Apple introduces the iPhone XS

Another year, another set of brand spankin’ new iPhones. But this year, little has been left to the imagination as leaks have continued to spring up over the course of the past few months.

Today, however, the new iPhone becomes official. Apple has introduced a new models of the premium iPhone, the iPhone XS, which comes in three finishes, gold, silver and space grey.

So let’s take a look at the details.

Design

The new iPhone doesn’t look all that different from the iPhone X, but that is always the case with the “S” years. The phones come in gold, silver and space grey and are made with surgical grade steel, as well as a new glass formulation for durability.

The Apple team has also upgraded the dust and water resistance of the iPhone, bumping it to IP68 rated, with water resistance up to 2 meters deep for several minutes. Schiller added that the phone was tested in many liquids, including orange juice, tea, wine and beer.

Developing… Please refresh

from Apple – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2N7OELO

Apple watchOS 5 ships on September 17

Apple today formally introduced the next generation of Apple Watch devices, the Series 4. Alongside the new devices, the company announced the updated watchOS 5 mobile operating system will ship on September 17.

The new version of watchOS was first shown off at this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote, where flagship features like the Walkie-Talkie mode, smart Siri watch face, updated Podcast app, support for Siri shortcuts, and a “Raise to Speak to Siri” feature were highlighted.

The company didn’t really spend time reviewing these features today, as the new devices themselves were the focus.

Series 4 Apple Watch devices will offer 30% more screen space thanks to an edge-to-edge display, as was previously leaked and today confirmed. To take better advantage of that extra room, watchOS 5 will debut a new watch face that lets you pack in a lot more complications.

Now, you can add all kinds of extra complications to your Series 4 watch face – up to 8 on the new device. Among these, you can add photos of loved ones to the screen which you can tap to connect with, or if you’re traveling, you can customize a watch face that tracks different time zones. You could also use the extra space to create the ultimate health and fitness watch face, Apple says.

One of the complication setups makes it easier to connect directly to people from the face, one is a multiple time zone array and one setup is focused on health and fitness.

https://t.co/bsraCoBLLW #AppleEvent pic.twitter.com/Asmb0AB2pl

— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) September 12, 2018

The modular face will get an update, too, with more graphical information from apps like stocks, heart rate and activity, and even those from third party developers. Debut developers include MLB At Bat, Qantas, and Life Zone nutrition app.

The Apple Watch Series 4 screens are over 30% larger on each watch, but the case is actually thinner than the last model. There are also redesigns of all of the Watch apps. The face can contain up to 8 complications at a time.

https://t.co/bsraCoBLLW #AppleEvent pic.twitter.com/AazOvS7X2J

— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) September 12, 2018

Other new watch faces designed to take advantage of the Series 4 display include a Breathe face, where the animation is timed around a deep breath, as well as a suite of motion faces (similar to live wallpapers), including Vapor, Liquid Metal, Fire and Water. These react uniquely with the curved edges of the case, Apple says.

WatchOS 5 also becomes a better workout companion with features like automatic workout detection which provides an alert to start a workout while giving retroactive credit, plus new dedicated workout types Yoga and Hiking. Runners will get extended battery life — which is increased to six hours — plus cadence for indoor and outdoor runs, pace alerts for outdoor runs, and rolling mile pace, which shows pace for the immediately preceding mile.

WatchOS 5 offers a ton of features, many of which Apple didn’t highlight today due to time constraints. But lists of new features found in beta builds are readily available, as are videos. They’re also available on Apple’s official watchOS 5 website here.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2xaXBcx

Apple unveils the Apple Watch Series 4

Apple just unveiled an updated Apple Watch. And this year’s new Watch is all about the display. Thanks to thinner bezels and a slightly bigger casing, you’ll see more on your screen.

“Apple Watch isn’t just the number one smart watch, it’s the number one watch in the world period,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said before introducing Apple COO Jeff Williams.

