iOS

The iOS 9 GM includes a new feature for Siri to help it better recognize your voice when using the automatic ‘Hey Siri’ activation feature. On all current iPhones, you can activate Siri by saying ‘Hey Siri’ when the device is plugged in to power. On the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, the ‘Hey Siri’ activation feature works all the time, plugged in or not, thanks to new dedicated components inside the latest iPhones meaning it can be ‘always on’.

This makes the addition of voice training particularly relevant. In previous OS versions, Hey Siri would just work if you toggled a switch in Settings. With the GM, the OS now prompts you to go through a few training exercises before the feature will be enabled. Some readers have claimed that this feature is like Voice ID, so that Hey Siri function will only respond when the true owner of the phone speaks to it. Whilst this would be a nice feature, we cannot reproduce this and believe it is only meant to improve general detection accuracy.

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One of the novel features Apple added to the iPhone 6s to distinguish it from its predecessor was Live Photos, where every photo you take is effectively a very brief video, capturing the movement and sound as the photo was taken. The feature is unique to the 6s as it’s activated by a 3D Touch. Today, we’ve learned a little more about the simple yet clever technology behind it.

As you may already know, existing iPhones start taking photos the moment you open the app. This is how Apple provides the camera with the ability to take photos instantly, with none of the delay (‘shutter lag’) you see with some digital cameras. The camera has already taken and temporarily stored a whole bunch of photos, and it simply keeps the last one taken as you press the button and discards the rest … 
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In a new interview posted in the Wall Street Journal, Apple’s Jony Ive and Hermes’ artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas discuss Apple’s first partnership with a luxury fashion brand to create branded Apple Watch models. To recap, on Wednesday, Apple announced Apple Watch Hermes, a collection of watches code signed with the renowned Paris designer. The watches will be available in October.

Ive says the partnership is unprecedented and began before the Apple Watch was even announced to the public, breaking traditional Apple secrecy.

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Apple Pay in the UK is slowly rounding up all the major banks and getting them onboard. Following the addition of HSBC and First Direct last month, Halifax and Lloyds customers can now use Apple Pay from today. The service is still rolling out so if your cards don’t activate immediately don’t fret. Check again in a few hours.

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Well-known iOS hacker “iH8snow” published a new YouTube video last night showing off the first untethered jailbreak for the as-of-yet-unreleased iOS 9. The modified iPhone 5 is running the GM build of the software, which will be released to the public on Wednesday.

iH8sn0w says that the jailbreak shown in the video, is “dirty and hacky,” but nonetheless a “proper jailbreak,” which he confirmed also works on the iOS 9.1 beta, though that’s not shown in the video.

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iOS 9.0 may not yet be available to the public, but Apple is already seeding the next version of the mobile operating system to testers. Yesterday developers got their hands on the first version of iOS 9.1, and today the same has been made available for users on the public iOS beta.

To download the new build, which includes support for new emoji characters, users can head over to the Apple Beta website and enroll their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. After a reboot, iOS 9.1 should show up under the Software Update tab in the Settings app.

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With the introduction of the iPhone 6s lineup and the new iPhone Upgrade Program, Apple’s AppleCare+ extended warranty program gets a slight price increase to $129 from the previous $99 price point.
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Code/Mobile, Recode’s annual mobile technology conference, has become the norm for someone from Apple to appear. Last year, Apple VP Greg Joswiak took to the conference stage. This year, for the first time, Code/Mobile will feature Apple Pay head Jennifer Bailey. Bailey was most recently seen publicly on stage at WWDC and interviewed on CNBC.

The conference usually takes the form of a Q/A interview, so no doubt Bailey will be quizzed by the Recode hosts on the uptake of Apple Pay as well as new features in iOS 9 like loyalty cards and the rebranding of Passbook as ‘Wallet’.

