As expected, the top programming languages ranked by RedMonk include JavaScript, Java, and PHP in the top three slots with Objective-C rounding out the top ten.
Though it does not rank as high as its Objective-C counterpart, Swift was singled out by the researchers for growth that "is essentially unprecedented in the history of these rankings." In two calendar quarters, Swift has climbed from the 68th slot in Q3 2014 to the 22nd slot in Q1 2015, a jump of 46 slots. Given this meteoric rise, Swift is expected to become a Top 20 language sometime this year.
According to Chris Lattner, head of Apple's Developer Tools department, the Swift programming language was in development for four years before its official unveiling during WWDC 2014. From its conception, Swift was designed to be more approachable and fun, allowing developers to produce apps quickly and easily. Developers can use Swift code to build new apps or to add it alongside Objective-C into existing apps.
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich appeared today on CNBC’s Squawk Box to talk about the financial future of the technology company. Following discussions about Intel's disappointing Q1 forecast and flat PC sales, CNBC anchor Betsy Quick questioned the executive about rumors that Apple may eventually drop Intel chips from its Mac computers in favor of its own processors.
Unfazed by the questioning, Krzanich toed the company line, revealing no new information about the future of Intel's relationship with Apple and simply calling it a "strong" one.
I just hear the same rumors. Our relationship with Apple is strong and their products are great. Apple is always going to choose the supplier who can provide them the most amount of capability in innovation for them to build on, for them to innovate. They're a company based on innovation. Our job is to continue to deliver parts that have that capability give them that, that are better than our competitors. And then they want to use our parts. So I wake up every morning making sure that across the board, whether it's Apple or Lenovo or Dell or any of our customers -- we have to provide the most competitive part: performance, price, reliability, all of those.
In his latest report, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo offered the prediction that Apple may launch ARM-based Macs in the next few years. In this scenario, Apple would replace the Intel chips it currently uses with custom designed A-series chip, allowing the company to better time processor upgrades with new product launches. Apple last year was forced to delay major product launches across its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lineup, offering only minor processor bumps due to delays in Intel's Broadwell processors.
Rumors of Apple's interest in ARM-based Macs are not new, with earlier reports suggesting Apple has developed ARM-Based prototypes of the iMac, Mac Mini, and a 13-inch notebook model. If the rumor pans out this time, the switchover to ARM processor would initially target low-end machines that would benefit from the low battery consumption of the ARM-based architecture. Future expansion may be possible as improvements in Apple's A-series processor begin to rival the performance of Intel's entry-level offerings.
Apple recently started selling the 27-Inch iMac With Retina 5K Display in the refurbished section of its online store, as first noticed by MacGeneration and 9to5Mac. These refurbished models offer customers the chance to save up to 15 percent off the retail price of a brand new model.
Several 27-inch Retina iMac models are available, including the entry-level model which is availablee for $2119 and includes a 3.5GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of memory and a 1TB Fusion Drive. Other available Retina iMacs include a $2,419 model with 16GB of memory and a 3TB Fusion Drive and a $2,549 unit with 16GB of memory and 512GB flash storage. All three models are in stock and available to ship today.
After months of speculation, Apple unveiled the 27-Inch iMac With Retina 5K Display during its October media event. The consumer desktop features a 5120 x 2880 pixel display with improved contrast, viewing angles, and color accuracy. Early impressions of the machine were favorable with reviewers praising the "stunning display" and noting that it is a "huge step up" from Apple's notebook Retina displays.
Back in late November, iPhone case maker Urban Armor Gear sent an iPhone into space using a weather balloon, and in early January, the site shared a video depicting the iPhone's journey to the stratosphere in an Urban Armor Gear case.
The iPhone soared 101,000 feet into the atmosphere, and was subjected to 70 mile per hour winds and temperatures that dropped to -79 degrees Fahrenheit. Though turned on at launch, the iPhone later shut off and froze due to the cold weather.
Urban Armor Gear hooked the iPhone up to a weather balloon rig that also included a GPS locator and two GoPro cameras for filming. Upon descent, the iPhone and the flight rig withstood 150 RPM rotation speeds, and at landing, the rig broke while the iPhone managed to remain unscathed.
