Tech Industry

The electronics repair site iFixit says that after it published its detailed teardown of the upcoming Apple TV hardware, Apple reached out to say that the company had violated the developer agreement and revoked the account that was used to obtain the device.

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We’re here at Box’s BoxWorks conference in San Francisco where Tim Cook is set to open the event with a fireside chat speaking with CEO Aaron Levie. The event is set to kick off shortly at Moscone Center with enterprise an obvious focus of the conversation. Aside from IBM and Cisco partnerships, Apple recently unveiled the 12.9-inch iPad Pro — coming in November — with optional Apple Pencil stylus and Smart Keyboard case, a new product that will certainly set its targets on enterprise customers. Cook’s talk today also marks the first since Apple announced its record 13 million iPhone sales during launch weekend of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. Check out the details below:
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Update: We’re hearing the date for the new HomeKit bridge is October 6th … In addition, Philips has officially confirmed that the old box will not be getting HomeKit compatibility in any form. However, it will continue to receive other software updates. You can buy the new HomeKit bridge from here.

Philips is finally ready to join the HomeKit ecosystem with a new box that will act as a bridge between the Apple HomeKit standard and its range of smart internet-connected lightbulbs. As shown in the images above, provided by sources, the new box looks very much like an Apple TV — a rounded rectangle ‘puck’ with indicator lights showing connectivity status.

The new HomeKit box will be available in October and connect existing Philips Hue accessories to the Apple platform. The bridge box will be sold standalone as an official ‘Works with Apple HomeKit’ compatible accessory as well as in new combo sets, also depicted above. These sets include new bulbs with a few improvements over the current models …

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Five years in the making and fifteen months since its last speaker release, all-in-one speaker maker Sonos is ready to unveil its next flagship speaker to the world with the all-new Play:5. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because Play:5 is the same name as the previous flagship home speaker from Sonos before today. With its name unchanged, then what exactly is different with the latest premium connected speaker from Sonos? For starters there’s a streamlined design with a new input method for controlling playback. Sonically, the new Play:5 delivers an array of sound with volume that easily fills a sizable room.

And alongside the new Play:5, Sonos is releasing a new speaker calibration tool called Trueplay. Using the built-in mic on your iPhone or iPad, intelligent algorithms, and a bouncy sci-fi tone, Trueplay enables Sonos speaker owners to enhance their speakers to deliver enhanced sound in the home regardless of speaker placement. Current Sonos customers will be happy to learn that Trueplay isn’t just coming to the latest connected speaker either…
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The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus launch today, with a pressure sensitive 3D Touch screen being touted as one of the phone’s flagship new features. Apps can take advantage of 3D Touch in many ways, such as using firm presses to reveal quick actions on the Home screen or use Peek and Pop metaphors to quickly preview content from within the UI.

Naturally, Apple has added 3D Touch features to its own apps. Try firmly pressing on a link from within Safari, or quickly call one of your Favorites by using the Phone app’s 3D Touch quick actions. You can even force press on the keyboard to enable trackpad cursor input. However, as is true in most cases, the most interesting innovations come from the third-party App Store community.

We’ve compiled a list of the best third-party apps that have updated to include 3D Touch features, so you can try them out on your brand new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus …

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Pixelmator today released the latest version of its photo editor for iPhone and iPad, Pixelmator version 2.1. The update brings full support for iPad iOS 9 multitasking, the ability to import and edit 8K resolution images, Open-In-Place document management across iOS and more.

As part of general improvements for iOS 9, such as adoption of Apple’s new system font (San Francisco) in the UI, the primary change is the addition of the iPad multitasking support. This means Pixelmator can now be docked to the side of the screen using Slide Over. On more recent iPads, you can also pop Pixelmator into Split View for true 2-app side-by-side multitasking.

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Ahead of the official launch on Friday, Apple has now sold out out of all iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus on Apple.com in the US and worldwide, twelve launch countries in total. The earliest delivery quote you can now get for a new iPhone is September 29th. The iPhone 6S Plus has been sold out for about a week now and now the 6s has followed suit, four days ahead of release.

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In Belgium, Apple has opened its first ‘next-gen’ redesigned Apple Store in Brussels. The store features huge glass panes that curve around the exterior. The store has also reduced its reliance on backlit screen panels. Instead, Apple is relying on a single huge screen that covers one wall which will serve many purposes, including retail training and product marketing.