Williams framed the watch as a communication device, a fitness device and a health monitoring tool. For instance, the Apple Watch can notify you if you have an unusual heart rate. It’s clear that Apple has put aside the idea that the Apple Watch is an app platform.

“Everything about it has been redesigned and reengineered,” Williams said. The design still looks very familiar, but it’s clear that the screen is bigger. You don’t necessarily see it when there’s a dark watch face. But it’s striking in the Breath app for instance.

The small version has a 32 percent larger display, and the bigger version has a 35 percent larger display. Thanks to a brand new watch face, you can put up to eight complications at once. It looks busy but it works.

In order to put a bigger display, the company had to make the Watch slightly larger. The 38mm model is now called the 40mm model, and the 42mm model is now 44mm large.

According to Williams, the total volume of the Series 4 model is still smaller than the volume of the Apple Watch Series 3 thanks to a thinner design. So there you go — a larger watch in a thinner body.

The displays now has rounded edges just like on the iPhone X. The digital crown has been redesigned to give you haptic feedback. The speaker is 50 percent louder. I’m not sure who uses this speaker, but if you need to make a quick phone call or use the new walkie-talkie feature in watchOS 5, it’s now better.

The back of the device is now made of black ceramic and sapphire crystal, which should help when it comes to cellular reception. The new system-on-a-chip (the S4) is supposed to be twice as fast as the one in the Series 3. Thanks to a new gyroscope, the Watch can detect a fall, which could be particularly useful for elderly.

This is a developing post…

from Apple – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2MumHZC

Apple has now sold almost 2B iOS devices

As usual, Apple used its annual iPhone event to provide us with a few fresh stats about the state of its business. The most important one came right at the start of today’s event.  Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that the company is about to sell its 2 billionth iOS device.

“We’re about to hit a major milestone,” he said. “We are about to ship our two billionth’s iOS device.”

 

We know that Apple had shipped about 1.2 billion iPhones by early 2017. This is all iOS devices, though, not just iPhones, so it’s no surprise the number is quite a bit higher.

“This is astonishing,” he said. “iOS has changed the way we live. From the way we learn to the way we work. To how we are entertained to how we shop, order our food and get our transportation and stay in touch with one another.”

It’s worth noting that Google announced two billion Android users in early 2017.

In addition to these new iOS stats, Cook also announced that Apple’s stores now see 500 million visitors per year.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2xancSL

Google gets more RCS messaging support from Samsung

Google has secured a bit more buy in from Samsung for a next generation text messaging standard it’s long been promoting.

The Android OS maker’s hope for Rich Communication Services (RCS), which upgrades what SMS can offer to support richer comms and content swapping, can provide its fragmented Android ecosystem with a way to offer comparably rich native messaging — a la Apple’s iMessage on iOS.

But it’s a major, major task given how many Android devices are out there. And Google needs the entire industry to step with it to support RCS (not just device makers but carriers too) if it’s going to achieve anything more than fiddling around the edges.

Zooming out for a moment, the even bigger problem is the messaging ship has sailed, with massively popular platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram having already offloaded billions of users into their respective walled gardens, pulling the center of gravity away from SMS.

Not that that has stopped Google trying, though, even as it has been muddled in its strategy too — spreading its messaging efforts around quite a bit (with false starts like Allo).

Google doubled down on RCS in April when it pulled resources from the standalone Allo messaging app to focus on trying to drum up more support for next-gen SMS instead.

It has also managed to build a modicum of momentum behind RCS. At this year’s Mobile World Congress it announced more than 40 carriers now backed RCS — up from ~27 the year before. The most recent support figure put the carrier number at 55.

But, three years on from its acquisition of RCS specialist Jibe Mobile — and ambitious talk of building ‘the future of messaging’ — there’s little sign of that.

An added wrinkle is that carriers also have to have actively rolled out RCS support, not just stated they intend to. And it’s not clear exactly how many have.

