iPhone 6s: Carrier Plans & Price Comparison

The iPhone 6s (16GB, 64GB, 128GB) and iPhone 6s Plus (16GB, 64GB, 128GB) are available now from all major carriers.

Select a phone model below to compare the latest iPhone plans.

• Browse iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus prices below
• iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are still available
• Check out the iPhone buying super guide at the bottom of this page to help you get the right mobile plan with your next iPhone.

16GB 64GB 128GB

16GB 64GB 128GB

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Why Your Existing IT Assets Hold the Key to Modernization

More often than not, the most prudent path to IT modernization does not lead to new systems, but to the better leveraging of existing IT assets and applications.

A thought-provoking recent Insurance & Technology article, The Rocky Road of Modernization, examines top challenges that insurance companies face today in replacing and modernizing existing core systems.

The analysis raises salient points around the importance of a customer-focused approach and operational efficiency to effective, modern IT strategy for insurance firms. The article outlines possible IT strategies for effective change, including the assertion that, “Systems produced today” are “better able to handle the modern … environment.”

This reflects popular opinions about older IT systems and the value they can deliver to insurance companies. But it may be a misperception. More often than not, the most prudent path to IT modernization does not lead to new systems, but to better leveraging existing IT assets and applications. For insurance companies embarking on IT modernization initiatives or evaluating whether it makes sense to do so, there are a handful of considerations to keep in mind. 

[The State Of Policy Admin Systems Modernization]

Don’t rush to rip and replace existing IT systemsWhen organizations set out to rip and replace their so-called legacy applications, removing a decades-old working system can be difficult. Even if the effort succeeds, a lot of money is spent for very little in return. What replaces it is -- fundamentally -- merely a like-for-like equivalent. Yet extensive budget, resources, and upheaval are consumed on this venture.

And in reality, the viability of system-wide replacement carries considerable risks that often exceed modernization of existing IT assets. Swapping out one system for another compels the organization to cope with significant changes, including functional equivalence, data integrity, user acceptance, training, hardware, and software commissioning, among others.

The new system is untested, the system being replaced is undocumented, and the possibilities for errors are huge. Studies undertaken by industry commentators and analysts talk about failure rates of between 40% and 70%, depending on the nature of the project, where implementations are excessively late, over budget or just never delivered.

So what motivates an organization to rip out perfectly good business applications and replace them with new code that may or may not do exactly the same job? It may be the result of a false assumption that sticking with the same systems will not enable the company to meet future needs, or a surface-level diagnosis of what the IT and business challenges are.

Before rushing to rip and replace existing IT systems that in most cases are highly capable and future-proofed, insurance company CIOs and IT decision-makers must gain a deeper understanding of the scope of the problem and employ a pragmatic approach to fixing processes -- without jeopardizing existing services or adding to the IT backlog. An optimal starting point is focusing on the backlog at a systemic level. Isolating and planning backlog busting projects is facilitated by new incarnations of application knowledge technology, and smarter tools for making application changes.

Understand the enduring value of COBOLThe I&T article notes that older systems are “expensive to operate” and rely on “outdated” skills, such as COBOL programming. True, COBOL is one of the oldest programming languages around, brought into the world by Grace Hopper in 1959 -- but it is far from outdated and one could argue more essential than ever in enabling insurance companies to innovate and modernize mainframes and existing enterprise applications. Even today, COBOL powers 70% of all business transactions -- everything from ATMs to point-of-sale systems and the filling of healthcare prescriptions. Currently, 250 billion lines of COBOL support today’s core business applications -- with 1.5 million new lines written every day.

Critical insurance applications running COBOL are, from a maintenance perspective, easier to understand and manage than equivalent languages. In terms of available skills, most developers in 2014 -- with their knowledge of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) such as Eclipse or Visual Studio -- can easily pick up COBOL, the latest versions of which also work within these environments. Furthermore, today’s COBOL applications can be deployed onto modern architecture and platforms such as cloud, Web, and mobile without the risks and costs usually associated with rewriting applications.  

Beware of “hidden” technical debtFor insurance company CIOs and IT decision-makers evaluating the upfront and ongoing costs associated with modernization projects, it is easy to assume that systems produced today are less expensive to maintain due to the programming languages that power these systems.

