Swiss bank UBS has issued a research note that projects Apple Watch
sales totaled 1.7 million units in the June quarter, a somewhat
surprising increase of 100,000 units compared to its estimate of 1.6
million sales in the March quarter.
Apple Maps
has been updated with comprehensive transit data for the U.S. cities of
Honolulu, Hawaii and Kansas City, Missouri, enabling iPhone users in
the areas to navigate using public transportation, including buses and
commuter rails.
Transit routing options in the Kansas City metropolitan area include
RideKC buses and the downtown KC Streetcar. Directions extend to most
suburbs in both Kansas and Missouri, including Overland Park, Olathe,
Independence, Lee's Summit, Shawnee, Blue Springs, Lenexa, and other
smaller communities.
UK technology firm ARM Holdings is to be bought by Japan's Softbank for £24bn ($32bn) it confirmed on Monday.
The
board of ARM is expected to recommend shareholders accept the offer -
which is around a 43% premium on its closing market value of £16.8bn on
Friday.
The Cambridge-based firm designs microchips used in most smartphones, including Apple's and Samsung's.
ARM, which was founded in 1990, employs more than 3,000 people.
Shares
in the UK technology firm surged by 45% at the open of the London Stock
Exchange to 1,742.85p per share, adding £7.56bn to ARM's market value.
Taiwan
Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has reportedly secured
exclusive orders for the A11 processor expected to power Apple's 2017 "iPhone 8".
According to the Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN),
the Taiwan-based foundry will be the sole supplier of Apple's
next-generation A11 chip, which will be built on a 10nm FinFET process.
TSMC co-CEO Mark Liu announced at the company's recent investors meeting
that its first 10nm customer product has been produced with
"satisfactory yield" and that three products had already been "taped
out".
Taping out refers to the initial design of the chip having been
completed for creation of the masks that will be used to print the
actual chips, although further tweaks are likely as test production is
carried out. TSMC is said to have begun taping out the design for
Apple's A11 processor in May. Xilinx, MediaTek, and HiSilicon are said to be the other customers that will use the company's 10nm process technology.
It has only taken a week for Pokémon
Go’s creatures to pop up all around the planet – but their journey really began
in 1996
Playing Pokémon Go in New York:
augmented reality brings the creatures out of the game and into the real world.
Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Returning home on Thursday
afternoon, I was stopped by two 10-year-olds standing at the top of my road.
“Are you playing Pokémon Go?” one asked. When I said I was, they
went wild.
“Oh my days! There’s a Gengar over there,
and there’s a gym over there and that woman’s playing it too. Everyone here is
playing it! What level are you? How many Pokémon do you have?” At this point,
the game had been out in the UK for less than 12 hours.
Apple has a major iPhone redesign planned
for 2017, with a glass body and edge-to-edge OLED display that includes
an integrated Touch ID fingerprint sensor and front-facing camera.
With it looking more and more like Apple is going to remove the headphone jack on the iPhone 7,
we've seen considerable speculation and discussion about the transition
to either wired Lightning headphones or Bluetooth options. Looking at
the wireless possibilities, the first iPhone 7 headphone jack rumors
immediately reminded us of an "AirPods" trademark filing we discovered last October that seemed likely to be linked to Apple, although conclusive proof could not be found at the time.
Nest on Wednesday introduced an outdoor surveillance camera to complement its indoor Nest Cam.
The Nest Cam Outdoor will go on sale this fall for US$199. It is easy
to mount on any outdoor surface, according to the company, and even has
a magnetic base for attaching to gutters.
The camera, which resembles a unit of track lighting, can capture
1080p video. It has live-streaming capabilities, as well as two-way
audio. It has a 130-degree field of view and includes night vision
support.
When science vloggers gather around an electromagnet experiment, you know something exciting is about to go down.
In a YouTube video posted this week, we see Dianna Cowern of "Physics Girl," Joe Hanson of "It's Okay to be Smart" and Joe DiPrima of "Arc Attackmusic" destroy an empty soda can with an electromagnet.
