News - page 435

In the space of three short months, Jon Prosser went from an obscure YouTube nobody pumping out videos barely anyone watched to becoming one of the hottest Apple reporters on the internet.

On Twitter and YouTube, he’s unspooled a string of accurate predictions, including the exact dates and launch times of two of Apple’s newest products, the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the 2020 iPhone SE. That’s no mean feat, given Apple’s obsessive secrecy.

Prosser’s latest leak — revealed on last week’s episode of Cult of Mac’s podcast, The CultCast — claims Apple is working on a special pair of Steve Jobs Heritage Edition AR glasses. That wild revelation drew skepticism from none other than über-Apple reporter Mark Gurman.

“Do I even need to say that this (along with the rest of the Apple AR glasses stories in the past week) is complete fiction?” Gurman tweeted.

Jon Prosser makes headlines

Perhaps Gurman, who made his bones at 9to5Mac before moving up to Bloomberg, is feeling the heat. Prosser is starting to nip at his heels.

Tile, a startup that makes location-aware tracking tags, told the European Commission’s Competition department that Apple isn’t playing fair. It claims the iPhone maker has moved to “completely disadvantage” its smaller rival, even as Apple prepares to launch its own tracking tags.

The accessory maker told the U.S. government the same thing earlier this year.

Apple reportedly placed multiple rush orders for iPad screens with LG Display. The tablet saw increased demand in Asia this quarter, with COVID-19 forcing so many people to attend classes and work from home.

This week on The CultCast: AirPods with new sensors could be on the horizon, and that would fit perfectly with Apple’s always-on approach to health. Find out why we can’t wait for in-ear health trackers. Or for Apple to revamp the musty Messages app for Mac.

Plus, we discuss the aftermath of last week’s controversial chat with hotshot Apple leaker, Jon Prosser. And finally, Cult of Mac TV reviewer Scout Tafoya tells us why you probably ought to queue up Defending Jacob (and why you might want to skip Central Park).

Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. Easily create a beautiful website all by yourself, at Squarespace.com/cultcast. Use offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

If nautical nonsense be something you wish, then drop on the deck and download SpongeBob: Patty Pursuit, a side-scroller that debuted Friday on Apple Arcade.

Apple’s latest Apple Pay promo will get you 30% off custom sunglasses or eyeglasses from leading brand Ray-Ban.

Since prices for glasses are over $100, that means a saving of at least 30 bucks. Not bad, considering all you need to do is pay online using Apple Pay, and use a special code.

A federal judge has thrown out a copyright lawsuit against Apple and director M. Night Shyamalan claiming that Apple TV+ series Servant stole its core idea from a 2013 independent movie.

As with the spooky Servant, the movie The Truth About Emanuel is the story of a traumatized parent who hires a babysitter to look after a baby that (spoiler alert) turns out to actually be a doll.

Apple has started selling officially refurbished iPhone XR models in the Apple Online Store. The handsets are available in 64GB, 128GB, and the discontinued 256GB storage options — for about $100 to $120 less than their current selling price.

Apple remains the king of the wearables, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker, published Thursday. In total, the analytics firm claims that total device shipments for all wearables hit 72.6 million in the first three months of 2020. Of these, Apple shipped 21.2 million units.

Apple Watch remains the world’s no. 1 smart watch by a wide margin. However, shipments declined as a result of coronavirus-related challenges in the supply chain. Nonetheless, the continuing might of Apple’s AirPods — helped by Apple’s Beats “hearables” — was more than enough to offset the decline.

Days after Twitter labeled a Tweet by President Trump as false, Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that seeks to overturn liability protections for social media services.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the president’s most powerful political opponent, called the move “a desperate distraction” on the day U.S. deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic reached 100,000.

Apple nipped a 8-episode biography of Hedy Lamarr away from Showtime. The drama will star Gal Gadot as the 20th-century actress who was also an inventor who helped lay the groundwork for some of today’s wireless technologies.

The show will appear on Apple TV+, the company’s streaming video service that’s taking on the likes of Netflix and Disney+.

A protester wrote a cryptic message on the window of the Apple Store in Tigard, Oregon, on Wednesday, and left a mysterious package. Police shut down the shopping center and sent in the bomb squad.

Fortunately, the bundle at the center of the furor turned out to be a non-dangerous bag of apples.

Scientists want to know if the health data an Apple Watch collects can be used to diagnose COVID-19. There are multiple research studies currently open to those with Apple’s wearable.

