Apple's new iPhone, Apple Watch and Apple Pay is here: A round up of what happened at the Apple Event

The big star-studded event at Cupertino saw many new things that Apple introduced to the Apple fans all around the world. These were the new iPhone, Apple watch and Apple Pay. Apple introduced 2 new iPhones – a 4.7” iPhone 6 with a 750p display and a 5.5” iPhone 6 Plus with 1080p display. Both are equipped with NFC giving them the ability to use the Apple Pay “tap-to-pay” system. And lastly the new Apple Watch is there to give a competition to the existing wearables in the market. 

Let’s have a quick recap of all the important announcements from the Apple Event yesterday. 

First here is iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. 

A beautifully redesigned device. 

From the time when the first iPhone sat on the shelves to the current iPhone 6 there has been quite many variations to the design. From the round-back to the flat design in iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 for the first time saw 2 different sizes in the same device. But now the glass front melts into the curved all-metal sides on both models, and they’re thinner than previous iterations, with a significant size bump for even the small model. A camera protrudes slightly from the back, and the display is supposed to be stronger, with a higher resolution. 

Apple into the Phablets 

With the iPhone 6 Plus, Apple ventured into a new area of phablets which was earlier left untouched. iPhone 6 Plus comes with an amazing 5.5” 1080p Retina HD display. The keyboard now carries a few extra keys, including dedicated buttons for cut, copy, and paste. The Plus also gets a new gesture, called reachability: double-tap the home button and the top of the screen scrolls down, letting you reach elements at the top of the screen without reaching with your thumb. Its available starting from $299 on a 2-year contract. 

The new iPhone 6 

Speaking truthfully, it’s a larger than the previous iPhone 5S but still keeps it from the flagship segment of the Android and Windows smartphones which now mostly have a 5” screen size with 1080p resolution. iPhone 6 has a screen resolution of 1334x750. It’s bigger from its earlier brother. Also the new A8 chip gives improved battery life and will be running the latest iOS 8. Its available starting from $199 on a 2-year contract. 

New processor means new powers with A8 

The new iPhones are powered by the new 64-bit A8 and M8 co-processor chips that provide a lot more benefits over the A7. It’s supposed to be 50 percent more efficient with 25 percent faster than A7 and is also smaller in size. Meanwhile, the M8 chip is a huge improvement over the movement-tracking processor Apple unveiled last year with the iPhone 5s.The new version can identify what type of physical activity you’re doing at a given time and even measure elevation thanks to a barometer. 

New Camera 

The iPhone 6 is also getting a slight boost in the photo department thanks to its new iSight 8-megapixel camera. That’s still the same number of megapixels, but Apple says it should still take better pictures thanks to an improved sensor, digital image stabilization and f/2.2 aperture. The company claims you’ll be able to focus in and snap a photo twice as fast as you can with the iPhone 5s. One can now shoot panorama upto 43MP and shoot 1080p at 30fps and 60 fps. Also slo-mo video can now be shot from 120fps to 240fps. iPhone 6 Plus has optical image stabilization in which camera can move up and down instead of just left and right and works in tandem with the gyroscope to get perfect snaps. 

iOS 8 is available on September 17th 

Apple didn't spend much time talking about any new features in the latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 8, but did announce that it will be available as a free upgrade on September 17th, two days before the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. 

Apple Pay 

The iPhone 6 is also one of three Apple devices that will have access to the company’s new mobile payments service, called Apple Pay, thanks to a built in NFC antenna. Along with the iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch, the iPhone 6 will let you store credit card data and pay at tons of different stores. You’ll also start seeing Apple Pay buttons pop up on mobile websites all over the place to let you do everything at stores like Disney, Macy’s, Walgreens, Staples, Subway and even in Drive-thru McDonalds. Apple also stressed how safe the new app is thanks to a new secure element that protects your identity and data. Apple will start off in US with American Express, Visa and Mastercard. 

And the most awaited Apple Watch 

It’s a smartwatch with inductive charging, a square face, sapphire glass, swappable bands, a heartbeat sensor and a rotating digital crown. Users will be able to choose between six different straps, including a sport band, a leather loop, a classic leather buckle and a stainless steel strap that is easily adjustable. The watch will come in two different sizes and three different collections: Watch, Watch Sport and Watch Edition. It’s compatible with the iPhone 5 and onwards. 

