Confirmed: Spartan will include extension support
We reported on rumors last week that Microsoft may include Chrome extension support in Spartan, and it seems that extensions are definitely in the works for Microsoft’s new browser — albeit without explicit mention of the “Chrome” part.
A drunk intelligence worker crashed that drone near the White House
When you heard that someone crash-landed a drone on the White House’s grounds at 3AM on a Monday morning, did you suspect that the pilot was hammered? Well, you’re right. Officials have revealed that the operator was a drunk National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency worker who decided that the middle of a cold night was a great time to fly his friend’s drone (a DJI Phantom, shown above) near the President’s home turf. He didn’t realize what he’d done until his pals told him that his escapades were all over the news. Give credit to this unnamed man for doing the right thing afterwards, though — he notified both his employer and the Secret Service to set their minds at ease.
It’s good to know that the incident was just the result of having too much to drink, although it does underscore the White House’s current inability to cope with drone incursions. At two feet across, the Phantom wouldn’t have been spotted by a radar system designed to detect regular aircraft and missiles. If the White House’s defenders want to protect against far more sinister uses of drones, they’ll have to update their technology, improve their perimeter patrols, or both.
[Image credit: US Secret Service]
Filed under: Robots
Source: New York Times
Wear Messenger app now supports FlickKey keyboard
The Wear Messenger app for your Android Wear smartwatch has now received support for the FlickKey keyboard, which allows you to type on your wearable using gestures.
The same mechanism has been used on Flick Calc as well as the FlickKey IME, and it has received generally favorable reviews. Use of a standard keyboard on a device as small as a smartwatch is just not feasible. So having something like FlickKey makes lives a little easier for the users.
Sure, it won’t replace your conventional typing experience, but will certainly let you type faster compared to conventional QWERTY keyboards. The Wear Messenger app is still paid and will set you back by $1.99, so nothing’s different in that regard.
If you have already bought the app, you can expect an update notification to pop up sometime soon, which should contain all these features on board.
Come comment on this article: Wear Messenger app now supports FlickKey keyboard
Glow headphones pulse to your music and so much more
If you were to judge Glow headphones solely by their picture, you’d probably think they were just ordinary headphones with a glowing feature slapped in order to make them stand out. While that’s partially true, there’s a lot more to it than that.
The Glow headphones hit Kickstarter today, promising the world’s first headphones that use embedded laser light. More specifically, Glow utilizes a technology from Corning called Fibrance, which basically is a light-diffusing glass optical fiber that is extremely flexible and yet maintains it’s brightness and light uniformity no matter how much you curve, wrap and twist it. It is important to note that the light itself isn’t static, and pulses to the beat of your music or even the rhythm of your heart.
If you don’t think the pulsing light features are cool enough, the device comes with a 5-way controller that lets you change and pause your music, makes calls, activates Google Now, lets you snap a camera pic and so much more. Providing they meet all their Kickstarter goals, the startup behind Glow even plans to integrate a heart rate sensor inside of the earbud.
While many audio accessories have special features that extend beyond just controlling and listening to music, many times they are built with Apple in mind. Thankfully that’s not the case here, as the accessory was designed with a focus on Android. In fact, the team plans to introduce more advanced Android-specific features down the road (such as contextual awareness to some degree) — though its immediate goal is just seeking funding so they can get the product out into the hands of consumers.
For those interested in pledging, you can secure a Glow in red, green or blue for $149 with an estimated delivery timeframe of July 2015. For more details on Glow, be sure to check out their official Kickstarter page.
Tim Cook: Apple Watch on Schedule to Ship in April [iOS Blog]
During today’s earnings call covering the first fiscal quarter of 2015, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared some new details on the prospective launch date of the Apple Watch. According to Cook, Apple Watch development is currently on schedule, and the company is planning to ship the device in April.
Development for Apple Watch is right on schedule, and we expect to begin shipping in April.
