Apple

Apple helps raise over $8M for World Wildlife Fund

Apple on Friday announced that its Apps for Earth campaign has generated more than $8 million in total proceeds. For 10 days in April, the iPhone maker worked with 24 developers to publish interactive and educational content to the App Store, with the proceeds going exclusively to the World Wildlife Fund.

Plausible concept imagines Magic Keyboard with contextually aware OLED function keys

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is adamant that one of the standout hardware features of a next-geneation MacBook is an OLED display which would replace the row of physical function keys. If that's the case, and knowing how Apple works, we might easily see this OLED touch bar come to a next-generation Magic Keyboard.

That's precisely the idea behind an interesting OLED Magic Keyboard concept by German magazine Curved.de, realized in co-operation with Dutch 3D artist Martin Hajek.

Bluetooth 5 goes official with 2x speed, 4x range and other new features

As promised, Bluetooth Special Interest Group (BSIG), the organization that develops the ubiquitous short-range networking standard, of which Apple is a promoting member with voting rights, yesterday announced Bluetooth 5 at a press event in London.

Promising double the speed and four times the range of the current Bluetooth 4.x implementation, Bluetooth 5 is coming late-2016 to early-2017, BSIG said.

Beijing court orders iPhone 6 sales ban over patent infringement, Apple to appeal ruling

Apple just hit yet another roadblock in China with news that the Beijing Intellectual Property Office (BJIPO) has ordered the company to halt sales of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus on the grounds that the Apple handset copied the design of the 100C smartphone, which is being produced by Shenzhen Baili, one of China's phone vendors.

Apple has confirmed that it will challenge the sales ban by appealing to the Beijing Higher People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Court.

iOS 10 tidbit: managing app downloads in progress with 3D Touch

Pausing an in-progress App Store download has always been a cinch on iOS: you just tap the icon of the app being downloaded on your Home screen in order to pause the download, and then tap it again to resume it.

But cancelling the download is a trickier affair: you must tap the icon's X sign in jiggle mode. The problem is, entering iOS's signature jiggle mode often interferes with 3D Touch.

Thankfully, iOS 10 comes to the rescue with all-new 3D Touch shortcuts for managing downloads in progress.

iOS 10 tidbit: getting to Spotlight from any app, in an instant

Since installing iOS 10 Preview on my iPhone 6s I've been discovering these little gems that, in my personal opinion, will make this particular revision to Apple's mobile OS the most worthwhile upgrade yet.

Aside from major new headlining features, it's the little things that make our hearts sing. One of such subtle refinements is the ability to quickly get to Spotlight Search from any app.

iOS 10 tidbit: unsubscribe from mailing lists from the Mail app

Lately, I feel like all I get is spam email. This is very frustrating and I've taken to using apps like Unroll.Me that make it easy to unsubscribe from the bevy of email lists I've somehow wound up on. That being said, it appears Apple has baked the ability to unsubscribe from mailing lists straight from the native Mail app in iOS 10.

macOS Sierra preview: Siri comes to the Mac

macOS Sierra brings the familiar features of Siri for iOS to the Mac with an attractive user interface, third-party integration and some interesting capabilities specifically designed for the desktop that are not supported on iOS. In addition to standard search queries, you can ask Siri to locate a specific document you worked on last night, add a meeting to your calendar, start a FaceTime call and more.

The Siri interface is interactive, letting you drag and drop items from search results into your documents.

You can even pin Siri searches in the Notification Center with live updating! Here's our quick video preview of Siri for Mac in action and a detailed overview of the supported features that Apple hopes will make you more productive.

Apple executive explains why iMessage isn’t on other platforms

In a broad reflective piece on Apple's WWDC keynote, noted tech journalist Walt Mossberg made some interesting comments regarding a recent rumor that Apple was considering bringing its iMessage service to Android. Turns out that isn't happening, and won't be in the near future.

Speaking to a "senior Apple executive," Mossberg says Apple is happy with the 1 billion+ active devices it currently caters to, so it doesn't feel an immediate need to grow its user base by expanding to other platforms. It also still considers its iMessage service a major iOS-exclusive feature.

No, widgets haven’t been removed from iOS 10’s Notification Center

Widgets are a big deal in iOS 10. In addition to having new capabilities such as increased support for 3D Touch and the ability to play—and even stream—video inline, they now have a dedicated side panel on the Lock screen. Now, some people have voiced concerns about widgets having been removed entirely from the Notification Center on iOS 10.

Luckily, that's not entirely true.

iOS 10 tidbit: “Define” has become “Look Up,” now supports Siri-powered web suggestions

As a non-native English speaker, I rely on a Define feature which helps me pull up the definition for any selected word in Safari and other apps, as determined by iOS's built-in Dictionary.

With iOS 10, Apple has rebranded this feature as Look Up and it's not just a marketing gimmick: On iOS 10, Look Up's greatly expanded scope now serves up any piece of Internet content that Siri Suggestions support.

iOS 10: app sharing made simple with handy new 3D Touch shortcut

In the run-up to the WWDC 2016 keynote, Apple announced a major shake up in the App Store with several new features, among them an easier way to share third-party apps with friends and family using 3D Touch.

Now that iOS 10 Preview has released to Apple's registered developers and we've had a chance to spend hands-on time with this feature, we're pleased to report that it works precisely as advertised.