iPhone

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple is cutting component orders for the iPhone 5c by up to a third, reiterating the news that Apple is curtailing iPhone 5c production. This backs up a multitude of reports by industry analysts, which said that iPhone 5c demand is weaker than Apple’s initial expectations.

Apple told its Taiwanese assemblers Pegatron Corp. and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. that shipments of the iPhone 5C in the fourth quarter would be cut, the people said. Pegatron, which analysts say assembles two thirds of the iPhone 5Cs, was told orders would be cut by less than 20%, said a person familiar with the matter. Hon Hai, which assembles the remaining low-cost iPhones, was told orders would be cut by a third, said two people familiar with the matter.

In the past, Apple CEO Tim Cook has cautioned against supplier shipments analysis as an indicator of sales performance, saying that Apple sources components from multiple manufacturers. However, the sheer number of independent reports about cuts to iPhone 5c suggests there is some underlying truth to the story. On the flip side, iPhone 5s sales seem to be booming, doing better than predicted.

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Earlier today, Apple announced that it will be holding its fall event on October 22nd. The event will take place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California. However, like in some past years, Apple will hold a simultaneous event to cater to media not located in the United States.

For its September 10 iPhone event, Apple held simultaneous satellite streams in Berlin, Tokyo, and Beijing. For the upcoming event, the stream will be held in London, according to members of international media invited to the stream. The London-based event will begin at 6PM local time and it will be held at the Kings Place Hall. This hall fits a few hundred people.

It is likely that the London stream will also offer an opportunity for local journalists to try out the new devices. We’re expecting an iPad mini with Retina display, redesigned full-sized iPad, new Macs, and talk of OS X Mavericks, so there will be plenty in store for the demo area…

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In line with my report from earlier this month, Nike has taken the wraps off of its brand-new Fuel Band. The FuelBand is Nike’s fitness tracking device that is worn around the wrist, and it has been popular (including within Apple’s upper ranks). The new version, officially called Nike FuelBand SE, makes improvements to the design that focus on color, durability, and connectivity. As I reported, the new FuelBand is more durable, more water-resistant, and connects to devices via Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (LE) technology:

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Space Gray iPad mini 2 casing (via <a href="http://sonnydickson.com/2013/09/27/hands-on-with-the-ipad-mini-2-in-space-gray/">Sonny Dickson</a>)

One of the most exciting new features of the upcoming iPad mini successor is perhaps the long-rumored Retina display. Apple has been developing a Retina-version (Apple’s term for the crisper display found on iPhones, the larger iPads, and some MacBook Pros), but the company has been reluctant to ship it due to cost, hardware size, and battery-life concerns. Though for October 22nd, it sounds like Apple has an iPad mini with Retina display ready to go.

But, it could potentially have a very minor trade-off: some extra thickness and width that will likely not be noticeable to the human eye. Just like the the full-sized iPad went thicker (and heavier in that case) to accommodate the much higher-resolution Retina display, the iPad mini could slightly bulk up to fit the new display, according to Macotakara. At a conference in China, the website went hands-on with some purported cases for the next-generation iPad mini. These cases fit a device with a thickness of 7.5mm and width of of about 0.2mm wider than the current iPad mini…

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With no word from Apple on the breakdown of its record-breaking iPhone sales between 5s and 5c (and no word expected during the company’s earnings call either), everyone is posting their estimates.

First to the punch was Localytics, who used iPhone connections to mobile and web apps to come up with an estimate of three to one in favor of the 5s. KGI’s Mingchi Kuo disagreed, using supply chain analysis to put the figures closer to 50/50, and suggesting that, if anything, sales of the 5c might be slightly higher. Now we have Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (via AllThingsD) using consumer surveys to suggest that the 5s is outselling the 5c two-to-one … 
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You may recall we broke the story that Apple’s iPhone trade program, launched in the U.S. in August, was coming to the UK. It’s now launched – but you may not want to use it.

Apple says it will offer up to £175 for iPhone models in its UK stores. Apple offers up to $250 in its U.S.-based locations. The program allows a customer with an iPhone 3G or newer to receive a gift card with the trade-in-value for use towards a new iPhone. The new device must be activated in-store.

An online version, based on a different recycling firm, launched in the UK last year.

