Sam Biddle

The First Pictures in the World of the iPhone 5 Taken Apart

You can’t even buy an iPhone 5 yet, but some speedy German tinkerers at iPhone Garage have ripped the thing apart for the world’s first teardown. Underneath the hood, the phone is absolutely gorgeous in ways you’ll never even see. Just like the Retina MacBook Pro, the iPhone 5’s naked components looks like a mix…

When Did Small Phones Become Crappy Phones?

There was a time when you could buy something that was compact, fast, and beautiful. That time is over. “Smaller” is just a polite way to say “here’s the bad version for cheap people.” And that’s really awful. The 4.3-inch HTC 8X looks like a tremendous phone—the ultramodern, ultrafunctional WP8 software paired with killer hardware:…

iOS 6: All the Best New Features

Today is the day iOS 6 arrives, and it’s going to make your iPhone better than it’s ever been before. Why should you upgrade? There are so, so many reasons. https://gizmodo.com/go-download-ios-6-right-now-updated-with-direct-links-5944585 Facebook Maybe the best and most overdue addition. (Almost) everyone uses Facebook, so the deeper it’s stuffed into the soul of iOS, the better.…

What Is This Secret Weapon the US Has Been Hiding for 30 Years?

In 1981, the White House released a secret memo regarding the stockpiling of a certain weapon. What kind of weapon? Now that it’s been declassified, we still have no idea: the title remains censored. The document, National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 7, obtained by the Federation of American Scientists, doesn’t leave much room for interpretation:…

Fandango could be one of the first services you’ll use with iOS 6 Passbook. The movie tickets of the future. [9to5Mac]

Indentured Servitude, Money Laundering, and Piles of Money: The Crazy Secrets of Internet Cam Girls (NSFW)

If you think cam girls—those flirty naked characters that plague porn site pop-up ads—are raking in easy money, you’re right. If you think cam girls are bleakly stripping online out of desperation, you’re also right. Peel away the sex and pixels and money and you’re left with the cloudy truth about the Internet’s relationship status…

14 People Using Hilariously Giant Old Cell Phones

You think phones are getting huge now? Before smartphones reigned, dumbphones made people look—in retrospect—insanely dumb. It wasn’t their fault, but let’s look back in time and laugh at them. Early in the life of the mobile phone, virtually everyone who owned one looked like this guy: a white dude walking next to an airplane.…

The iPhone 5 Is More Powerful than the Fastest PowerBook Ever Made

We’ve come a long way, guys. In 2005, the best possible laptop you could buy from Apple scored around 1,000 on Geekbench, a popular performance testing program. The newest iPhone 5—a phone—demolishes that number. The 17-inch PowerBook, the last of the line that preceded the current MacBook lineage, weighed in at 7 pounds, a full…

Dyson DC44 Animal Vacuum Review: Small, Sure, But It’s All About How You Use It

We live in an age of robot cleaners scouring our floors for us with virtually no intervention. It takes a special vacuum cleaner to make you want to go back to using your arms again. But the DC44 Digital Slim vacuum is worth a look if you’re considering a Roomba—because this vacuum might actually be…

Disgusting Pink Slime Company Launches Billion Dollar Offensive (Updated)

In America, it’s not illegal to sell disgusting cow purée washed with ammonia for human consumption. But, according to BPI, the company that makes this dystopian meat filler, it’s illegal to talk about it. Time for a $1.2 billion lawsuit. https://gizmodo.com/pink-slime-is-close-to-complete-destruction-5908859 Mother Jones reports that BPI, which caught an enormous amount of (deserved!) hell for…

Facebook’s Richest Employees Have a Secret Rich People Fun Club

While the rest of America grapples with an 8 percent unemployment rate and a generally MySpace economy, the New York Times reports Facebook’s top 250 richest staffers gather to talk boats, art, and generally being unimaginably rich. Sounds fun! The Times’ claim undergirds an important aspect of Facebook’s IPO disaster: you can be insanely rich,…

Don’t Be a Jerk With Your Cool New iPhone 5

You just pre-ordered the newest iPhone. Or you’re going to be the first in line to snatch one up next week. You’re beaming. You’re going to have the phone that everyone’s talking about—the best iPhone ever. Now please don’t be an awful person who pisses everyone off. Here’s what you can and can’t do in…

After iPhone 5 the Only Small Phones Left Are All Horrible

Apple gave in. As every other smartphone ballooned, adding inch upon inch, birthing the horror realm of the phablet, the iPhone stood its ground at 3.5 inches—the world’s best phone was still compact. Not anymore! And that’s sad. People want big phones, whether that’s a good thing or not, and so, by God, Apple gave…

You Can Pre-Order Your iPhone 5 Tonight at Midnight

If you’re planning on snatching up a new iPhone as soon as humanly possible, Wired says it’s going to be a late night—online pre-orders begin tonight. Apple and Sprint will start selling at 12:01 AM PT (that’s 3 AM for us East Coasters), and Verizon will beat them to the punch by a minute, starting…

There’s (Finally!) a New Ultra-Skinny iPod Touch

Remember iPods? The things that switched Apple from a computer company to the electronics company, the most valuable in company in company history? There hasn’t been a new one in two years. Today, it’s back, upgraded, widescreen-ed, and super skinny. Unlike previous models, the new iPod Touch looks more like the new iPod Nano than…

The iPhone 5 Packs LTE: It’ll Be Fast as Hell

Yep, as pretty-much-confirmed this morning, the newest iPhone will be able to ride the fastest cellular data out there, meaning web, streaming video, and all of your downloads will be ten times as speedy—with 8 hours of battery. https://gizmodo.com/apple-leaks-iphone-5s-lte-powers-early-5942576 LTE access will be available on all three major US carriers (and others across Europe and…

Apple Leaks iPhone 5’s LTE Powers Early

Using the same method of URL guesswork on Apple.com, you can find evidence that the iPhone 5 will be LTE-powered. https://gizmodo.com/the-new-iphone-will-be-called-the-iphone-5-update-new-5942567 This was expected, but we thought we’d at least have to wait until today’s keynote speech to get confirmation. This does the trick. We will have to wait and see what the carrier plan…

The New iPhone Will Be Called the iPhone 5 (Update: New iPods Leak Too!)

Looks like we were wrong! It still doesn’t really make sense, but leaked search results directly from Apple.com all but confirm that the New iPhone will be named the iPhone 5. https://gizmodo.com/the-next-iphone-wont-be-the-iphone-5-5930068 First pointed out by 9to5Mac, the internal disclosure is easy to reproduce on your own. Just type “iPhone 5” into Apple’s own website…

Apple’s Hideous Leather Software Is Based on Steve Jobs’ Private Jet

We hate the way a lot of Apple design looks, these days: virtual leather, felt, wood, and glass. It’s like a sleazy game room in your Cool Uncle’s basement. Who is making these eye-screwing decisions? Fast Company says it was Jobs. https://gizmodo.com/ugh-god-why-is-apple-making-everything-look-like-an-u-5849940 Skeumorphism—the design technique of making a virtual thing look like a real thing…

Google Fights Back: Official YouTube for iOS Is Here

Last month, Apple yanked the YouTube app that’d been collecting mold on your iPhone since 2007. On the one hand, nobody will miss it in iOS 6, because it was terrible. On the other, YouTube. But fret not: it’s back. https://gizmodo.com/apple-is-removing-youtube-from-ios-6-5932215 But more important than simply being back, it’s back in a proper way, built…