MacRumors

For the first time since 2012, sales of Apple's iPhone overtook sales of Android devices by a slight margin during the October to December 2014 period in the United States, according to the latest figures from Kantar Worldpanel (via TechCrunch). Apple's iPhone took a 47.7% sales share of the U.S. smartphone market while Android accounted for 47.6%, with Windows Phone accounting for 3.8% of sales.
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In the US, Apple iOS overtook Android for the first time since this time in 2012, albeit by the slimmest 0.1% margin," reported Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. “While the success of the iPhone 6 and 6Plus is unprecedented, this quarter’s performance also points to Apple having its strongest portfolio ever. With a range of devices available at different price points in both contract and pre-pay Apple was able to take advantage of a weaker Android offering at the premium end of the market.

Kantar also notes that the iPhone 6 was the best selling smartphone in the United States, and that the iPhone's market share rose 6.2% in Europe during the holiday quarter. By comparison, Android's share declined 3.8% overall in Europe, as Italy was the only country to experience market share growth. In China, Apple grew 2.2% to claim a 21.5% market share, with the growth attributed to the launch of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

During the company's earnings call last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus brought more Android switchers and new customers than prior models. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sold a record 74.5 million units during the holiday quarter, with a 46% growth when compared to last year and Apple's launch of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c.

Related Forum: iPhone

There have been multiple sightings of a mysterious van with a strange apparatus on its roof in Concord, CA and, according to CBS affiliate KPIX 5, the car is leased to Apple. Bay Area blog Claycord posted photos of the Dodge Caravan earlier today.

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Photo via Claycord

One possible use for the car could be for a mapping project, as the cameras on top of the vehicle are similar to other mapping cars. The Cupertino company has been planning on significantly improving its Maps application though, with plans for transit directions, improved points-of-interest data, indoor mapping and more. It would be likely that Apple would be prepping a feature similar to Google Street View or Bing StreetSide.

Claycord, however, noted that the Apple car looked similar to a self-driving Dodge Caravan spotted in New York in September 2014. Technology analyst Rob Enderle, who spoke to KPIX, also agreed that it's a self-driving car rather than a mapping car.

“Too many cameras,” said Enderle. “It has cameras that are angled down at all four corners of the vehicle.”

As noted by AppleInsider, Google's Street View cars do use a total of 15 5-megapixel cameras to stitch together its images. Apple's leased minivan appears to have similar technology, with 12 cameras that could potentially be used to stitch together images for a Street View-like picture.

Apple is not one of the six companies who have a permit for testing driverless cars, but Enderle says it wouldn't matter, noting that Apple could have a partnership with a manufacturer that allows them to lease and test a driverless car without a partner.

An Apple spokesperson told KPIX that the company had no comment.

After widespread complaints over the past five months, the so-called "GMT bug" affecting iOS 8 calendar users appears to have been at least partially fixed. Without installing a software update, several users on the Apple Support Communities, Google Calendar Help Forum, Twitter and MacRumors forums are reporting that calendar events are now syncing in the proper time zone on iOS 8.1.3 and earlier versions. Given that users were not required to take action, it is speculated that Google may have quietly fixed the issue on their backend.
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A significant number of users have been voicing their complaints about the GMT bug since iOS 8 was released in September. In short, the bug causes calendar items to be synced in the GMT time zone regardless of location. One particular topic posted within the Apple Support Communities about the issue has received over 300,000 views and close to 800 replies, although Apple has yet to officially address the bug in iOS 8.1.3 or previous software updates. For that reason, some calendar users syncing with Microsoft Exchange or other services may still experience syncing issues until a wider fix becomes available.

Apple appears to be aware of the GMT calendar bug after listing it in iOS 8.2 beta 5's release notes and, as corroborated by multiple reports, should include a proper fix for the issue in the public release of iOS 8.2. Many users are upset that a fix has taken this long, considering that multiple software updates have been released since the bug was uncovered, but the good news is that the bug finally appears to be nearly resolved.

Follow along in our GMT bug thread on the forums for the latest information.