But for those who really don’t want the hassle of dealing with private sales, it’s at least an option to make that shiny new iPhone 5s a little cheaper …

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For the last few weeks, I’ve been testing out both the RAVPower Wireless Charger and the xRobot Power Bank, two unique takes on the conventional way to charge your devices. While both products come from the same family, their functionality couldn’t be farther apart. Let’s take a look how both worked.

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According to typically-reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities, Apple has a slew of new products in the works for 2014. The analyst has summarized his expectations for these new products in a new research note, and has also reaffirmed some of his previous claims for products in Apple’s pipeline for the rest of Fall 2013…

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Alongside iOS 7 came support for a new third-party accessory: game controllers. To use this feature, you need to both own an Apple-approved gamepad accessory and a compatible game from the App Store. We have seen leaks of MFI hardware from Logitech and other manufacturers, but nothing has yet hit the market.

As such, uptake for the new Game Controller APIs by developers has been slow as customers cannot yet take advantage of the feature. Today, the Unity framework announced on its blog that the newest version of its game engine surfaces inputs from these controllers natively in the SDK. Basically, Unity is offering a wrapper between Apple’s Objective-C API and Unity’s own game logic code.

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Apple today has changed its iPhone 5s shipping estimates in the United States (and other countries such as China, Canada, and Australia), to note that the phones will ship in 2-3 weeks. Previously, Apple said that phones would ship in October. The high-end of the new quoted time will put some phones in the range of shipping during the first week of November…

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Image: abcnews.com

KGI’s Mingchi Kuo, an analyst with a solid track-record, and the man who came closest (almost) to calling opening weekend sales of the iPhone, now believes Apple shipped ‘just’ 11.4M iPhone 5c handsets in September, rather than the 17M he had earlier forecast, reports Business Insider.

Kuo is now estimating Apple shipped 11.4 million 5Cs in the September quarter, a 33% drop from his original estimate. He also says he expects 5C sales to be just 10.4 million units for the December quarter, a 10% sequential drop.

This makes some sense of the rampant discounting seen on the 5C (which actually started at Walmart before launch), but doesn’t necessarily mean that iPhone sales as a whole are down … 
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iOS 7 has taken top billing in Pfeiffer Consulting’s annual Mobile OS User Experience Benchmarks, scoring just over 73 percent against 57 percent for Android and 47 percent for Windows Phone.

The study attempts to calculate an objective rating for the usability of a mobile OS by a typical, non-technical user by measuring four elements:

• Cognitive load
• Efficiency
• Customization
• User experience friction … 
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Home automation image: insideci.co.uk

There are a couple of analyst rumors doing the rounds at present that are best described as … questionable.

First, we have Brian White claim (via VentureBeat) that the key focus of the long-rumored iWatch is as a control for home automation systems.

As an Apple supplier, our contact offered insight into the “iWatch” and described this potential new device as much more than an extension of your iPhone but as a multi-purpose gateway in allowing consumers to control their home (i.e., heating/cooling, lights, audio, video, etc.)

You may recall that Mr White is a man who likes his remotes: he predicted back in April that the Apple HDTV (which he always claims is going to be released in the next quarter or two) would be controlled by an iRing … 
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Earlier this week, we reported on some details and photos of the one-off Leica camera designed by Apple’s Jony Ive and Marc Newson for the Product(RED) campaign. Leica originally shared some interesting tidbits about the functionality and development process of the camera, but now, Vanity Fair has published an extensive interview with Ive and Newson about the process. The report provides an interesting look into Apple PR’s process of organizing interviews of its executives:
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Image: redorbit.com

Evernote, Adobe, even Apple … just a few of the companies who have found their user data compromised by hackers in recent times. The possibility of a hacker being able to access one of your web accounts is worrying enough – but if you use the same email address and password for almost all the websites you use, the risk becomes huge.

The first thing a hacker does when they get hold of a list of usernames and passwords is to use automated software to fire them at a whole bunch of popular websites. That means your online security is only as good as the most vulnerable of the websites you visit. Not good.

The answer, of course, is to use a unique – and strong – password for each website you access. But that creates its own hassles. Strong passwords aren’t easily memorised. Sure, we can ask our browsers to store logins for us, but when you might use several different computers, an iPhone and an iPad, you’d have to login once from each device as soon as you chose the password so it gets stored before you forget it. Not very convenient.

Which is where password managers come in. When you see the instructions, it’ll look like a long process, but it in fact takes only 10-20 mins if you have two or three devices … 
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