Author

Stephen Hall

Stephen is Growth Director at 9to5. You can find his current work at 9to5Mac, 9to5Google 9to5Toys, Electrek, and more. If you want to get in touch, follow me on Twi t ter. Or, email at stephen (at) 9to5mac (dot) com, or an encrypted email at hallstephenj (at) protonmail (dot) com.

Connect with Stephen Hall

stephenjhall

New wider color-screen smartwatch appears on Pebble’s website

Stephen Hall Feb 23 2015 - 5:12 am PT

important-498f2948dc15c9b8d5883394635c209d-1

Update: The image has been removed and replaced with the below image of an actual pebble… Oops?

We told you last week that Pebble is likely about to announce the next-generation of its smartwatch, featuring a thinner design, a color e-paper-like display, and a revamped OS. Now, thanks to an image hosted on Pebble’s own servers, we have a look at a device with a physical appearance matching the device we described. The device looks to have a larger bezel, as well as buttons that are smaller compared to its predecessor.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Developer hacks Android Wear to show iPhone notifications (Video)

Stephen Hall Feb 22 2015 - 9:12 am PT

From 9to5Google:

Android Wear and iOS (direct connection) - YouTube 2015-02-22 11-02-59

Android Wear is great, but if you’re an iOS user, it looks like the Apple Watch is going to be your only option for a while. Google has yet to make any of Android Wear’s functionality compatible with Apple’s operating system, and it doesn’t look like they plan to do so any time soon. But that’s not stopping one developer, Mohammad Abu-Garbeyyeh, from hacking Android Wear to at least support notifications from iOS devices.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Long-time Macworld editor Chris Breen joins Apple

Stephen Hall Feb 17 2015 - 2:35 pm PT

ChrisBreen250x297 Chris Breen, a long-time writer and Senior Editor for Macworld, has decided to leave a long-time career of journalism covering the Cupertino company and take his talents straight to Apple itself.

According to a post on his personal blog:

Just a note to say that I’ve left Macworld to work for a Cupertino-based technology company you may be familiar with.

There are loads of reasons for the change, but blend them together and they add up to my desire to try something different before I don the large shorts and spend the bulk of my remaining days looking for my misplaced spectacles.

“Chris has been such an essential staff member that the word “essential” seems woefully inadequate to describe him,” wrote Macworld’s Susie Ochs.

This news comes several months after another long-time journalist, Anand Shimpi of AnandTech.com, also retired from writing to join Apple.

As with Anand, it’s not known what Breen will be doing at Apple. Being part of the post-Cotton PR team at the company is definitely a possibility, but the fact that another Macworld Editor Jon Seff was picked up for the secretive Apple University training program might shine some light on what Apple is doing with these journos.

IDC: Xiaomi’s growth tops Samsung in China, but Apple is making a dent too

Stephen Hall Feb 17 2015 - 12:56 pm PT

iphone-lineup

According to the latest numbers from IDC, Xiaomi—the rising star of the smartphone industry—has managed to pass up Samsung in China. In 2013, Xiaomi trailed Samsung’s almost 19% market share by a solid 13 percentage points (at just 5.3%), and was only the 5th largest maker of smartphones in China. Things changed in 2014. Last year, Xiaomi finished off with 12.5% of the market, almost a half-point more than Samsung at 12.1%, taking the top spot and passing not just Samsung, but Lenovo, Huawei, and Coolpad as well.

Interestingly, though, the latest numbers also show that Apple’s launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus contributed to a decent size dent in both Samsung and Xiaomi’s market footprint in Q4 of last year.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Google brings smooth Safari-like zoom to Chrome Canary for Mac

Stephen Hall Feb 11 2015 - 9:28 am PT

9to5Google: Beyond Good and Evil 2015-02-11 10-58-47

The latest build of Chrome Canary for Mac packs a great new feature that’s likely familiar to those who use Safari on a daily basis. While current stable builds of Chrome have a jaggedy pinch-to-zoom functionality that only zooms in 10% increments, the latest build of Chrome Canary provides a smooth buttery zoom experience like Apple’s browser.

As of right now, it looks like the feature works a little bit less fluidly than Apple’s offering, but that’s to expected in the most experimental public release version of Chrome. Zooming works the same way that it does in Safari and current versions of Chrome, so all it takes is pinching two fingers on the Trackpad.

If you’re sticking with Safari on your Mac for this reason or others (battery life, anyone?), it looks like this feature—once it makes its way to the stable release—will give you one more reason to switch over to Google’s browser. If you want to give it a try, head over and download the latest build of Chrome Canary.

