Apple

Opera unveils new iPad-only browser, Coast

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 23, 2018

Opera Software, a Norwegian developer primarily known for its Opera family of web browsers with over 350 million users worldwide, today unleashed a brand new iPad browser.

It's called Coast and they're billing it as "the browser that should have come with the iPad." If anything, Coast strives to answer the question, "What should a tablet browser be?”

It's packed with advanced features and features an unassumingly minimalistic user interface. Opera insists it's not a mere mobile browser tweak, nor a scaled-down PC browser.

"It is something new," Opera teased Monday, although I'm not sure that's the right choice of words as Coast is based on Safari's WebKit engine, in accordance with App Store rules. Anyway, the new browser is based on intuitive swipe gestures and Opera claims to have invented a lot of technology that "works under the hood, keeping you safe and secure".

Jump past the fold for the full reveal...

Video of blue iPhone 5C up and running?

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 12, 2016

The Chinese technology blog C Technology over the past week posted purported shots of the iPhone 5C packaging as well as an alleged video of the fully assembled and powered on red plastic iPhone 5C variant, running the stock iOS 7 Safari browser.

Monday morning, the blog posted another video apparently depicting a light blue iPhone 5C in action, running iOS 7. The short clip takes us through the Home screen, user interface transitions, Safari tabs, the Lock screen and other aspects of Apple's redesigned mobile operating system...

NSA can hijack ‘most sensitive data’ on your iPhone, top secret files reveal

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated May 16, 2016

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has pretty much compromised every online user's security through a previously unknown ten-year program against encryption technologies that made "vast amounts" of collected data "exploitable."

After these shocking revelations came to light Thursday, a new report Sunday in German news weekly Der Spiegel has given the privacy scare a whole new meaning.

See, owners of iPhone, BlackBerry and Android devices are at risk of their "most sensitive data" being fully exploitable because the NSA is able to crack protective measures of these systems, previously believed to be highly secure...

Martin Hajek’s vision of the Lord of the Rings iPhone 5S Home button

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated May 16, 2018

A pair of sketchy images posted Friday by the Chinese-language blog C Technology prompted quite a stir among technology denizens. If you haven't seen them already, the purported photographs show an odd-looking iPhone 5S packaging (likely Photoshop'd) sporting device graphics on the box's front. The most curious aspect of it: a redesigned Home button, without the square in the middle and with a silver ring around it.

The photos led armchair analysts to postulate that the ring is actually a fingerprint sensor - nevermind that virtually every single rumor points to the sensor being actually built underneath the Home button. Anyway, here's 3D artist Martin Hajek's awesome Lord of the Rings mockup which draws from the supposedly "leaked" packaging...

VLC 2.1 arrives with souped up subtitles, FTP web downloads and lots more

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

After a two-year hiatus from the App Store, VideoLan's comprehensive media player for iOS devices, VLC, has finally made a comeback in July.

Rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of modern media technologies, the new VLC brought as a revamped interface along with its trademark support for a bunch of non-iOS media formats such as .mkv files. Following on the initial re-release, the team yesterday posted a major VLC update.

Version 2.1 extends media playback capabilities with new features and numerous improvements, including UPNP and FTP discovery and streaming, web content downloads through the FTP protocol, deinterlacing (Always, Automatic or Never), subtitles font customization and lots more...

Everything we think we know about the iPhone 5S

Cody Lee ∙ Updated May 16, 2018

It's been a long, long time, or so it seems, since Apple unveiled the iPhone 5. And while the handset has done decidedly well for the company, it's been close to a year now, and consumers are ready for something new.

If our intel is accurate, they shouldn't have to wait much longer. Apple sent out invites last week to a media event set to take place on Tuesday, September 10 at its Cupertino, California campus. And it's widely expected to use the stage to unveil a new handset.

In fact, most of the evidence suggests that, for the first time in its history, Apple will unveil two new iPhones next week. One is the replacement for the flagship iPhone 5, believed to be called the iPhone 5S, and the other is an all-new budget model, allegedly called the iPhone 5C.

