iPad (2021)

Development team FiftyThree has announced that its popular drawing app, Paper, will be available for the iPhone soon. Since its release in 2012, the application has been exclusive to the iPad.

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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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Apple today announced that it will be holding its annual music festival across 10 days during the month of September in London. Previously known as the iTunes Festival, this year’s show is known as the “Apple Music Festival” in reference the recently launched Apple Music service. It is also notably shorter than the typical 30 days of concerts. Pharrell Williams, One Direction, Florence + The Machine and Disclosure will be the headlining acts at this year’s festival, which takes place from September 19th to September 28th.

Apple’s Eddy Cue in addition to the main artists have commented on the announcement:

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Apple plans to hold one of its annual fall media events on Wednesday, September 9th to introduce the new iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus with Force Touch, and after many fits and starts, it appears that the long-awaited next-generation Apple TV will also be unveiled. We’ve been reporting on this upcoming model since 2014, as Apple has been planning to update its set-top-box with support for an App Store for quite some time.

Earlier this year, Apple had locked in a June WWDC debut for both the new Apple TV hardware and software upgrades, but the company ultimately decided to delay the introduction until the fall. While some had speculated that the announcement was pushed back due to a lack of content deals, we are told that the delay was internally attributed to a concern over compromising iOS 9 engineering resources, as the latest OS release is focused at least as much on polish as on new features.

Why would the new Apple TV potentially take away resources from iOS 9? According to sources, this new Apple TV model, codenamed J34, will be the first model to run a full-blown iOS core. Specifically, the new Apple TV operating system will be a TV-optimized version of iOS 9. In addition to the new hardware inside, running iOS 9 will give the new Apple TV a series of benefits over the current model. Below, we explore what users can expect from Apple’s next-generation living room product.

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In this week’s episode of The Logic Pros, we are taking a hands-on look at Moog’s Sub Phatty synthesizer to see how it stacks up against some of its much more affordable virtual counterparts.

Moog instruments have been used on many of the most popular and historic records over the years, having become as legendary in their own right in the process. The company is widely considered to be one of, if not the premiere synth makers on the planet. Producing the fattest sounding oscillators and filters around since the late 60’s, Moog’s instruments certainly come at a premium, and there’s a good reason for it. In the past few years the company introduced a couple new synthesizers in its Phatty line, that brought Moog’s flagship features and famous ladder-style filter down to a fairly affordable price point. At just under $1,000, cheap certainly isn’t the word to use to describe Moog’s monophonic, all-analog Sub Phatty synthesizer. But it might be the closet thing to a Voyager you’ll get without seriously breaking the bank. 
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It appears plans for future Apple wireless accessories have (again) been spoiled by the FCC. According to a pair of filings that hit the organization’s website yesterday, Apple is preparing to soon debut new versions of its Bluetooth Magic Mouse and Wireless Keyboard. According to images indicating the FCC label location on the accessories, the new mouse will be called the “Magic Mouse 2.” As for the new wireless keyboard, there are no indications of a name change as of yet.

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Apple and Best Buy have agreed to begin selling both the standard AppleCare protection plan for Macs and the more premium AppleCare+ for iPhones, iPads, and the Apple Watch through Best Buy stores, according to sources. The plans call for Best Buy to begin offering the AppleCare plans in its stores at checkout around the week of September 14th, just ahead of the iPhone 6S launch. This will mark a notable expansion of the Apple and Best Buy relationship, and Best Buy will become one of the only retailers, aside from select U.S. carriers, to offer AppleCare outside of an Apple Store.

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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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Amid falling sales of the device, The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is working with more than 40 tech companies to make the iPad a more appealing work tool. Apple is reportedly working with officials from professionals in the business app market to train its own specialists to better sell towards workforces, which will lead to

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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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I love the Apple ecosystem. It’s not perfect, and the gap between it and the Google alternative isn’t as great as it used to be, but to my mind it’s still by far the best solution for anyone looking to have all their data and content available across both desktop and mobile devices.

But there’s one notable gap in my own use of the Apple system: books. Despite the fact that my iPad is my primary ebook reader, I still use the Kindle app and buy my books from Amazon rather than Apple … 
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Claimed 3D CAD images of the iPad mini 4 supports earlier reports that the upcoming device will adopt a very similar form factor to the iPad Air 2, getting the thickness down from 7.5mm to 6.1mm. A video (below) of the CAD images was posted by @onleaks, a source with a good track-record … 
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Update: iOS 9 beta 3 for public beta testers is also available.

