News - page 384

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation called Facebook’s anti-Apple attack ads “a laughable [attempt] … to distract [users] from its poor track record of anticompetitive behavior and privacy issues” in an article published Friday.

Facebook lashed out at Apple last week with two full-page newspaper ads. The campaign targeted Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency feature, which fills users in on which apps are tracking them. Facebook claims the change will hurt small businesses by making it tougher for them to use targeted ads.

Apple revealed over the weekend that it is once again shuttering some of its stores as COVID-19 cases continue to climb. All 53 Apple Stores in the company’s home state of California, alongside those in Mexico, Brazil and London will shut their doors temporarily.

Apple has not announced when they will reopen. In the United Kingdom, nonessential stores in Greater London are closed until at least December 30, when guidance will be reviewed.

Apple has temporarily stopped working with Wistron, the iPhone supplier that this month had riots break out at its Indian factory due to alleged mistreatment of employees.

In a statement, Apple said that it has put the manufacturer on probation. It will not receive new Apple business until it has carried out corrective actions.

So far, 2020 has been a total Grinch. Find a little fun with these new and recently updated apps, which will guide you to Christmas light shows, plunge you into Marvel superhero brawls and even boost your darts game.

Plus, Canadian CBD connoisseurs can gain access to all the latest info on what’s available and where. And iPhone 12 Pro/Max owners can see in the dark.

Between AirPods Max and Apple Fitness+, this was one big week for Apple. The company continues to expand its sprawling, intertwined empire of hardware, software and services — and these new entries look like winners.

Read our dueling reviews for insight into how the high-end headphones and the subscription fitness service compare to rivals. You’ll find them, along with a load of helpful Apple how-tos and the week’s top news stories, in this week’s free issue of Cult of Mac Magazine. Download it now for your iOS device. Or use the links below to get to the stories on the web.

Apple reportedly isn’t prepping a iPad Pro with an OLED display in 2021. This counters a report from several weeks ago that said an iPadOS tablet with the advanced screen is in development.

All iPads use traditional LEDs, but that might change in the coming year. What the new type of display will be is still up in the air, though.

The state government in Karnataka, India found multiple labor law violations at the iPhone factory where workers rioted last weekend, a new report claims.

The riot took place at a Wistron factory. It resulted in $7 million of damage, with thousands of iPhones stolen during the protest. The government report — from the Department of Factories, Boilers, Industrial Safety and Health — says that underpayment of wages, poor factory conditions, and irregular hours were all common at the plant.

The App Store has been one of the main focuses when it comes to Apple and potential antitrust violations. However, Apple Pay could also be a rising vulnerability for Apple as it defends itself against accusations of monopolistic behavior, the Financial Times notes.

According to the report, citing Loup Ventures analysts, Apple Pay is now used by 507 million people. That’s around half of the people in thee world who own an iPhone. By 2025, Bernstein analysts think it could facilitate one in every 10 credit card transactions worldwide. Of these, Apple gets an estimated 0.15% of each transaction.

The new AirPods Max headphones have plenty going for them. But “easy to take apart” apparently isn’t among their positive attributes.

Our friends over at iFixit have published the first installment of their AirPods Max teardown and — while it’s too early to know for certain whether these are going to any more repairable than the significantly tinier AirPods and AirPods Pro — the early signs show that they’re not particularly easy to gain access to.

At least in some ways, TikTok has had a blinder of a year in 2020 — being one of, if not the, the most consistently popular app in the App Store on a monthly basis, as well as enjoying the best single quarter of any app ever.

According to app analytics platform Sensor Tower, it’s picked up another record, too: That of the top 10 most downloaded iOS app of the year with the highest percentage of positive reviews. It seems that people really, really like their TikTok.

Coronavirus cases continue to spike around the U.S. and the world — and the set of Apple TV+ shows is no exception. With several positive COVID-19 tests having been reported on the set of Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, the show creator and one of its lead actors Rob McElhenney sent out a message to staff, Variety reports.

But not everyone was happy about it.

Superstar Samuel L. Jackson will take the lead in The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, a limited series coming to Apple TV+. The show is being adapted from a novel about a dying man getting a revival of his youth.

