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Apple unveils iPhone 15 Pro with titanium case, holds line on prices

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(Last Updated On: September 13, 2023)

Apple launched a new series of iPhones that included a new titanium shell, a faster chip and improved video game playing abilities, Reuters reported.

The biggest surprise with the iPhone 15 that will come out Sept. 22: It did not raise prices, reflecting the global smartphone slump.

The event at Apple’s Cupertino, California, headquarters comes amid lingering economic uncertainty, especially in China, Apple’s third-largest market where it faces challenges from expanded restrictions on using its iPhones in government offices and the first new flagship phone in several years from Huawei Technologies (HWT.UL).

Huawei raised its second-half shipment target for the new Mate 60 series smartphone, which has satellite capability, by 20%, the country’s official Securities Times reported on Tuesday shortly before the Apple event.

Apple did not deliver any blockbuster surprises, and shares closed down 1.7% after event.

While Apple avoids the terms artificial intelligence, or AI, the technology was the driver of several new features.

An Apple executive said the company used machine learning to detect a person in the frame, allowing users to turn a picture into a portrait immediately or later in the Photos app.

Apple also showed off new watches, including a Series 9 Watch with a feature called “double tap” where users tap thumb and finger together twice, without touching the watch, in order to perform tasks like answering a phone call.

It uses machine learning to detect tiny changes in blood flow when the user taps their fingers together, freeing up the other hand for other tasks like walking a dog or holding a cup of coffee, said Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams.

Both the Pro and other iPhone 15 models will have a brighter display and a 48-megapixel camera as well as 100% recycled cobalt in their batteries, Reuters reported.

Apple said the iPhone 15’s satellite connectivity can now be used to summon roadside assistance. It is rolling out the feature out with the American Automobile Association (AAA) in the United States.

Apple said that USB-C charging cables are coming to both its iPhone 15 and the charging case of its AirPods Pro devices. The move reflects requirements from European regulators to use USB-C and allows the use of the same charging cables already used for iPads and Macs.

“I was expecting Apple to try and spin the all USB-C decision in certain way but they didn’t they were very matter of fact in the way they talked about it,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Creative Strategies. She said the shift “brought some differentiation to the iPhone Pro, because there’s faster throughput for data transfer. That is going to be valuable for people” who use the device for professional photography, Milanesi said.

Apple also said the iPhone 15 Pro can capture what it calls “spatial videos” by using two of the device’s cameras to capture a three-dimensional video. Those videos will be viewable on Apple’s Vision Pro headset that is due out early next year, marketing chief Greg Joswiak said.

The Pro’s use of titanium makes it lighter and stronger than previous models of other metals, read the report.

Bob O’Donnell, head of TECHnalysis Research said the steady prices were a surprise.

“I think both Apple and the carriers recognize that with consumers feeling pressure on their budget and the lack of dramatic changes it’s getting harder to convince people to upgrade. Keeping prices stable should help with that,” he said.

The iPhone 15 costs $799, the iPhone 15 Plus starts at $899 and the Pro series starts at $999. The Pro Max starts at $1,199, the same prices as last year for the same levels of storage. Last year, Apple offered a $1,099 iPhone Pro Max model with less memory.

Apple still relies on iPhone for more than half of its sales, but the global smartphone market has slumped from shipping 294.5 million total phones to 268 million in the second quarter. Apple’s shipments declined the least of any major smartphone maker, dropping from 46.5 million phones to 45.3 million, according to data from Counterpoint Research.

The outdoor sports-focused Apple Watch Ultra 2 has new features for cycling and diving and what Apple said is the brightest screen it has ever made. The Series 9 will start at $399 and the Ultra 2 watch will start at $799 and be available Sept. 22.

Apple will no longer use leather in any of its products, said Lisa Jackson, the company’s environmental chief. The company is replacing some of those products with a textile called “FineWoven” that it says feel like suede, Reuters reported.

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Three astronauts return to Earth after a year in space

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(Last Updated On: September 29, 2023)

A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts returned to Earth on Wednesday after being stuck in space for just over a year. American Frank Rubio set a record for the longest U.S. spaceflight — a result of the extended stay.