Nor is it clear how many users of RCS there are at this stage. (Back in 2016 carriers were merely talking about building “a path” to one billion users — at a time when SMS had several billions of users, suggesting they saw little chance of creating anything near next-gen messaging ubiquity via the standard.)

The latest Google-backed RCS development, announced via press release, is of an “expanded collaboration” between Mountain View and Samsung — saying their respective message clients will “work seamlessly with each company’s RCS technology, including cloud and business messaging platforms”.

The pair have previously added RCS support to “select Samsung devices” but are now saying RCS features will be brought to some existing Samsung smartphones — including (and beginning with) the Galaxy S8 and S8+, as well as the S8 Active, S9, S9+, Note8, Note9, and select A and J series running Android 9.0 or later.

Which sounds like a fair few devices. But it’s also muddier than that — because again support remains subject to carrier and market availability. So won’t be universal across even that subset of Samsung Android handsets.

They also now say that (select) new Samsung Galaxy smartphones will natively support RCS messaging. But, again, that’s only where carriers support the standard.

“This means that consumers and brands will be able to enjoy richer chats with both Android Messages and Samsung Messages users,” they add, after their string of caveats.

Despite the PR ending on an upbeat note — with the two companies talking about bringing an “enhanced messaging experience across the entire Android ecosystem” — there’s clearly zero chance of that. A clear consequence of the rich ‘biodiversity’ of the Android ecosystem is reduced ubiquity for cross-device standardization plays like this. 

Still, if Google can cherry pick enough flagship devices and markets to buy in to supporting RCS it might have figured that’s critical messaging mass enough to stack against Apple’s iMessage. So added buy in from Samsung — whose high end devices are most often contending with iPhones for consumers’ cash — is certainly helpful to its strategy.

from Android – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2NAv5v0
via IFTTT

Live from Apple’s iPhone event

Gooooood morning, Cupertino. Today’s the big event at Apple HQ. 2018’s been a slow year for Apple hardware (including a complete no-show at WWDC a few months back). As ever, we’ll be on-hand to help make sense of all of the news as it breaks, and you can follow along with our handy liveblog below. For those who want it straight from the source, you can follow Apple’s live stream or over on Twitter.

As far as what to expect, but all accounts, there’s going to be A LOT. New iPhones are basically a given. Likely there will be a sequel to the iPhone X, along with a cheaper version that keeps the design in tact, while swapping the OLED for something a bit cheaper. A new version of the Apple Watch also seems like all but a given at this point. Here’s a rundown of the most likely announcements for today’s big show to help you brace for the news.

Things kick off at 10AM PT, 1PM ET.

from iPhone – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2CPFTBr

Apple, AT&T, Amazon, Google among tech giants called to Senate Commerce Committee

If you weren’t done watching tech giants get grilled by lawmakers, mark your calendar for September 26 in what’s expected to be another riveting round of questioning.

Policy chiefs from AT&T and Charter, along with senior executives at Apple, Amazon, Google and Twitter will face questions from the Senate Commerce Committee later this month about how each company approaches safeguards to consumer privacy. The tech and telco companies will be asked to “discuss possible approaches to safeguarding privacy more effectively,” among other things.

Noticeably absent is Facebook; though the committee says the witness list is subject to change.

Committee chairman Sen. John Thune ssaid the hearing will allow the companies to “explain their approaches to privacy, how they plan to address new requirements from the European Union and California, and what Congress can do to promote clear privacy expectations without hurting innovation.”

Beyond that, it’s not clear exactly what the point of the hearing is.

A congressional source told TechCrunch to expect each company to explain for one what they could do to protect privacy outside of the law, and what role Congress can play in creating a single set of privacy requirements.

This will be the latest in a string of hearings in recent months following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which embroiled Facebook in an exposure of millions of users’ data.

This will be the second Senate Commerce Committee hearing this year focused on the issue. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify in April and later the Senate Intelligence Committee has held several hearings to discuss election security and disinformation campaigns around the 2018 midterm elections.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2x8k61P