Participants contribute to the goal of detecting the illness before the wearer knows they’re sick.

Apple continues to lag behind when it comes to machine learning — and voice-to-text transcription on the iPhone is just one more example of this.

In a new video posted online by journalist James Chan, the iPhone’s speech transcription skills are put up against Alphabet’s Pixel smartphone. Not only is Apple’s version significantly slower, but it’s a whole lot less accurate, to boot.

Alongside the physical health concerns during COVID-19, there’s been a massive uptick in mental health issues like anxiety. Those worries are highlighted by a big surge in mental wellness mobile app downloads, as noted in a new report from app analytics firm Sensor Tower.

The firm notes that the top 10 mental wellness apps experienced a big increase in downloads in April from the pre-lockdown January 2020. In all, apps like Calm, Headspace and Meditopia racked up a total of 10 million downloads last month.

The Apple Watch Leather Loop strap could be getting a redesign for this year’s Apple Watch Series 6. According to images posted to Reddit on Wednesday, the redesigned bands will come in (at least) black, blue, red and brown color options.

Unlike the existing Leather Loop straps, the new ones appear to have an additional accent color that runs down the edge of certain straps. It’s definitely a nice touch, design-wise — although there’s no guarantee that these are legit.

Want to own the home of a former Apple CEO? Wouldn’t we all? Unfortunately, you’ll need to pony up $37.5 million to do so.

Belonging to Mike Markkula, the angel investor who played a critical role in Apple’s early days, the ranch is the largest single landholding in Central California’s Carmel Valley. Markkula reportedly purchased it in 1982 for $8 million. He’s been trying to sell it since at least 2013 — and has dropped the price substantially during that time.

A video by the listing agency, Hall and Hall, lets you take a look around.

The next game headed for Apple Arcade involves a certain pants-wearing sponge. A short preview video on Wednesday teased the upcoming Apple Arcade release of SpongeBob: Patty Pursuit.

Watch it now:

Apple has seemingly beaten Netflix to fund Martin Scorsese’s next movie Killers of the Flower Moon, Deadline reported late Wednesday.

The forthcoming Apple Original movie will feature Scorsese regulars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in the lead roles.

A MacBook Pro runs this triathlete’s setup. Brice Van Der Post is always on the go so it makes sense that he uses a laptop to power his rig, instead of being chained down by a desktop.

The highlight of this desk might actually be the desk itself. Since Van Der Post works for a furniture company, his factory custom-built the desk for him. The 70×30-inch unfinished teak top gives him ample space for his work. It is also a great canvas for all of the tech on it.

He has a 34-inch LG UltraWide Curved Monitor, which continues to make frequent appearances in our ‘Setups’ series, and a Logitech MX Master 2S, which is a multitasker’s dream mouse.

Van Der Post also has a pair of KRK studio monitors for audio, while a M-Audio AIR Hub take the speakers to the next level.

Apple purchased Inductiv, a Canadian company that focused on using artificial intelligence to clean up data. They created HoloClean, which was designed to get useful predictions from “noisy, incomplete, and erroneous data.”

The employees of Inductiv joined the team developing Siri, Apple’s voice-driven AI assistant, according to Bloomberg.

Today was supposed to be the day that NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX sent a manned mission to the International Space Station — the first launch from American soil in nine years, and the first manned rocket launch by a private company.

Instead, due to bad weather, the launch was scrubbed and rescheduled for Saturday afternoon. If it goes off as planned, some striking artwork by Tristan Eaton will accompany astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley into space.

The pieces Eaton made are called “Human Kind” and we are highlighting them for Wallpaper Wednesday.

iOS 14 will supposedly include Home screen widgets, and a concept artist dreamed up a design. His short video is sure to excite anyone who’s ready for their iPhone’s main screen to become more dynamic and informative.

Pokémon Go‘s Buddy feature gives you a, well, Poké buddy to go on adventures with, much like Pikachu was to Ash in the animated series.

Now, thanks to a new feature called Reality Blending, the experience is going to get even better — and a lot more glitch-free. If you haven’t seen it, check out the (weirdly tear-jerking) ad for the Buddy Adventure feature below, as well as details about how it’s been improved.

In what may be the most unlikely Apple lawsuit since Carl Sagan sued Apple for calling him a “butt-head,” Pablo Escobar’s brother (yes, that Pablo Escobar) has filed suit against the Cupertino tech giant over a FaceTime bug.