Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities believes that Apple's own wireless charging accessory for the upcoming iPhones won't debut at today's event at the Steve Jobs Theater.
HomePod, Apple's $349 wireless speaker powered by Siri and launching this December in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, has been spotted in the wild.
HomePod, Apple's wireless speaker scheduled to arrive this December, will support a new pairing method based on special audio tones generated by it and detected by a host iPhone.
Apple's augmented reality framework has emerged as one of the biggest new features of iOS 11. Here's another awesome use case for ARKit: a Find My iPhone-style app for finding your lost or misplaced devices in augmented reality.
One of the biggest challenges for iPhone owners today is keeping the battery at a reasonable level by the day’s end.
No one likes seeing a critical alert about how the battery level is low, but with a new free jailbreak tweak called SmartLowPower by iOS developer NoisyFlake, you can save more power than ever before.
Fresh details on HomePod's setup, unearthed yesterday from the newest iOS 11 developer beta by Brazilian outlet iHelp.br (Google Translate), show that the process of setting up Apple's upcoming wireless speaker won't differ much from configuring your AirPods or Apple TV via your iPhone, iPod or iPod touch with iOS 11.
David Ho, president of Taiwanese contract manufacturer Inventec Appliances, suggested during an earnings conference today that a high-profile smart home device his company has received orders for would be faced with constrained launch supply in December.
A lot of people rely on AirPlay to stream media from their handsets to their Apple TV or other AirPlay-enabled devices. Unfortunately, some apps, like those provided by TV providers, seem to purposely block the AirPlay function so you can’t stream to the big screen.
As I’m sure many people are peeved by this deliberate block of standard iOS functionality, a new jailbreak tweak called PremiumPlay by iOS developer Tony Kraft provides a way around it.
iOS lets you restrict apps from using cellular data, so it only makes sense to let users do the same with Wi-Fi networks. Although cellular data is more prone to being limited by caps and speed reductions, Wi-Fi networks can sometimes cause issues with apps because of how they're configured or raise security concerns.
By installing a new jailbreak tweak called ConditionalWiFi2 (iOS 10) by iOS developer Creatix, you can choose what apps can connect to the internet over a Wi-Fi connection.
Amazon is working on the next Echo accessory that should feature significantly improved sound quality over the current lineup of Echo smart speakers, Engadget reported Thursday.
The gizmo will reportedly include “several tweeters” versus the one large tweeter and a woofer in the existing Echo. The company is also improving the new Echo's microphone technology, “though it's unclear how it's doing so.”
Current Echo devices have seven far-field mics, while Apple's HomePod has six and Google's Home has two.
Shorter and slimmer than the original Echo, which released two years ago, the next Echo will be more stylish than its predecessors thanks to rounded edges and a cloth-like covering.
Amazon is allegedly planning for a fall release.
Echo has been lauded as the best voice-activated speaker on the market in terms of AI and voice features, but with poor audio quality. That's in stark contrast to Apple's upcoming HomePod, which many reviewers praised for being the best-sounding smart speaker out there, even outperforming Sonos in terms of sound quality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l_YjBiK7iM
With the next Echo, Amazon is clearly looking to close the gap with HomePod when it comes to audio quality and style.
HomePod features an array of seven horn-loaded tweeters, each with its own custom amplifier, a high-excursion woofer with custom amplifier, internal low-frequency calibration microphone for automatic bass correction and a six-microphone array for far-field Siri and room sensing.
The built-in A8 chip constantly analyzes the music being played through the speaker, as well as the room layout, to continually optimize audio quality using software-based features such as direct and ambient audio beam-forming and transparent studio-level dynamic processing.
HomePod is due to launch this December.
Image: Amazon Echo Show with a built-in display
As you leave your home to visit over places, you probably bounce from Wi-Fi network to Wi-Fi network to save your cellular data. In some cases, your device automatically connects to known or trusted Wi-Fi networks, whether you want it to or not.
A new jailbreak tweak called NotifyWiFi10 by iOS developer ichitaso is a Wi-Fi notification management platform that alerts you every time your device connects to different Wi-Fi network. It comes with a slew of features for choosing what happens after connecting to certain ones.
At the beginning of May, iOS developer Limneos started tinkering with the iPhone’s NFC chip to allow it talk to third-party NFC tags and accessories that Apple has never allowed its system to talk to before.
At the time, it was just a work in progress and a proof of concept, but Limneos has officially released a new jailbreak tweak in Cydia dubbed NFCWriter that unlocks the full potential of your NFC chip for everyone. It's the first time that the chip has been hacked to this extent, and it opens a whole new realm of possibilities.