Unless you have unlimited cellular data, you probably connect your iPhone to every Wi-Fi network you come across. It could be a local coffee shop, public library, or just a friend's place. Wherever it is, you'll need to ask for the access point's password if it's a secured network, and that can be a hassle if the place is busy or the owner forgets the credentials. Luckily, Apple has a solution for this problem.
Today is the 10-year anniversary of the death of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs. To commemorate the occasion, Apple has posted a message and a mini-documentary on its website.
The beginning of autumn has delivered a number of new augmented reality developments, and we're on top of it.
Amid a troubling resurgence in coronavirus cases, led by the new Delta variant, augmented reality is once again moving back into the spotlight as a solution, especially now that the move to return to offices has been stalled.
The march to the mainstreaming of augmented reality can sometimes seem slow, but this week things picked up in earnest.
Part of the mainstreaming of augmented reality is learning to adopt new habits around the hardware delivering these groundbreaking next-gen interface experiences.
Facebook's earnings calls are generally focused on numbers—revenue and user growth. But this week the company's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, carved out a significant portion of the call to elaborate on Facebook's plans for immersive computing.
It's already been a banner year for mergers and acquisitions in the augmented reality industry, with WaveOptics and Ubiquity6 among the notable companies acquired. Two of the more active M&A players, Snap and Epic Games, continued their respective buying sprees this week with major deals supporting their AR strategies.
When you're a writer with work published across various online platforms, building a portfolio of your work can be pretty time-consuming. That's where Authory comes in.
Ever since Facebook announced its partnership with Luxxotica brand Ray-Ban to produce smartglasses, the augmented reality space has been on high alert awaiting more details.
The tech world was taken by surprise this week with the unexpected unveiling of Snap's augmented reality Spectacles smartglasses.
Sure, Microsoft has mostly marketed its HoloLens headsets towards enterprises and developers, but we learned this week that, like every other tech giant, the company is working on a consumer-grade AR wearable. Speaking of consumer smartglasses, Apple made another strategic investment this week that has implications for Apple's AR future.
Apple's Find My app just got way more useful. While it's great for locating a lost or stolen iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple Watch, Mac, and AirPods, as well as anything attached to an AirTag tracker, it's even better now that it works with third-party accessories and gear.
There's already some fierce competition between Snap and Facebook in the AR space, but it's about to heat up even more, with Snap snatching up a 3D mapping startup that could add some new AR capabilities to its arsenal.
One of the smaller frustrations of the coronavirus pandemic is unlocking your iPhone with Face ID while wearing a mask. If you have an iPhone with Touch ID, you won't need to punch in your passcode every time Face ID fails since you can use your fingerprint. But for those of us without Home buttons, unlocking our iPhones just got a lot easier — even if we're wearing a mask.
Apple's Reminders app has come a long way. In the past, if you really wanted to keep track of your important daily, weekly, and monthly tasks, you needed to install a specialty third-party app to make it work. While those apps still offer valuable features, Reminders can get the job done for many iPhone users now. With iOS 14.5, Apple only sweetens the deal.
Streaming media companies like Netflix and Hulu make deals with Roku to have their apps featured on Roku's remote controls, but there's an inherent flaw with this model: the buttons become useless if the app no longer exists. So, is there anything you can do to change those defunct buttons on your Roke remote?
The race for the future of AR wearables gained steam this week with several pivotal developments. First, Apple, the subject of numerous reports and rumors regarding its purported AR headset, is reportedly eyeing an in-person unveiling of the device for later this year, rather than introduce it at its upcoming virtual Worldwide Developers Conference, which would usually be as good a time as any to make a big AR hardware announcement.
When Microsoft unveiled Mesh a couple of weeks ago, the move revealed a major part of Microsoft's next steps toward dominating the augmented reality space, particularly with regard to enterprise customers.
Most of you probably hate ads on your smartphone, but they're a part of modern digital life. As long as apps like Instagram are free to use, then we'll need to pay by dealing with posts, videos, and pop-ups trying to sell us stuff. Well, not necessarily, so long as you're OK with a few compromises.
The face tracking of cats and dogs are probably my favorite AR innovations that have come to Snapchat Lenses over the past few years.
Most packages sent to you via delivery services include a tracking number that allows you to track it from the creation of the shipping label all the way to your doorstep. The U.S. Postal Service includes tracking information with many of its mailing services, but not for first-class mail or periodicals. Luckily, there's a workaround to that limitation that you can set up pretty quickly.
The year is still off to a roaring start, with augmented reality at the center of nearly everything, from enterprise solutions, to entertainment, to safety.
