Believe it or not, there’s an iPhone 6 in that pile of smartphones shown in the image above and we’re going to compare it to Samsung’s newly announced Galaxy S6. Which one would you prefer? More importantly, what are the major differences between these two devices? Well, let’s go ahead and find out…
David Barnard, CEO of Contrast, has today announced that they will be bringing a slimmed down version of Launch Center Pro to the Apple Watch. You can see how the app has been transformed from the grid appearance of the iOS version to a simple list, to optimise screen real estate on the Watch’s much smaller display. This means users can initiate quick actions from their wrist, rather than digging their phones out of their pockets.
The company will ‘hopefully’ have the app available in the App Store when the Watch ships sometime in April.
Another tweet indicates that the company is working on more WatchKit apps as well.
I’m incredibly excited about Apple Watch, and am working on other apps for it. I’m not at all skeptical it’s going to sell really well.
— David Barnard (@drbarnard) March 1, 2015
We have received images of a white building under construction behind the Yerba Buena Center of the Arts, the venue for Apple’s ‘Spring Forward’ event on March 9th. The tipster said that security guards are patrolling the scene, wearing ‘Apple Security’ shirts, confirming the connection between the building and Apple.
Apple built a similar external structure for the Apple Watch’s original unveiling in September, which acted as a demo hall for the products (iPhone 6 and Apple Watch) that Apple had announced at the event prior. Given the similarities, it is likely that this is the purpose of this new building as well.
It is worth noting, however, that in the past Apple has simply used side rooms inside Yerba Buena for its demo areas. Unlike the Flint Center, previous events show that there is space for indoor demos if Apple wanted to use it.
More images after the break …
In the second half of The Telegraph’s interview with Tim Cook, Apple CEO Tim Cook has reaffirmed his position on privacy. Cook says that whilst currently consumers do not understand the ramifications of sharing their data with third-parties, “one day they will”.
Moreover, Cook openly objects to governments that say data sharing is required to combat crime and terrorism. There has been pressure for tech companies to offer back-doors into encryption mechanisms, but a clear implication of this interview is that Apple will strongly oppose this view. Cook describes privacy as a ‘basic human right’.
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Apple Watch is launching in April, and Apple just scheduled a March 9th press event where it is expected to give it a proper introduction, but between those two dates Swiss watchmakers will finally unveil their own smartwatches that will likely compete with Apple’s high-end Apple Watch collection.
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Former Apple retail chief Ron Johnson is getting back into the fashion game. The man who helped shape the Cupertino company’s retail arm made the jump to become CEO of JCPenney after exiting Apple in 2011, but was eventually removed from his position there as well.
The undeterred Johnson announced today that he would be leading a $16 million round of funding in online women’s retailer Nasty Gal. Johnson has also been appointed to the retailer’s board of directors. Nasty Gal is currently in the process of launching its own physical stores, though it currently only has one location in Los Angeles.
Apple’s ex-exec recently helped raise $30 in funding for online shopping startup Enjoy, and was reported in late 2014 to be working on a gadget delivery service.
Note: Kickstarter currently appears to be down possibly because of a certain new smartwatch…
The iPhone-connected smart lock market is getting a new player today as Candy House introduces a new, competitively priced device called Sesame—a play on the phrase “open sesame”—that retrofits your existing deadbolt lock with modern smarts.
While current smart lock options carry higher price tags and require replacing existing hardware, Sesame starts at $99 ($89 early bird special) and adds smart lock features to most existing door locks. Check below for an excellent video demo and more info:
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Mercedes-Benz chairman Dieter Zetsche
It happens each time there is talk that Apple is preparing to enter a new product category: industry leaders issue the standard statement that they’re unfazed by potential Apple competition because 1) Apple makes computers and 2) this is their turf, their expertise.
Almost like fulfilling the prophecy, head of Mercedes-Benz cars Dieter Zetsche recently did just that while discussing the rumor with Australian publication motoring.com.au:
“If there were a rumour that Mercedes or Daimler planned to start building smartphones then they (Apple) would not be sleepless at night. And the same applies to me.”