When the Apple Watch was announced, Apple gave a vague “Early 2015″ launch date for the device, making it unclear when it would actually ship. Several rumors recently pointed towards a March launch date for the device, but it appears it will actually begin shipping out to consumers a month later, in April.
Now that we know when the Apple Watch is expected to launch, the only unknowns about the device are battery life and its cost. Rumors have suggested that battery life will be somewhat disappointing, lasting approximately 19 hours during “mixed use.”
Cost is also up in the air, aside from a known starting price of $349 for the lower-end device. Pricing on the middle tier version is unclear, as is pricing for the high-end gold Apple Watch, which rumors suggest could sell for thousands of dollars.
Tim Cook: Apple Has Sold More Than 1 Billion iOS Devices [iOS Blog]
Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed on Tuesday during the company’s quarterly earnings call that it has sold more than 1 billion iOS devices to date since launching the original iPhone over seven years ago. According to Cook, the impressive milestone, which accounts for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, was reached in December and was helped along by a record-breaking 74.5 million iPhones sold in Q1 2015.
Cook emphasized that iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus demand was stronger than any other iPhone it has ever released, selling at a pace of roughly 34,000 devices per hour. The success of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus was aided by the widest international rollout of an iOS device to date, with the smartphone launching in more places than ever before and in a total of 130 countries.
1 Billion iOS devices shipped!!
— Philip Schiller (@pschiller) January 27, 2015
Apple’s revenues soar thanks to iPhones and China
Well, it’s that time again. Apple has just released its latest batch of quarterly earnings, and wouldn’t you know it — the folks in Cupertino once again sold more iPhones than it has in any other quarter. We’re talking 74.5 million phones changing hands since October, up just about 50 percent from its last utterly insane holiday quarter. Apple doesn’t break down sales numbers by model, but its smartphones’ bang-up performance helped push company revenue to new heights; the company raked in a cool $74.6 billion in revenue, along with $18 billion in pure profit. That is crazy.
So the iPhones did extremely, ridiculously well – what about iPads? Apple only sold about 21.4 million, and while that’s not exactly a number to sneeze at, it’s significantly lower than the more than 26 million the company moved during the last holiday season. There are plenty of possible culprits here, from the less-than-game-changing upgrades the iPad Air and Mini lines received earlier this year, to the growth in demand for the iPhone 6 Plus, a device that not only closes the gap between phone and tablet, but also nets Apple more cash than the bog-standard 6. That sort of dip in performance doesn’t come out of the blue though — we saw it last quarter too, a phenomenon CEO Tim Cook referred to as a “speed bump”.
Bear in mind, we all expected this quarter to be a blow-out. After all, the last few months represent the first full quarter of sales for the company’s new iPhones and iPads, a big push into the holiday buying maelstrom and a more aggressive mobile stance in China. As usual, people are fingering that last, region-specific reason as a big, big reason for that growth. A quick look at Apple’s data reveals why: Greater China accounted for about $16 billion of the company’s overall revenue over the past three-ish months. That’s just about twice the number the region put up last year, making it only slightly less valuable than Apple’s business in Europe. Factor in a new report from analysis firm Canalys proclaiming Apple the victor in Chinese smartphone sales (beating Xiaomi, Samsung and Huawei in that order) and it’s not hard to see just how crucial China is to Apple’s future growth.
Noticeably absent from this first information blast is any word on Apple Pay, which is – among other things – is being baked into some 200,000 self-serve kiosks across the United States. Apple gets a tiny cut from each Pay transaction that gets processed, which could ultimately mean big bucks falling into the company’s coffers when phone and tablet sales slip into slightly more reasonable territory. Here’s hoping it’ll get a detailed shout-out in the customary earnings call, set to kick off shortly.
