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7,263 'iPhone' stories November 2008 - March 2015
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Introduced in 2007 by Steve Jobs, iPhone is Apple's flagship iOS device and easily its most popular product around the world. The iPhone runs iOS and includes a large collection of mobile apps through the App Store.

iPhone 9to5Mac

Introduced in 2007 by Steve Jobs, iPhone is Apple’s flagship iOS device and easily its most popular product around the world. Software wise, it runs iOS and includes a large collection of mobile apps through the App Store.

Table of contents

Since its introduction, Apple has released at least one new phone every single year. In recent years, that has typically been in the fall. iPhones are sold through multiple retail channels including Apple Stores, cellular stores, Best Buy, and other major electronic retailers. iPhones can be bought with a single up front payment, financed through the iPhone Upgrade Program, or financed through a cellular carrier.

Apple’s smartphone has become much more than just a phone since its debut. The iPhone can act as your primary camera, music player, GPS device, email client, mobile banking system, messaging device, movie player, and much more.

Current Lineup for 2019:

Discontinued Models:

Read below for all of our coverage

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Atari’s new gamified fitness app lets you unlock classic arcade games by working out

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Mar 19 2015 - 8:27 am PT
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Atari is releasing a new fitness app today called Atari Fit that lets users unlock classic Atari arcade games by working out.

The app acts as a personal trainer of sorts with over 100 exercises and fitness routines as well as integration with Apple’s Health app and fitness tracking wearables like Fitbit and Jawbone.

It also has a few interesting gaming features including multiplayer, online leaderboards, and the ability unlock classic Atari games like Pong, Super Breakout, and Centipede:

Multiplayer – Play with friends all over the world anytime. Join a team and workout together or race against each other. Track your stats as a group and encourage each other to workout. Compete to become the fittest team of gamers worldwide!

In addition to unlocking games using points earned by working out, Atari is teaming up with Walgreens to offer Walgreens Balance Rewards loyalty program points as in-game rewards.

The Atari Fit iPhone app is available for free on the App Store.

ResearchKit may go beyond individual studies, open up era of ‘open-source’ medical research

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Mar 19 2015 - 6:22 am PT
5 Comments
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We’ve already seen the potential of Apple’s ResearchKit platform to sign up large numbers of participants to medical studies in an incredibly short time, but a reported conversation between the founder of an open science non-profit and an Apple VP suggests that the potential goes far beyond this.

Fusion, in an extensive profile, reports that Apple may be intending to collect anonymised health data in a central database accessible to medical researchers around the world, enabling each to benefit from that shared data to forward their own studies. The vision was initially put forward at a conference back in September, long before ResearchKit was announced, by Stephen Friend, the founder of Seattle-based Sage Bionetworks, a nonprofit that champions open science and data sharing.

“Imagine ten trials, several thousand patients. Here you have genetic information, and you have what drugs they took, how they did. Put that up in the cloud, and you have a place where people can go and query it, [where] they can make discoveries.” In this scenario, Friend said, patients would be able to control who could access their information, and for which purposes. But their health data would be effectively open-sourced.

Apple reportedly took an immediate interest in the idea … 
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Apple seeds Safari 7.1.5 and 6.2.5 betas to developers for Mavericks and Mountain Lion

Avatar for Mar 18 2015 - 3:01 pm PT
6 Comments

Apple today has released a pair of Safari betas for earlier version of OS X. Safari 7.1.5 beta for OS X Mavericks and version 6.2.5 beta for OS X Mountain Lion are both available on the Mac Developer Center for registered developers. Safari 8.0.5, which includes the same upgrades as the Mavericks and Mountain Lion versions, is not available as a separate download, but it comes as part of the OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 developer and public betas. Here are the focus areas for these Safari betas:


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How-To: Transfer, edit, and share DSLR or point-and-shoot photos using your iPhone or iPad

Avatar for Jeremy Horwitz Mar 18 2015 - 12:25 pm PT
21 Comments

Apple’s iPhones became Flickr’s most popular camera phones in 2008 and most popular cameras overall soon thereafter, but even now, iPhones constitute only 9.6% of the photo-sharing site’s userbase. Despite the iPhone’s undeniable popularity, over 90% of photographers are using other cameras: Canon has a 13.4% share, Nikon 9.3%, Samsung 5.6%, and Sony 4.2%, with tons of other brands following close behind. While the cameras in phones continue to improve every year, they’re not the best tools for photography — they’re just the ones most people carry with them all the time.

