Apple Continues Hiring Automotive Experts, Possibly for Rumored ‘Titan’ Car Project
Apple recently made a major automotive hire that hints at the company’s continued work on an electric car, reports The Wall Street Journal. The company hired Doug Betts, who previously served as the Senior Vice President of the Chrysler Group, where he was the global head of operations leading product service and quality.
According to Betts’ LinkedIn page, he began working at Apple in July. Aside from a role in “Operations,” in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are no details on what he is doing at the company.
Betts’ LinkedIn profile suggests he made major customer satisfaction improvements and warranty cost reductions during his tenure at Chrysler, with job duties that included quality engineering, field issue problem solving, manufacturing operations, and supplier quality, among other tasks. Prior to working at Chrysler, Betts worked at Nissan, Toyota, and Michelin.
Along with Betts, The Wall Street Journal suggests Apple also recently recruited a researcher, Paul Furgale, with a specialization in autonomous vehicles to join its team of employees working on its car project. The company is said to be seeking out other experts with robotics and machine experience, with Furgale recruiting both students and researchers.
Earlier this year, Apple hired Paul Furgale a well-regarded autonomous vehicle researcher in Switzerland, and has begun recruiting other robotics and machine vision experts to work on a confidential project.
Mr. Furgale had been deputy director of the Autonomous Systems Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, or ETH. Mr. Furgale previously had led a European Commission project called V-Charge that sought to develop self-parking vehicle technology.
News of Apple’s car project, code-named “Project Titan,” leaked in February, but details on the top secret effort remain scarce. Apple reportedly has hundreds of employees working on developing an electric vehicle and has been recruiting talent from the automotive industry and other car-related fields, poaching employees from companies like Tesla, Ford, and GM. Rumors have thus far disagreed on whether Apple is focusing on self-driving capabilities for the vehicle.
Rumors have suggested Apple is aiming to produce a car by 2020, but because Apple often works on projects that never make it to fruition, it’s possible that its car plans could be shelved or delayed in the future if the company is unhappy with its progress.
MTV VMA Nominees to Be Unveiled Exclusively on Beats 1 Radio Station
Apple’s scored another exclusive for its Beats 1 radio station, with MTV today announcing plans to unveil its 2015 Video Music Award (VMA) nominees exclusively on Beats 1. MTV will reveal the list of nominees on Tuesday, July 21 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time on the Beats 1 “Charts” show hosted by Brooke Reece and Travis Mills.
Let the countdown begin!
The 2015 @MTV #VMA nominees will be announced exclusively on #Beats1.
Tuesday 7AM PT/10AM ET pic.twitter.com/EwcvIYe30E
— Beats 1 (@Beats1) July 20, 2015
Since its June 30 launch, the Beats 1 radio station has seen several world first song releases and exclusive interviews, being the first platform to play Pharrell’s Freedom and air an interview with Eminem before his Phenomenal music video debuted on Apple Music.
Apple is aiming to lure customers to Apple Music and its Beats 1 radio station by offering content that is unavailable on other music services. In addition to premiering world first songs on Beats 1, Apple Music is the only service that offers Dr. Dre’s album The Chronic and Taylor Swift’s 1989.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 vs Apple iPad Air 2
With Samsung having unveiled their latest Galaxy Tab S2 tablets, we take a look at the competitor that this new range of tablets has been created to directly compete against – the Apple iPad Air 2.
Both the iPad Air 2 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 have a 4:3 aspect ratio and the Galaxy Tab S2 is being marketed as a media consumption device, much like the iPad Air 2. As for the rest of the specs, we’ve compiled a list of the specs for each tablet and stacked the iPad Air 2 and the Galaxy Tab S2 against each other to see who comes out on top.
The winner? The Galaxy Tab S2 has a bigger battery, faster processor, and is lighter, but iOS has been proven to be better at memory management and power optimisation than Android. With that being said, it really is going to come down to the simple choice of Android against iOS given the similarities between these two devices.
Let us know what you think in the comments below.
The post Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 vs Apple iPad Air 2 appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Apple Store Miranda Opening in New South Wales on July 25
Apple is planning to open a new retail location in New South Wales, Australia on Saturday, July 25 at 10:00 a.m. local time, according to the company’s list of retail stores. The store is located at the Westfield Miranda shopping centre in Miranda, a suburb of Sydney.
