Luke Dormehl - page 81

Apple supplier Wistron has plans to assemble printed circuit boards for future iPhones at a new plant in southern India, a new report claims.

Wistron already manufactures iPhone 6s and 7 models in India. It started out manufacturing iPhones for the Indian market by building iPhone SE modes in 2017.

Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue was spotted with rock legend Paul McCartney at Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Cue is probably Apple’s most famous sports fan. He also oversees products including Apple Music. Hanging out watching sport with one of the biggest icons in the history of music would surely be a pretty big win, then!

Apple Arcade got a publicity boost over the weekend when Apple transformed the prime real estate of its U.S. website into a fun ad for the gaming service. The promo playfully incorporates animated Apple Arcade characters — including Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog — into the usual publicity shots for devices like the iPhone 11.

Apple took a proverbial sledgehammer to the Unofficial Apple Archive, an online collection of more than 15,000 classic Apple ads and assorted other materials, last weekend. Cupertino’s legal team issued a slew of takedown notices to Vimeo and the Unofficial Apple Archive’s host provider, Squarespace, resulting in thousands of vintage Apple ads vanishing in the blink of an eye.

While I understand the reason for the takedowns, I really, really wish Apple hadn’t tried to wipe the ads off the internet. Fortunately, Apple could set things straight — by embracing both its past and its most ardent fans.

Beleaguered Apple display-maker Japan Display revealed Friday that it has agreed a $918.87 million bailout deal that will throw it a major lifeline as it attempts to claw its way back to profitability.

The money comes for Japanese investment fund, Ichigo Asset Management. Ichigo’s CEO will become Japan Display’s new chairman, while the deal will make Ichigo the company’s largest shareholder.

The tax rules need rewriting for the digital age, and finally the world’s governments are doing something about it. On Friday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation announced that 137 governments around the world have agreed to launch a rewrite of tax rules for multinational companies the digital age.

Tax officials from the countries in question have agreed to meet in Paris for negotiations about how this might work. The aim is to crack down on the kind of tax avoidance that can happen when multinationals shuttle their profits around to different countries.

For the second week in a row, Apple TV+ has had a quiet Friday — with zero new content uploaded to the streaming service.

By comparison, this week Netflix debuted seven new series including Next in Fashion, Ragnarok and a sixth season of BoJack Horseman. Disney+, meanwhile, delivered new episodes of Diary of a Future President and Marvel Hero Project, exclusive short Lamp Life and the 2019 Lion King remake.

Apple’s two-factor verifications have greatly increased security for users. Now Apple wants to make the process more streamlined by standardizing the format of SMS messages which contain one-time passcodes.

Apple WebKit engineers explained the proposal on online code repository GitHub. Alongside Apple, the project also has the support of Google Chromium engineers. Mozilla’s Firefox has yet to get on board.

Amazon has pipped Apple and Google to the no. 1 spot in this year’s Brand Finance Global 500 ranking.

The somewhat unorthodox ranking system looks at the world’s 500 most valuable brands across all sectors and countries. It then assigns a “brand value” based on a royalty rate that companies could get for licensing their name in the open market.

A draft bill by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham could possibly land Apple and assorted other tech giants with major lawsuits. The proposal would potentially affect tech companies who offer services with strong encryption.

It asks the government to come up with a list of best practices for tech companies to prevent cases child exploitation and abuse. That could mean banning such encryption, and making tech companies more responsible if their services are used to share these materials.

For most people, tap and swipe-based gestures are the perfect way to navigate on an iPad. That’s not true for everyone, however. This is why the makers of a new eye-tracking system called Skyle have developed this innovative iPad Pro accessory.

Built with the accessibility audience in mind, the system lets users insert their 12.9-inch iPad Pro into a smart protective case, plug in an eye tracker, and then use a special Skyle app to navigate their iPad with nothing more than well-placed glances.

Apple TV+ is adding Damages and Bridesmaids star Rose Byrne to its growing stable of stars. The streaming service is reportedly “preparing to give a series order” to a new series titled Physical, starring Byrne.

The show, which will blend comedic and drama elements, is set in a 1980s SoCal beach community. Rose Byrne plays a housewife who finds new fulfilment in the world of aerobics.

According to Tim Cook, users won’t see any ads on Apple TV+ anytime soon. Or ever.

“For the TV+ business, we feel strongly that what that customer wants is an ad-free product,” Cook said during Tuesday’s record-breaking Apple earnings call. Considering how much money Apple could rake in from advertising, that’s leaving a lot of cash on the table. But it’s also completely the right thing to do.