If you shoot photos with a DSLR or point-and-shoot camera, you probably aren’t sending images directly to the Internet from the camera itself. You probably come back home, transfer your photos to your computer, then edit and share them with Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom or one of Apple’s three photo management apps — iPhoto, Aperture, or the beta version of Photos.

For around $30, your iPhone or iPad can change the way you shoot, edit, and share photos. Using the right accessories and apps, you can easily publish DSLR-quality photos a minute after snapping them. I’ve been doing this for years, and it works incredibly well; today, it’s actually better than at any time in the past, thanks to recent iPhone and iPad hardware improvements. This new How-To guide will walk you through everything you’ll need to know to use your iPhone or iPad as a photo editing and sharing station, looking at photo transferring accessories, editing software, and sharing options…


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Apple Store retail plan for Watch: 15 min. appointments, 10+ try-on stations, Experts for Edition

Avatar for Mark Gurman Mar 18 2015 - 11:22 am PT
34 Comments
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Apple will introduce several major initiatives to ready its retail stores for the Apple Watch’s launch in April, according to sources briefed on the upcoming changes. Starting on April 10th, Apple will allocate 15 minutes per customer for in-store try-on appointments, using 10 or more try-on stations to manage what’s expected to be a steady flow of customers interested in having hands-on time with the Watch. While customers will not necessarily be required to have an appointment, they will be time-limited and guided during the hands-on experience. Additionally, they will be given the opportunity to place a reservation at the time of try-on for a particular model, and make a follow-up appointment to pick the watch up during the April 24th launch date. Stores will also have launch day stock for walk-in appointments.


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Black Box device can brute-force iOS 8.1 PINs, bypassing repeated attempts lockout & data-wipe

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Mar 18 2015 - 4:51 am PT
12 Comments

Security company MDSec has been testing a black box device that manages to gain access to iPhones running up to iOS 8.1 by brute-forcing the passcode over a USB connection to simulate keypad entry. Normally, trying every possible 4-digit PIN would be prevented by automated lockout or data wipe after ten incorrect attempts, but the IP Box manages to bypass this.

The IP Box is able to bypass this restriction by connecting directly to the iPhone’s power source and aggressively cutting the power after each failed PIN attempt, but before the attempt has been synchronized to flash memory.

After each attempt, it measures light levels on the screen to see whether it got access to the homescreen; if not, it restarts the phone fast enough that the PIN counter doesn’t get updated.

It’s not a very practical means of attack in the real world. Restarting the phone after every single attempt means that testing every single PIN would take around 111 hours, and thus take an average of around 55 hours to get access. You need physical access to the phone for those 55 hours, and need to have stopped it from gaining any kind of network access in that time to prevent the owner using Find My iPhone to remotely wipe it. But it’s an interesting proof of concept.

Apple appears to have fixed the vulnerability in iOS 8.1.1, as companies selling the kit note that it is not compatible with this version of iOS.

Although this isn’t something to worry about, it’s still good practice to use a complex passcode–not a great hardship on a recent iPhone, where you’ll be using Touch ID most of the time. Just go into Settings > Touch ID & Passcode and slide off the Simple Passcode switch.

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China’s gold consumption suggests Apple Watch Edition is aimed at China, says Om Malik

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Mar 17 2015 - 4:30 am PT
8 Comments

China’s voracious appetite for gold suggests that this might be the key market for the solid gold Apple Watch Edition, says former GigaOM founder Om Malik.

There is a love affair between the Chinese and gold jewelry. The gold consumption in that country is going through the roof. (In 2014, the worldwide consumption of gold fell and yet, China demand still stayed strong.) […]

Some believe that the Apple Watch Edition (the expensive kind) will find more takers in China than anywhere else in the world.

It has previously been suggested that it was Asia, and China in particular, which drove the successful decision to start offering iPhones, iPads and now the new MacBook in a gold color.

China is of course a huge market for Apple, the company’s revenues there rising from $12.7B in 2011 to almost $30B last year. Year-on-year revenue growth in China was 17% last year, more than double the growth in Europe and four times that of the Americas.

Apple last year announced plans to increase the number of Apple Stores in China from 15 to 40 in two years, six of them since opened. Retail head Angela Ahrendts listed an emphasis on the country as one of her three key goals.