It is not clear where the Apple Store will be located within the mall, but the development spans four stories and has more than 400 retail stores.
The Miranda Apple Store will be the ninth store located in New South Wales, joining the existing Bondi, Broadway, Castle Towers, Charlestown, Chatswood Chase, Hornsby, Penrith, and Sydney retail stores. Counting the new Miranda store, Apple now has 22 stores located in Australia.
At its retail store openings, Apple often celebrates by offering t-shirts to the first 1,000 customers who visit each location. Apple is already accepting Genius Bar reservations at the new Miranda location.
‘Znaps’ Adds MagSafe-Style Connectivity to Your Lightning Cables
Znaps is a new Kickstarter project that aims to make connecting a Lightning cable to your iPhone or iPad as simple as connecting a MagSafe charger to your MacBook. Znaps consists of a connector that plugs into the Lightning port on your iOS device, and an adapter for your Lightning cable that lets it connect to the port magnetically.
With the Znaps Connector and Adapter, a Lightning cable can snap onto your device using magnets, making it quicker to connect and charge an iPad or iPhone. There’s also a version for devices that use Micro-USB.
Let’s make charging easier! ZNAPS is a simple yet perfect solution to prevent frayed charging cables, tripping over cable resulting in smashed phones, pointless fiddling to plug in cable in the dark, water damage through charging outlet, and more! This innovative magnetic charging adapter will make your life just a bit more convenient.
Znaps is small enough that it will work with a wide variety of custom iPhone cases that leave the Lightning port exposed, and as the project’s creators point out, it can cut down on the hassle of fumbling to get a Lightning cable plugged into an iPhone or an iPad.
Znaps works for both charging and syncing, and a small LED light on the adapter will light up when a device is being charged. The magnetic field it uses is “negligibly small” according to the project’s creators, and will not cause damage to the internal components of the iPhone. It also does not enhance or impede charging times.
A Znaps Connector and Adapter for Lightning or Micro-USB can be obtained for a pledge of $11 Canadian, or just under $9. There are also several other tiers available at different price points for purchasing multiple Znaps.
Znaps are projected to ship in late November of 2015, but as most of us have experienced on Kickstarter, there are projects that miss shipping estimates by months, especially when orders exceed expectations, so prospective purchasers should keep that in mind when backing this project.
NFL ‘Game Pass’ With On-Demand Game Broadcasts Coming to Apple TV
The NFL has long offered various packages that let football enthusiasts watch games on their mobile devices, but it’s always been difficult to get that content on the Apple TV. That may be changing, however, according to a website dedicated to a revamped Game Pass program that the NFL plans to debut later this summer.
For viewers in the United States, the NFL currently offers Game Rewind, with access to on-demand NFL games after they air on broadcast television. As of July 31, 2015, Game Rewind is being discontinued in favor of Game Pass, a consolidated service that will offer all 256 NFL season games on-demand as well as access to live out-of-market preseason games.
Game Pass access will be added to the existing NFL Mobile app on the iPhone and the iPad, and the website indicates Game Pass content will also be available on “select connected TV devices” including the Apple TV. When the new Game Pass service is made available on the Apple TV, it’ll be the first time the NFL has allowed full game broadcasts on Apple’s set-top box, which is big news for football fans who are also cord cutters.
At the current time, there’s an NFL Now channel on the Apple TV, but this is limited to historic videos, breaking news, and game highlights, rather than complete games due to contracts with television providers. With the prior Game Rewind service, the NFL went so far as to disable AirPlay mirroring to the Apple TV in an effort to keep broadcasts limited to iOS devices.
The new Game Pass works a lot like the former Game Rewind service. It includes live access to most preseason games, aside from those that are nationally broadcast, plus on-demand regular season, playoff, and Super Bowl games that are available after they air on broadcast television.
Game Pass is available in the United States, Bermuda, Antigua, the Bahamas, any U.S. territories, possessions and commonwealths (including American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands), and Mexico. Pricing for the Game Pass is not yet listed.
NFL fans outside of the United States already have access to an international “Game Pass” service that offers up live games and on-demand content, and while it confusingly shares the same name as the new service available in the U.S., it appears the international service will continue to be available.
(Thanks, Tyler!)
