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Woojer is a wearable mobile accessory designed to allow its wearer to feel what they’re listening to on their mobile device — via the medium of haptic feedback — rather than simply having banging tunes inserted into their earholes. It’s also being aimed at gamers who want a more immersive in-game experience, or for watching movies or other audiovisual content on a mobile device. The Israel-based startup behind Woojer, which closed a $600,000 angel round earlier this year, has been developing the product since the start of 2011. It currently has a working prototype — and plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign next month to raise funding for an initial production run. If that’s successful, they hope to ship to backers in early Spring 2014. How exactly does Woojer work? Its creators describe it as a “tactile transducer” that reproduces sound as a polyphonic vibration, allowing a haptic, noiseless element to augment the standard stereo audio the user hears via their own headphones (which plug into the Woojer box via a 3.5mm headphone jack). Unlike some of the rival offerings in this space, such as subpac and bassAware Holster, Woojer doesn’t require the user to strap on some form of backpack or wear a special headset. (Or look like they buy all their clothes at Cyberdog.) Instead, the roughly matchbox-sized box is clipped to clothing so it rests against the body. Its low frequency vibrations then create a physical bass sensation — similar to hearing live music at a concert or cinema surround sound. Or that’s the theory. Here’s how Woojer explains the tech — which it will be showing off next week at Pepcom in San Francisco: adds Woojer founder Neal Naimer. Advantages over rival offerings in this space include its small size and portability; lower price (final retail price is still being decided but Naimer suggests a ballpark figure of $70 for two devices vs $300 for some rival offerings); polyphonic sound; improved latency over rivals’ so that the tactile sensation doesn’t lag the audiovisuals; and a longer play time (Woojer will be good for more than four hours of use), according to Naimer. The startup is taking to Kickstarter to push production forward rather than attempting to partner with games or headset makers as a faster way to get to market. Here’s a video of Woojer’s Naimer pitching the concept earlier this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=30QFmhbf0o0

Nike is revealing a new version of its FuelBand today at an event in New York City. Dubbed the FuelBand SE, the new fitness tracker sports a variety of color accents and represents the sporting goods maker’s first non-cosmetic update to its activity tracking wearable since the gadget’s introduction. The FuelBand, for those who aren’t familiar, is a wearable wristband that provides users with a visual readout of their steps taken during the course of a day, and also offers up a ‘Fuel’ tally, which is a metric made up by Nike that calculates based on your activity level through things like walking, running, paying basketball and more. They don’t share much about how they come up with that number, but it’s likely not terribly scientific and meant primarily as a motivation device to get people moving more frequently. This new second-generation product has a similar design to the original version (but with red, pink or yellow accents), with a rubberized band that fits snugly around the wrist available in different sizes. This edition is intended to be better at encouraging users to move, and harder to cheat with. Nike reports that doing things like punching your fist in the air to game your score won’t up your Fuel score, according to CNET. It also looks to offer up better ability to differentiate between different types of activity, like cycling, spinning and rowing. Nike’s new hardware is sealed and waterproofed, making it usable in the shower, and it’s got a highly refined motion detection algorithm. There are regular reminders (once hourly) to prompt you to get up and stop being so lazy, and there’s a new shortcut to let you double tap the button to access time. It uses Bluetooth 4.0, too, which should make it easier to sync data and provide a bit of a battery boost. There’s also a brand new app redesign to do along with it, with more granular and informative charts and graphs related to activity data. A new Fuel-per-minute metric offers a look at your average intensity, rather than just cumulative activity totals. Finally, there’s sleep tracking, which the first generation device lacked entirely. Sleep tracking is available to users of the Fitbit Flex, and the Jawbone Up, so that’s a huge addition in terms of playing catchup with the competition. The FuelBand SE is still iOS only, however, so don’t be expecting an Android app anytime soon. Users not in the Apple flock can still use the website, however

