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.
Based on the case photos, the iPad Pro bump will be very similar to what we’ve seen in the iPhone 11 Pro.
The new iPad Pro is expected to feature a triple-lens camera module. Whereas the iPhone 11 Pro has a telephoto, wide, and ultra-wide camera array, it is believed that one of the three lenses on the new iPad Pro will be a 3D-depth time-of-flight sensor.
The expected time-of-flight sensor is similar to the front-facing TrueDepth camera, which uses Infrared light to create a 3D representation of your face for Face ID. The big difference is this 3D sensor would be back-facing, able to detect depth about 8-10 feet away from the iPad.
Although Apple’s intended use cases for the technology are still somewhat unclear, it is expected to be able to enable new augmented reality applications — and perhaps bring high-fidelity Portrait mode to the iPad camera for the first time.
The latest rumors indicate that the new time-of-flight sensor will debut first on the iPad Pro in the spring, as well as being a premier feature of the high-end iPhone 12 in the fall.
Do you need a case for your AirPods case? Perhaps not, but the accessory accessories are increasingly popular, whether your personal style extends to crocheting or leather. And what if it looked as cute as this Game Boy-inspired design from Elago?
Making things that make your gadgets look like other gadgets is kind of Elago’s thing. Witness their stands that turn the Apple Watch into a Macintosh or an iPod, for example. The AW5 Game Boy case is available in black or the Game Boy’s classic light grey color scheme, which would seem the obvious pick. Elago says it’ll still work with wireless chargers.
After announcing that Apple is “more than doubling” its donations to help aid relief efforts, the report continues to mention that there is a “slower return to normal conditions than [Apple] had anticipated” and that the company no longer expects to meet the revenue projection it laid out for the quarter.
There are two major reasons for this. The first factor, and the one most pertinent to the Western market, is that Apple expects that its “worldwide iPhone supply will be temporarily constrained” due to the relevant facilities ramping up more slowly than expected.
The Cupertino firm takes great pains to emphasize in the report that any disruption to the business is only temporary, and that the company is “fundamentally strong”, so it remains to be seen how severe any supply shortages may be.
Nearly four years after it launched as an iPad-exclusive in 2016, Apple’s Swift Playgrounds app is now available for Mac as part of Apple’s Catalyst app initiative, designed to help bridge the software gap between its macOS and iOS platforms (via 9to5Mac).
The free app cleverly disguised as a video game teaches kids how to use Apple’s Swift programming language, and to maybe build apps of their own. Now that it’s on Mac, it might be easier for kids to publish those Swift apps, too; they can now use those skills on the same laptop they’d need for the company’s Xcode software. Xcode isn’t available on Apple’s tablets.
Apple’s product page also says your code will seamlessly move from iPad to Mac as you write it, and the new app comes with a few Mac-exclusive features, like the option to drag and drop snippets of common code directly into your lesson with your mouse or trackpad. According to 9to5Mac, it also has support for the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar, but they don’t say how it might help.
Apple’s first earnings report for 2020 soundly beat Wall Street’s estimates, landing it an all-time quarterly revenue record: $91.8 billion (about £70.5bn, AU$135bn).Advertisement
What’s more important than this 9% year-over-year growth are the products that drove it – the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro, the AirPods and AirPods Pro, and the Apple Watch 3 and Apple Watch 5 – and what they tell us about Apple’s strategy going forward. The company also cited ‘services’ as a key revenue booster.
Yes, officially, Apple keeps things vague, saying that “iPhone, Wearables and Services drove all-time record revenue.” But we dove into the sales numbers and put on our analyst hat on to examine Apple’s bounce back from last year’s declines.
Why is this important? If Apple shifted its strategy recently (which we think it did), it’s likely to continue down this path to maximize profits and that may mean the company will continue to release similar products in 2020 and beyond. Here’s what we found.
1. The Apple Watch 3 was too cheap to ignore
Apple cites ‘wearables’ as a key revenue driver and, to us, that translates into sales of the Apple Watch 3. Yes, the new Apple Watch 5 likely drove a chunk of revenue given its higher price, but most people didn’t need an always-on screen – they bought into the idea of an Apple Watch at a reasonable price.
The Apple Watch 3 at $199 / £199 / AU$319 became too difficult to ignore for people who’d resisted Apple’s smartwatches previously, or who were stuck with the original Apple Watch and in a dire need of an upgrade to the watchOS 6software.
