Flagship Apple Stores Outfitted With Interactive Tables to Highlight 3D Touch
Flagship Apple Stores in San Francisco and New York have been outfitted with new “Force Touch” tables, which are designed to show off the new 3D Touch feature on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. In these retail locations, there’s a special table that houses iPhone 6s models.
When a 3D Touch force press gesture is used on the screen of one of the iPhones, which all display a fish, the table reacts to the pressure with a neat rippling water visual. The touch-enabled table can be seen in the video below from Grate App. (via 9to5Mac).
These tables are only in San Francisco and New York at the current time, but it’s possible Apple could install them in additional stores around the world as part of an iPhone 6s promotional effort. The fish theme of the table and iPhone duo is also used on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus boxes and in their live wallpapers.
Apple calls 3D Touch, the flagship feature of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, the “next generation” of Multi-Touch. 3D Touch enables new pressure based gestures, allowing users to “Peek” at content link links in Messages or Mail with a light press and “Pop” into that content with a longer press. 3D Touch also includes Quick Actions for accessing app content directly from a press on an app icon on the Home screen.
US will reportedly require consumers to register their drones
If you get a new drone this holiday season, you might have to register it with the US government. According to a report from NBC News, the US is ready to announce new requirements for consumers purchasing drones, the most notable of which is that you’ll need to register it with the department of transportation. It’s part of a plan to make sure that drones don’t end up colliding with aircraft flying in and out of airports, something that has the government rightly concerned.
The plan is expected to be announced as soon as Monday, and the DOT wants it in place by Christmas.
DOT announcement coming Monday w/indstry – plan to register drones – hoping plan is in place by xmas, follows drone/plane close calls.
— Tom Costello (@tomcostellonbc) October 16, 2015
It’s not clear yet what exactly will be required of consumers and how much information they’ll need to share with the government, but knowing that the government can track you down if your drone causes an accident would probably make it owners use them with a little more caution.
Source: NBC News
Tinder’s parent company files for IPO
Match Group, the owner of Tinder and OkCupid, is going public. According to the filing, the company hopes to raise $100 million dollars. The mega-dating company states in its paperwork filed with the Security and Exchanges Commission that its advantage over its competition includes strong brand recognition (It’s tough to think of a dating brand larger than Tinder right now) and the ability to scale. It currently has 59 million monthly active users and of those 4.7 million are paid. Most of its intended growth will probably be international. The increased funds from the offering will help it focus on product development, becoming more mobile, improve customer acquisitions and expand its portfolios with new products and buying up competitors. The company will be listed on the NASDAQ as MTCH. Of course all these numbers and talk of growth come down to love. Or at least the short-term “love” of hooking up. The Match Group’s stated mission is “to increase romantic connectivity worldwide.”
Via: TechCrunch
Source: SEC
Sprint is throttling data hogs who use more than 23GB in a month
Sprint’s unlimited data plan is about to get more expensive, and now the carrier is also saying that it’ll start throttling the heaviest users of that unlimited data. Sprint CTO John Saw says as much in a blog post entitled “Protecting the 97 percent” — a reference to the 97 percent of the carrier’s customers that will go unaffected by this change. The company’s new “quality of service” practice means that it’ll start throttling users who go over 23GB of data in a billing cycle. At that point, their data usage will be prioritized below the rest of the carrier’s customers, but only in “times and locations where the network is constrained.”
Those customers will still get unlimited data, they just might not get it as fast as they were expecting. The overwhelming majority of customers won’t ever run into this restriction, it seems — as other carriers have already done, it looks like Sprint will be constraining the few to save the experience of the many. “Our goal with [the quality of service practice] is to prevent some portion of that three percent going forward from negatively impacting the other 97 percent of customers,” Hall writes.
While that’s not an unreasonable viewpoint to have, it still isn’t exactly “unlimited” data if you’re going to have your speed constrained. To that end, it looks like Sprint will be writing this into its customer agreements going forward. These new restrictions will only apply to people who new customers who purchase an unlimited data plan starting today, or current customers who upgrade their handsets and remain on unlimited data going forward.
Via: CNET
Source: Sprint
Huawei announces which Huawei devices will be getting the Android Marshmallow update
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push();
The wave of manufacturers announcing which of their devices will be updated to Android Marshmallow continues as it was announced today which Huawei devices will be getting the Android Marshmallow update. There aren’t many surprises here with Huawei’s latest flagship devices, the Huawei Ascend P8, Ascend Mate 7 and Ascend Mate S headlining the list, and naturally the list cuts off around the 2 year mark (though I could be wrong). All said, the list contains 15 devices, which is pretty commendable in this day and age where mid-range devices tend to draw the short straw as soon as they are conceived.
Unlike LG who announced a timeline for when its first updates would start rolling out, Huawei didn’t specify exactly when this would all start and we definitely wouldn’t be holding our breaths just yet. All the same, we’re impressed with just how many manufacturers are being upfront about which devices are going to be getting updates in the immediate future, but conversely, it does punctuate how strict companies are going to be on their 18-24 month support windows.
What do you think about the list of which Huawei devices will be getting the Android Marshmallow update? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: GizmoChina via Phandroid
The post Huawei announces which Huawei devices will be getting the Android Marshmallow update appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
Adobe patches that horrible Flash vulnerability
Relax folks, the latest Flash vulnerability has been fixed, according to a security bulletin from Adobe. Yesterday we learned that Flash on Windows, Macs and Linux all had a critical vulnerability that “could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.” Yup, that’s pretty much as bad as things get when it comes to security issues. Thankfully Adobe rushed to fix the issue — previously we thought it might take until next week for a fix. So if you’re still relying on Flash for some reason, be sure you get the latest update ASAP.