Apple has been fighting a war of attrition against the jailbreaking community since the original iPhone was jailbroken in 2007. The jailbreakers expend resources and time to find a new exploit, but then Apple pushes out a small update to block it. This was a cycle for years, but the flow of reliable jailbreaks has been slowing. There was a jailbreak for iOS 6 the day it launched, but iOS 7 is much more locked down. We’ve been hearing for weeks that a jailbreak is on the way, with iOS developers hard at work, but have yet to see any significant movement. How much longer will it be until there is a reliable iPhone 5S jailbreak? By gaining root access to iOS, modders are able to give the user privileges to bypass Apple’s security measures and install unapproved software or tweak deep system settings. This usually requires finding a bug or vulnerability in iOS or the boot ROM. Hardware-related vulnerabilities in the Apple A-series chips are also possible, but less common, especially after the iPhone 5 and its A6 chip. Today, without an exploit, an iOS 7 jailbreak simply can’t happen. Not all hacks are created equal, though. Many of the bugs that make jailbreaks possible only lead to tethered jailbreaks. That basically means you need to plug the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch into a computer running the jailbreak software every time it boots. If you’re not around a computer with the necessary software, the phone is a brick. Most users aren’t willing to deal with this, preferring to wait on the untethered jailbreak. The untethered version is a persistent jailbreak that works without the aid of a computer to make the phone or tablet boot up. These unfortunately are much harder to develop — the days of going to an website and getting your iDevice jailbroken with a tap seem to be long gone. There used to be plenty of iOS jailbreak suites, many of them with caches of new exploits ready to go when Apple patched one. However, it seems like most of the low-hanging fruit is gone now. Tethered jailbreaks have become far more common, and Apple has been continuing to harden the system against even minor exploits. There isn’t yet a jailbreak for iOS 6.1.4, the version prior to iOS 7. Noted iOS hacker Winocm says he has a jailbreak for this version of the platform in the works and will release it before the end of the year. So when can we expect a jailbreak for iOS 7? Members of evad3rs, the team behind evasi0n (a popular jailbreak tool) previously said an exploit is in the works. More recently, evad3rs modder Planetbeing claimed to have all the pieces in place for an iOS 7 jailbreak. In fact, evad3rs members have successfully run unsigned code on iOS 7. This probably means the necessary exploits have been identified, but the team is still working out the specifics and building a tool for the general public to use. Apple will, of course, patch the holes in one of the upcoming bug fix releases of iOS 7, so Evad3rs may end up waiting for iOS 7.1 to blow the jailbreak exploits. That would give users more time to enjoy the freedom before Apple locks them out again. Every piece of software has vulnerabilities, but they have to be found and exploited first. The jailbreakers aren’t the only ones looking, either. Apple hunts for the same things on its end because these exploits are security concerns. You can’t blame Apple for patching jailbreak exploits — it’s making iOS more secure for the vast majority of users who don’t jailbreak. When and if a jailbreak is developed for iOS 7, it might not be a good solution. Maybe Apple is close to winning this war.

Apple analyst Brian White at Cantor Fitzgerald is in Asia filing daily reports. In today's report he says he was surprised to see that in China, there were plenty of gold iPhones in stock, but the "Space Grey" model was selling out. We don't think anyone can read anything meaningful into this anecdote but we read it, said, "huh," to ourselves, and thought it would be interesting to pass along. Consider it one for the files:

Twice as fast as the iPhone 5? Twice as CRASHY claims app bug watcher Apple's flagship iPhone 5s handsets are suffering "Blue Screen of Death" crashes that force fanbois to reboot their expensive gear. And we're told application software, when launched by the user, crashes twice as often on the new mobile than freshly run code on the iPhone 5c and 5. That's all according to data provided by app-performance tracker Crittercism: it claims about two per cent of the "hundreds of millions of app launches" it has tracked on the iPhone 5s result in crashes, compared to one per cent for the iPhone 5c and 5. Crittercism boss Andrew Levy told AllThingD. Levy is of the opinion – which we share – that it's no surprise that the 64-bit A7-equipped iPhone 5s apparently has a higher app-crash rate than its 32-bit A6-equipped brethren. After all, developers have had over a year to tune their apps for the A6, which was introduced in September 2012 in the iPhone 5, and the iPhone 5c is essentially an iPhone 5 in an "unapologetically plastic" case. The A7 and the iPhone 5s' M7 sensor-managing coprocessor have been available for devs to conquer only since September 20 of this year. There were undoubtedly some lucky folks who got their hands on prerelease versions for optimizing and testing their apps, but the unwashed masses of iOS app developers had to wait in line like the rest of the fanboi flock. New hardware. New operating system. Nothing to see here. Move along – but keep your ear to the ground to learn whether Apple and its developer community can improve that 2X crash rate in a reasonable amount of time. Of perhaps more interest is the fact that some iPhone 5s users are experiencing a nostalgic Windows-like Blue Screen of Death, especially when exiting the apps in Apple's iWorks productivity suite: Numbers, Pages, and Keynote. The BSOD-then-reboot problem has been reported in Apple's discussion groups, MacRumors forums, and a YouTube video, among other places. Although the complaints center mostly on iWork apps, other users claim to have had the same problem with Chrome and Safari, and while using FaceTime. Interestingly, iOS (like any system worth its salt) supposedly sandboxes apps, so you'd think that a misbehaving program couldn't take down the entire device – but perhaps Apple bent its own sandboxing rules for its iWork apps, and is now paying the price. Some users have suggested that the BSOD issue can be fixed by disabling the iWork apps' iCloud syncing – which seems reasonable, knowing Apple's less than stellar history of cloudy offerings. To do so, launch Settings, tap iCloud, then toggle off Numbers, Pages, and Keynote in the app list that appears. The BSOD problem is not new to the iPhone – it has been reported previously on the iPhone 5, 4S, and 4, as well, but our best guess is that those appearances were due to hardware problems. This time around, well, who the Tophet knows? We're dealing with Apple, after all, and our role as consumers is to simply sit back and wait until Cupertino's iOS engineering team releases an update.

Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch launched a couple of weeks ago as a fat, ugly, and expensive smartphone accessory that our own Devindra Hardawar called “relentlessly inessential.” That’s not where Apple is going with iWatch. Rather, Apple is looking to create a device that will allow you to control your music, your temperature, your security, your lighting, your energy use, your entertainment, and potentially much more, says Cantor Fitzgerald’s Brian White, who talked to Taiwanese and mainland China suppliers. iwatch“As an Apple supplier, our contact offered insight into the “iWatch” and described this potential new device as much more than an extension of your iPhone but as a multi-purpose gateway in allowing consumers to control their home (i.e., heating/cooling, lights, audio, video, etc.),” White said today in a research note. Now that is interesting. The raison d’etre behind smartwatches has been a little suspect; they’ve mostly looked like little more than an adjunct to your smartphone. Which begs the question: Why do you need one? And the real-life use of smartwatches as sort of a wrist-based Google Glass, with constant social updates streaming in, can be problematic. One startup founder I talked to said when he checked updates on his Pebble, people thought he was being rude because he was “always checking his watch” and clearly was bored with them. Building a watch-like device that is truly smart and useful for something other than seeing a constant stream of tweets would be a very Apple-like way to go. Personal fitness tracking and monitoring is a no-brainer, and adding home automation control makes it even more interesting. Clearly, Apple TV could be part of the mix, as well as support for a number of the home automation standards. As interesting as this could be, however, it’s unclear how big of a market Apple would be attacking here. Because the home automation market, while growing fast and offering tremendous opportunities, is still relatively nascent.