Inside, Apple has installed two rows of plant pots with real trees growing inside the store. Even more incredibly, the product tables (made of fine redwood) are actually motion sensitive with power outlets revolving into view when it detects people are nearby. Reader Franklin Schrans has sent in a video showing the cool moving tables in action …

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According to internal Google documents that 9to5Google has obtained, huge updates to the Chromecast platform — in almost every respect — are just around the corner. The long-rumored 2nd generation Chromecast hardware is set to debut at Google’s event later this month with several brand new features, including “Chromecast Audio,” Spotify support (finally!), a brand new Chromecast companion app, and more. Here’s a roundup of everything we’ve learned so far…
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While Apple’s new Move to iOS app appeared to be the company’s first ever Android app, Phandroid did some digging around in the code to discover that it in fact appears to be just a rebadged third-party app called Copy My Data.

If we take a look under the hood of Apple’s Move to iOS app, we see the […] android:name is still set to android:name=”com.mediamushroom.copymydata”. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The two applications share a vast majority of code and functionality. In fact, all of the com.mediamushroom.copymydata strings were left inside Apple’s rebranded version. Essentially, the only differences between the two apps are Apple’s artwork being added, the inclusion of Apple’s licensing agreements, and Media Mushroom’s UI elements being removed. That’s really it.

Apple thus appears to have simply licensed an existing app, rather than creating its first Android app – meaning that the Apple Music app expected to makes its way across to Android sometime this fall may be the first Apple-coded app on the rival smartphone platform … 
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Having previously challenged Apple’s iPads and Apple TVs with rivals called Fire and Fire TV, Amazon today debuted a series of new Fire tablets and Fire TV media streamers at remarkably aggressive price points. Led by the new $49.99 7″ Fire tablet, the Fire tablets aim to dramatically undercut iPads on price, while the $99.99 4K Fire TV and its siblings were designed to leapfrog new and old Apple TVs with specific features…
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Update: Now at over 30,000 1-star reviews:

Yo Tim, what's the customer sat on the Move to iOS app http://t.co/aFeOtup4f1 pic.twitter.com/ebytmXG1nt

— Benjamin Mayo (@bzamayo) September 27, 2015

Apple launched its ‘Move to iOS’ Android app yesterday as part of the iOS 9 launch, which streamlines the process of migrating data and apps from an Android phone to an iPhone. Just hours after launch however, Android users are not taking well to Apple’s first Android app (if you discount Beats Music, which existed before Apple acquired them). The app has accrued over 2700 1-star ratings in the few hours it has been available, with a less-than-spectacular 1.9 star average rating.

Very few of the commenters seemed to have actually used the app to migrate data to an iPhone and are instead using the reviews section to vent their frustration at Apple in general. The reviews are dominated by Android users complaining about iPhone battery life, overpriced Apple Watches, ‘iSheep’ and more …

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Update: LiquidSkin are currently selling a great screen protector for only $0.50 for both iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. Add these to your cart and use the following promo codes:

• iPhone 6s LiquidSkin Screen Protector — use code YTETINAX at checkout
• iPhone 6s Plus LiquidSkin Screen Protector — use code TQLPTKZZ at checkout

The 3D-Touch pressure sensitive features in the new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus is invisible to the eye but  — at some level — its based off sensors in the screen that detect levels of pressure. This led some people to worry if plastic screen protectors and glass screen covers would impact the sensors, perhaps even prevent 3D Touch from working completely.

However, it turns out this is not the case. 3DTechtronics asked Apple SVP Phil Schiller about this issue in an email. Schiller responded and says it’s not a problem: “screen overlays that follow our guidelines will continue to work with 3D Touch”.

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Apple has now activated the new iCloud Storage tiers, as announced last week at Apple’s September event. The new tiers do not bump the free tier — it remains at 5 GB. However, for $0.99 per month you now get 50 GB of storage, up from 20 GB. The 200 GB plan is now cheaper at $2.99 and the 1 TB plan is now half the price at $9.99 per month.

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AT&T today has revealed a slight change to how it is handling throttling users grandfathered into unlimited data plans. Up until today, AT&T has throttled unlimited data users when they hit 5GB of usage and are in a congested area. As a reader has pointed out to us this evening, however, the carrier has updated its website with a new policy for throttling those on an unlimited data plans…

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Apple has started a new big project in its web services division, according to The Information. The report claims Apple has decided to rewrite its cloud services to all fall under one single technology stack using open-source technologies. This will combine Apple’s services like iCloud, Siri, iTunes and more into a unified backend platform.

Apple has seemingly settled on Mesos, the backend infrastructure for Siri, as the core of its new platform which will take years to finish. Apple publicly revealed it had moved Siri to a Mesos stack earlier in the year.

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