Switzerland

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on Switzerland:

Apple Pay goes live with Switzerland’s largest bank

By

Apply Pay UBS
UBS has been talking with Apple over Apple Pay since 2016.
Photo: UBS

Switzerland’s biggest bank, UBS, has finally embraced Apple Pay, the bank revealed Wednesday. The bank announced Apple Pay support as “coming soon” back in April. However, it has taken another few months for that to promise to come to fruition.

Customers of the bank can start using Apple Pay today for both credit cards and pre-paid cards.

Apple Pay will finally be going live with Switzerland’s biggest bank

By

Apple Pay UBS
It took long enough to reach this point!
Photo: UBS

Apple Pay is coming to Switzerland’s largest bank UBS after it refused to adopt it for years.

A report from the website MacPrime shared an image from UBS suggesting that Apple Pay will go live in the near future. No date has been announced for exactly when that will take place. However, it will reportedly be in the next few weeks.

Disney+ racks up 5 million downloads on launch day in Europe

By

disney.plus.uk.2
Disney+ has finally landed in the UK.
Photo: Apple

The Disney+ mobile app is off to a roaring start in Europe and the UK just days after it launched earlier this week.

Third-party app analytics firm App Annie revealed that the Disney+ app has been downloaded over 5 million times on launch day, possibly thanks to millions of residents having to shelter-in-place due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Swiss banks accused of colluding to hurt Apple Pay

By

Apple in talks to bring Apple Pay to Israel
Apple Pay arrived in Switzerland in 2016.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Switzerland is opening up an investigation into whether major banks colluded to fight off the threat of mobile payments services such as Apple Pay.

The banks, which include Credit Suisse and Switzerland’s top bank UBS, supposedly wanted to boost the Swiss mobile payment service TWINT. As a result, they are alleged to have blocked their credit cards from working with Apple Pay and the rival Samsung Pay service.

Apple’s new Swiss lab will help start the robot uprising

By

Robot
Apple is hiring robotics researchers.
Photo: Scott Schaut/Mansfield Memorial Museum

Apple is reportedly on a hiring spree for robotics and computer vision researchers to work at a supposed new R&D lab in Switzerland.

According to a new report, Apple has already hired around ten postdoc and doctoral students from ETH Zurich, a science, technology, engineering and math university in Zürich.

Swiss banks are finally getting Apple Pay

By

Apple in talks to bring Apple Pay to Israel
Apple Pay has a new market opportunity.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple’s VP of Apple Pay recently said that Apple was “working rapidly” to bring its mobile payment system to new markets — and according to a fresh report that rapid progress may result in Apple Pay arriving in Switzerland, its seventh market, as early as next week.

Jony Ive was right — Swiss watchmakers are dying

By

apple-watch
Do Swiss watchmakers wake up sweating at the sight of the Apple Watch?
Photo: Apple

Jony Ive memorably (allegedly) described Swiss watchmakers as “f**ked” due to the then-impending launch of the launch of the Apple Watch, and one year later — like some kind of creepy, well-dressed soothsayer in an Apple-centric episode of The Twilight Zone — it seems he may have been correct.

Swiss watch exports suffered their biggest decline in six years in October, with sales dropping 12 percent to $2 billion. Jon Cox, an analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux in Zurich, describes 2015 as a year “to forget” for watchmakers.

Unless their name is Apple, of course.

Apple Watch is currently barred from going on sale in Switzerland

By

apple-watch
Not yet coming to the home of the watchmakers. Photo: Apple

When the Apple Watch goes on sale April 24, one place it will be conspicuous in its absence is Switzerland: the spiritual home of the wristwatch, which Jony Ive famously (allegedly) said was “f**ked” due to the awesomeness of Apple’s upcoming wearable.

One possible reason? A trademark claim made by a company called Leonard Timepieces for a watch and watch parts carrying the image of an apple and the English word “APPLE.” First filed in 1985 — not too long after Apple originally launched the Mac — the 30-year trademark expires on December 5, 2015.

iTunes In The Cloud Starts European Rollout With Switzerland & Austria

By

ios-screens

For Americans, iTunes in the Cloud has freed a lot of us from the tyranny of having to constantly switch movies and music on and off our devices. As long as we purchased a movie or song on iTunes (or, alternatively, subscribe to iTunes Match), we can stream it from the Cloud.

Unfortunately, Apple’s been taking a creeping approach to rolling out iTunes in the Cloud internationally. For at least two European countries, though, rollout has just started: Austria and Switzerland can now stream movies they bought from iTunes from the Cloud.

Keyboarding Reinvented Specifically For Your iPad [Deals]

By

CoM - Touchfire2main

The Touchfire keyboard has all the functionality of a standard keyboard, but in a paper-thin, transparent rubber that fits directly on your screen. You can still view the entire screen right through the keyboard with the ability to touch and swipe as if nothing was there – and Cult of Mac Deals has it for $42 for a limited time!

The Touchfire is a true Kickstarter success story. The creators Steve Isaac & Brad Melmon jump started the process on Kickstarter and with a goal of $10,000 they ended up blowing it out of the water with raising more than $200,000! Since their campaign ended in 2011 they’ve been in full force delivering one of the most revolutionary iPad products to consumers around the globe.

Apple Agrees To Pay Swiss Federal Railway Service For Purloined iOS 6 Clock Design

By

clock-copiers-e1348165431748

What’s good for the goose should be good for the gander. Apple gives other companies a lot of flack for ripping off their intellectual property, but in iOS 6, they ripped off the design of a classic clock designed by Hans Hilfiker which has been both trademarked and copyrighted by the Swiss Federal Railway Service.

It seems unlikely that the transgression was willful, but it was still sloppy of Apple to not do their due dilligence when it came to researching the clock, or seeing if its design was trademarked.

Luckily, Apple has now chosen to do the right thing, having reached out to to the Swiss Federal Railway Service, who today announced that the companies have signed a licensing deal for the famous clock. It’s unknown what the terms are, but it’s good to see Cupertino do the right thing here.

Source: SBB.CH
Via: The Verge

The iPhone 4S Goes On Sale In 22 More Countries Today

By

174299-apple-iphone-4s-lines-stretch-toward-4-million-sales

Although we Yanks and select Euros already have iPhone 4Ses in our pockets, the iPhone 4S launch is hardly over. Far from it.

Today, Apple started selling the iPhone 4S in twenty-two other countries. Those countries are: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Any Liechtensteiners care to report on how the lines are looking over there?