Apple has finally met its Fortnite match

Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite - #FreeFortnite

Epic Games executed its most ambitious Fortnite live event yesterday, leading both Apple and Google to remove one of the world’s most popular games from their app stores. It was a well-choreographed sequence of events designed to highlight the power Apple and Google hold over app stores, especially Apple’s walled garden. Epic Games has now filed lawsuits against both Apple and Google in a battle that’s likely to last months. Epic Games is uniquely positioned to pull off a stunt like this, and now poses a serious threat to how Apple, in particular,…

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iPhone owners have less than two weeks to replace battery for £25

Owners of iPhones with failing batteries have 12 days to take advantage of Apple’s out-of-warranty £25 battery swap offer before the price rises to as much as £65. The discounted battery replacement scheme, which applies to the iPhone 6 and newer models, was launched following revelations last year that Apple was intentionally slowing iPhones because of worn batteries. Apple apologised and reduced the cost of its out-of-warranty battery replacements for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, 6S and 6S Plus, SE, 7 and 7 Plus, 8 and 8 Plus and iPhone…

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This is iPhone 8

The hardware that allows the iPhone 8‘s rumored facial recognition capability could consist of a "revolutionary" new camera system for its front-facing camera. The report follows related rumors of Apple augmenting or ditching its Touch ID fingerprint scanner in favor of iris or facial recognition technology, fueled by its acquisition of Israeli facial recognition startup RealFace. Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 — yep, that Galaxy Note 7 — was among the first phones to come equipped with an iris scanner.

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99.6 percent of new smartphones run Android or iOS

The latest smartphone figures from Gartner are out, and they paint an extremely familiar picture. Between them, Android and iOS accounted for 99.6 percent of all smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2016. This duopoly has been the norm for a while now (in the second quarter of 2015 this figure was 96.8 percent), but it’s always impressive — and slightly terrifying — to see how Google and Apple continue to wring the last decimal point drops of market share from global smartphone users. Of the 432 million smartphones…

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Microsoft warns iOS isn’t as secure as you think

Microsoft has warned customers that iOS is no more secure than Android, contradicting commonly held beliefs about the relative security of the two platforms. The company said that recent attacks targeting iOS prove it’s as vulnerable as Android. Brad Anderson, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for enterprise and client mobility, set out his views in a company blog post last week. He used the Pegasus iOS spyware, revealed last month, as an example of severe vulnerabilities present in iOS. Pegasus is capable of monitoring everything a user does on their device,…

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Apple Pay Has Officially Launched In The U.K.

The Eagle has landed. An accidental tweet told us that the U.K. wouldn’t have to wait for Apple Pay much longer, and that tweet was right. Apple Pay has officially launched in the U.K. Finally! It has been available to customers here in the US since last October, so your time has finally come, U.K. Hopefully your bank is one of the launch participants: American Express, First Direct, HSBC, Nationwide, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander and Ulster Bank. I use Simple as my bank and had to wait until…

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A free version of Google Play Music has launched just before Apple Music

The company is making a Pandora-like radio streaming service available to everyone in the US initially, consisting of curated playlists and automatically generated streams. However, users won’t be able to pick any song they want like Spotify’s free tier allows. “We think that by giving users a taste of Google Play Music, through the ad-supported tier, more users will ultimately become paying subscribers,” said Google Play’s vice president of partnerships Zahavah Levine. “Until now, this was a lost opportunity – to bring more people into Google Play Music.” Google is…

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Apple sides with Microsoft in closely watched patent dispute with Google

Lawyers for Microsoft and Google will appear Wednesday morning at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in a long-running dispute over patents that were originally owned by cell phone maker Motorola Mobility. But this is no ordinary patent showdown. Other tech companies are watching the case closely for its potential to set a precedent for negotiations over “standard-essential patents” or “SEPs” — technologies required to implement industry standards. The case has already created some unusual alliances. Apple (PDF) and T-Mobile (PDF) are among the companies siding with Microsoft in the case,…

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