Take Java, for example. While it performs well for mobility requirements, it can lead to higher “technical debt” -- the Gartner-coined term that defines the eventual consequences of poor system design, software architecture, or software development within a code base. According to CAST Software’s CRASH report, the estimated technical debt of Java is $5.42 per line of code, compared to $1.26 per line of COBOL.

Those planning to implement a modernization project should assess risk, cost, competitive advantage, and time to implement as key considerations. Reusing current working, trusted systems, then defining appropriate strategies to modify them, requires lower-scale change that delivers value improvements quickly, but without undue risk of assuming high technical debt. Interestingly, the same reuse strategy helps tackle issues around compliance and IT backlog, concerns which also weigh on the insurance sector.

Additionally, it is important to note that modern COBOL development tools enable organizations to address application performance gaps (in Web, mobile, and cloud) with lower enablement risk than alternative rewrites to Java or repackaging. 

The market expects insurers to be cost-efficient and -- naturally -- risk-averse. Embarking on a modernization strategy based on reuse is a low-risk route to better customer service and operational efficiency. Sticking with the programming language that has successfully underpinned the core application since it was created is not “outdated,” but forward-thinking and ultimately common sense.

Paul Averna is Vice President, Enterprise Solutions, at Micro Focus, a leading global provider of application modernization software.

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Review Roundup: iPhone 6s Joy Depends on Where You're Coming From

Notices for the new iPhone have started appearing, and Apple's hardware once again is being bathed in critical acclaim, with just a few cries of discontent here and there.

The new capabilities in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus may appear underwhelming to some observers, but not to Re/code's Walt Mossberg.

"These are things that improve the quality of the phone while generally making a fluid, powerful product even better -- and faster and easier to navigate and use," he wrote. "They secure the iPhone's place as the best smartphone on the market."

Even more emphatic about the quality of the new iPhone models was John Gruber of Daring Fireball.

"'The Only Thing That's Changed Is Everything' is the slogan of Apple's marketing campaign for the iPhones 6s. I can't beat that," he wrote. "I've been testing both models for 12 days, and what Apple is saying about the new iPhones is true. They don't look new, but almost everything about them is new."

Live Photos

While many reviewers agreed that these latest models were the best iPhones yet, that doesn't mean innovation is alive and well in the smartphone market.

"Smartphone innovation has plateaued, and what we demand most in our newest phones are improvements to the essentials," wrote Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal.

Two essentials in a smartphone are taking pictures and navigation, and many reviewers noted that Apple has innovated in those areas with Live Photos and 3D Touch.

Live Photos combines video and still photography into a new content form. It automatically captures 1.5 seconds of video before and after you snap your still shot and lets you export the package as a photo-video hybrid.

"The absolute best thing about the 6s is Live Photos," Stern wrote. "They're awesome for reliving fun moments, especially of an active puppy or child, and anyone with an iOS 9 iPhone or iPad can view them."

Terrific Cameras

Nevertheless, Live Photos appears to be a work in progress.

"If you move your camera immediately before or after taking the photo, the movement will show up in the animated photo," Brian X. Chen wrote for The New York Times. "Several of my Live Photos were ruined because I put the phone down too quickly after taking the picture."

He also would like to be able to turn off audio in Live Photos and be able to edit the video in them -- two capabilities not available in the feature out of the gate.

Another glaring omission in Live Photos, Chen noted, especially in the age of sharing: no Facebook support. Live Photos can be played only on iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan devices.

Those Live Photos, by the way, are being captured by what many reviewers are saying is the best cameras in an iPhone to date. "The iPhone 6s cameras are terrific," wrote Daring Fireball's Gruber. "They're fast, responsive, and accurate -- accurate meaning that unedited, right off the camera roll, the color and light reproduction look like how the scene appeared to my eyes."

3D Touch

Apple did more than tweak the quality of the cameras in the new iPhones from previous models.

"I was incredibly impressed by the differences in camera quality between the iPhone 6 Plus and the iPhone 6s Plus," Matthew Panzarino, a former professional photographer, wrote for TechCrunch. "It's very, very noticeable and very welcome."

