I think we’d all feel sort of like this…

What makes people give up a few hours of their time—or even an entire night—to stand outside of a store waiting for the doors to open so that they can buy a phone? As Apple has proven time and again, they’re not waiting for just any phone. And if the crowds gathered outside of Apple Stores on Friday are any indication, the iPhone 5s looks likely to stir just as much passion as its predecessors.

To gauge just how much passion, though, we went down to the Apple Store on Stockton Street in San Francisco and spent some time talking to just a few of the hundreds of people waiting in line. We wanted to find out what made them wait around for their chance to be among the first to get their hands on an iPhone 5s. And we also wanted to see if anyone had any love to give the overlooked iPhone 5c.

Elsewhere on the site, you’ll find our...

If you've got time management issues and don't care for the built in iOS calendar then that a look at the three apps Vern Seward points out in this week's Free on iTunes. Cal, Calendar by Readdle, and Vintage Time.

As has happened with previous iOS releases, real-world user testing has uncovered a few bugs that slipped through the months-long beta process. Yesterday marked the discovery of the first serious bug, a method of bypassing iOS 7's lock screen security -- however, the flaw was complicated to achieve, easily avoided by simply disabling Command Center's optional ability to appear on the lockscreen prior to user passcode entry. The new issue takes advantage of a glitch in the emergency call feature to allow users to make regular phone calls, bypassing the passcode lock....
 ...

From 9to5Toys.com:

A large majority of the deals we cover each day come from a variety of ‘Daily Deal’ websites or are so popular that they don’t even last 24 hours. We know you can’t be at your computer every second, so we’re going to round up the best deals each day to make sure you have a fair shot at the deals you want. Be sure to follow 9to5Toys.com so you never miss a deal... Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+.

Today’s featured deals...

Today was an exciting day at the Apple Store in Pasadena, California as the launch of the new iPhone 5s and 5c turned ugly. The L.A. Times is reporting that at least 200 people were waiting in front of the store this morning for a chance to buy one of the new phones when several fights broke out.

Two people, ages 23 and 43, were arrested for fighting in line outside of the store before it even opened. Then around 9 a.m. another fight started, this time involving a contender for worst person in the world. A man hired several van loads of homeless people from a downtown Los Angeles homeless mission with the promise of paying them $40 if they'd wait overnight in line.

When the man left the store with several iPhones this morning, the people he hired...

With iOS 7 officially out of the bag, there are no shortage of tips coming in highlighting many of the new tweaks users can expect to see in Apple's new mobile OS.

One particularly welcome addition to iOS 7 is the ability to view timestamps for individual text messages. To do so, simply swipe to the left while in a conversation view and timestamps appear on the right-hand side of the screen.

As an example, here's what a typical iMessage conversation might look like.

With a quick swipe to the left, I can now see at which time each individual message was sent. This is a great new feature seeing as how previous versions of iOS would often group together messages, sent many minutes apart, under the same timestamp.

Note that this feature works for iMessages and texts sent via SMS as well.

As a comical aside as we head into the weekend, does anyone recognize the 'Venus de milo gummy bear' reference from above?...

An annual gathering of technologists passionate about creating great things.

I’ll be speaking at this conference next week in Chicago. Join me and a lot of other great speakers—tickets are on sale until midnight tonight Pacific time.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Much as it would probably like to, Apple hasn’t yet been able to shift the manufacturing of the A7 processor that powers its new iPhone 5s away from Samsung. The research firm Chipworks confirmed Friday that the chip is indeed being fabricated by Apple’s nemesis. Evidently nothing much came of that rumored deal with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, so Apple must continue to rely on Samsung for important components like these despite the nasty rivalry between the two companies.

Like the rest of the world, we got our hands on the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c on Friday. But before we sit down with the phones for a long weekend of rigorous testing, we’ve got some first impressions to share.

In the video player above, you’ll see Jason Snell’s first looks at both iPhones. (Just click on the video icons on the left to select which video to play.) But he also wrote down some initial thoughts on both the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s. In addition, Serenity Caldwell walks you through the process of getting started with your new iPhone.

There’s also...

Zach Epstein at BGR gives us a good, yet short summary of a rather lengthy (13 pages) review of the iPhone 5s posted on Anandtech by Anand Lal Shimpi. In his article, iPhone 5s slaughters its quad-core rivals in performance tests despite having "just" a dual-core CPU and 1 GB of RAM. Zach notes that this is the "most thorough [technical] review" to date. Shimpi's article quickly grew to 40 pages with the addition of user comments.

