Peter's Interest

Sales of Apple's iPhones in brick-and-mortar stores have crashed by half since June, prompting them to whittle down or even halt the sale of the devices, after the US handset maker eased controls on pricing, giving online retailers more room to offer discounts. Apple decided in April to free up distribution and not control trade margins and the final consumer price of iPhones in any retail channel as it sought to double sales this financial year to 2 million units. This led to the phone being offered at deep discounts on Amazon, Snapdeal and Flipkart, among others. "iPhone is currently the most abused smartphone online when it comes to pricing, with Apple completely relaxing trade norms and discipline," said Subhash Chandra, managing director of Bengaluru-based Sangeetha Mobiles, which runs 250-plus stores. "While all retailers are suffering, several smaller shops have completely stopped selling iPhones since they have to face consumer backlash on lower online pr...

The iPod may not be Apple's golden goose anymore, hell, it's not even an option on the company's site anymore, but that doesn't mean that the firm is ignoring it. The company is giving the iPods a seasonal refresh with the junior devices getting some new colors and the iPod touch getting more of the features we're used to seeing on the iPhone. Whereas the existing touch came with just a 5-megapixel camera, the new version gets an 8-megapixel shooter with burst and slo-mo -- just as you'd find on the iPad Air 2. Internals-wise, the new iPod comes with the 64-bit A8 CPU that you find in the iPhone 6, paired with the M8 motion co-processor that'll please the fitness enthusiast in your life. If you were looking to grab the new iPod Touch, then the 16GB edition will set you back $199. In addition, you can grab a 32GB option for $249, a 64GB variant priced at $299 and, for the first time, a 128GB model that'll sell for $399. At the same time, Apple also ...

Hackers always enjoy a product launch, and for good reason. Come the public release of any new smartphone, app, or service, hackers are given a new challenge and toy to play with, and will race to be the first group or lone wolf to crack its defences. This is particularly true for Apple products, where there is a massive jailbreaking community.  Jailbreaking is a popular practice that lets hackers remove the controls Apple builds into its products to stop people taking certain actions -- like downloading applications from third-party stores.  As a result, it's no surprise in the run-up to the release of Apple Pay, a contactless payment service, everyone from the Hacker News to The Guardian warned hackers would find ways to exploit the service.  Yet, come the release of Apple Pay in the UK on July 14, the doomsaying didn't ring true and we're still yet to hear about a successful scam or proof of concept attack targeting the platform.  According to security firm Fir...

People spend close to three hours a day looking at a mobile screen - and that excludes the time they spend actually talking on the phones. NEW DELHI: Like pretty much everyone these days, Susan Butler stares at her smartphone too much. Unlike most everyone, she took action, buying a $195 ring from a company called Ringly, which promises to "let you put your phone away and your mind at ease." Ringly does this by connecting its rings to a smartphone filter so that users can silence Gmail or Facebook notifications while preserving crucial alerts, like text messages from a babysitter, which cause the ring to light up or vibrate. "Hopefully it will keep some distance between my phone and my hand," said Ms Butler, 27, who lives in Austin, Tex, and is a technology consultant for small businesses. Given how quickly cellphones have taken over our lives, it's easy to forget that they are still a relatively new technology. The first iPhone came out eight years ago, and ...

Notification Centre widgets have become a useful part of iOS since they were first unveiled as part of iOS 8. If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can pull down the Notification Centre and add installed apps' widgets to the Today view by tapping Edit. From weather updates to sports scores, these widgets let you quickly check useful information without having to open apps. Most apps have a useful companion widget in the Notification Centre, while there are some that exist only for their widget. Orby Widgets is an app with 12 widgets that you might want to try. We checked it out to see if these widgets are useful. Design The Orby Widgets app isn't much more than a few cards that show you what each widget does. A button at the bottom left brings up the list of widgets and lets you tweak how the widgets display data. The app's design is satisfactory but we would've preferred it if the widget settings button was more prominently placed. The settings icon doesn't m...