Kiran Upadhyay

As announced at WWDC last month, Apple is making a beta of its newly updated mobile operating system, iOS 9, available to the general public for testing starting today, alongside the beta version of OS X El Capitan, its updated desktop OS. The iOS 9 beta build will allow early adopters to try out upcoming features, including new apps like News and a refreshed Notes, transit directions in Apple Maps, an improved Siri, a smarter search which lets you surface results from inside apps, and much more. Meanwhile, El Capitan offers a variety of improvements to core features like Mission Control, Spotlight, native apps, including Safari, Mail, Maps, Photos, plus performance improvements, and other items. “But wait” you say. “My friend has been running an iOS 9 beta for weeks now!” Perhaps! Up until this point, it’s been available as a developer beta, which meant three things: it’s really only meant for people who need early access to ensure their apps are compatible, it was buggy as...

Apple, the word’s most valuable corporation, has a new cash tally: $194 billion. That’s to say that if you add up its cash, cash equivalents, short-term marketable securities, and long-term marketable securities, it totals $194 billion. Cash is a loose term that is usually employed at the corporate scale to include accreted value that remains functionally liquid. Apple, which has more money than any other corporation that I know of, invests the majority of it in longer-term vehicles than many companies. That’s because Apple is so frakking rich that it can stash $160 billion in long-term securities, and still have plenty of cash around the globe to fund its operations and then some. While Apple has been stacking the cash in various vaults, the company is also growing its debt pool. Apple’s long-term debt rose from $28.99 billion at the end of its quarter concluding on September 27, to more than $40 billion today. Why would a company as wealthy as Apple hire debt when it has s...

Apple has acquired LinX, an Israeli camera tech company whose most recent offerings include multi-aperture camera models which can enable effects like background focus blur, parallax images and 3D picture capture. TechCrunch received the following from Apple, which is a statement the company provides in lieu of confirmation when it has, in fact, acquired a smaller company: Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans. The LinX acquisition was valued at around $20 million according to the Wall Street Journal, according to sources familiar with discussions between the two. The Israeli startup’s hardware was targeted at tablets and smartphones specifically, and could not only offer the kinds of background defocus that’s popular on low aperture lenses paired with DSLRs, but could also help achieve better low-light performance, ideal for taking pictures indoors or at night without using flash. Apple’s plans could al...

Apple has released a series of four videos today that show — explicitly — exactly what the Apple Watch can do, how it will do it and why you might be interested in buying one. If it seems to be a bit late in the cycle to get something like this out, I agree. Apple’s early marketing around the Watch has focused mainly on its construction, originality and possibilities for customization. That’s not a bad thing at all, but it’s much more suited to a product that’s entering an upgrade cycle. The last few years of iPhone or iPad releases is a good example of this. If you’re going to convince someone they might like to purchase the new one you’re going to highlight differentiating design, color, materials or functionality. For a completely new category of product, Apple had to dig back — all the way to the original iPhone — to remember how to position these things. It’s probably difficult to recall, but the first iPhone was such a radical departure from anything that had come before i...

Apple’s newest MacBook is clearly designed to set the stage for all Apple notebooks to come – it has a dramatically thin body, which measures only 13.1 mm deep at its thickest point, and a 12-inch display with a very small surrounding bezel. The screen has Retina resolution of 2304×1440, with a 16:10 aspect ratio, and the computer has just one port for power and data input/output (plus a 3.5mm stereo jack for headsets). It really is, top to bottom, a computer that pushes the edge of technical advancement forward, and Apple’s decision to call it simply the “MacBook” signals that this is the way of the future. In person, the computer’s technical achievements are even more stunning than they were on stage. The notebook weighs only around 2 lbs, which is amazingly only about half a pound heavier than the original iPad. Holding it in the hand tricks your mind into thinking it’s even lighter, though, thanks to that larger display and the fact that you remember it’s actually a notebook. ...