"Our cases already meet military drop-test standards, but now we can officially say that they are space tested as well," said Steve Armstrong, co-founder of Urban Armor Gear. "The fact that the iPhone survived its space adventure and returned fully functioning showcases our commitment in providing our customers world-class, or in this case out of this world, protection for their premium devices."
The iPhone was protected by an Urban Armor composite case which promises military-grade protection, but it did not have a screen protector and still managed to come out undamaged. After landing, the iPhone powered back on and was fully functional, demonstrating the durability and solid construction of the device.
Ustwo, the developers behind the hit game Monument Valley today published a detailed infographic that gives a rare inside look at what it takes to develop an ultra popular game and the rewards developers can reap from creating an app that soars to the top of the App Store charts.
For those unfamiliar, Monument Valley is a highly popular indie puzzle game that asks players to lead the main character through a series of mazes spanning 10 separate levels. The game was highly praised for its design, which included a unique and striking art style.
According to Ustwo's infographic, it took Ustwo's eight person team 55 weeks and $852,000 to develop the original version of Monument Valley ahead of its April 2014 launch. The app's Forgotten Shores expansion, released in late November, took an additional 29 weeks and $549,000 to develop.
Monument Valley received some negative attention after the expansion was priced at $1.99 in-app by users who believed that the update should be free, but the half a million in development costs for the Android and iOS apps explain why it would have been largely unreasonable for the team to release an expansion at no cost.
The more than $1 million that Ustwo poured into the development of Monument Valley paid off, and the game earned a total of $5,858,625 from 2,440,076 sales. 81.7 percent of all revenue came from iOS from 1,736,431 sales while Google Play and Amazon represented a combined 18.2 percent of revenue. The game's highest one day revenue was $145,530, which it earned on the first day it launched.
Monument Valley saw upticks in sales after earning an Apple Design Award in June, following the launch of the Forgotten Shores expansion, at Christmas, and after the December announcement of its status as iPad Game of the Year.
The majority of iOS sales came from the United States at 38 percent, and the game ended up being translated into 13 local languages. 12 percent of sales came from China, five percent from the U.K., and 4.4 percent came from Japan. Half of the players who purchased Monument Valley finished the game, and 24 percent of players went on to purchase Forgotten Shores.
Following some leadership changes that Google has implemented, Tony Fadell, creator of the Nest thermostat and "iPod Father," will oversee Google's Glass division, reports The Wall Street Journal. Google is planning on splitting out Glass, its wearable headset computer, from the Google X research lab into its own unit, led by Ivy Ross, who will report to Tony Fadell. Fadell will be in charge of Glass, and will provide "strategic guidance" on the product.
Largely seen as a failure at this point, Google Glass failed to drum up enough developer interest to truly establish itself in the wearable market and Google has continually pushed back the product's mass market release.
Google has opted to cease selling Glass to consumers through the Explorer program, but the company will continue to sell the product to companies and developers. In November, Glass Head of Business Operations Chris O'Neill said the company remained "completely energized and as energized as ever" about Glass and that Google remained "committed as ever" to an eventual consumer launch.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Google still has plans to release a new version of Glass in 2015, but details on the upcoming product and its potential launch date are unclear. With the shift, it appears that Google is shying away from public testing in favor of internal testing, a strategy used by Apple.
Under Tony Fadell, Glass could see some significant changes. In addition to creating the Nest thermostat, which was acquired by Google in early 2014, Fadell has been credited as one of the original creators of the iPod. Widely known as the "iPod Father," Fadell was the SVP of Apple's iPod division from 2006 to 2008 and helped to produce early versions of the popular music player.
Apple's decision to ship iOS 8 with several new apps pre-installed, including Podcasts and iBooks, was somewhat controversial because pre-installed default apps are unable to be deleted from a user's device. At the same time, though, default apps that come automatically installed introduce the content to a range of new people who might not have otherwise discovered it in the App Store.
iBooks Director Keith Moerer at the Digital Book World Conference, image courtesy of David Lamb
Before iOS 8, the iBooks app had to be searched for and downloaded from the App Store, putting it on par with several other App Store-based e-books apps like Amazon's Kindle app for iOS. Pre-installing iBooks made it "so easy" for new users to try iBooks for the first time, said Moerer. Family Sharing, also new in iOS 8, helped to improve customer acquisition as well.
