MacRumors

Ahead of the launch of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, there were rumors suggesting both TSMC and Samsung were developing Apple's A9 chip for the device. There was some confusion over how the split would work, because the two companies used different technologies - TSMC was rumored to be using a 16-nanometer process while Samsung used a 14-nanometer process.

Chipworks has now confirmed via several iPhone 6s teardowns that the new devices do indeed contain application processors from both Samsung and TSMC. Comparatively, the die size of the Samsung processor is smaller than the die size of the TSMC processor.

The APL0898 chip was developed by Samsung and measures in at 96 square millimeters, while the APL1022 chip manufactured by TSMC measures in at 104.5 square millimeters. Chipworks suggests Apple's decision to use processors from both companies points towards "major sourcing problems," but over the last few years, Apple has opted to diversify its supply chain to prevent manufacturing hurdles that can potentially lead to delays.

It is not yet clear how the size difference between the chips will affect the performance of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, but Chipworks plans to benchmark each of the processors to figure out whether iPhones equipped with Samsung chips and those equipped with TSMC chips perform differently.

Earlier this month, developer James Addyman got his emulator, Provenance, working on the Apple TV Developer Kit provided to developers via lottery, and now developer Kevin Smith has gotten the popular MAME game emulator running on the device.

In the video below, a tvOS version of the MAME emulator is demonstrated on the fourth-generation Apple TV. For those unfamiliar with MAME, it stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Over the years, several apps with the MAME code have snuck into the iOS App Store, letting people illicitly run old arcade games.

In the video, Smith shows several old arcade games running on the Apple TV, including Donkey Kong, Galaga, Street Fighter II, Raiden, and Metal Slug - Super Vehicle. All of the games are said to run well, though there are some lingering sound issues with a few of the titles.

The video's description includes some of the technical hurdles that had to be overcome to get the emulator working on tvOS.

I created a target for tvOS and set about getting the code to compile for arm64 (Mandatory for AppleTV), fixed a variety of compiler and linker errors. Removed code which was incompatible with tvOS frameworks and simplified code to work on tvOS. Added a basic icon compatible with tvOS. I added some tweaks to the source to allow the pause button to exit the game and supporting the resolution for the 1080p display.

While developers have been able to get emulators running on the developer versions of the fourth-generation Apple TV, which were handed out to help developers create Apple TV apps, emulators won't be available on the tvOS App Store. Apple doesn't allow emulators on iOS and will likely adopt the same policy for tvOS.

There is a possibility that emulators will be able to sneak into the tvOS App Store in the future, buried deep within legitimate apps, but as on iOS, such apps will only survive for hours before being pulled once discovered by Apple.

Apple recently removed older versions of OS X and other discontinued software from the Purchased tab of users who had previously purchased or downloaded them. With the change, it is no longer possible for users to download Aperture, iPhoto, OS X Lion, OS X Mountain Lion, and OS X Mavericks from the Mac App Store.

The decision to disallow users from downloading the older software is not going over well on reddit, where commenters are calling Apple's decision "user-hostile."

That's really unfortunate and hostile by Apple. What about people who use older operating systems due to compatibility problems with specific software?

I recently had to re-install Mavericks, but didn't keep the "Install OS X Mavericks" app. Now my only chance of getting it again is to download it from another location, and I don't know whether that image has been compromised.

It is not clear if Apple's decision to prevent users from downloading older software from the Mac App Store is a temporary bug or a permanent change. The software has, however, been unavailable for several days now.

It's possible Apple is aiming to prevent people from downloading software that is outdated and unsupported, but at least one of the now-inaccessible apps, Aperture, continues to work on OS X El Capitan.

In just a few short days, the first Apple Music trial periods will begin ending for those who signed up for the trial on June 30, Apple Music's official launch date. As that end date approaches, Apple has updated its Apple Music website to add a series of Guided Tour videos to walk people through using the service.

These Guided Tour videos will show you how to discover new music, hear recommendations from experts, create playlists, connect with artists, and listen to all the music you love on all your devices. Watch now.