URL tracking codes: you'll see them on almost every link you copy online to share with friends and followers. It could be tens or hundreds of extra characters appended to the end of a URL, which websites and marketers use to tell how you got to the link in the first place. These excess tracking tokens not only make the links you share look sloppy and spammy — they could even invade your privacy.
If you're using a VPN-based ad blocker with full HTTPS functionality on a Samsung phone, you'll get a notification informing you there's a third-party security certificate in use. No big deal, except it shows up every time you restart the phone. Samsung isn't alone in this type of annoyance, either.
Working with people in different time zones can be difficult when scheduling a time to meet up virtually, whether it's on Zoom, FaceTime, another video chatting app, or just a good old-fashioned phone call. The time needs to be good for all parties, and trying to remember UTC offsets and doing mental math isn't easy. Luckily, there's an easier way to deal with time zones on your iPhone.
You know that you have the Gmail app on your iPhone. After all, you get Gmail notifications, you see it in the app switcher, it's in the Settings app, and there's an "Open" button in the App Store instead of "Get" or a download icon. But you cannot find the app on your Home Screen. If this situation sounds like something you're dealing with on iOS 14 or iOS 15, there's an easy answer.
A lot of digital ink has been spilled heaping scorn on Magic Leap. Much of that media schadenfreude was due to what some believed were unmet promises versus some of the early hype around the product. Others just seemed to be rubbed the wrong way by the startup's Apple-esque secrecy and penchant for attempting to coin new terms and frameworks for things that were, mostly, already in play.
UPDATE: Entries are now closed. Thank you for participating! Next Reality is where we help you literally 'see' into the future of augmented reality, and to help with that mission we're offering three free pairs of Snap Spectacles 3 to three lucky readers who sign up for the Next Reality daily AR email newsletter.
The holiday season is here! Whether you're gift shopping for the iPhone owners in your life or just trying to save some money on your own purchases, Black Friday can deal out the discounts. This year, you'll find great prices on iPhone accessories of all kinds — all Thanksgiving week long — whether you're buying gear for an iPhone 12, X, or 7, there's something here for everyone.
Apple's latest update, iOS 14.2, is finally here. As the name implies, it's the second major update to hit iPhones since Apple released iOS 14 in the fall. The update brings at least 13 new features and changes to all compatible iPhones, including over 100 new emoji and eight new wallpapers.
Every year, Apple adds some old technology to the iPhone and gives it a catchy marketing name, then like clockwork, it becomes the next big thing. Google, on the other hand, creates some truly innovative features, doesn't really bother naming them, then lets them languish in obscurity until Apple reinvents them at a later date.
In a tradition dating back to the Nexus days, Google has always used fish-themed codenames when communicating internally about their phones. Their laptops and tablets are usually named after video game characters. These names often give us the first evidence of an upcoming device when they're used in software commits in Android's open source code.
As if telemarketers weren't bad enough, now we have robocalls and spoofed numbers to deal with. Many of us get a least one spam call per day, if not much more than that. Google's Phone app has always been great at managing these calls, but it's been exclusive to their Pixel phones — until recently, that is.
For the first time, Apple has announced four new iPhone models at the same time. At the Oct. 13 web-only event, Apple revealed the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. This year, it made a phone for everyone. But when can you get your hands on one of these 2020 models?
When you can't touch the shutter button on the screen in the Camera app, your iPhone has another way to snap a picture or take a video — just press the Volume Up or Volume Down button. But when it comes to bursts and QuickTakes, however, things are a little bit trickier in iOS 13, iOS 14, and iOS 15.
Apps can learn a lot about you just by reading information about your smartphone. They can easily track what device model you have, your phone number, and in some cases, your hardware MAC addresses. Many third-party apps will only track your device values for advertising purposes, but some might be trying to snoop on your data for ill intentions.
It's almost impossible to use Apple News at night without having to mess with the white point and zoom filters. That might sound a bit dramatic, but it's really not when you consider that iOS 13 has a perfectly good Dark Mode that should work for News. So why are we stuck reading most news stories in Light Mode? We're not, but you have to put a little work into it going dark in News.
After the iPhone X eclipsed the $1,000 mark, phone prices skyrocketed. Android OEMs like Samsung started putting out phones in the same price bracket that were crammed with expensive parts. To appease the folks that didn't want to drop over a grand on even the nicest phones, a new segment was created with devices that are still in the flagship tier, but not top-of-the-line.
At the beginning of every year, Samsung drops a fantastic phone in the Galaxy S series, and then tries to top it with the Galaxy Note series in August. This year, Samsung had their work cut out for them. But they managed to improve on their predecessor and properly challenge Apple's best.
