New Apple TV to Debut in September.

Buzzfeed‘s John Paczkowski reported on Thursday that Apple is planning to debut its much-anticipated next-generation Apple TV in September. His sources indicate the new streaming box will be unveiled at the same event where Apple will debut their new “iPhone 6s,” and “iPhone 6s Plus” handsets.

As has been previously rumored, it is said to include an A8 processor, a touch-pad based remote that’s “drastically improved” compared to the current version, a new operating system that supports a full App Store, developer APIs, and Siri voice control, and more on-board storage to accommodate apps. Physically, the Apple TV will take on a new, slimmer look.

Paczkowski says Apple will not be premiering its much-rumored television service at the event, as his sources indicate the streaming service will possibly launch in late 2015, but more likely sometime early 2016. Apple’s streaming televisionbundle is said to include around 25 channels, and will cost approximately $30 to $40 per month.

Apple had bene expected to debut a new set top box, along with the streaming television service back in June at WWDC 2015, however the two were “not ready for prime time,” thus delaying the introduction of both products.

Force Touch Panels Enter Mass Production Ahead of ‘iPhone 6s’ Launch.

As the launch of the so-called “iPhone 6s” and “iPhone 6s Plus” inches closer, suppliers have begun shipping Force Touch panels for the next-generation smartphones, according to DigiTimes. The report claims that Apple’s supply chain partners started shipping Force Touch panels in limited quantities in June before ramping up production of the pressure-sensitive modules in July.

Taipei Times vaguely reported that Apple’s touch panel supplier TPK expects widespread adoption of pressure sensors, presumably for Force Touch, later this year. Force Touch, an existing Apple Watch and MacBook feature, is a pressure-sensitive technology that will enable future iPhones to distinguish between a light tap and deep press and complete different actions accordingly.

Taiwan-based website DigiTimes has a mixed track record at reporting on Apple’s upcoming product plans, but its sources within the upstream supply chain have proven reliable in the past. Apple has also announced new iPhones in September or October since the iPhone 4s, so suppliers ramping up Force Touch production is to be expected with less than two months to go.

The “iPhone 6s” and “iPhone 6s Plus” are rumored to feature the same 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch screen sizes, an A9 processor with 2GB of RAM, Force Touch, a faster Qualcomm LTE chip, an improved 12-megapixel rear-facing camera and 7000 Series aluminum. The overall design of the smartphones will likely be nearly identical to the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

How To: Squeeze More From Your MacBook’s Battery.

No matter how much battery life you get from your MacBook, it never seems to be quite enough for the task at hand. This quick “how to” will share some handy tips and tricks for squeezing every possible minute of life from your laptop’s battery.

Dim the Screen!

Sure, this may seem like a “Improving MacBook Battery Life for Dummies” tip, but most users likely have their MacBook’s screen brightness set too high. Dimming your screen is probably one of the easiest things you can do to squeeze more power from your battery.

On a MacBook, the F1 and F2 keys will control the brightness of the laptop’s on-board display. F1 will dim the screen a notch with every tap. Tapping F2 makes it one notch brighter.

Alternatively, you can go into “System Preferences” -> “Display” and use the slider found there to adjust the brightness.

Experiment and see how dim you can make the screen and still easily view it without eye fatigue.

Turn off the Eye Candy (Transparency)

Eye Candy is pretty, that’s why we like it. But those transparency visual effects on the menus uses more system resources to render the effects, using more battery power. Anything that makes your MacBook work harder uses power!

Go to “System Preferences” -> “Accessibility.” Click the “Display” icon, and then click either the “Increase Contrast,” or “Reduce Transparency,” checkboxes.

Bonus: Some users may also find enabling these options make the display easier on their eyes.

Turn Off Automatic Updates

A MacBook that is automatically checking the Mac App Store for updates, and then downloading them and installing them while on the battery is a MacBookthat’s using more power than it should.

Go to “System Preferences,” -> “App Store.” Here, uncheck the “Automatically check for updates” checkbox. This will stop your MacBook from checking for or downloading any updates.

Turn Off Bluetooth

If you’re not using a Bluetooth keyboard, mouse, trackpad, or other Bluetooth accessory with your MacBook, go ahead and turn off the Bluetooth.

Go to “System Preferences” -> “Bluetooth.” On the left side of the screen, you’ll see a button marked, “Turn Bluetooth Off.” Click that button, and the Bluetooth radio in your MacBook will turn off, thus saving battery power. You can then follow the same steps when you need to turn Bluetooth back on.

Note: You can also turn off Bluetooth from the Menu Bar of your MacBook. Just click the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar, and then click on the “Turn Bluetooth Off” menu selection in the pull-down menu, quickly toggling the Bluetooth radio to off.