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Apple cleared of infringing former Nokia patents, $100M claim thrown out

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Mar 17 2015 - 4:05 am PT
1 Comment

Apple has been cleared of infringing five wireless patents originally held by Nokia in its iPhones and iPads. The patents were later acquired by a subsidiary of Conversant Intellectual Property Management Inc, which sued Apple for $100M by calculating a per-device license fee. Apple argued that even if it had infringed the patents, which it denied, a fair license fee would be less than $1M.

Reuters reports that a federal jury in Texas took five hours to deliberate yesterday before finding in favor of Apple.

Had Conversant won, it’s possible that the majority of the revenue would have been paid to Microsoft and Nokia. In a complicated chain, Conversant obtained the patents when it acquired a company called Core Wireless, which had in turn bought them from Nokia–which had licensed them to Microsoft.

In its purchase of Core Wireless, Conversant agreed to return two-thirds of any revenue from licensing and litigating the patents back to Microsoft and Nokia, according to the documents. A Microsoft representative on Monday night could not confirm whether that agreement was still in force.

Update: Microsoft has since informed me that “Microsoft no longer has a financial stake in Core Wireless.”

Apple holds the unenviable record of having been sued by more patent trolls than any other company. It has a mixed record of success in these cases, Apple saying last year that it usually won on the merits of the cases it defended, but chose to settle some “for business purposes.”

Apple last month lost a case brought by Smartflash, and was ordered to pay over half a billion dollars in damages. Apple is appealing the award, while Smartflash is extending the proceedings to devices made since the lawsuit was originally filed.

In a separate ongoing patent dispute with Ericsson, the ITC has been asked to block the import of iPhones into the country.

Opinion: Understanding the extended period between the Apple Watch event and next month’s launch

Avatar for Zac Hall Mar 16 2015 - 11:05 am PT
38 Comments
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Christy Turlington Burns & Tim Cook

Apple has shown off the Apple Watch at a special event now on two occasions: first after the iPhone 6 last September, then after the new 12-inch MacBook last week. We know how the Apple Watch will look, how much it will cost, when we can buy it and for how much. Many developers are ready to ship apps for the Apple Watch, and we’re already seeing an accessory market for Apple’s wearable.

Since last week’s event, I’ve been thinking about why Apple might have chosen to have its second Apple Watch unveiling more than a month before people can actually buy the device. My conclusion? It’s complicated, but mostly necessary considering the complexity of actually buying the right watch.

Apple’s motivation is to ensure that you have an iPhone 5 or later before next month, and that you have the answer to a number of questions including how many millimeters your wrist measures if you plan to pre-order before trying on an Apple Watch. And because we know how major iPhone launches go with getting the exact model you want, pre-ordering will be the first opportunity to secure the Apple Watch of your choice or risk waiting even longer.
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Anonymously tracking phones through airport security cuts waiting time by a third

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Mar 13 2015 - 5:42 am PT
2 Comments

Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport says that anonymously tracking smartphones through airport security has enabled it to cut the average waiting time by a third.

The system, developed by Danish company Blip Systems, scans both WiFi and Bluetooth connections to look for MAC addresses of mobile devices passing through security. Counting the number of devices in each queue enables the system to estimate the length of the queue. The queue length is displayed to passengers in minutes, so they can choose which queue to join, and also used to help the airport allocate the right number of security personnel.

Blip says that it anonymizes this data, and only uses device counts. You might think iOS 8 users don’t have to take the company’s word for it since Apple introduced MAC address spoofing when scanning for networks, but the protection offered by this was last year shown to be rather limited.

The same system is used in a number of other airports around the world, but this is the first time it’s been used in the USA.

Via The Verge

ResearchKit did in 24 hours what would normally take 50 medical centers a year – Stanford University

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Mar 12 2015 - 4:36 am PT
15 Comments
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Stanford University said that 11,000 iPhone owners signed up for a heart health study using Apple’s newly-announced ResearchKit in the first 24 hours–completely unprecedented numbers.

“To get 10,000 people enrolled in a medical study normally, it would take a year and 50 medical centers around the country,” said Alan Yeung, medical director of Stanford Cardiovascular Health, speaking to Bloomberg.