The aluminum can sits inside a thick coil of wire. The trio then sends
an electrical current through wire, which creates the electromagnet. In
turn, the electromagnet dramatically rips the can apart with a loud
bang and quite a few sparks.
Luckily, they film the experiment
using a Phantom high speed camera, capturing the impressive explosion at
11,000 frames per second.
Apple and the World Wildlife Fund this week announced that the recent "Apps for Earth" promotion has raised more than $8 million in proceeds to support the WWF's conservation work.
The Apps for Earth promotion, timed to take place to celebrate Earth
Day, ran from April 14 to April 24 and saw dozens of apps offering
special in-app purchases with 100 percent of the proceeds going directly
to the World Wildlife Fund.
Many of the participating apps, which included titles like VSCO, Trivia Crack, Hearthstone, and Angry Birds 2,
heavily promoted the fundraiser, even going so far as to change app
icons and graphics during the time that it ran. Apple itself updated the
theme of the App Store's front page to highlight the promotion,
Your phone can help you navigate from one side of the country to the other, help you share memories with friends, or even identify the song that's playing right now. But it can’t answer basic (and important) questions like, “Where’s the nearest building exit?” or “Will this couch actually fit in my apartment?” That’s because while your phone may know where you are in the world, it doesn’t know where you are
The U.S. International Trade Commission
said on Tuesday it had launched a patent infringement investigation
into the import and sale of certain portable electronic devices
utilizing haptic technology.
It
said the investigation was based on a complaint filed by Immersion
Image copyrightKwon Sung-hoon/Busan Metropolitan City via APImage caption
The pink light over the seat is activated wirelessly
A bluetooth system
that alerts underground train users to give up their seats for pregnant
travellers has been trialled in South Korea.
The Pink Light campaign was tested by 500 pregnant women in the city of Busan over a five-day period. The women carried sensors that activated pink lights by priority seats on the Busan-Gimhae Light Rail service.
Though the 2017 iPhone is more than a
year away from launching, we're already hearing non-stop rumors about
the device due to the major design changes Apple is expected to
introduce. The latest rumor, coming from IHS analyst Kevin Wang,
suggests the 2017 iPhone will include a dual-curve OLED display that
covers the left and right edges of the device.
On Chinese social networking site Weibo (via PhoneArena), Wang said Apple will release a device with sloping edges similar to the Vivo XPlay 5 or the Galaxy S7 Edge.
Kevin
Wong's exact words are that after Vivo outed the Xplay 5 with its 5.4"
OLED screen that slopes to the sides like on the S7 edge, there will be
more manufacturers using this technique, including Apple with next
year's iPhone.
Apple is already rumored to be using flexible
OLED displays for the 2017 iPhone, which will be necessary for any kind
of dramatically curved display. It is not clear from Wang's statement
how far the display will extend to the edges of the device and whether
it will be a subtle curve for
In the future, drivers in the United Kingdom
may be able to store their driver's licenses digitally in Apple's
Wallet app, bringing Apple one step closer to fully replacing the
traditional physical wallet.
Oliver Morley, CEO of the UK's Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, showed off a prototype version of a digital driving license on Twitter this morning (via The Independent).
In the image, the Wallet app on the iPhone was shown with a virtual
copy of a UK driving license, stored right next to other Wallet cards.
According to Morley, the feature is still a prototype and will not serve
as a full replacement for a driving license, but an add-on, with its
implementation possible following the discontinuation
of a paper driving license counterpart in June of 2015. Security is one
of the main priorities for the introduction of the digital driving
license in the UK.
Apple has updated its System Status page to reflect that iCloud Mail and Notes may currently be unavailable for approximately 0.86% of users.
Apple says "users may be unable to send or receive mail and may also be unable to use Notes" until the services are restored.
The outage began shortly after 5:00 a.m. Pacific. This article will be updated when new information becomes available.
Update 9:41 AM: According to Apple's System Status page, the issue was resolved shortly after 9:00 AM Pacific Time.
An
attorney for Oracle Corp told jurors on Tuesday that Alphabet Inc's
Google deliberately took Oracle's intellectual property without
permission, kicking off a $9 billion retrial.Oracle
claims Google's Android violated its copyright on parts of the Java
programming language, while Google says it should be able to use Java
without paying a fee under the fair-use provision of copyright law.
