Earlier this evening, Apple's CEO Tim Cook took the stage at AllThingsD's D11 conference to talk about all things Apple. Cook rarely does interviews, but he looked like a pro fielding questions from tech veterans Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.
Over the course of the hour-long talk, the trio discussed a wide range of fascinating topics including iWatch rumors, iOS 7 and Android's growing marketshare. And as usual, we've combed through it all to bring you the 15 most interesting points...
Tim Cook just kicked off AllThingsD's D11 conference with an on-stage interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. The conference has become a major event for Apple, with Steve Jobs attending several of them, and Cook now a returning veteran speaker.
And he didn't disappoint. The CEO was surprisingly candid, answering all kinds of questions from what he thinks of Google Glass, to his thoughts on the state of the TV market. He even confirmed Jony Ive is working on iOS 7. We've got a full recap after the break...
It appears that the bad blood between Apple and Samsung isn't enough to keep the two from working together. Despite previous reports that the iPad-maker is trying to distance itself from its rival, it has reportedly returned a large chunk of its LCD panel business back to Samsung...
Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal said the world's top contract manufacturer, Foxconn, was looking to diversify beyond assembling Apple products.
Today, a Taiwanese publication reports that Foxconn has teamed up with the Firefox browser maker Mozilla on a mobile device to be powered by the Firefox OS.
This isn't a rumor: the two partners have invited the press to the unveiling of a new device on June 3. According to the people in the know, the mysterious gizmo will be a tablet. The development puts Foxconn in a somewhat odd position as it assembles Apple's iPhones and iPads, though I doubt Apple is worried much - if at all - considering the Firefox OS is an also-ran in the mobile arena...
It was not long ago that people dreamed of providing a PC for every child on the planet. Well, the vision needs to be updated. Tablets - particularly those in the iPad mini size range - are outselling laptops now and soon will overtake all PCs, research firm IDC reported Tuesday.
Some 229.3 million tablets are expected to ship this year for a 58.7 percent growth rate, compared to 2012. By contrast, PC shipments are down for the second year in a row, dropping 7.8 percent in 2013, the company announced.
The key takeaways: tablets are becoming smaller and cheaper, while at the same time being increasingly able to accomplish tasks once done by PCs...
Wouldn't it be great if the iPhone could detect when you are holding the handset to your ear or sitting on a desk, automatically adjusting the volume? Apple thought so, as well. Tuesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted the iPhone maker a patent on a way to adjust the speaker volume based on proximity.
The patent, filed just a year after the iPhone was unveiled, uses the smartphone's many sensors to detect the device's proximity from a user. Just as a proximity sensor is used to detect when the phone is at your ear (thus turning off the touch screen), sensors could also adjust speaker volume...
Remember Blockbuster? The once popular video and game rental chain got pushed to the brink of relevancy as the likes of Netflix, Hulu, iTunes and Amazon took over.
But if you're stuck in the old age and still rent movies on discs, Blockbuster's re-written iOS app could come in handy for managing your physical rentals on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices.
Some of the welcome features include the ability to scan your membership card for in-store checkout and check movie availability on a per-store basis. And for those of us that have long moved on, Blockbuster earlier this month released a brand new On Demand iOS streaming app...
European nations must stop offering incentives aimed at attracting companies seeking a haven from the U.S. government's 35 percent tax on repatriated money. The European Union's Tax Commissioner Algirdas Semeta Tuesday called on EU member nations to halt "specific incentives" aimed at attracting international corporations such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Coca Cola and many others.
Semeta's comments in Brussels follows a week of high-profile discussion of ways Apple and other tech giants filter income through EU nations such as Ireland to avoid paying heftier taxes back home...
Sorting through the ocean of rumors today, I stumbled upon a Chinese report suggesting a twice as sharp Retina display on the next iPhone. While there's some chance we could see Apple develop a higher-resolution iPhone at some point, another sketchy report claims that the company is also working on a much larger iPad with a 12.9-inch display.
If true, this would put the rumored 'iPad maxi' in the range of netbooks and notebooks and appeal to niche market verticals, such as digital photographers, pro video editors, designers, content creators and so forth...
Apple's Retina display may still be the best mobile display on the market, but not so much anymore in terms of the sheer pixel count and clearness.
Case in point: Samsung's five-inch Galaxy S4 with its full HD 1,920-by-1,080 resolution screen at a whopping 441 pixels per inch easily outperforms the iPhone 5's four-inch 640-by-1,136 Retina display at 326 pixels per inch. Another example: HTC's flagship One smartphone and its 468 pixels per inch display.
Now, a new rumor out of China alleges that Apple's next iPhone will have an upgraded Retina display with twice as much pixels as the current-generation...
I was quite excited about Infuse, a versatile and nice-looking iOS media player by FireCore, the team behind the aTV Flash Black. The one and only major gripe I had with the software is its absence of AirPlay streaming, which is quite a limiting factor if you want to watch your media on the big screen TV through your Apple TV. While AirPlay support is definitely coming in a future update, the team yesterday issued a small update fixing minor inconsistencies and tweaking a few features...
If you've been following Apple stories lately, chances are you came across a news piece last week that calls for a black and white iOS 7 redesign.
You know, the facelift reportedly in the works under the guidance of Apple's legendary design guru Jony Ive. It should be, in a word, awesome.
As asserted by the very reliable writer Mark Gurman, Ive not only got rid of skeumorphism, he also eliminated the shine and transparent gloss for one that’s flat and mostly black and white.
And with two weeks until Apple's June 10 keynote at WWDC 2013, we'll soon find out just how deep the rabbit hole of visual changes in iOS 7 go. For now, we're asking you to join the discussion and tell us where you stand on the black & white iOS 7 revamp...