Following Apple Music introduction, Spotify has doubled down on music discovery and third-party integration, the two areas where it hopes to outsmart competition, with Monday's announcement of a Discover Weekly feature and deep integration with the Nike+ Running mobile app.
Unlike Apple's human-curated playlists for various activity types, Spotify's Discover Weekly playlists are entirely driven by algorithms and personalized to each user's listening habits, as per Re/code on Monday.
Samsung on Monday announced a next-generation Galaxy tablet to take on Apple's iPad Air 2. The Galaxy Tab S2, driven by Android 5.0 Lollipop, is even thinner than Apple's device: it measures an impressive 5.6mm thin and includes Samsung's exceptionally bright and vivid Super AMOLED display in 7.9 and eight-inch flavors.
Regardless of the screen size, the new Tab S matches the resolution of full-size iPads at 2,048-by-1,536 pixels though last year's Tab S came outfitted with a sharper 2,560-by-1,600 pixel resolution displays.
It'd be a move that'd be praised by everyone, and for good reason. Not only is 16GB too small a storage tier for a device with no ability to bolt on additional storage, but in 2015, it's becoming a real problem.
Updates are bigger, apps are bigger and the entry-level iPhone size hasn't changed since 2012's iPhone 5. But now a sketchy rumor, posted yesterday by MIC Gadget, suggests that Apple could at last retire the 16GB storage tier on new iPhones.
If the rumor is true, the baseline edition of an upcoming 'iPhone 6s' refresh will apparently start at thirty-two gigabytes of storage.
Apple is continuing its "If it's not an iPhone" advertising campaign with a new follow up commercial solely focused on apps. The commercial touts the App Store's more than 1.5 million apps.
This is the third entry into Apple's "If it's not an iPhone" campaign. The two previous commercials were posted ten days ago, each focusing more on the hardware and customer satisfaction side of things.
Well-connected KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has issued a new report to clients ahead of Apple's June quarter earnings report, which is due this coming Tuesday.
The note, a copy of which was obtained by AppleInsider, provides several predictions regarding Apple's upcoming product refreshes.
For starters, Kuo is expecting new Apple Watch Sport variants in rose and yellow gold color options matching the upcoming 'iPhone 6s' and 'iPhone 6s Plus' colors. He also wrote that new iMac models with upgraded processors could arrive later this year, in addition to a thinner, lighter iPad mini and more.
A batch of photos of a purported 'iPhone 6s' rear housing in gold, obtained by Future Supplier and reposted today by French blog NowhereElse.fr, serve as our best indication yet that Apple's upcoming smartphone refresh will re-use the exterior design of the current-generation (shocker!).
More important than that, however, the photos suggest the upcoming handsets will introduce minuscule changes to the internal layout, with a source claiming a “stronger” Unibody construction and a change to the material's feel.
There will be no transferring your offline Apple Music collections onto the new iPod nano or iPod shuffle because Apple is overly concerned about piracy, as it should be, and so the company's decided to play it safe instead.
As 9to5Mac discovered Friday, attempting to transfer Apple Music songs marked for offline playback onto your nano or shuffle via iTunes produces a “some of the items in the iTunes library were not copied to the iPod because Apple Music songs cannot be copied to an iPod” message.
Of course, you can still sync your own songs that you imported into iTunes and music purchased on the iTunes Store, just like before, but Apple Music including songs marked for offline playback is off limits to the nano and shuffle.
Apple is rumored to be considering a switch to the Apple Watch's touchscreen technology for future iPhones as the firm is reportedly unhappy that in-cell panels that current iPhones use are struggling with touch sensitivity on screen edges.
While all iPhone models ranging from the original iPhone to the iPhone 4s were outfitted with the traditional glass (G/G) panels, Apple's engineers in 2012 switched to in-cell technology for the iPhone 5. Since the iPhone 5, all iPhone models have used in-cell tech.
In-cell technology eliminates a layer by building the capacitors inside the LCD assembly itself, which allows for a notably thinner appearance of the screen.
According to an analysis by DigiTimes Research based on supply chain data and market observers, a 2017 iPhone model (presumably to be called 'iPhone 7') is expected to make a switch to G/G, but the upcoming 'iPhone 6s' and 'iPhone 6s Plus' models are expected to still use the in-cell screen assembly process.
Reverting back to using G/G panels would let Apple add more features to iPhones, including ultra-sharp screens and nearly bezel-less appearance.
The officially licensed game of the Mission Impossible film series has arrived in the App Store ahead of the movie's worldwide release by Paramount Pictures.
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation for iPhone and iPad, available now in the App Store at no charge, offers a combination of first and third-person action.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate secure locations and eliminate high-profile targets, perform lethal strikes and confront the Syndicate across the globe.
Inbox, a gesture-driven email app for the iPhone and iPad by the Gmail team which was born out of Google's acquisition of Sparrow, was updated on the App Store today with enhanced snooze options for package tracking updates, restaurant and event reservations, calendar invites and a couple other types of emails.
The feature makes it easy to snooze an email message to the day before the event, knowing your email will come back at just the right time. These enhanced snoozing capability is in addition to custom snooze times which were introduced back in March.
Telltale’s iOS game based on HBO’s award-winning Game of Thrones TV show has been available in an episodic format on the App Store for several months now. Today, they shared info pertaining to the penultimate episode titled “A Nest of Vipers,” scheduled for release on next Thursday, July 23.
I don't want to spoil any surprises so let me just briefly mention that actions you take of every Forrester in this episode are vital to the survival of the house. And of course, Tyrion and Cersei continue to manipulate one another.
I debated over it for a while, but I just couldn't resist ordering a brand new 6th generation iPod touch after looking at the specs of the device. The new iPod touch, despite not changing much from a use-case standpoint, is quite the compelling device.
When you consider how underpowered the previous generation iPod touch was, this really is a major upgrade. You're essentially getting an iPhone 6/iPhone 6 Plus level 64-bit A8 system on a chip (SoC) with its M8 motion coprocessor, along with double the RAM at 1GB.
The SoC and RAM alone would be enough to blow the previous iPod touch, which is downright painful to use on iOS 8, out of the water, but Apple has included significant improvements to the iSight Camera—bumped up from 5 megapixels to 8 megapixels—there's faster 802.11ac Wi-Fi, an upgrade to Bluetooth 4.1, a 128GB storage capacity option, and more.
Make no mistake, the iPod touch 6th generation is more powerful than some of the lower tier phones hitting the market today. If you're serious about gaming, photos, and video, but don't need the capabilities of a phone, then the iPod touch 6th generation might be considered a bargain.
Watch our full video review for the unboxing, benchmarks, comparisons to the 5th-gen iPod touch and much more.