Tags: GMT, iOS 8

For several months leading up to the launch of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, it was heavily speculated that the smartphones would be equipped with sapphire crystal displays. Those rumors failed to materialize, however, as Apple opted to continue using ion-strengthened Gorilla Glass for its displays. Just weeks later, Apple sapphire partner GT Advanced filed for bankruptcy in what turned out to be a dramatic fallout between the two companies over strict contract terms and sapphire production issues.

Sapphire Crystal iPhone

(Image via MKBHD)

While GT Advanced experienced difficulties with both the quality and quantity of sapphire, it is possible that Gorilla Glass was the better choice for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus after all. TIME reported in September that sapphire, in its current form, has several properties that are less ideal than glass, including being thicker and heavier, more expensive, unable to transmit as much light and less durable after exposure to normal wear and tear. Sapphire also has up to double the screen reflectance of glass, especially under bright light, which could make it difficult to read the screen.

The reflective issue in particular could soon be a thing of the past, however, as DisplayMate confirmed to MacRumors that it has lab tested new sapphire technology that it believes will be a major breakthrough for smartphone displays. The display calibration and evaluation company found the production-ready enhanced sapphire to be at an advantage over both regular sapphire and glass based on the results of its testing, and predicted that "rapidly falling production costs" could make the material go mainstream in the near future.

"We have just lab tested an important new sapphire technology that significantly lowers the screen reflectance of sapphire to much lower than glass, turning its former major disadvantage into a major new advantage," said Dr. Raymond Soneira, DisplayMate President. "A technical note, this isn't an Anti-Reflection AR coating, which would scratch off easily and defeat sapphire's tremendous scratch resistance - so the enhanced sapphire is now number one in scratch resistance, low reflectance and performance in high ambient light. In addition, displays using it could run with lower screen brightness and result in increased running time on battery."

While Apple's recent partnership with GT Advanced made it clear that the iPhone maker is certainly interested in sapphire, it remains unknown if and when the company will ever use the material for the iPhone or other products. A number of smaller smartphone makers such as Huawei, Kyocera and Vertu have already turned to sapphire crystal displays, and these new technologies lay the foundation for Apple and other handset makers to follow suit.

Apple’s newest operating system, iOS 8, is installed on 72 percent of iOS devices almost five months after it first launched in September of 2014, according to new numbers Apple shared on its App Store support page for developers.

Installation numbers are up 9 percent since mid-December and have jumped 3 percent since January 20, following the launch of iOS 8.1.3 at the end of the month. As iOS 8 adoption grows, the number of users running iOS 7 has dropped to 25 percent. 3 percent of users continue to use an earlier operating system.

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iOS 8 adoption has been somewhat slower than iOS 7 adoption, as iOS 7 was running on 80 percent of devices in January of 2014, compared to iOS 8’s 69 percent adoption rate at that same time. Possible explanations for the slower adoption rate include the large amount of storage space required to update to iOS 8 and the major bugs the operating system has experienced. Excitement over iOS 7’s complete visual redesign may have also driven a larger number of upgrades.

Apple has resolved many of the initial bugs that were found in iOS 8 with several operating system updates, including iOS 8.1, iOS 8.1.1, iOS 8.1.2, and iOS 8.1.3, which has led to an uptick in adoption, and the company has also made an effort to inform customers that it’s possible to install iOS 8 via iTunes to alleviate storage space issues.

Though adoption of iOS 8 has been slower than iOS 7 adoption rates, Apple is still way ahead of Android. The latest version of Android (5.0, aka Lollipop), released in November, is currently only installed on 1.6 percent of Android devices. The vast majority of Android users are still running KitKat, which was released in October 2013, or even Jelly Bean, which first debuted in June 2012.

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Android updates often take a long time to propagate to customers because of the large number of different Android-based devices on the market. Android updates must go through carriers and cell phone manufacturers, who like to build their own apps and interfaces into the operating system.

