iOS

While iOS 8 adoption was lagging behind last year’s release at just 15% before the official launch of the new iPhones on Friday, it’s now hovering at approximately 30% after record first weekend sales for the new iPhones. That stat, which comes from research and analytics firms Fiksu, Mixpanel, Appsee, & Chitika is below the almost 50% of users iOS 7 had this many days into launch last year.

Fiksu and Mixpanel also offered data on iPhone 6 vs iPhone 6 Plus adoption following the first weekend of sales. Both show that iPhone 6 is outpacing iPhone 6 Plus quite significantly after the first few days in customers’ hands, but it’s quite likely that could be due to a much tighter supply of iPhone 6 Plus.
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With the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus now officially in customers’ hands after a record opening weekend of iPhone sales, today we get a look at various benchmark results for the devices compared to the competition from AnandTech. Ahead of the site’s full technical review of the new iPhones, today it posted several benchmark results showing the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus win out by just about every metric.
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Apple has today announced that it sold 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus units in the first three days of sales. This includes the 4 million units sold in the first 24 hours of preorder sales. Apple’s newest iPhones have consistently been out of stock across the world, particularly the iPhone 6 Plus which is believed to have faced production issues, limiting the number of available devices for sale.

For comparison, Apple reported 9 million iPhone 5s and 5c sales in the first three days. This means the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus set a new record by over a million units. Apple is unlikely to give any more color regarding iPhone sales performance until its quarterly earnings call in October. As usual, Apple has opted to not share the breakdown of sales between the two new devices.

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Climate Week NYC is an annual conference about environmental sustainability. For 2014, there is a particular focus on lowering carbon emission across business, government and individuals. Apple CEO Tim Cook is scheduled to speak at the event, for the first time, at 12 PM EST. The livestream for the event is embedded below.

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Keeping your home screen organized can sometimes be a difficult task. Folders are great, but what if you’re looking for a deeper level of order? Luckily, we’ve seen a few glitches over time that have helped.

Hidden in iOS 8 is a glitch that allows you to nest folders within folders. This can be helpful if you’d like to sub-categorize apps within folders or hide various stock apps in iOS 8 (because there are a lot of them). Nesting folders on iOS 8 is easy to do and completely reversible…

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With iPhone 6 and 6 Plus officially going on sale today through Apple retail and partners, a lot of you on the hunt for a new case. We’ve been keeping track of announcements from the notable case makers and below put together our updated list of the nicest cases we’ve seen yet.

As we always do, we’ve stuck to the case manufacturers we know and trust (like Apple, Griffin, Otterbox, Grovemade, & Cygnett) and also included a wide selection of different products from hard to soft, plastic to aluminum, and wallets to gun-style holster cases. We’ll add more to the list below as we find more iPhone 6 and 6 Plus cases.

Head below for the full list:

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With the iPhone 6 Plus teardown complete, iFixit has commenced work on disassembling the iPhone 6. Unsurprisingly, the internals are similar to that of the 6 Plus, but adjusted to fit in a smaller space. Whereas the 6 Plus can contain a humongous 2915 mAH battery, the iPhone 6 has a 1810 mAH rated battery. This is still an improvement over the ~1500 mAh component in the iPhone 5s, but is roughly inline with relative increases in screen size. Apple’s official battery life tests indicate that the iPhone 6 performs roughly as well (in some instances, better) than the iPhone 5s in terms of battery longevity.

Elsewhere, images of the components is sort of de ja vu from all the component leaks leading up to the phone’s unveiling. The larger speaker assembly makes an appearance, first leaked in August. Like its larger brother, the NFC tag in the phone is a modified version of a standard component.

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Research firm Deepfield reports that Apple has for the first time relied on its own content delivery network for the distribution of iOS 8 to users (via WSJ):
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Apple has today released iAd Producer 5.0, the latest revision to its advertisement development environment. The headline addition for this update is support for iTunes Radio ad creation on desktop iTunes for Mac and Windows. This helps increase the possible reach of iAds to more eyeballs.

In addition, Apple has overhauled the coding aspects of the app (even though Apple amusingly claims you don’t “need any programming”) with code completion, syntax highlighting themes, inline syntax error warnings and more.

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So it’s finally here. Apple has released iOS 8 to the masses and as you would expect, a decent amount of features come along with that. We’ve previously detailed our favorite hidden features in iOS 8, but today we’re letting it all out. We’ve put together a list of our top 20 favorite iOS 8 features that you can look forward to after updating…

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Over 60% of 9to5Mac readers are on iOS 8 following yesterday’s public release, but that’s not surprisingly representative of all users. In fact, adoption of iOS 8 this year seems to be lagging further behind previous releases, especially last year’s record setting adoption rate for iOS 7. A quick look at the various advertisers and research firms tracking adoption through apps and device usage on their platforms shows iOS 8 is sitting at around half of what iOS 7 had during the same time period.
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According to TIME, U2’s partnership with Apple goes far beyond a free album in your iTunes library, much to the chagrin of some users. The group is reportedly working with Apple on a ‘secret project’ to rejuvenate digital music scales.

Details, however, are thin on the ground. Bono is quoted as saying he is developing a new music format that will somehow inspire consumers to buy complete albums once more. Without more information, it’s impossible to tell whether this is a silly pipe dream or an actual possibility. In the age of streaming music, the sales potential for individually bought songs is waning.

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As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Apple CEO Tim Cook has published a letter (below) on the company’s website expressing his commitment to the privacy and security of iOS and Mac users. Cook says that he will now issue annual updates on how user data is being handled, and the company will become even more transparent how its data collection tactics.

The executive also reiterated previous claims that neither he nor any part of the company has collaborated with governments to provide access to user information, noting again that Apple does not read users’ email, iMessages, and other communications. He also pointed out that there is no “profile” being created about user browsing habits or other data points that often interest advertisers.

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Apple is reportedly making its Activation Lock theft deterrent feature on by default in iOS 8 as it moves to please politicians attempting to require smartphone makers implement a remote “kill switch” to disable stolen devices. The news comes from Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón who praised Apple’s decision in a statement today.

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As part of iOS 8’s new Extensibility features, developers can now create app extensions throughout the system for sharing information and performing actions without actually launching their apps.

What this means for users is that the familiar action or share button (the upward arrow in a box) will now contain way more options than ever before. Remember when Apple added Facebook and Twitter sharing, for example directly to Safari and Photos on iOS? Starting with iOS 8, Apple is allowing all app makers to create similar buttons for sharing and actions. An example of an action (like copy or add to Reading List) shared by Apple at WWDC was native language translation directly in Safari using Bing Translate. Extension support also includes photo filters allowing photo editing apps that provide filter extensions to work inside of the native Photos app.

A year after introducing Touch ID, the secure fingerprint scanner first introduced with the iPhone 5s, Apple is also now allowing apps to take advantage of Touch ID for the first time. Touch ID users can now authenticate log-ins and more in supported apps using the secure fingerprint scanner. Below we’ll tell you about the latest apps already taking advantage of extensions and Touch ID support for iOS 8.

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