Apple renews interest Liquidmetal

 For many years we hear of Liquidmetal. This alloy with particularly interesting properties is exclusively used by Apple Computer today (read: Apple, Atakan Peker and LiquidMetal), but its use is limited to small accessory to access the SIM card tray of iPhone. If it therefore seems obvious that Apple's research on the subject go much further than a simple paper clip, we still await the release of a product using Liquidmetal and just learned that Apple has renewed its license with Liquidmetal Technologies for a period that will run until February 5, 2016.

The first Apple exclusive license for the use of Liquidmetal in electronic products dates back to 2010, and therefore it is more than five years that the Cupertino company is working on developing new products using this alloy. Apple does has a revolutionary use in his cartoons, or seek it also block the use of this alloy to its competitors? The suspense is over.

New beta for OS X, iOS and watchOS

 It's already two weeks after their first official presentation and making them available to developers as beta versions that OS X 10.11 El Capitan, iOS watchOS 9 and 2 have been updated last night. The three updates, available only for registered developers, bringing a number of new features under the hood and a few graphical tweaks here and there to iOS 9. need this update is also an opportunity for us to discover a very interesting feature that was available since the first beta: the ability for the system to temporarily remove some applications in order to apply a software update on a device whose storage space is too low.

This innovation should make great service for users of iOS including iPhone or iPad has a full memory. Hopefully, however, this kind of new feature Apple does not encourage too long to continue the marketing of devices with 16 GB or even 8 GB of storage just ...

The iPad mini first generation was withdrawn from sale

 The iPad mini first generation was quietly removed from l 'Apple Stores online catalog! The Apple Store does indeed offers more iPad Mini for the first few hours without Apple would bother to communicate on the subject. Without much doubt, the small Apple tablet, which had been marketed for the first time in November 2012, has been retired because of old age and outdated features. The range of Apple Tablet So now consists exclusively of devices with Retina displays, whose rates have not been changed:

f the iPad mini is no longer displayed on the Apple Store, it is however still possible to get it, including through the   Refurb Store where you can get a small discount: at the time of writing these lines, it is proposed from 226 € instead of 249 €. What sell the remaining stocks pending the final disappearance! Given the age of the tablet, but we advise you to prefer investing in an iPad mini 2, with a much higher power and Retina display 

The Apple Watch 2 is 2016

 As usual with Apple products, it takes the first or the second update for a truly successful product, the first version remains generally quite limited and confidential. Watch for Apple, it would seem that the usual pattern repeats itself: our colleagues from 9to5Mac  give us some first details on Apple's intentions for the Apple Watch 2, which will not start in 2015 but in 2016 . Surprisingly, Apple would rather satisfied with the autonomy of its first shows connected

nd if you forget to recharge one night

The first use of studies suggest indeed that most users still have 30% to 40% of battery when they go to bed. Apple has not yet the capacity to promise several days of autonomy at once, daily recharging should remain the norm and engineers of Cupertino would prefer to focus on adding new features. The Apple Watch 2 should have a FaceTime camera, and receive wireless chip more autonomous that will happen just over the iPhone today. The arrival of new sensors is also a proposed runway, but our colleagues do not have reliable information at this time. Finally, Apple would consider reviewing its pricing range to propose models between classic Apple Watch stainless steel (€ 649 to € 1,249) and Apple Watch Gold Edition (€ 11,000 to € 18,000). However, it is still early, and although the sources of our colleagues are generally very reliable, keep in mind that Apple's strategy still has time to evolve. See you in about a year!

Our first iPhone iOS 9 of impressions

 This week Apple introduced iOS first 9, a first beta version was made available to developers in stride. We immediately installed the first version of the future mobile system on an iPhone 6, to give us an idea of what to expect. Verdict? We advise you (really) not to do so.

We will not review the new iOS 9, we have already discussed at its output (read:   Apple annonce iOS 9) and you can find images by viewing the inaugural conference of the WWDC (read:  Revivez la WWDC 2015 en vidéo). We will however give you our experience and feelings regarding this update, which we recall is a working version that is set to change to its effective output during the month of September.

New features

New iOS 9 are actually far fewer than the conference earlier this week left to think at first. If not we put aside the features reserved for the iPad and those that are still available in France, as public transport plans or new apple pay cards, there is not much to get in the tooth when an iPhone is used. Several new products announced during the WWDC are not yet in addition present in the beta, as some improvements to Siri, Spotlight, or applying News.

All that remains is very little. The radius of the news immediately visible, it was of course the new multi-tasking mode, which works in reverse of the previous system (the home screen located on the right of the screen) and is very confusing without bring any benefit (except perhaps to see an additional application in one glance ...). It also has research accessible again by sliding to the left of the home screen, which offers suggestions for sources of news that can not be selected, and recent contacts and applications (which we But do not open for months). It is currently impossible to access half of the functions presented during WWDC (like the weather widget), and the only novelty we really enjoyed unrestricted is the Notes application, which lets small drawings, insert lists, photos ... then remain the tiny alterations, such as adding a handy navigation bar in the Photos application, or adding a small button to return to the previous application when app redirects to another application (eg, Facebook Messenger from).

Stability and performance

Overall, this first beta is surprisingly quite stable and performance are at the rendezvous. As a working version that is not finalized and will be further improved before its release, this is very encouraging. A bit like OS X 10.11 El Capitan where most improvements are under the hood, Apple relies heavily on the reliability of its mobile system with this next update.

Note however that we were very unpleasantly surprised by the autonomy of our iPhone 6 following the installation of this first beta version of iOS 9. The phone, even unused, heated enormously and discharges completely in half a day. It is obvious that this defect will be corrected with the next update, and the problem will be gone before the public release of iOS before 9 and even the public beta phase scheduled during the month of July. Until this is resolved concern, therefore we do not recommend installing this heavily pre-9 version of iOS on your phone, unless developer and to have a real business need. 9 iOS bringing no great revolution on the iPhone, there is also little point in taking the time to perform this update and take the risk of encountering problems of incompatibility with the applications you use every day.