Stanford is one of five academic centers that have developed apps that use the iPhone’s built-in accelerometers, gyroscopes and GPS to provide data which assists in medical research. There are, say researchers, both pros & cons to recruiting study participants through ResearchKit … 
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Apple adds 13 new Apple Pay retailers to website, bringing total to 58 merchants

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Mar 11 2015 - 4:32 am PT
3 Comments
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Apple has added 13 new retailers to its Apple Pay site, bringing the new total to 58 merchants. The biggest name wasn’t a surprise: Tim Cook gave a shout-out to Coca-Cola vending machines during Monday’s Spring Forward event, with 40,000 machines supported today, and a further 60,000 being upgraded by the end of the year … 
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Opinion: Apple’s Spring Forward event signals huge changes ahead for Mac, iPad, Apple TV + Apple itself

Avatar for Jeremy Horwitz Mar 10 2015 - 1:02 pm PT
53 Comments

Although many people expected that Apple’s Spring Forward event would mostly focus on the Apple Watch, more than half of the event — notably, the first part — covered other topics. Collectively, there were so many interesting developments that their individual significance was somewhat lost, particularly given that long-awaited Watch pricing news wrapped up the event.

That’s why I wanted to reconsider what Spring Forward revealed about some of Apple’s non-Watch products. Some of the announcements signal that big changes are ahead for Apple’s Mac, iPad, and Apple TV product lines, as well as Apple itself. Read on for my thoughts, and add yours to the comments section below…


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USB-C cable gallery, compare to Lightning and Micro-USB, specs and Apple’s future

Avatar for Seth Weintraub Mar 10 2015 - 9:47 am PT
69 Comments
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Lightning vs. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Aukey-Hi-speed-Reversible-Connector-Supported/dp/B00RGNJXD4/ref=sr_1_1?amp;amp;qid=1421386415&amp;amp;sr=8-1&tag=thepartim-20&ie=UTF8&amp;amp;peasin=B00RGNJXD4&amp;amp;keywords=B00RGNJXD4&amp;amp;pebp=1421386732649">USB-C cable from Aukey</a>

We’ve been poring over Apple’s change to the 8.4mm by 2.6mm USB Type C standard since we got tipped the design of the new MacBook late last year. It is a big change for Apple and puts the future of longstanding technologies like Thunderbolt and MagSafe into questionable status.  Even Lightning seems a whole lot more vulnerable when an adapter that is marginally bigger, but has the whole industry behind it, shows up in Apple’s future flagship laptop.

Some quick, fun facts on USB Type C that make it pretty amazing:
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Game developers seek Apple Watch event spotlight as major companies ready apps

Avatar for Mark Gurman Mar 6 2015 - 4:30 pm PT
13 Comments
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Hundreds of iOS developers have been working with Apple in secret Cupertino-based sessions on apps for the Apple Watch, and now we’ve learned that this list includes game developers. According to two sources, multiple “mass market, casual” game developers have been in the running to show off light games on stage during Monday’s “Spring Forward” event in San Francisco. While Apple could end up not showcasing games next week, we’re still told that they are championing the idea of light weight gaming on the Apple Watch. As one source said, “the iOS gaming ecosystem will be well represented on the Apple Watch despite [the simplicity] of the Software Development Kit (SDK)…


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Apple reportedly invests in new $1.4 billion Japan Display LCD plant

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Mar 6 2015 - 10:16 am PT
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Reuters reports that Japan Display Inc, an Apple parts supplier, just announced plans to build a new $1.4 billion LCD plant that will reportedly help it become a primary supplier of smartphone displays to Apple.

The report also claims that Apple has invested in the plant, but didn’t disclose any financial details related to the investment:

The company did not name Apple, in line with its policy of not identifying clients. A person familiar with the matter said Apple would also invest an unspecified amount in the plant, which would further the Japanese screen maker’s aim of becoming the primary supplier of high-tech screens for iPhones.

The news follows reports last month that Apple was considering such an investment in the new factory somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.7 billion.

The new plant will reportedly start production in 2016 and increase Japan Display’s LCD capacity by 20 percent.

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CNN app gets a Notification Center widget, sports section on iOS

Avatar for Mark Gurman Mar 5 2015 - 3:29 pm PT
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CNN today pushed out an update to its iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch application with a pair of features that some users will find significant: a Today widget for iOS 8’s Notification Center and a sports section. The widget is populated with the latest top stories from CNN, while the sports section sources its content from Bleacher Report, which has a dedicated App Store app (iPhone, iPad). CNN also says this version includes various bug fixes, like every app update that has come before it.


