A report from DigiTimes claims Apple are beginning to ramp up production of the Apple Watch, ahead of its early 2015 launch. According to its sources, between 30 and 40 million units of the Apple Watch have been ordered, putting the likely launch window sometime in February. A topic in our forums asks about the possibility of a US-only launch for the Apple Watch, but I’m not so sure — the last time Apple launched a physical product in a single country was the iPhone, and that was back in 2007.
Meanwhile, the “iPad Pro” has been pushed back amidst manufacturing difficulties, which analyst Ming-Chi Kuo cites as component yield rates for the oxide panel used in the larger, 12.9-inch, display. MacRumors notes the potential iPad Pro release date is now “up in their air”, which is perhaps too subtle of a dig that you should be getting the iPad Air 2 instead, because that’s a damn fine tablet.
Continue reading
Anandtech checked out the GPU in the iPad Air 2, and found it’s even better than they expected. Even though the OS will happily spill the beans about the processor, software tells us nothing about the kind of graphics card we have under the hood. Comparing performance of Apple’s A8X with known graphics processors gets us pretty close, but we can only confirm our findings once we have shots of the die. Anandtech’s read is slightly technical, but the bottom line is: graphics performance on the iPad Air 2 is nothing short of amazing.
Continue reading
A new security vulnerability has been discovered on Apple’s iOS platform, this time to do with certificate security regarding apps. The issue is because Apple doesn’t enforce certificates for apps with the same bundle identifier, it means non-legitimate apps installed via a provisioning profile can “take over” legitimate apps installed from the App Store. Ars Technica’s explanation of the threat says the same process can’t be used to overtake Apple’s own apps, such as Mobile Safari or Mail. Unlike WireLurker, which involved users jailbreaking their devices and circumventing Apple’s built-in security, this vulnerability works alongside Apple’s existing security measures on iOS.
Continue reading
Apple’s latest web tool lets you deregister your mobile phone number from iMessage. It’s designed to be used if you used to have an iPhone but don’t anymore, and as the website says, “may need to turn off iMessage if you are using a non-Apple phone and can’t get SMS or text messages someone sends you from an iPhone”. If you still have your iPhone it’s pretty easy as you can just turn off iMessage, otherwise you’ll need to put in your phone number, get a confirmation SMS, and put the confirmation code into the website.
Continue reading
Anandtech’s review of the iPad Air 2 says the tablet continues the same tried-and-true formula of previous iPads, iterating on both design and hardware specs to produce “one of the only tablets worth buying on the market today”. Significant improvements in the display and camera make it more usable, and while hardware specs don’t matter for most people, the updated A8X SoC means an all-round better user experience. In short, it’s just a better tablet, and Anandtech has the graphs to prove it.
Continue reading
Office for iPhone and iPad is now free, as in beer. The Verge reports that starting today, you won’t need an Office 365 subscription to create or edit documents using Office for iOS, which is pretty good news seeing as it puts Office on equal footing with Apple’s own iWork suite. But there’s a few caveats: Microsoft have said only “basic editing” is available for non-Office 365 subscribers, and Macworld has a breakdown of exactly what that means.
Continue reading
If I asked you what the next big thing was for Apple, “glasses-free 3D” wouldn’t be at the top of my list. But that’s what one Taiwanese website wants you to believe, with MacRumors relaying the rumour the next iPhone will feature glasses-free 3D technology, much like what people see on the Nintendo 3DS. It’s interesting to note that Apple previously patented ideas relating to stereoscopic 3D, but as for whether we’ll see that kind of tech in the next iPhone? Your guess is as good as mine.
Continue reading
MacRumors reports a sketchy rumour which claims Apple will discontinue the iPad mini in favour of the larger screen of the iPad Pro. It likely won’t be happening anytime soon as Apple just released the iPad mini 3, and definitely won’t be happening anytime soon given that the iPad Pro isn’t even a device which exists outside the halls of Cupertino, but it’s fun to think about Apple forcing users to go to the iPhone 6 Plus instead of the iPad mini.
Continue reading
On one of the only days of the year I don’t publish a news post, Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks out about his sexuality. Writing for Bloomberg’s Businessweek, Tim Cook says he’s proud to be gay, and considers being gay one of the greatest gifts God has given him. While Cook has never denied his sexuality and has always been open about it with his colleagues at Apple, this is the first time he has publicly acknowledged his sexuality, too. I guess we all knew, it was just nice to hear it from the man himself, right?
But seriously, I go away for two days, and suddenly Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor is working with Apple. The exact details of his project remain a secret, but in an interview with Billboard, Reznor reveals it’s related to music delivery, saying it’s an extension of his work with Beats. If Reznor thinks it’s work worth diverting effort from making music, you can tell it’s got to be pretty important.
Continue reading
Every month, we’ll be bringing you no more than a handful of slightly longer — but always worthy of your time and attention — reads about the wonderful world of Apple. This is Good Reads.
- We kick off Good Reads this morning with a profile of Jony Ive from Vogue, who describes Ive’s zen-like qualities alongside his design genius. Of course, Ive is the one behind all design at Apple these days, hardware and software, so to say he had a hand in the Apple Watch — itself a very design-oriented device — is an understatement.
Design critics now look back at the birth of the Jobs-Ive partnership as the dawn of a golden age in product design, when manufacturers began to understand that consumers would pay more for craftsmanship. Together Jobs and Ive centered their work on the notion that computers did not have to look as if they belonged in a room at NASA.
Continue reading
A report from DigiTimes claims Apple are beginning to ramp up production of the Apple Watch, ahead of its early 2015 launch. According to its sources, between 30 and 40 million units of the Apple Watch have been ordered, putting the likely launch window sometime in February. A topic in our forums asks about the possibility of a US-only launch for the Apple Watch, but I’m not so sure — the last time Apple launched a physical product in a single country was the iPhone, and that was back in 2007.