The Digital Crown 

The interface makes full use of the digital crown, and developers will be able to use it for their own apps. The Apple Watch will also be using voice input through Siri. Apple built a cool way to see your photos. You start out zoomed out, with all of your photos showing as minuscule thumbnails. Then you use the crown to zoom in. Pushing it returns you to the device’s home screen. The interface is designed to minimize the hassle of using a small screen – the included messaging app lets you respond using canned replies or spoken ones that you dictate, and the communication system gets its own little dedicated button under the crown. 

Availability 

The new iPhones will be available in India starting from 17th October with the price of the unlocked version still un-announced. The Apple Watch will debut next year but the date is still in folds. Keep an eye on the further updates coming your way.

Explore Further: Apple(India) 

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iPhone Release date and specification confirmed

The most awaited event of the year i.e. the launch event of next iPhone is supposedly happening on 9th September. This news came from Re/Code's John Paczkowski. It can be quite safely taken as a final as a lot of reports came earlier indicating that there would be an Apple event in the first week of September. Historically Apple has brought out its flagship phones in the month of September and the phones are released in the market 10 days after the launch. This year is expected to be in line with that, because Apple is all about continuity. 

A recent report by Venture Beat gave a big conformation on what is coming the box at the Apple event on 9the September. According to them iPhone 6 will be powered by A8 processor with 2GHz cores. Also, the device will reportedly run an improved Wi-Fi 802.11ac module that is provided by Broadcom, and it will sport Cat. 6 LTE, which is sometimes marketed as LTE-Advanced. 

For the folks who were hoping for sapphire, Venture Beat backs up earlier rumors that suggests Apple is not going with a sapphire panel and instead something that’s “slightly harder than Gorilla glass.” 

So just mark your calendars and wait. 

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Apple once again in Limelight for compromising privacy

Apple’s been like all about iOS security and user’s privacy at all fronts. But they themselves have engineered surveillance backdoors into the iPhones. This was recently revealed by a highly skilled hacker, Jonathan Zdziarski (aka NerveGas) who presented his paper “Identifying Backdoors, Attack Points, and Surveillance Mechanisms in iOS Devices” at the recently held Hacker On Planet Earth conference in New York.

In making the iOS more secure against typical attackers they have just made easier for the Law Enforcement Agencies who with the help of right tools can easily get anything they want from your iOS device even at a routine traffic stop. His investigation into the coding behind iOS revealed that the seemingly user-friendly system, which is used on hundreds of millions of Apple iPhones, contains a number of "undocumented high-value forensic services" and "suspicious design omissions," both of which make it relatively easy for private data to be extracted from users' phones. NSA even developed a program to gain full access' to iPhone.

“In December 2013, an NSA program dubbed DROPOUTJEEP was reveled by security researcher Jacob Appelbaum that reportedly gave the agency almost complete access to the iPhone", as written by ZDNet.

These iOS tools that facilitate spying are not for iTunes or Xcode (quite clever), the Genius Bar/Apple Support, developers or engineers, and the code discovered in iOS versions isn’t something Apple forgot about as years passed. “Apple has been maintaining and enhancing this code, even with iOS 7; they know it’s there,” the researcher wrote.

He pointed that applications using file relay, pcap or house arrest assist in collecting your information. ITunes for which they are quite careful do not use any file relay or pcap. Although it uses house arrest but only for accessing Documents. But maybe the data is collected for folks at Genius Bar or Apple Support? No. Data is too raw to be of any use to tech support and cannot be in anyway put back on phone. Another theory can be for Debugging but 600Million devices need not have debugging always on.

“Well they could have also forgotten that old debug code was there. But over the time the code has been modified and enhanced and that’s true for even iOS 7. They know about it”, were his thoughts. He even contacted Apple’s CEO’s Steve Jobs and Tim Cook regarding the issue but returned empty handed.

“Overall, the otherwise great security of iOS has been compromised… by Apple… by design” he concludes his presentation.

Source : BGR, ZDNet, Zidziarski

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iPhone 6 to Launch in September

The most awaited product by the Apple a new addition in the iPhone family iPhone 6 will be launched on September 19 according to a new report from Tencent Digital News out of China today. Although we can’t be so sure about it but it September 19^th is Friday meaning the day on which Apple launches its iPhones and also lines up with date provided by Deutsche Telekom back in May.

iPhone 6 Dummy Leaked Photos

This updated report points to the fact that these will be coming only in 32GB and 64GB models. Also, today’s report makes no mention of when the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 will launch, and the two are now largely expected to hit the market at the same time.

Keep in mind it’s possible this is just an educated guess for the iPhone 6 prediction. After all, there are only four Fridays in the month of September.

Source: Laoyaoba via Macrumors

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