Luke Dormehl - page 20

Apple Podcasts Subscriptions went live Tuesday, allowing podcasters around the world to charge monthly subscriptions for their shows. When announced at Apple’s Spring Loaded event in April, the company billed the feature as a “global marketplace for listeners to discover premium subscriptions offered by their favorite creators.”

The premium podcasts show up in Apple’s Podcast app, complete with the ability to subscribe, in more than 170 countries and regions, Apple said. And the new option gives podcasters a fresh way to cash in on the craze Apple helped start.

Apple quietly reduced the one-year Apple TV+ free trial for customers who buy new Apple devices to three months.

The company made the change in a note on its Apple TV+ website. While customers who buy and activate an eligible device (that’s an iPhone, iPad, Apple TV or Mac) before July 1 will get the one-year trial, those who do so from July 1 onward will qualify only for three months.

Set to a breathy cover of “New York, New York,” a new trailer for The Morning Show’s second season offers clues about how the Apple TV+ show will continue to explore the #MeToo movement and other key themes.

The dramatic new trailer, released Monday, also reveals that new episodes of The Morning Show will return to Apple TV+ on September 17. Check it out below.

Japan is the latest country to turn its antitrust attention on Apple. The Japan Times reports that the Japanese government is set to investigate both Apple and Google over their dominance in mobile operating systems.

The report, which cites a Nikkei article, is short on details. It notes that nine out of 10 phones sold in Japan run either Android or iOS. But it does not explain where the problematic aspect of this is. Typically, antitrust involves situations in which a market leader, or collusion between market leaders, results in a monopoly of a particular market. Breaking up these monopolies is intended to give customers more choice.

The Apple Watch Series 7 will boast a faster processor, better wireless connectivity, and a new, improved screen, says a new report from Bloomberg. The screen will have thinner bezels and a “new lamination technique that brings the display closer to the front cover.” This would be the first Apple Watch form factor redesign since 2018.

However, a body temperature sensor that was planned for this year’s update has supposedly been pushed back to the 2022 iPhone. Meanwhile, a rumored blood sugar sensor for monitoring glucose levels is reported as still being several years away.

If you’ve been dreaming of seeing the bottom half of people’s faces in Apple Stores (odd dream, admittedly!), you’ll get your wish starting this week as many Apple Stores in the U.S. begin loosening their mask requirements.

This comes as major retailers are increasingly getting back to normal as the coronavirus pandemic subsides. Apple has been one of the more cautious parties when it comes to in-store mask policies. The likes of Walmart, Trader Joe’s and Costco have already ditched mandatory mask rules. But Apple was said to be holding back.

It seems Apple can’t keep a lid on Beats Studio Buds. Celebrities keep getting photographed wearing the not-yet-announced in-ear wireless headphones, and now the launch date has leaked out.

They are still MIA for regular folks to buy. But since they showed up in yet another social media post by a famous athlete, Apple is seemingly playing a calculated long game when it comes to ramping up anticipation.

Signs of the new iPhone 13 series showed up in a database belonging to the Eurasian Economic Commission this week. In all, seven new iPhones appeared under the model identifiers A2628, A2630, A2634, A2635, A2640, A2643 and A2645.

The EEC is frequently a good place to look for future Apple releases. All devices being released in Eastern Europe, Western Asia and Central Asia must be registered there if they use encryption technology. That includes the iPhone.

The trailer for season two of Apple TV+ series See gives us our first glimpse of new star Dave Bautista in the post-apocalyptic series. Bautista is best known for playing Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, as well as for his Batista-bombing escapades as a former heavyweight champ in WWE.

In See season two he plays Edo Voss, brother of Jason Momoa’s character Baba Voss. Check out the trailer below.

When people talk about “Apple” and “leaks” in the same sentence, they’re usually referring to rumors about upcoming products. But the Justice Department of the Trump administration took the step of subpoenaing Apple in an effort to quell White House leaks during the Trump presidency.

