Luke Dormehl - page 22

For the second year in a row, Apple TV+ kids’ shows Helpsters and Ghostwriter have racked up a slew of Daytime Emmy award nominations. While not quite the collective 13 nominations the two shows received last year (of which Ghostwriter wound up winning one), they nonetheless picked up an impressive six noms between them.

Ghostwriter — now in its second season — received five nominations, including outstanding sound mixing and editing, lighting direction, music direction and composition, art direction, and hairstyling. Helpsters — also having finished season two — picked up a nomination for outstanding costume design.

The Apple Watch is not slowing down when it comes to its dominance of the smartwatch market. According to a new report by Counterpoint Research, Apple Watch recorded an impressive 50% annual growth in Q1, claiming an impressive 33% of the overall global smartwatch industry.

Meanwhile, a separate report from the International Data Corporation said Apple shipped 30.1 million Apple Watches for the quarter, representing an almost 29% share of the market. While the reports differ slightly on the numbers, the take-home message is that Apple is killing it when it comes to smartwatches.

Queen Elizabeth II may not be the biggest fan of Apple TV+. According to a report from the U.K.’s Daily Mail, the queen signed off on her grandson, Prince Harry, doing a show for the streaming service — but was possibly misled about its contents.

The report claims the queen believed the show, The Me You Can’t See, was “about veterans’ mental health – not to air his dirty emotional laundry and launch a ‘personal attack’ on the royal family.”

Facebook isn’t backing down in its battle against Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature. And it’s seemingly got a couple of heavy hitter researchers in its corner.

In a Facebook-funded paper published Wednesday, Feng Zhu, an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and D. Daniel Sokol, a professor of law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, take issue with Apple’s new privacy features — referring to them as “an anticompetitive strategy disguised as a privacy-protecting measure.”

The fast food industry doesn’t just produce on-demand fries and burgers quickly, it’s also classically had a rapid turnover of employees. That’s a headache during normal times, but with the current post-COVID staffing shortage, it’s proving to be more of a migraine.

One McDonald’s restaurant in Altamont, Illinois, has a bright idea to get staff to hang around, though: Offer free iPhones for those who stay in the job for at least six months.

NBA superstar LeBron James shared an image of himself on Instagram wearing what could *just possibly* be the as-yet-unannounced Beats Studio Buds in white. The new, wireless Beats earbuds sound like they’re Beats’ version of Apple’s AirPods.

Beats is, of course, owned by Apple — thanks to Cupertino’s massive $3 billion acquisition in 2014. For whatever reason, it seems Apple will continue to release Beats-branded earbuds, despite the fact they stray into AirPods territory.

Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry’s Apple TV+ show, The Me You Can’t See, apparently became a big hit for the streaming service.

According to Deadline, insiders call the series the most-watched program worldwide on Apple TV+ since premiering earlier this month. It also drew 25% new viewers to the service, and a “more than 40% increase” in average weekend viewership in Harry’s homeland.

Most people haven’t gotten their hands on the 2021 Apple TV 4K yet. The good folks at iFixit have not only picked one up, but they’ve also stripped it down to peer inside.

A new teardown video suggests that the next-gen set-top box could be fairly straightforward to fix. However, don’t expect that same repair ease to apply to the upgraded Siri Remote.

TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor maker, has reportedly commenced production on the next-gen A15 chip for the iPhone 13.

It seems that Apple’s expecting to have a big hit on its hands, too. Digitimes reported Wednesday that “demand for the chip surpass that for its predecessor last year in scale, according to industry sources.”

As impressive as the sleekly minimalist, modernist Apple Stores are when they’re built from the ground up, there’s something dazzling about the company’s retail outlets that take over and restore classic buildings.

That second category certainly applies to Apple Via del Corso, which opens Thursday in the historic city of Rome. The 17th Apple Store in Italy, the new (well, old) structure is described by Apple as one of its “most significant restoration projects.”

That may be understating its appeal, too. Judging by the images, this could be the most spectacular Apple Store yet.

Apple will become the world’s leading purchaser of OLED smartphone displays in 2021, snapping up an enormous 169 million panels for use in its iPhones. That’s considerably up for the 114.5 million it bought last year. It also puts Apple ahead of Samsung when it comes to buying these displays.

But don’t feel too bad for Samsung.

Commencing May 25, both new and existing Verizon unlimited plan subscribers can get up to a year of free Apple Arcade, along with the other goodies already offered.

Customers on the $90 per month Get More Unlimited or $80 per month Play More Unlimited plans will receive the full year of free access. Meanwhile, those on other unlimited plans will get six months.

Apple products have always cost a premium, but they’re also some of the best-made devices and products that you’ll find. Most of the time, at least.

9to5Mac points out that all three of Apple’s Hermès AirTag Key Rings and Luggage Tags are listed as “Currently Unavailable” on Apple’s website, regardless of which option users try to select. It also cites a reader who suggests a quality issue could be to blame.

Of all the items that get misplaced regularly in my home, the TV remote has got to rank up there as number one. Other items, such as keys and wallet, may have a smaller footprint, but for whatever reason it’s the TV remote which constantly winds up going MIA.