The
case previously went to trial in 2012, but a jury deadlocked. If the
new jury in San Francisco federal court rules against Google on fair
use, then it will consider Oracle's $9 billion damages request. In
court on Tuesday, Oracle attorney Peter Backs said about 100,000
Android smartphones will have been activated by the time he finished his
hour-long opening statement, and 3 billion phones had been activated
since the lawsuit began.
That translated into $42 billion in revenue, he said, and all those phones contained Oracle's valuable property.
"You
do not take somebody's property without permission and use it for your
own benefit," Backs said. He said Google's defense cannot cover what
they did with Java, and called it the
The United States Patent and Trademark Office today granted
Apple a patent that describes a collection of iPad-compatible Smart
Covers that could integrate various display technologies to greatly
enhance "the overall functionality of the tablet device." The original
patent application was published in August 2012 and dates back to August 2011, four years before Apple introduced the original iPad Pro and its Smart Connector. (via Patently Apple).
The first integration of a next-generation Smart Cover lies in video
playback, where a user could watch a video with the cover folded up into
a triangle like Apple's current Smart Covers allow, but now supporting a
set of touch-sensitive areas for play, pause, fast forward, and rewind
controls. Although the user would not be able to directly see where they
were pressing down, "the size and location of the touch sensitive areas
can allow for a user to easily learn the locations after a short
familiarization period," according to the patent.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been named as one of several tech industry executives that will speak at Startup Fest Europe, a festival geared towards helping startups grow faster, according to the event website.
Tim
Cook (Apple) and Travis Kalanick (Uber) have accepted their invitation
to come to the Netherlands with great enthusiasm. Neelie Kroes (special
envoy StartupDelta) personally invited Cook and Kalanick during her
visit to San Francisco together with Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
Let’s
say I want to know what love is ... and I want something to show me. I
could listen to pop music. I would discover that love is the greatest
thing. It’s a drug. It’s something you can’t hurry. Apparently it’s
thicker than water, which doesn’t really tell me much, other than love
will be difficult to drink and may have a lower freezing point. By this
point, I’ve already had enough of silly love songs.
Cinema, too, has explored it for many years – all those two-hour
stories of forgiveness and redemption, and Julia Roberts just being a
girl standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her. Books have been
there for centuries, covering both ends of the sexy spectrum from the
gently smouldering affection between Elizabeth and Darcy, to Morrissey’s
car crash of a sex scene.
The man who has identified himself as the creator of Bitcoin plans to provide further proof to his claim.
Craig
Wright's spokesman told the BBC that he would "move a coin from an
early block" belonging to the crypto-currency's inventor "in the coming
days".
The Australian entrepreneur announced he was behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto on Monday.
Critics have said that the evidence produced to date is unconvincing.
You can read the strongest case for the prosecution in this post on Github, where Wright's blog is described as
"flimflam and hokum which stands up to a few minutes of cursory
scrutiny, and demonstrates a competent sysadmin's level of familiarity
with cryptographic tools, but ultimately demonstrates no non-public
information about Satoshi.
"The
author goes on to speculate that Craig Wright "used amateur magician
tactics to distract non-technical or non-expert staff of the BBC and the
Economist during a stage-managed demonstration."
It's not
completely unfair to describe me and Mark Ward - the other BBC reporter
at the briefing - as non-technical or non-expert. Indeed, in yesterday's
blog I said this: "What we saw seemed impressive - though it would need
a far higher level of expertise than we possess to be certain."
In line with Apple CEO Tim Cook's recent comments about "very strong" iPhone SE demand exceeding supply, the company has reportedly increased orders for the low-priced 4-inch smartphone in the second quarter of 2016.
DigiTimes claims that the second-quarter outlook for iPhone SE-related
chip orders has been revised to more than 5 million units, up from
3.5-4 million, and the upward trend is expected to continue through the
third quarter.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art today opened
its "Manus x Machina" Costume Institute Exhibition, which is being
sponsored by Apple. The show focuses on the dichotomy between handmade
haute couture and machine-made fashion, featuring pieces that juxtapose
traditional hand techniques like embroidery, pleating, and lacework with
technologies like laser cutting and thermo shaping.