The new iPhones also incorporate 3D Touch, which essentially makes touch granular. A light touch can trigger one task; a heavier touch can trigger another. In addition, where you apply pressure can determine which task is performed.

The feature was a hit among some reviewers.

"This is one of those potentially huge user behaviors -- like swiping, or pinching and zooming -- that seem odd or minor at first, but which Apple historically is able to make deeply important and useful," Re/code's Mossberg wrote.

It met with a tepid response from others, including The Times' Chen.

"Unlike past touch gestures on the iPhone, like pinching or swiping, I found 3D Touch, in its current state, to be limited and mostly unnecessary," he wrote.

Processing Muscle

Of course, the reason things like Live Photos and 3D Touch work so well on the new iPhones is the new processor in the smartphones.

"If you operate an iPhone 6 side-by-side with an iPhone 6s, the difference hits you between the eyes," wrote David Pogue for Yahoo Tech. "Opening apps, switching apps, processing things -- it all happens faster on the 6s."

Battery life and storage capacity are two areas where the new iPhones received mixed notices.

"The No. 1 thing people want in a smartphone is better battery life," WSJ's Stern wrote. "The iPhone 6s doesn't deliver that."

However, Re/code's Mossberg was satisfied with the battery life he got from the phones.

"In two weeks of heavier-than-normal use (because I was testing, testing, testing) the iPhone 6s never died on me before I was ready to end my day," he wrote. "Even after 15 hours, there was typically 10 percent or so of battery life left in the tank."

Storage was an issue among many reviewers because new phones have features, such as Live Photos and 4K video, that are byte hogs.

"If there were ever an iPhone that needed more storage, it's this one, yet Apple continues to rip off customers with a 16GB base model ... rather than offer a 32GB one," Stern wrote.

Who should upgrade to the phones? The new phones are a good buy for users of older iPhones, our review sampling suggests.

"If you are thinking of buying a new phone, and you have anything older than an iPhone 6, you should buy an iPhone 6s Plus," wrote Nilay Patel for The Verge. "It is the best iPhone ever made, and it is right now the best phone on the market."

"If you're upgrading from an iPhone 5s or anything older," he added, "it will blow your mind."

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Gadget Ogling: Fresh Fires, Tablet Touches, and Underwater Drones

Welcome to Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that gazes wistfully across the landscape at a sea of changing leaves and wonders what new gadgets the fall will bring.

In our deciduous forest this week are an updated Fire TV, a low-end Amazon Fire tablet, a case that adds touch functions to the rear of iPhones and iPads, and an underwater drone.

As ever, please do not consider these reviews, for they are not. The ratings reflect only how much I'd like to try each item, and in no way relate to how much I need to have a pumpkin spice latte immediately.

Burning Up TV

In case you didn't already know it, Amazon has designs on taking over your television, and Fire TV (pictured above) seems a strong competitor to the refreshed Apple TV.

Fire TV's big advantage is that it can stream video in ultra high-definition 4K resolution, while Apple's device cannot. Nor can Roku or Chromecast. Fire TV also has voice control in the form of Alexa, which one could use to check the weather or sports scores while watching a show on Netflix.

Storage is just 8 GB, but it's expandable with a memory card.

There already are some fine games available for Fire TV, and there's a gaming edition of the system available with a controller. I like that one can search for shows and movies from across a breadth of services at once (though, curiously, Netflix is not among the list of services included in the cross-platform search at present).

At US$50 less than the latest Apple TV, I'm more tempted to pick up one of these, even though I'm more invested in Apple's ecosystem.

Amazon's making a bold statement with its latest upgrades to Fire devices, and I certainly would like to have a Fire TV in my living room.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Watch It's Hots

Bringing the Fire

Amazon's Fire tablets are more an entry point to purchasing content and shopping for physical goods than devices for productivity or quality photography. They're all about consumption.

So Amazon's plan to get its tablets into the hands of as many people as possible by offering a new introductory tablet for just $50 is a smart move.

