Both the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department launched probes into allegations that TikTok breached an agreement regarding child-privacy protections, Reuters reported Wednesday.
News of the investigations follows a story earlier this week claiming the U.S. government might ban TikTok for security reasons.
Apple has added new locations in the U.S., Europe, and Canada to its out-of-warranty Independent Repair Provider Program for iPhones.
The program launched in the United States last fall. Today it is expanding out of the U.S. for the first time. It’s also announcing that a total of more than 700 registered independent repair providers are now available across America.
Anker has launched its new HomeKit-compatible smart security camera. The EufyCam 2 Pro, exclusive to Best Buy, boasts 2K resolution and free local video storage.
It also carries over the 365-day battery life, on-device human detection software, and “user-friendly interface” of the previous generation EufyCam camera.
As a result of coronavirus-induced lockdowns, the way we work has changed dramatically in 2020. Plenty of employees and businesses are now talking seriously about remote working and whether it represents a viable path forward for reimagining employment.
It turns out that Steve Jobs was talking about this exact topic 30 years ago. No, Jobs didn’t foresee COVID-19. But an old interview clips unearthed by journalist Jon Erlichman shares Jobs’ thoughts on the way technology can transform the way that you and I work.
Check it out.
iOS 14 will allow users to make payments using QR codes with Apple Pay, a hidden feature in the Wallet app discovered by 9to5Mac suggests.
While the feature isn’t functional yet, it will allow users to point their iPhone camera at a QR code or barcode in order to pay bills. Apple didn’t make any mention of it at WWDC 2020, but that could potentially be transformative for scan-as-you-go shopping and other scenarios.
Apple is re-closing four more of its Apple Stores in Melbourne, Australia as coronavirus cases spike again in the region.
Apple Chadstone, Apple Southland, Apple Doncaster, and Apple Fountain Gate will all be temporarily closing down, along with Apple Highpoint, which closed its doors last week. Australian Apple Stores began reopening two months ago, after having been shuttered since March 14.
Apple’s third-gen AirPods will boast a design and compact system-in-package (SiP) solution similar to AirPods Pro, TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claims in his latest research note to clients.
Kuo suggests that the next-generation wireless earbuds will arrive in the first half of 2021. That would be approximately 18 months after Apple debuted the AirPods Pro design in 2019.
A decade ago, Berkshire Hathaway founder Warren Buffett said he just didn’t get Apple. Today, Apple shares make up some 43% of Berkshire Hathaway’s entire stock portfolio, according to a report from Motley Fool.
The firm’s 245 million Apple shares have increased in value by more than $55 billion since the start of 2019 to be worth upward of $91 billion. Still, from an investor’s perspective, it makes you wonder whether you’d be better off simply investing in AAPL itself, rather than paying a fund manager!
The United States is considering banning TikTok and other Chinese social media apps, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Speaking with Fox News, Pompeo said “we are certainly looking” at such a ban. When asked if people should download the app, Pompeo said, “Only if you want your private information in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Apple retained its second place spot for the fifth year running on the world’s most valuable brands list compiled by branding valuation company BrandZ.
The firm values Apple’s brand at $352.2 billion. Unlike a market cap, which values the business as a whole, this brand valuation is designed to assess the value of the branding itself.
Apple is “assessing” a new Hong Kong security law that could make protest a crime, claims Bloomberg.
The newly passed National Security Law criminalizes acts of secession (breaking away from China), undermining power and authority of the government, the use of violence or intimidation, and collusion with foreign or external forces.
China says that it was return stability to Hong Kong, although critics of the new law worry that it will negatively affect freedom of speech and protest.
Tim Cook’s testimony in front of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee antitrust investigation committee will take place on July 27 at midday EST. The hearing, which will be live-streamed, will be accompanied by similar testimonies from Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sundar Pichai of Google, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.
The title of the investigatory hearings is “Online Platforms and Market Power” with a focus on “Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple.”
Pokémon Go turns 4 today and, while it might not be the shiny new toy of the App Store anymore, it’s not showing signs of slowing down, either.
The AR Poké-spotting game just passed $3.6 billion in global player spending, according to leading app analytics platform Sensor Tower. Of that, almost $1.7 billion — or 46.4% of the total revenue — came from the App Store.
