Aggressive iPhone Pricing Might Not Be Enough

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A number of Apple products got aggressive new price points at the “By Innovation Only” event. At Wired, Daphne Leprince-Ringuet wonders if it will be enough.

For a company that is famous for premium pricing, Apple’s sudden shift to more affordable devices (even if it is its older line-up) comes as a surprise. A look at its sales performance last year might explain the change of heart: in 2018, Apple’s best-selling device was the $649 iPhone XR, meaning that its entry-level device out-performed the more advanced XS and XS Max. In other words, phone buyers are unwilling to shell out the extra dosh to get their hands on Apple’s best smartphones. Last year in China, the tech giant even cut prices for some of its iPhones, iPads, Macs and AirPods by nearly six per cent – partly in response to “lower than anticipated” iPhone sales in the country… By cutting its prices on phones and watches, therefore, Apple is hoping to supplement its iOS customer base and lure in new customers who might purchase other services within its ecosystem.

Researchers Test Phones to See if They're Secretly Listening

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Siri, are you spying on me?

Researchers put an iPhone and a Samsung phone into a room, playing cat and dog food advertising for 30 minutes.

The security specialists kept apps open for Facebook, Instagram, Chrome, SnapChat, YouTube, and Amazon with full permissions granted to each platform…They repeated the experiment at the same time for three days, and noted no relevant pet food adverts on the “audio room” phones and no significant spike in data or battery usage.

The results won’t surprise those in the information security industry who’ve known for years that the truth is that tech giants know so much about us that they don’t actually need to listen to our conversations to serve us targeted adverts.

For some people, maybe the belief that phones secretly spy on us is less terrifying than learning how much data these corporations actually have on us.

Prepare Your iPhone for Hurricane Conditions

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Apple Maps redesign coming with iOS 12

USA Today has a list of excellent tips on how to prepare your smartphone for disaster conditions.

If you’re preparing for a hurricane, your survival plan should include your smartphone. But you’ll want to do a few things in advance to make sure it will work, and actually be helpful in an emergency. And it’s a good time to remember: you won’t be able to rely on your mobile device for everything.

The author’s checklist is impeccable.