The iPhone 11 reportedly accounted for a massive 1 out of 10 of all smartphones sold in Europe and the United States during the last quarter of 2019. The iPhone also made market share gains in every major market — including the big five European countries, the US, China, Japan, and Australia.

As if people needed another reason to be wowed by Apple after its blow away earnings call Tuesday!

Apple has reduced the price of HomePod to $280, a further reduction on the $349 it charged initially for its smart speaker. Unfortunately, you’ll have to be living in India to take advantage of it.

Having released the HomePod in 2018 in the United States, Apple has finally launched it in India. This heavily populated market is comparable in size to China. However, Apple has not yet been able to make too many inroads in terms of sales.

Nintendo’s mobile games have pulled in more than $1 billion in revenue from global player spending, new data published by mobile analytics firm Sensor Tower suggests.

Nintendo currently has six mobile games, which have received a total of 452 million downloads worldwide. The biggest earner, accounting for 61% of mobile revenue, is the RPG game Fire Emblem Heroes.

Next time you’re shooting an iPhone video, be glad you’re not shooting in waist-deep snow in freezing conditions. That was the challenge posed to Joe Carlino, the intrepid videographer behind Apple’s latest “Shot on iPhone” promo.

The ad, which dropped yesterday, shows four pro snowboarders doing their thing in the wilds of British Columbia. Cult of Mac spoke with Carlino about how the ad came about, and the pros and cons of shooting on iPhone in inhospitable conditions.

A new iOS app lets users simultaneously record video using multiple iPhone cameras. DoubleTake is created by the makers of popular camera app Filmic Pro.

In the words of the app’s makers, DoubleTake transforms your phone into a multi-cam studio — although you’ll need to be running an iPhone XR, XS, or iPhone 11 to be able to use it.

Apple reportedly wants its suppliers to manufacture more than 80 million iPhones in the first half of 2020, a new report from Nikkei claims. If those figures are accurate, it would mean ramping up iPhone production by more than 10% compared to last year.

These units would mostly be Apple’s current-gen iPhone 11 series units. However, there would reportedly also be up to 15 million of the new iPhone SE 2 low-cost device Apple will supposedly introduce in March.

Apple will be among the companies represented at a meeting today, hosted by a group that’s supporting the Department of Health and Human Services’ efforts to make it easier for patients to access and share their health data.

The organizers are nonpartisan group Carin Alliance. More than 40 people representing some of the biggest companies in the industry will attend in-person or on the phone. Apple’s representative is Ricky Bloomfield, a doctor with expertise in HealthKit and ResearchKit, who joined Apple in 2016.

Apple has debuted a new snowboarding “Shot on iPhone” video and, well, it’s pretty darn impressive. Photographed by sports videographer Joe Carlino, the ad depicts four snowboarders as they do their thing in British Columbia, Canada.

“Follow past and present Winter X Games snowboarding competitors Red Gerard, Danny Davis, Kimmy Fasani, and Ben Ferguson as they explore untouched powder in the backcountry of the British Columbia Interior at the legendary Baldface Lodge,” the description reads. Check out the video below. You won’t regret it.

An Apple-friendly CEO may be the reason Apple patched up its relationship with mobile GPU maker Imagination Technologies, a new report from the Telegraph newspaper suggests.

The publication features an interview with CEO Ron Black. Black took over as CEO and President of Imagination in 2018, one year after Apple and the chipmaker fell out, causing shares to plummet.

Tim Cook shared a tribute to Kobe Bryant Sunday after the NBA legend’s death at the age of 41 in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California. Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, was also killed in the crash, alongside seven others.

“Devastated and heartbroken by the passing of Kobe Bryant,” Cook wrote. “I admired his athletic prowess from afar and his humanity close up. He was an original. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends and fans. RIP.”

A new analyst report suggests 33.6 million customers were ready and waiting to subscribe to Apple TV+ before its November launch and estimates that number could grow to 40 million subscribers by the end of this year.

If accurate, the numbers from TV industry market analyst Ampere Analysis would put Apple TV+ ahead of Hulu and Disney+, and already at more than 50% of Netflix in the United States.

An estimated 12,000 people can comfortably work together in Apple Park. But Apple’s a big company — and 12,000 people is only a drop in the ocean.

For that reason, Apple has leased six floors in a nearby office building, just six minutes’ drive from its enormous circular headquarters at One Apple Park Way.