Apple

Meet the Range, an iOS food thermometer for smarter cooking

If you're something of an epicurean but with non-chef-level cooking skills, this will be godsent. A new project by the Russian startup that brought us a five-sensor iPhone life monitor dongle, the Range is an iOS food thermometer used for candy making, roasting and other types of high-temperature cooking projects.

There's more to this accessory for smarter cooking than meets the eye so jump past the fold for the full reveal...

Classic zombie board game Chainsaw Warrior coming to iOS soon

Chainsaw Warrior, a one-player zombie board game published way back in 1987 by Games Workshop (best known in the US for the Warhammer 40,000 and Blood Bowl franchises), will be making the leap to iOS later this year, the British publisher announced.

Created by Auroch Digital, an indie development studio based in UK's Bristol Games Hub, the game is set in the near future: the year is 2032 and you must defend the mankind from a zombie apocalypse which has ensued after a dimensional rift opened up in a New York slum...

Rumor: Apple to discontinue iPhone 5 alongside budget, 5S launch

A new report out of Korea today claims that Apple is going to be discontinuing production of the iPhone 5 this fall, transferring all of its efforts to its next generation flagship handset, the iPhone 5S, and the long-rumored 'budget iPhone.'

Citing 'industry partners' with knowledge of the situation, ETNews is reporting this afternoon that Apple has asked its supply chain partners to wind down iPhone 5 production. And, according to the report, it plans to halt it altogether this fall...

Textbooks are coming to Google’s Play Books in early August

Taking a page from Apple's book (pun intended), Google's Play Books service will start carrying textbooks in August, giving students the choice of renting (for six months) or buying electronic textbooks, available on iOS or Android devices.

And in drawing from its Internet roots, the search monster also said electronic textbooks will be available for reading on the web, using any standard desktop web browser. The Internet giant promises a "comprehensive selection of titles" from five major publishing partners: Pearson, Wiley, Macmillian Higher Education, McGraw-Hill and Cengage Learning.

Jump past the fold for the full reveal...

Can Apple get its mojo back without high iPhone gross margins?

Apple CEO Tim Cook's message Tuesday was clearly: "We're back!" But can a company which has experienced four quarters of sliding shares and a stock value that's dropped around 40 percent since September make such a claim without traditionally fat gross margins?

The iPhone - Apple's flagship product - has seen its per unit revenue fall with the iPad telling a similar story. In an ironic development, Apple products once overshadowed by the iPhone and iPad now are revenue champs, according to a Wednesday report...

Apple navigates low revenue, tight margin future

Tuesday's announcement by Apple that it sold more devices but with less profit during the June quarter seems to have reset investor expectations about the tech giant. The key to Apple introducing new products going forward now appears to be the ability to sustain Wall Street confidence that CEO Tim Cook can continue steering the ship effectively without the hand of late co-founder Steve Jobs.

Although overall quarterly revenue of $35.4 billion topped the consensus of $35 billion, profit fell 22 percent to $6.9 billion. As a result, Cook tried to reassure investors, announcing Apple was "laser-focused and working hard on some amazing new products" set for the fall and 2014...

App Store is now EA’s biggest retail partner

Electronic Arts, the most prolific games publisher, during a conference call discussing its June quarter earnings, paid a nice little lip service to Apple by acknowledging that the App Store has become its biggest retail partner in terms of sales - and for the first time, too. That's another important milestone for both Apple's strides in the mobile gaming space and its application store, which last month celebrated its fifth birthday and 50 billionth app download...

Google Drive iOS app can now open links in Chrome or Safari

Google is building a nice little ecosystem around Apple's iOS by feverishly updating its iPhone and iPad warez with deep cross-app integration. For example, earlier this month the Internet giant refreshed its Chrome iOS browser with the ability to open URLs for YouTube, Maps, Google+ and Drive in Google’s native iOS apps instead of the browser.

Notably absent from that update: the Google Drive client for the iPhone and iPad. Well, Google saw to that with today's Drive iOS release which can now open links in Google's Chrome or Apple's Safari browser. Google Drive version 1.5 also adds support for inserting rows and columns using the “+” button in Google Sheets...

AT&T’s LTE expands to seven new markets

The nation’s second-largest carrier continues expanding its fourth-generation Long-Term Evolution (LTE) wireless technology coverage. On Wednesday, the carrier announced it has deployed LTE across seven new markets, including California's Merced and Velleyo regions, alongside additional LTE pockets in Missouri, Delaware, Alabama and  Connecticut. The development follows AT&T's major LTE expansion in nearly three dozen new markets last month...

Apple’s dual-image sensor patent focuses on higher quality images

While we've all heard the saying "two heads are better than one," a new Apple patent applies that thinking to digital images. The patent, granted Tuesday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, describes a method of combining two image sensors to produce a photo with the best quality.

In its U.S. Patent No. 8,493,482 filing, Apple outlines a 'Dual image sensor image processing system and method.' The company mentions the iPhone, iPod and some Macs as potentially benefitting from the technology, suggesting a likely iSight camera bump up and better imaging on future devices...

Apple’s iPad grabs 84 percent of tablet web traffic

It is pretty well understood that Apple's iPad is a major player in tablet traffic online. However, new numbers only emphasize the iPad's dominance as the device has accelerated further and now accounts for 84 percent of web traffic. Specifically, more than eight out of ten online ads were served to tablet devices carrying the Apple logo, a web analytics firm announced yesterday.

Competing tablets are left fighting over the remaining crumbs, with the No. 2 tablet - Amazon's Kindle Fire - accounting for just 5.7 percent of traffic detected between June 15 and June 21...

Apple updates touch tech in upcoming iPads

DigiTimes in January wrote Apple's fifth-generation iPad could adopt the iPad mini's thin-film touchscreen technology called GF Ditto, also better known as GF2. NPD DisplaySearch is well-versed in all things concerning mobile screens and yesterday they corroborated the rumor.

Specifically, DisplaySearch notes Apple’s shift toward in-cell display tech for the iPhone 5 and GF2 for the upcoming iPads has resulted in major shifts in the touch-panel industry supply chain. Basically a double-sided ITO film, GF2 has allowed Apple to make the iPad mini much thinner and significantly lighter compared to the bulkier G/G touchscreen tech driving the iPad 3.

As the iPad 5 is widely expected to adopt the iPad mini's thin and light appearance, obviously a major part of that will be Apple's adoption of the advanced GF2 technology...