There are seven different Guided Tour videos, which cover a range of topics. Three of the videos are dedicated to the Apple Music subscription service, walking people through using the For You section of Apple Music for personalized recommendations, the New feature that has music curated by Apple Music editors, and Apple Music Playlists, also curated by Apple Music editors.

There are also videos on using Beats 1 Radio and Apple Music Connect, Apple's artist-focused social networking feature. The final two videos cover adding songs from the Apple Music Library to a user's own music library, and creating Playlists.

Apple has not yet uploaded its Guided Tour videos for music to YouTube, but it's likely the videos will be added to the channel in the near future. For now, the tutorial videos can be watched directly on Apple's site.

Update: Apple has added all of the Apple Music Guided Tour videos to its YouTube channel. Links to each video are listed below.

- Apple Music Playlists
- My Playlists
- My Music
- Connect
- Radio
- New
- For You

With each iteration of the iPhone, Apple improves camera quality, which has led to the iPhone being one of the most popular camera choices in the world. The iPhone 6s introduces the company's first 12-megapixel camera, an improvement over the 8-megapixel cameras Apple has used since the iPhone 4s and the most advanced iPhone camera yet.

Camera+ co-founder Lisa Bettany has taken a series of comparison shots that demonstrate how the iPhone has improved over the years, with photographs taken with every model of iPhone beginning with the original iPhone and ending with the iPhone 6s.

Her photographs provide a fascinating look not only at how the iPhone 6s has improved over the iPhone 6, but also at how smartphone camera technology has progressed over the last eight years.

Bettany compares images taken with each iPhone and the Camera+ app across eight categories, including Macro, Backlit, Backlit Macro, Daylight, Portrait, Sunset, Low-Light, and Low-Light Sunrise. There are, of course, striking differences between the original iPhone and the iPhone 6s, but even between the iPhone 6 and Apple's newest device, there are noticeable improvements, especially when it comes to detail.

Along with a jump in megapixels, Apple's iPhone 6s also includes several other improvements. "Deep Trench Isolation" prevents the color bleeding and artifacts that often come with an increase in megapixels, plus Apple's also introduced faster autofocusing speeds and a new image signal processor for better noise reduction and improved tone mapping.

In Bettany's opinion, the camera improvements combined with software updates and the A9 processor on the iPhone 6s make it the best iPhone camera yet. "There is an apparent increase in the speed of auto focus and improvements to colour accuracy, details and sharpness, especially in low light," she writes.

Bettany's full selection of image comparisons are well worth checking out and can be found on her website.

Since the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have been out for a few days, some users have begun to test the breaking point of the new devices, especially in regards to the possibility of water resistance. A handful of YouTubers have put together some videos showcasing impressive results of both the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus under a few inches of water, but the devices fare much worse when put to the test under four feet of water in a swimming pool.

The first video pits the iPhone 6s Plus against the Galaxy S6 Edge in a small container, under a few inches of water. Each smartphone survived an impressive thirty minutes submerged under water, and appeared to retain their entire functionalities afterwards. As noted by Keaton Keller, the creator of the video and part of the TechSmartt channel, last year the iPhone 6 died after a brief minute facing the same test.

The second video crafts a similar test, but this time compares an iPhone 6s to an iPhone 6s Plus under similar amounts of water as Keller's video. After about an hour, both versions of the new iPhone retained functionality with features like the camera, 3D Touch, and other basic touch screen responses still intact. Zach Straley, the video's creator, followed up a few days later with an update video that showed both iPhones unlocking with Touch ID, having unaltered sound, and with completely functional charging ports and headphone jacks.

Finally, iDeviceHelp posted a video a bit different than the previous two, this time submerging an iPhone 6s Plus into a swimming pool under four feet of water. After one minute, the phone displayed slight touch screen issues, but appeared relatively safe to use. After two full minutes underwater, the device's screen began to fade out, then turned off and refused to reboot a few moments afterwards. A few minutes later, the iPhone 6s Plus grew hotter and hotter, and about two hours later it was completely dead and couldn't be woken up.