Filed under: Mobile
Source: BusinessWire
Sonos update makes it easier to play music in any room
Sonos’ big controller app update from last year was a case of two steps forward and one step back. It was slicker and made it easier to find music, but playing music got harder — among other issues, it required extra effort to send tunes to speakers around your home. Kinda defeats the point of multi-room audio, don’t you think? At last, though, it looks like Sonos is ready to tackle some of those biggest hiccups. An upcoming version 5.3 update (not shown here) will put an always available room menu at the top of every screen, so it should take less time to deliver a radio stream to the living room or a podcast to your kitchen.
There’s more: the Now Playing screen once again shows the track progress so that you can skip through long clips, and it’s faster to both get back to browsing music and crossfade tracks to avoid jarring breaks. The main problem? You’ll probably have to wait. Sonos is only making 5.3 available as an Android beta right now, and the finished version will arrive sometime in the “coming months.”
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Source: Sonos Blog
Google Fiber officially arriving at Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham
Google Fiber was initially started off in Kansas City, Kansas followed by Kansas City, Missouri. It was then made available in regions of Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah as well. Today, Google has announced the rollout of Fiber in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham.
Fiber will be accessible in 18 cities across these 4 regions, so a large number of users will be able to get their hands on Fiber for the first time.
The service was known to be arriving in these regions sometime soon and this announcement from Google has officially confirmed it for us.
Fiber brings blazing fast broadband internet to your home, which is up to 100 times faster than conventional broadband connections as Google proudly mentions.
Customers have the option of picking Gigabit Internet + TV for $130 a month, while the standard Gigabit internet option will set you back by $70 per month. Google is waiving off construction fees for both connections, which is a nice little perk.
But if you’re not looking to spend so much on broadband, Google also has a standard internet connection which is on par with today’s speeds. It offers 5 Mbps download speeds and will require you to pay a $300 construction fee up front or in instalments of $25 for 12 months.
If you are covered by either of the aforementioned cities, make sure you check with Google for a new connection.
Source: Google
Come comment on this article: Google Fiber officially arriving at Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham
Apple announces Q1 2015 results: 74.5 million iPhones, 21.4 million iPads, 5.5 million Macs sold, 74.6 billion in revenue earned!
Apple has announced their Q1 2015 earnings and the numbers include Apple announces Q1 2015 results: 74.5 million iPhones, 21.4 million iPads, 5.5 million Macs sold, 74.6 billion in revenue earned! Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook:
“We’d like to thank our customers for an incredible quarter, which saw demand for Apple products soar to an all-time high,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Our revenue grew 30 percent over last year to $74.6 billion, and the execution by our teams to achieve these results was simply phenomenal.”
You can read the full press release below, tune into the conference call via Apple.com, and keep it locked to iMore for ongoing coverage.
Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results
Highest-ever revenue & earnings drive 48% increase in EPS
Growth led by record revenue from iPhone, Mac & App Store
- The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $74.6 billion and record quarterly net profit of $18 billion, or $3.06 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $57.6 billion and net profit of $13.1 billion, or $2.07 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 39.9 percent compared to 37.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 65 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
The results were fueled by all-time record revenue from iPhone® and Mac® sales as well as record performance of the App Store℠. iPhone unit sales of 74.5 million also set a new record.
“We’d like to thank our customers for an incredible quarter, which saw demand for Apple products soar to an all-time high,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Our revenue grew 30 percent over last year to $74.6 billion, and the execution by our teams to achieve these results was simply phenomenal.”
“Our exceptional results produced EPS growth of 48 percent over last year, and $33.7 billion in operating cash flow during the quarter, an all-time record,” said Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO. “We spent over $8 billion on our capital return program, bringing total returns to investors to almost $103 billion, over $57 billion of which occurred in just the last 12 months.”
Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2015 second quarter:
• revenue between $52 billion and $55 billion
• gross margin between 38.5 percent and 39.5 percent
• operating expenses between $5.4 billion and $5.5 billion
• other income/(expense) of $350 million
• tax rate of 26.3 percent
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