Zetsche added that his position in saying that Apple building a car would be like Mercedes building a smartphone is “full of respect” for the iPhone maker.
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The FTC is fining the creators of two different smartphone apps, both of which were previously available as paid apps on the App Store, for falsely claiming to detect symptoms of melanoma. The two apps, MelApp and Mole Detective, have long been removed from the App Store (although a version of Mole Detective remains on Google Play for $4.99), and Apple appears to have cracked down on similar apps that were available on the store as recently as early 2014.
The Federal Trade Commission has challenged marketers for deceptively claiming their mobile apps could detect symptoms of melanoma, even in its early stages. In two separate cases, marketers of MelApp and Mole Detective have agreed to settlements that bar them from continuing to make such unsupported claims. The agency is pursuing charges against two additional marketers of Mole Detective who did not agree to settle.
It’s not the first and it likely won’t be the last time app makers face scrutiny from government officials over health care claims as fitness becomes more of a focus on mobile devices and companion wearables. As recently as November, the FTC was said to be pressing Apple on how it plans to use sensitive health related data collected from its upcoming Apple Watch launching in April.
No matter which way you cut it, it remains remarkable that Samsung continues to serve as a key component supplier to Apple for the innards of the iPhone and iPad line while also being a major competitor in the mobile phone space. In fact, to this day, it is hard to argue that there is a bigger Apple component partner than Samsung.
Just as Samsung prepares to unveil its latest flagship Galaxy S6 next week, The Korea Times reports that Apple and Samsung have struck a deal for the latter company to supply the former with at least 50% of the mobile DRAM chips used it Apple’s followup to the iPhone 6 expected later this fall. But that’s the tip o’ the iceberg as they say…
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Samsung has acquired the battery pack business of leading automotive parts supplier Magna International. The move, according to a statement from the companies, will “enhance Samsung SDI’s capabilities in batteries for electric vehicles.”
While Samsung producing batteries and energy storage solutions for vehicles isn’t exactly new—it already supplies batteries for Tesla and others—there is an Apple Car connection in its latest acquisition…
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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC9XNqSgj4w]
A team of biomedical engineers at Columbia University has developed an iPhone dongle costing just $34 that can conduct HIV tests with similar accuracy to ‘gold standard’ laboratory equipment costing over $18,000. The test, which also detects syphilis, takes just 15 minutes to run …
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Just one day after T-Mobile CEO John Legere announced the wireless provider surpassed Sprint to become the number three carrier in the country, Sprint today announced a new aggressive shared data plan that it says offers better value compared to T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon.
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Since the launch of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus last fall, we’ve noticed that Sprint subsidiary Virgin Mobile USA has offered limited-to-no stock on its iPhone lineup with “out of stock” messages on each of their iOS device and seemingly no plans to replenish inventory. Specifically, the pre-paid carrier went head first into the holiday season without any iPhone inventory for shoppers.
Virgin later confirmed that it had no specific plans to carry the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus at the time, and now the prepaid carrier has completely scrubbed the entire iPhone lineup from its online store.
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T-Mobile CEO John Legere announced during the company’s Q4 earnings call today that the company has surpassed Sprint to become the number three carrier in the country.
That would mean the carrier has reached its goal set by Legere to move ahead of Sprint by the end of last year (via The Verge):
“…Going into this year, they have 55 million customers… T-Mobile had 33 million customers. We merged with MetroPCS and went to 42 million customers, and we’ve since added 13 million customers to get up to, guess what, 55 million customers.”
So as of right now the two appear to be neck and neck based on the numbers Legere shared, but he also hinted T-Mobile’s lead would be easier to see over “the next quarter or two.”
[youtube=http://youtu.be/n72sk4fFSw4]
After announcing its first dev con last December, Yahoo today kicked off its mobile developer conference in San Francisco where it unveiled five new products for mobile app makers. As suspected, Yahoo revealed the latest tools from Flurry, the mobile ad and analytics firm it acquired last July.