Apple announced the new MacBook today, and in true Apple fashion, it does things differently. A lone USB-C port will handle the charging, data input and video out. So how will users recharge an iPhone and the laptop at the same time? Buy these adapters from Apple of course! Apple just released a series of accessories for the USB-C port in the new MacBook. To use a standard USB cable, you’ll need this $19 adapter. Both costing $79, the USB-C Digital and VGA adapters each add another USB-C port, a standard USB port and an HDMI or VGA output, respectively. So as it stands today the new MacBook cannot directly recharge an iOS device without an adapter. Unless Apple releases the USB-C Lightning cable before launch, users will have to plug the standard USB Lightning cable into the $19 USB adapter. This isn’t the first time Apple has charged into the future without consulting the consumer. Back in 1998 the company launched the iMac G3 without a floppy drive or serial port. Then, late...

Apple proudly proclaims that the Apple Watch has an all-day battery life. But what does that mean? Well, hopefully your workout doesn’t last longer than 30 minutes. Apple defines the Apple Watch battery life here. According to the page, the “all-day battery life is based on 18 hours with the following use: 90 time checks, 90 notifications, 45 minutes of app use, and a 30-minute workout with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth, over the course of 18 hours.” The page is buried deep in the Apple Watch product page. Apple clearly does not foresee selling the Watch based on its battery life. For specific usage, the life varies. Apple states that the Watch’s battery can last up to seven hours during a workout when heart rate sensor is turned on. When playing back music, the battery will last up to 6.5 hours and up to 3 hours when the Watch is used for phone calls. However, if the Watch is used as a watch, the battery can last up to 48 hours. When the Apple Watch’s batter...

Apple just announced its latest MacBook. It’s tiny. It makes the Macbook Air look like a Dell Inspiron circa 2002. But hopefully you’re not one of those jerks that actually uses the ports on the side of your computer. This MacBook only has a single USB-C and it does everything from charging, to sending video out and transporting data. It’s the only port on the computer meaning owners cannot charge the computer and an iPhone at the same time. It’s not possible to output video to a monitor and input data from an external drive — at least not without a hub. This single port was likely the byproduct of Apple’s quest to make the thinnest MacBook possible. Ports take a lot of room. Thanks to their physical structure, the female jack cannot be made that much smaller. This isn’t the first time Apple threw out industry standards. In 1998 Apple shocked the industry and didn’t include a floppy drive or serial ports in the iMac G3. Instead Apple included a CD-ROM and two USB ports. In 20...

Google’s Android has gobbled up market share world wide, now accounting for over 80% of all smartphone shipped globally. But when it comes to actually making money, Apple is eating all the profits as it continues its focus on premium devices. Today Strategy Analytics said that Apple in Q4 last year accounted for 89% of all smartphone profits, equating to $18.8 billion, with Android taking only 11%, or $2.4 billion. The blow for Android is softened only slightly less so only by the fact that other platform players like Microsoft, Blackberry and Firefox seemingly made no profit at all. The figures given here relate to profits generated by handset makers, not the services ecosystem and potential profits made by app publishers and others, which, of course, includes Google itself, which adds new users of for its mobile search business, mobile ads business and other apps with each unforked Android sale. Overall, smartphone handset profits were up 31.4% compared to the same quarter a...

Apple is offering a new repair program that extends coverage for certain MacBook Pro models made between 2011 and 2013 that are exhibiting problems related to video. The program offers either free repairs on affected models, or reimbursement for repairs already paid for by users. To check if your MacBook Pro is among those covered by the extension, head to Apple’s support tool and enter the serial number that you can find on your machine’s “About This Mac” dialog box under the ‘’ menu in OS X. Models that may be affected include the 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pro, as well as the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, provided they were manufactured during the 2011 to 2013 time span. Symptoms your machine may be exhibiting if it’s affected include video distortion, lack of video or image despite a powered-on computer, or unexpected system restarts. Only in the case of a Mac actually showing these symptoms should you contact Apple to take advantage of the repair program, since othe...

