Apple 'Very Aware Of' Pricing Concerns, Energizer's Brick-Sized Phone, Google Home Bug Teases Apple Music Support - MacRumors

Brought to you by: Apple COO Jeff Williams 'Very Aware Of' Concerns Over Apple Product Cost Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams spoke at Elon University in North Carolina last Friday, and in a Q&A session, he was asked about the high prices of Apple's products. Williams noted that Apple wants to be an "egalitarian" company and is "very aware of" pricing concerns. He did not, however, offer any specific thoughts on how Apple can address the pricing issues other than a vague mention of efforts in developing countries. The comments by Williams come as research firm Gartner estimates that Apple experienced its worst year-over-year decline in iPhone sales in three years during the holiday quarter, largely due to weakness in China. Samsung leads the overall smartphone market while Huawei has rapidly grown to challenge Apple for the second spot in the rankings.   Read Full Article Support Our Sponsor Make Apple Device Management Easier With Jamf Now Jamf Now is an on-demand mobile device management (MDM) solution for iPad, iPhone, and Mac devices in your workplace. Perform MDM tasks like deploying apps, distributing email and Wi-Fi settings, and securing company data easily, no IT expertise required. Manage your first three devices for free. Add more starting at $2/device/month. Create your account now!   Visit Sponsor Popular Stories Feb 28, 2019 This is What a Smartphone With an 18,000mAh Battery Looks Like Following Samsung's announcements including its $2000 Galaxy Fold smartphone last week, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was the scene of a number of other tech-related announcements that attracted significant attention. Perhaps the most talked-about device introduction was Energizer's upcoming Power Max P18K Pop smartphone that packs an 18,000 mAh battery inside. It's a ridiculously thick phone, but if you're looking for long battery life, this might be your thing. In other MWC news, if you thought Samsung's Galaxy Fold was expensive, you might be surprised to hear about Huawei's new folding smartphone, the Mate X, which starts at $2600. These obviously aren't going to be for the masses just yet, but it'll be interesting to see where this folding device technology goes. And finally, Oppo has introduced a triple-camera phone that offers up to 10x optical zoom. Apple has been rumored to be including a triple-lens camera in at least this year's iPhone XS Max successor, but we're not yet sure about it's capabilities.   Read Full Article Apple Plans to Close Stores in Eastern District of Texas in Fight Against Patent Trolls Apple appears to be pursuing an interesting new strategy to thwart "patent trolls" that frequently sue the company in hopes of winning multi-million-dollar verdicts despite not having any products of their own. Lawsuits brought by patent trolls have typically been filed in the Eastern District of Texas, which has been perceived as a favorable jurisdiction for plaintiffs in such cases. But Apple is now moving to close its two retail stores in the Eastern District, located in the Dallas suburbs of Plano and Frisco, and replace them with a single new store just over the border in north Dallas. By closing its Plano and Frisco stores, Apple will no longer have an established place of business within the Eastern District, and thanks to a 2017 Supreme Court ruling limiting where patent infringement lawsuits can be filed, patent troll plaintiffs will no longer be able to sue Apple in the Eastern District. One such company is, however, attempting to sneak in under the wire, filing suit against Apple this week over LTE-related patents. The plaintiffs previously won over $10 million in a judgment against Huawei over the same patents.   Read Full Article Google Says Bug Caused Apple Music to Appear in Google Home App Following integration of Apple Music with Amazon's Echo devices several months ago, there was considerable interest this week when Apple Music started showing up as an option within the Google Home app, suggesting streamlined support for Apple's music service might be coming to Google's lineup of smart speakers. That doesn't appear to be the case, however, as Google says Apple Music's appearance was a bug related to the fact that Google Assistant (which does support Apple Music in a limited fashion) and Google Home share some Google account settings.   Read Full Article Fun iOS Safari Bug Lets You Trick Your Friends With Fake Website Headlines Our recent series of tips videos has proven popular with readers and YouTube subscribers, and here's a particularly fun tip that takes advantage of an apparent bug in how Safari and Messages interact on iOS. Watch the video to see how it works, but the trick lets you send a website link in Messages with a text snippet that makes it look like a headline from the page. You can make that text snippet be whatever you want, so it's a good way to trick your friends for a brief moment until they tap through to see the page.   Read Full Article USB-IF Confusingly Merges USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Under New USB 3.2 Branding If you were already confused by the terminology used to describe the various USB speed standards, then buckle up. The governing body for USB has announced new branding that means all of the recent generations of USB will be variations of "USB 3.2". So what does this all mean? The 5 Gbps standard that was originally known as USB 3.0 and later renamed to USB 3.1 Gen 1 will now be called USB 3.2 Gen 1. The more recent 10 Gbps standard previously known as USB 3.1 Gen 2 will now be called USB 3.2 Gen 2. Those changes set the stage for the upcoming 20 Gbps standard that will naturally be called USB 3.2 Gen 3. Just kidding...it's actually going to be called USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. We're not making this up.   Read Full Article Apple's MacBook Air vs. Microsoft's Surface Laptop 2 Finally this week, we took a look at Apple's latest MacBook Air and compared it to Microsoft's Surface Laptop 2. Obviously your preference is going to largely come down to whether you're a Mac or Windows fan, but there are some interesting hardware comparisons to be made between the two machines. Neither machine is going to be a workhorse for demanding applications, but they both deliver strong battery life in portable sizes and weights that will be great for most users.   Read Full Article

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