Apple Design Chief Jony Ive, who is serving as co-chair alongside pop
star Taylor Swift and actor Idris Elba, was on hand at the opening and
gave an introductory speech, a portion of which was captured on social networking site Periscope.
We
are thrilled at Apple to help bring to life Manus x Machina: Fashion in
an Age of Technology. When Anna and Andrew first talked to me about the
exhibition, I was particularly intrigued that it would stimulate a
conversation exploring the relationship between what is made by man and
what is made by machine. That it would challenge the preconception held
by some that the former is somehow inherently more valuable. Not only in
the context of today, but also the future.
For this week's giveaway, we've teamed up with Leef to give MacRumors readers a chance to win the 32GB Leef iBridge, an iPhone-compatible storage device, the Leef iAccess, a microSD card reader, and a 64GB microSD card to go along with it.
Leef's iBridge
is designed to expand the available storage on an iPhone or iPad by
connecting to the Lightning port on Apple's devices. The iBridge can
store photos, videos, music, and other files, freeing up valuable space
on an iOS device, and it can also be used for backups. With the included
USB 3 connector, it can quickly transfer files between a Mac and an iOS
device.
With the Leef app, content stored on the iBridge can be accessed on an
iPhone or iPad, so music, videos, and photos can be viewed or played
directly from the device. A wide range of audio, video, and document
files are supported, from .MP4, .MKV, and .AVI to .WAV, .AAC, and .AIFF.
There's also a built in tool for taking and storing photos right on the
iBridge.
A 3D printed Apple logo is seen in
front of a displayed stock graph in this illustration taken April 28,
2016.
Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Apple
was set on Friday to have its worst week on the stock market since 2013,
as worries festered about a slowdown in iPhone sales and after
influential shareholder Carl Icahn revealed he sold his entire stake.
Image caption
Out with the old: Facebook employees see the old Sun Microsystems logo when they head home
Sun Microsystems was a Silicon Valley giant.
Founded
in the 80s, the company sold hardware and software to thousands of
companies, and during the dot.com boom it was bringing in $5bn (£3.4bn)
in revenue each quarter. But then the bubble burst, and the firm went
into a catastrophic downward spiral.
Its share price plummeted and, in 2010, the scraps of Sun Microsystems were bought up by Oracle — and that was that.
Six
years on, I'm driving towards San Jose, past the Menlo Park
headquarters of Facebook. On the side of the road, there's a big "Like"
billboard, and you'll often find a bevvy of techy tourists waiting to
have their picture taken in front of it - like some kind of social media
Taj Mahal.
But most striking about the Facebook sign is what's on
the reverse side: a logo for Sun Microsystems, the previous tenants at
this location.
Image copyrightReutersImage caption
Apple says it has received 5,000 requests for help gain access to iPhone data in 2015
The US government
has dropped a case against Apple that sought to compel the company to
provide access to an alleged New York drug dealer's locked iPhone.
The Department of Justice said Apple's help was no longer necessary as the passcode had been obtained.
A
similar case involving a phone used by the San Bernardino gunman was
dropped when the FBI got help from a third-party to unlock the handset.
The DoJ denied either case was about setting a court precedent.
The
cases revolve around cracking the four-digit security number that
accesses the phone without triggering a security feature that erases all
data after 10 incorrect guesses.
Image copyrightGoogleImage caption
Google wants self-drive cars with no steering wheels or pedals
Google has formed a
coalition with carmakers and taxi-hailing companies to help steer the
regulations needed to make self-drive cars a reality.
Including Ford, Volvo, Uber and Lyft, it will lobby lawmakers and regulators on some of the legal barriers.
Former US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration official David Strickland will be its spokesman.
The coalition also aims to convince the public of the benefits of driverless cars.
"Self-driving
technology will enhance public safety and mobility for the elderly and
disabled, reduce traffic congestion, improve environmental quality, and
advance transportation efficiency," the group said in a statement.