Now, Christian has already done a great job going over what we expect to see from the latter, so it's time to take a look at the former. Here's everything we think we know about the iPhone 5S…

Everything we think we know about iPhone 5C

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated September 28, 2016

It's now widely accepted Apple will, for the first time in iPhone history, launch not one but two new iPhones this coming Tuesday. One, a flagship iPhone 5S, and the other a long-rumored budget iPhone that should help the company tap emerging markets where telcos rarely subsidize devices.

Critics assume the so-called iPhone 5C will somehow flop because it'll have a plastic shell. In reality, coupled with Apple's marketing prowess and brand power, the iPhone 5C will widen Apple's price umbrella and replace the $450 off-contract iPhone 4S as Apple's most affordable iPhone yet - without offering a two-year old hardware.

We've combed through a flurry of news stories, analyst reports and speculative articles, weighing in each source/publication's credibility to come up with a set of features we're fairly certain the iPhone 5C will include. Of course, your guess is as good as ours so don't shy away from voicing your opinion down in the comments...

Apple updates apps with support for iPhone 6 and iPhone 7. Wait, what?

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

Apple posted tiny updates for a number of its apps this week, including iMovie, iPhoto, Pages and more. And while the updates themselves seem insignificant—most of their change logs read "addresses compatibility issues"—they may not be.

It's been discovered that all of these apps, and several others from third party developers, now show that they've been "optimized for iPhone 6" in their Compatibility sections on the App Store. Does this mean the iPhone 5S is actually the iPhone 6?

Update: as noted by several commenters below, it appears that Apple either has a major glitch in its iTunes backend, or is totally trolling us. Users are seeing "optimized for iPhone 6, 7" and so on, depending on their region. We have updated the title of the post to reflect this.

Analyst sees Apple launching iPhone with a 4.5 to 5-inch display next year

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 13, 2018

Thursday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal released a story claiming that Apple has begun testing different display sizes for future iPhone models. The outlet said that the company is experimenting with screens between 4.8 to 6-inches.

The report was The Journal's second on the topic in as many months, leading many to believe that there really might be some truth to these plus-sized iPhone rumors. And today, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has thrown his hat into the ring...

Updated Apple TV software with improved AirPlay tipped off for Tuesday’s iPhone keynote

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 6, 2013

Contrary to previous reports, Apple won't update the $99 Apple TV set-top box hardware just yet, currently in its third generation. As we reported recently, some rather inconclusive shipping records tracked to the global trade intelligence platform Panjiva suggested that a fourth-gen Apple TV or even a standalone TV product was imminent.

According to the Wall Street Journal-owned technology blog, that's not the case at all. Instead, with the upcoming keynote being focused on new iPhones and the supporting iOS 7 software, Apple will instead release an update to the Apple TV software, with one particular standout new feature being detailed...

Evidence mounts of iPhone-compatible Textbooks

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 6, 2013

Apple's iBookstore is great, especially if you're an iOS device owner. I'm a heavy reader so I always keep a few e-books on my devices to read whenever I have some free time. As part of Steve Jobs's dream to reinvent the education, Apple at January 2012's media event in New York City unveiled interactive Textbooks, a whole new kind of textbook experience.

Having bought a few since, I can safely proclaim interactive digital textbooks the future of education - as in, I wish I were a school kid now. Unfortunately, Textbooks work only on iPads as smaller form-factor iDevices are not supported. Over the past few days, several solid pieces of evidence suggested that iBooks Textbooks are coming to the iPhone and iPod touch.

Jump past the fold for the full reveal...

BlackBerry says it submitted BBM to App Store two weeks ago

Cody Lee ∙ Updated March 19, 2019

The official BlackBerry Messenger app for iPhone is on the way, according to the Canadian-based company. Alex Kinsella, a Senior Manager who is working on the software, tweeted out this afternoon that BBM for iPhone has been submitted to the App Store.

In fact, Kinsella says his team submitted the app for review two weeks ago, meaning it's basically up to Apple now when we'll see it made available. And it'll be interesting to see what happens here, as the company has a history of blocking big releases...