Overall, it appears that the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have seen measured improvements in water resistance over last year's models, but complete submergence under liquids up to a few feet will still cause the new devices to meet their demise. So while new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus users can rest assured a small amount of rain or other liquid won't immediately harm their device, larger accidents like dropping it into a swimming pool or lake are still cause for concern.

It should be noted that even under a few inches of water, the iPhones didn't come away completely unscathed, Straley noting in his follow-up video that the iPhone 6s in particular saw a slight digital aberration in the form of a diagonal line across the top of the screen. Still, it appears that Apple has made a noticeable attempt to bolster the iPhone's waterproof quality, which may lend early rumors of the "iPhone 7" a small bit of credibility.

Apple today announced that opening weekend sales for the brand-new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have exceeded thirteen million units, breaking the previous record of ten million units sold by the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus last year.

“Sales for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have been phenomenal, blowing past any previous first weekend sales results in Apple’s history,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Customers’ feedback is incredible and they are loving 3D Touch and Live Photos, and we can’t wait to bring iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus to customers in even more countries on October 9.”

The company claims, as with previous years, that demand for the new smartphones is at an all-time high, and confirmed that the new iPhones will be coming to 40 additional countries beginning on October 9, including Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain and Taiwan.

- October 9: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Maldives, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan

- October 10: Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates

- October 16: India, Malaysia, Turkey

The company has stated it plans to have the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus in over 130 countries by the end of the year.

MacRumors has made a few hands-on videos showcasing some of the newer and upgraded iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus features, including Live Photos, 3D Touch, and Touch ID. As more and more customers received their orders over the weekend, the first impressions of the new devices began to roll out, leading to a large consensus of a noticeably faster experience that feels largely different than most "S" generation iPhones.

The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus was just released in first-wave launch countries around the world last Friday, but a few new rumors about the 2016 "iPhone 7" have begun to surface online this morning. According to a source from the Chinese social media site Weibo (via Mac Otakara) [Google Translate], the next version of the iPhone will have a strengthened, waterproof frame and may ditch a metallic casing altogether.

This strengthened body would certainly follow in the footsteps of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, which bolstered the weak points of its predecessors and moved to a stronger 7000 Series aluminum alloy. According to today's rumors, however, the so-called iPhone 7 will find its strength in a focus on a waterproof and dust-proof body that would allow iPhone users to worry less about dropping their smartphones in liquids.

This big new upgrade to the iPhone 7 would call for a new frame and casing material, and according to one of the postings on Weibo, Apple is in fact planning on adopting an entirely new material next year for the iPhone 7. If this turns out to be the case, the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus would be the last in the iPhone line to include a metallic casing for the smartphone.

Mac Otakara also received news from reliable sources stating that the upcoming iPhone would have a "completely flat" LCD screen, but, as with all of today's rumors, it should be taken with a grain of salt given that we're just now under a year away from Apple revealing the device. These aren't the first rumors of the iPhone 7, either, with reports dating back to March concerning the 2016 iPhone's possibility of adopting Intel LTE Chips, including glass-on-glass touch panels, and being the thinnest iPhone yet.

When Apple announced the iPhone 6s, they didn't mention that the new iPhones carry 2GB of RAM, an increase from 1GB on the iPhone 6. The 2GB RAM was later confirmed in Xcode and benchmarks. This increased RAM allows the iPhone to keep more Apps and data active in memory.

iDownloadBlog recorded this video showing the difference between the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s after loading several websites in Safari:

The iPhone 6s is able to keep more websites active in memory without requiring a reload when returning to the tab. The additional RAM should also allow more apps to remain active in memory without relaunching.

The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus just launched on Friday.

The standout new feature of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus is 3D Touch, which Apple is billing as an evolution of Multi-Touch. The new feature allows the display to sense how much pressure is being applied, opening up new ways for users to interact with their phones. We went hands-on with the 6s Plus and explored what the feature is capable of.

