Apple is developing a machine to update iPhones while they're still inside the field

Forward-looking: Having to attend round while your state-of-the-art cellphone downloads and installs the modern day OS and protection updates is a necessary evil, however possibly now not for too much longer. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is developing a proprietary gadget to be used in retail stores that will be able to update an iPhone without having to unbox it.

An Apple Store employee could be capable of positioned a field of unopened iPhones on a pad-like device. The gadget will then in some way be able to turn the iPhones on, have them download and set up an update, then turn the handsets go into reverse as soon as complete.

Gurman said the gadget ought to start rolling out to Apple retail shops before the cease of the yr, but we have got extra questions than solutions concerning this little bit of wizardry.

How precisely will the device be able to turn on an iPhone with out bodily pushing the electricity button? The pad-like device shows MagSafe, Apple's proprietary, magnetically-attached wi-fi charging and accent attachment machine, should someway be concerned.

Perhaps the device Apple is developing for retail shops is sincerely a extra effective model of MagSafe that could in some way spark off an iPhone to show itself on without the energy button being pressed. Does this imply that iPhones are never truly off until the battery is absolutely tired?

Worse yet, what if this generation falls into the wrong hands and a person figures out how to remotely electricity on devices and trigger software updates at a meaningful distance? Will there be a manner to decide out of the feature once you're taking possession of the smartphone? That may be a privacy nightmare for Apple, however let us no longer get in advance of ourselves.

If a success at the iPhone, it stands to cause that Apple ought to hire a similar device for the iPad. And depending on how it works (whether or not or not it uses MagSafe), it might also be a viable concept for rival device makers to replicate and convey to their platforms.

Image credit score: Martin Sanchez, Studio Proper