The Apple Watch is coming very soon, with a launch date of April offered by none other than Apple CEO Tim Cook, so understandably, the supply chain is moving to meet initial demand. Apple has ordered between five and six million devices to be produced in preparation for the kick-off of sales, the Wall Street Journal reports today, a figure which puts Apple’s expected demand for its first wearable somewhere close to initial expectations for the original iPad. Apple’s smartwatch is expected by many to obliterate the existing appetite for wearables from other manufacturers, and an initial order of 5 million would indeed reveal anticipated sales far above the estimated 720,000 devices across all Android Wear manufacturers the occurred during the entirety of 2014. But Apple is also nimble with its order and supply chain structure, so this could change quickly depending on whether we see far more or far fewer shoppers flock to the Apple Watch upon its release. Apple’s distribution of...

Apple is working on a car, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Mac maker kicked off a top-secret project to develop an electric car with a minivan aesthetic, per the WSJ’s sources, after CEO Tim Cook approved the project nearly a year ago. It includes “hundreds” of staffers and is led by Ford Motor vet and Apple VP Steve Zadesky. The project involves research into battery tech, robotics and metal production, according to the paper. The report comes hot on the heels of a Financial Times story confirming Apple R&D efforts around car tech, and goes further than either that report or an earlier one from Business Insider wherein an Apple employee reportedly confirmed some kind of car-focused project. As I wrote earlier, it makes perfect logical sense that Apple would focus some effort on this area, given the direction in which the tech industry in general is headed. Apple has allotted for as many as 1,000 people to work on the project, according to the newest report, and th...

Apple has taken another step toward turning iWork into a service anyone can take advantage of, similar to Google’s web-based productivity suite. The company made its iWork for iCloud apps available to anyone, regardless of whether or not they have any Apple hardware, so long as they have or sign up for an Apple ID. So far, that’s only available via the public iCloud Beta, but presumably if all goes well with the test that will roll out to the standard version of iCloud after that. The web-based versions of Apple’s iWork suite are surprisingly complete, and also manage to keep getting better, thanks to updates that have brought features like interactive charts and a much better user interface to the platform since its introduction back in 2013. iWork used to be a paid productivity suite that Apple sold first via boxed copies then via the Mac App Store. Today, it completes the transition from revenue source to value-add service for iWork, with a web version that serves as a taste ...

Apple, in its flush of new, bigger iPhone 6 handsets, has been selling record numbers of its older and newer model smartphones in the last few months, and now it’s passed another significant milestone: it has managed to overtake sales of Android devices in the key market of the U.S. for the first time in three years. According to figures from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the market research division of WPP, in the key holiday sales quarter of Q4 2014, Apple sold more iPhones than all of the various Android OEMs put together, the first time that it has managed to do this since Q4 2012. But if you don’t want to buy into any Apple hype, you might consider there’s likely some margin for error here — iOS devices accounted for 47.7% of sales, while Android devices accounted for 47.6%. The more interesting question is whether this was a seasonal bump or the start of a bigger trend. On that front, Kantar is bullish on Apple’s overall lineup that includes older models, especially in co...

Apple has a new patent (via AppleInsider) that covers modular accessories for mobile devices like the iPhone, which include a physical gamepad with action buttons, D-pads and analog joysticks; a QWERTY hardware keyboard for typing; additional camera, speaker and microphone units; and even a full, secondary multitouch input like a trackpad. The accessories in the patent are described as using either hardware or Wi-Fi connections (i.e. Bluetooth) to talk to the main device. The accessories described in the patent would make for a range of iPhone add-ons that turn it into a modular device with a range of potential uses. You can imagine how iOS devices might be able to better fit the needs of niche users with these kinds of add-ons, including not only gamers but also users in specific industries, as well as creative professionals and those looking for more comprehensive on-the-go audio recording solutions. Some of the variations of the accessories even include provisions for adding o...