According to Moerer, iBooks consumption on phones is also on the rise since the launch of the larger-screened iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. "We are seeing more of our book sales starting to come from the phone," he told the audience at the conference. Moerer also highlighted the company's commitment to establishing relationships with creative professionals, including authors, and noted that indie publishing is one of iBooks' "biggest growth areas." Foreign publishing is also expanding, with Spanish-language publishing becoming a larger part of Apple's business in the United States and Japan seeing a lot of growth.
Moerer commented on the overall e-book market, saying that while Apple has noticed a slowdown in "other digital media businesses", the company is content with "our place within it" and still has many opportunities for growth through leveraging other content from iTunes, including movies and music.
Competing book stores were also a subject of discussion, with Moerer pointing out that Apple does not charge for publishers to promote books, unlike other stores like Amazon. "We accept no co-op payments, no pay for placement," he said. Apple is most focused on supporting artists big and small, according to a statement relayed by Gigaom:
Whether an author chooses to self-publish or work with a small or large publisher, I'm very proud that our business terms are the same. The same 30---70 split applies to a self-published author as well as an author published by the very biggest house. Because we're not a publisher ourselves, we work very closely with publishers and we view them as partners. We view what we do as an expansion of our support of print professionals on the hardware and software side and the way we run our other media businesses.
Apple's iBooks Store has gotten the company into hot water in the past, as Apple was found guilty of conspiring to fix the prices of electronic books. As a result, the company was subjected to a penalty of $450 million and forced submit to anti-trust monitoring.
iBooks has remained a major focus for the company despite its troubles, and along with making the app a default iOS app, Apple also introduced several new iBooks features in iOS 8 like an auto night mode, new organization, and more. OS X Mavericks also saw the introduction of a Mac-based iBooks app that allows users to read books on their Macs.
Apple is planning a major retail increase in China in the coming weeks, retail chief Angela Ahrendts tells China's Xinhua News Agency. According to Ahrendts, Apple's aggressive strategy involves the opening of five new retail stores in the next five weeks. Apple is timing this expansion with the festive shopping of the February 19 Chinese New Year holiday.
"We are opening five new stores before the Chinese New Year this year. Four of the stores are in brand new cities for us," Angela Ahrendts, Apple's senior vice president of retail and online stores, told Xinhua in a telephone interview.
Apple already has opened one of the five planned retail locations, with the recent debut of a new store in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital and home to one of Apple's Foxconn facilities. Other upcoming stores include the West Lake Apple Store in Hangzhou, which will to open January 24.
Apple's just-opened MixC store in Zhengzhou
With the addition of these five new stores, Apple will operate a total of 20 retail locations in China and Hong Kong, on the way toward a goal of 40 stores in the Greater China region over the next several years. These new stores reflect Apple's increasing emphasis on China, which Ahrendts told Xinhua is "a huge and important market for every global company today."
Ahrendts said Apple is hiring in China. The biggest challenge she sees is keeping up with demand while providing the same global customer service standards. She would not say where the other three other stores will be, but Apple's China website lists store jobs in 15 places, including Anhui, Guizhou, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Shandong, Shanxi and Tianjin, none of which currently have Apple stores. One store in Shanghai is the busiest globally, receiving more than 25,000 visitors a day.
China is a growing market for Apple with an increasing proportion of its revenue coming from its Asian retail and online storefronts. Apple's Chinese online store is the fastest growing store for the company, with orders up more than 80 percent last year.
Apple may boost the amount of internal RAM and use faster LPDDR4 RAM technology in its next-generation iPhone 6s, claims TechNews Taiwan (via G Gor Games). These RAM modules offer low power consumption and a significant performance increase over the 1GB of LPDDR3 RAM used in the current-generation iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
According to supply chain sources, the LPDDR4 RAM modules for the iPhone 6s will be supplied primarily by Hynix, Samsung, and Micron-Elpida. Elpida reportedly was behind schedule, but the company allegedly improved its manufacturing process to a level that will meet Apple's demand. Micron-Elpida and Hynix were identified in iFixit teardown analyses as the RAM suppliers for Apple's current iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models.
