The U.K. government, which clashed with Apple and Google over its approach to contact tracing, has reportedly done a U-turn and will now adopt the tech giants’ privacy-conscious framework for fighting COVID-19.
The BBC reported the change of heart Thursday, one day after revealing that a former Apple executive, Simon Thompson, has taken charge of the delayed project. Thompson, who works as chief product officer at online retailer Ocado, supervised Apple’s e-commerce efforts a decade ago.
Apple has officially started offering its Mac trade-in program at Apple Stores in the U.S. and Canada. Apple has long offered trade-ins for credit toward a new purchase or a gift card for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Store. However, until now Mac trade-ins were limited to online-only. That meant that people had to mail in their Mac to Apple.
By making this available in its retail stores, it makes it easier than ever to trade your old Mac.
Ben Hess is a professional cinematographer — and he has the gear to prove it. He rocks an iMac Pro that’s hooked up to a 27-inch LG 5K UltraFine Monitor, giving him acres of premium screen real estate.
But the highlight of this rig is not the $5,000 computer or the $1,300 screen. It’s his $27,000 Red Gemini Camera and $5,000 lens. Hess comes to play. The Red Gemini is top-shelf, and an Atlas anamorphic lens gives him the eye of a hawk.
Anker boasts that the just-released PowerExpand Elite hub lets you “connect everything imaginable,” and there’s a certain amount of justification. This accessory has no less that 13 ports. There’s Thunderbolt 3, USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, audio ports, memory card readers, and more.
The company also launched on Wednesday the Anker PowerExpand, which “only” has seven ports of a range of types.
In 1983, novelist Wallace Stegner said “the National Parks are the best idea we ever had.” He certainly has a point. National Parks are treasured by pretty much everybody.
As if Twitter wasn’t noisy enough, it soon will let certain users post audio tweets. The new feature, which Twitter is testing exclusively on iOS devices, will let users talk for up to 140 seconds.
Twitter says the voice tweets will “add a more human touch” to the service.
Zoom promised on Wednesday to make end-to-end encryption an option for all users, not just paying ones.
This video conferencing app became incredibly popular during the COVID-19 epidemic. But it also drew criticism for weak security.
Zoom worked quickly to fix that, but again faced complaints when the company decided that end-to-end encryption would only be for paying customers. That’s a decision it changed today.
Apple’s educational summer camps for children are moving online. They’ve been redubbed Apple Camp at Home.
In previous years, Apple Camps were held in the company’s retail stores. But this year, they’ll be teaching video, art and design, and coding through a self-guided Activity Book and virtual sessions.
U.S. lawmakers want to talk to the CEOs of the biggest tech firms. And the heads of Amazon, Facebook and Google said they‘re willing to testify in the House of Representatives’s probe into antitrust activities. Apple, on the other hand, reportedly told Congress that it’s willing to send a senior executive, but stopped short of promising that would be CEO Tim Cook.
The exclusive WWDC 2020 jackets that Apple sent to winners of its Swift Student Challenge feature a nifty plaid pattern made of emojis.
Brayden Gogis, a 16-year-old game developer who lives in Indianapolis, is one of 350 winners in this year’s youth coding competition. He described the experience of unwrapping his Apple prize package — and gave us a closer look at the unique emoji pattern.
A Siri Shortcut activated by the phrase “Hey, Siri, I’m being pulled over” could prove valuable in the event of a police traffic stop. The shortcut triggers your iPhone to start recording video from its front-facing camera, pauses any music, sends your location to a trusted contact, and uploads the video to iCloud or another cloud server of your choice.
The shortcut is designed to help protect users during interactions with law enforcement.
Apple stock has already recovered to its pre-coronavirus lockdown levels, but according to two investment firms much larger gains are on the horizon.
Speaking with CNBC, Todd Gordon, managing director at Ascent Wealth Partners, argued that Apple could be set to rally an additional 40% from its current share price. That would take Apple to $490 — or $135 above its $355 all-time high.
One of the creators of newly launched email service Hey accuses Apple of behaving like gangsters by allegedly threatening to remove the app from the App Store if it did not start selling its premium subscription through Apple’s platform — thereby giving Apple a cut of the profits.
“Like any good mafioso, they paid us a visit by phone,” Basecamp CTO David Heinemeier Hansson wrote in a long Twitter thread. “…[W]ithout even as much of a curtesy euphemism, [Apple said] they’d burn down our store (remove our app!), lest we paid up.”