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3D Touch can be used both in and out of apps. Outside of apps, on the Home Screen, a user can press down on an app's icon to quickly interact with the app. This feature is called Quick Actions. For instance, pressing on the Phone app allows you to quickly call a recent contact. Or, pressing down on the Camera icon allows you to quickly take a selfie.

Inside of apps, 3D Touch allows users to "Peek" and "Pop" into their content. For instance, within the Messages app a user can press down on a contact's message thread to see their latest message and then press down harder to Pop into the thread to reply. Finally, 3D Touch can be used to turn the keyboard into a trackpad.

Apple notes that creating 3D Touch was "unbelievably hard", and that the company had to work with Corning to create a new pliable iPhone cover glass. When the glass is pressed, the 96 sensors embedded in the backlight display to measure microscopic changes between it and the glass. The measurements are combined with the touch sensor to sync finger motion with images on the screen.

On first impression, users are enjoying 3D Touch. MacRumors forum member jsmith189 said he thinks it could become an integral part of navigating an iPhone.

I really enjoy the 3D Touch - while there aren't too many apps that use it right now, I can definitely see it becoming part of my everyday 'without thinking about it' navigation.

Other users, like forum member Boardiesboi, note that the feature does take getting used to and that he adjusted the sensitivity on the feature so that it responds to lighter touches.

Users who prefer to use screen protectors on their devices shouldn't hesitate to purchase one for the iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, as Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller confirmed in an email to 3D Techtronics that screen protectors would work with the new display technology as long as they comply with Apple's design guidelines.

While 3D Touch is mostly compatible with Apple apps so far, third party companies are likely to embrace the new functionality in their apps in the near future. Today, Twitter updated its app to take advantage of the feature, allowing users to quickly access search or compose new tweets from the home screen.

One of the brand new features for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus is Live Photos, which captures an additional 3 seconds of video around a still image and plays it through when a user 3D Touches the photo. We went hands on with the new feature and experimented with it.

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To use Live Photos, a user just has to take a normal photo when the "live" icon in the upper center of the screen is lit up. The iPhone automatically captures 1.5 seconds of video before and after the photo and stitches it all together. Because Live Photos combines video and still images, the new format takes up double the space a regular photo would.

While reviewers were largely positive on Live Photos, first impressions from users haven't been as kind. MacRumors forum member kungxpao said that he turned the feature off after a few test shots. However, some users see potential in the feature, like fellow forum member Conan86.

Live Photo is a great feature when you create them intentionally. I hope Apple would allow us to remove accidental "live" portions of a photo as I probably wouldn't hold 3 seconds to take a photo every single time.

Only the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus can create Live Photos, but they are viewable on all iOS 9 devices and Macs running OS X El Capitan. Eventually, Live Photos will also be shareable on social media services like Facebook and Instagram.

With the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, one well-known hardware feature got a substantial upgrade: Touch ID. Apple improved the Touch ID sensor, allowing it to recognize fingerprints faster than it could previously. We went hands-on with the brand new iPhone 6s Plus and compared its improved Touch ID sensor to the one in the iPhone 6 Plus.

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The 6s Plus' Touch ID unlocks the phone almost instantaneously, taking a user straight to their Home Screen when they rest their finger on it. Comparatively, the speed of the 6 Plus' Touch ID makes it seem like a two-step feature, first waking up the display and then taking a user to the Home Screen.

On first impression, some users think the new Touch ID is too fast, however. Reddit user MasterofLuiz notes that it's so fast it affects how he usually uses his phone.

I can't even click the home button to check the clock without it automatically unlocking the phone. It's crazy

MacRumors forum member mykaluk has attempted to best the speed of the new Touch ID, attempting to tap the Home Button so quickly that it doesn't read his fingerprint. However, he notes that the Touch ID is able to read the fingerprint every time.

Be sure to check out the iPhone forum to join the discussion about the two new phones and their new features, or visit the iPhone accessories forum to see how the new cases look on the new devices, or whether existing cases fit the new devices. If you'd like to find out which apps take advantage of 3D Touch, make sure to check out the iOS Apps forum.