It promises ro perform decently with a quad-core processor. Like the Fire TV, there's just 8 GB of storage, but it too is expandable with a microSD card, onto which you can download movies and shows from Amazon Prime for offline viewing.

There's a new speed-reading function that displays a word at a time in the middle of the screen at whichever speed you're most comfortable. That might help me read more books.

The 7-inch screen seems more than fair for the price. It looks like a fine budget alternative to an iPad, and if you're just looking for an on-the-go device to watch video, it's a solid option.

I can't fathom why anyone would opt for a regular Kindle over this unless they want distraction-free reading.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Catching Fires

Capacitive Case

As I mentioned in my last column, which focuses on Apple's new slate of mobile devices and Apple TV, I'm not a fan of playing complex games on my iPhone.

Anything that requires more than a few taps or swipes is best served with a physical controller, since it's difficult to manipulate multiple controls at once and make sure you're not covering the screen with your hands.

Handycase appears to go some way to resolving said problem. It's a crowdfunded iPhone and iPad case that adds touch controls to the back of the device. You know, where your fingers naturally rest while you're holding it.

It frees up screen real estate from one's sticky digits, though if you really want to see what your fingers are doing, Handycase's apps can superimpose them onto the screen.

While the idea's great -- and I hope it works well in practice -- it seems that it would require Apple to open up iOS to allow for a secondary input before Handycase had complete control over your device.

It also needs developers -- particularly ones of more complex games -- to let Handycase use it as a controller as well.

As it stands, I'm itching to get my hands on one, in the hope I can control Lego game characters and see what I'm doing at the same time.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Tablet Boosts

Under The Sea

I'm not sure when or why we started calling remote-control submersibles "underwater drones," but I'll run with it as I am determined to take the plunge with OpenROV Trident.

It's a submersible that can help one explore ocean life and learn about what's hanging out under the docks in your town's seafront. I'm particularly tickled by the option to view what the camera sees through a virtual reality headset, though I can't imagine my river would have life remotely as vivid as inFinding Nemo.

It's essentially snorkeling for layabouts, and though I love open water, I'm frequently nervous about what lies beneath the surface, so taking a look before diving in would reduce my fretting.

I'd still worry that the tether line that sends back images would snag or break, though I'm trusting the line is sturdy.

At the very least, It should prove a killer educational experience. I'd have ached for one if they were around in my youth.

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Design the Jet Engine of the Future, Win $2 Million

The U.S. Air Force is offering $2 million to whoever can design a new and improved engine to power its airplanes.

The competition, known as the Air Force Prize, is open to American citizens and permanent U.S. residents age 18 and older, as well as corporations and research institutions in the United States. The goal of the contest is to speed up the development of a lightweight, fuel-efficient turbine engine, or jet engine, to power the aircraft of the future.

This is the first time the Air Force, or any other branch of the U.S. military, is offering a prize to stir up technological innovation among the general public, said Lt. Col. Aaron Tucker, deputy chief of the turbine engine division at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)

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Ultrathin 'Invisibility Cloak' Can Match Any Background

In the movie "Predator," an alien uses a cloaking device to hide in plain sight, but the effect is far from perfect: The alien's attempt to conceal itself is thwarted by distortions of light bending around it. Now, researchers have built an ultrathin "invisibility cloak" that gets around this problem, by turning objects into perfect, flat mirrors.

Invisibility cloaks are designed to bend light around an object, but materials that do this are typically hard to shape and only work from narrow angles — if you walk around the cloaked object, for instance, it's visible. But a new cloak avoids that problem, and is thin and flexible enough to be wrapped around an object of any shape, the researchers said. It can also be "tuned" to match whatever background is behind it — or can even create illusions of what's there, they added.

Led by Xiang Zhang, director of materials science at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the group constructed a thin film consisting of a 50-nanometer-thick layer of magnesium fluoride topped by a varying pattern of tiny, brick-shaped gold antennas, each 30 nanometers thick. (For comparison, an average strand of human hair is about 100,000 nanometers wide.) The "bricks" were built in six different sizes, ranging from about 30 to 220 nanometers long and 90 to 175 nanometers wide. 

