Apple

“Shot on iPhone” continues with low-light photos taken on iPhone 7/Plus

Apple today launched a new iPhone photography showcase, called “One Night on iPhone 7,” that's part of its ongoing “Shot on iPhone” advertising campaign. According to the company's media release issued Monday, “One Night on iPhone 7” launches today in 25 countries globally.

The campaign features night shots snapped by a group of iPhone photographers that are meant to showcase the low-light capabilities of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus cameras. You can download them from the Apple Newsroom website.

Canopies, walkways, plants & more shown in latest iSpaceship drone footage

Despite Apple Campus 2's progress being slowed down due to poor weather and heavy rainstorms, the latest 4K aerial footage of the massive ring-shaped structure from drone pilots Matthew Roberts and Duncan Seinfield shows that the 280,000-square-foot building is finally nearing completion.

Heavier work has been largely completed, with more landscaping and finishing touches in the form of walkways, lamps, parking lots and more now appearing on the site.

Starbucks testing AI-powered digital barista assistant in iPhone app

You'll soon be able to order your favorite latte by using your voice as Starbucks today kicked off a limited beta test of a new artificial intelligence assistant inside its mobile app for iPhone. Aptly named My Starbucks Barista, this new feature will let you order items by conversing with the virtual barista within a new messaging UI, the firm said Monday.

OLED for iPhone 8 could add $50 million to Apple’s March quarter expenses

iPhone 8, or 10th Anniversary iPhone as affectionately dubbed by the media, is expected to adopt the unrivaled organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display technology as utilized on Apple Watch screens and the new MacBook Pro's Touch Bar.

OLEDs are more difficult and pricier to produce than the traditional LCD panels so the decision to outfit iPhone 8 with an OLED-based screen could cost Apple approximately $50 million in incremental costs in the March quarter, according to an investor memo from Cowen & Company's Timothy Arcuri obtained Monday by AppleInsider.

T-Mobile to offer prepaid MasterCard with new smartphone purchases beginning February 1

Beginning Wednesday, February 1, T-Mobile will offer existing and new U.S. customers a prepaid MasterCard with a new smartphone purchase, the carrier announced this morning. The promotion includes every new smartphone that T-Mobile sells, including various iPhone models. In oder to qualify for the deal, you must activate your new smartphone on T-Mobile's ONE or Simple Choice Unlimited 4G LTE plan.

Oceanhorn 2 confirmed to use Unreal 4 engine, first screenshots look stunning

Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas by Cornfox & Bros. is among the best-looking, Zelda-like action adventure games I've ever played on mobile. As we recently reported, the team is now hard at work on a sequel, titled Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm, which will use the praised Unreal 4 graphics engine to make porting to other platforms a lot easier.

The proprietary graphics engine from the original didn't give the team enough flexibility nor has it allowed them to more quickly add new features so they've switched to arguably the most powerful game engine in the industry, developers explained.

How and where to share faster with AirDrop

In the absence of reliable figures from Apple, it is not much more than conjecture to say that AirDrop is likely a feature often neglected by the average iOS user. The gut feeling persists though, simply based on day to day observations, and it is a tenable position to take until proven wrong by Cupertino or another reputable source. The file transfer protocol is indeed handy for the transfer of heavier media files (e.g. videos, photo albums), but often only becomes relevant to us when we for example have upgraded to a new device.

Next to sheer transmission speed however, there are other notable areas where AirDrop has the clear edge when it comes to sharing all kinds of material from your iPhone. The AirDrop icon has now fully permeated the sharing tab in iOS 10’s user interface and that is for a good reason: it is without fail going to be more nimble than iMessage, Mail or other contenders, often actually skipping steps that would throttle the process elsewhere. Such being the case, here are some unique scenarios where AirDrop excels on your iPhone and why you should try to embrace the feature more regularly.

iPhone 7 Plus accounted for an estimated 40% of all iPhone 7 sales in the holiday quarter

People are way more interested in Apple's $769 iPhone 7 Plus than they were in the $649 iPhone 6s Plus, Cowen & Co. analysts told The Wall Street Journal. In other words, many buyers don't mind paying more for features like dual cameras and other extra hardware not available in standard iPhone 7.

Cowen estimated that iPhone 7 Plus accounted for about 40 percent of an estimated 58.5 million iPhone 7 devices Apple sold globally during the December quarter. Contrast that with iPhone 6s Plus, which accounted for an estimated 23 percent of all iPhone 6s sales during the same quarter the previous year.

For reasons unknown, Apple takes down theft-deterrent Activation Lock web tool

Apple recently took down its web tool for checking if a used iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Apple Watch was stolen. The firm gave no explanation for the move.

The link to the Activation Lock webpage no longer works and the support document detailing the feature does not contain any reference to the web tool as of January 24. It was unclear at post time if a new version of the tool might be returning in the future in one form or another.

Apple earns Louis Braille Award for advances in device accessibility

Apple has long been praised for its efforts in device accessibility. Back in 2015, for example, they received the American Foundation for the Blind's Helen Keller Achievement Award for the VoiceOver screen reader technology. The various Accessibility features available on iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS have now earned Apple the Louis Braille Award from the Associated Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ASB).