The Apple Watch will start shipping in April to consumers, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook, who revealed that month as the expected target launch date for the company on Apple’s Q1 2015 earnings call. The timeframe for launch was described as “early 2015″ when the Apple Watch was originally announced in September of last year. The Apple Watch release date has been the subject of much speculation since its announcement, with recent reports pegging March as the month of its arrival. Cook’s decision to add some clarity to its actual release timeline is uncharacteristic for Apple, which normally doesn’t put a firm launch date on unreleased products, but pre-announcing the hardware months in advance was already a departure from standard practice. Setting a more definite timeline for the Apple Watch does set expectations, however, ensuring that no one will be surprised when the wearable doesn’t appear in March as rumored. It also helps developers time their software releases correctly...

Apple had a pretty good quarter. And by “pretty good,” I mean it was the biggest quarter in history. And not just for Apple. For any company. Ever. This page charts the past record holders. Until today, Russia’s Gazprom (the largest natural gas extractor in the world) held the record at $16.2 billion in a quarter. Apple now holds the record: $18.04 billion in profit, fiscal Q1 of 2015. Absolutely. Insane. For reference, that means Apple makes around $8.3 million dollars per hour in profit (24 hours a day). Of the current Top 20 record holding earners, 15 are Oil/Gas producers — primarily ExxonMobil and Shell. The other five are all Apple, over various quarters. Via

It’s a standard Apple play to shave a few atoms off the waists of its gadgets come refresh time — allowing the company’s marketing department to crow about thinner flagships that also pack more power and boast better screens, or both. If rumors about a next generation model of the MacBook Air are to be believed, for instance, Apple is planning to slice the laptop’s thickness roughly in half, while boosting its display size from 11 inches to 12, mostly by reducing the bezel, so its overall footprint hardly grows at all. But this party trick of packing more into less requires something to give. Likely space for certain physical ports, in the case of the rumored skeletal MacBook Air. While, for current iPhone flagships, the 6.9mm thick (thin) iPhone 6 and the 7.1mm iPhone 6 Plus, a degree of form-factor integrity has clearly been lost in the quest to achieve size 0 smartphones — hence the bendgate saga. iPhones that weren’t quite so thin would probably have stood up a little more...

Apple’s 12-inch MacBook Air has been rumored for a while now, but the computer is very real, according to a new report from 9to5Mac’s Mark Gurman. The resourceful and consistently accurate site has revealed specs and renders of a 12-inch MacBook (which is pegged for release anytime between the near future and mid-2015) that pushes the limits in terms of thickness, input and output ports, and overall design. The 12-inch notebook is almost twice as thin as the existing 11-inch model of the same computer. It has only a very slight taper from its thinnest point to its thickest, unlike the versions shipping now, and it manages to occupy a footprint similar to the current 11-inch Apple notebook, despite the larger display, thanks to the use of a nearly edge-to-edge chiclet-style keyboard, as well as smaller bezels surrounding the 12-inch Air’s screen on all sides. Apple’s boldest decision with this computer might be that it is apparently dropping almost all physical input and output po...

Apple is set to start finally selling the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus without SIMs, completely unlocked in the U.S., according to 9to5Mac’s reliable Mark Gurman. The SIM-free version of the iPhone has been available in the stores of other countries before now, but a debut stateside would be the first time it’s officially unlocked and without any carrier ties or SIM since its launch this past fall. The T-Mobile version of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is not locked into any specific contract, and will work with SIMs from other carriers, but the latest flagship smartphone from Apple still technically can’t be bought SIM-free through official channels in the U.S. Pricing won’t change either, according to Gurman, meaning the iPhone 6 will range from $649 to $849 depending on storage choices, and the iPhone 6 Plus will go from $749 to $949 unlocked and SIM free. Storage options with this generation include 16, 64 and 128GB options, as Apple dropped the 32GB tier and began offering the new top of t...