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Paralyzed Man Can 'Feel' Again with Brain-Connected Prosthetic Hand

A prosthetic hand that is connected directly to the brain successfully enabled a paralyzed man to "feel" again, according to researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The 28-year-old male, who suffered a spinal cord injury and has been paralyzed for more than a decade, was able to control a robotic hand with his brain and reported being able to sense physical sensations.

DARPA researchers attached electrodes to the man's sensory cortex — the area of the brain responsible for identifying tactile sensations, such as pressure. Electrodes were also placed on the patient's motor cortex, the part of the brain that directs body movements.

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China: Sperm banks entice donors with iPhone cash

Image copyrightGetty Images

Image captionApple products are hugely popular in China and some sperm banks are playing on the brand's appeal

Chinese sperm banks are trying to attract donors by offering men enough cash to buy a brand new iPhone, it's reported.

Renji Hospital in Shanghai is among several facilities using the appeal of Apple's recently announced iPhone 6s in a campaign to encourage more sperm donations,the Changjiang Times reports. "No need to sell your kidneys - you can easily have a 6s," the hospital says in an online posting, referring to cases in which people raised cash to fund their iPhone and iPad purchases by giving away an organ. Underneath several iPhone images, the hospital says if a man passes a full health examination and then makes regular sperm donations, he'll be rewarded with up to 6,000 yuan ($940; £610) - enough to cover the cost of the new handset.

Chinese consumers' love for all things Apple is well-established. The release of an earlier iPhone model was stopped on safety grounds in 2012, after a near-riot outside a Beijing stockist where about 2,000 people had gathered.

Using the appeal of the new product to attract sperm donors has caused much amusement among Chinese social media users. "I don't know whether to take this seriously or not!" one person on the Sina Weibo social network says. "This is great!" says another. "I hope that those who sold their kidneys can see this." And one person writing on the NetEase news portal sees nothing wrong with the initiative, describing the sperm banks' methods as "very creative".

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Blue Origin Rockets Into Cape Canaveral

Blue Origin on Tuesday announced plans to launch rockets from a Cape Canaveral launchpad, which it has leased from NASA.

"The site saw its last launch in 2005, and the pad has stood silent for more than 10 years -- too long. We can't wait to fix that," said Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos, who is also the founder of Amazon.
It's the sort of thing the folks at NASA like to hear. People are interested in space again, and a reboot of the space race is playing out between two of the commercial spaceflight industry's top players.
After losing out to SpaceX on a land lease, Blue Origin has snatched a lot in the same neighborhood at Cape Canaveral.
SpaceX plans to launch its next rocket from Launch Pad 39A in 2016, while Blue Origin hopes to fire off its first spacecraft from the historic Complex 36 before the decade comes to a close.

The Enablers

The tenants from the commercial spaceflight industry are fulfilling an initiative NASA started roughly five years ago to establish a multi-user spaceport for government and commercial projects.
As the space shuttle program drew to a close, NASA knew it would have a number of assets it would no longer require, said Tom Engler, deputy director of the Center Planning and Development Directorate at NASA'sJohn F. Kennedy Space Center.
NASA wanted to make its old assets available to the commercial space industry to help it realize its goals "faster and more efficiently than they would have otherwise," he told TechNewsWorld.
"So we started about five years ago partnering with commercial space, and we had some significant wins here at Kennedy Space Center to help us construct the multi-user spaceport," Engler said.

Commercial Partnerships

One of those victories was a partnership with SpaceX for use of Launch Pad 39A, which the company is rehabbing to host the launch of its Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Dragon spacecraft, according to Engler.
Another victory was Boeing taking occupancy of the old orbiter processor facility, which it has converted into the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing facility. NASA worked with the state of Florida to sublease the center to Boeing, which will use the facility to build its new CST-100 spacecraft.
"We created that agreement with the state of Florida," Engler said. "Florida is subleasing that to Boeing and allowing them to use that facility to build their CST-100 spacecraft, which they recently unveiled as the 'Boeing Starliner.' That's the new name for it."
Blue Origin's move into Complex 36, with plans to build locally, is another victory for NASA, the state of Florida and the Space Coast.
"Our relationship with the commercial space industry is in a number of ways very good," Engler said. "We've had a partnerships we've developed here with respect to providing new capabilities to enable their commercial space endeavors."