T-Mobile’s new ‘SCORE!’ program gives you smartphone discounts & perks for $5/month

Stephen Hall Jan 26 2015 - 7:00 am PT

John Legere

T-Mobile is seemingly continuing with its “Un-carrier” parade, as the company just announced a new program called “SCORE!” that lets customers add $5 per month to their bill to get some steep discounts on smartphone upgrades. Essentially, enrolling in this program lets you subsidize one of your own future smartphone purchases, but it looks like T-Mobile is going to try to make the investment worth your time.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Google rolling out updated Drive app for Mac w/ new status menu & bandwidth control

Stephen Hall Jan 14 2015 - 1:47 pm PT

png;base6472d8f9a601a3d9ce

Google is rolling out an updated version of its Google Drive app for Mac and PC this week with a few handy new features. First, you’ll find (as you can see above) that Google has updated the status menu to show much more information than before. Now, you can see the files that are being synced up to the cloud as well as a check mark next to them that will appear as they do so. The app will also make it clear which files are currently syncing and which files are yet to be synced. Additionally, hovering over an item will let you share it straight from the menu.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Just like its phones, tablets and set top boxes, ‘leaked’ Xiaomi laptop looks exactly like an Apple MacBook Air (Updated)

Stephen Hall Dec 29 2014 - 1:43 pm PT

xiaomilaptop

Xiaomi has definitely been growing fast in emerging markets, but until now the company has focused mostly on stealing as much of Samsung’s Chinese smartphone market share as it can. According to Gartner’s most recent numbers, the company rose in Q3 to take a spot in the world’s top 5 smartphone manufacturers. But the company has other products beyond just smartphones, and now it has apparently begun working on a new Mi-branded laptop—and, to no one’s surprise, it looks just like a MacBook Air.

Update: a Mi spokeperson has refuted that the image in question is a Xiaomi laptop. This appears to be the original.

Expand
Expanding
Close

T-Mobile John Legere

T-Mobile CEO John Legere wishes you a NSFW Christmas (Video)

Stephen Hall Dec 22 2014 - 3:36 pm PT

Happy Holidays from T-Mobile CEO John Legere - YouTube 2014-12-22 15-08-26

T-Mobile CEO John Legere is known for trolling his competitors, and it looks like he decided to—in the spirit of the season, of course—mock them some more as a Christmas gift. T-Mobile has spent the entire year going through several different “uncarrier” events (now totaling eight), attacking its competitors and introducing services and features that it hopes will set it apart. And as Legere touches on in the below video, plenty of people seem to have been convinced that switching is worth their time…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Amazon’s Prime Now same-day delivery service arrives today via new iOS app

Stephen Hall Dec 18 2014 - 2:06 pm PT

Introducing Amazon Prime Now - YouTube 2014-12-18 11-02-11

Amazon has launched a new service called Prime Now which, as its title suggests, hopes to bring products from Amazon to your door faster than ever. The service currently offers “tens of thousands” of items spanning a wide variety of categories, is available now in parts of Manhattan for Amazon Prime members, and users have the option of going with either one or two hour delivery.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Gartner: iPhone sees growth while Samsung continues to slow, Apple to have record Q4

Stephen Hall Dec 15 2014 - 11:33 am PT

iPhone 6

Gartner today published its third quarter numbers, showing overall growth in the smartphone market and a strong quarter for Apple. Mobile devices overall saw as many as 456 million sold with smartphones taking a 301 million slice of that pie, which comes out to a solid 66% (up 20% from last year). This shift in the market seems to be hurting Samsung and Nokia the most, because while the Korean giant is still leading the pack, this year smaller companies with slimmer margins seem to be taking some of its foothold.

Expand
Expanding
Close

T-Mobile announces new $100 unlimited 2-line data plan, $100 10 GB 4-line plan

Stephen Hall Dec 9 2014 - 3:00 pm PT

T-Mobile-infographic-1

AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon need to watch out. The “uncarrier” has announced yet another couple of reasons they hope will get you to ditch your current cellular provider for T-Mobile. Today, CEO John Legere and his cohorts have come out to announce that T-Mobile is now offering a 2-line family plan that comes with unlimited talk, text, and 4G data, for $100 a month.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple adds 9 new Flyover locations to Maps, additional countries for Siri showtime listings

Stephen Hall Dec 5 2014 - 11:12 am PT

Flyover Wellington New Zealand

Apple has today added 9 new locations to its Flyover feature in Maps (via MacRumors), including three in France, a landmark in Sweden, one in New Zealand, two in Arizona, and a couple more United States landmarks in Wyoming and Arkansas. Flyover allows users pinch to zoom and pan around high resolution views of more than a hundred different landmarks, and today’s additions bring the total number of supported locations up to 101.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Speck iPhone 6 case roundup: CandyShell, Inked, and Card cases reviewed

Stephen Hall Nov 10 2014 - 6:52 pm PT

With every new model of the iPhone, Speck has hit the market with a new version of the famed CandyShell case. These three models of the CandyShell—including the CandyShell, CandyShell Inked, and CandyShell Card—follow that tradition, and they do a great job of providing some standard protection for your new iOS device.

