It feels like 1,000 years since Tim Cook stood on stage an announced that Apple was selling a gold-plated smartwatch for $15,000. At the time, it was difficult to say if this was a sensible move or just one involving “courage,” because no one had tried to sell a small wrist computer for that much before.
Two years later, the normal-human Apple Watch is doing surprisingly well, exceeding expectations by being the best-selling smartwatch in its category. The $15,000 gold Apple Watch Edition? Well, it’s been discontinued, and now its fancy Paris flagship store is closing.
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Apple roll out a revamped and next-gen MacBook Pro. In fact, the entirety of Apple’s Mac lineup has been in dire need of a meaningful refresh for an embarrassingly long time.
Thankfully, we won’t have to endure Apple’s stale and stagnant Mac lineup for much longer. Earlier this week, Apple sent out invitations for a special media event set to take place on October 27. Apple, in typical fashion, hasn’t told us what’s on the agenda but it’s no secret that the event will focus primarily on new Macs. It’s also no secret that the star of the show will be a completely retooled MacBook Pro with a number of snazzy new bells and whistles.
Apple famously has hundreds if not thousands of in-house engineers who work on chip design and the group’s work is becoming increasingly more impressive with each new iPhone release. Getting right down to it, the new A10 Fusion chip that powers Apple’s iPhone 7 is an absolute beast. While new iPhone models are always faster than their predecessors, Apple really outdid itself with the A10, both in terms of overall performance and power efficiency; as we were reminded in a new showdown on Friday, the iPhone 7 crushes leading Android phones.
This past Wednesday, a group of seven individuals walked into an Apple Store in Natick, Massachusetts and calmly carried out a highly orchestrated yet not too sophisticated heist. Clad in hoodies and low-riding hats as to hide their identity as best they could, the group of individuals circled around an iPhone display table and systematically cut all of the security cords before snagging 19 iPhones and fleeing the premises on foot.
We’ve got one last list of paid iPhone and iPad apps on sale for free to share with you this week, and it’s a good one. Well, it’s not quite as impressive as yesterday’s list since so many awesome apps went on sale on Thursday, but you can still grab a few of them without paying if you head back to that post to check them out. If you want a fresh batch of apps, you’ll find it below. More →
Apple’s biggest event of the year has obviously come and gone at this point, and millions of people have new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus handsets in their pockets right now. The annual iPhone press conference is always the Apple event that fans look forward to most each year, and a new iOS unveiling at WWDC is a close second. But 2016 isn’t over yet and Apple has one more event planned before the year is through.
This event isn’t anticipated quite as eagerly as other recent Apple events, mainly because Apple’s Mac lineup is expected to be the focus. Apple makes some great computers and the company’s next-generation MacBook Pro is getting some very nifty new features, but desktop and laptop computers aren’t quite as sexy as smartphones these days. Of course, Apple has more in store for us than just new Macs, so let’s take a look at what we can expect from next week’s press conference. More →
Today is October 21st, and it has now been a month and a week since Apple first released its new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Five full weeks, and yet it’s still next to impossible to find the model that everyone wants. The larger iPhone 7 Plus is vastly superior to its smaller sibling this year, and Apple’s new glossy jet black color is obviously the most desirable color of the season. It’s also the most difficult color for Apple’s manufacturing partners to create, and you know what happens when high demand meets low supply.
If you want a jet black iPhone 7 Plus, you have two options: you can either stalk your local Apple stores every single morning until you find one in stock, or you can order one online. If you’re not the stalker type and you want your shiny new iPhone before Christmas though, you had better order one right away. More →
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 may be toast — literally and figuratively — but Android fans have a new pair of flagship phones to lust after this holiday season. Google’s first ever “made by Google” smartphones pack cutting-edge specs into a somewhat unique design, giving shoppers what most early reviewers believe to be a viable alternative to Apple’s iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
We know the Pixel phones feature the latest and greatest features Android has to offer, and we also know that they pack some serious power on paper. By how do those impressive specs translate in the real world? Is the Pixel a match for the reigning performance champs, Apple’s iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus? More →
If you listened to the pundits and armchair analysts, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the iPhone 7 was going to be a boring upgrade, nothing more than a stop-gap measure to keep consumers occupied until the release of the radically re-designed iPhone 8.
Of course, the iPhone 7 was far from boring. Sure, the device may lack one overarching killer feature, but it nonetheless sports a sufficient number of impressive enhancements that, taken together, make the device a compelling upgrade in its own right.
For the first time this year, Apple went with two different providers of cellular modems in the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. Some phones have Qualcomm modems, the company Apple has worked with for years. The others had Intel modems, marking a real breakthrough for Intel, which has been trying to get its chips into flagship smartphones for years.
Unfortunately, testing is showing that there’s a big difference between the two modems. Although both will work just fine when there’s a good LTE signal, it seems that if you’ve got an Intel modem, your data speed in areas with less-than-ideal coverage may be much slower.
If there’s one thing I have learned from my lifelong battle with email, it’s this: be flexible. There are always new apps in development and new features being added to existing tools. The best tool for the job today might not be the best tool for the job tomorrow. What’s more, your email app of choice could disappear at any moment, as I learned the hard way back in 2015, so you have to be willing to reexamine your options at a moment’s notice. In fact, you should always be on the hunt for new tools.
When I first moved away from my go-to iPhone app back in 2015 because it was being discontinued, I landed on Microsoft’s Outlook. The app is still a great choice, but it’s no longer at the top of the pack. I have now begun bouncing between two different apps that offer fantastic design, reliable performance and fantastic feature sets, and I just can’t pick a winner. More →
Welcome to the post-Galaxy Note 7 world, where every exploding smartphone instantly makes the news. An iPhone 7 owner appears to be the latest victim, claiming that he left his iPhone 7 in his car and came back to find the vehicle filled with smoke with the interior badly burned. While the cause of the fire hasn’t yet been confirmed by officials, photos from the scene show that the fire indeed destroyed the interior of the car. More →