Related Forum: iOS 8

Apple continued to be the leader in mobile ad revenue by a significant margin in 2014, based on the latest insights from Opera Mediaworks (via TechCrunch). According to the report, iOS captured 51.67% of ad revenue and 27.18% of traffic during the fourth quarter to close out the year as the leader in dollars earned. Meanwhile, Android trailed in second in revenue with a 41.20% share despite generating an all-time high in ad impressions and commanding 62.69% of traffic among mobile operating systems.

iOS Android Ad Revenue 2014

Android may have expanded and taken the lead in traffic, but iOS retained its solid lead for revenue generation and monetization. Apple’s tenacious grip on revenue generation is driven to a large extent by its favorable market position in western markets, such as the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom. In these markets, rich media and video advertising are more common and the high volume of mobile application usage (vs. mobile browsing) drives a robust user acquisition market.

The mobile advertising market, much like the overall smartphone industry, is largely a two-horse race between iOS and Android. BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows each accounted for around 1% or less in traffic and revenue during the fourth quarter, while all other smaller mobile platforms grouped together held a 5.55% share of traffic and 5.89% share of revenue. Social networking, games, and music, video and media lead the way in traffic volume and revenue generation.

Tags: Android, iOS

Apple's next major iOS update, iOS 8.2, includes the WatchKit API and support for the Apple Watch, so it's been widely assumed that the software will launch alongside the device. According to sources that spoke to BGR, iOS 8.2 may not be released at the same time as the Apple Watch after all, coming instead in March.

An unspecified March release date means the software could come just a week or so ahead of the Apple Watch, or over a month, depending on the specific launch date of the Apple Watch. Tim Cook recently confirmed the Apple Watch will be released in April, but he did not narrow down the month-long timeframe. It is not clear why Apple might choose to launch the update ahead of the Apple Watch, as it is heavily focused on the device aside from some bug fixes and other minor improvements to the iOS 8 software.

As we reported last week, Apple has been asking some high-profile developers to have their Apple Watch apps ready by mid-February, a request that could be related to a potential March software launch and accompanying event.

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BGR has been fairly accurate with its iOS release date predictions. The site correctly determined several iOS 7 beta release dates, most notably targeting March of 2014 for the launch of iOS 7.1, which turned out to be accurate. The site has, however, been wrong on some occassions, like when it inaccurately predicted the launch of iOS 7 beta 6 and beta 7.

Apple has seeded five iOS 8.2 betas to developers thus far, and the most recent beta was released just yesterday. We've already been seeing hints of what the Apple Watch will be capable of thanks to developer efforts thus far, and Apple Watch sightings have been picking up as employees in Cupertino test the device ahead of its launch.

Update 2:10 PM PT: 9to5Mac is also reporting that iOS 8.2 will be released in March, possibly during the second week of the month.

Tags: BGR, iOS 8.2
Related Forum: iOS 8

With filming on the upcoming Steve Jobs film underway in the company's hometown of Cupertino, California, thousands of people responded to a casting call over the weekend, hoping to be included as extras in scenes being filmed at the Flint Center where Jobs unveiled the original Macintosh in 1984.

As reported by CNET's Shara Tibken, well over 2,000 people showed up in 80s-inspired attire to be extras for a scene in the upcoming movie, but hundreds including Tibken herself were turned away due to the overwhelming fan response to the casting call.

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I thought I'd have no trouble getting onto the movie set at the Flint Center here since I was "confirmed" as an extra and arrived at the designated time. Silly me. After years of covering the lines at Apple events and product launches, I should have known better.

Potential extras began lining up at 5 AM despite instructions to arrive between 9 and 10 AM, with one member of the casting company calling the response "absolutely overwhelming."

According to the notice to be an extra, I was to take part in a scene from 1984 (which was evidently to be the Mac launch). It recommended that men have "big long sideburns" and that women should wear blouses that are "boxy in cut with larger shoulders." Everyone was supposed to wear layers. [...]

There were plenty of Cosby sweaters and plaid, flannel button-ups. And many women sported side ponytails and leg warmers, which didn't seem quite appropriate for Apple shareholders (Jobs introduced the Mac during a stockholder meeting in 1984).

