad mini en-route for a rumored $200-250 price point, our sources are saying that the iPod touch will stay at an entry-level price point at or around $200.
@Chronic is also saying that the new iPod touch will run a processor named S5L8942X which is similar to the AppleTV single core A5:
oh wait, another thing worth mentioning: the new iPod touch / N78AP runs on an S5L8942X, NOT an S5L8950X.
It’s not hard to imagine the iPhone 5 will once again include a camera demo, perhaps Phil Schiller showing off automagical new Panorama software, and other optical wonders.
We’ll surely know all tomorrow at 10AM Pacific/1 PM Eastern. We’ll have full live coverage of the announcements. Expand Expanding Close
Ahead of Apple’s iPhone event tomorrow, where we also expect to see a refreshed iPod lineup, Guilherme Schasiepen shares a few new fifth-generation iPod touch concepts with us.
Update: In a blog post prematurely posted on its UK website, Vodafone confirmed it has 500,000 nano-SIMs ready to go, while noting the “first devices have now been announced.” It also posted the images above showing off just how tiny the new SIMs are… approximately 40 percent smaller than micro-SIM.
They’re so slim and tiny you might only be able to handle them with tweezers – but imagine the extra space the new nano-SIM card frees up inside your handset…The first devices have now been announced – and Vodafone has now got 500,000 of the new 12.3 mm x 8.8 mm nano-SIMs in stock.
We told you that nano-SIMs was arriving at carriers last week ahead of this week’s iPhone launch when the first one was spotted at T-Mobile partners in Europe. Today, iFun reports that Vodafone Germany also has its SIM cards in stock and ready to ship in the next 24 hours:
After the nano-SIM sightings at Telekom and O2 internally distributed cards, on which we reported in the course of the forenoon were able to report that we are now sitting in front of confirmed nano-SIM shipments Vodafone. Expand Expanding Close
On Aug. 6, Beta 4 of iOS 6 came out with one huge gaping hole: Apple’s YouTube app. There was speculation on both sides of the fence that Apple might have pulled it because of the ongoing war with Android or perhaps Google pulled it because it wanted more control of the app and/or it wanted to show more ads. In reality, it was probably a little of both.
Whatever the case, just a month after being pulled and just a day ahead of Apple’s iOS 6/iPhone 5 event, Google has released its own homegrown YouTube app into the App Store. It is formatted for the iPhone only (an iPad version is in the works), but it already has many features that its Apple-built counterpart lacked.
Description
Watch the world’s videos and keep up with your favorite YouTube channels with the official YouTube app for iOS. Sign in to access your subscriptions, playlists, uploads and more.
Features:
✓ Enjoy YouTube’s vast video catalog, including official music videos
✓ Find videos and channels more easily with voice search and query autocomplete
✓ Subscribe to channels and instantly access your subscriptions with the channel guide UI
✓ Read comments, browse related videos, enable subtitles and more – all while watching
✓ Easy video sharing to Google+, E-mail, Facebook and Twitter
Did Google throw this together in just one month or did it have some advance warning? We are thinking the latter; it is already receiving some good reviews and appears to be a well-polished product.
As TheNextWeb points out, it is not certain how you will upload videos to YouTube in the new app. Matt Panzerino postulates that Apple will allow YouTube to be granted rights in iOS to have a file handling menu option. We are not so sure that Apple cares if you can upload to YouTube natively (see Mountain Lion) from the OS. We are thinking that you will eventually need to open the YouTube app manually, browse to the video, and do it the old-fashioned way.
The more important question now becomes: where is the Google Maps app for iOS?
More… including a walkthrough YouTube video below:
When Pender asked whether Apple would be announcing its newest iPhone next week, Apple lawyer Michael McKeon of Fish & Richardson in Washington said he wasn’t told of the company’s plans. “It will be thinner and the screen bigger?” the judge asked. McKeon would only say, “That’s what the blogs are saying.”
While getting its graphics’ proportions right this time around, research firm Nielsen revealed July 2012 findings today and announced 55.5-percent of mobile subscribers in the United States now own smartphones with young adults and teenagers leading the charge.
