South of the Circle is a narrative adventure game that starts with a plane crash in Antarctica in 1964. Its animation style results from motion-captured performances from a cast of actors.

The story begins Friday on Apple Arcade, this company’s subscription gaming service.

The app economy has done well during the coronavirus pandemic but some categories have done better than others. According to a new report by app analytics platform Sensor Tower, one category of app that has done exceptionally well are home improvement apps.

In the United States, first-time installs of the top home improvement apps doubled year-over-year between the months of March and September. Monthly active users also grew by 35% during that time.

Mark Zuckerberg isn’t happy about an iOS 14 feature that will make it harder for developers and advertisers to track iPhone users — on the basis that the anti-tracking tech could hurt small businesses already struggling in the age of coronavirus.

In Thursday’s earnings call, the Facebook co-founder and CEO said that actions planned by Apple “could have a meaningful negative effect on small businesses and economic recovery in 2021 and beyond.”

Nothing beats the mind-to-hand connection of taking notes with pen and paper. At the same time, digital notes are superior in a number of ways: They take up no space, they don’t get lost, and they’re clean and legible no matter how bad your handwriting is.

Why not combine the best of both?

Apple has won another Emmy Award — but, no, it’s not for any of the great shows you’ll find on Apple TV+. Instead, on Thursday Apple was awarded an Engineering Emmy Award for its ProRes video codec, the high quality video compression format Apple developed — which is now standard issue in the movie business.

The award was given to Greg Wallace, director of video apps engineering at Apple. The awards show also featured a short video from Apple engineers Peter Chou and Mitchell Oslick. Check out the video below.

Apple’s celebrated spy drama Tehran reaches the end of the road Friday as the Apple TV+ airs its season finale.

The episode, titled “Five Hours Until the Bombing Run,” is one of three new shows on Apple TV+ this week. It means that, for the uninitiated, the entire series is now available for viewing. (Plus non-subscribers can tune in to watch the Halloween animated classic It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.)

COVID-19 both helped and hurt Apple earnings in the company’s most-recent financial quarter. CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri discussed the nitty-gritty details of the results Thursday. They also shared what’s really going on with Apple as it tries to keep releasing best-selling products in the middle of a pandemic that’s upended the world economy and ordinary people’s lives.

Here are seven things we learned from Apple’s Q4 2020 earnings call.

Apple pulled in more revenue last quarter than in any previous July-through-September period, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Growth came from sales of Mac and iPad, as well as revenue from services.

But iPhone revenue was down dramatically because of the delayed release of the iPhone 12 series. That hurt earnings significantly.

To get audiences primed for Wolfwalkers, Apple debuted on Thursday a “Legendary Prologue” for what will be first animated movie on Apple TV+. It introduces viewers to a medieval world where humans can transform into wolves.

Watch the video preview now.

Ahead of Apple postings its latest quarter results today, two of the company’s rivals — Samsung and Spotify — have published their own calendar Q3 results. And they’re good. But there’s a catch in both cases.

To put it mildly, 2020 hasn’t been the best year on record. It’s been a year that, at various times, makes you mad enough to throw things — like, err, bacon?

This oddball bacon-tossing concept is at the center of a game called *ahem* Bacon — The Game. Created by the excellent indie developer Philipp Stollenmayer (Sometimes You Die), it’s a strangely addicting game which I’ve played, off and on, for the past couple of years.

Today, Stollenmayer cranked up the crispiness by adding another 30 levels to the quirky game. If you’ve not played it before, this is a great time to give it a whirl. Or a toss.

Enjoy the biggest discount yet on Apple’s newest Powerbeats headphones, or save $50 on Powerbeats Pro with Amazon and Woot. These discounts won’t last long, so enjoy them while you can!

Apple was seemingly banking on the iPhone 12 being its most popular new handset this year. But it appears the company may have underestimated just how popular the new iPhone 12 Pro is with users.

According to Digitimes, Apple is ramping up orders for the LiDAR Scanner exclusive to the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max models.

Guitar sales are soaring during COVID-19 quarantines, and that makes perfect sense. What better way to spend time at home than learning an instrument? But not everyone is sitting on their duff all day, and traveling with a guitar can be a serious headache. This portable guitar trainer makes your music studies truly portable.

The iPhone 12 mini won’t ship until November 13, but a video doing the rounds on Chinese social media shows an unboxing of Apple’s new miniature iPhone. Well, kind of.

The joke video shows the unboxing of an impressively accurate, shrunk-down copy of Apple’s iPhone mini. It’s reminiscent of the tiny cellphone in 2001’s Ben Stiller comedy Zoolander. And it’s kind of awesome.

Apple temporarily shuttered its Apple Walnut Street retail store in Philadelphia as the city is rocked by protests and riots following the killing of a black man, Walter Wallace Jr., by police.

According to Apple’s website, the store is closed from now through at least November 4. An asterisk on the page lists this as “special store hours.”

According to Apple leaker Jon Prosser, Apple could almost double the storage of its current top-of-the-range iPhone — by introducing the first 1TB iPhone.

At present, Apple’s maximum iPhone storage option tops out at 512GB. The storage for Apple’s top iPhones has been capped at this figure for the past three years since the iPhone XS and XS Max. This year, the base option of the iPhone 12 Pro was doubled to 128GB from the minimum 64GB of the iPhone 11 Pro.

Weak iPhone sales likely pulled down Apple earnings in its last financial quarter. But the COVID-19 pandemic almost certainly pushed up demand for iPad and Mac. Still, total revenue is expected to be down slightly.

We’ll find out for sure Thursday when Cupertino announces its financial results from the July-through-September period.

Amazon is slashing prices on the 2020 iPad Pro with cellular connectivity for the first time. You can save up to $49 on some models, while bigger discounts on Wi-Fi only units are still active.

Bag yours before the prices return to normal!

Apple Clips 3.0, released on Wednesday, includes an improved user interface to make it easier to record video and then add effects to it. There are enhancements for both iPhone and iPad users.

This free software helps users combine video clips, photos and music into fun videos. It’s aimed at producing eye-catching content for TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and more.

AFC Richmond gets to keep its coach for years to come. Apple TV+ revealed Wednesday that it renewed its sports comedy Ted Lasso all the way through a third season.

The first season recently wrapped up, and received high marks from critics and audiences. And there’s plenty more to come

The iPhone 12 display is no more likely to get scratched than its predecessors or competitors. A rigorous test disproves an early report that Apple’s latest is easily susceptible to this type of damage.

This should head off anyone declaring “scratchgate” in the spirit of the iPhone 6’s actually real Bendgate and the MacBook’s Flexgate.

A French antitrust complaint against Apple targets an iOS 14 feature that makes it tougher for companies to indiscriminately use tracking technology for mobile advertising.

The anti-tracking feature previously faced criticism, unsurprisingly, from companies that work in mobile advertising. However, this is the one of the first legal actions taken against Apple due to the feature.

Preorders for the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro are “super high” in India, largely thanks to authorized resellers offering good trade-in deals and monthly installment payments, according to a report published Wednesday.

Apple doesn’t reveal iPhone sales figures anymore. That means Apple watchers must be on the lookout for other early signs to indicate how well new iPhones are doing. In India, at least, that appears to be pretty darn well for iPhone 12.

The world is changing fast, but PDFs remain a fundamental part of every digital workplace. The ubiquitous digital document format is as common as ever, but they’re also as tricky as ever to edit and convert.

This powerful toolkit offers a welcome and easy way to work with PDFs.