According to one of the line minders, the film will be shooting in the Bay Area for another six to seven weeks, giving aspiring extras additional opportunities to try for a spot in the film, which is planned for release next year.

HTC last week published a video to its YouTube channel, HTCAmerica, which satirizes HTC's biggest competitors - namely Apple and Samsung - with a song sung by rapper Greg Carr, known as "Doc G."

The video, fully titled "Doc G's HTC Anthem "Hold the Crown" w/ David Bruce," centers around the rapper interacting with various people dressed up as smartphones from the various companies. Carr, known mainly for his time in the group P.M. Dawn, is joined for a majority of the video by HTC's own David Bruce.


The song's lyrics (via Engadget) include jokes about everything from Apple's inferior performance and sound ("Your chip is slower, But you'll never touch our BoomSound") to Samsung's "overrated" Galaxy ("More than a few clowns stole what we originated, We own the universe, your Galaxy is overrated"). It also includes general riffs on HTC's most popular features like Extreme Power Saving Mode and references to HTC CEO Peter Chou.

The company also released an interview on the same YouTube channel in which Bruce questions Carr about various topics ranging from his time with HTC products to his thoughts on the competition. During it, the rapper states he's been "a huge HTC supporter for years," and believes HTC has "the best phones created."

Tag: HTC

Following the October release of its redesigned "Selfie" 4-in-1 Photo Lens for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Olloclip is today introducing two new lens sets to expand the range of options available to iPhone photographers.

The new Macro 3-in-1 Lens offers three new magnification levels at 7x, 14x, and 21x, while the new Telephoto + Circular Polarizing Lens brings 2x magnification alongside a polarizing lens that minimizes reflections and reduces glare. MacRumors went hands-on with both of the new Olloclip sets over the weekend to give you a look at what kind of images the new accessories are capable of producing.

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What's in the Box

Like the 4-in-1 Lens for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the two new Olloclip lenses come with a lens attachment that's compatible with both the front and rear iPhone cameras.

The Telephoto + CPL accessory features a 2x telephoto lens attachment along with a polarizing lens that is detachable and compatible with other Olloclip lenses thanks to interchangeable filter mounts.

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Box contents of both lens sets combined.

The Macro 3-in-1 accessory comes with a 21x macro lens on one side, and a 7x/14x lens on the other side. Switching between magnifications is done by unscrewing the lens. There are also two lens hoods which serve as positioning guidelines to help you determine the optimum position for an in-focus macro shot.

Both lens sets come with three interchangeable carrying clips in green, blue, and black, lens caps, carrying pouches, a detachable wearable lanyard, and two removable inserts to adjust the fit to either the iPhone 6 or the iPhone 6 Plus.

Design

The lens accessories feature a reversible body made of a thick plastic that allows them to be fitted over the rear and front facing cameras of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, and the lenses themselves are made of high-quality aluminum and glass. As with all Olloclip photo accessories, the new lenses cannot be used with a case or a screen protector due to the tight fit, but Olloclip is working on a very nice iPhone 6 and 6 Plus case that we were able to check out at CES. It should be coming in the near future.

The lens sets are compatible with the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, with the different fit accounted for with plastic inserts. Each lens slides easily over the protruding rear-facing camera and locks into place. On the smaller iPhone 6, when the rear-facing camera is in place the opposite lens fits over the front camera, but with the larger iPhone 6 Plus, the lenses need to be tilted to the left when switching between the front and rear cameras.

Even though it's necessary to slightly adjust the lenses on the iPhone 6 Plus, getting them on the phone is super quick and takes only seconds, which means you're not likely to miss an important moment fumbling around to try to get the lenses attached.

➜ Click here to read rest of article...

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Tom Wheeler plans to submit a proposal that would allow the agency to regulate Internet service much like a public utility, reports The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The move would let the FCC introduce strong rules that could prevent Internet providers from creating "fast lanes" letting certain sites pay for faster speeds.

It is expected that the proposal will reclassify high-speed Internet service as a telecommunications service, instead of an information service, under Title II of the Communications Act, according to industry analysts, lobbyists and former F.C.C. staff members.

