Apple Announces Release Dates for iOS 9, watchOS 2, and OS X El Capitan

Today Apple made a number of new announcements at their fall 2015 event. There are two new iPhones, two new iPads, and a new Apple TV set top box. Buried underneath the avalanche of product announcements were the confirmations of when the upcoming updates to Apple’s three current operating systems would be released.

According to Apple, both iOS 9 and watchOS 2 will be launching one week from now on September 16th. iOS 9 supports all devices with an A5 SoC or newer. For iPads this includes everything except the original iPad, which is really impressive when you consider that the iPad 2 launched in early 2011 with a version of iOS 4. The supported models of the iPod Touch include the iPod Touch 5 and the new iPod Touch 6 which is almost identical to the 5th gen on the outside but has Apple’s A8 SoC. Supported iPhones include the iPhone 4s and any iPhone released afterward.

As for OS X El Capitan, it will be launching on September 30th, which is just a bit later than iOS 9 and watchOS 2. As for supported devices, the system requirements are unchanged from OS X Yosemite so if your Mac can run that then it can run El Capitan.

Samsung Announces 12Gb LPDDR4 DRAM For Mobile Devices

Today Samsung Electronics announced that they have begun mass production of the memory industry’s first 12Gb LPDDR4 DRAM on their 20nm manufacturing process. These new chips offer 50% greater density than Samsung’s existing 8Gb chips.

The production of 12Gb chips opens up the possibility of smartphones and tablets with 6GB of RAM using a four 12Gb chip DRAM package, as well as 3GB using just two chips in a package. A 6GB package would also only take up the same amount of space as existing 3GB packages which use 6Gb chips. The new 12Gb chips also end up being very slightly more than 30% faster than their 8Gb chips, with a per-pin speed of 4266Mbps which would give 34Gbps of bandwidth over a 64bit bus. With Samsung beginning mass production of this new memory it’s only a matter of time before we start to see more devices move from 2GB to 3GB and from 4GB to 6GB of RAM.

Google Introduces New Street View App

Today Google introduced a new Street View application for iOS and Android. Due to the differences between Google’s app offerings on iOS and Android it’s a bit confusing to describe what this app is replacing. On Android it simply serves as an update to the existing Street View for Maps application that was part of Google Maps. On iOS it actually replaces the Google Photo Sphere application, which was the only way for iOS users to take photo sphere pictures as they didn’t have access to the Google Camera application that exists on Android.

The new application really just serves as a portal for users to look around the world at different street view photos. I haven’t yet received the Android update as it’s still rolling out, but my Photo Sphere app on iOS has updated and based on Google’s blog post the interfaces for both are essentially the same. On both Android and iOS the app now integrates a camera for taking Photo Sphere pictures, and it encourages users to take them and add them to Google maps for other users to see. There’s also support for hooking up an actual spherical camera to take more professional level images than your phone would.