The trio landed in a remote area of Kazakhstan, descending in a Soyuz capsule that was rushed up as a replacement after their original ride was hit by space junk and lost all its coolant while docked to the International Space Station, AP reported. 

What should have been a 180-day mission turned into a 371-day stay. Rubio spent more than two weeks longer in space than Mark Vande Hei, who held NASA’s previous endurance record for a single spaceflight.
The Soyuz capsule that brought Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin back was a replacement launched in February. Russian engineers suspect a piece of space junk pierced the radiator of their original capsule late last year, midway through what should have been a six-month mission. Engineers worried that without cooling, the capsule’s electronics and any occupants could overheat to dangerous levels, so the craft returned empty.

There wasn’t another Soyuz to launch a fresh crew until this month. Their replacements finally arrived nearly two weeks ago.

“No one deserves to go home to their families more than you,” the space station’s new commander, Denmark’s Andreas Mogensen, said earlier this week.
Prokopyev told ground controllers throughout the descent that all three were feeling good. They experienced more than four times the force of gravity as their capsule streaked through the atmosphere and came to a touchdown in the barren Kazakh steppes, ending up on its side. Helicopters moved in with recovery crews to fetch the astronauts.

“It’s good to be home,” Rubio said after being pulled from the capsule.

Rubio, 47, an Army doctor and helicopter pilot, said at a news conference last week that he never would have agreed to a full year in space if asked at the outset. He ended up missing important family milestones including the oldest of his four children finishing her first year at the U.S. Naval Academy and another heading off to West Point.

Rubio had said the psychological aspect of spending so long in space was tougher than he expected. He may hold on to this record for a while. NASA has no plans as of now for more yearlong missions.

It was the first spaceflight for Rubio and Petelin, 40, an engineer. Prokopyev, 48, an engineer and pilot, has now pulled two long station stints.
They logged 157 million miles (253 million kilometers) since launching from Kazakhstan last September and circled the world nearly 6,000 times.

 

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NASA’s first asteroid sample on track for Sunday parachute landing in Utah

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(Last Updated On: September 23, 2023)

A NASA space capsule carrying a sample of rocky material plucked from the surface of an asteroid three years ago hurtled toward Earth this weekend headed for a fiery plunge through the atmosphere and a parachute landing in the Utah desert on Sunday.

Weather forecasts were favorable and the robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx was on course to release the sample-return capsule for final descent as planned, with no further adjustments to its flight path needed, NASA officials said at a news briefing on Friday, Reuters reported.

Mission managers are expecting a “spot-on” touchdown on the U.S. military’s vast Utah Test and Training range, west of Salt Lake City, said Sandra Freund, program manager at Lockheed Martin, which designed and built the spacecraft.

The round, gumdrop-shaped capsule is scheduled to land by parachute at 10:55 a.m. EDT (1455 GMT), about 13 minutes after streaking into the top of the atmosphere at roughly 35 times the speed of sound, capping a seven-year voyage.

If successful, the OSIRIS-REx mission, a joint effort between NASA and scientists at the University of Arizona, would mark the third asteroid sample, and by far the largest, ever returned to Earth for analysis, following two similar missions by Japan’s space agency over the past 13 years.

OSIRIS-REx collected its specimen from Bennu, a carbon-rich asteroid discovered in 1999 and classified as a “near-Earth object” because it passes relatively close to our planet every six years. Scientists put the odds of it striking Earth at 1-in-2,700 in the late 22nd century.

Bennu is small as asteroids go, measuring just 1,600 feet (500 meters) in diameter – slightly wider than the Empire State Building is tall but tiny compared with the cataclysmic Chicxulub asteroid that struck Earth some 66 million years ago, wiping out the dinasours.

Like other asteroids, Bennu is a primordial relic of the early solar system whose present-day chemistry and mineralogy are virtually unchanged since it formed some 4.5 billion years ago. It thus holds valuable clues to the origins and development of rocky planets such as Earth, and may even contain organic molecules similar to those necessary for life to evolve.