Reddit is fixing its iOS app after an iOS 14 beta tester discovered that the app was copying the contents from users’ clipboards.
The clipboard copying appears to have been an accident. In a statement to The Verge, a Reddit spokesperson blamed the problem on a dodgy line of code:
Tom Hanks made a few not-so-flattering comments about the “Apple overlords” in an interview about his new World War II movie Greyhound. The film, which was originally supposed to launch in theaters, was pulled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, it will premiere on Apple TV+ this Friday.
In an interview with The Guardian, Hanks describes the shift to Apple TV+ as “an absolute heartbreak.” He also spills the beans on one of Apple’s slightly unusual requests for his press interviews.
Apple’s “Made in LDN” Today at Apple program will kick off later this month, after Today at Apple sessions were canceled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Because of the continuing effects of coronavirus, the sessions will take place online, rather than in Apple Stores.
The Made in LDN sessions are aimed at teaching skills to young musical artists, aged 16-25, in London. They will run from July 27 through August 28. Registration kicks off today.
Apple chipmaker TSMC is reportedly preparing 80 million A14 chips for the next-gen iPhone 12, claims regular Apple leaker l0vetodream.
Interestingly, this follows a recent report suggesting that certain iPhone orders have been cut in half. If accurate, it suggests that Apple has some very high hopes for the iPhone 12.
Apple contract manufacturer Foxconn has successfully resolved an issue that was stopping its component shipments from China being imported to India, amid tensions between the two nations.
Customs officials were holding shipments from China following violent incidents at the Himalayan border, which is shared by China and India. This was reportedly causing problems for Foxconn, which carries out iPhone manufacturing (among other things) in both countries.
The makers of the “high-end” camera lens arrays used in the iPhone 12 will reportedly start shipping them in mid-July, says reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo in a research note published Friday.
Kuo doesn’t deal exactly what these new lenses consist of. However, he has previously suggested that the iPhone 12 will feature seven-element lenses that will offer superior image quality to the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro due to increased light transmission rate.
A group of digital advertising associations in Europe have taken issue with Apple’s plan to offer users notifications on which apps track them to offer personalized ads.
At WWDC 2020, Apple announced new tools for iOS and iPadOS that let users better control which apps track them by asking for permission in the form of pop-up messages. The next versions of the iPhone and iPad operating systems will reveal to users what type of data different apps collect. But the digital advertising companies say that this could carry a “high risk of user refusal.”
Londoner David William Hearn is not a trained programmer. He has no university education when it comes to making software. And yet his musical notation app for iPad, StaffPad, just won a coveted Apple Design Award this week.
The iPad app gives composers and conductors powerful tools for writing and tweaking musical scores, and for sharing their changes instantly with musicians on a stage or in a recording studio. StaffPad places the iPad and Apple Pencil squarely in the center of the collaborative creative process.
Here’s how Hearn and his team created their award-winning music-notation app.
Total App Store spending surged to a massive $32.8 billion in the first half of 2020, combining money spent on premium downloads, subscriptions, and in-app purchases, a recent blog post from app analytics firm Sensor Tower suggests.
Not only is that an enormous amount of cash, but it’s also close to double the estimated gross revenue spent in the Google Play store, despite the bigger market share enjoyed by Android. User spending on Google Play reportedly hit $17.3 billion in the first half of the year.
Apple is giving out a free $50 to any new Apple Card users who use their fancy credit card to sign up to an Apple subscription service like Apple Music, Apple News+ or Apple TV+, or to spend money in the App Store.
The sign-up deal runs through the end of July. It applies to customers who are spending money on one of Apple’s services using their Apple-branded credit card for the first time.
Apple TV+ reportedly made big inroads while users were stuck home during the coronavirus lockdown, a recent study by Parks Associates claims.
The research firm notes that more than two in five U.S. households with broadband have trialed a streaming video service during lockdown. A surprisingly large 8% of households have trialed four or more. Among new subscribers to TV streaming services, Apple TV+ was sampled by 27% of households, the report states.
“Hey Siri” can be inadvertently activated by other wake words including “A city,” “Hey Jerry,” and more, reveal researchers from Germany’s Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the Bochum Max Planck Institute.
Siri’s far from the only voice assistant with a weakness when it comes to false triggers, however. The study compiled a list of over 1,000 words that can accidentally activate different A.I. assistants.