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Apple plans relaunched Beats streaming music service for WWDC, skipping March event; Apple TV still coming

Avatar for Mark Gurman Mar 5 2015 - 10:26 am PT
38 Comments
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Apple won’t take the wraps off of its upcoming Beats-based music streaming service at its March 9 “Spring Forward” event, according to music industry sources briefed on the launch timeline. Instead, Apple currently plans to introduce the service, at least in beta form, at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in early June. The WWDC keynote likely takes place on Monday, June 8th, and that’s the event where the debut will occur. The new iTunes music streaming service is based on technology acquired from Beats Music, including curated playlists, cloud-based libraries, and offerings customized to the musical tastes of individual users. The service will be priced as high as $7.99 per month, which is less expensive than current $9.99 pricing for Beats Music, Spotify, and Rdio…


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Apple Watch predicted to take 55% of the 2015 global smartwatch market with 15.4M units shipped

Avatar for Zac Hall Mar 5 2015 - 9:56 am PT
14 Comments
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Research firm Strategy Analytics released its latest report today forecasting global Apple Watch sales and smartwatch marketshare for 2015. The firm’s predictions put Apple’s anticipated global smartwatch marketshare at more than half with 54.8% reached in 2015. Notably, that forecasted percentage is versus all other smartwatches combined competing with the Apple Watch.

While the report predicts that Apple will take the overwhelming majority of smartwatch sales this year, it predicts a relatively conservative number of units shipped globally in 2015 at 15.4 million. That forecast still beats the collective “other” group with a 12.7 million units shipped globally predicted.

To be clear, the firm is predicting that the as-of-yet unreleased Apple Watch will outsell the existing smartwatch market in 2015…


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Next iPhone rumored to (unsurprisingly) feature 2 GB of RAM, Force Touch, Apple SIM

Avatar for Benjamin Mayo Mar 4 2015 - 10:07 am PT
17 Comments
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AppleInsider is reporting that it has received information about the next-generation iPhone hardware. It claims that the next iPhone, generally expected to be a ‘6s’ style device (meaning that it will feature internal changes but the external chassis will be the same as the 6), will feature 2 GB of RAM, just like the A8X in the iPad Air 2. It also says that Apple is considering inclusion of an Apple SIM as standard, just like the cellular iPads.

For some context, the iPhone first shipped with 1 GB of RAM in 2012 with the iPhone 5. This means a RAM jump is now about ‘due’, with many expecting an increase last year to help accommodate the increased asset size required by the Retina HD iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

Although 9to5Mac cannot directly backup the claims, the advancements feel like an obvious progression for the device given Apple’s inclusion of 2 GB of RAM in the iPad Air 2 as well as the introduction of the Apple SIM last fall. Note also that Apple has doubled RAM every few generations of iPhone, and given that many were expecting an increase last cycle, it is not surprising to see it rumored for the ‘iPhone 6s’, which is likely to feature new and improved internals like other ‘tock’ years.


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RadPad now lets you easily split rent with roommates using Apple Pay

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Mar 4 2015 - 7:07 am PT
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RadPad, an app we told you about back in November when it launched as one the first to let you pay rent using Apple Pay, now lets you easily split rent with roommates.

Pay with RadPad Roommates makes it really, really easy for renters who have roommates to pay their rent together, using their own credit, debit card or Apple Pay… A roommate signs up and invites their other roommates to pay rent together: RadPad sends invites to each roommate, via text and email. The roommate receives the invite, accepts it and then enters in their credit or debit card or elects to use Apple Pay. That’s it!

You’ll also be able to see when your roommates are slacking with status information on their half of the rent.  The app allows up to four roommates to split the rent and sends a check to the landlord on behalf of the tenants. You can even setup rent payments to your landlord through the app if they aren’t using RadPad.

RadPad tells us it’s expecting to process $14M in annual rents this year after launching in October.

The RadPad app is available on the App Store for free.

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Waze app to get AMBER alerts, help users look out for missing & abducted children

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Mar 4 2015 - 5:48 am PT
3 Comments

Waze, the free crowdsourced navigation and traffic app, is to get AMBER alerts in the U.S., helping users look out for missing and abducted children. You’ll only see alerts for children in your local area, and for safety reasons details will only appear once your vehicle has been stationary for at least ten seconds.

AMBER alerts are created by law enforcement agencies to quickly alert members of the public to children who have been reported missing or are believed to have been abducted. Waze says the app will scan for new alerts every ten minutes, though once you’ve dismissed an alert it won’t be shown again for a further week.

Alerts will display all the information available, which will normally include a photo of the child, their name, age, description, where they were last seen, what clothing they were wearing and details of any vehicle known or believed to have been involved.

The update is expected to roll out shortly in the U.S. only. Waze is a free download from iTunes. It was last updated in December, with an iOS widget and improved traffic data.

Facebook added AMBER alerts to its mobile apps in January.