Apple Job Listing For A Plastics Tooling Engineer Coincides With Low-Cost iPhone Rumors

 There have been rumors surrounding the possibility of a low cost iPhone which could be pieced together using various iOS device components. As to whether that is true or not remains to be seen, but thanks to a recent job listing by Apple, it seems that at the very least Apple is looking for new ways to use plastic in their products. So far Apple has been known for using high quality materials for most of its offerings, such as glass, aluminum, stainless steel and whatnot, but the job listing for a “Tooling Engineer” in plastics has revealed the Cupertino company’s interest in using plastic in non-traditional ways to help shape and control the material better.

This seems to somewhat corroborate the rumors that this low-cost iPhone could be made using a plastic body compared to the iPhone 4/4S and iPhone 5 which used a combination of glass, stainless steel and aluminum. Then again plastic is prevalent in other Apple products such as the Magic Mouse, cables, keyboards and etc. so it is possible that this job listing might not be related to the iPhone at all. Either way with rumors about a low-cost iPhone running rampant, this job listing seems to be rather coincidental in nature, but we’ll keep the speculation to a minimum and suggest you do the same.

Valve’s Gabe Newell Believes Apple, Not Consoles, Is The Biggest Threat For Living Room Gaming

 Earlier this month at CES 2013, Valve unveiled the Piston which was a collaborative effort between them and Xi3 which was Valve’s stab at taking over the living room gaming space which is currently dominated by consoles like the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and the Wii U. At least from a layman’s point of view, that certainly seems like the case but apparently Valve’s Gabe Newell doesn’t seem to think so. In fact during a talk given by Newell at the University of Texas (via Polygon), he claims that Valve’s biggest threat is not console manufacturers like Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo (with the former 2 pegged to unveil next-gen consoles later this year), but rather surprisingly Apple!

As far as Apple’s gaming efforts are concerned, there has not been much apart from providing discrete graphic cards in their Mac offerings, so it was certainly an interesting perspective. “The biggest challenge, I don’t think is from the consoles […] I think the biggest challenge is that Apple moves on the living room before the PC industry sort of gets its act together.” At the moment the only living room product that Apple offers would be its Apple TV, which at its current state does not pack enough power to play the kind of games that gamers will expect, so it is interesting that Newell managed to arrive at that conclusion, but what do you guys think?