Apple needs to start making bargain basement mobes because soon there won't be enough rich new iPhone customers left in the world to prop up its sales growth, a leading analyst has suggested. The claim comes in a report by Toni Sacconaghi, senior analyst with Bernstein Research, with the snappy title: The tech sales researcher said that "only a finite number of users globally can afford a $450-plus smartphone", warning that Apple could struggle to pull in new users in the face of tough competition from Android phones. This could mean that the fruity firm's growth will "invariably slow" unless it caters to the lower end of the market. There are expected to be five times as many first time budget smartphone buyers in 2015 as in 2013 year, the analyst suggested, and Apple needs to get in fast and steer them towards the fruity path if it wants to survive. Sacconaghi added: The report made the "surprising" claim that the majority of new iPhones are still sold to first-time fanbois and gurlz. In 2011, 52 million iPhones were sold to new users, accounting for 72 per cent of the market. This figure dipped in the next two years, but in 2013 the majority of new iPhone owners were still brand new to the world of Apple mobes, with 57 percent, or 85 million people, choosing to take Cupertino's blue pill for the first time. However, to keep up this ratio between Apple virgins and world-weary fanbois, Apple will have to sell a whopping 125 million iPhones in the next two years. Sacconaghi fears this might not be achievable, asking where these users will come from "if the benefit from carrier additions is modest beyond China Mobile" – a carrier with more than 100 million customers, probably the world's biggest, which does not offer the iPhone on contract. If a deal is inked between Apple and China Mobile, the analyst continued, Apple could bolt on at least 15 million more customers almost overnight. The analyst said: As Apple watchers already suspect, the fruity firm's ability to, ahem, "innovate needs" as far as smartphones are concerned appears to have been dampened, the report concluded. So far, the only thing on Apple's horizon is the rumoured launch of a new iPad on 22 October, and we don't know how much of a features jump that will be on the existing iPad, although the technical specifications are likely to be upgraded. So, Mr Cook, are you up to the job of stopping Apple from rotting?

With the iPhone 5s launch behind us, industry watchers are now turning up the heat as they sniff around for details on next year’s iPhone 6. We have already seen a few early reports from multiple solid sources suggest Apple will finally make the move to a larger display in next year’s iPhone 6, and now another report from a well-respected source suggests Apple is indeed finally getting ready to satisfy critics and launch a smartphone with a larger screen. Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek on Monday issued a research note to investors in which he reversed course on Apple. Misek previously had a Hold rating on Apple shares with a $450 price target, but he’s now bullish on Apple’s prospects. As a result, Misek upped his target to $600 on Monday morning and slapped a Buy rating on Apple’s stock. There are a few reasons for the analyst’s change of heart, one of which is that his supply chain sources indicate that Apple is getting more favorable prices from its component suppliers. This is a change from Misek’s position earlier this year and if accurate, it would obviously boost Apple’s bottom line. Beyond margins, however, the analyst says Apple is finally going to cave and launch an iPhone 6 with a bigger display. “Despite still seeing risk to CQ4 and FY13 revs, we now believe better [gross margins] will allow Apple to skate by until iPhone 6 launches with its 4.8″ screen,” Misek wrote in the note. ”We est ~50% of smartphone shipments have >4″ screens and that iPhone 6 will catalyze a large upgrade cycle. The stock is attractive based on the attitude change, FY15 revs >+15%, and valuation.” Misek has had a few good calls regarding unreleased Apple products in the past, and he is considered by many to be among the top analysts covering Apple right now. That certainly doesn’t make an iPhone 6 with a 4.8-inch display a done deal, but it adds fuel to earlier reports from The Wall Street Journal and plugged in KGI Securities analyst Ming-chi Kuo. Apple shares jumped more than 1% on Misek’s report.

Here's a fun video from the Everything Apple Pro blog. It's a race between iPhones. Every model is lined up, powered off, powered on and otherwise tested. Which one is fastest? We'll let you see for yourself but here's one spoiler alert: The tester concludes that if you already have an iPhone 5, there's no need to upgrade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8eSrdgTHhK0 There are, of course, other reasons you might want one of Apple's newest phones...