Other Ways to Save Battery Power

If you’re running on battery power, don’t use your MacBook’s iSight camera with FaceTime, Skype, or even to record videos.

Make sure to eject any DVD’s or CDs that might be in your MacBook’s Superdrive. Spinning the disc up and down sucks down the battery power.

Close any apps you’re not using. The more apps you have running, the more resources you’re using, and the more battery power you’re using.

When using your browser, close any unused windows or tabs. Each open window or tab uses up a little power, even if it’s not currently the one you’re viewing.

42% of iPhone 6 owners in the U.S. say they’ve used Apple Pay

42 percent of iPhone 6 users in the U.S. have used Apple Pay, according to new research from analysts at the The Auriemma Consulting Group.

The same study suggests that Apple Pay is no one-off novelty either, since 84 percent of these users have used Apple Pay for more than three transactions in store, while 76 percent have used it to pay for items in-app.

Interestingly, the 42 percent of Apple Pay users is virtually identical to the number of users Auriemma recorded when it carried out similar bits of research in February and April.

While the number of places accepting Apple Pay has increased over the course of 2015, this would suggest that it is still largely the same early adopters who are using Apple’s mobile payments system — although it’s likely that more will be using it thanks to the arrival of the Apple Watch.

The Auriemma Consulting Group carried out its study by interviewing 500 iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners between May 29 and June 15. Given that Apple has sold well over 100 million iPhone 6 units by now around the world, if these figures prove representative in the U.S. — which remains Apple’s biggest market — that’s a whole lot of people using Apple’s payment platform.

It will be interesting to see how it compares to the first reports of Apple Pay adoption in the U.K, where the service just launched this month. The difference between the U.K. and U.S. is that users in the United Kingdom have been using NFC payments for a few years now. On the one hand, this makes Apple Pay less of a novelty, although it also means there’s far more existing awareness of NFC.

Apple Music already has half Spotify’s subscriber numbers.

Some of the streaming numbers on Apple Music’s biggest tracks — particularly on newer hip-hop songs — are said to be rivalling the number of listens on Spotify, according to a new report.

Apple Music has only been around for a month, but music label insiders claim it has already surprised people by attracting more than 10 million subscribers.

If accurate, those numbers are phenomenal, given that Spotify only has a little over 20 million paying subscribers after being around since 2006. The majority of its listeners are non-paying.

These numbers don’t give a true indication of Apple Music’s popularity, since this is still its free three-month trial, but if Apple retains a decent percentage of these listeners, it’s fair to say that the exercise has been a major success.

The report also claims that Apple will be using the MTV Video Music Awards to heavily publicize its streaming music service, which may help explain the cross-promotion in which VMA nominees were announced on Beats 1 radio.

Not everything about Apple Music’s first month has been quite so successful, however. In addition to the early controversy with Taylor Swift over streaming fees, Apple is also facing an FTC antitrust investigation — although a report from yesterday, citing a law professor, suggests the case may be without merit.

iPhone 6s vs. iPhone 6c vs. iPhone 6 rumors: 4-inch metal iPhone.

There’s a lot of back and forth on the iPhone 6c rumor, and a new report seems to indicate that Apple may have indeed planned three new iPhones for a fall 2015 launch… but then decided to stick with just two of them. However, a new 4-inch iPhone with updated internal components that would launch alongside the iPhone 6s family — often dubbed as the iPhone 6c — might still be in the works.

According to Cowen and Company analyst Timothy Arcuri, the 4-inch iPhone 6c was under development in the early months of the year.

Arcuri gathered his intel from various sources in Apple’s supply chain, according to his note to clients. These sources said Apple was working on an “iPhone 6-looking version of the iPhone 5C,” and Arcuri said he had seen evidence of the iPhone 6c in Apple’s supply chain from January through March.

However, it looks like Apple may have killed or postponed the project.

“I think one of the reasons is because the iPhone 6 has sold so well,” Arcuri said. “And they said, ‘Look, why would we want to cannibalize? If we came out with an iPhone 6C, we would essentially cannibalize a price-reduced iPhone 6.’”

As was the case with previous iPhones, the iPhone 6 is likely to stay in Apple’s lineup for one more year once the new iPhones arrive, and it’ll cost $100 less than its original price. However, this doesn’t change the fact that some buyers may prefer a smaller new 4-inch iPhone, sized along the lines of 2013’s iPhone 5S.

Recent reports have indicated that an iPhone 6c launch might be scheduled for next year, and Arcuri isn’t completely dismissing the device.

There is also more indication Apple isn’t ready to dump 4-inch iOS devices just yet. Just a few days ago, the company released an iPod touch 6G model that’s on par with iPhone 6 when it comes to specs, with better internals than the iPhone 5S. The move may suggest that the iPhone 6c might still be in the works.

