Apple designs its hardware and software to be safe and secure. It's one of the benefits of using the company's products. But, like just about anything else, sometimes a good thing can be too good at what it does.
A new year, a new flagship smartphone. Not Apple this time, but rather from Samsung. The company revealed its latest effort earlier this week, unveiling the Galaxy S21 lineup for the world to see. There are three handsets to choose from this year, but the question is: can Samsung sway you away from the iPhone?
2020 feels forever ago, and it's hard to imagine that in those 12 months I managed to buy two different MacBook Air models. But that's what happens when, at first, you really need to upgrade, and then, by the end of the year, Apple intrigues you enough to grab your interest all over again.
Apple's newly announced Connected Home over IP initiative - made with Amazon, Google, the Zigbee Alliance and others in tow - is a grand attempt to unify a really broken environment for smart home appliances. Apple's participation will help HomeKit gain a leg up in the smart home wars going forward, and should also help devices from other makers be more secure.
In this week's Editor's Desk roundup: Supply line news out of Asia suggests that Apple is anticipating a big 2020. News of increased iPhone manufacturing projections and some interesting info on the AirPods front too. Finally, some ruminations on the end of Jony Ive's tenure at Apple.
Looking at it objectively as a consumer of entertainment content, I think Apple TV+ is a horrible deal. No wonder they're giving it away. I'm way more interested in Disney+ than I am in Apple TV+. And I don't think I'm alone.
Apple news this past week was punctuated by four spotlight events: The release of iOS 13.2, the introduction of the new AirPods Pro, Apple's quarterly earnings announcement, and the release of Apple TV+. Let's look into each of these in more detail in this week’s editor's roundup.
Binge watching is a cultural phenomenon that drastically changed the way people watch television shows. While networks like ABC and NBC are still relying on the weekly release for the majority of their content, streaming titans like Netflix and Amazon have decided that giving viewers an entire season of a show on day one is perfectly acceptable.
So there I was, two days into my carrier's billing cycle looking at a text message saying I had used 80% of my 2GB data allowance. I'd used 1.6GB of 4G data in a couple of days, and I have Wi-Fi at home and at work. In fact, the only place I don't have Wi-Fi in my day-to-day life is my car.
I'd used 1.6GB of 4G data in my car. How?
The answer came after much toggling of iOS option switches, browsing of websites and general trial and error. It turned out the 'Documents and Sync' portion of the inner workings of iOS was eating data like there was no tomorrow, which, once it reached that 2GB cap, wasn't far from the truth. I had to buy more data just to give me wiggle room to do some more testing and once I knew where in iOS I could specifically track the usage that was causing me problems, I had somewhere to start.
Now believe it or not this post isn't about hunting for strange iOS bugs and squashing them with the contempt that they deserve. It's not even to point out that the culprit, after it was first thought to be iCloud Drive and in particular my favorite text editor, was actually iCloud Photo Library. It's to remind everyone that betas aren't as fun as you may think.
Ever since the first iPad was introduced by Steve Jobs way back in 2010 there has been the argument about whether it is just there to be a media consumption device, or can actually be used for what PC users seem to be so determined to call 'real work.'
Steve Jobs knew, or at least he hoped that iPads would eventually replace computers as we know them. When launching the first iPad he spoke of his new tablet as a car, and the computers that came before it as trucks.
I'm trying to think of a good analogy. When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks. But as people moved more towards urban centers, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks. Less people will need them.
He knew the transition wouldn't be easy, and he was right.
Everything started so well for Apple this week. After the launch of the company’s two new devices, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, Apple revealed on Monday that this was the most successful iPhone launch ever, with 10 million units being sold during the opening weekend. The only thing that prevented Apple to sell more iPhones during that time was simply that they couldn’t make them fast enough. That’s a nice problem to have.
But then things started turning sour on Tuesday when the first reports of what is now commonly known and referred to as #bendgate emerged online. If the negative press about bendgate wasn’t enough, Apple shot itself in the foot on Wednesday when it released iOS 8.0.1, an update supposed to fix several bugs, but which turned out to be the biggest software release fiasco in modern Apple history.
With fanboys and Apple haters alike putting their own spin on both sides of the story, I thought I’d put some perspective to all this and share my thoughts on the situation.
As is always the case every time a new iPhone is released, or a major iteration of its software pops up on Apple's servers, the planet goes into meltdown about battery life. It's almost as predictable as Apple's iPhone release schedule, and it's getting old.
I was already pondering how Apple's newly released iOS 8 was performing for people when I read iMore's post covering its new battery shaming feature. Rene does a great job explaining how iOS 8 monitors app usage and then plots out a percentage of the battery drain that app has caused. The reasons for that drain are plenty, and the important thing to remember is that they're not all bad.