Apple's latest flagship smartphones, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, have only been on sale to the public for about a week, yet photographers and filmmakers are already taking advantage of the devices' fancy new hardware. Specifically, their using the iPhone 6s Plus' ability to shoot 4K video in order to make stunning, world-class documentaries. The video, called The Painter of Jalouzi, is made by filmmakers Bryn Mooser and David Darg from the Haiti-focused RYOT Foundation, which -- as its website reads -- seeks to find "sustainable ways to foster hope in the midst of despair". Through film and other creative...
The iStore's iPhoneography competition is back and you can enter now. Apple has launched two campaigns to showcase the camera prowess of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. The first was photographs and the second was, released a few days ago, videos. This competition continues on this and you can be part of it. The competition is adjudicated by iStore and it is now in its fifth year. Entries are opened now and will close on 28 August 2015. That means there is still plenty of time for budding photographers to take photos, as many as you can until you...
The scariest line of characters on the internet right now makes absolutely no sense, but will crash your iPhone nonetheless. Word on the web is that Apple's CoreText API can't render a specific string of non-sensical characters, so whenever an incoming message containing the mysterious text is displayed as a banner alert or notification, the system will restart. As Ars Technica verified, this means that web browsers and other apps running on current versions of iOS and OS X are also affected. Some Apple users have even reported that third party apps like WhatsApp and Instagram as well as their email crash...
With the tech press' attention is firmly on the Mobile World Congress, currently underway in Barcelona, Apple has released a new ad campaign called Shot on iPhone 6, showing off photos taken on the device. In the past we've reported on iPhoneography, the South African photography competition for iPhone users, but now Apple has woken up to its own device's popularity within the photo-taking sphere and is promoting it. This is not the first time Apple has promoted the camera capabilities of its devices. A few days ago, with a Martin Scorcese voiced ad, it promoted the iPad as...
In an effort to broaden its "emoji diversity", Apple is introducing some 300 new emoji. Developer preview builds include a range of new country flags for iOS and OS X that only includes one out of a possible 53 from Africa: South Africa. Uhm, what was that about diversity? How people of the world would exactly use our national flag and what its emoji equivalent would become shorthand for we can't quite predict. If the famous nail-painting emoji have become shorthand for "I'm not bothered" and "Haters gonna hate", our Rainbow Nation colours come to stand for something completely different. Read more: New phone...
A federal jury in Tyler, Texas has ordered Apple to pay US$532.9-million to Smartflash LLC, a company that licences patents and does not sell anything, Bloomberg reports. The jury ruled that the company’s iTunes software used a Smartflash LLC’s patented inventions without permission. Smartflash LLC has something of a history of suing big companies, including Amazon, and is also currently suing Google and Samsung. The company, which appears to play exclusively in the patent space, claims that Apple infringed three patents, and was seeking US$852-million in damages. Apple argued against the accusation and said that the damages should be...
A new report by AppAnnie -- probably one of the most comprehensive application analytic firms out there -- found that although Google Play apps are being downloaded more and more each day, iTunes is seeing more return in cash. As you probably know, Android is the dominating mobile operating system in our world today. With just under 1.5 million apps at the end of last year, Google Play is home to about 300 000 more apps than its Apple counterpart. This echoes a report we saw last week that boldly claimed Google’s Play store grew by more than 50- 60% last year....
It looks like Mozilla is planning on bringing its Firefox web browser to iOS. If current mobile and browser stats are anything to go by, this would be a smart move if the fiery fox is to dig itself out of a hole in terms of gaining market share. Firefox release manager Lukas Blakk said that “We need to be where our users are so we're going to get Firefox on iOS." According to TechCrunch, Blakk was quoting Mozilla’s VP for Firefox Jonathan Nightingale. Mozilla Firefox is currently available on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. iPhone and iPad users are...
We've all experience it: that horrifying moment when you drop your smartphone, wondering whether your screen is about to be smashed to pieces. That worry could however be a thing of the past. Apple was granted a patent by the USPTO on Tuesday. The patent describes a system that can recognise an iPhone drop. The mechanism will react to an iPhone in mid-air, re-orient it, and alter the angle of its impact with the ground after determining how best to shift it to make sure the fall does as little damage as possible. The patent uses existing tech, including...
Apple is on an infinite rise, it seems. A rise in Apple shares on Tuesday pushed the market value of the company above US$700-billion, making it the first company to hit that milestone. Apple shares rose nearly one percent in morning trade to US$119.75, giving it a market capitalisation of around US$701.7-billion. The shares did however fluctuate in a narrow range later in the day. The surge puts Apple way ahead as the most valuable company by stock market value, with Exxon Mobile (at US$403-billion) and Microsoft at (US$394-billion) lagging significantly behind. Investors and analysts were amped about Apple at...
The world's biggest social network, Facebook, just launched a stand-alone app called Rooms, which wants to bring back the good old days of chat rooms, with a twist of modernity. Designed by Facebook Creative Labs, Rooms is completely independent of its big blue parent. You don't need a Facebook account to sign in for instance; you can make up your own pseudonym if you like. When you sign-up to Rooms, you're asked to create a new category (called "rooms") -- anything from Berlin Graffiti or Backpacking Through Asia to Online Dating to City Gardening. It's almost like Reddit's threads, but with more...
The iPhoneography exhibits in Cape Town and Johannesburg have come and gone, but the images taken have etched their pretty little hues and contrasts into our minds. Now the general public has a chance to vote on what it thinks is the best of the best. "With more than 400 breathtaking images on display in Johannesburg and Cape Town," the press release notes, "we have decided to give the community the chance to vote for their favourite images in both cities. Every photo chosen as a finalist in both competitions will be entered into the Community Choice Award." At the end...
There’s a great deal of focus on iPhone sales trends in North America and Europe, particularly from the tech blogger echo-chamber. That’s understandable, given that most of these writers and websites are based in the US, but increasingly the Apple iPhone is becoming an emerging market story. In the most recent (second) quarter, Apple reported a “new all-time record for total iPhone sales in the BRIC countries”. Bloomberg suggests that in the overall smartphone market, the four BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) account for more sales than all other emerging markets combined. Or, in fact, developed markets. That’s...
As Apple gets ready to announce its financial results early next week, analysts are predicting another booming quarter for iPhone sales. A round-up of professional and amateur analyst predictions from Fortune shows that Apple is likely to have shipped around 55-million iPhones in the past quarter, up 16% from the same period a year ago. According to Fortune however, the real interest will be in how many iPhones it managed to sell before it struck a deal with China Mobile that has seen contract prices for the iPhone cut sharply in the country. Another point of interest is that...
Fingerprint security -- while it may appear to be the most "high-tech" means of protecting access to secure information (every lab in a movie ever, your new iPhone 5S), it's actually quite a logically-flawed system simply because: you leave the key everywhere you go, and on everything you touch. So when it came to Apple's new TouchID system the main question on everyone's tongues was whether Apple's design could counter lifted fingerprints. According to a blog post by Marc Rogers on Lookout, the answer is not as simple as we might expect. He says that TouchID has flaws but, "the...
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