Articles about iPhone

Yesterday we debated whether interest in the Apple Watch is falling, but Tim Cook says that sales have doubled over the last year. This is an easy claim to make when you don’t reveal the actual sales figures, but the story is definitely less rosy when we look at the iPhone. For the second quarter ever, sales of Apple's smartphone fell.

This was not only a drop in sales, but an unexpected one. While analysts had been predicting sales in the region of 52.27 million, the reality is that the company shipped just 50.2 million in the quarter ending April 1, 2017. It might not seem like a big difference, but the sustained fall in sales saw Apple's stock to follow suit to the tune of 1.5 percent.

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Uber broke Apple's rules by tagging and tracking iPhones even after users had uninstalled the taxi-hailing app. The New York Times reports that Tim Cook met with CEO Travis Kalanick and warned that the Uber app could be kicked out of the App Store for violating privacy guidelines.

It is said that Uber has been found "secretly identifying and tagging iPhones" not only after the app was uninstalled, but even after phones had been wiped. The "fingerprinting" technique was used -- it is alleged -- to identify individual iPhones, and measures were taken to hide the offending code from Apple.

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Microsoft is making it easier than ever to sign into a Microsoft account, adding a new authentication option in the Microsoft Authenticator app that lets you approve the sign in attempt using just your Android smartphone or iPhone.

Here's how it works. When you enter your Microsoft account handle you will get a prompt from Microsoft Authenticator to approve or deny the attempt. To take advantage of this option, you need to add your Microsoft account to the app or, if you already did so, turn on the "Enable phone sign-in" option.

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It's something that Android users have been able to do for a little while now -- using the Timeline function of Google Maps to check back over their travel history. Now the feature is coming to iOS, meaning iPhone users can now look back over their day and where it has taken them.

Google suggests that it's a great way to rediscover places you have visited in the past, but it also provides a means of tracking how far you have traveled over the course of the day. Users are given a good level of control over what's included in their timeline, allowing for complete personalization.

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Early last year, iPhone users upgrading to iOS 9 started to complain that their phones were being "bricked" by the process. An Error 53 was generated, and Apple explained that the bricking was intentional when it was detected that an iPhone had been subject to third party repairs. Many people were unhappy about this, and Australia is suing Apple.

The country's watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), argues that consumer rights are being infringed upon. It says that Apple has engaged in "misleading or deceptive conduct and made false or misleading representations to consumers."

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Last week saw the release of iOS 10.3, and thoughts are already turning to the next major release of Apple's mobile operating system. When iOS 11 launches later this year, it is not expected to support 32-bit apps and this means that a number of apps that have not been updated accordingly will stop working.

Built into iOS 10.3 is a tool that can be used to quickly determine which of your apps could die in iOS 11. While it's possible that updates might be released for them, Apple's move away from 32-bit software is far from new, so it's probably time to start looking for 64-bit alternatives for anything you have come to rely on.

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In a dramatic announcement, British firm Imagination Technology has revealed that in 15 to 25 months' time Apple will no longer be using its GPU chips. Imagination's graphic chips are used in the iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV and Apple Watch, and the revelation sent the British firm's shares into freefall.

Apple will reduce its reliance on Imagination's technology as, the chip-maker explains, it "has asserted that it has been working on a separate, independent graphics design in order to control its products and will be reducing its future reliance on Imagination’s technology." Apple is Imagination's largest customer, and the company has issued a warning that the iPhone-manufacturer risks infringing upon intellectual property rights.

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With the launch of iOS 10.3 and macOS 10.12.4, there was great excitement about the arrival of a new file system as well as improvements to performance -- even if they were only perceived improvements. Something that didn’t get a great deal of attention, however, is the introduction of replies to reviews.

Just as has been an option in Google Play for years, developers can now respond to the reviews that people leave about their apps and games. It's something that has been a very long time coming, and finally brings a dialog to the App Store, meaning that users and developers have a two-way channel of communication.

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Apple has introduced updates for all of its major operating systems, releasing iOS 10.3, macOS Sierra 10.12.4, tvOS 10.2 and watchOS 3.2. The latest versions add new features, improve the user experience and fix a number of bugs.

On the iPhone and iPad front, the biggest addition in iOS 10.3 is the support for locating AirBuds through Find My iPhone. The OS can display the current or last-known location and lets you play sounds through the earbuds to help you find them more quickly.

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Yesterday WikiLeaks published the second batch of its Vault 7 documents, Dark Matter, revealing information about Apple-related hacks used by the CIA. This time around, the documents focus on hacks for MacBooks and iPhones, and comes two weeks after the initial batch of documents came to light.

Apple previously said that it had addressed "many of the issues" from the first Vault 7 leaks, and now the company has said much the same regarding the second batch. Despite promises from Julian Assange, it seems that WikiLeaks has not been in contact with Apple to provide further details about the exposed vulnerabilities.

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It's only a couple of weeks since WikiLeaks unleashed the first batch of its Vault 7 CIA documents, revealing the agency's spying and hacking capabilities. Now the organization has released a second cache of files dubbed Dark Matter, and they show that the CIA has developed tools for hacking Apple products.

Bold and exciting names like Sonic Screwdriver, DerStarke, Triton and DarkSeaSkies are the monikers given to attack the firmware of MacBooks and iPhones. What's particularly interesting about the documents is that they appear to show that the CIA had the ability to exploit Apple hardware and software a full decade ago.

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Automation tools like IFTTT continue to be popular, and as if to prove this, Apple has just bought the iOS app Workflow. Working in a similar way to Automator for macOS, Workflow brings task-oriented automation to iPhone and iPad users.

There's good news to top off the acquisition revelation. Apple is not only keeping Workflow up and running rather than shutting it down, it's also hanging onto the original team of developers behind the app. Even better, Apple is making Workflow available free of charge, dropping the previous $2.99 price tag.

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When it comes to Google, many people are concerned about privacy, and rightfully so. Look, the company makes money through advertising and data collection. In other words, if you rely on the search giant's services, such as Gmail and Maps, the company probably knows a lot about you -- including the locations that you visit.

While exposing your location is normally something people try to avoid from a security perspective, today, Google is making it easier to do so. No, the search giant isn't doing it without your permission -- it is actually a very cool new feature. The company is enabling Google Maps users to share their real-time location with others. The reason that this is cool (and not scary) is that the user can choose with whom they share the location, and for how long it is shared. Your phone will even keep you notified that you are sharing your location -- just in case your plans change and you forget to shut it off. In other words, it is totally optional.

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A year ago, I wrote about popSLATE 2, a crowdfunded case for iPhone that looked amazing. The proposed product put a second shatterproof E-Ink screen on the back of the phone, and doubled as a battery pack.

I was so impressed with it, I immediately backed the campaign. There’s always a risk when funding products on the likes of Indiegogo (which this was) and Kickstarter, especially when it comes to technology devices, and sadly despite raising over $1.1 million (1371 percent of its funding goal), popSLATE has announced that the company has gone bust, meaning that backers won’t receive the new product and there will be no refunds.

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Even though Apple released the first iOS device with a 64-bit processor three and a half years ago, there are still nearly 200,000 titles in the App Store that have not been optimized for those iPhones and iPads. And that will soon turn into a major problem for developers and users alike.

Starting with the next version of iOS, Apple plans to drop support for apps that are not updated to support 64-bit iPhones and iPads, a move which is expected to affect roughly 187,000 titles based on a Sensor Tower report.

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