Resurgence of the Space Coast

Securing new tenants for the multi-user spaceport has been just one facet of NASA and Florida's goal to incubate the nascent spaceflight industry in the region known as the "Space Coast." State and federal officials also have been pushing for commercial companies to build their rockets on Florida's east coast.
In the commercial space industry, there's an opportunity to leverage the synergies of consolidated operations, said Dale Ketcham, chief of strategic alliances for Space Florida. Florida is poised to benefit from those economic efficiencies.
"We had once just been a launch site," he told TechNewsWorld. "Now we build capsules for Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and soon we'll be building rockets for Blue Origin. We still have much to do, but we are well on our way to providing end-to-end services for the space marketplace of the future."
Geography is a major reason the Space Coast is ideal for the space industry, noted Ketcham. It's why the government secured the 147,000 acres where the Kennedy Space Center rests.
"Often [spacecraft and rockets] were shipped from elsewhere with the expectation that it will work -- but here in Florida, we see to it that it does," Ketcham said. "This mentality has engendered not just a capable workforce, but a community culture that knows what it takes to get people and payload into orbit."
Now, with Blue Origin serving as another win for the Space Coast, questions about the future of the Kennedy Space Center seem to be drowned out by all of the activity going on.
"There was a general concern over the future of the Kennedy Space Center," said NASA's Engler, "but from where we are now, the future is very bright."

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Apple Dresses iOS to the Nines

Apple on Thursday released iOS 9, the latest version of its mobile operating

 system. Although more evolutionary than revolutionary, it has some useful additions.

**

The good news is that iOS 9 works on much of Apple's existing hardware. If your device can run iOS 8, it should be able to run iOS 9. However, some of the software's features are available only on the newest iOS devices -- the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, and the iPad Pro.

I installed the new OS on all of my Apple devices without much of a hitch, although after installing it on my iPhone 6 Plus, the device forgot my fingerprint, and I had to rescan one of my digits.

Apple Pay fans will find this version of iOS very friendly. You can call the app up by pressing the home button twice from the lock screen. Not having to deal with the lock screen before performing an Apple Pay transaction is a welcome addition.

Apple has buffed the look of iOS with a new sans serif font, San Francisco. It gives the software's interface a cleaner and clearer modern look. The font also will be used in the new OS X El Capitan, and the upcoming Apple Watch OS 2.

Better Notification Organization

When you swipe right from the home screen, a new search screen appears. It displays items based on location and time of day. It shows recently accessed items, as well as recent news. When I accessed the screen near noon, there was a button to send Siri searching for nearby lunch eateries.

Search also can be accessed with a swipe down the home screen. At the top, there's a row of favorite apps based on your usage. If you have multiple screens of apps, this can be a quick way of accessing an often-used app with a minimum of hunting.

Apple also tweaked how notifications are screened in iOS 9. By default, they're displayed in chronological order and grouped by day. Previously, they were grouped by app.

That could be aggravating, because if you didn't see a notification when it initially was displayed and pulled down the notification screen, you'd have to hunt through a bunch of app groups to find the notification just pushed to you.

If you prefer the old way of doing things, you can choose to group notifications by app from the settings menu.

The Today screen on the notifications page has changed slightly, too. It has a new addition: Find Friends. If you add it to the active widgets on the page, it will notify you if a friend is nearby.

Hey Siri!

Siri's screen in iOS 9 has undergone some cosmetic changes, and there's no audio confirmation when you call it up.

In addition to using the home button to call Siri, you can configure it to appear by saying, "Hey, Siri!" However, you'll have to train it to recognize your voice first.

However, unless you have an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, your device will have to be tethered to a power source. That limitation will reduce the usefulness of the feature for many. After all, we have mobile devices because we don't want to be tethered to a power source.

For some time now, the iPhone's competitors have had a power-saving mode. It performs a number of functions to stretch out battery life as the power plant approaches depletion. With iOS 9, the iPhone now has this feature, too.

The iOS 9 keyboard has received a facelift -- it uses the new San Francisco font on the keys -- and it has a welcome new feature: When you enter caps mode, all the keys change to capital letters.