Apple's next-generation iPhone also is rumored to sport the same design as the iPhone 6 with internal improvements such as an A9 processor and a dual-lens DSLR quality camera. Today's report also hints at the adoption of "Force Touch" technology as seen on the Apple Watch to differentiate between quick taps and more forceful presses.
It is not clear, however, how Apple would implement such a system on the iPhone as it would appear to require a major shift in display technology for the device given that the Apple Watch uses a flexible OLED display paired with electrode sensors to support the Force Touch feature.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today published an Apple patent application revealing the company's interest in an iPhone or iPad home button that transitions form its normal functionality into a small joystick for gaming (via Patently Apple).
The "multi-function input device" would serve its normal home button functions, ostensibily with Touch ID and all other current features, but with a simple pressure click would pop up and transform into a slightly elevated thumb joystick.
Home button mode (left) and joystick mode (right)
A simple push of the elevated home button back into a flush position with the body of the iPhone would return it to its original state when done gaming. Diagrams included in the application show a very low-profile joystick , allowing for some level of physical control while being much smaller than traditional game controller joysticks in order to fit into the thin bodies of iOS devices.
Apple's claims within the patent application note some gamers' hesitancy to play seriously on a smartphone due to the entire set of controls resting on the screen, with their fingers blocking a significant portion of the game's content. The company thinks a built-in solution in form of this new home button could be an acceptable option for those unable or unwilling to carry additional gaming accessories.
As noted by Patently Apple, the patent, with inventor credit going to Colin Ely and Fletcher Rothkopf, was originally filed by the company in the summer of 2013. Though it's highly unlikely this particular technology will show up on the company's next iPhone, presumably launching later this year, like most patents it's still interesting to see what possibilities Apple has considered in the past and the possible directions it may choose to go in the future.
Apple Pay was introduced last year during Apple's September iPhone event and debuted alongside iOS 8.1. Months after launch, the service continues to expand with two major announcements today that mark the further expansion of the mobile payments service into regional supermarket chains and the continued adoption by consumers.
Starting today, California supermarket chain Save Mart Supermarkets is rolling out Apple Pay to all 217 Northern California and Nevada stores it operates under the Save Mart, S-Mart Foods, Lucky, Maxx Value Foods, and FoodMaxx brands. Save Mart Co-President & Chief Strategy and Branding Officer Nicole Piccinini Pesco said that the grocery store chain is adding Apple Pay for the "benefit and convenience" of their customers, adding that Apple Pay will "transform the shopping experience for our customers".
While Apple Pay continues to expand to new retailers, consumer interest in the mobile payment service also remains strong. As part of its Q4 2014 earnings report, Bank of America today announced that almost 800,000 customers have enrolled in Apple Pay and have added approximately 1.1 million cards to the service since it launched in October 2014.
The number of mobile banking customers increased 15 percent from the year-ago quarter to 16.5 million users, and 12 percent of deposit transactions by customers were done through mobile, compared to 9 percent in the year-ago quarter. Since the introduction of Apple Pay™ in October, nearly 800,000 customers have enrolled in the service, adding approximately 1.1 million cards.
Bank of America was a launch partner for Apple Pay, and the company has continued to promote Apple Pay since that time, releasing advertisements showcasing the convenience of using Apple's mobile payments service with a Bank of America credit card.
Google today updated its Google Maps app to version 4.2, adding a number of new features to enhance the user experience including filters to sort restaurant searches by cuisine and built-in weather information for various cities around the world.
It's now possible for users to drop pins for both starting and destination points when mapping out directions, and Google Maps allows users to add transit directions to their calendars. Finally, the update also includes several bug fixes.
What's new
- Filter searches for restaurants by cuisine type - See current weather information for cities around the world - Drop a pin for your starting and destination points in directions and navigation - Add transit directions to your calendar - Bug fixes
The new beta, build 14C99d, is available through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store and through the Mac Dev Center.
As with previous betas, Apple asks developers to focus testing on Wi-Fi, Mail, and VoiceOver. Many Yosemite users have had some ongoing problems with Wi-Fi since the new OS was first launched in October, and a November 10.10.1 update did not resolve all of the lingering issues.