Finally, a new image leak from NowhereElse shows what seems to be an iPhone 6c battery, which might fit Arcuri’s story. According to the French tech site, the battery has a capacity of 1,715 mAh and may have been developed for a new 4-inch iPhone, as it’s smaller than the 1,810 mAh battery in the iPhone 6 but bigger than the iPhone 5c battery (1,507 mAh).

ESPN could be offered as standalone channel on Apple TV, says Disney CEO – but don’t hold your breath.

Disney could respond to the increase trend toward cord-cutting by offering direct consumer access to ESPN, says Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company. This could potentially make it available as a standalone channel on Apple TV, rather than something you can only get if you subscribe to a cable package that includes it.

But don’t rush out to cancel your cable subscription just yet – Iger, who is also on Apple’s board, said in a CNBC interview that the move won’t happen in the next five years. He was responding to questions about the future of the channel in an increasingly difficult market for cable. Enterprise recently reported that the channel lost more than three million viewers in the last year.

Sports network ESPN, meanwhile, reportedly lost 3.2 million viewers over the last year as a growing number of pay-TV customers either cut the cord or sought so-called skinny packages that didn’t include the industry’s most expensive channel. ESPN accounts for about $6 of most cable bills.

Iger said that the company viewed technology as friend rather than foe, and would adapt as the industry changed.

“While the business model may face challenges over the next few years, long term for ESPN … they’ll be fine. They have pricing leverage, too,” Iger said. “Disney [Channel] is another … brand and product that could be sold directly to the customer.”

But with that five year caveat, don’t expect to find ESPN offered as a standalone service like HBOor Showtime, and possibly not even as part of the streaming TV service Apple is expected to launch in the fall.

Wallpapers of the Week: A cartoon world.

Continue the Wallpapers of the Week section, we take a step away from the natural, in favor of the imagined.

Inside, find a collection of imagined environments that were digitally created by his graphic design skills. Although not photographically based, the wallpapers are crisp, clean, clear, and make excellently colorful wallpapers. 

Wallpapers

Download: iPad; iPhone

Download: iPad; iPhone

Download: iPad; iPhone

Download: iPad; iPhone

Cure your iPhone addiction with NoPhone, a useless plastic rectangle.

Do you mediate every bit of your experience through the cold display of your iPhone? Do you film concerts, text during dates, and spend more time looking at your screen than into the eyes of the people you’re hanging out with?

Are you addicted to your iPhone?

NoPhone may have the solution for you. In what seems to be a rather tongue-in-cheek product page, NoPhone touts its thin, light, wireless design. Which makes sense for a smartphone-shaped hunk of plastic.

“Enjoy always having the ability to clutch a rectangle of smooth, cold plastic without forgoing any potential engagement with your direct environment,” says the site. “Never again experience the unsettling feeling of flesh on flesh when closing your hand.”

You can actually purchase a NoPhone in plain ($12) or selfie ($18) models, the latter of which come with a mirror affixed to the front of the “device.” Notice that you have to buy your NoPhone contract-free; there are no hidden costs.

Better yet, you can grab an entire Family Plan set of NoPhones for $45, which gives you five NoPhones, instruction manuals, and more attention to your real friends. NoPhone does not include:

• Texting Your Ex-Boyfriend
• Location Tracking
• Browsing History
• Data Overages
• Dead Batteries
• Phone

So, when you start to worry that you might be using your iPhone too much, leave it at home and take your NoPhone. You’re surely going to be the laughingstock an inspiration for all your friends.

Buy one for your significant other right now, and you’ll be like Eric Warner, who says the NoPhone saved his marriage.

“My wife bought me a NoPhone and I haven’t Instagramed my food in a week,” he wrote, in a totally not made up quote on the NoPhone website.

Leaked iPhone 6s front panel looks awfully familiar.

The iPhone 6s is likely to be revealed within the next two months, which means the leaks are starting to flow out of the supply chain like toxic fumes pouring out of Foxconn factories. We got our first look at a purported iPhone 6s rear shell last week, and now a new set of pictures of an alleged iPhone 6s front panel have leaked online.

The front panel glass is almost identical to the iPhone 6 display, which is pretty much exactly what you’d expect for an “s” upgrade. The source claims that the display panels for the white and gold units are currently in production and ready to be shipped to assemblers.

Here’s another shot of the front glass:

Unfortunately, Nowhereelse’s sources weren’t able to confirm whether the front display is made with sapphire crystal, or if Force Touch technology will be built into the display.

The iPhone 6s is expected to be revealed in September. Other rumored features include an improved DSLR-like camera sensor, an A9 processor, more RAM, improved battery life, and a more precise Touch ID sensor.