Data stolen from a dating website aimed at "beautiful people only" has been traded online.
The
details of more than a million members including their weight, height,
job, and phone numbers were discovered unencrypted online in December
2015.
They have now been sold on the black market, said security expert Troy Hunt.
The
firm said the data belonged to members who joined before July 2015 and
that no passwords or financial information were included.
Security
researcher Chris Vickery, who originally discovered it, told the BBC
the firm acted quickly after he notified them - but by then, data had
already been sold on.
"They published it openly to the world with no protection whatsoever," he said.
Beautiful People originally claimed the content was from a test server but Mr Vickery said the data itself was still genuine.
"Whether or not it's in the test database makes no difference if it's real data," he added.
"The
breach involves data that was provided by members prior to mid-July
2015. No more recent user data or any data relating to users who joined
from mid-July 2015 onward is affected," Beautiful People said in a
statement. Image copyrightBeautiful PeopleImage caption
People wishing to join the website are first rated by existing members
Beautiful People has been contacted by the BBC for further comment.
Public information
Now the compromised data appears to have been sold on the black market, security expert Troy Hunt told Forbes.
"Now
it's public, cybercriminals have the opportunity to use this
information to steal personal identities or more," said David Emm,
principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
"Unfortunately, once a breach of this nature has been made, there is not much that can be done."
Cybercriminals
use the genuine identities to synthesise new ones, and they tend to act
within a month of receiving stolen data, said John Lord, managing
director at identity data intelligence firm GBG.
"Organisations
need to take action and use more data, analytical insights and
triangulation of multiple-identity proofing techniques to minimise the
potential effects of identity theft for both the user and the businesses
serving them," he said.
Beauty secrets
People
hoping to join the Beautiful People website submit photographs which
are then rated by existing members of the opposite sex for 48 hours.
If they get enough positive votes, they are then granted membership.
The firm claims more than 700 marriages have taken place between people who met on its website.
There's no evidence that companies that declined to pay extortion fees to the Armada Collective were attacked, researchers say
Since early March, hundreds of businesses have received
threatening emails from a group calling itself the Armada Collective,
asking to be paid between 10 and 50 bitcoins -- $4,600 to $23,000 -- as a
"protection fee" or face DDoS attacks exceeding 1Tbps.
While
many of them did not comply, some did; the group's bitcoin wallet
address shows incoming payments of over $100,000 in total. Yet none of
the companies who declined to pay the protection fee were attacked,
website protection firm CloudFlare found.
The company talked with
more than 100 current and prospective customers who received an
extortion email from the Armada Collective, as well as with other DDoS
mitigation providers whose customers have been threatened by the group.
The Apple Watch turned one year old on Sunday, and Macworld
decided to use the device's anniversary as an opportunity to revisit
the state of gaming on Apple's first wearable. While the launch of the
Apple Watch brought a wave of excitement
for users and developers alike, the subsequent months saw a noticeable
dive in both buzz-worthy Apple Watch game announcements and user
interest, with a few exceptions.
As it was in April 2015, developers still believe that what works best
for Apple Watch games are short, "quick-hit experiences" that get users
in and out of fun, engaging games before raising their wrist grows
tiresome. Everywhere Games CEO Aki Järvilehto, whose company created one
of the first popular Apple Watch games, Runeblade [Direct Link],
believes that as well as quick bursts of entertainment, wrist-worn
games should "grow with the player" over the course of a few days,
weeks, and even months.
The company's viewpoint has netted an enthusiastic fanbase who have created detailed wiki pages and generate an active subreddit on Runeblade. According to Everywhere Games' statistics, active players log into the game about 100 times per day. Runeblade
crafted a bite-sized RPG experience that's become a model for other
Apple Watch games, but another popular blueprint being followed by
developers comes from Three Minute Games' interactive fiction experience
Lifeline [Direct Link], which puts players in the shoes of the only person who can communicate with a distant, stranded astronaut.
Taiwan
Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has reportedly secured
exclusive orders for the A11 processor expected to power Apple's 2017 "
With it looking more and more like Apple is going to remove the headphone jack on the 
Apple CEO 
In line with Apple CEO 