Keyboard Becomes Trackpad

Apple has added some new apps to the iOS lineup. There's Find Friends, which can be used to see your friends' locations, provided they give you permission.

There's also Find Phone, for locating your phone or other device, and an iCloud Drive app for accessing your content stored in Apple's cloud. Both apps make locating a device and manipulating files in the cloud much more convenient.

Apple added some new tools to the Notes app in iOS. There's a tool for formatting lists, for instance. Some basic text styles are included, too, such as title, heading and body.

You can include images in notes, and there's a sketch feature for drawing with a finger.

Those features are the same on the iPad, but there's a bonus on the tablet. You can hold two fingers on the keyboard and it will act like a trackpad, allowing you to slide your cursor around your text.

Goodbye Newsstand

Why it has taken Apple so long to change the mail app in iOS is anybody's guess, but it finally added a feature that I suspect many users have wanted for along time: the ability to mark and trash all the mail in an in-box.

With iOS 9, Apple has scrapped the old Newsstand app and replaced it with News, which has a Flipboard flavor.

You choose a bunch of news sources from a list provided by Apple. Then, when you access the app, stories from all the sources will be queued for viewing.

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Ad blockers top Apple charts as iOS 9 debuts

Ad-blocking apps have soared to the top of Apple's App Store charts following Wednesday's debut of iOS 9.

A $2.99 app called Peace, which promises to block "most ads and privacy-invading trackers on web pages" is the top paid app in the App Store, according to mobile analytics firm App Annie. A $3.99 app called Purify Blocker is at No. 4 on the paid-apps charts. And a 99 cent app called Blockr is No. 17 on the charts.

Why this sudden interest in ad blockers?Apple's new iOS 9 software, which powers iPads and iPhones, adds a feature that allows the Safari Web browser to tap into content blocking from third-party apps. You simply install such an app and then set Safari to use it to block advertisements and similar content as you surf the Web.

Those ads have long been a sore spot for people surfing the Internet.

Blocking ads benefits users by speeding up Web performance and keeping ads from cluttering the screen. But advertisers naturally use ads to generate income, and many websites that are free rely on ads in order to bring in revenue. If ad blocking becomes too prevalent, advertisers argue, then many websites might have to charge users to access their content or else shut down.

The counterargument from the user side is that many ads on the Web are intrusive, annoying and infringe on privacy. Advertisements use video, animation and other in-your-face techniques to try to grab your attention. But the privacy issue is perhaps one of the strongest, with people increasingly concerned about the data collected by advertisers.

"Web advertising and behavioral tracking is out of control," Marco Arment, the developer of Peace, said in a blog post on Wednesday." They're unacceptably creepy, bloated, annoying, and insecure, and they're getting worse at an alarming pace."

Arment contends that people who use ad blockers shouldn't feel guilty that they may be hurting advertisers and websites that depend on ad revenue.

"If publishers want to offer free content funded by advertising, the burden is on them to choose ad content and methods that their readers will tolerate and respond to," Arment said.

By adding the ability to integrate ad blocking, Cupertino, California-based Apple is clearly taking the side of users. Now we'll see how advertisers react.

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programs and famous and ancient Games

programs and famous and ancient Games

With the continuous development in the world of the Internet and the computer and the vast amount of programs and games that areprogrammed daily and which became the shops electronic crowded it would be nice to go back a bit to look at the best 7 programs and popular gamesno longer exist today is no longer one in the world Akthert to its existencebecause he and after the emergence of games and great new programsand features high-forgotten time everyone with those programs and the famous games that were the best that you can use on your computer at the time.

But with the beginning of the twentieth century, all of these programstablets and games become stacked in boxes away from computers anddespite the fact that these games and programs are considered too old andis sophisticated and very boring to Tgertha now that it in the past was one of the best games, software, and may Asvadt of human much for this. People who downloaded this programming games and create these programs deserve to remember what they have done little and give someappreciation and respect what they have accomplished, even if one is usednow.




