Follow Benjamin on Threads to keep up with his latest projects. Benjamin blogs about Apple news and rumors and posts insightful product and app reviews. Read his work on 9to5Mac and his personal blog.
Benjamin Mayo also creates apps for iOS as a professional indie developer and contractor; more details here. Email to discuss making your iOS project.
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The Correlium team has today released a beta of a work-in-progress hack to get the Android operating system running on the iPhone.
Using the checkra1n jailbreak exploit to gain access to the bootloader of older iPhone models, Project Sandcastle lets you install a semi-working version of Android on an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus. Support for additional phone models is in the works.
Apple today announced the Shot on iPhone winning photos for the contest it started in January. This year, applicants had to show off their skills using iPhone 11 or iPhone 11 Pro Max, submitting their best Night mode shots.
A panel of judges selected six winners this year. The photographers and their compositions will be featured in an online gallery, on Apple’s Instagram page, and be part of a global billboard ad campaign.
As the impacts of the coronavirus on businesses remain unclear, Foxconn is trying to appease its partners by announcing today that it expects to resume normal production at full capacity in China by the end of March.
Foxconn remains Apple’s primary producer of high-end flagship iPhone models. Whilst parts come in from all over the world, final assembly of Apple’s most expensive iPhones happens in Foxconn factories, so it’s good news for Apple that Foxconn thinks it can be back up and running sooner rather than later.
Apple is set to pay up to $500 million to settle a United States lawsuit over the iPhone battery performance throttling debacle of 2018.
Via Reuters, Apple agreed to a preliminary settlement in legal documents filed on Friday. The company denied wrongdoing but said it settled to avoid lengthy court proceedings. The monetary suit is equivalent to $25 per impacted iPhone.
As we enter March, the number of rumors about upcoming Apple hardware continue to rise. There’s a palpable feeling that Apple is about to release new shiny stuff soon, although no one is 100% sure of exactly what is coming down the pipe. With the coronavirus outbreak spreading, Apple’s plan for the summer season are also in question.
Here’s a look at everything Apple could release this month, from iPhone to Mac to iPad and more.
A weekend report published in British newspaper The Independent put a renewed spotlight on the treatment of ethnic Uyghurs in China. Focusing on labor conditions at Chinese factories, the report says that the Chinese regime has relocated thousands of the Muslim Uyghurs from the west Xinjiang region, to be forced into work at these factories.
In addition to Nike, Dell, Volkswagen, and other big US brands, Apple is also linked to the story — specifically two Apple suppliers, BOE and O-Film.
Filings for new Powerbeats headphones today hit the FCC, model number A2015, following 9to5Mac’s discovery of “Powerbeats4” in code references back in December. The new model is expected to feature ‘Hey Siri’ support and a H1 chip, like what we have seen in Powerbeats Pro and latest-generation AirPods.
This model has hit the FCC ahead of an official announcement from Apple or Beats. The filings include a drawing of the new earbuds, and they look very similar to existing Powerbeats.
An Australian housing provider, Casa Capace, debuted two HomeKit-equipped homes this week as part of an innovative disability accommodation pilot. For most of us, smart home accessories are just a simple convenience but for the highly-dependent and disabled, smart home technology can be transformative.
Residents can use the Home app or Siri on the HomePod to open doors, raise and lower blinds, adjust the thermostat and more. The pilot program will house six residents across the two newly-built smart homes. If successful, it is likely that more homes in the same manner will be built.
The Netatmo Smart Indoor Camera now officially supports HomeKit Secure Video as of today, as announced in a Netatmo blog post. The firmware update is being made ‘gradually available’ over the upcoming days.
This means that new and existing Netatmo Smart Indoor Camera owners can now take advantage of HomeKit Secure Video features, where detected motion events are recorded as clips to the user’s iCloud account to be able to be watched back later.
According to Macotakara sources, the iPhone 12 lineup may support a new WiFi spec, 802.11ay, which is currently in the draft phase and expected to be finalized at the end of the year. 802.11ay uses 60GHz spectrum (separate from the 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands used in standard home router WiFi) to offer high-bandwidth device-to-device data transfer.
It would be a perfect technology for Apple to use to improve the speed of AirDrop transfers, for example …
As we continue to hear rumors that a new iPad Pro revision is coming in the spring, Ben Geskin shared photos of supposed cases for the new hardware. Mirroring CAD leaks from the end of the year, the eye is naturally drawn to the new square hole for the expected new 3D-sensing iPad Pro camera system.