As the largest consumer electronics show in the world, CES often gives us a hint of the technologies we can look forward to in the near future, based on the products that are shown off at the show. In 2013 and 2014, there was a heavy focus on wearables, and this year's emphasis on home automation suggests 2015 will be a big year for connected home products.
There's one other important emerging technology that we may see explode over the course of the next few years -- wireless charging. Several companies, including Energous and WiTricity, demoed upcoming wireless charging solutions, and the Alliance for Wireless Power had a booth showing off how wireless charging will work in the Home of the Future.
MacRumors had a chance to sit down with Alex Gruzen, the CEO of WiTricity, who walked us through the company's technology, its existing partnerships, and gave us details on when we might see the debut of the first products using WiTricity's technology, which uses the Rezence specification agreed upon by the Alliance for Wireless Power. WiTricity's wireless charging solutions, which we have covered multiple times in the past, works using magnetic resonance, which is able to transfer power over distances using the magnetic near-field.
In the past, wireless charging solutions like the Powermat (which uses a competing technology from the Power Matters Alliance) have required the electronic device being charged to rest directly on the power source, but WiTricity's wireless charging technology is unique because it does not require direct contact. The magnetic field used for charging is able to wrap around barriers, letting WiTricity charging pads be placed in unassuming locations like under desks, rugs, tables, and more.
In our time at the WiTricity booth, we saw charging pads that were placed under concrete, under desks, and more, hidden out of sight but still capable of delivering a full charge to a device (or multiple devices at once) equipped with WiTricity's technology. This type of hidden charging technology is what we can expect in the future, and Energous, previously mentioned, also debuted a similar "WattUp" technology that uses radio frequencies to charge devices, replacing a charging pad with a transmitter that can provide power up to 15 feet away.
Samsung has recently been in talks with BlackBerry about a potential takeover, reports Reuters. The South Korean company has reportedly offered to buy BlackBerry for $7.5 billion, in the hopes of acquiring BlackBerry's extensive patent portfolio. Executives from both companies are said to have met last week in order to discuss the potential deal.
South Korea's Samsung proposed an initial price range of $13.35 to $15.49 per share, which represents a premium of 38 percent to 60 percent over BlackBerry's current trading price, the source said.
The offer price would imply an enterprise value of $6 billion to $7.5 billion for BlackBerry, assuming conversion of $1.25 billion of convertible debt, according to the documents.
BlackBerry has struggled with flagging sales in recent years, and in 2013, the company received a takeover bid worth $4.7 billion from Fairfax Financial, but the deal ultimately fell apart. BlackBerry went on to receive interest from both Apple and Microsoft, among others, but was uninterested in breaking up the company to sell it piecemeal.
Ultimately, the company accepted investments and aimed to re-establish itself in the smartphone market, which led to the launch of the Passport, a large square-shaped phone, and the Classic, a throwback to original BlackBerry designs.
BlackBerry holds quite a few valuable patents, which are estimated to be worth $1 billion to $3 billion. In 2012 alone, its patent portfolio grew by 986 patents, many of which are relevant to competing smartphone companies like Samsung.
Update 2:40 PM PT: BlackBerry has issued a press release claiming that it has not communicated with Samsung about a possible purchase.
BlackBerry Limited (NASDAQ:BBRY)(TSX:BB) ("BlackBerry") is aware of certain press reports published today with respect to a possible offer by Samsung to purchase BlackBerry. BlackBerry has not engaged in discussions with Samsung with respect to any possible offer to purchase BlackBerry. BlackBerry's policy is not to comment on rumors or speculation, and accordingly it does not intend to comment further.
Google today announced a forthcoming update to its Google Translate app for iOS that will bring instant camera-based translation and automatic language recognition to Apple's mobile devices. This will be Google's first update to the translation app in nearly a year.
The updated translation app improves upon the current text recognition feature by incorporating the real-time translation technology that Google acquired with Word Lens last year. Instead of capturing a photo for translation, users can point their phones at signs, menus and other text and immediately view overlays containing the translated phrases.
At launch, this Word Lens feature will support a limited number of languages (English to and from French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish) with additional languages expected in the future. It also will work even when there is no available Internet connection.
