Siri’s latest trick has it setting the tempo for the Internet’s beatboxing magic.
Apple’s digital assistant may not be the best beatboxer on its own, but it can provide the backdrop for some more talented people. And those people have found a way to get Siri to lay it down so that they can spit hot fire and record it for our entertainment.
All it takes is a little math.
Apple reported record revenue during its earnings call Tuesday, but Tim Cook almost sounded like he was channeling Game of Thrones characters. He didn’t actually say “winter is coming,” but he might as well have.
Revenue is high for now, but iPhone sales are slowing down, the iPad continues to underperform and — most troublesome of all — the global economy will continue to play havoc with Apple’s bottom line.
Still, Cook and Co. remain optimistic about Apple’s ability to continue its world-beating performance. Here are five of the biggest takeaways we got from Apple’s Q1 2016 earnings call today with Cook and Apple CFO Luca Maestri.
The stakes couldn’t be higher today for Apple’s first earnings report of 2016.
Depending on how well Apple’s holiday season went, the company could set new records for the most profits in a quarter by any company ever as well as total number of iPhones sold in any quarter.
Apple’s earnings for Q1 2016 have broken the world record for the most profit made by a company in one quarter.
With total revenue hitting $75.9 billion, Apple managed to rake in a record $18.48 billion in profit. The company managed to increase iPhone sales to 74.8 million despite predictions from Wall Street that the company would see decline. However, Apple did warn investors in its guidance that next quarter may be the the first time growth drops.
Despite missing on some numbers, Tim Cook praise Apple’s team calling Q1 2016 “Apple’s biggest quarter ever.”
If you like blazing up every now and then, make sure you don’t post it on Instagram. Since marijuana use is still federally recognized as illegal in the United States, posting a picture with that Mary Jane could mean you wind up with a serious fine or even some significant jail time.
Social media strategist Shannon Self says that an Instagram post with someone smoking marijuana is punishable by a fine of up to $150,000 or 18 months of jail time. That’s especially true in many states that still have laws in place banning marijuana either medically or recreationally.
Whatever else we hear from Apple’s earnings call later today, we know that its App Store game is strong.
The virtual store that provides all of your favorite fart apps raked in a Scrooge McDuck-esque pile of coin with a record-setting $3.3 billion in revenue and 5.5 billion downloads during the last three months of 2015.
Apple wasn’t the only company that finished the year strong, though; Facebook also pulled in some impressive numbers.
Apple’s News app that came preinstalled with iOS 9 hasn’t exactly taken off like the company hoped it would, but a new report claims Apple is planning to give the app and publishers a big boost by adding subscription-only content.
When LynnMarie Rink and her son, James, got to the Nashville Apple Store to replace his broken iPad last week, they weren’t expecting anything unusual. Of course, for James and his mom, atypical is their way of life.
James has Down syndrome and autism, and uses his iPad to communicate. When he got to the Apple Store last Thursday, he got excited at something out in the mall and ran out of the store at top speed. Unfortunately, there was a big glass wall instead of a door in front of him, and he ran into it face first, causing a little scene with tears and a fat lip.
It was just then that an Apple Store employee came up and offered to help them get their new iPad — and did something amazingly gracious.
Sure you can get you MacBook or iPhone in gold or rose gold colors. Or for a few bucks more – OK, several thousand dollars more – you can get your Apple products plated with real 24K gold.
Maybe the bitten Apple logo on your devices is enough status symbol for you, but Goldgenie, with offices in London and Dubai, is betting there are a few Apple fans drawn to the hypnotic shine of the precious metal.
Google’s awesome Inbox app just got a heck of a lot more useful for those who leave all the important information they’ll need later inside their emails.
Starting today, Inbox can seek out addresses, contact information, bills, directions, bookings, package tracking numbers and more effectively than any other mail app.
There’s no great way to record phone conversations. Apps and recording services come with fees and limitations. There’s my clunky way – putting the phone on speaker with my digital recorder nearby – but I will often lose a good quote from some sudden outside noise.
A company in Israel wants to mass produce a simple solution with an iPhone case that has a built-in recorder to pick up both sides of the conversation with the press of a button.