Net neutrality, which is the principle that all data on the Internet should be treated equally, has been a major topic of discussion in recent months as the FCC in 2014 approved commercially reasonable "Open Internet" net neutrality rules that could potentially allow companies to pay for better service.

In November, President Obama urged the FCC to instead implement strong rules to protect net neutrality, following a four tenet path that would prevent ISPs from blocking or throttling Internet sites. Obama's proposal also called for the prevention of paid prioritization, keeping companies from shelling out money for faster speeds, and it suggested greater transparency between ISPs and their customers.

More than any other invention of our time, the Internet has unlocked possibilities we could just barely imagine a generation ago. And here's a big reason we've seen such incredible growth and innovation: Most Internet providers have treated Internet traffic equally. That's a principle known as "net neutrality" -- and it says that an entrepreneur's fledgling company should have the same chance to succeed as established corporations, and that access to a high school student's blog shouldn't be unfairly slowed down to make way for advertisers with more money.

Obama's call for stronger net neutrality rules caused FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to reverse course from his original plan that did allow for paid prioritization, and he is said to be aiming to submit the new proposal to FCC commissioners on Thursday. Wheeler may, however, aim for a "light-touch approach" to the plan, avoiding meddling in pricing decisions. A vote on the proposal is expected on February 26.

Apple has been working on developing its own content delivery network and has been pursuing deals with various ISPs to ensure the efficient delivery of content to customers, but it's possible these types of deals will no longer be allowed if the FCC's newest proposal is implemented.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Apple plans to take over the Mesa, Arizona factory where GT Advanced was formerly producing sapphire boules, transforming the facility into a massive $2 billion data center, reports CNBC. The data center will reportedly act as a "command center" for Apple's global data network.

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According to Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, the center will house 150 full-time Apple employees and its construction at the 1.3 million square foot facility will create 300 to 500 additional jobs.

In a statement, Apple called the investment one of the largest it had ever made and pledged that the facility would run on 100 percent renewable energy like the company's other data centers.

"This multibillion-dollar project is one of the largest investments we've ever made, and when completed it will add over 600 engineering and construction jobs to the more than one million jobs Apple has already created in the U.S. Like all Apple data centers, it will be powered by 100 percent renewable energy, much of which will come from a new local solar farm," Apple said in a statement on the project.

After GT Advanced filed for bankruptcy and abandoned the Mesa, Arizona plant, there were questions about what Apple would do with the facility. GT Advanced's closure caused a massive loss of jobs in Mesa, but Apple pledged to find a way to repurpose the location and preserve jobs in the city.

Image courtesy of AZCentral

radioshack_logo_stackedThe end may be near for RadioShack retail stores after a dire September warning that the company would not be able to finance operations "beyond the very near term" without a sale, investment, or company restructuring. According to Bloomberg, RadioShack may be planning to sell half of its stores to Sprint and close the other half in a move that would potentially see the termination of the RadioShack brand.

The locations sold to Sprint would operate under the wireless carrier's name, meaning RadioShack would cease to exist as a stand-alone retailer, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks aren't public.

RadioShack was established in 1921 and flourished for many years, but in the early 2000s, the retail chain began seeing some decline in sales. In 2006, RadioShack closed 500 stores and laid off more than 400 employees in an effort to cut costs, but the brand has continued to struggle since that time as consumers have turned towards online retailers like Amazon and dedicated carrier stores from AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and more.

The company warned investors in September that it could be forced to file for bankruptcy protection, but RadioShack bankruptcy rumors have circulated since 2012, when RadioShack first began seeing major losses. A second consolidation was announced in 2013, with an additional 1,100 stores to be closed, but that move has since morphed into the liquidation plan to sell to Sprint or another company as RadioShack has continued to lose value over the course of the past year.

Terms are still being discussed between RadioShack and Sprint and Bloomberg warns that negotiations could break down or that plans could change. The two companies have discussed co-branding, and it's still early enough in negotiations that another bidder could purchase RadioShack and keep the retail chain operational.

