News

Only for true Apple fans: Twelve South’s candle smells like a freshly unboxed Mac

Do you remember what your Mac smelled like the first time you unboxed it? If not, Apple-exclusive accessory maker Twelve South has you covered with a hand poured soy wax candle that delivers a “new Mac” smell to your nose. “We took that scent—and literally bottled it,” wrote the company. The candle is part of Twelve South's line of merchandize that includes Mac-style T-shirts, hats, mugs and more.

Dropbox Paper app now available in the EU

Paper, a new productivity app from cloud storage experts over at Dropbox, launched in public beta in the United States a month ago. After a slight delay, Paper is now available to customers in the European Union. With the free Paper app (not to be confused with Facebook's experimental Paper app), you can collaborate on projects, get updates, make edits and respond to feedback right from your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

Yahoo releases Newsroom for iOS app with curated stories, personalized feeds & more

It's business as usual for the struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo which today released a brand new free of charge iPhone and iPad application, called Newsroom. The app provides curated stories and news content relevant to you and sports built-in social sharing features, personalized feeds and more. The 96.9-megabyte download requires an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with iOS 9 or later and is available at no charge from the App Store.

Here are Google Pixel phones with better-than-iPhone 7 camera, built-in Assistant & more

As promised, Google today held a media event to launch new hardware and software products, among them a pair of new smartphones—a five-inch Pixel and a 5.5-inch Pixel XL. These are the first “Made by Google” phones that come with the firm's new Assistant built in. Google says the devices feature “the highest rated smartphone camera ever”, a battery that lasts all day and much more.

Alleged A10X Fusion benchmark suggests 20+ percent faster CPU in 2017 iPads

Apple typically takes the iPhone's A-series chips and updates them for iPads with more GPU cores and a faster performing, higher-clocked CPU. These chips typically have an “X” in their name, but with new iPad Pros and a fifth-generation iPad mini due in Spring 2017 the company has not yet officially announced an “X” variant of the iPhone 7's A10 Fusion chip.

Today, a source on Chinese social network Weibo posted alleged synthetic GeekBench 4 benchmark scores that could indicate at least one-fifth faster CPU performance in both single-core and dual-core computing for the purported A10X Fusion chip.

Apple Pay launches in Russia

Apple's mobile payments service has officially launched in Russia, marking the tenth country where Apple Pay is now available. According to Reuters this morning, the service is available with support from MasterCard and Moscow-based Sberbank at launch. Users can add their credit or debit card to Apple Pay via the Wallet app on their iPhone or set up Apple Pay directly in the Sberbank Online mobile app.

Leaked photos and commercial show off Google’s Pixel smartphones ahead of today’s unveiling

As we told you, Google will be unveiling a pair of “Made by Google” smartphones, the Pixel and Pixel XL, at a media event later today. Yesterday, British mobile retailer Carphone Warehouse posted a series of slides for the upcoming devices.

These images give us a solid advance look at some of the features of the upcoming smartphones. In addition, Rabid Rotty just captured on video a Pixel commercial that aired in Canada ahead of the unveiling.

Adobe releases Photoshop and Premiere Elements 15 with facial feature adjustments & more

Adobe today released new versions of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements for Mac and Windows with new automated tools, video collages, facial feature adjustments allowing you to change frowned faces into bright smiles with open eyes, a Photomerge Group Shot option that combines faces and bodies from a series of pictures to create a single perfect composite and much more.

Apple granted patent for a Touch ID sensor that could work through an iPhone display

If you've been waiting for the next iconic design since the release of the black-clad iPhone 5, this year's iPhone 7 probably feels like a slight disappointment. Apple is widely thought to have saved its best innovation and industrial redesign for the Tenth Anniversary iPhone next year which could embed the fingerprint sensor, FaceTime camera and sensors behind the display.

As revealed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Apple has now been granted a patent for a fingerprint-sensing technology that could work through the display itself, paving the way for an iPhone with the full-screen face design.

macOS Sierra is now available as an automatic download

Apple on Monday told The Loop's Jim Dalrymple that the free macOS Sierra software update will be available as an automatic download later today. This means that the software update will download in the background for Mac owners who have auto update downloads enabled in System Preferences.

Apple is being smart about the move and won't download any files to your computer if it's low on storage or does not meet the system requirements for macOS Sierra.

“Online Stores” dropped from Angela Ahrendts’s title, but she is still Apple’s retail boss

Apple's boss of online and physical retail stores, Angela Ahrendts, no longer has “Online Stores” in her official title. Instead, Apple is now referring to her role simply as “Senior Vice President, Retail” to better reflect its efforts to simply retail branding. Her reworded title along with a tweaked job description is live at the Apple Leadership webpage.

The change occurred over this past weekend. This is a purely cosmetic change: her responsibilities have not shifted and she is still in charge of all things retail at Apple.