By default, iOS doesn’t support animated icons, although there are a few exceptions: the Clock app, for example, or the way the Settings icon used to animate when you were downloading an OTA update. But wouldn’t it be great if every icon on your homescreen animated? Yes, it would … but unfortunately, only jailbreakers can make that happen.
Our Twitter timelines have become swamped with ads and sponsored tweets, but if you’re famous enough, you don’t have to see them.
To provide its “VIP” users with a greater experience, and to prevent them from wandering to rival services, Twitter has all but stopped injecting ads into their timelines.
Apple Pay has added the last of the U.K. holdout banks, with Barclays revealing that it will start offering Apple’s mobile payment service to customers in the United Kingdom, “within the next 60 to 75 days.”
Although there’s no definite day given, that would put the date somewhere between March 12 and 27, which is slightly later than the “very early 2016” launch the bank had mentioned last year.
The other day, we learned that Microsoft’s next app would be an iOS keyboard called Word Flow. But today, we can do one better. We can show you what it looks like running on an iPhone! And it turns out to have a really cool mode for one-handed texting.
If you had asked me in the 1990s, I’d never have thought I’d one day feel sorry for Microsoft, but right now it’s pretty hard.
Two days after Microsoft finally got NFL announcers to stop calling the Surface an iPad, just in time for Microsoft’s tablet to stop working during a game, Microsoft VP Joe Belfiore, a.k.a. the long-time face of Windows Phone, has been spotted tweeting on an iPhone.
D’oh!
Apple has invented a camera lens that would yield higher-resolution images and would be even tinier than the cameras used in today’s super-slim iPhones.
How tiny would it be? Imagine a total axial length of just 2 mm or even less, making this potentially perfect for the long-awaited FaceTime camera of the next-gen Apple Watch 2.
The Apple Watch 2 is expected to be a notable improvement on the original, but according to a new report Apple’s not expecting to see a big sales bump for the next-gen device.
In fact, Apple’s weaker-than-expected predicted numbers are a major reason why it opted to stick with Quanta Computer for production, rather than shifting manufacturing over to Foxconn, which builds the (much) higher volume iPhone.
Apple rarely reduces its prices, but if you’re looking to grab the company’s fourth-generation Apple TV for a bargain this is your lucky day — because Apple just added refurbished TV 4 models to its online store.
The basic 32GB set-top box will set you back $129, which represents a saving of $20 from the regular price of $149. The 64GB model, meanwhile, carries a price tag of $169, which equals $30 off the normal $199.
Apple could owe up to $532 million for infringing on secure communication patents, used for both its FaceTime and its iMessage services — or at least it will if patent-holding entity VirnetX Holding Corporation has its way.
A lawyer for the firm told a court in (where else?) the Eastern District of Texas that, “Apple hasn’t played fair. They have taken Virnetx’s intellectual property without permission.”
Samsung and Apple have been bitter smartphone rivals for nearly a decade now, but it appears that Samsung may be ready to finally embrace iOS.
Some of Samsung’s best apps (if not all) are coming to iOS soon, according to a new report that claims the Galaxy-maker plans to pull a Microsoft and bring its apps to Apple’s platform as part of its effort to increase adoption of its connected devices.
Apple has dished out a brand new batch of beta software updates today for developers, bringing new software to OS X, Apple TV and Apple Watch.
The new software updates come exactly two weeks after Apple served up the first beta versions of iOS 9.3, watchOS 2.2, tvOS 9.2, and OS X 10.11.4, all of which bring a host of new features to your favorite Apple products.
Apple just seeded the latest build of iOS 9.3 to developers, with beta 2 now available to download via an over-the-air update on devices with either a current iOS 9.3 beta build installed or Apple’s developer profile configured.
The download, the third beta release of iOS 9.3 following beta 1 and the subsequent beta 1.1, doesn’t yet appear to be available via Apple’s online developer portal.
Owners of the new fourth-gen Apple TV can finally play podcasts on the big screen thanks to a new software update that was seeded to users this morning.
The upcoming iPad Air 3 might look a lot like the new iPad Pro, only a bit smaller, according to a purported new leak.
The update to the Air line could be coming down the pipeline as soon as March, and it appears that the refreshed tablet could come with four-speaker audio.