Amazon Launches Game Center Competitor for Kindle Fire, Testing 4-5 Inch Smartphone Displays
Amazon today announced the launch of its new "GameCircle" feature for the Kindle Fire tablet, a set of tools similar to Apple's Game Center that will allow users to chart achievements, compete with others via leaderboards, and sync game progress across devices via the cloud.
GameCircle will make achievements, leaderboards and sync APIs accessible, simple and quick for you to integrate, and will give gamers a more seamless and entertaining in-game experience.
Amazon's GameCircle appears to lack the social aspects in Game Center such as specifying groups of friends and initiating head-to-head gameplay, but its core features are otherwise very similar to what is offered in Game Center while folding in cross-device syncing that some iOS developers have embraced via iCloud.
Meanwhile,
MarketWatch provides a bit more color on Amazon's rumored
smartphone project, noting that the company is currently testing prototypes with displays in the range of four to five inches.
Officials at some of Amazon's parts suppliers, who declined to be named, said the Seattle-based company is testing a smartphone and mass production of the new device may start late this year or early next year. [...]
One person said that the screen of Amazon's smartphone currently being tested measures between four and five inches.
As screen sizes on Android phones have increased to beyond four inches, Apple is also said to be planning a boost for the iPhone's screen that has measured 3.5 inches diagonally since the device's launch in 2007. The next-generation iPhone is said to include a screen of approximately 4 inches, with rumors suggesting that Apple will increase the height of the screen while maintain the current width.
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Apple today updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with its new M5 chip, which is also available in updated iPad Pro and Vision Pro models.
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Apple today announced the next-generation iPad Pro, featuring the custom-designed M5, C1X, and N1 chips.
The M5 chip has up to a 10-core CPU, with four performance cores and six efficiency cores. It features a next-generation GPU with Neural Accelerator in each core, allowing the new iPad Pro to deliver up to 3.5x the AI performance than the previous model, and a third-generation ray-tracing ...
Apple plans to announce new products "this week," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Apple's "Mac Your Calendars" teaser last October
In his Power On newsletter today, Gurman said the products set to be updated this week include the iPad Pro, Vision Pro, and "likely" the base 14-inch MacBook Pro, with all three likely to receive a spec bump with Apple's next-generation M5 chip.
Gurman...
We didn't get a second fall event this year, but Apple did unveil updated products with a series of press releases that went out today. The M5 chip made an appearance in new MacBook Pro, Vision Pro, and iPad Pro models.
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We've rounded up our coverage and highlighted the main feature changes for each device below.
MacBook Pro
M5...
Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak today teased the launch of an upcoming product, saying "something powerful is coming" on social media.
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A short animation accompanying Joswiak's teaser reveals a brief glimpse of a MacBook Pro along with the words "coming soon." The shape of the MacBook Pro is a V, which is the Roman numeral...
Apple's AirPods Max have now been available for almost five years, so what do we know about the second-generation version?
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Apple today updated the Vision Pro headset with its next-generation M5 chip for faster performance, and a more comfortable Dual Knit Band.
The M5 chip has a 10-core CPU, a 10-core GPU with Neural Accelerators, and a 16-core Neural Engine, and we have confirmed the Vision Pro still has 16GB of RAM.
With the M5 chip, the Vision Pro offers faster performance and longer battery life compared...
Apple is going to launch a new version of the MacBook Pro as soon as tomorrow, so we thought we'd go over what to expect from Apple's upcoming Mac.
M5 Chip
The MacBook Pro will be one of the first new devices to use the next-generation M5 chip, which will replace the M4 chip.
The M5 is built on TSMC's more advanced 3-nanometer process, and it will bring speed and efficiency improvements. ...
The new 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 chip does not include a charger in the box in European countries, including the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, and others, according to Apple's online store.
In the U.S. and all other countries outside of Europe, the new MacBook Pro comes with Apple's 70W USB-C Power Adapter, but European customers miss out....
Apple on Wednesday updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro with its next-generation M5 chip, but previous rumors have indicated that the company still plans to announce at least a few additional products before the end of the year.
The following Apple products have at one point been rumored to be updated in 2025, although it is unclear if the timeframe for any of them has...