“We’re literally looking at geologic materials that formed before Earth even existed,” Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the mission at the University of Arizona, Tucson, told reporters last month.

OSIRIS-REx launched in September 2016 and reached Bennu in 2018, then spent nearly two years orbiting the asteroid before venturing close enough to sink its robot arm into the loose surface on Oct. 20, 2020, in a grab-and-go maneuver.

The spacecraft embarked on a 1.2-billion-mile cruise back to Earth in May 2021.

The Bennu sample is estimated at 250 grams (8.8 ounces), far surpassing the amount of material carried back from asteroid Ryugu in 2020 and asteroid Itokawa in 2010.

On arrival, the new sample will be flown by helicopter to a “clean room” set up at the Utah test range for initial examination, then transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, to be parceled into smaller specimens promised to some 200 scientists in 60 laboratories around the world.

The main portion of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, meanwhile, is expected to sail on to explore yet another near-Earth asteroid.

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Explainer: What to know about October’s ‘ring of fire’ solar eclipse

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(Last Updated On: September 22, 2023)

Millions of people in the Americas will be in a position to witness an astronomical treat on Oct. 14 with a solar eclipse in which – weather permitting – the moon will be seen passing in front of the sun.

The eclipse is due to be visible along a path covering parts of the United States, Mexico and several countries in Central America and South America, Reuters reported.

Here is an explanation of the type of solar eclipse that will occur and where it will be visible.

WHAT IS AN ANNULAR SOLAR ECLIPSE?

A solar eclipse happens when the moon journeys between Earth and the sun, blocking the view along a small path of Earth of some or all of the sun’s face as it passes. The one that will occur on Oct. 14 is a type called an “annular solar eclipse.” This occurs when the moon passes between Earth and the sun at a time when the moon is at or close to its farthest point from our planet. It does not completely obscure the face of the sun, unlike in a total solar eclipse.

WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE A RING OF FIRE?

Because the moon is farther than usual from Earth during an annular solar eclipse, the moon will not completely obscure the sun, instead looking like a dark disk superimposed atop the sun’s larger, bright face in the sky. As a result, the eclipse will momentarily look like a ring of fire surrounding the dark disc of the moon. A total solar eclipse is due to occur on April 8, 2024, passing over Mexico, the United States and Canada.

WHERE WILL IT BE VISIBLE AND WHAT IS ITS PATH?

According to the U.S. space agency NASA, the path in the United States where the maximum obscuring of the sun will occur on Oct. 14 runs through parts of several states beginning at 9:13 a.m. PDT (12:13 p.m. EDT/1613 GMT) in Oregon, then California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The path then crosses over parts of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia and Brazil before ending at sunset in the Atlantic Ocean. People in much larger parts of North America, Central America and South America will be able to see lesser obscuring of the sun – still an impressive sight.

HOW BIG ARE THE EARTH, MOON AND SUN?

The moon will nearly cover the sun’s face, as visible from Earth, only because the moon – in actuality much smaller than the sun – is so much closer to our planet. The moon’s diameter is 2,159 miles (3,476 km), compared to the sun’s diameter of about 865,000 miles (1.4 million km) and Earth’s diameter of 7,918 miles (12,742 km).

WHAT IS THE SAFEST WAY TO WATCH AN ECLIPSE?

Experts warn that it is unsafe to look directly at the bright sun without using specialized eye protection designed for solar viewing, risking eye injury. Because the sun is never fully blocked by the moon in an annular solar eclipse, it is never safe to look directly at it without such eye protection. Viewing it through a camera lens, binoculars or telescope without making use of a special-purpose solar filter can cause severe eye injury, according to these experts. They advise using safe solar viewing glasses or a safe handheld solar viewer at all times during an annular solar eclipse, noting that regular sunglasses are not safe for viewing the sun.

HOW DO SOLAR ECLIPSES DIFFER FROM LUNAR ECLIPSES?

Lunar eclipses occur when Earth is positioned between the moon and the sun and our planet’s shadow is cast upon the lunar surface. This leaves the moon looking dim from Earth, sometimes with a reddish color. Lunar eclipses are visible from half of Earth, a much wide area than solar eclipses.

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