Apple begins its march into automobiles with Apple CarPlay. The system turns your dashboard into an iOS-powered system through the iPhone’s lightning port. Any iPhone users before iPhone 5 are out of luck. Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo will begin having the option next week. Honda, Hyundai and Jaguar will offer it later this year. Many car manufacturers will have it eventually in the future.
Steve Jobs’ ace in the hole for design as Apple began its world-changing iRun? Jony Ive. Ive’s collaboration with Jobs yielded the iMac, iPod, iPad, and iPhone, and earned him global accolades. Now we get to learn more about the man with Leander Kahney, the bestselling author of Inside Steve’s Brain, painting the portrait of this trailblazer. Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products ($12/Kindle, $17/hardcover) might inspire you, or just get you really jealous.
The iPad must’ve been really working that treadmill and eating a lot of kale because it’s now 20% thinner and 28% lighter than Apple’s last iconic tablet. It’s so darn light that it also has a new name: the iPad Air. It goes on sale November 1 with prices starting at $499 for a 16GB Wi-Fi-only model and up to $629 for a 16GB with 4G LTE connectivity. The fifth generation iPad weighs just 1 pound, down from 1.4, and features the same 9.7-inch screen as seen in previous iPads. It’ll run on the same A7 processing chip that’s found in the iPhone 5S.
Oh that precious battery life. Is there any technological advancement needed more than extra juice? I mean besides a Waffle Generator. The guys at Apple don’t think so, and they’ve put their money where there mouth is with the new line of MacBook Pros. Of course much of the credit has to go to Intel for its new Haswell processors which will be inside the new laptops and promise to extend battery life up to 9 hours. The 13-inch Pro (starting at $1,299) will feature a 2.4GHz Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Naturally things are also thinner and lighter this time around, with the 13-incher weighing in at just 3.46 pounds and measuring just 0.71 inches thick.
Chief Apple designer Jony Ive and industrial designer Marc Newson have conspired to concoct this beauty of an aluminum full-frame camera based on Leica’s M model. To be sold at a charity auction next month, the limited edition Leica features a 50mm f/2 lens and a “laser machined aluminum body and anodized aluminum outer shell.” Proceeds will go towards the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
We all know an Apple fanboy/girl or two. You know, someone who wants to talk about what day they’ll start camping out for the iPhone 6, as they’re in line for the iPhone 5. If you’re that person, you also need to own Iconic: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation ($75). Creator Jonathan Zufi defined the word ‘painstaking’ by purchasing dozens and dozens of old Apple products to photograph in his own studio. The result is a 350-page book with more than 650 photos, covering the “most visually stunning and important products produced by the world’s most innovative company.” Broken down into six chapters — desktops, portables, peripherals, prototypes, iDevices, and packaging — Iconic covers more than 35 years of Appley goodness. And perhaps best of all, there are no pics of Ashton Kutcher.
Fingerprint smudges on your smartphone, a necessary evil. Fingerprint smudges on your mom’s personal massager, whoa. But fingerprints on the iPhone 5S ($199 for the 16GB model, $299/32GB, $399/64GB) are downright vital. Apple’s newest top-of-the-line iPhone features a zippy 64-bit A7 processor, bigger sensor in the camera, and rapper-worthy color schemes. But it’s the fingerprint recognition feature (“Touch ID”) that’s building buzz here. It’s built right into the home button and can be used for security or even to buy stuff on iTunes. Get your paws on one September 20.
Some guy somewhere has probably been saying for the last 7 years, “I don’t care! I’m not buying an iPhone until they offer it in pink!” Well stand-your-ground guy, Apple’s ready for you now. The iPhone 5C is the step-down version of the flagship iPhone 5S. It’ll come in white, green, blue, pink, and yellow, with the 16GB model running just $99. The front-facing FaceTime camera has been improved, the battery is a little bigger, and again, pink is an option.