Follow Benjamin on Threads to keep up with his latest projects. Benjamin blogs about Apple news and rumors and posts insightful product and app reviews. Read his work on 9to5Mac and his personal blog.
Benjamin Mayo also creates apps for iOS as a professional indie developer and contractor; more details here. Email to discuss making your iOS project.
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Apple is continuing to increase the availability of the Apple TV app in order to get more people watching its streaming service, Apple TV+. Today, on Comcast’s quarterly earnings call, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said it has agreed a deal with Apple to bring Apple TV+ to Comcast platforms.
This means the Apple TV app will soon be available on Xfinity X1, Xfinity Flex, upcoming XClass TV sets, and the Sky Q cable box which is a major player in the United Kingdom market.
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The efficiency of Apple Silicon allowed Apple to offer the same chip options across the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro, with the highest-end M1 Pro and M1 Max configs available for both sizes.
However, there is one small difference: High Power Mode is exclusive to the 16-inch model. The larger chassis 16-inch MacBook Pro chassis allows Apple to increase thermal envelope further, enabling the M1 Max to maximize its performance output.
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The notch has been a big point of contention since the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro were announced. By increasing the height of the macOS menu bar to include the notch height, Apple’s hope is that in most use cases, the notch is easily ignored and does not interfere with content.
This has mostly turned out to be true. However, Apple has included a temporary workaround app launch mode that exists as a fallback in case users run into incompatibilities. This mode is available as a toggle in the Get Info panel, labelled ‘Scale to fit below built-in camera’.
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Apple and Sony today announced that the Apple Music app is now available on PlayStation 5 consoles, joining the likes of Spotify as an official music service on the PlayStation system.
Apple Music is fully integrated into the PS5 with support for background music listening whilst gaming, 4K music videos, and access to the full Apple Music catalog.
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The prolific Pixelmator team has today released the latest update to their flagship image and photo editor, Pixelmator Pro. This version brings full support for macOS Monterey, including a library of Shortcuts actions, and takes full advantage of the power of the latest M1 Pro and M1 Max chips in the new MacBook Pros.
There’s also a new Split Comparison view for comparing layer adjustments, a new Bokeh blur filter, and more enhancements.
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Apple TV+ today launched its new big-budget sci-fi series Invasion, streaming exclusively on Apple TV+. Here’s more about Invasion and how to watch.
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The Nielsen TV ratings hold a prestigious place in at least measuring the popularity of traditional television watching. Whilst Nielsen is slightly less relevant when it comes to streaming, it does have widely-regarded streaming charts featuring Netflix, Disney+, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video titles.
For the first time, Apple TV+ is now also being tracked by Nielsen and Ted Lasso made its debut as the fifth-most watched original series for the week of September 20-26, in the United States.
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Following the impressive debuts of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro, we are now waiting for Apple to finish the transition from Intel -> ARM CPUs. Remaining Intel Macs include the 27-inch iMac, the higher-end Mac mini and the Mac Pro.
As we’ve seen with the new laptops, switching to Apple Silicon is also an opportunity for the company to give the products other upgrades. This morning, display analyst Ross Young tweeted that he expects Apple to launch a 27-inch iMac in the first quarter of 2022, featuring a mini-LED 120Hz display, just like the displays seen in the MacBook Pros unveiled this week.
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The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro were announced to much fanfare yesterday, with one of the hero features being the new Liquid Retina XDR display. In addition to larger physical size and smaller bezels, mini-LED high contrast ratio and 120Hz ProMotion refresh rates, the screens also feature increased native resolutions with higher pixel density.
This brings with it a new selection of scaled screen resolution options in System Preferences. Most notably, the high-end MacBook Pro once again features a native 2x resolution as standard…
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As part of its October Unleashed event, Apple today unveiled the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro. The new MacBook Pro features the ‘M1 Pro’ chip, with 8 high-performance cores and 2 high-efficiency cores, a 16-core GPU and 32 GB RAM. There’s also an ‘M1 Max’ chip, which doubles RAM and GPU again. The 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1999 and the 16-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2499.
The design of the MacBook Pro has also been completely redesigned, now featuring thinner bezels albeit with a notch housing the webcam. The mini-LED display has more pixels, supports high contrast and 1600 nits of peak brightness, and also runs at 120Hz with ProMotion technology. The MacBook Pro now also features a HDMI port, SD card reader, and MagSafe for magnetic charging.
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An unofficial YouTube stream of the Apple event has drawn tens of thousands of viewers ahead of Apple’s actual October ‘Unleashed’ event going live, where the company is set to announce a highly-anticipated new MacBook Pro. However, this fake stream — like a lot of terrible things in 2021 — has converted into a crypto currency scam.
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The Apple Store is down ahead of Apple’s October ‘Unleashed’ media event, which starts at 10 AM PT today.