Apple today released iOS 9 beta 5 for registered developers testing the new operating system ahead of its release this fall. The latest build comes two weeks and two days after the previous version, which included tweaked icons, the return of Home Sharing support, a new Handoff UI, a cleaner Apple Music experience, and changes to how Apple Pay can be activated on the lock screen. Headlining features in iOS 9 include an overhauled Notes app, transit directions in Maps, multitasking features on iPad, a News app, and much more. As Apple starts to fine tune these releases, changes between each build should slow down. We’ll explore the latest beta for any notable differences, and let us know if you spot any changes as well.
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In a video this week to retail store employees, AppleCare chief Tara Bunch has outlined some changes coming to the company’s AppleCare+ program for the iPhone and iPad. In the video, Bunch and an associate in charge of AppleCare+ say that the service will now become simpler to add for international customers. For example, if a Hong Kong resident travels to the United States, purchases an iPhone or iPad, and adds AppleCare+ to their purchase, their new device will become automatically registered with AppleCare+ in their home country…

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Like many other people right now, I’m in the midst of watching my house transform as a direct result of Marie Kondo’s best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. As the title suggests, the book powerfully explains how to properly keep any room tidy, in the process helping you resolve lingering issues in your life. Thanks to positive press, strong word of mouth, and surprisingly tangible results, Tidying Up is rapidly taking minimalism mainstream, bucking an age-old trend towards hoarding untold quantities of stuff and leaving it scattered around one’s living and working spaces.

As a long-time minimalist, it’s refreshing to see decluttering catching on. But Kondo’s KonMari system — keep only those items that “spark joy” and are actually being used, discarding everything else — has created a problem for tech-savvy readers. No matter how necessary they’ve become in our lives, Apple device chargers don’t “spark joy.” In Kondo terminology, their cables are untidy; particularly if you’ve purchased inexpensive third-party options, they’re not particularly nice to look at.

I knew this was a problem when my wife, inspired by Tidying Up, nearly tossed out the multi-iPad charger our family has used for years. Yes, the charger was creating visual clutter, but we needed it — or something better — to keep everyone’s iPads working. My hunt to find minimalist solutions to our daily charging needs inspired this article. Below, I’ll run through a few options that will help you tidy up your iPad, iPhone, iPod, Apple Watch, and Mac spaces, so you (and/or your significant other) can achieve minimalism without giving up your favorite devices…

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Apple has now flipped on support for Apple Pay to more than 40 additional banks and credit unions across the United States. The new banks join a steadily growing list of over 400 institutions across the country with active support for Apple’s mobile payment service. Apple Pay also recently debuted in the UK with 9 of the major banks supported so far. You can find the latest additions of US banks below:
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Update: Our winner has been announced! Congrats!

Congratulations to Jaime Marin—the winner of the Bushel Challenge! Jaime manages Apple devices for a mid-sized produce company that specializes in providing quality fruits and vegetables for their customers, 365 days of the year.  They’ve been able to utilize features from Bushel such as Wi-Fi configuration, app deployment, password policies, and more to streamline work processes for the team.

Thanks to all who participated in the Bushel Challenge—we hope you had a little fun along the way! While there’s only one lucky winner, everyone who participated can still manage up to three devices for free, for life. If you missed the Challenge, head on over to Bushel to learn more and get started for free today.

If you need to deploy iOS or OS X devices to your employees or organization, having cloud access to setup, deploy, and manage your fleet these days seems like a no-brainer. That’s why our go-to recommendation is Bushel, a super easy-to-use and slick web-based app that offers cloud access to deploying and managing Apple devices. The perfect supplement to Apple in the workspace, Bushel — created by JAMF Software — is a few steps ahead of the game. In this article, we walk you through how to use Bushel (which is free for up to 3 devices) to manage your fleet of Apple devices.

In special collaboration with 9to5Mac, Bushel is also offering a challenge to businesses: Try out Bushel and get entered to win free Bushel for life, as well as a free iOS device for your company.
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Apple’s iPad continues to lead the tablet market, according to new data from IDC, but its marketshare has dropped a few points year-over-year, and the overall market for tablets saw negative growth, based on units shipped globally. That’s according to second quarter 2015 unit shipments and marketshare over the same quarter a year ago, as Apple shipped 10.9 million units versus 13.3 million units during the second quarter of 2014. While the iPad continues to lead in the tablet space, IDC’s data shows Apple’s market share dropping nearly 3 points from 27.7% to 24.5% …
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