Update Feb 3 4:34 AM PT: Bloomberg also reports that Amazon is in talks to acquire some RadioShack locations to boost its brick-and-mortar retail presence in the United States. RadioShack has over 4,000 U.S. locations. The discussions are reportedly ongoing and a deal may not be reached.

Update Feb 5 2:21 PM PT: RadioShack officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Thursday, February 5, and announced plans for a deal with Sprint. An asset Purchase agreement with Standard General (RadioShack's largest shareholder) and Sprint will allow the RadioShack name to live on via a "store-in-store" model in some of the 2,400 shops (out of 4,000) it plans to sell. The remaining underperforming stores will be closed.

Apple today seeded the fifth beta of iOS 8.2 to developers, three weeks after seeding the fourth beta and almost three months after releasing the first iOS 8.2 beta.

The beta, build 12D5480a, is available immediately to registered developers as an over-the-air update and it can also be downloaded from the iOS Developer Center. Today’s update also includes Xcode 6.2 beta 5 with WatchKit.

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iOS 8.2 includes the WatchKit SDK, allowing developers to create apps, Glances, and notifications for Apple’s upcoming wearable device ahead of its 2015 launch. The first iOS 8.2 beta, with WatchKit SDK and developer documentation, revealed several new details about the Apple Watch, including its heavy reliance on the iPhone and the different types of content developers can create for the device.

Update: It appears iOS 8.2 beta 5 fixes a bug that prevented Facebook from working properly. Some early reports have also suggested the beta fixes the "GMT bug" in iOS 8 calendar syncing.

Tag: iOS 8.2
Related Forum: iOS 8

The Steve Jobs biopic based on Walter Isaacson's best-selling biography began filming in January, and the first images of Michael Fassbender and Seth Rogen as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak have surfaced (via The Daily Mail). The two actors were filming scenes at the Flint Center in Cupertino last week, and will also be filming at Steve Jobs' original childhood home.

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In the images, Fassbender wears a dress shirt, jacket, and bowtie, while Seth Rogen is dressed somewhat more casually in a tie and sweater with a full beard. Fassbender has the long ear-length hair style that Steve Jobs had in the 1980s.

Michael Fassbender, who has most recently starred as Magneto in the newest X-Men movies, was somewhat of a controversial choice in the leading role due to his limited resemblance to Steve Jobs and the fact that he's not a household name like Christian Bale or Leonardo DiCaprio, both of whom were previously attached to the film before turning down the role of Jobs.

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In leaked emails from Sony, Aaron Sorkin and other executives were initially against Fassbender because "the world isn't going to care," but director Danny Boyle was fully behind Fassbender and Sorkin came to accept him, saying "He's a great actor whose time has come."

Filming on the biopic will reportedly take place at a limited number of locations including the garage of Steve Jobs' childhood home, two auditoriums, and a restaurant. The movie will consist of three continuous scenes covering three product launches: the debut of the original Macintosh, the unveiling of the NeXT computer, and the introduction of the iMac.

Along with Fassbender and Rogen as Jobs and Wozniak, the film also stars Kate Winslet as early employee Joanna Hoffman, Katherine Waterson as Steve Jobs' girlfriend Chrisann Brennan, Perla Haney-Jardine as Jobs' daughter Lisa, and Jeff Daniels as former Apple CEO John Sculley.

With the Apple Watch on schedule to ship in April and some developers asked to have apps readied for this month, we are beginning to see a slow trickle of apps surface for the wrist-worn device. Todoist on Monday became the latest software maker to tease their work-in-progress Apple Watch app, sharing a video and screenshots of the upcoming to-do app with MacRumors this morning.

Todoist Apple Watch
Todoist [Direct Link] aims to bring its popular to-do app for iPhone and iPad to the wrist with a simple Apple Watch app that will provide task management at a glance. When paired with an iPhone, the app will enable users to view their upcoming tasks and categories, reply to comments, and schedule or mark complete tasks. Todoist tells us that the video below is missing the task filter view, but plans to add the feature soon.


