AppleInsider

Eight 'AppleInsider' stories May 2011 - July 2014

Apple ID two-step verification feature rolls out to dozens of new countries

Mark Gurman Jul 17 2014 - 6:33 am PT

Apple this week has greatly expanded the availability of its Apple ID two-step verification, bringing the feature from 11 countries to 59 countries. Two-step verification for Apple IDs uses either iOS’s Find my iPhone application or SMS to provide login verification in addition to a password. The feature first rolled out for both Apple ID and iCloud IDs in early 2013 and it expanded to a few more countries later that year. Here are all the countries that support two-step verification (both the original countries and the new ones):

Expand
Expanding
Close

Rumor: Apple planning to release iWatch in August-September timeframe

Ben Lovejoy Apr 8 2014 - 4:10 am PT

12 Comments

Concept image: Stephen Olmstead

You can’t get much sketchier than a Chinese Economic Daily report cited by DigiTimes, but the former is citing supply chain sources in claiming that Apple plans to release the iWatch in the third quarter of this year, and that the company expects to ship 65M units this year.

The iWatch will be manufactured by Quanta Computer, while Taiwan-based chip design house Richtek has also entered the supply chain. The device’s touch panel will be supplied by TPK, the paper noted. [With Samsung making the processor to Apple’s design.]

The original story says that suppliers have been asked to meet an August delivery date.

The China Times has previously suggested that TPK would make the touch panel, but this isn’t a particularly notable consistency: the company has in the past been a key panel supplier to Apple, while Quanta is a long-time Mac assembler, mostly in Asia but more recently in the USA also.

Barclays analyst Blayne Curtis, quoted in AppleInsider, is suggesting that the iWatch may include a UV sensor, measuring exposure to sunlight. While Curtis believes that the purpose of the rumored sensor is to prevent excessive exposure to sunlight, it’s possible that for some of us it might be more usefully employed to do the opposite …

Apple patents image technologies for security, artificial depth photography, more

Zac Hall Dec 3 2013 - 9:28 am PT

0 Comments

Apple is steadily focused on enhancing and innovating the camera system on its hardware, the iPhone in particular, and the tea leaves unsurprisingly suggest we should expect further progress in iPhotography.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark office recently granted Apple a patent entitled ‘producing stereoscopic image,’ as noted by AppleInsider, which describes a process in which two similar images are intelligently combined to create an artificial sense of depth within the photo.

The camera system on the latest iPhone hardware already supports a number of algorithm-driven features such as HDR (high dynamic range) photography in which an over exposed and under exposed image are matched together to produce a greater dynamic range of lighting.

Just last month, the company was awarded a patent describing a Light Field camera with the ability to refocus images already captured hinting at which photography advancements we should anticipate in future hardware.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Debunked: Apple is not acquiring Loewe, Foxconn CEO denies iTV rumors, Digitimes is ‘wrong most of the time’

Jordan Kahn May 14 2012 - 9:42 am PT

0 Comments

[tweet https://twitter.com/#!/up2secapple/status/202068480105775105]

Update May 16, 2012: German publication Handelsblatt (via Bloomberg) quoted Chief Executive Officer Oliver Seidl of German TV manufacturer Loewe as saying the company has had “no contact” with Apple regarding an acquisition.

Less than a month after posting a false claim about Apple’s CEO Tim Cook visiting the Valve HQ, ole’ Danny Dilger claimed this weekend that Apple is moving to acquire a German TV manufacturer called “Loewe.” Again, we did not run with the story, because we preferred to mock it instead via Twitter. Not only has that story been debunked, but more allegations about Foxconn’s CEO Terry Gou having confirmed an Apple television are now being denied by the company. Oh, and Digitimes’ track record…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Tim Cook didn’t visit Valve, says Valve Co-Founder

9to5 Staff Apr 19 2012 - 4:37 pm PT

0 Comments

Oh my. Last week, AppleInsider ran a post claiming Tim Cook visited the headquarters of Valve for some undisclosed business. We did not report it due to the sketchy nature of the source, but the story did receive some airplay amongst those less familiar with reputation of the source in question.