Specifically, it sought to gain information from Apple regarding data from the accounts of at least two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, their aides, and family members — including one minor. The New York Times reports that the gag order on the subpoena only expired this year, allowing those investigated to know they had been under scrutiny.

The days of iOS 14 are numbered. Here in June 2021, it’s all about … err, iOS 4?

At least, that’s the case for Zane Kleinberg. While most of the Apple fanbase is focused on the newly announced iOS 15, teen developer Kleinberg painstakingly remade iOS 4 — which Apple released in 2010 — from the ground up as a standalone app. He calls it OldOS, and you can try it out for yourself today.

“What I’ve created [with] OldOS is iOS 4 beautifully rebuilt in SwiftUI,” the up-and-coming developer told Cult of Mac. “In essence, the app is something of an emulator, or perhaps, a second operating system that lives inside an app on your phone. It’s really designed to be a near-functioning, near-pixel-perfect re-creation of iOS 4.”

The eMate 300, one of the most fascinating forgotten Apple products of the late 1990s, has received a second life as a Raspberry Pi laptop.

The personal data assistant, which Apple sold for less than a year between 1997 and 1998, was a sales dud at the time of its release. However, with its Jony Ive-designed curvaceous clamshell made out of translucent green plastic, it resembled the later iMac G3 and iBook computers that helped reestablish Apple as a computer manufacturer of note.

That makes it a machine worth celebrating. Now, thanks to the efforts of a YouTuber named Billy The Kid, it’s also a machine capable of running YouTube videos. Check out the video below.

Apple has teamed up with Globant, a consultancy that helps businesses prepare for a “digital and cognitive future,” to launch a new Earn Your Apple Watch program. Aimed at companies and their employees, the configurable white label app and reward program uses Apple Watch’s various activity tracking tech to boost employee wellness.

The app allows Apple Watch-wearing employees to earn rewards by completing monthly activity goals. Those rewards could be goods or services vouchers, larger vendor-specific purchases, or even discounts on a new Apple Watch. It’s a smart way of trying integrate Apple Watch into businesses that want to get their employees moving.

Efforts to regulate Big Tech continue with Democrats currently circulating drafts of antitrust bills that could affect the likes of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google.

While there is every possibility that these draft bills morph over time, the biggest way they would currently affect Apple is by curtailing its ability to operate an app marketplace. This feeds into growing criticism about Apple’s control of the App Store, which has been the subject of investigation around the world.

Apple’s forthcoming MacBook Pros were erroneously expected by some to show up at this year’s WWDC. But according to a report from Digitimes, the next-gen Apple notebooks will not launch until the third quarter of 2021. This could be due to a lower-than-expected production yield for the mini LED screens for the computer.

The new 16-inch and 14-inch MacBook Pro models are expected to be the biggest MacBook Pro redesign in quite a while. They are likely to sport a redesigned chassis, offer a returning built-in SD card reader and HDMI port and a restored MagSafe charger. They will also boast the next generation of Apple Silicon processor, and will supposedly ditch the controversial Touch Bar as well. The question is when exactly fans will be able to get their hands on them!

Smart home technology isn’t a massive focus of Apple’s. But the European Commission is nonetheless concerned that Apple could be one of the companies potentially able to engage in anticompetitive behavior in this area due to its outsized influence on the tech industry.

In preliminary investigation results published Wednesday, the EC raises concerns about the potential of “gatekeepers emerging” in this sector. The inquiry into Internet of Things (IoT) devices was launched in July 2020. It’s based on feedback from more than 200 different companies. Along with Apple, Amazon and Google are both mentioned as big players.

The U.S. Senate passed a bill Tuesday that could see the United States invest $52 billion in growing its own chip manufacturing technologies. The $52 billion is part of a broader bipartisan bill. In total, it aims to invest close to $250 billion in U.S. manufacturing and technology.