Earlier in 2020, Jackson appeared in The Banker, the first movie on Apple TV+.

The next star-powered movie on Apple TV+ will put Justin Timberlake in the spotlight. He’ll star in Palmer as a former prisoner determined to put his life back together. The film will debut on Apple’s streaming service in late January.

Watch a trailer now:

AirPods Max are controversial for a number of reasons. For one, there’s the $550 price tag. But the odd-looking case Apple designed for these over-the-ear headphones also drew plenty of mockery.

The designers of AirPods Max defended their creation in an interview published Thursday.

Watch Strap Co’s impressive lineup of high-end Apple Watch bands is now available from the Cult of Mac Store. There are great nylon, leather, and stainless steel options to choose from — all brilliantly made and available in a range of color options.

We couldn’t be more delighted to have added them to our collection, and we think you’ll love them just as much as we do.

Oscar winner Jared Leto could play Adam Neumann, boss of WeWork, in an Apple TV+ series about the rise and fall of the shared workspace startup.

At one point in time, WeWork had an estimated value of $47 billion, before it collapsed. Neumann served as WeWork’s CEO from 2010 through 2019, before finally being pressured into resigning. A Wall Street Journal article last year cited his “eccentric behavior” as one of the reasons he was pushed to step down.

Apple TV+ executives are reportedly in “prolonged conversations” to acquire two movies produced by former Pixar and Walt Disney chief creative officer John Lasseter.

The movies could be part of a larger agreement between Apple and the company Skydance Animation, which Lasseter heads up. Lasseter is one of the most successful creators in animation history. He played a key role in creating the Toy Story franchise, The Incredibles movies, Finding Dory, Frozen and more.

Facebook has launched its second, blistering full-page ad against Apple, one day after it took it to task in The New York Times and elsewhere for allegedly hurting small businesses.

The new ad, which will appear in today’s papers, is titled “Apple vs. the free internet.” Here’s what it says:

Facebook is supporting Fortnite maker Epic Games in its lawsuit against Apple, marking another low in the relationship between the two tech giants.

According to Steve Satterfield, a director of privacy and public policy at Facebook, the social network company thinks that it is, “really important that the court understand far reaching impact of Apple’s unfair policies.”

Never one to rest on its laurels, Apple already seeded the first betas of iOS 14.4 and iPadOS 14.4. And that’s not all. watchOS 7.3 beta 1 and tvOS 14.4 beta 1 are also up for testing.

If that wasn’t enough, macOS Big Sur 11.2 is included in this rush of fresh pre-release versions, too.

Four out of five iPhones released in the past four years run iOS 14, according to Apple. That’s despite the operating system version only being available for three months. And iOS 14 adoption is well ahead of where iOS 13 was at this point last year.

Nearly as many iPad users have upgraded to iPadOS 14.

Google followed through with a promise to make its Stadia cloud-gaming service available for iPhone and iPad. On Wednesday, the company starting the process of giving Apple mobile devices access to console-quality games, including Cyberpunk 2077.

But don’t look to the Stadia application in the App Store — the subscription service must be played through a web app.

Users of the Chromecast with Google TV will soon be able to install the Apple TV app. That’ll bring access to Apple’s streaming video service, along with series like Ted Lasso and movies like Wolfwalkers.

This is part of Apple’s efforts to get its video app on as many platforms as possible. Going beyond iPhone Mac, the video software is already on multiple smart TVs, game consoles and more.

Apple employees donated their time and money in record quantities in 2020, a year that hasn’t exactly been the best in living memory. Apple’s Giving Program, which matches employee donations and volunteered hours with monetary donations to the size charity, saw plenty of action.

While Apple doesn’t provide exact figures for the year, it notes that — since the program’s inception in 2011 — Apple employees have raised close to $600 million in total donations to more than 34,000 organizations. Along the way, employees have volunteered a massive 1.6 million hours of their time.

Apple has released the first trailer for its upcoming Billie Eilish documentary, The World’s A Little Blurry.

The documentary, which Apple reportedly paid $25 million to acquire, will debut on Apple TV+ February 26. The trailer depicts Eilish in her regular home life, on stage, and also shows off home video of the pop star as a kid. Check it out below.