A new demo from researchers at Mysk shines a light on the free, unrestricted, access all apps have to the iOS clipboard.
In the video, the developers create a dummy app that simply prints out the information gleaned from the clipboard. When the user copies an image, the app can immediately see the image content and the metadata like the location of where the photo was taken. This becomes a little more sinister when the demo shows that installed widgets can also silently collect all data copied to the clipboard, without user knowledge.
Update: New iPads too. Although, given the breadth and number of listings now found, it is starting to feel more like guesswork on the part of Target rather than an insight into Apple hardware product plans.
We aren’t entirely sure what to make of this just yet but Target employees are noticing some interesting listings popping up on their inventory system, seemingly tipping the hat on soon-to-be-announced Apple hardware.
In addition to the ‘AirPods X generation’, 9to5Mac received images showing that there are also dummy entries for ‘Apple TV Gen X’ — a possible successor to the Apple TV 4K — and ‘Apple Watch Series X’ bands. There’s also listings for ‘Apple iPod Touch X Generation’.
So we have AirPods, and we have AirPods Pro. Scattered track record Digitimes is continuing to report that it believes Apple will add another SKU to the AirPods lineup within the next six months, in what it calls AirPods Pro Lite.
In its latest report, Digitimes describes the AirPods Pro Lite as an entry-level truly wireless earphone set. Digitimes continues to be the only publication specifically describing such a product, although Ming-Chi Kuo did say that Apple would release new wireless headphones in the first half of 2020 — so maybe they are talking about the same thing.
Apple is said to be discussing adding the ability for users to set third-party apps as defaults, overriding the built-in preference for Apple’s Safari and Mail. The news comes as Apple faces increasing scrutiny over how it operates the App Store whilst giving preferential treatment to its own apps and services.
In addition, Bloomberg says that Apple is considering opening up the HomePod to third-party music services like Spotify or Amazon Music. Right now, the HomePod can only natively interact with Apple Music.
Apple CEO Tim Cook posted on Weibo this morning, sharing his support for the people and communities in China in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak.
Apple today announced that it has picked up the rights to a new film project starring Mahershala Ali, who previously won Oscars for best supporting actor in ‘Green Book’ and ‘Moonlight’. The film is written and directed by Benjamin Cleary.
As shared in a research note, TF Securities Ming-Chi Kuo expects Apple system-in-package partners to ramp up production of the ultra-wide band ‘AirTags’ in the second or third quarter of this year.
Kuo says that the supply chain will be producing tens of millions of units by the end of the year. Although not said explicitly, it suggests that Apple’s Tile-like trackers (referenced in code as ‘AirTags’) will be released this year.
Digitimes says that a new iPad Pro series is in production with a target release date of March, echoing earlier comments from Bloomberg.
Last night, Apple released a statement warning investors that it would miss its quarterly revenue guidance, making it the second revenue warning in only two years. Apple said that business outside of China was strong, but production bottlenecks would affect worldwide supply and domestic Chinese demand was also down.
Bloomberg says that Apple has been readying the lower-cost ‘iPhone SE 2’, which will resemble an iPhone 8 with an A13 chip inside, despite coronavirus disruption to factories. The publication believes the device is still on track to launch in March.
Apple’s iPhone 12 may not support 2×2 uplink as initially expected, according to the latest report from Ming-Chi Kuo.
In a pair of Digitimes reports, the supply chain publication notes that the impacts of the coronavirus will cause disruption to the standard next-gen iPhone manufacturing schedule, but it is unlikely to mean Apple will need to delay the usual September launch timeframe for the iPhone 12 series.
Demand for the A14 chip is also said to be high, with orders more than 50% higher than the equivalent period for the A13 chips. Digitimes notes that this is a result of Apple’s aggressive moves into rolling out 5G on its phones.
Apple has added a new toggle to the top of the Subscriptions page on iPhone and iPad. By toggling the switch, users can choose not to receive email notifications every time a recurring In-App Purchase is charged.
It’s a small feature addition, but may be welcomed by Apple users who have a lot of subscriptions.
In a hilarious question and answer session with Oscar-winning Taika Waititi, the writer was asked by the throng of press what writers should be asking for in the next rounds of talks of producers through the Writers Guild of America union. His answer: “Apple needs to fix those keyboards.”