After months of speculation, the iPad Pro is finally real. And it’s big. The iPad Pro has a 12.9-inch display with a 2732×2048-pixel resolution. That’s 5.6 million pixels across the massive screen, and even more than a 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display has. But the display isn’t the only makes the iPad Pro like a laptop. It’ll have a keyboard and stylus, too.
And the crazy thing is, it sort of works. This 1.57-pound, 6.9mm-thick device is a little clunky, sure, but it’s entirely possible to hold in one hand. It’s sturdy and handsome, with speakers on all four corners and the same rounded-rectangle feel as its smaller brethren. It’s just enormous. I can’t say that enough.
This $99, all-white stylus felt light in the hand when I used it to scribble in Notes and draw on a picture in Apple's native Mail app. It also felt fast, unlike some styluses that suffer from latency issues. But again, I didn't use it for an extended period of time.
The new Apple TV was constructed on a foundation encompassing powerful hardware, a modern operating system, a new user experience with deep Siri integration, tools for developers, and most importantly, an App Store.
As for performance, it's unsurprisingly great in the limited demos running here. The App Store isn't live yet and is showing a dummy screen, but the games are running fast and smooth, and video apps are of course streaming flawlessly.
Only consumers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, the UK and the U.S. will receive the Siri Remote.
Apple executives demonstrated most of the anticipated new features of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, including an upgraded, 12-megapixel camera and a new capability called 3D Touch. It can sense how hard a user is pressing a button, allowing for easier access to different menus and information. It also gives users “tactile feedback” when they touch their screens. Pressure-sensitive touch screens are already available on the Apple Watch and the new MacBook.
Ive is proud of 3D Touch because it improves the experience of owning an iPhone, but he’s also proud of what it says about Apple. He can’t think of another company that would have put so many resources into such a seemingly subtle, yet potentially profound, change.
“Why would we spend this many years working on 3D Touch when you can do some of these things with a button? Well it’s, it’s just such a fluid connection with your content,” says Ive, a little dreamily. “And not everything is binary, is it?”
Apple today announced the iPhone Upgrade Program, a new initiative that will let consumers buy new, unlocked iPhones from the company and move up to the new flagship model every year.
As has been the case with new versions of OS X for several years now, El Capitan will be a free upgrade for existing Mac OS users.
Apple said that wasn’t possible, because its iMessage service was encrypted.
But, the thing is, there is actually a very high likelihood that, technologically, iMessage could be wiretapped, because it does not allow users to verify encryption keys when writing or receiving messages.
These questions should be discussed in a public forum with public participation before any such system is built out, and not as a result of secret court decisions and under a gag order. We applaud Apple’s resolve in standing firm, and we strongly urge the government to bring this debate out in the open where it belongs.
The continued existence of Mac user groups is an anachronism in a world where Apple customers today can almost instantaneously get tech support online and at Apple Stores. Only a few hundred user groups remain, down from several thousand at their peak in the early to mid-1990s. But they continue as a testament to loyalty and fellowship, qualities that seem quaint in a fast-moving world that sometimes favors online interaction over face-to-face encounters.
It is surprising that one last gap remains in the middle of this stack of system exclusivity: Apple licenses the instruction set architecture for its mobile devices from ARM.
It's only 15 seconds of music, featuring a delicate jingle of banjo and guitar topped with a honeyed song in the dialect of Bassa. Yet it's 15 seconds that changed everything for Blick Bassy, the Cameroonian musician whose song "Kiki" was chosen for Apple's iPhone 6 advertising campaign, airing globally in June.
Pockets matter because they’re personal. What we wear at our waists is at least as intimate as what we wear on our wrists, and what we’ve worn there over the centuries tells us a lot about who we are, how we’ve changed, and how we’ve stayed the same. We’re greedy; we’re vain; we’re hungry; we’re late. We want to start fires and listen to a thousand songs.
When you act like you belong so everybody just goes with it pic.twitter.com/PCQX3Nigtz
— Mark Agee (@MarkAgee) September 8, 2015
Thanks for reading.