Apple

Earlier this year, the creator of the Swift language and head of Xcode developer tools left Apple to join Tesla. However, by June, Chris Lattner departed as lead of the car maker’s self-driving Autopilot software. The longtime Apple employee today revealed that he is now joining the Google Brain research division to work on AI.

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For Google, being the default search engine on iOS is highly lucrative, with Apple’s mobile devices predicted to contribute approximately 50% of Google’s mobile search revenue. So much so that one financial firm estimates that Google will pay Apple $3 billion this year to remain the default.

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Samsung has forecast that its Q2 profits will easily set an all-time record for the company. While sales of its flagship S8 smartphone will play some role, the bulk of these profits are expected to come from chip and display panels …

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QR codes are really cool. The ability to point your smartphone camera at a blob of random black lines and have an easy link or message come from it is fascinating and useful, but hardly anyone uses them. There’s a reason for that, however.

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Gartner today is out with its latest report concerning the smartphone industry during the fourth quarter of 2016. According to the data, global sales of smartphones to users totaled 432 million units during the quarter, an increase of 7 percent compared to the year before.

Perhaps most notably, Q4 2016 saw Apple leapfrog Samsung to become the number 1 global smartphone vendor….

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Apple stepped up. Today it announced the iPhone 7, the first true successor to the iPhone 6 that launched in 2014. While many expected this to be yet another “tock” (think iPhone 6SE) update offering little more than incremental improvements and an almost indistinguishable design, Apple instead brought a slew of substantial enhancements to the device and introduced a new glossy black design that even convinces me that the phone is deserving of its whole integer naming bump.

Most of what Apple introduced with the iPhone 7 is admittedly catchup — they’re features that Android OEMs have been offering for months (or in some cases, years). Headphone jack removal, waterproofing, dual-cameras, stereo speakers, and 32GB base storage have all been done on Android handsets. The iPhone 7 does, however, pack a lot of these features into an overall package that’s undeniably polished and backs them up with raw power enhancements under the hood…

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2016 seems to be doing all sorts of good to Samsung. Its pair of flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, are receiving accolades from both the specialized press (including us) and customers, and the momentum will probably be kept up come the Galaxy Note 7, a little over a month from now.

Consumers in particular seem to be really happy with Samsung’s recent output, so much so that its sales are soaring arguably beyond expectations…

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Despite having been mocked because of its browser-only OS limitation, Chromebooks have seen an astonishing degree of success in certain sectors including education, mostly due to the combination of high efficiency and low costs.

But when MacBook enclaves Apple CEO Tim Cook‘s old high school start making “the switch” to Chromebooks from MacBooks, we take notice…

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The battle between Samsung and Apple for the first spot in the consumer electronics world seems to be never ending. As products get increasingly better it becomes progressively harder for brands like these to win the customers’ hearts (and wallets), but at least for 2016, Asia has spoken…

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Apple took the stage today at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, California to announce the latest new features — for developers and consumers alike — for its four main platforms: watchOS, tvOS, macOS (previously called OS X), and iOS. There is tons of new stuff in these releases set to go public later this year, but one thing that became increasingly clear as the event progressed was that the Cupertino company is playing a lot of catch up.

It’s not a new trend, really. Google has always introduced features and potential products to the public not long after they become barely workable experiments, leaving other companies like Apple to appear behind at times — whether or not they actually are “behind” in reality. It goes without saying that there are always things being worked on in the background (that’s why I put “copied” in quotes), but with many of today’s announcements, Apple brought those things to light.

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According to a report from MacDailyNews, Apple will announce that iMessage is coming to Android at Monday’s upcoming WWDC 2016 keynote.

Such an announcement, which MacDailyNews claims to have obtained from “a source familiar with the company’s thinking,” would go a long way towards making it simpler for users to shift between the two competing platforms. But what would be Apple’s motivation for making such a change?
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Among other changes this morning, Apple announced a new 85-15 revenue split with developers of apps that have subscriptions. Recode is now reporting that Google has had the same plan in mind for the Play Store, but with an important advantage.

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Huawei‘s ambition are not small. At the Wall Street Journal and f.ounders-held Converge technology conference in Hong Kong, Huawei director Richard Yu — who heads the company’s consumer electronic business — made it clear that the firm’s short term plan is more than aggressive…

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Mobile contactless payments are becoming an increasingly important and common feature nowadays, and following Apple‘s and Google‘s push with their respective systems, Samsung too has started to offer its service in Europe, starting with Spain…

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There are a number of things that need to be considered when trying to properly evaluate a device. Beyond mere specs and real life performances, for instance, customer satisfaction is indeed an important metric.

For years, Apple has boasted the iPhone as the number one choice for consumers, but as per the last American Customer Satisfaction Index, Samsung seems to have overthrown the Cupertino giant with its own Galaxy Note 5…

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Few things have made the case for an interesting use of the NFC chips inside our phones like contactless payments. Revived by Apple with the introduction of Apple Pay in late 2014, mobile-based transactions have seen an interesting resurgence ever since.

Companies like Samsung and LG have come up with proprietary solutions, but Android users have all found a home under Google‘s very own rooftop with Android Pay. Initially launched in the US alone, the service is now expanding, and after recent promises of a forthcoming launch, it looks like the green light for the UK may be imminent (via Telegraph)…

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With the announcement of the Apple Watch‘s “Force Touch” first and the iPhone 6s‘ 3D Touch after, Apple introduced a new, intriguing way to interact with our screens, matching interesting software features with the pressure-sensitive panel behind the actual display.

Predictably, despite some devices like Huawei‘s Mate S or ZTE‘s Axon Mini already supporting some sort of similar, proprietary technologies, Google was rumored to be working on a system-wide implementation for all Android OEMs to use. However, as Recode reports, the support for such a feature seems to have been put momentarily on hold…

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Google parent company Alphabet has once again surpassed Apple in terms of value based on market capitalization. CNBC points out that Alphabet (GOOG) saw its market cap around $498.56 billion during trading today, while Apple (AAPL) saw its market cap down around $496.69 billion.

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In the middle of seemingly stalling profits and a general slowdown of the smartphone industry — like Apple‘s notable first quarter of YoY growth drop in years — Samsung seems to be enjoying a moment of sunshine bathing.

Eleven months after losing the leadership to the Cupertino giant, the Korean manufacturer has climbed once again to the top of the US vendors’ list, as per a Counterpoint Research report (via Business Korea)…

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