Expand
Expanding
Close

WhatsApp update shows read receipts, leaked image suggests future VOIP feature

Stephen Hall Nov 5 2014 - 2:06 pm PT

B1tBWf4IgAAUOkF

Although this isn’t an actual update to the app, WhatsApp is now sporting a nifty new feature that—although small—might make a big difference in how users of the messaging app stay in touch with their friends. The Facebook-owned app, which would previously show double check marks if a sent message had been received, now goes one step further and turns those check marks blue if the message has been read.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple Pay Day: Experiences with Apple’s new payment service mostly positive

Stephen Hall Oct 20 2014 - 2:06 pm PT

Apple Pay iOS 8.1

Apple Pay, which was unveiled to the world at the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, has officially launched in the U.S. today alongside iOS 8.1. Experiences with the service on its first day have been mixed, and notably, Eddy Cue this morning to acknowledged that in saying that Apple still has “a lot of work to do.” Some banks are requiring verification processes which are taking time, and some widespread credit card companies, like Discover, aren’t yet supported at all. But some experiences with Apple Pay have been seamless and it seems that, so far, the service is working as expected despite its slow roll-out.
Expand
Expanding
Close

This guy got paid to use Apple Pay at Whole Foods

Stephen Hall Oct 20 2014 - 12:39 pm PT

It looks like Apple Pay has its perks. According to one Reddit user, he headed to Whole Foods today to…

iCloud Photos on the web goes live leading up to iOS 8.1 release

Stephen Hall Oct 18 2014 - 1:24 pm PT

unnamed-1

While iOS 8.1 isn’t officially going to be released to the public until Monday, several reports across the internet are saying that Apple’s Photos app within the web-based iCloud website has now gone live for those using the iOS 8.1 beta. The interface looks a lot like that of the Photos app on iOS, letting you view your library as organized by either Moments or Albums.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apps
Mac

Apple releases iTunes 12.0.1 for Mac OS X Yosemite and Windows

Stephen Hall Oct 16 2014 - 2:41 pm PT

Along with the actual release of the public version of Mac OS X Yosemite, Apple has pushed iTunes 12.0.1. The update, available for users who have upgraded to Mac OS X Yosemite, brings iTunes to version 12. The update is available through the Mac App Store on the Mac, or you can download it directly from Apple’s website.

Additionally, Apple has now released iTunes 12.0.1 for Windows.

The Cupertino corporation has also just pushed Security Update 2014-005 for Mac OS X Mavericks.

Apps

Instagram for iOS updated with iPhone 6 and 6 Plus support

Stephen Hall Oct 16 2014 - 2:18 pm PT

Instagram for iOS is definitely one of the most used apps on the iPhone, but we’ve been waiting quite some time for it to be updated to support the larger screens of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Today, finally, that update has landed bringing Instagram to version 6.1.3. In fact, these are the only new features that this version brings. Head over to the App Store to get the update, and enjoy being able to view your friends’ pictures in full resolution.

Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite now available as a free download

Stephen Hall Oct 16 2014 - 2:07 pm PT

As was mentioned earlier today during Apple’s special event, Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite is now available as a free upgrade for users running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and 10.9 Mavericks. To get the update, you can head to the Mac App Store or, alternatively, simply click this direct link.

Expand
Expanding
Close

225 million satisfied customers: iPad is fastest selling Apple product ever over first four years

Stephen Hall Oct 16 2014 - 10:42 am PT

9to5-image 2014-10-16 at 1.39.11 PM

Apple has announced some numbers regarding its iPad lineup, mentioning that the company sells more iPad units in a year than the full PC lineups of Acer, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. Tim Cook says there are an impressive 225 million satisfied customers. The iPad gives Apple the number one spot in customer satisfaction, and the Cupertino Corporation touts that the iPad mini with Retina Display has achieved 100% customer satisfaction. “You just don’t see these numbers in customer sat,” Cook says.

Apple Watch

Apple announces Apple Watch WatchKit SDK available in November

Stephen Hall Oct 16 2014 - 10:13 am PT

Screen Shot 2014-10-16 at 12.11.22 PM

Apple has announced today that the Apple Watch SDK, WatchKit, will be available to developers starting next month. While Apple has partnered with many developers who have already gotten started developing apps, this release will allow anyone with access to Xcode the ability to start making software for Apple’s smartwatch.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple Pay settings page and iPad Touch ID references appear in modified iOS 8.1 beta

Stephen Hall Sep 29 2014 - 7:33 pm PT

2014-09-29 21_22_26-Hamza Sood on Twitter_ _Apple Pay settings and privacy http___t.co_N9m87XITNy_

According to newly surfaced screenshots of a modified version of the recently released iOS 8.1 beta, it appears that the upcoming iPad line will have some amount of Apple Pay capability and a Touch ID sensor to match. Additionally, screenshots of a hidden Passbook settings page have surfaced showing what it might look like when adding a credit card for use with Apple Pay.

Expand
Expanding
Close