This includes Flurry Analytics Explorer, a new dashboard for the Flurry Analytics system which it says enables developers to discover more insights with than before, and Flurry Pulse, which lets app builders “share app signals with partners using their existing Flurry SDK implementations and the click of a button.”
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Samsung announced in a press release this evening that it has purchased LoopPay, an Apple Pay-like mobile payment company. LoopPay turns existing magnetic stripe card readers into secure, contactless receivers. This means that, in an ideal world, LoopPay would be available in nearly every retailer that accepts magnetic strip cards. A specific acquisition price is unclear at this point.
In an amusing retaliation to Jony Ive’s opinion of Motorola’s Moto Maker, Motorola president described their company as a ‘different philosophy’ as well as directly attacking Apple’s product lineup, describing iPhone prices as ‘outrageous’ in a conversation with the BBC.
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Chris Breen, a long-time writer and Senior Editor for Macworld, has decided to leave a long-time career of journalism covering the Cupertino company and take his talents straight to Apple itself.
According to a post on his personal blog:
Just a note to say that I’ve left Macworld to work for a Cupertino-based technology company you may be familiar with.
There are loads of reasons for the change, but blend them together and they add up to my desire to try something different before I don the large shorts and spend the bulk of my remaining days looking for my misplaced spectacles.
“Chris has been such an essential staff member that the word “essential” seems woefully inadequate to describe him,” wrote Macworld’s Susie Ochs.
This news comes several months after another long-time journalist, Anand Shimpi of AnandTech.com, also retired from writing to join Apple.
As with Anand, it’s not known what Breen will be doing at Apple. Being part of the post-Cotton PR team at the company is definitely a possibility, but the fact that another Macworld Editor Jon Seff was picked up for the secretive Apple University training program might shine some light on what Apple is doing with these journos.
According to the latest numbers from IDC, Xiaomi—the rising star of the smartphone industry—has managed to pass up Samsung in China. In 2013, Xiaomi trailed Samsung’s almost 19% market share by a solid 13 percentage points (at just 5.3%), and was only the 5th largest maker of smartphones in China. Things changed in 2014. Last year, Xiaomi finished off with 12.5% of the market, almost a half-point more than Samsung at 12.1%, taking the top spot and passing not just Samsung, but Lenovo, Huawei, and Coolpad as well.
Interestingly, though, the latest numbers also show that Apple’s launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus contributed to a decent size dent in both Samsung and Xiaomi’s market footprint in Q4 of last year.
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Following a US District Judge in San Francisco ordering Typo to pay BlackBerry $860,000, the Ryan Seacrest-backed company now faces another suit from the Canadian smartphone maker for continuing to sell its iPhone case with an integrated hardware keyboard.
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The New Yorker has published an extensive profile on Jony Ive, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Design. Many newspapers have written up articles on Ive in recent years, but this latest account by Ian Parker is by far the most detailed and (arguably) the most interesting, revealing new anecdotes and tidbits on Apple’s latest products in the process.
The story tracks how Jony arrived at Apple back in the late 90’s, how his relationship with Jobs developed over that period, and how he is adapting to ‘leading’ design in post-Jobs Apple. The piece includes some new details about how the Watch project and the newest iPhones formed, as well as incorporating quotes from Tim Cook, Bob Mansfield, and others.
Read on for some select excerpts from The New Yorker’s story.
Tactus Technology is introducing a unique, new keyboard case today called Phorm that promises to bring tactile feedback to the typing experience while still using the on-screen touch keyboard. Phorm uses microfluids to raise a segments of a screen protector kept on with a frame and protective case to apply “physical” keys that appear and disappear at the swipe of switch. The goal is to improve typing speed and accuracy when typing with the iPad without requiring a keyboard you have to charge or pair with your tablet. Check out the video below to see Phorm in action.
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Sources say Sprint is dropping a requirement that made the mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) using its network—such as Ting, FreedomPop, Straight Talk, Boost, and Virgin—wait a certain period of time, usually at least a year, before offering support for the latest devices.
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