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Apple didn’t mention the new iPhone 6s battery life as part of the keynote and there may be a reason for that. In the promo video, Apple shows a shot of the iPhone 6s internals. As it happens, this render is extremely detailed and you can actually make out the battery specifications inscribed onto the battery. Its rated at 1715mAh, which is down from the 1810mAH packed into the previous iPhone 6.

It seems that Apple has had to shrink the battery to make space for new features like the 3D Touch screen and the Taptic Engine. However, according to Apple’s technical specifications, it shouldn’t make a difference. The battery life estimates for the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6 are identical …

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As it announced last month, the popular drawing app Paper is now available for the iPhone. Since the app’s initial release in 2012, it has been available exclusively on iPad, but its developers, FiftyThree, say that the experience is just as beautiful and seamless to use on the iPhone as it is on the iPad.

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On Apple’s public specs page, it says that the new Apple TV includes an A8 chip and that’s about it in terms of the bundled SoC. However, Apple’s developer documentation goes into more detail specifically listing the hardware as having 2 GB RAM (via Steve Troughton-Smith). This means the internals are actually better than the A8 in the iPhone 6 and latest-generation iPod touch, which only have 1 GB of RAM.

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With Apple’s introduction of its new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus going on sale later this month, the company will discontinue the gold color option for the previous generation iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 5s.
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Announced earlier in the year, it is now official: Discover bank cards will be supported by Apple Pay from September 16th, the same day as iOS 9 is released. Discover joins Visa and MasterCard in the US as supporting card types for Apple’s contactless payments service.

To sweeten the deal, Discover is even offering a special cashback promotion to celebrate the addition of Apple Pay. You can get 10% cashback on up to $10,000 of in-store purchases until the end of the year, as long as those transactions were using Apple Pay.

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The new Apple TV comes in 32 GB and 64 GB flavours, but Apple doesn’t want you using all that space up too quickly. Developers have to comply to strict rules about how their apps can use local storage. For starters, the app binaries themselves cannot exceed 200 megabytes of static resources: any resources required over that cap must be available to download on-demand and are only cached for a limited time. This means that games are going to have to really reorganize their code to segment their gigabyte blogs into small level chunks.

In addition, Apple says the Apple TV has no app-accessible persistent local storage. This means that all data must also reside in iCloud, such that if the system decides to delete the app data, it can be redownloaded.

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With iOS 9 set to release on September 16th, Apple has released the final beta build, the Golden Master, to developers. Along with this beta is an all new preview build of iOS 9.1. The exact changes in iOS 9.1 aren’t yet known, but we’ll keep this post updated with any changes we find in either build.

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The iPhone Upgrade Program is a new program that gives you a new iPhone every year, with AppleCare+ for just $32 a month for two years. Keeping paying and you keep getting new phones and service coverage. This option is available in US Apple Stores to start with more countries coming soon.

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Apple has announced the new powerful Apple TV will be backed up by a huge app library from the developer community. They have announced many on stage today, and many more will be announced very shortly as the entire community gets onboard.

The new hardware is much more powerful than the previous generation. Coupled with an App Store, it creates a whole new opportunity for developers and all new user experiences for customers on the TV.

Here’s a complete gallery of all Apple TV apps announced so far:

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9to5Mac has been reporting that Apple was planning some cosmetic updates to the Apple Watch, including new Sport bands and a gold aluminum Apple Watch Sport, for some time. A few hours ahead of Apple’s event, an image has appeared on Twitter depicting what appears to be a Product (RED) Apple Watch Sport band. To date, Apple has offered Apple Watch Sport bands in white, black, green, blue and pink.

Although Apple is supportive of the charity, the Apple Watch notably debuted without any Product (RED) affiliation. This appears to be changing today …

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As expected, the Apple Store has gone down ahead of Apple’s Hey Siri event later today at 10 AM PST. Although we don’t expect the iPhone, iPad Pro or Apple TV to be available to buy today, the site will return with information about the new products after the presentation is over. There is a chance that Apple’s updates to Apple Watch — new band colors and a new gold Sport watch — may be available immediately.

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