Apple Expands Seattle Presence With New Lease at Two Union Square
Apple has agreed to lease office space in the Two Union Square skyscraper in downtown Seattle, according to Bloomberg. The report claims that Apple will occupy the 44th floor and half of the 45th floor in the 56-story office building, which is roughly 30,000-square-foot space that can house 120 to 200 employees based on standard corporate leasing ratios.
Seattle has become a hotbed recently for Silicon Valley companies because of its talent pool and lower cost of living compared with the San Francisco Bay Area, with Amazon, Facebook, Google and Alibaba Group among the tech giants with offices in the region. Apple opened its first engineering office in Seattle last year after acquiring Union Bay Networks.
Apple has hired more than 9,000 employees in the last year and now has a worldwide headcount of about 115,000, according to the report. The company’s existing Seattle office focuses on core infrastructure services such as iCloud, suggesting the northwestern city could serve as a hub for its rumored high-speed content delivery network for faster cloud services.
Apple Watch Beats Original iPhone and iPad in Customer Satisfaction Among Early Adopters
While some critics within the tech media have heavily scrutinized the Apple Watch since its launch, new survey data shared by Techpinions suggests that the true mass market sentiment toward the wrist-worn device is overwhelmingly positive. In particular, the survey found that traditionally “non-tech” users liked the Apple Watch more than those with a closer connection to the tech industry.
According to research firm Wristly and Creative Strategies analyst Ben Bajarin, overall customer satisfaction with the Apple Watch is 97%, which is the highest customer satisfaction rating of any previous first-generation Apple product. Wristly determined that rating by combining the “Very Satisfied/Delighted” (66%) and “Somewhat Satisfied” boxes together (31%).
The survey data is based on the Wristly Apple Watch Owner Network, a diversified panel of over a thousand Apple Watch buyers. Wristly says that it asked respondents a series of pre-qualification questions to ensure that the panel did not skew towards early adopters and instead represented a healthy range of consumers. Among those profiled, Wristly found 34% to be “tech insiders” and 53% to be “non-tech” users.
What has been fascinating about the Wristly Apple Watch Panel is how diverse it is across the adoption cycle spectrum. We have those on the bleeding edge of adoption all the way through mainstream consumers who aren’t buying it for the sake of Apple fanaticism or love of tech and gadgetry but because they saw the utility and usefulness of the product right off the bat. They are all represented in our panel.
Apple Watch customer satisfaction was found to be higher than the original iPhone and iPad, which scored 92% and 91% ratings respectively, although satisfaction levels were contrasting among different types of users. “Non-tech” users and “tech insiders” were most satisfied with the Apple Watch, while “app builders” were slightly less satisfied, with less than half choosing the “Very Satisfied” box.
Apple has not publicly disclosed any official Apple Watch sales figures to date, and will be grouping the wrist-worn device under its “Other Products” category in quarterly earnings reports. Apple Watch global sales estimates range between 2.8 million and 5.7 million ahead of the company’s third quarter fiscal results set to be announced on Tuesday at 2:00 PM Pacific.
Apple’s iPod Touch shows its muscle in iFixit teardown
If you want everything Apple’s iPhone can do except the “phone” part, the $400 cheaper 6th-gen iPod Touch is for you. It even has the iPhone 6’s A8 chip, albeit running a tad slower. The iFixit team has taken the 4-inch device apart to view its guts and see whether Joe Shmoe could fix it with the right tools. Its findings? The Touch has a pretty nice camera for a music player, but lacks the iPhone’s image stabilization and has a slightly slower f/2.4 iris. It’s also missing the pricier sibling’s touch sensor, but otherwise shares a surprising number of parts. And if it breaks? Unless you’re prepared to heat, tweeze and pry, you’d best leave the fixing to Apple.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Apple
Source: iFixit
Apple Debuts New ‘Amazing Apps’ iPhone Ad
Ten days after releasing its first two iPhone ads using the new tagline of “If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone,” Apple today debuted a third ad in the series. The new ad, entitled “Amazing Apps” focuses on the array of apps available in the App Store.
This is an iPhone. And it comes with something amazing: an App Store with over one and half million of the best apps available. That’s over one and a half million hand-picked, awe-inspiring, just plain surprising, who knew a phone could do that apps. If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone.
The latest campaign is the third series of ads for the iPhone, following an initial set from Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake and a more recent “Shot on iPhone 6″ campaign that focuses on the phone’s camera capabilities.
AIVAnet 