Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone 4 and FaceTime at WWDC 2010 in San Francisco.
A few months prior to the keynote, photos of a prototype iPhone 4 were leaked by Gizmodo after an Apple engineer accidentally left the device behind at a bar in Redwood City, California, leading Jobs to quip "stop me if you've already seen this."
iPhone 4 featured an all-new design with a glass and stainless steel unibody and squared edges, with Jobs describing it as the thinnest smartphone ever at the time. It was also the first Apple product to feature a higher-resolution Retina display, with an average person unable to see individual pixels on the screen from an average viewing distance.
While its design was acclaimed, it was soon discovered that the iPhone 4 could experience signal drop when gripped in a way that blocked the antennas built into the frame. Jobs downplayed the issue in a press conference, noting that all smartphones have antenna weak spots, but Apple did offer a free bumper case to customers that helped to mitigate the problem. The following year, the iPhone 4S featured significant antenna upgrades.
Later in the keynote, Jobs introduced FaceTime, which he demonstrated by having a video call with Apple's recently departed design chief Jony Ive. Apple initially planned to make FaceTime an open standard, but that never happened, with some reports having claimed that patent lawsuits are at least partly to blame.
Monday December 16, 2024 8:55 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple released iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. Apple has added a handful of new non-AI related feature controls as...
Wednesday December 18, 2024 11:39 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple is no longer planning to launch a hardware subscription service that would let customers "subscribe" to get a new iPhone each year, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman first shared rumors about Apple's work on a hardware subscription service back in 2022, and at the time, he said that Apple wanted to develop a simple system that would allow customers to pay a monthly fee to gain...
Contrary to recent reports, the iPhone 17 Pro will not feature a horizontal camera layout, according to the leaker known as "Instant Digital."
In a new post on Weibo, the leaker said that a source has confirmed that while the appearance of the back of the iPhone 17 Pro has indeed changed, the layout of the three cameras is "still triangular," rather than the "horizontal bar spread on the...
Wednesday December 18, 2024 10:05 am PST by Juli Clover
Elevation Lab today announced the launch of TimeCapsule, an innovative and simple solution for increasing the battery life of Apple's AirTag.
Priced at $20, TimeCapsule is an AirTag enclosure that houses two AA batteries that offer 14x more battery capacity than the CR2032 battery that the AirTag runs on. It works by attaching the AirTag's upper housing to the built-in custom contact in the...
Tuesday December 17, 2024 9:02 am PST by Joe Rossignol
The current Apple TV 4K was released more than two years ago, so the streaming device is becoming due for a hardware upgrade soon. Fortunately, it was recently rumored that a new Apple TV will launch at some point next year.
Below, we recap rumors about the next-generation Apple TV.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week reported that Apple has been working on its own combined Wi-Fi and...
Monday December 16, 2024 4:17 pm PST by Juli Clover
Blackmagic today announced that its URSA Cine Immersive camera is now available for pre-order, with deliveries set to start late in the first quarter of 2025. Blackmagic says that this is the world's first commercial camera system designed to capture 3D content for the Vision Pro.
The URSA Cine Immersive camera was first introduced in June, but it has not been available for purchase until...
Sunday December 15, 2024 9:47 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple is planning a series of "major design" and "format changes" for iPhones over the next few years, according to The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie.
The paywalled report published today corroborated the widely-rumored "iPhone 17 Air" with an "ultrathin" design that is thinner than current iPhone models. The report did not mention a specific measurement, but previous...
Apple launched the controversial "trashcan" Mac Pro eleven years ago today, introducing one of its most criticized designs that persisted through a period of widespread discontentment with the Mac lineup.
The redesign took the Mac Pro in an entirely new direction, spearheaded by a polished aluminum cylindrical design that became unofficially dubbed the "trashcan" in the Mac community. All of ...
Still my favorite iPhone design to this day. The silver and black combo was so slick and I loved the little details like the +/- etching on the volume buttons or the black ring around the headphone jack. It just felt like such a massive step up from previous iPhones in pretty much every way.
Good times, when we've had a 2-year cadence of actually innovative iPhone releases under a visionary leader. It's a shame this powerhouse of a device got embedded in collective memory as the "you're holding it wrong" phone.
