Apple

Apple reportedly buys Israeli facial recognition company RealFace

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated March 23, 2017

Hot on the heels of multiple reports calling for some sort of facial recognition on iPhone 8 to potentially augment or supplant Touch ID, news reaches us that Apple has acquired RealFace, a machine learning and facial recognition company hailing from Israel.

The Tel Aviv-based startup, founded in 2014 by Adi Eckhouse Barzilai and Aviv Mader, was bought for $2 million, according to the Times of Israel. Hebrew-language financial outlet Calcalist pegged the deal's value at several millions dollars. RealFace is innovating user authentication with what it calls the worlds leading facial recognition technology.

Snapchat kicks off online sales of iPhone-connected Spectacles

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated March 19, 2019

Spectacles, a pair of camera glasses developed and manufactured by Snapchat, are no longer exclusively distributed via the company's pop-up vending machines, called Snapbots. Today, Spectacles became available for purchase online, CNET reported Monday. Available in three vivid colors and expected to ship in 2-4 weeks, the $130 Google Glass-like accessory is now available online via spectacles.com.

Apple may not be building Siri-powered Amazon Echo rival after all

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 20, 2017

Tim Bajarin, writing for Time magazine, is claiming that Apple may not be building an Amazon Echo rival after all. Instead, he said, the company could be more interested in turning Siri into a ubiquitous feature across its device lineup.

“After talking with Apple executives, I've come away with the impression that they're more interested in turning Siri into an omnipresent artificial assistant across devices, rather than designing a single device specifically to serve as a Siri machine,” he said.

Rumor: four new iPad Pros, 128GB iPhone SE and iPhone 7 in Red to be unveiled next month

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 20, 2017

Fairly reliable website Mac Otakara is reporting that Apple will be holding a media event next month to announce hardware updates for several of its popular products. Wondering what's on tap for a refresh? According to the Japanese publication, Apple will add a new 128-gigabyte iPhone SE model to the existing 16GB and 64GB capacities.

In addition, we should also see the previously rumored Red model of iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus and four new iPad Pro models introduced at the event.

Disney creates prototype living room with ubiquitous wireless power delivery

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 20, 2017

While speculation keeps mounting that iPhone 8 might come outfitted with some kind of wireless charging technology, a research arm of the entertainment conglomerate Disney has engineered and shown off a prototype living room capable of ubiquitous power delivery over-the-air without requiring any cables, wires or charging pads.

The solution is based on aluminum panels, which cover the walls, ceiling and floor, a single generator located just outside the room and a copper pipe containing more than a dozen capacitors which are capable of setting the electromagnetic frequency of the structure and finding the electric fields.

Apple shifting towards regionally-focused digital and social media campaigns

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 20, 2017

According to a recent report from AdWeek, Apple has instructed TBWA\Media Arts Lab to sharpen focus on digital and regional advertising campaigns.

Apple is said to have been streamlining its global marketing efforts and restructuring relationship with its longtime global advertising partner.

The Cupertino company now wants the legendary agency to focus more on creating tailor-made campaigns for regional markets and less on translating its big brand campaigns for global markets. As a result of the change, TBWA\Media Arts Lab’s Los Angeles headquarters and other offices around the world had to layoff an unknown number of translation and transcreation staff.

Check out stealth case for iPhone prototypes Apple uses to prevent leaks

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 17, 2017

More than six years ago, an Apple engineer mistakenly left an iPhone 4 prototype on a bar stool in a nice German beer garden in Redwood City, California. The rest, as they say, is history.

The random dude who originally found it didn't really have a clue he'd gotten hold of Apple's biggest secret at the time as the prototype device was cleverly disguised as an ordinary iPhone 3GS.

Australian leakster Sonny Dickson gave MacRumors a closer look at a special stealth case Apple uses to prevent leaks and conceal handset prototypes during transport between its Cupertino headquarters and manufacturing partners in China.

YouTube will stop showing 30-second unskippable preroll ads beginning in 2018

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 17, 2017

Google will stop showing users those annoyingly unskippable 30-second preroll ads on YouTube clips. According to an official statement from the search giant given to Campaign, the change is coming in 2018 to give advertisers and agencies time to adjust their plans.

In aiming to provide a better advertising experience for online users, Google has clearly come to the inevitable realization that consumers loathe unskippable ads on YouTube.

Google’s dedicated search app gains filters for local results, Gboard & enhanced AMP support

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 17, 2017

Google's dedicated search app was updated this morning on App Store with a trio of nice-to-haves. For starters, you can now easily filter your local search results for museums, coffee shops, restaurants and other places of interest. With an expanded support for Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), more webpages will now load instantly within the app. AMP-optimized webpages are denoted on search results with a lightning bolt icon. Lastly, you can now use Google's gesture-driven Gboard keyboard in the mobile search app.

New Apple ads continue positioning iPad Pro as being better than a computer

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 17, 2017

Apple today published four new ads on its YouTube channel that continue to position its iPad Pro tablet as being better than a computer. The four new commercials, running sixteen seconds each, use the tagline “Real Problems... Answered” and appear to be based on typical PC user tweets.

The videos promote the tablet as a device that's free of wires, immune to viruses, faster than most laptops and able to run Microsoft Office apps and connect to fast LTE cellular networks.

Give the new ads a quick watch, then meet us in comments.

iPhone 8 concept imagines rumored “function area” replacing Touch ID and Home button

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated March 15, 2017

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, along with other analysts, told clients that iPhone 8 would most likely feature a 5.8-inch OLED screen with an active display area of 5.1 inches.

It's now becoming clear that Apple's upcoming handset will probably adopt an almost bezel-less full-screen front face design by ditching the physical Home and Touch ID button.

Its function would be supplanted by a set of dynamic virtual controls sitting in a new “function area” at the bottom of the display. That, in turn, would allow for a range of time-saving shortcuts without degrading the experience, as evidenced in a batch of nicely done renderings created by a MacRumors Forum member “deuxani”.

Pokémon GO gains 80+ new creatures and a bunch of new features in latest update

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 17, 2017

Pokémon GO developer Niantic Labs announced two days ago that an upcoming update would bring over eighty new Pokémon and other new features to the popular augmented reality game. Yesterday, the developer said that the new Pokémon GO 1.27.2 update containing those perks began rolling out.

It's a staggered release so you might need to wait a little bit longer if it's not live on your local App Store yet. Here's everything new in Pokémon GO 1.27.2 for iOS.