Falling into the speeds and feeds trap when discussing mobile devices can be tricky, especially when the specs that smartphone vendors share most frequently only paint a small piece of the picture. It's easy to look at things like CPU cores and clockspeeds and make assumptions, but dozens of factors contribute to a smartphone's performance. --Zach Epstein

...

The introduction of automatic app updates in iOS 7 is terrific.  But there may be times when you don't want that to happen.  Here's an explanation of when you might want to turn it off and how to do it.

iOS 7 does a pretty good job taking just about any image you have and making it work with the new parallax background effect, moving your image behind your icons. But there are tricks to making it work well, and there are also some fantastic photographs out there on the internet. Combine it all together and you get FreeiOS7.com's collection of parallax wallpapers. They've sized them for both the iPhone and iPad, so head on over and check 'em out. Easiest is to do it from your iOS 7-based device, then save your favorite image(s) to your camera roll and... off you go!

No, this is not an April Fool's Day post. Tim Cook, Apple CEO and legendary operations guru, has joined Twitter. His twitter handle is @Tim_Cook.

While it was initially unclear if the account was one of many parody accounts that have been set up using Cook's name, Apple executive Phil Schiller re-tweeted a post from Cook, effectively verifying the authenticity of the account.

Cook's first tweet reads:

Visited Retail Stores in Palo Alto today. Seeing so many happy customers reminds us of why we do what we do.

- Tim Cook (@tim_cook) September 20, 2013

Cook's Twitter description reads: "CEO Apple, Fan of Auburn football and Duke basketball. Cupertino." You can tell Cook values greatness because he's not following Auburn basketball or Duke football. He knows how to pick his spots.

When I first took at look at Cook's Twitter account...

iTunes 11.1 introduced some huge changes, specifically with regards to podcasts. You may not realize it, but podcasts are now synced with your iOS devices (and Apple TVs updated to Version 6) and that means iTunes manages things VERY differently. From sorting to deleting, nearly all of it has changed. We'll be talking more about that on our upcoming Mac Geek Gab this Sunday, and likely writing some more tips, too, but for now there's a great post at Apple's Support Forums with some good tips to get you started. Hopefully this helps! 

It's been expected, but now an AppleTV update has arrived. The new 6.0 firmware adds support for iTunes Radio and purchases from the iTunes Music Store. In addition, updating adds podcast syncing, viewing of shared photo streams and AirPlay from iCloud. This update gets the AppleTV feature parity with iOS 7.

The new firmware also upgrades the AirPlay wireless streaming feature, so you can now play iTunes store purchased content on other AppleTVs.

The download and install was very slow for me today, likely because Apple servers are slammed with all the other updates people are doing with new iPhones and in upgrading devices to iOS 7.

Apple has been enhancing the AppleTV software recently, and has added new apps for Vevo, The Weather Channel, the Disney Channel and other content sources.

To get the update on your AppleTV, go to Settings > General and...

I am not a New Yorker; standing in lines make me want to start stabbing people. The last time I actually went to a for-real brick and mortar Apple store to purchase a for-real Apple product rather than ordering online like a sane person was back in 2007, when I spent a whole day camped out waiting for a first-generation iPhone. That was a miserable experience, and so was this morning's wait for an iPhone 5S. But it wasn't all bad, because I got to get up close and personal with the kind of people who want gold iPhones.

How the iPhone 5S Gold came to be.

Apple didn't provide Ars with advanced review hardware for either of the new iPhone models, and so both Ars Senior Product Specialist Andrew Cunningham and I found ourselves in line at our respective Apple stores on the morning of the iPhone 5S launch, waiting along with everyone else. Rather than kicking back and enjoying the new features, we'll be digging in over the weekend in order to bring you some...

It's difficult to look at just the proposed features of a new smartphone like Apple's iPhone 5s, announced on September 10, and make an accurate assessment of its prospects in the marketplace. Instead of analyzing features, we should look at technical currents.

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Subscribe via RSS

Daily Update for September 20, 2013 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 20 Sep 2013 15:45:00 EST. Please see our...

Every single version of the iPhone to ever be released has been doomed. In fact, some of them were so doomed I'm surprised we even acknowledge their existence anymore. Apple needs to just give up before the company has to start selling coffee mugs from its headquarters just to turn a profit.

Wait, Apple already does that? My god, it's happening.

But don't take my word for it, let's look at all of the extremely well-thought-out arguments as to why each new iPhone was going to flop... until it didn't.

iPhone - 2007

• It doesn't do 3G - What is this, the dark ages?
• It's locked to AT&T - Wow, Apple, way to kill your not-even-good smartphone idea before it even got a chance.
• The camera sucks - No flash? Almost zero options? What a joke.
• No picture messaging - My brother needs to see this...

Today in the MacNN Forums, the discussion begins about the new iPhone 5s in a thread started by "subego" after a "surprisingly smooth" ordering process via the Apple Store App. With the release of iOS 7 earlier this week, forum goers began to discuss the new features in the thread titled "iOS 7 - Spheric's Tips and Tricks"....
   ...

If you would like to keep a specific user account more private, you can do so by removing it from the log-in window in OS X.

The A7 processor in the iPhone 5s is being manufactured by Samsung, Chipworks analysis confirms. There had been rumors that TSMC would be handling the chip's production as Apple tries to distance itself from Samsung, but today's discovery adds to a growing number of reports indicating that TSMC won't take over any duties until at least 2014. Chipworks says it is still conducting analysis, but speculates that Samsung is using the same 28nm HKMG manufacturing process employed for the Exynos processor in the Galaxy S4....
 ...

On a day filled to the brim with iPhone 5s and 5c happenings, Apple pulled the trigger on the good stuff for its Apple TV set top box.

Per AppleInsider, Apple released its anticipated software update to Apple TV today. The new software adds the followings fixes and changes:
- Added support for iTunes Radio and AirPlaying content from iCloud — like music from iTunes Match — to another person’s Apple TV.

- Allows users to take any purchased iTunes content — such as music, movies or TV episodes — and stream it directly to an Apple TV that may not be configured with their iTunes login credentials. The...

On the same day his firm released its newest iPhones, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook appears to have taken a step into the social media world, opening a Twitter account and letting slip a single tweet.
   ...

Time is running out for BlackBerry. The company announced on Friday that it is cutting 4,500 jobs and that it will report a net operating loss of roughly $1 billion in its next quarterly earnings report.

I certainly feel bad for the people that lost their jobs, but we all knew this was coming.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Visited Retail Stores in Palo Alto today. Seeing so many happy customers reminds us of why we do what we do.

—
Tim Cook (@tim_cook) September 20, 2013

Other Apple executives have been on Twitter for a while, and today CEO Tim Cook sent out his first tweet mentioning that he visited retail stores in Palo Alto for the retail launch of the iPhone 5s and 5c. Cook has been a member of Twitter since July, but his account is not yet verified by Twitter. Apple marketing chief Philip Schiller retweeted Cook’s tweet earlier today proving that the account is indeed run by the Apple CEO.

Earlier today Cook, along with Apple executives Phil Schiller and Eddie Cue, made an appearance at Apple’s Palo Alto retail...

Chipworks

A few hours after iFixit's high-level teardown of the iPhone 5S and 5C, Chipworks has started to tear down the individual components inside the phone to see what makes it tick.

Their first discovery involves what we've been wondering about the A7 since Apple first mentioned how similar it is in size to the previous A6: its manufacturing process. It turns out that Apple is indeed using Samsung's 28nm Hi K Metal Gate (HKMG) process to build the chip, a slight shrink from the previous 32nm HKMG process used in the A6, the A6X, and some A5 variants. For those who don't know, an upgraded manufacturing process can cram more transistors into a smaller amount of space, ultimately allowing the chips to fit into physically smaller phones...

Last night, iFixit started to take apart the iPhone 5s, and now the repair shop has fixed its sights on the iPhone 5c. This latest guide by iFixit delves into the differences between the iPhone 5c and both the 5s and 5. It kicks off with some commentary on the meaning of the "C" in the phone's name -- does it stand for "color," "cheaper," "childish," or something else?

The teardown points out in several places that the iPhone 5c is very similar to the iPhone 5. It shares many of the same hardware specs and is basically an iPhone 5 with a plastic casing. It's not an iPhone 5 clone, though, and actually shares some features of the iPhone 5s, like a snug-fitting display assembly, a bigger battery and a very similar internal case design.

Just like the iPhone 5s,...

With the release of Apple's newest flagship iPhone 5s and the mid-level iPhone 5c, AppleInsider's trade-in guide can help you get the most from your old iPhone.
   ...

While the rest of the world is fighting to get their hands on the gold iPhone 5s, iFixit was busy stripping one down to its frame. Inside, they found Apple's Touch Id fingerprint scanner, but the M7 motion and fitness chip wasn't anywhere to be seen.

The Mac Observer Spin:
No M7 chip! Looks like Apple's marketing team came up with a clever way to explain the motion and fitness features, and Apple never explicitly said M7 was a single chip -- but they sure did a great job of implying just that.

Full disclosure: I don't entirely get the point of screen protectors. My screens, from touch-based to desktop, have all survived entirely fine until this moment without them.

The dollar store iPad-specific screen protector comes with an entire page of directions on the obverse of the container. You clean the screen with the provided cloth ("in a dust-free environment"). You then pull back the plastic backing about an inch, align and then press and work your way down the tablet screen.

The cleaning cloth is about 3x3 inches in side, made of a silky material and did a pretty awesome job in cleaning the grime off both my tablet and my glasses -- it's now been tucked into my backpack for further glasses work. So good win on that!

That's where the good news ends.

The protector itself comes in a separate bag with a stiff backing. I carefully peeled down my "about an inch," aligned the home button hole and carefully, carefully tried to lay down the sheet and...

While iPhone fans have been waiting in line to pick up the 5c in their favorite colors, one tech repair site has been disassembling the polycarbonate-backed iPhone, revealing a sturdy device that loses some points on repairability.
  ...

Apple has released Apple TV Software Update 6.0, the latest feature and content update for its set-top box. The new version provides support for Apple’s new iTunes Radio streaming service, introduced in iOS 7 and iTunes 11.1 for users in the U.S., along with several other enhancement, including the ability…

While the world is getting up to speed on iOS 7's more visible features like Control Center and the dazzling parallax effects, there's one feature that hasn't gotten a lot of attention -- iBeacons. TidBITS author Michael Cohen wrote a great piece this week that talks about the feature and what it can do for iOS device owners in the future.

iBeacons was just a word on a slide at WWDC 2013, but as Cohen points out, it has the potential to provide some amazing functionality. To quote Cohen, "Apps can use iBeacons to answer the question 'Where am I?' not in terms of a location on a map, like GPS does, but in terms of where the device is relative to another device. Specifically, where it is relative to another device acting as an iBeacon."

An iBeacon is a radio that can be placed anywhere, and when an iOS device gets...

Apple gave its Apple TV set-top box an internal overhaul Friday, issuing a software update that adds a few new features to the device. Arriving two days after AllThingsD predicted it would, the new firmware brings with it a bunch of enhancements.

Among new features included in Apple TV 6.0: support for iTunes Radio and purchases from the iTunes Music Store, podcast syncing, the ability to view videos and photos from a shared photo stream and Airplay From iCloud, an upgrade to Apple’s Airplay wireless streaming software that allows people who have purchased content from Apple’s iTunes store to play that same content on other Apple TVs.

Developing …

NetworkWorld is reporting that Apple's iOS 7 may be the first instance of large-scale use of a new type of Internet protocol called multipath TCP, or MCTCP. Just what is MCTCP -- and what does it do -- you may ask? Here's what NetworkWorld's John Cox says:

Researchers have been working for years on creating "disruption tolerant" networks, which can automatically work around failures, sometimes multiple failures, and adapt to changing network conditions. Today TCP is a single path protocol: if that path should fail for any reason, the session ends, and the connection has to be re-established.

By contrast, MCTCP is a TCP extension that enables the simultaneous use of several IP addresses or interfaces. Existing applications - completely unmodified -- see what appears to be a standard TCP interface. But under the covers, MPTCP is spreading the connection's data across several subflows...

Apple has once again turned to Samsung to manufacture its new 64-bit A7 processor that powers the flagship iPhone 5s, an analysis of the system-on-a-chip has confirmed.
  ...

Apple has indicated that it is already sold out of some iPhone 5s models, citing “incredible” demand for the new device, according to report this morning by AllThingsD. Although Apple typically does not provide specific sales information until after the initial launch weekend, it has revealed that it many…

Apple is seeing "incredible" demand for its new iPhones, according to an official statement. "Demand for the new iPhones has been incredible, and we are currently sold out or have limited supply of certain iPhone 5s models in some stores," a PR representative says. The company has declined to go into any more detail, but typically reserves specific numbers until completed launch weekends, quarterly results calls, and major press events....
  ...

...
    

...

Messages in iOS 7 are very economical in their presentation.  Not every message bubble is time stamped.  Here's a quick tip on how to reveal those times.

U.S. Senator Al Franken, who has questioned Apple and other technology companies several times in the past, just published a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook questioning the privacy implications of the TouchID fingerprint sensor feature included in Apple’s new iPhone 5s. In the letter (below), Franken says that “important questions remain about how this technology works, Apple’s future plans for this technology, and the legal protections that Apple will afford it,” and requests that Apple explain more in-depth how it’s storing fingerprint data:

It’s clear to me that Apple has worked hard to secure this technology and implement it responsibly. The iPhone...

There's a great line from the exceptionally addicting television series Breaking Bad where drug kingpin Gus Fring explains why he humbly runs a fast food chicken restaurant and even donates to police related causes.

"I hide in plain sight," he says.

So too does Apple's innovation hide from the critical eyes of analysts and investors who reacted to Apple's iPhone announcements with a collective sigh. For reasons that defy explanation, Apple alone is seemingly held up to a standard of innovation that no company could ever live up to.

So like clockwork, Apple's iPhone announcements last week were followed by the same tired arguments about how the company has lost its luster, and rather bizarrely, how the company needs to innovate faster.

While the flaws in these commonly levied assertions have been pointed out time and time again, Glen Fleishman recently...

The new iPhone 5S is out and normal folks are getting their fingerprints all over it—exactly what Apple intended with the inclusion of the fingerprint scanner. However, early reviews have included the occasional note that the fingerprint scanner's ability to enable iTunes purchases didn't quite work correctly—the iPhone 5S would prompt for a password instead of simply accepting the fingerprint.

To address this, Apple has issued an update to iOS 7 for the iPhone 5S (and also for the 5C, though it's unclear what else the update addresses). Several other outlets are reporting that the update is only 17.5MB, but when I checked via iTunes on my fresh-from-the-box iPhone 5S, I got a download that was 1.39GB in size.

We'll have our full iPhone 5s review up as soon as possible, along with video showing off how the new devices (and their new cameras) work.

Read on...

Everyone on Wall Street pretty much freaked last Monday when Apple didn't announce any pre-order numbers for the total units of iPhone 5c's sold. That's nothing new -- analysts on The Street are a jittery, throw-you-under-a-bus crowd. But the fact that Apple has remained silent is neither good nor bad. However, today that silence has been broken a little bit with the company telling AllThingsD:

"Demand for the new iPhones has been incredible and we are currently sold out or have limited supply of certain iPhone 5s models in some stores."

Will that assuage Wall Streets worries? Probably not. But I sense a well-deserved "I told you so" from Apple coming on when they do announce the new iPhone's sales launch numbers.

Apple: Demand for iPhone 5s and 5c has been "Incredible" originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog...

Apple's new iPhone 5c represents the first time the company has specifically updated and advertised its mid-range handset, giving the device a unique role in expanding expectations for the company's smartphone sales.
   ...

Android Authority is in Hong Kong with both the iPhone 5s and 5c. Like it has done in the past, the blog put the two phones through their paces in a classic comparison drop test. Joshua Vergara dropped the phones from a chest-level height and sent them to the pavement in the front-first, back-first and side-first positions.

In the end, the iPhone 5s fared well in the tests with only minimal scratches and dings. The iPhone 5c passed with flying colors until a front-first drop shattered the screen. Bummer. You can check out the torture test in the video below.

iPhone 5s and 5c sorta, kinda pass chest-level drop tests originally appeared on TUAW -...

The iPhone 5c and 5s unboxing videos have surfaced.

Just hours after Apple launched sales of the iPhone 5s and 5c at its brick-and-mortar Apple Stores, videos showing the some of the devices’ first unboxings have been uploaded to YouTube.

Per AppleInsider, Aussie iPhone customer Ben Pasternak offers one of the first looks at the two devices in two separate clips. The first features what seems to be an rare gold version of the iPhone 5s. Availability of the of the new color is thought to be extremely constrained as reports from those waiting in line have said Apple Stores will only be...