Apple doesn’t break down its ‘Wearable’ sales (in fact they’re lumped into ‘Wearables, Home, and Accessories’), but the company did say it had trouble keeping up with Watch 3 demand, according to Reuters, and that the Apple Watch accounted for 75% of all wearables purchases in its latest quarter.
The winning strategy? Think about it: when the Apple Watch first launched, it cost $349 / £299 / AU$499. Almost five years later, we have a wholly better smartwatch in the Apple Watch 3, and it’s $150 cheaper than 2015’s technology. The Apple Watch finally became affordable, and that’s been a win for everyone.
(Image credit: Future)
2. AirPods for everyone
Apple’s AirPods – also lumped into the Wearables category – were popular this past Black Fridaybecause there were three kinds on sale at once (technically four kinds, as we often found the original AirPods 1st gen on sale ridiculously cheap).
Apple is known for expensive gadgets, but it has begun to appeal to a wider range of consumers who want to buy into the true wireless earbudsphenomenon. There’s something for nearly everyone with the AirPods without wireless charging, AirPods with wirelessly charging, and its top-of-the-line AirPods Pro.
The winning strategy?Apple continued to tout its prestige as a premium brand with its noise-canceling AirPods Pro, yet it kept in stock two other versions of the AirPods for a cheaper price – at least when it could make enough of them.
(Image credit: Future)
3. That iPhone 11 camera rocked
“I wish Apple would release a Pixel.” Someone actually said that to us after seeing the Google Pixel 3 camera quality in 2018. And we knew exactly what they meant. It was clear that Apple needed to play catch-up to hit a ‘super cycle’ of upgrades.
It did just that in September 2019 when the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Maxlaunched with superior cameras, matching or exceeding the photo quality of flagship Android smartphones in 2019. The Pixel 4 didn’t wow us nearly as much.
Apple introduced a triple-lens camera with the two iPhone 11 Pro models, and a photo-fixing Night Mode on all three new iPhones. We don’t take many Slofies with the front-facing camera, but Apple marketed this slow-motion video feature as if it was the next big thing. Well played.
The winning strategy? iPhone 6 holdouts, stranded without a way to upgrade to iOS 13, finally had enough reason to upgrade to the iPhone 11, which had a camera that we found performed markedly better and, importantly, looked different. That hypnotic, trypophobia-triggering iPhone Pro cameras set the stage nicely.
Apple also doggedly pushed its trade-in program to reduce the advertised iPhone 11 price, which made it seem much cheaper. In the US, carrier-subsidized iPhones at one time cost $199 (carrier plans cost more over time), and while we aren’t back to that price, consumers aren’t being alarmed by the full retail price either.
Apple has introduced another replacement program, this time for the official line of Smart Battery Cases for the iPhone XS, the iPhone XS Max, and the iPhone XR – the three handsets launched in 2018.
It appears some of these cases aren’t charging up iPhones properly, or aren’t charging up properly themselves – so if yours hasn’t been working as it should, then it’s worth checking if you have a device that’s eligible for a replacement.
Cases manufactured between January 2019 and October 2019 are the ones affected, according to Apple, covering all the colors available (black, white, pink) for the three iPhones we’ve already mentioned.
If Apple finds that you do have a defective Smart Battery Case, it’ll swap it for one that works free of charge. It also promises to dispose of the dud devices in an environmentally friendly way.
Case closed
“Apple has determined that some Smart Battery Cases made for iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR may experience charging issues,” says Apple on the support page for the replacement program.
Apple goes on to say that a case that “will not charge or charges intermittently when plugged into power”, or that “does not charge the iPhone or charges it intermittently” may need replacing. There’s no safety issue with the cases, however.
If you think you have one of the dud units, you need to take it to an Apple Store or an officially authorized Apple repair shop. You’ve got two years to get around to doing this from the date of sale, though presumably you’ll want a working battery case sooner rather than later.
The latest Smart Battery Case that launched at the start of 2019 hasn’t had the smoothest of rides – it went off sale for a period, though it wasn’t clear exactly why. Apple continues to sell the cases, presumably now fully working, as well as versions for the new iPhones.
We’ve seen two generations of the Apple Pencil so far – both of which are still in use on current devices – and a new patent has shed some light on what we can expect with the next version of Apple’s stylus.