Source: Adobe
Russian hackers reportedly stole stock trading info from Dow Jones
Last week, Dow Jones (owner of The Wall Street Journal among other things) said that its customer database was hacked — but it’s possible the company has been contending with a much bigger data breach for a long time now. According to Bloomberg, the FBI, Secret Service, and SEC have all been investigating a theft of data from Dow Jones by Russian hackers who wanted to access insider trading information. There’s a bit of a twist to the story, however: Dow Jones is strongly denying the Bloomberg report.
In a statement, Dow Jones says: “to the best of our knowledge, we have received no information from the authorities about any such alleged matter, and we are looking into whether there is any truth whatsoever to this report by a competitor news organization.” Despite that strong denial (and shade thrown at Bloomberg’s reporting), CNBC received confirmation from the FBI’s New York office that it was indeed aware of the hack and investigating it.
For months, the FBI and SEC have been trying to determine exactly what sort of data was accessed and how the hackers could have profited from the breach. Some of Bloomberg’s sources claimed that the hackers were able to view news stories not yet released for publication, some of which could have provided information and news about companies that hadn’t been released to the public. And this isn’t the first hack centered around finding insider info: earlier this year, Ukrainian hackers infiltrated servers from PR companies like PR Newswire and Businesswire for five years to access unreleased press releases from major corporations.
[Image credit: AP/Mary Altaffer]
Jury rules Apple owes $234 million for University of Wisconsin patents
Apple’s loss of a patent infringement case to the University of Wisconsin could turn out to be a costly one, as a jury ruled today that it owes the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation $234 million. The technology at issue is used for A7, A8 and A8X processors (found inside the iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 series, iPad Air, iPad Mini 2, Apple TV 4 and other devices), and is supposed to increase efficiency. Apple told Reuters that it plans to appeal the ruling, but had no further comment. While it can certainly handle the financial hit ,the trouble may not stop there — WARF has also filed a lawsuit against Apple for its new A9 CPUs that are inside the new iPhone 6s family and iPad Pro.
[Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images[
Source: Reuters
Amazon patents a pair of Augmented Reality glasses
It looks like Amazon may be jumping into the Google Glass game. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released an approved patent this week describing a pair of augmented reality glasses designed by the publishing/merchandise/practically-everything-else giant Amazon.
It’s possible that Amazon is developing this product initially for internal use. After all, augmented reality could go a long way toward making an Amazon warehouse worker’s life a hell of a lot easier. It would certainly ease the workload if employees were able to read barcodes without a scanner, immediately locate and navigate to an item’s location, or see individualized instructions for the movement of every product.
These AR glasses aren’t exactly Google Glass clones from the sounds of it, though. The patent specifically outlines the ability of the smart glasses to swap from opaque to transparent through interaction with a tablet. Effectively, the smartness of these spectacles is toggleable, allowing the user to quickly swap between augmented and regular old reality.
If Amazon decides to make a push for the glasses commercially, they might have a steep road of ahead of them. While Google Glass has brought us a slew of advances and was one of the first products that made us really realize that our lives were going to be a lot like science fiction novels going forward, the product has yet to find a home among consumers. Maybe that’s because the consensus at large is that wearing Google Glass makes you look like a douche.
Maybe if Amazon’s smart glasses can overcome the douche factor, they’ll stand a chance in the public market. Either way, with technologies like this growing every day, one thing is for sure: the future is going to be interesting.
BlackBerry Priv gets a moment in the spotlight with a new official showcase
You may remember a few weeks ago when John Chen, Blackberry’s CEO, demonstrated the Blackberry’s Android-powered handset in the most awkward interview ever. In a nutshell, he was aware that his company had built a phone called the Priv and that it had something to do with Google, and maybe there was an android or a robot or something involved somehow too. The poor guy looked a little out of his depth. Well, now Blackberry managed to keep their executives out of the room for a full 41 seconds to give the Priv the quick showcase it deserves.
It’s short, but there’s actually a lot crammed into this little video. We get a chance to see that 4-inch QHD dual-curved AMOLED display in action, and we get a good feel for the Priv’s practical size (147×77.2mm) and heft (192g). It’s nice to see our beloved Lollipop running on a Blackberry device, and the overall design of the casing looks sturdy and sleek.
See also: Blackberry Venice shown off in quick look video
The main thing on display about the Priv is, of course, the physical keyboard. This hardware is becoming increasingly uncommon, and Blackberry is hoping to lure back those mobile users who were once so addicted to their “Crackberry” devices, but who invariably set the company aside when it was no longer able to compete with the slew of apps available from the App Store and Google Play Store.
Orchestral soaring at the appearance of the physical keyboard might be a bit over the top–it’s a text message conversation about lunch, after all, not a triumph of the human spirit–but if you look closely around 0:21, you’ll catch a glimpse at a pretty slick little feature: the user selects anticipated words on the screen with only a flick of his finger. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, but it looks like one of those things that could become second-nature after using the Priv for a while.
What are your thoughts? Sold on the Priv yet? Let us know in the comments! Also be sure to check out the hands on leaked this morning from Carphone Warehouse for another look at Blackberry’s first Android powered device.
AIVAnet 