Enric Enrich, a 20-year-old iOS developer at Doist, explains further:

Once inside the main Todoist app, the user can access their Inbox, Projects (and full task lists within each project), Labels, Filters, and a 'Today' view showing all tasks for the day, as well as overdue tasks. When you tap on a task to get the detailed view, you will be able to see the task's associated labels, its due date, its priority level, and you will be able to either "complete" or "postpone" the task directly from the watch. If you don't want to complete or postpone the task, you use the watch's microphone to explicitly assign a time/date to the task (this feature is still in development)."

Apple made its WatchKit SDK available alongside the release of iOS 8.2 and Xcode 6.2 beta in November, although developers are limited to an emulator-only development environment until the Apple Watch is released. For now, a third-party Tesla app and concepts of what apps such as Instagram and Uber could look like provide the best teaser of what the future of the wrist holds.

While much of the wearables focus remains on the upcoming Apple Watch launch, Pebble continues to push forward with its own smartwatch platform that began as a record-setting Kickstarter project and has blossomed into a successful company. Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky recently discussed the company's extensive plans for new hardware in the upcoming year, along with a few details of Pebble's prosperous 2014, in an interview with The Verge.

Reaching a milestone for the company, Pebble shipped its one millionth Pebble smartwatch on December 31, 2014, undoubtedly thanks to a few major price drops to its flagship products and the introduction of noteworthy apps onto the device last year. As The Verge points out, Pebble's biggest competitor in 2014 was Google's Android Wear device range, but both will be facing significant competition come this April when the Apple Watch launches to the public.

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Migicovsky is unfazed by the imminent release of the Apple Watch, however, outlining how Pebble's line of devices planned for release this year will deal less with the app-obsessed world most devices focus on, instead offering something dramatically different than any smartwatch on the market.

"We’ve found a new framework to use as an interaction model on the watch," boasts Migicovsky, before adding that while apps will continue to exist on Pebble, they won't be the main focus of the platform. "It doesn't look like what we have today, and it doesn't look like what's on your smartphone."

Migicovsky sticks mostly to pointing out Pebble's successful year - such as the company more than doubling by year's end its 400,000 units sold as of March - than providing meaningful details on new products coming out of the company. He tells The Verge fans will have to wait until "later this year" for more details on the company's upcoming devices.

Pebble's unflinching attitude towards its upcoming war with the Apple Watch falls in line with previous actions the company has taken when it comes to Apple's new wearable. When Apple announced the Apple Watch last September, Pebble updated its website with a few related zingers - targeting battery life, price, and over-enthusiastic responses - aimed at its competitors, namely Apple.

Tag: Pebble

apple_feb2015_bondsApple today filed a prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission, hoping to sell $5 billion worth of new debt according to reports.

Managed by Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, the offer's monetary specifics haven't yet been revealed by Apple, but the company says the money will be used to cover "general corporate purposes, including repurchases of our common stock and payment of dividends under our program to return capital to shareholders, funding for working capital, capital expenditures and acquisitions and repayment of debt."

As Bloomberg's Lisa Abramowicz points out, much of the proceeds the company receives from the bond sale are undoubtedly going to buybacks and dividend payments.


This follows the company's previous bond sale last November, where Apple notably began issuing bonds in euros. That sale saw Apple looking to raise €2.8 billion ($3.5 billion) for the usual "general corporate purposes," again primarily share buybacks and dividend payments.

Today's prospectus comes on the heels of the company's record-breaking earnings for the first fiscal quarter of 2015, posting revenue of $74.6 billion in the quarter, and subsequently seeing a noticeable bump in shares of its stock when the market opened last Friday.

While the company holds roughly $178 billion in cash and marketable securities, much of that cash is held outside of the United States and would currently be subject to significant taxes if brought back to the U.S. to be used for stock buybacks and dividends. As a result, Apple has been pursuing bond sales at very favorable interest rates as a cheaper means of funding these initiatives, repaying the bonds from ongoing operations over time.

Update Feb 3 4:52 PT: The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has increased the size of its bond deal to $6.5 billion.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: Bonds