A new patent spotted by AppleInsider details how a future Apple Pencil could come with support for more gestures beyond the double-tap input that the 2nd-gen Apple Pencil offers.
This would work via a touch-sensitive panel on the side of the pencil where the user’s fingertip naturally rests – you could swipe up and down to scroll through webpages, for example.
“[While] the user is holding a stylus or other touch-based input device, the user may be limited to the input options provided thereby,” says the patent, so “additional input capabilities” on the stylus would come in very handy.
Writing to reach you
Another way of adding input to the Apple Pencil, as outlined by the patent, could be letting users roll the stylus in their fingers or on a surface to control something on screen.
The patent also makes mention of a camera embedded inside the Apple Pencil alongside the sensors, although this innovative has been mentioned in previous patents too – this could possibly make the stylus more intelligent in terms of knowing what it was writing on.
Support for other devices is mentioned too – including TVs and the Apple Watch – but again this has been mentioned in Apple Pencil patents in the past.
As always with patents from any tech company, there’s no certainty about when we’ll see this new features appear, if they ever make it to the Apple Pencil at all, but they do give us an idea of what Apple is experimenting with.
So now that we know that the long anticipated mac pro, or the cheese grater as it is characterized, is now available to be purchased lets have a look of what MKBHD has to say about it!
The famous YouTube tech reviewer had the Mac pro 2 weeks before the official launch and been hidden from his latest releases.
As you will notice from the second impressions video, the Youtuber is really happy with the overall package as with his set up rendering a video with his current setup and the mac pro set up is almost 75%!!
Watch the whole review video and let me know with your thoughts!
Apple is set to make its return to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in less than a month. CES 2020 officially begins on January 7, and Apple will make a formal appearance at the conference for the first time since 1992 — this time to talk about privacy.
As first spotted by Bloomberg, Apple’s senior director of privacy Jane Horvath will speak at CES during a “Chief Privacy Officer Roundtable.” The CES schedule indicatesthat this discussion will focus on things like regulation, consumer privacy at scale, and more.
Privacy is now a strategic imperative for all consumer businesses. ‘The future is private’ (Facebook); ‘Privacy is a human right’ (Apple); and ‘a more private web’ (Google). How do companies build privacy at scale? Will regulation be a fragmented patchwork? Most importantly, what do consumers want?
The roundtable will be moderated by Rajeev Chand, head of research at Wing Venture Capital. Privacy executives from Facebook and Procter & Gamble will also be included in the event, as well a commissioner from the Federal Trade Commission.
Erin Egan — VP, Public Policy and Chief Privacy Offer for Policy: Facebook
Jane Horvath — Senior Director, Global Privacy: Apple
Susan Shook — Global Privacy Officer: The Procter & Gamble Company
Rebecca Slaughter — Commissioner: Federal Trade Commission
Apple didn’t have a formal presence at CES last year, but the company strategically placed privacy-focusedbillboards throughout Las Vegas during the conference. This marks the first time that Apple has formally appeared at CES since 1992, according to Bloomberg.
At CES 2019 earlier this year, Apple privately met with members of the tech press to demonstrate upcoming HomeKit technology. Apple did not have a formal booth or a public presence of any sort, though.
Apple’s new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR were announced all the way back at WWDC 2019 in June, and now we know when you’ll be able to place an order for the high-end hardware: December 10th, according to an email that Apple has sent out to customers (as spotted by Marques Brownlee on Twitter.)
Apple had originally announced that the Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR would be available sometime “this fall”; a Bloomberg report back in November confirmed that Apple would still be shipping the devices in December, but today’s email is the first confirmation of an actual date. (Technically, December 10th does still meet Apple’s promised “fall” release window, given that winter doesn’t officially start until the 21st of the month).
Notably, Apple’s annoucement email just says that the Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR will be “available to order” on December 10th — given the fact that many users will likely be ordering custom configurations, shipping may take longer.
The entry-level Mac Pro is set to cost $5,999, which gets you 32GB of memory, an octa-core Intel Xeon CPU, Radeon Pro 580X graphics, and a 256GB SSD. The 32-inch Pro Display XDR, starts at $4,999, although you’ll almost definitely need to buy the (controversial) $999 stand, which isn’t included in that $4,999 price.
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