Apple

NYT spells out Apple’s living room strategy

Ed Sutherland ∙ July 18, 2013

Apple's plans for the living room have rested largely on the Apple TV the company's leadership continues to call "a hobby project." While there's been talk that the tech giant could unveil its own television set, rumors of revamping the television experience have been greeted with industry concern and fruitless negotiations.

However, now comes word Apple wants to be friends with Time Warner, Disney and other content producers - and along the way improve some of the worst aspects of current television viewing.

One result of the partnerships is an upcoming Time Warner Cable Apple TV app that would turn Apple's $99 set-top box into a channel guide for live and on-demand programming much superior to the clunky software now offered by the distributor...

Verizon activates 3.9M iPhones in Q2 2013

Ed Sutherland ∙ July 18, 2013

Despite concerns about a shrinking pool of U.S. cell phone owners who have yet to upgrade to smartphones, Verizon Wireless announced it activated 3.9 million iPhones during the second quarter, an increase of 44 percent surpassing analyst forecasts of 3.5 million iPhone subscribers.

In other words, of the 7.5 million smartphones Verizon activated in the June quarter, over 50 percent were iPhones. Smartphones now account for more than half of Verizon Wireless customers, rising to 64 percent from a previous 50 percent, according to the official earnings results the carrier posted Thursday...

Meet Apple’s iWatch dream team

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 18, 2013

As evidence pertaining to a rumored Apple smartwatch mounts, so do Apple's recent tech celebrity hirings. For example, the past few weeks saw the poaching of former Adobe CTO and Flash proponent Kevin Lynch, who joined Apple as VP of Technology.

Another example: the outgoing French fashion label Yves Saint Laurent CEO Paul Deneve is joining Apple to work on special projects as a Vice President reporting directly to Apple’s boss Tim Cook.

Along with the company's long-time hardware guru Bob Mansfield, head of all Design and Human Interfaces across the company, Jonathan Ive, iOS/OS X boss Craig Federighi and other high-profile execs, Apple is assembling an all-star cast tasked with figuring out its next breakthrough - wearables...

Suppliers say Apple ramping up iDevice chip orders

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 18, 2013

We've witnessed recently a mishmash of wildly unlikely predictions, genuine-looking iPhone 5S production shots, plenty of various other leaks and big media confirmations, all seemingly pointing to Apple flexing its manufacturing muscle ahead of upcoming new product launches.

Hot on the heels of this chatter, a Taiwanese trade publication chimed in Thursday claiming Apple's chips suppliers are seeing a boost in orders from Apple, which could be interpreted as another solid indication that the company is ramping up production as it gears up for the next iDevice refresh cycle...

Apple moves to patent in-display fingerprint sensor tech

Cody Lee ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

One of the big new features in the upcoming iPhone 5S, Apple's next generation smartphone, is expected to be a built-in fingerprint sensor. To be fair, we've yet to see any evidence of this, but reports have been consistent over past 6 months.

Up until now, most folks have presumed that if Apple were to outfit its handset with such a sensor, that it would build it into the Home button. But according to a new patent filing from the company, it could build it right into the display...

Apple joins alliance of tech companies in push for better NSA transparency

Cody Lee ∙ July 17, 2013

Apple is reportedly teaming up with Google, Facebook, Microsoft and a number of other tech companies that will demand dramatically increased transparency from the US government regarding surveillance by the NSA and other agencies.

In a letter to be published tomorrow, the alliance—which includes 63 companies, investors, and non-profit orgs—will call upon President Obama and congressional leaders to allow them to report more specifically on security requests...

Google to refresh its Nexus 7 tablet next week

Cody Lee ∙ July 17, 2013

Despite the fact that Apple showed up to the 7-8-inch tablet game late, it has taken the lead in the space. Admittedly, Amazon doesn't offer sales numbers and Apple doesn't break up iPad sales, but it's widely believed that most of them are minis.

But it appears Google is looking to de-throne the Cupertino company next week, by introducing a new version of its Nexus 7. The search giant issued media invitations to a July 24 event this morning, and there's been several leaks since then...

Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded graces the App Store

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 17, 2013

Readers over 30 need no introduction to Sierra's Leisure Suit Larry series of adventure games. Back in the 1980s, when computer games were all blocky, the concept of point-and-clicking one's way through the game was still in its infancy.

It was then that programmer Al Lowe had set out to create Larry Laffer: a lovable, balding virgin character in his 40s.

Each game in the series featured a simple premise: Larry had to talk young women into having sex with him. Two years ago, Replay Games acquired a license for the whole franchise.

Following the successful "Make Leisure Suit Larry come again!" campaign on Kickstarter (14,000+ fans chipped in to bring Larry back to life), the small development studio has started re-releasing Larry games on a number of platforms.

And thanks to Kickstarter crowd-funding, Replay was able to basically write Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded from scratch and update the game's appearance for the 21st century technology...

Google’s new Maps SDK brings Street View and Indoor Maps to iOS apps

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 31, 2023

Google yesterday pushed a major 2.0 update to its native Maps iOS app.

The software has brought native iPad support, offline maps, a much cleaner interface, improved navigation, indoor maps of building floors and other enhancements.

By the way, today's Chrome iOS update lets you open map links in the Google Maps app instead of the browser.

To go along with the new Maps app, Google yesterday issued a version 1.4 of its Google Maps SDK for iOS. The new frameworks make it easy for Apple's registered iOS developers to write apps that incorporate such new features as Street View, Indoor Maps, and a new look and feel...

12 words your iPhone won’t auto-correct

Cody Lee ∙ Updated February 2, 2023

Apple's implementation of auto-correct in iOS has long been the subject of criticism. When it works, it works, but it has the reputation of being inconsistent. Sometimes it won't notice slight misspellings of a word, and other times, it'll offer wrong suggestions. And apparently, there's a handful of words that auto-correct won't touch at all.

The Daily Beast ran a few low-grade, in-house tests on the feature, and it found that, on top of the obvious curse words, there are at least 12 often-used, 'hot button' terms it seems to purposely ignore.

Could Apple Stores sell more iPhones?

Ed Sutherland ∙ July 17, 2013

Can Apple more than triple the percent of iPhones sold at its retail stores, pumping up sales of its flagship smartphone?

While CEO Tim Cook is pushing the idea, some observers question whether the goal of selling half of all iPhones in Apple Stores is in fact attainable.

The Apple CEO says he'd like in-store sales of iPhones - now at fifteen percent - to match the fifty percent of handsets serviced by Apple Store Geniuses. Currently, around 90 percent of iPhones are purchased either through U.S. carriers or third-party resellers...

Chrome gains full-screen on iPad, opens links in native apps, saves bandwidth and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 17, 2013

The Internet giant Google has just pushed a major update to its Chrome browser for the iPhone and iPad, sporting better voice capabilities and containing a whole bunch of new features that make the browser fully interoperable with major Google apps available on the iOS platform.

In addition to advanced voice control achieved through additional enhancements to voice search and improved text-to-speech, this edition of the Chrome 28 build boasts tight interoperability with Google's other native apps on iOS.

For starters, there's a handy option to open links for YouTube, Maps, Google+ and Drive in Google's native iOS apps instead of the browser. On the iPad side, there's a new full-screen browsing mode (finally) along with other tidbits, mentioned after the break...