News

iOS 10 preview: Siri comes to (some) apps & powers smarter QuickType keyboard suggestions

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 20, 2016

Siri has gained new features in iOS 10. Not only does she power smarter QuickType keyboard suggestions and lets you control HomeKit-compatible accessories using your voice, but Apple now officially supports third-party integration with SiriKit for developers.

In opening up Siri to apps, Apple's taken the same controlled approach like with iOS multitasking by only permitting certain app types.

In this iOS 10 preview, we're going to take a closer look at an improved QuickType keyboard with added Siri intelligence, explain specific app types that can take advantage of Siri and look into the technologies that make all of this possible.

Spotify surpasses 100 million users, 30 million paid users

Cody Lee ∙ June 20, 2016

Spotify on Monday told The Telegraph that it now has more than 100 million monthly active users worldwide. But of that 100 million, only roughly 30 million or so are paid subscribers—so the ones that dole out ~$10 a month.

For comparison, SVP Eddy Cue announced during last week's WWDC keynote that Apple Music now has 15 million paid subscribers. Now that's just half of Spotify's count, but still very impressive for a service less than 1 year old.

New iPhone 7 rumor: dual-SIM trays, headphone jack not going anywhere, 256GB model

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 20, 2016

Apple's next-generation handset may include dual-SIM trays allowing it to be used with multiple carriers more easily, if photos of alleged iPhone 7 components posted on Chinese microblogging service Weibo are anything to go by.

The ability to use two SIM cards at the same time, a first for iPhone, would let users send and receive cellular phone calls and text messages from two phone numbers, via two carriers. The iPhone 7 may also keep the headphone jack and include a 256-gigabyte model, a leakster said.

Here comes “Captured on Galaxy S7” ad

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated June 25, 2017

You don't need to be an advertising expert to figure out that the latest campaign for Samsung's Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge bears striking resemblance to “Shot on iPhone,” one of Apple’s most successful ad campaigns which has won many awards since its debut nearly two years ago.

As CNET reported this morning, Samsung started airing a brand new commercial for its new Galaxies.

Titled “Captured on Samsung Galaxy S7”, the video was conceived to show off 4K video capture capabilities of the phone.

iOS 10’s elusive Dark Mode shown in Settings app

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 20, 2016

Five days ago, iDownloadBlog's own Andrew O'Hara first wrote about jailbreak developer Andy Wiik's discovery of Dark Mode resources buried deep within iOS 10's Messages app.

During the weekend, Wiik shared a few new screenshots showing a dark mode for the Settings app, running in iOS Simulator, strongly suggesting that these Dark Mode resources may not have been left within iOS 10 code by accident.

TextEdit app spotted on iPad’s Home screen in WWDC session video

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 20, 2016

TextEdit, one of the stock applications for the Mac, might be coming to the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, suggests an icon spotted on an iPad during one of the WWDC 2016 demos.

As first discovered by MacRumors, the “What's New in Metal, Part 1” WWDC session video shows (mark 17:58) a TextEdit icon on the iPad's multitasking app switcher screen and on the Home screen.

Apple’s updated Photos app recognizes 7 facial expressions, 4,432 objects and scenes

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 20, 2016

During the WWDC keynote a week ago, Apple announced that iOS 10 and macOS Sierra will bring facial recognition features alongside a brand new Memories tab and other improvements in Photos for iOS 10 and macOS Sierra.

According to a Medium post by Redditor “vista980622,” Photos' facial recognition engine is capable of distinguishing between seven distinct facial expressions and detecting up to 4,432 searchable objects and scenes on your photos.

India relaxes rules on foreign direct investments, paving the way for Apple Stores

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 20, 2016

The government of India has relaxed its strict rules on foreign direct investments, which stipulate that 30 percent of goods sold by foreign companies must be manufactured or produced within India, paving the way for Apple's retail expansion in the 1.25 billion people market. Acording to The Times of India on Monday, Apple should benefit from a new three-year relaxation on local sourcing norms.

watchOS 3 preview: faster performance, instant app launching & simplified navigation

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated August 8, 2024

watchOS 3 is a creative destruction of the Apple Watch's operating system and an admission that Apple's first attempt was all wrong. With significantly improved performance, simplified navigation and the ability to launch your favorite apps almost instantly, watchOS 3 does a lot of things right.

Apple helps raise over $8M for World Wildlife Fund

Cody Lee ∙ Updated May 3, 2018

Apple on Friday announced that its Apps for Earth campaign has generated more than $8 million in total proceeds. For 10 days in April, the iPhone maker worked with 24 developers to publish interactive and educational content to the App Store, with the proceeds going exclusively to the World Wildlife Fund.

Plausible concept imagines Magic Keyboard with contextually aware OLED function keys

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 17, 2016

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is adamant that one of the standout hardware features of a next-geneation MacBook is an OLED display which would replace the row of physical function keys. If that's the case, and knowing how Apple works, we might easily see this OLED touch bar come to a next-generation Magic Keyboard.

That's precisely the idea behind an interesting OLED Magic Keyboard concept by German magazine Curved.de, realized in co-operation with Dutch 3D artist Martin Hajek.

Bluetooth 5 goes official with 2x speed, 4x range and other new features

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 17, 2016

As promised, Bluetooth Special Interest Group (BSIG), the organization that develops the ubiquitous short-range networking standard, of which Apple is a promoting member with voting rights, yesterday announced Bluetooth 5 at a press event in London.

Promising double the speed and four times the range of the current Bluetooth 4.x implementation, Bluetooth 5 is coming late-2016 to early-2017, BSIG said.