The bill passed Tuesday with a 68-32 vote. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer described it as likely to “go down as one of the most important things this chamber has done in a very long time.”

It is an attempt to wrestle back control of some of the world’s tech manufacturing from China.

Tencent’s Honor of Kings raked in royalty levels of cash in the App Store, app analytics platform Sensor Tower reports. The report doesn’t break down exact iOS earnings, but across both the iOS App Store and Android’s Google Play store, the popular gaming title pulled in $264.5 million in player spending — in the month of May alone.

That’s a whole lot of cash, not least for a multiplayer online battle game that’s been around on mobile since 2015. It’s a testament to its longevity, and the fact that App Store success doesn’t rely on the United States these days.

Thanks to Substack and its rivals, 2021 has been huge for subscription newsletters. But Casey Newton of Platformer notes that the newsletter boom times could be threatened by Apple’s newly announced Mail Privacy Protection feature for iOS 15. And he’s not alone.

Monday’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote was short on tangible details about Apple TV+. But Apple seized upon arguably its biggest week of the year to showcase a new trailer highlighting the great shows and movies available to watch on its subscription video service. And previewing one or two more.

To a remixed version of The Beach Boys’ classic “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” the two-minute Apple TV+ ad shows off the slate of Apple Originals. It casts Apple TV+ productions as mold-breakers, with original vision — and no shortage of big hits. It also offers some nice shots of upcoming productions, including Apple’s Foundation sci-fi series, the CODA movie that swept Sundance, the second season of surprise hit Ted Lasso and more.

Check it out below.

Want to relive Craig Federighi’s daring iPad catch from Monday’s keynote, set to a toe-tapping tune? Of course you do. Fortunately, Jonathan Mann is here to help.

Mann, a prolific musical YouTuber, has been writing songs about Apple dating back to the days of Antennagate and the iPhone 4. None other than Steve Jobs once played one of Mann’s iPhone ditties on stage at an Apple event. Each year after Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Mann pens a song based on the event.

His song this year won’t leave you any the wiser if you didn’t watch this year’s WWDC keynote. But it will certainly get you nodding your head — and reliving that Federighi catch over and over. Check it out.

Selling your old Apple device to buy a new one can be a high-stakes game. Do it before Apple announces the replacement and you can bank a few extra bucks because a) you’re selling the latest-gen product and b) the market’s not yet saturated with other sellers doing the same thing.

The catch? You’d better be confident that Apple’s going to announce the product you think it will. Because if it doesn’t, you’ll be stuck with no device at all. That appears to have happened to a handful of Apple users who were confident that Monday’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote would include the launch of next-gen MacBook Pros powered by M2 chips.

Apple didn’t unveil new laptops — and now people who sold their computers to gear up for new ones are not too happy about the situation.

Apple appears to have restored the scroll wheel to setting alarms in iOS 15, having replaced it with last year’s iOS 14 update.

While it’s a minor feature, it’s one that was conspicuous in its absence last year, replaced with a far clunkier, counterintuitive replacement. Now it’s back — showing that Apple does indeed listen when people call out certain features that used to be better.

Apple will launch its head-mounted augmented reality display in the second quarter of 2022, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from TF International Securities.

It will feature lenses built by Genius Electronic Optical, which Kuo says will be the “sole supplier” for the high-end camera lenses in the forthcoming iPhone 13. (Largan Precision supposedly sent Apple samples for the handset’s rear wide lens and rear telephoto lens that failed to live up to Cupertino’s exacting standards. As a result, Apple canceled its Largan orders for iPhone 13 and will give them to Genius instead.)

Cupertino is reportedly in “early stage talks” with two Chinese battery companies, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. and BYD Auto, about supplying batteries for an Apple car.

Apple is said to have developed breakthrough battery technology for its rumored vehicle, although it needs a third-party supplier to build these batteries. It may be one step closer to finding them.