Christie Smith, Apple’s vice president of inclusion and diversity, has left the company after two-and-a-half years in the role. Smith worked under Apple’s SVP of Retail and People Deirdre O’Brien.
Smith’s departure was reported by Bloomberg and confirmed by Apple. Her departure had been planned for a couple of months, but Tuesday was her last day.
Apple has posted the YouTube live stream link that will allow viewers to tune in to its WWDC 2020 keynote next week.
The June 22 event will kick off at 10 a.m. Pacific, streaming directly from Apple Park. This is the second time Apple has streamed a special event on YouTube, following last year’s iPhone unveiling.
Last week, a new job forced Ollie Parker to build his work-from-home setup. No small task, but the British accountant made the most of it and he quickly whipped up a cozy setup great for grinding.
“I just finished the build of it all last week as I started a new job working from home,” he said. “And then I have my Xbox connected and play some Warzone in my spare time.”
The heart of Parker’s setup is a 2019 MacBook Pro attached to a 34-inch LG UltraWide Curved Monitor mounted on a Humanscale MW Monitor Arm.
Artists can use an iPad or iPhone to create augmented reality experiences with Adobe Aero. And today the software added support for embedding audio into AR experiences. It’s now possible to add sound effects to virtual objects overlaid on the real world by this app.
Aero is free, and is intended for creatives not coders.
The studio that created Oscar-nominated The Secret of Kells will bring its latest animated feature to Apple TV+ before the end of 2020. Wolfwalkers is set in medieval Ireland, and tells the story of two girls who transform into wolves.
Travelers looking for a lightweight external monitor for their MacBook can turn to AirTab. This comes in at only 1.1 pounds and 0.19 inches thick.
And the AirTab Touch adds a 10-point touchscreen without increasing the bulk.
Apple has reportedly picked up international broadcasting rights for Tehran, a spy drama about a young Israeli agent trying to destroy an Iranian nuclear reactor.
The eight-episode Israeli series, created and written by Moshe Zonder (Netflix’s Fauda), could be coming to Apple TV+ very soon.
A Chinese video sharing app which ripped off was heavily inspired by TikTok in its design has been booted out of the App Store, shortly after it was removed from the Google Play Store due to reports of plagiarism.
Zynn not only closely resembled TikTok in its design, but also in much of its content. A previous report from Wired claimed that many popular TikTok users have had their content (and even knockoff user profiles) shared on the rival app. That didn’t go over well!
Stories picked by Apple News’ human editors are far more likely to represent a diverse range of outlets — and be more serious and less focused on celebrities and entertainment — than its algorithmically curated alternative, researchers claim.
Jack Bandy and Nicholas Diakopoulos from Northwestern University analyzed thousands of Apple’s “Top Stories” and “Trending” articles over a 10-month period. They discovered that the latter, which are determined algorithmically, show stories from significantly fewer outlets, predominantly CNN or Fox News. Articles from BuzzFeed and People also figured heavily in the mix — with an emphasis on light news.
Apple says that it is disappointed to be targeted in two new antitrust investigations by the European Union. The two antitrust investigations, into both the App Store and Apple Pay, were announced Tuesday.
“It’s disappointing the European Commission is advancing baseless complaints from a handful of companies who simply want a free ride, and don’t want to play by the same rules as everyone else,” Apple told Reuters in a statement. “We don’t think that’s right — we want to maintain a level playing field where anyone with determination and a great idea can succeed.”
According to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, Apple has overcome whatever delays it faced in manufacturing the iPhone 12 and, as of now, the devices should debut in September as planned. Shipping would take place early the next month.
While that’s marginally later than last year’s launch date, it suggests that Apple has managed to claw back its schedule after coronavirus rocked the supply chain earlier this year.
Apple faces another antitrust complaint in the European Union, this time from Japanese tech company Rakuten. The anti-competition complaint relates to Apple’s e-book business, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.
In response, the EU opened an official investigation into the App Store. On Tuesday, EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said the government will scrutinize Cupertino’s business practices. “We need to ensure that Apple’s rules do not distort competition in markets where Apple is competing with other app developers, for example with its music streaming service Apple Music or with Apple Books,” Vestager said. “I have therefore decided to take a close look at Apple’s App Store rules and their compliance with EU competition rules.”