Apple

AT&T LTE gets turned on in a bunch of new markets

U.S. wireless carrier yesterday turned on its fourth-generation Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network in several new market whilst expanding coverage in others.

AT&T's speedy LTE network is now available in major new markets across Illinois, New York and Southern New Jersey Shore Points.

Expanded LTE coverage is now available in the states of North Carolina, Minnesota, Ohio, South Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania and more. Go past the fold for the full list of LTE additions...

Square Wallet redesigned in a major update

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's mobile payment startup Square has been gaining serious traction, slowly but steadily. Just recently, the company released a stylish Stand accessory which turns your iPad into a full-blown cash register.

Square has also updated its Register app with kitchen tickets and a bunch of new features for restaurants and today their universal Wallet iOS app has received a face-lift and gained several new capabilities in a major 3.0 update...

Budget iPhone thought to borrow colors from iPhone 4 bumpers

Just as Reuters ran a story this morning claiming Apple is planning to release two phablets next year and build  a budget iPhone in variety of colors in 2013, the reliable Japanese blog Macotakara piggy-backs with its own story asserting that Apple's inexpensive iPhone will actually borrow colors from those iPhone 4 bumpers.

This apparently means such color choices as black, white, pink, orange and blue. The story goes on to note that Apple is shooting for a September launch of the budget iPhone...

Reuters: Apple considering phablets, $99 colorized budget iPhone

According to a Reuters report Thursday, Apple is talking to its suppliers and manufacturing partners about producing multiple iPhone models in the next year or so, including a long-rumored less expensive iPhone in a range of color choices and two larger-screen models. The report asserts Tim Cook & Co. are adamant to iPod-ize the iPhone by offering more screen and color choices in order to appease to those smartphone buyers who are increasingly considering larger form-factor devices to enjoy their media, surf the web and enjoy their content on a bigger screen...

Jony Ive reportedly had Apple’s marketing team design iOS 7 icons

Since the moment Apple unveiled its completely redesigned mobile OS on Monday, the comments regarding its UI, and particularly the new icons, have been flowing nonstop. Some folks like the changes, and others refuse to believe it's the product of Apple designers.

And as it turns out, the latter group may be right. Sort of. A new report is out this afternoon claiming that there are explainable reasons behind the strange-looking app icons and inconsistant UX in iOS 7. And according to insiders, it's still a major work in progress...

Apple and Tim Cook getting sued over NSA’s PRISM intelligence program

The controversy over National Security Agency data mining isn't going away anytime soon. As you know, the scandal blew up when it was discovered that the government issued a secret order to Verizon Business Network Services to provide the NSA with logs for millions of calls on an ongoing daily basis.

Numerous lawsuits are being announced with each passing day and some have already been filed. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said he will sue the Obama administration over the "unconstitutional" PRISM surveillance programs.

And now, an activist group is suing Apple and Tim Cook, as well as Facebook, Google, YouTube, Skype, AT&T, Sprint, Yahoo, Microsoft, PalTalk, AOL, the NSA and its Director Keith Alexander, President Obama himself and Attorney General Eric Holder over participating in the government's secret Big Brother initiative...

Comcast demos next-gen X2 TV platform

While Apple CEO Tim Cook continues teasing the public with respect to a rumored standalone television set with the shiny Apple logo on it, market incumbents are beginning to take notice of the buzz.

Not content with sitting on the sidelines and watch Apple potentially make deeper inroads into the living room, the cable giant Comcast, the nation's top pay TV provider, today took the wraps off its next generation, cloud-enabled X1 Platform from Xfinity.

They are calling it the X2, it's coming this Fall, has a sleek new user interface, is social, can talk to you and run apps and integrates with Facebook, Instagram, Pandora, Rotten Tomatoes and more. I've included more details and a promo video after the jump...

Apple posts new video: ‘Making a difference. One app at a time.’

Apple has posted a new, lengthy video to the iOS section of its website today. The 10-minute clip is called 'Making a difference. One app at a time.' and it highlights how folks around the globe are using apps on Apple's mobile products.

As usual, the videography in the short film is beautiful and the message is concise. Apple is showing how iOS apps help make the world a little bit better, and things a little bit easier, for people from all different walks of life. Watch it...

The new AirPort Extreme can house SATA hard drive, teardown reveals

Apple at Monday’s WWDC 2013 keynote briefly mentioned its refreshed AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule wireless appliances which now support Gigabit Wi-Fi, also known as 802.11ac, for three times throughput of 802.11an. In unveiling the sixth-generation AirPort Extreme, Apple's marketing honcho Phil Schiller somewhat cryptically alluded that the redesigned base station might accept internal storage.

“There’s also room in there for a hard drive,” he quipped. Sure enough, teardown wizards over at iFixit bought a brand spanking new unit and tore it apart, finding 3.5 inches of empty space inside...

Apple says it owns one-fifth of e-book market

Under questioning by U.S. government lawyers, an Apple executive testified that the company owns about 20 percent of the U.S. e-book market - double the figure many observers had assumed.

The surprising percentage was revealed as the head of the company's iBookstore service refuted government charges of conspiracy to set e-book prices.

During the sixth day of testimony in the Department of Justice's lawsuit against Apple, company director Keith Moerer said iBookstore grabbed twenty percent of e-book sales soon after opening, a figure it continues to hold. Additionally, he said iBookstore sales increased 100 percent in 2012 with more than a hundred million customers...

Apple complies with two-year warranty requirement in France, Germany and Belgium

The latest in Apple warranty shenanigans in Europe: caving in to pressure from a number of the European Union member states, the company has now updated its warranty policy in Belgium, giving all buyers two-year warranty as standard.

Remember, Apple's insistence on upselling European customers to its paid AppleCare extended coverage has failed to impress authorities in Europe, where two-year warranty is required by law.

In Italy, for example, Apple was fined $264,000 in Italy over offering only a single year of warranty as standard...

Apple devices top Android on 3G networks

We've always contended that while Android has a numerical advantage over Apple's iOS, the iPhone and iPad see much greater usage.

More evidence of that belief: more than half of all 3G cellular traffic comes from Apple devices.

When combined, the iPhone 4, 4S and 5 account for about 53 percent of all 3G cellular traffic. Adding the iPad boosts the number to nearly 60 percent, according to a firm that analyzes cell network traffic. Where is Android? Samsung's Galaxy S, S2 and S3 combined make up a bit over eighteen percent of 3G traffic...