It is true that there are many games and programs are very sophisticatedand containing the specifications and has been improved very significantlybut the credit for the success of any new game or a new program goes back to the games and programs that were before him because of theminspired by the ideas of which could be adopted by the giant and companiesas well as specialized programmers to create games and programs that can fit users and gain their admiration.

Here's now famous list of the best programs and games no longer exist at the present time and no longer think of a use at all:

1-Game America Online 1991

Among the best 7 programs and popular games no longer exist gameAmerica Online, Game America Online 1991 when issued has achieved verystunning success and has been both possess a computer at the timeobsessed with playing the game America Online 1991 and is a gameinteresting was sold of which millions of copies and the game to now stilllive in the hearts of some old users and nerds electronic games for a long time despite the fact that the game no longer have any presence in the era of technological development experienced by human beings now.

2-Game Wolfenstein 3D 1992



Game Wolfenstein 3D 1992 also was one of the best games that achieved great success when issued was game killed interesting and characterized bytrying simulations faces and show them as fact feature a three-dimensionalcourse, compared to the game Wolfenstein 3D 1992 games today issomething crazy because the game was in the past of the best gamesbefore that show the techniques used in modern games. Today no one thinks of retrieving the past and play Wolfenstein 3D 1992 and do not think anyone would consider it, but it keeps the anniversary of users who wereaddicted to this game and enjoy it very much.

3 - Microsoft Encarta 1993 Encyclopedia 

 


Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 1993 and by the Microsoft Corp. issued in 1993 and have achieved very great success amid users of computers andhas been encyclopedia of hundreds of articles, photos, illustrations and mayhave been Mtoukrh different languages but as Microsoft company hasstopped issuing and gradually celebrated encyclopedia from the world ofcomputers it has been you can acquisition encyclopedia on CD / DVD andrun it on your computer and search for anything in the various fields andsome followers of the company to Microsoft Azalo to disk now rememberthis encyclopedia from time to time.

4 - Netscape Browser 1994

Netscape 1994 browser among the best browsers that have been its creation and issuance was Netscape Browser 1994 is the browser mostcommonly used and the only one who had a special and features is saidthat the Netscape browser in 1994 is the secret behind the issuance of the famous Mozilla browser and present strongly in the present time has thecompany Netscape browser before the final withdrawal in 2008 to encourage the direction of its users to use the Mozilla browser and Netscape browser 1994 is one of the best browsers that have passed on the history of computers and the computers at the time.

5 - Microsoft Entertainment Pack 1995 package 

Pack for the Microsoft Entertainment Entertainment Pack 1995 issued byMicrosoft Corp. for the first time it was one of the best 7 programs andgames have been launched have lived in the hearts of users of Windows 3 and Windows XP for a long time and to now still Users of Microsoft Corp.are talking about the first versions of this package on the forums and Think Back memories of playing them and comparing them what they provided as Microsoft and today is no doubt that there is a big difference between yesterday and today.

6 - Microsoft FrontPage 1996 program

During the years 1996 and 2003, the Microsoft FrontPage Editor 1996 is the best program you can use to edit HTML pages while working on Webdesign in Windows and despite intense competition, which was at that timethat no one could outdo Microsoft then with this program.

7 - program Napster 1999

Program Napster 1999 for download, which some call it the title of the first torrent was a program Napster 1999 of the best download programs in the past and which won the admiration of many users who were using it constantly, especially to download audio files download speed Napster program in 1999 at the time compared to programs Download today is considered weak and slow further degree possible, but this is natural and normal Valtguenih and informatics that existed in the past is not Aa exist today and the technical world in constant evolution, but these programs 7 will remain immortal in the minds of users who have lived era of the beginning of the computer and the Internet and will not forget, despite the congestion sites and shops Algketronah today with hundreds of software and games.This was the best 7 programs and popular games list no longer exists and that the demand for them is very large and it is used on a daily basis in the past but the world today the development and use of such programs is impossible because it is too old and Amkaintha weak for this has disappeared from the science computers and field has become today only for programs and cutting-edge high-potential games open.Thread participated Make them with your friends and get to know the best 7 programs and popular games no longer have a presence and also do not forget to join us on the social networking sites and our opinion in the comments section under the topic.

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