Google has also added a new real-time conversation mode that is available for the first time on the iOS platform. Previously incorporated into Android, this real-time mode improves the flow of a conversation by automatically detecting the languages being used by the participants. Once language identification is complete, users can speak at a natural pace without needing to tap the mic between each side of the conversation.
Google is rolling out the Translate update across its platforms with the iOS version debuting in the next few days. Google Translate is a universal app and available for free in the iOS App Store. [Direct Link]
Update 10:42 AM: The Google Translate update is now available in the App Store.
Facebook today plans to launch a new app for iOS and Android, simply titled "Work", that will allow businesses to build their own Facebook-like social networks to facilitate interaction amongst employees.
The service, which will also available on the main Facebook website, has been beta tested in "a very small set" of businesses around the world, Lars Rasmussen, the engineering director at Facebook who is heading up the project, told TechCrunch. Today's launch is the next step in testing the project, a continuation of a process the company has essentially been working on for a decade due to its basis in Facebook's own employees using the service to plan meetings, share files, and collaborate on projects.
“Facebook at Work’s strength is that we’ve spent ten years and incorporated feedback from 1 billion active users,” he says. “All of that is embedded now in the same product but adapted for different use cases.”
And it’s actually used by staff. “When Mark makes an announcement he just posts it on Facebook at Work,” Rasmussen says.
No details on pricing of the app, or overall service, were given, though TechCrunch points out that Rasmussen never rules out advertisements as a future possibility for the service. Facebook at Work will also be a bit bare bones when it launches today, as the service will allow users to share and receive documents, but due to the company's time crunch to meet today's launch, there won't be any in-app editing yet.
Rasmussen also gave TechCrunch a run-down of how the service functions when starting out, describing linking accounts amongst a user's personal Facebook and an overall similarity to the company's previously established Groups service.
“When an employer adopts Facebook at Work, they can construct it with a set of new accounts. Users can then link their work and personal accounts together so that they are logged into both at the same time.” This would work much like Groups and public profiles do today. On mobile, you would have two mobile apps running at the same time, he adds. “Even if the employee chooses to link there is no crossover. The content stays entirely within your personal or work Facebook.”
Though Facebook's new app is decidedly business-focused, it follows the company's recent trend of separating individual aspects of the service into multipleindependentapps acting autonomously from the main Facebook app.
The nascent service has a bit of an uphill battle, with competing services already filling the market and ensuring users their personal data won't leak over into the work side of things, but Rasmussen points out he's already seen how a service like this can fail by working on Google Wave, a similar work-focused service. “I can say that the challenges of making work more efficient is something that has been on my mind for a long time," he told TechCrunch, "And I come to it with a lot of passion and the knowledge of a failure of doing this at a different company."
Facebook's Work for iOS app is scheduled to launch later today.
Apple last week implemented price increases for App Store content throughout the European Union and in several other countries, rebalancing the company's pricing as exchange rates have shifted and new taxes have gone into effect in some countries.
One side effect of that change, however, is that auto-renewing subscriptions for app content have been automatically turned off for any pricing tiers that saw increases due to Apple's changes. The issue was noticed by a MacRumors reader and also highlighted by Popular Science UK editor Tom Royal today.
Users have so far apparently not been notified that auto-renewals have been turned off following the price increases, although in the examples we've seen the renewal dates are still several weeks into the future.
It is understandable that Apple may want or need to receive consent from customers before automatically raising recurring subscription fees, but so far neither publishers nor users have been notified of this issue and they are only discovering it for themselves when digging into the subscription settings for their apps.
Apple was proactive about notifying app developers of impending price increases roughly a day and a half of time, but additional information on the effect those changes are having on recurring subscriptions was not included. As a result, some users may suddenly find themselves losing access to their content while publishers may lose out from users who simply elect not to follow up on the issue and resubscribe, regardless of whether the new rates themselves would be a determining factor.
Users in affected countries should check their settings for any recurring in-app subscriptions and ensure that they turn auto-renew back on should they wish to continue receiving their content.
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich 
Apple today seeded a fifth beta of OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 to developers, just one week after seeding the 