As mobile manufacturers announce new phones in advance of the holidays, Nielsen took a snapshot look at the mobile market in the U.S. Smartphone penetration continued to grow in July 2012, with 55.5 percent of mobile subscribers in the U.S. now owning smartphones. This is a significant increase compared to July 2011 when only 41 percent of mobile subscribers owned smartphones.
Overall, young adults are leading the growth in smartphone ownership in the U.S., with 74 percent of 25-34 year-olds now owning smartphones, up from 59 percent in July 2011. Interestingly, teenagers between 13 and17 years old demonstrated the most dramatic increases in smartphone adoption, with the majority of American teens (58%) owning a smartphone, compared to roughly a third (36%) of teens saying they owned a smartphone just a year ago.
Android still dominates the smartphone OS market in terms of owners and recent acquirers, but iOS maintains second place with 34 percent of smartphone owners and 33 percent of recent acquirers.
Nielsen’s monthly survey is conducted across 20,000 mobile subscribers from the ages of 13 and up in the U.S.
T-Mobile announced a huge new “unlimited and unlocked iPhone” initiative today that will launch Sept. 12—a date that should ring a bell. The nation’s fourth-largest carrier does not and will not officially carry the iPhone, but its parent company carries the iPhone all over Europe and was even the original carrier in its home Germany. The biggest issue with T-Mobile USA and the iPhone is that T-Mobile’s 3G/4G bands are incompatible with Apple’s iPhone hardware. Therefore, a million plus iPhone users are kept to EDGE 2.5G speeds, which seemed to work O.K. for the original iPhone, but five years have passed since it first launched and expectations have largely risen.
Today’s announcement is a big one for T-Mobile and will be accompanied by a large marketing push. T-Mobile claims —and the math seems to work— that it will save users $50 a month over similar AT&T plans. The total savings amount equals $1,200 over the life of a two-year contract.
T-Mobile will have a store-within-a-store for iPhone users who want to make the hop. Trained T-Mobile salespeople will be able to instruct users on unlocking, but they will not physically open the devices. This is an unprecedented move…especially for a device that T-Mobile does not officially carry.
Getting your hands on an unlocked device is pretty easy and will probably get a lot easier over the next weeks as the new iPhone is announced. Apple has offered the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S unlocked almost since it released last year and you can currently snap up a new one at eBay for about $580.
T-Mobile has some more good news for prospective iPhone customers today: Remember the iPhone-compatible 1900MHz network it demo’ed at WWDC? That same 1900MHz 4G network is rolling out in Seattle, Las Vegas, Washington, DC, and the New York metro area currently (readers? sightings?).
Even better: T-Mobile’s tests of unlocked iPhone 4S devices running over 4G (HSPA+) on its 1900 band have recorded 70 percent faster average download speeds than iPhone 4S on AT&T’s network. We will wait for neutral parties to review before judging and, obviously, LTE is coming for the iPhone 5, which T-Mobile expects will run on its network.
However, the best part might be the company behind the network. T-Mobile allows its customers to make and receive calls over Wi-Fi when there is no network on their smartphones. The iPhone is no exception. T-Mobile has the Bobsled app for iPhone for making calls. This is fantastic not only when in low -service areas but also when travelling abroad. T-Mobile will release other apps soon for things like live TV, account management and visual voicemail.
For those thinking about making the jump, remember that T-Mobile is not an official carrier and things like the following may apply:
Also, AT&T offers customers a chance to request a device unlock for their iPhone. The main requirements are that the device is an AT&T iPhone and all contract and term commitments are satisfied before submitting a request. The carrier can take up to a week to process a request, and it “reserves the right to deny any unlock request that it concludes would result in an abuse of this policy or is part of an effort to defraud AT&T or its customers.” AT&T further said it could “alter this unlocking policy at its discretion without advance notice.”
HP’s Spectre One comes with accessories that look and act almost identical to Apple counterparts including the wireless keyboard, trackpad and mouse. The screen looks like a Cinema Display with HP pasted over the Apple. The only difference is the back (which few will see).
Perhaps manufacturers are learning the wrong lesson from Samsung. Although Engadget did not notice (or mention) any resemblance beyond the “Magic Trackpad style,” just about every commenter did. Update: Engadget Editor Tim Stevens says it was too obvious to mention:
