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Apple will likely take three years between full-model changes of its iPhone devices, a year longer than the current cycle. In a typical two-year term, fall 2016 was supposed to see a major upgrade. But the changes on the model to be launched this autumn will be minor, such as improved camera quality... These include a KGI report last month stating that the design would be largely unchanged and that it would not have ‘many attractive selling points.’

"Billionaires, tech CEOs and top members of the Republican establishment flew to a private island resort off the coast of Georgia this weekend for the American Enterprise Institute's annual World Forum, according to sources familiar with the secretive gathering. The main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab? How to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page, Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker, and Tesla Motors and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk all attended. So did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), political guru Karl Rove, House Speaker Paul Ryan, GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory...

Apple has yet to confirm whether it's investing in its own line of electric vehicles, but Reuters is out with more evidence that Project Titan is underway: The tech giant has reportedly been in talks with charging station companies and has hired at least four electric vehicle charging specialists. Apple has been asking charging station companies about their underlying technology, Reuters reports, for reasons other than providing charging stations for its own employees (which the company already does). Speculation about Apple's electric vehicle project, dubbed Titan, has gone on for months, with reports indicating the company is aiming to ship...

A Saudi man who claims he invented the concept of e-commerce during the early days of the internet says that he is talks with big firms who wish to avoid litigation for stealing his world-changing idea. “There are now undergoing negotiations with big companies inside [the kingdom] and abroad to find a solution without opting to head to international judiciary,” Faisal bin Fahd al-Osaimi told the local Saudi daily Okaz. Osaimi said he presented the concept of e-commerce to the late King Fahd in 1991, the same year the internet was born. The late king reportedly referred him to the...

Apple and Samsung supplier Foxconn has reportedly replaced 60,000 factory workers with robots. One factory has "reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots", a government official told the South China Morning Post. Xu Yulian, head of publicity for the Kunshan region, added: "More companies are likely to follow suit." China is investing heavily in a robot workforce. In a statement to the BBC, Foxconn Technology Group confirmed that it was automating "many of the manufacturing tasks associated with our operations" but denied that it meant long-term job losses. [snip] Since September 2014, 505 factories...

Less than a month after a still unexplained suicide took place inside a conference room at Apple headquarters, there seems to be more trouble in Silicon Paradise. According to CBS, an incendiary device ignited a fire late Thursday night at the offices of digital giant Google, damaging a Google Earth demo car and leaving a large singe mark on one of the buildings, authorities said. Mountain View firefighters were called to the massive complex on Salado Drive at about 10:52 p.m. Arriving firefighters were met by Google security personnel and guided to an area where the car, used in Google’s...

The 6502 CPU is a fondly-remembered CPU* for good reason: along with chips from Motorola, Intel and Zilog, it helped create the personal computer business in the 1980s. However, this project is affection on a grand scale: some US enthusiasts are creating a transistor-for-transistor replica of the chip's design using discrete components. It's a good thing we're in the era of surface mount components, because even with small components the 3,218 transistors, 1,019 resistors and various other bits of the MOnSter 6502 need a four-layer PCB measuring 12” x 15” with components mounted on both sides. Because a big, slow,...

Stanford Law Fellow Vivek Wadhwa weighs in on Donald Trump's rant on how Apple must make iPhones in the U.S. | Watch CNBC Live TV

Google will soon close one more door on the Flash plugin in Chrome, requiring users to authorize each and every site where they want Flash to load, rather than running it automatically. Google has detailed a proposal to make HTML5 the default in Chrome over Adobe's Flash Player. If all goes to plan, by the fourth quarter of 2016 Chrome will not be using the Flash plugin for the vast majority of the web, and will only make an exception as the default media player for the world's top 10 sites that still rely on Flash. For the time being,...

“Apple stock tumbled to its lowest level in nearly two years on Thursday, following a report that Asian component suppliers are seeing weak orders related to the upcoming iPhone 7,” Patrick Seitz reports for Investor’s Business Daily. “Japanese business publication Nikkei Asian Review reported Thursday that Taiwan-based tech suppliers expect to get significantly fewer orders from Apple in the second half of this year compared with the year-earlier period,” Seitz reports. “They cited the ‘ongoing slump in demand for premium smartphones and a lack of groundbreaking features for the upcoming iPhone 7.'”“Apple shares were down more than 2.5%, near 90,...

Tim Cook has just made a very public investment in the future of China, betting $1 billion on the country's version of Uber as he prepares for a trip to Beijing. The investment in Didi Chuxing is an unusual one for Apple, which typically swallows smaller companies whole. It does, however, reflect Apple's laser-like focus on China, which Cook predicts will one day surpass the United States as the company's top market.

A judge recently took the controversial step of letting the FBI force a woman to unlock an iPhone with her fingerprints. But it didn't work. CNNMoney has learned that the FBI was unable to open an iPhone in Los Angeles. It's an important detail when debating how new technology -- and new police methods -- affect Americans' Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. And it shows that while the FBI unlocked the San Bernardino terrorist's iPhone 5C, law enforcement still has trouble getting into most iPhones. The present case sparked nationwide attention when it was highlighted by the Los Angeles...

Sprawling dormitory complex outside Shanghai housed workers who spend 12 hours a day making Apple products Eerie images show austere eight and 12-bed rooms and filthy 'bathrooms' where workers used communal showers Workers operated water taps by pedalling and squatting toilet cubicles positioned over open sewerage drains Dorms can house 6,000 workers at a time but were abandoned hurriedly, with mementos left behind Impoverished men and women from countryside work 12-hour shifts for £250 a month and pay £16 to live in dorms Mold and mildew crawl up the walls of the communal bathrooms and the tiny, austere rooms are...

CUPERTINO, California and WALLDORF, Germany — May 5, 2016 — Apple® and SAP today announced a partnership to revolutionize the mobile work experience for enterprise customers of all sizes, combining powerful native apps for iPhone® and iPad® with the cutting-edge capabilities of the SAP HANA platform. This joint effort will also deliver a new iOS software development kit (SDK) and training academy so that developers, partners and customers can easily build native iOS apps tailored to their business needs. “This partnership will transform how iPhone and iPad are used in enterprise by bringing together the innovation and security of iOS...

Apple has held a special meeting with leading podcasters in an attempt to address concerns that the company is failing to adequately support the iTunes broadcast community

How Apple's music services all work is a little confusing, but in no way is the company interested in getting rid of your music library. Credit: Thinkstock A blog post has been making the rounds since Thursday, saying that Apple Stole My Music. James Pinkstone, writing on his company’s blog, tells a tale of losing 122GB of music files because of Apple Music. Plenty of websites are trumpeting this story, saying that Apple Music is the big bad wolf. But I’m afraid that isn’t the case.The author of this blog post begins by citing a bit of a conversation he...

On Thursday, The Guardian published a report by Nellie Bowles in which Cupertino mayor Barry Chang went on a little bit of a rant against Apple, Cupertino's largest employer. Chang had some harsh words about the company spending $5 billion to build an office in his city, including, for example, that "Apple is not willing to pay a dime" and that "they abuse" the city of Cupertino.Apple says that it pays tens of millions of dollars annually in property tax to Cupertino, and that it is the biggest taxpayer in Cupertino. Apple also says it funds millions in public improvements, such as adding sidewalks, bike...

Steven Sinofsky was President of Microsoft’s Windows’ division from 2009 to 2013. From his blog post about moving to an iPad as his full time machine: Unlike many “use a product for month” tests this is not an experiment. For me this is a deeply held belief that the rise of smartphones (specifically starting when the iPhone launched) would have a profound impact on the way we all use “computers”. The transformation spans hardware (thinner, lighter, smaller, cheaper, longer battery life, instant on/off, touch, sensors, connectivity, etc.), operating systems (more: secure, reliable, maintainable, robust, etc.), and app software (refactored, renewed,...

Chief Executive Tim Cook plans to visit Beijing later this month to meet high-level government officials, at a time when it is facing some setbacks in its most important overseas market, a source familiar with the matter said. Cook has frequently traveled to China since taking the helm of Apple five years ago, but his latest visit comes during a critical period.

Getting local politicians to battle Apple is hard, Chang said. He recently proposed that Apple – which is building a massive new campus its own employees nicknamed the Death Star, or more favorably, The Spaceship – should give $100m to improve city infrastructure.