Posts

One of the biggest questions leading up to Apple’s event today was how much would the various models of Apple Watch cost beyond the device’s $349 starting price. Pricing is a little more complex than Apple’s iPhones or iPads, with pricing for the three collections— Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport, and the gold Apple Watch Edition— all including various tiers depending on strap and case size combinations. Look at the entire lineup, all three collections range from the starting price of $349 for the Sport model to as much as $17,000 for the 18k gold Apple Watch Edition model....

Apple Watch sales fell year-on-year during the first quarter, reports Canalys. The market intelligence firm estimates that shipments fell from 6M in Q1 2019 to 5.2M in the same quarter this year. Apple’s market share also fell sharply, from 46.7% last year to 36.3% this year … One explanation of this is the success of Huawei’s smartwatches. In particular, the Huawei Watch GT 2, which our sister site 9to5Google described as “easily the best ‘not-so-smart’ smartwatch....

Update: Apple released Safari Technology Preview 126 last week but then pulled off the update. It’s now available again. Apple released today Safari Technology Preview 126, its experimental browser first introduced in 2016. With this update, users can have a sneak peek at upcoming web technologies coming to macOS and iOS. With Safari Technology Preview, some of the features announced with macOS Monterey and iOS 15 last week are available to users that are not necessarily running beta versions of upcoming operating systems....

Apple’s next Apple Watch Activity Challenge has officially been scheduled. The first-ever “Unity Challenge” will be held from February 1 through February 28, and it encourages Apple Watch users to celebrate Black History Month by closing their Move ring seven days in a row. This marks the first year that Apple has held an Apple Watch Activity Challenge in celebration of Black History Month. Apple Watch Activity Challenges are meant to promote using the watch for fitness and act as a way for Apple to guide users into taking advantage of the workout tracking features....

Apple today shared two new ads on its official YouTube channel, both of which highlight the “Portrait Mode” feature available exclusively on the iPhone 7 Plus. The feature, as the ads demonstrate, creates an instant depth-of-field effect by blurring the background to let anyone easily take a professional looking portrait. Both ads focus specifically on the Portrait Mode feature by showing how it can be used to shoot a superior portrait picture of a person....

Citi analysts give five reasons to buy Apple stock despite its target price being going down, according to MarketWatch. The reasonings include the launch of iPhone 14, a shift toward premium models, a $90 billion stock buyback, a potential for more devices-as-a-service, and upcoming new product categories. While shares are down, Apple will reveal third-quarter results at the end of the month. The MarketWatch article cites that the loss is less than other tech giants like Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta....

This morning, Pegatron signed a letter of intent to announce that it will invest up to $1 billion dollars to make a factory in Indonesia, via Reuters. The factory will make chips for Apple smartphones and may make components for MacBooks in the future. Pegatron is partnering with local electronics firm PT Sat Nusapersada. It is unclear how long it will take for the Pegatron operations to get off the ground....

Remember the good ol’ days when FaceTime wasn’t included with each Mac? Back then, you had to download a bit of software from the Mac App Store in order to make video calls to iPhone owners (though iChat could still do Mac-to-Mac calls). Even today, that standalone app is still available on the Mac App Store for $.99—and for some reason it’s still the #5 paid app on the entire store....

The Apple Watch Ultra launches this Friday. While it was already known that it features new packaging (with first reviews already out), we got the chance to take a look at the new box, which includes a booklet. With an adventurous style, the Apple Watch Ultra packaging brings the feel of a brand new Apple product as the company has added more information rather than just instructions and a cable....

A BI Intelligence report on the future of wearables is predicting that by 2020 the Apple Watch will account for 40% of all premium watch sales, defined as watches costing upwards of $350. The report suggests Apple will be shipping over 40M Watches a year by this date. A supporting survey found that those currently considering a smartwatch purchase were most interested in notifications and health & fitness apps, with the Apple Watch unsurprisingly seeing substantially greater appeal than Android Wear models....

While there haven’t been any more announcements regarding its upcoming streaming service, Apple is doing quite a bit behind the scenes when it comes to original content. According to Variety, Apple has recently begun working with Oscar-winning indie studio A24 on several films and TV shows. As usual, Apple is not giving any specifics on the deal beyond saying it has a “multiyear agreement” and is involved in multiple films....

Apple’s new Peanuts series Snoopy in Space has released its first trailer. Originally kicking off as a four panel comic strip that appeared in seven newspapers in 1950, Peanuts went on to become a global phenomenon, eventually appearing in 21 different languages, throughout 75 different countries worldwide. Created by Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts gave rise to numerous lovable characters, which even today - some 69 years later - are instantly recognizable....

Bloomberg is out with its 2019 Pay Index that ranks the compensation of US executives. Even though Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has a relatively small salary, bonuses and large stock awards launched him to being the second-highest-paid CEO after Tesla’s Elon Musk. Bloomberg‘s data shows that Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk handily earned the most of any US executive in 2019 thanks to options vesting. That saw Musk earn a sizeable $595....

One of the more surprising announcements from Apple at WWDC this afternoon was that it will be launching its own “Sign In with Apple” platform. In a post on its developer blog this evening, Apple notes that it will be required that apps implement “Sign in with Apple” if they also implement competing services. “Sign in With Apple” isn’t live in the first beta of iOS 13, but the company says it will be available for developers to test this summer....

Apple today has pushed an update to the official Apple Store app for iOS that includes a couple of notable enhancements and bumps the app to version 3.7. Most notably, the latest update expands the capabilities of 3D Touch within the app. Previously, the Apple Store app on iOS supported 3D Touch quick actions on the app icon, allowing users to more easily jump directly into various areas of the app....

The iPod refresh was leaked last week by assets in the latest version of iTunes 12.2 which pictured the new iPod touch, nano and shuffle colors. As reported this morning, it is also expected that the iPod touch will get a storage bump with a new 128 GB option for $399. The base iPod price is expected to remain unchanged with the 16 GB SKU priced at $199. Also notice that the Loop wristband is not visible in the corner of the iPod touch in the image above, suggesting it will be removed from the product....

In line with our report from a couple of weeks ago, Apple’s in-store iPhone trade-in program has arrived in Canada. The Reuse and Recycle program allows an iPhone user (of the first 3G model and newer) to trade-in their iPhone for a gift card that can be applied toward the purchase of the new iPhone. The amount of money on the card will vary by model and the quality of the older iPhone....

Apple this week announced Studio Display, which features a 27-inch 5K panel combined with a camera, microphones, and speakers that work together when the user connects the display to a Mac. What about Windows? If for some reason you need to use Apple’s $1599 monitor with a Windows PC, you can, but there are some limitations. An Apple spokesperson told The Verge that Studio Display is identified as a regular display when plugged into a Windows PC via the Thunderbolt connection (which not every PC supports)....

An upcoming Apple store in the heart of Hamburg, Germany. Photo courtesy of alkr.com In addition to the City Galerie store in Augsburg, which is opening tomorrow at 9:30am local time, Germany is about to become the home to yet another big Apple store, the country’s seventh. Local web sites iFun.de and Alkr.com published a series of photos this morning depicting a huge teaser poster in the window panels at the Jungfernstieg street in Hamburg, Germany....

Rounding out a week of Apple embargoed reviews, the first reviews of the Apple TV 4K and redesigned Siri Remote have now been published. These reviews detail the performance upgrades of the new Apple TV with an A12 Bionic processor on the inside, plus real-world life with the new Siri Remote. CNN Underscored says that the redesigned Siri Remote is the “best” they’ve ever tested and a “must buy” for Apple TV users:...