Anyway, long story short, it never happened. It was totally made up with the hope that neither company would call it out.

Unfortunately/fortunately, Valve did call the report out as a total fabrication.

Video game website Kotaku had a preview of the podcast from Seven Day Cooldown that included this quote:

We actually, we all sent mail to each other, going, “Who’s Tim Cook meeting with? Is he meeting with you? I’m not meeting with Tim Cook.” So we’re… it’s one of those rumors that was stated so factually that we were actually confused.

No one here was meeting with Tim Cook or with anybody at Apple that day. I wish we were! We have a long list of things we’d love to see Apple do to support games and gaming better. But no, we didn’t meet with Tim Cook. He seems like a smart guy, but I’ve never actually met him.

Image credit JoyofTech

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple adds bogus AppleTVs, iPads, iPods and iPhones to another config file, won’t deter developers

9to5 Staff Dec 12 2011 - 2:00 pm PT

0 Comments

Earlier today, Mark Tweeted the amusing new file Apple put in iOS 5.1 beta 2 which includes a lot of silly references to devices that don’t exist. This isn’t entirely new – Apple had done this to another file in iOS 5.1B1.

As you’d probably expect, it isn’t going to stop developers from finding the special sause inside iOS 5.1B2. That doctored file is a high level file which is easily found. Developers which we are in contact with are already digging through the lower level stuff which remains the the feeding grounds for useful information.
Expand
Expanding
Close

AppleTV update allows streaming of purchased TV shows and support for Vimeo

Seth Weintraub Aug 1 2011 - 9:23 am PT

0 Comments

Thanks Alonzo!

We’re hearing reports from @gruber backed up by iOS Firmware that AppleTVs are getting updated today with some enhanced new firmware. Early reports indicate that you can now stream any items purchased ever to AppleTV and Apple is now supporting Vimeo.

Apple’s update KB is here. And the direct download is 4.3 (8F455)

Feature	Summary
TV show purchases	Purchase TV shows on Apple TV. Shows purchased on Apple TV can be re-downloaded on other iOS devices. Shows purchased on other iOS devices or with iTunes automatically show up as available to play on Apple TV.
Vimeo	Browse and watch millions of user-uploaded videos found on the Vimeo service, for free.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple planning a 10th anniversary Apple Store event?

Seth Weintraub May 16 2011 - 11:44 am PT

0 Comments

Image via Sean Percival

Our spidey sense has been tingling over the past few weeks on this “Late May, 10th anniversary meeting” we’ve been hearing much about. Today BGR lays the groundwork for such an event:

There’s an overnight shift planned for around 10-15 individuals at each Apple Store to work from late Saturday all the way through mid-Sunday.
During the overnight shift, it’s going to be required that employees lock cell phones in the main office. They will also have to sign an NDA with Apple.
There are a wide variety of roles, we’re told, for the overnight shift. This includes all visuals staff, a manager, a business team member, a few Genius team members, one back-of-house employee, and a few generic Apple specialists.
Apple stores have apparently already received hardware to install, and are expecting more hardware to come on Friday or Saturday. All materials that Apple stores have received have been instructed to be under lock and key until after close on Saturday night.
Apple employees will be putting up black curtains at all stores so that people walking outside cannot see inside.
Employees have had to download gigabytes of data from Apple corporate labeled, “training” in a password-protected zipped folder that won’t accessible to managers or anyone else until Saturday afternoon.
Lastly, all Apple retail stores have mandatory meetings on Sunday, May 22nd. Most meeting are scheduled for the morning, but there are evening meetings as well.

Additionally, MacStories is reporting that the normal Sunday evening meeting has been moved to the morning.
Expand
Expanding
Close