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Apple CEO, Tim Cook has released an open letter to customers announcing the company's opposition to an order from a US Federal Judge which would require Apple to help the FBI access data on the iPhone 5c used by the San Bernardino shooter. Cook explains exactly what the FBI is trying to do, what old laws they’re using to do it, and expresses his concern for the democracy of America, “Ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.”


Remember English class in High School when you had to learn when to use ‘they’ and when to use ‘his or her’? For example, “Everybody loves their own mother,” when grammatically correct should read, “Everybody loves his or her own mother.” Personally, I have always thought rules like this make people hate grammar. But the outdated rule also excludes non-binary and outside of binary individuals. To remedy that, the Washington Post and even Merriam Webster accepts ‘they’ as a singular pronoun. We at iPhone Life do too, and we wanted to let you know about the change.

Well that didn’t last long. After Google released its Q4 earnings this week, its parent company Alphabet saw stock prices surge to over $800 due to the strong results. This sequence of events caused Alphabet’s market capitalization to reach $540 billion, surpassing Apple as the world’s most valuable company. But the 8% increase in Alphabet’s stock value didn’t last and as the market closed yesterday evening, Apple found itself back on top.

Surely, whether you’re Apple’s biggest fan or not, we can all agree the company’s marketing likes to buoy its own innovation and epic-ness. From the iPhone 6s tagline, “The only thing that’s changed is everything,” to the Apple Watch copy, “To wear it is to love it,” Apple is great at declaring the significance of its own products. That’s why Buzzfeed’s “If McDonald’s Advertised Like Apple” remains to be fantastically hilarious and deserves a throwback nod of appreciation.

Google’s parent company, Alphabet just passed Apple as the most valuable company in the world. After Alphabet released its Q4 earnings last night, stock prices shot up 8% causing the company’s combined share classes to reach $554 billion, surpassing Apple’s $534 billion. This is the first time a company has surpassed Apple in four years since Apple vaulted Exxon Mobile in 2012.

If you have stock in Apple, take a sigh of relief. Yesterday afternoon the company announced record quarterly profit, netting $18.4 billion dollars in Q1 2016. “Our team delivered Apple’s biggest quarter ever, thanks to the world’s most innovative products and all-time record sales of iPhone, Apple Watch and Apple TV,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. The quarter, which ended December 26, 2015, saw record breaking revenue as well, raking in $75.9 billion dollars. Wall Street warned Apple’s soaring numbers couldn’t last, but the company continues its upward climb.. for now.

Virtual reality is starting to go from a developers-only situation to a common consumer situation. CES in Las Vegas is full of such products, proving that VR is for everyone with the many different companies here showing off their latest and greatest. The first step to getting consumers into the virtual reality market is giving them something familiar and easy to use–Speck has done just that with its new Pocket VR viewer ($69.95, available Spring 2016).

CES in Las Vegas is a giant annual convention featuring the latest in consumer tech. Product trends span the field from virtual reality and electric cars, to personal drones and wearable tech. Since I haven’t mastered being in multiple places at once, I decided to put a video roundup together to showcase what’s happening across the CES floor. Here’s five videos featuring new tech that expands the reach of possibilities and showcases where the 2016 focus will be. 

CES, the Consumer Electronics Show of the year is upon us. Already we’re seeing awesome products from new companies and new products from awesome companies. Fitbit, the wearable tech company, took this opportunity to announce its new smart wearable ‘Blaze’ with a square face and touch screen display. Like an Apple Watch, the Fitbit Blaze ($199.95) will be able to alternate between different bands, but per Fitbit’s standard, the watch will focus on fitness tracking. However, it will also receive Smart Notifications such as calls, text messages, and calendar events.

Walmart hasn't adopted Apple Pay, and it's not clear whether it will (though one report I read said the company is increasingly open to it). Now, however, you have another option for paying at Walmart. Last week the company launched a new mobile payment system at selected stores that lets you pay for your purchase at the checkout counter by scanning a QR code with your iPhone or iPad. (For it to work on an iPad, though, you'll likely need to have a cellular data model.) The new mobile payment system will be available nationwide by the first half of next year.

Last week, six black teenagers of Somalian and Sudanese origin were asked to leave an Apple Store in Melbourne, Australia. An Apple Store employee asked the teens to leave for fear they would “steal something.” The incident of racial profiling was captured on video and shared to Youtube and Facebook where it went viral, prompting Tim Cook to respond to the event with an email last Thursday.

In 2011, Steve Jobs envisioned a second Apple Campus like that of a “spaceship landed.” Jobs imagined the structure as circular with a courtyard at its center and constucted without a “single piece of straight glass.” In Cupertino, California the envisioned structure is currently under construction with plans to be completed by end of next year.

I called it. Yesterday, in my article discussing T-Mobile's new pricing options, I wrote "T-Mobile is shaking things up, as usual, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the other carriers revise and revamp their offerings in response." Sure enough, Sprint has answered the call and not only met T-Mobile's pricing, it undercut the "uncarrier" in an almost desperate bid to be your next carrier.

One of the new features of the iPhone 6s is Live Photos. Turned on by default, this feature captures images for 1.5 seconds before and after the actual still photo that you take. When you tap on your still photo, you see what appears to be a three-second video of that moment. As you can see in the embedded video below, a still photo of rippling waves can show the actual rippling when you touch the display. Apple emphasized, however, that this is not a video, and that it doesn't greatly increase the file size. Any Live Photos you take can be viewed across iOS devices. And they appear as simple jpeg images when viewed on other devices.

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