With Apple redesigning the hated Siri Remote for its 2021 Apple TV 4K, you’d think it would be the perfect time to add some kind of tracking functionality to the device. After all, Apple’s just introduced AirTag, its location-tracking smart tech which promises to help you locate those hard-to-find with impressive accuracy.

Surely Apple could have squeezed its U1 Precision Tracking tech into the revamped Siri Remote? Apparently not. And according to a somewhat cryptic comment by Tim Twerdahl, Apple’s vice president of product marketing for home and audio, it’s to do with it being too thick. Or something.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak faces a million-dollar lawsuit for allegedly stealing the concept for his Woz U tech schools.

According to Connecticut business professor Ralph Reilly, he and Woz came up with the idea and participated in (among other things) an on-camera handshake a decade ago.

Fancy seeing an original Macintosh 128k, signed by Steve Wozniak? Want to feast your eyes on Apple’s first “portable” computer, which tipped the scales at nearly 16 pounds? How about eyeballing a rare Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, the only computer Cupertino ever made that was delivered to customers in a limo, and installed by Apple employees wearing tuxedos?

If you answered “yes” to all these questions, then there’s one more to ask: Are you willing to catch a flight to Kyiv, Ukraine — approximately 6,000 miles from Apple’s home in Cupertino — to look at them in person?

The Apple employee fired because of controversial passages in his 2016 memoir Chaos Monkeys calls his termination a “snap decision” by Cupertino execs.

Antonio García Martínez, a former Facebook product manager, was recently hired and fired by Apple within the space of a few weeks. In a recent Twitter Space chat with journalists Kara Swisher and Casey Newton, Martínez opened up regarding the specific writing from his book that was widely circulated before his Apple departure. The book describes San Francisco Bay Area women as “soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of sh*t.”

You don’t get bigger witnesses when it comes to an Apple trial than Tim Cook. Cook, the 10-year CEO of Apple, will today take the stand in the ongoing court case pitting Apple against Fortnite maker Epic.

With the trial expected to end Monday, Cook’s Friday testimony will be a “One more thing” event as Apple’s lawyers attempt to dismantle Epic’s case (and vice versa on the part of Epic’s legal team).

Considering that blue and green aren’t too far apart on the color spectrum, the difference between sending blue bubble messages and green bubble messages is pretty stark. The former, of course, means that the user is sending an iMessage, while the latter is a generic SMS, probably from an Android device.

For years, a certain segment of the population have mocked the green bubble crowd — with the gist being that a green bubble sender must have something wrong with them if they don’t own an iPhone. In a recent tweet, the CEO of a popular startup noted something else: That green bubble startup founders may have a tougher time landing investment.

“Unfortunate reality: if you don’t have iMessage, you are less likely to succeed at work,” Joshua Browder, the CEO of legal tech firm DoNotPay, tweeted this week. “The blue bubbles build trust!”

Apple once labelled the Apple TV a “hobby.” Now, six generations down the line, it’s proven it’s longevity as an interest for Apple. But is it the “must-have” streaming box the company has long promised?

With the review embargoes having lifted for the 2021 Apple TV 4K, it seems like Apple may have finally cracked the formula. And all it took were some neat upgrades and switching out that darn Siri Remote for something a whole lot better.

Here’s what the inaugural reviews had to say:

The iPhone 12 series has led a massive boom in smartphone shipments, particularly 5G models, in Japan.

According to a new report, Japan was the recipient of a 17% boost in smartphone shipments over the past 12 months. There was also a massive 40-fold increase in 5G handset shipments. Of the 5G smartphones, the iPhone 12 series made up almost half.

The folks at UK catalog-based retailer Argos screwed up by making the new Apple TV 4K available to customers one day early, before realizing their mistake and pulling availability. But seemingly not before a few lucky customers managed to get hold of the new streaming box.

Apple showed off the new sixth-generation Apple TV 4K in late April. It boasts Apple’s A12 Bionic chip and, most importantly, a redesigned version of the much-hated Siri Remote.

Zhang Yiming, CEO and co-founder of TikTok maker ByteDance, has announced that he will step down from his role leading the company. Co-founder Liang Rubo, currently the company’s head of human resources, will replace him in the role. Zhang, 38, will instead focus on “long-term strategy” for the company.

TikTok has enjoyed a period of one year at the top of the App Store as the most popular non-gaming app on the platform. However, it’s also seen its fair share of challenges during that time — most notably in the U.S. when former President Trump labelled it a threat to national security.

May 19, 1980: Apple introduces the Apple III at the National Computer Conference in Anaheim, California.

After two years of development, the Apple III arrives to follow the enormously successful Apple II. For a variety of reasons, it turns out to be the company’s first major misstep.

The next-gen Apple Watch could get a huge makeover, with a new, flat-edged design and a green option reminiscent of the AirPods Max.

The redesign would bring Apple Watch into line with the flatter design language and form factor of current-gen Apple products including the iPhone 12, iPad Pro and iPad Air. Apple tipster Jon Prosser revealed the info about the upcoming wearable, likely to be marketed as Apple Watch Series 7, on an episode of his Genius Bar podcast with Sam Kohl.