We are expecting to see a major update to the MacBook Pro line, with redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch models incoming featuring next-generation ‘M1X’ Apple Silicon. AirPods 3 and an M1X Mac mini update are also rumored.
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On Monday, Apple will unveil the highly-anticipated redesign of the MacBook Pro line as part of its ‘Unleashed’ October media event. It is expected to feature a whole new chassis design, industry-leading Apple Silicon, the return of MagSafe power connector and HDMI/SD Card slot, and a mini-LED display. This laptop has been in development for several years, and rumored for almost as long.
In the last few days, another idea has arisen. Some alleged leaks indicate that the new 16-inch and 14-inch MacBook Pro will also feature a notch in the top middle of the display, like an iPhone. This cutout would house the FaceTime camera and ambient light sensors, but Face ID biometrics is not expected.
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Update: This issue is now resolved. If you have missing app icons on your watch screen, you can wait for the App Store to update the app or manually remove and re-add it. The redownloaded version will have the correct app icon and complication assets available.
Today, the first Apple Watch Series 7 units are being delivered to customers. Launch day bugs are to be expected and it seems the Series 7 is no exception.
Customers are noticing that the icons for some third-party apps are missing, leaving blank holes on the honeycomb grid home screen. PCalc developer James Thomson has noticed that his app is one of those affected, perhaps linked to the fact that he issued an app update embedding Apple Watch Series 7 specific assets.
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Apple TV+ has teed up its third partnership with Bill Lawrence. Following the worldwide success of Ted Lasso, last month Apple announced that Lawrence would produce an adaptation of Bad Monkey starring Vince Vaughn.
This time, fellow Ted Lasso writer Brett Goldstein (who you may recognize as Roy Kent) is also in the mix for a new 10-episode comedy series called ‘Shrinking’, set to star Jason Segel.
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The article has been removed. The original source of this story was a tweet of a screenshot of an email purporting to be from Apple security. It has since come to our attention that the screenshot was spoofed and the bug does not appear to actually exist.
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Bloomberg is reporting that Apple has significantly cut its production schedule for the iPhone 13 series. Due to ongoing chip shortages, the supply chain is supposedly unable to deliver its original targets for iPhone 13 shipments.
The report says Apple is now expecting to make as much as 10 million fewer phones in 2021, than originally planned. Apple shares dropped 1% in aftermarket trading on the news.
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Now that the October Apple event is official, we are seeing a flurry of last minute rumors about the 2021 MacBook Pro, which are widely believed to represent the first major redesign for Apple’s pro notebooks since the disastrous 2016 butterfly-keyboard generation.
Various sources indicate that these new machines will feature a boxier chassis design, a HDMI port and SD card slot, and a ‘M1X’ Apple-designed SoC, aimed at replacing the current 16-inch Intel configs with superior performance and power efficiency. On top of this, according to the (so far) reliable leaker @dylandkt, these laptops will also feature a higher-quality 1080p webcam.
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Apple TV+ today released the full trailer for upcoming dark comedy drama limited series ‘The Shrink Next Door’. The series airs on November 12.
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Japanese Apple blog Macotakara today reported that the iPhone SE 3rd-generation will not feature a design change and instead will look like the current iPhone SE. This means it will keep the same 4.7-inch LCD display and Touch ID Home Button. Some earlier rumors had suggested a more significant design overhaul was on the way.
However, the new iPhone SE will pack in Apple’s latest A15 chip with support for 5G cellular networking. Macotakara expects production of the new iPhone SE to begin in December and start shipping to customers in spring 2022.
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The Apple Store is down ritual continues, this time in preparation for preorders of the Apple Watch Series 7. The store will be back up at 5 AM PT.
The new Apple Watch line-up features a larger screen that wraps around the curve of the watch’s body, faster charging speeds, and a higher peak brightness when using the always-on mode indoors. The Series 7 models are expected to be priced the same as the equivalent Apple Watch Series 6 configurations.
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Apple TV+ today released the trailer for a new series aimed at a preschool-aged audience, entitled ‘Hello, Jack! The Kindness Show’. The series will premiere exclusively on the service on November 5.
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While the long-term Apple-building-a-vehicle rumors continue unabated, Apple’s current presence in the car comes via CarPlay, which allows a connected iPhone to show maps, communication apps and more on the in-car infotainment system.
Bloomberg today reports that Apple wants to extend CarPlay to be able to interact more closely with the host vehicle. This could include controlling air conditioning, adjusting seats and other settings.
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Via Reuters, the Dutch antitrust authority has reportedly ruled that Apple’s App Store policies around the mandatory use of Apple’s In-App Purchase are anticompetitive.
Apparently, the investigation ruled that the requirement to use Apple’s in-app purchase system exclusively is unfairly monopolistic. The ruling has not yet been made public apparently at Apple’s request, and is undergoing legal review.
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