Apple

It’s still unknown whether Apple will one day expand its range of high performing and incomparably cool products to the not-exactly-chopped-liver world of drones, but a patent granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office takes that tantalizing prospect one step closer to imaginable.

Apple just released its newest iPhones, the 14 and 14 Pro and, boy oh boy, is it tempting to throw in the $1,099 for the latest and greatest from the company. But will it be the best phone to use for flying drones?

The diversity and depth of Apple products at times suggests there’s no limit to what kind of tech the company can produce, or what new activities it might decide to get involved with. Now, a new patent filing raises the question of whether Apple is contemplating a launch into the drone sector – albeit a defined and contained part of it.

First Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak brought the world Macs. Now he’s flying drones through K-12 classroom curricula. How cool did school just get?

You already know it: The iPhone 12 would come with cool new features. But did it ever cross your mind that Apple might suggest it could be mounted on a drone? It didn’t cross our minds either. But today, at its iPhone launch event, Apple did precisely that: It showed an iPhone 12… on a drone.

In the market for the best new consumer drone and have some Apple Store credit to spend? The newly launched DJI Mavic Air 2 and Fly More Combo bundle are both available to order from Apple.com starting today at a slight premium over DJI’s prices.

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Within three weeks of Apple buying artificial intelligence (AI) company Xnor.ai, the tech giant quickly ended the pre-existing military drone Pentagon contract to make sure that its tech would not be used in the controversial “Project Maven” military drone operation.

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This morning we showed you the latest two drone videos that captured the almost completed new headquarters of Apple, called Apple Park. Later today we were able to conduct a short interview with one of the video makers, Matthew Roberts, who has been documenting the construction since March 2016.

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Yesterday the U.S. Department of Transportation announced the 10 pilot programmes that have been approved under President Trump’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Pilot Program (UAS IPP) in an effort to bring the country up to speed when it comes to drone experimentation. Yesterday we published the list of awardees and today we are reporting on the companies that made the list such as Airbus, Alphabet (Google), Apple, AT&T, Microsoft, FedEx, Uber, and others. As well as the ones that did not make the list, most notably Amazon and DJI.

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Earlier today, a report explained that Apple was among a handful of companies who had applied for government permission to test drone usage beyond current FAA limits. Now, Apple has officially commented on these plans…

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Earlier today we reported that Apple is one of the 200 companies that are vying to participate in the UAS Integration Pilot Program. Some of the other big-name companies that compete for a spot in the program are well-known ones such as Intel, Amazon, Airbus, and Qualcomm. For most of these, it is pretty obvious why they would be interested to participate. Amazon and Airbus are interested in making deliveries by drone. Intel and Qualcomm are focussed on the fast-growing drone market because of the possibilities it offers for their chip products. Apple, however, seems to be the outlier. Why would the tech giant have an interest in the drone market?

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Amazon, Apple, Intel, Qualcomm and Airbus are among the companies hoping to be granted permission for a new series of experimental drone flights as part of the U.S. initiative launched by President Trump last year.

The government has opened up applications to companies interested in being able to conduct flights beyond line-of-sight, at night or over people that are not allowed under the current FAA rules.

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A drone pilot who has been making regular flights over Apple Park says he believes that the company is tracking all flights over the campus, and thinks it’s only a matter of time before counter-measures are used to block future flights …

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Last weekend during the NYC Drone Film Festival, I joined a session where children were writing code to program Parrot drones. The fact that the students got to fly the drones after they were done coding made all the difference. Those kids were stoked!

That’s also why this news got my attention. Recently Apple experts visited the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired to show software that allowed students to write code without having to look at the screen and fly Parrot drones. One of the students, Demetria Ober knows now that being (partially) blind does not mean you cannot program or fly a drone for that matter!

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