In the latest drone flyover video of Apple’s under-construction Campus 2, this one sent in by Matthew Roberts, we get a close-up look at progress made in recent weeks on the new Apple headquarters set to open early next year.
Ford today announced that its first vehicle to offer support for Apple’s iPhone-connected, in-dash CarPlay system will be the 2017 Escape going on sale in May.
All the way back in May, Google announced that its new Google Music “All Access” service will be arriving on iOS in the coming “weeks.” However, months have gone by and nothing has launched for iOS. A report last month indicated that the app would arrive at the end of October, and @evleaks has now claimed that the launch is “imminent.” If the app does indeed arrive soon, you can expect full coverage on 9to5.
When we heard late last month that Samsung planned to open Apple-style ‘store-in-store’ locations within Best Buy retail stores it was still only rumor. Today Samsung and Best Buy have made things official for its plans to roll out 1,400 “Samsung Experience Shops” in Best Buy retail stores across the United States. Best Buy plans to have the store within a store Samsung shops up and running by the summer with 900 scheduled to open by May:
The image above shows what a typical Samsung Experience Shop inside Best Buy will look like next to a current Apple store-in-store location.
9to5Mac first posted the back and front plates for what is now thought to be the next-generation iPhone in May, and then we immediately published several more high-resolution images comparing the black and white versions of the next-generation iPhone’s back. Since then, many more casings and schematics have shown up with the same design. It is not clear if these are all coming out of the Foxconn plant or if these are all copycats of the original leaks.
Today, KitGuru offers a few more “early iPhone” images that it recently spotted. A slew of full length, side view, comparison, and connector shots are available below—check ’em out:
Run by former Nokia and Fossil execs, and previously available in beta for Android devices only, Meta Watch officially launched its smartwatch platform today that interfaces with iOS—the first of its kind to utilize the low energy Bluetooth 4.0 technology. The watch works with an iOS app for customizing which notifications will pop up on its display. Notifications consist of the usual phone calls and messaging, but developers have access to an API that will allow them to send almost anything to the device.
The company previously had issues getting the platform to run smoothly due to limitations of iOS. However, thanks to Bluetooth 4.0, the device featuring a 96-by-96-pixel LCD display is now slated to ship sometime this month for $199. The Meta Watch is clearly still more of a development kit than an end-user product at this point, but with six fully programmable buttons, a 3-axis accelerometer, vibrating motor, ambient light sensor, and of course Bluetooth 4.0, there is a ton that devs will be able to do with the device.
According to Taiwanese PC manufacturers (via DigiTimes), Intel is preparing to release the first round of 22nm Ivy Bridge desktop, notebook, and ultrabook CPUs around April, 8 2012. Seventeen models are slated to be launched, but some desktop and notebook CPUs will likely replace current CPU options in next-generation iMacs and Macbooks.
The 3820QM and 3720QM i7 CPUs, detailed by DigiTimes, are candidates for a next-gen MacBook Pro. Meanwhile, quad-core Core i7 and Core i5 desktop models could land in a future iMac. Ultrabook CPUs, possibly headed to future MacBook-air-like devices are scheduled for later in the year (most likely May).
A few weeks back, a leaked roadmap for Intel’s upcoming Ivy Bridge mobile CPU lineup gave us a look into the new standard voltage M-series and ultra low voltage U-series lineups. The document shows the CPUs will probably make their way into MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs, and will most likely be available to OEMs sometime in April or May 2012. The document leaked days after a report claimed Ivy Bridge desktop processors would roll out to partners sometime in the second quarter of 2012.
The new Ivy Bridge lineup marks a significant performance increase over previous Sandy Bridge models found in current Macs. According to 3DMark Vantage GPU benchmark from Intel, there is an average 199 percent improvement in graphic intensive applications, and 25 percent overall better performance over Sandy Bridge CPUs. Improved power consumption could lead to increased battery life, while the lineup will also include OpenCl 1.1 support and DirectX 11 for more than 30 percent faster graphics performance. They could also support 4K video.
