Benjamin Mayo

As we approach Apple fall product season, the rumors and supply chain leaks just keep coming. This time, we get a look at the new iPad mini industrial design thanks to alleged aluminium case molds photographed by website Techordo; these are typically used by case manufacturers to produce accessories for Apple’s upcoming devices before they are available.

In line with previous leaks and 9to5Mac’s exclusive reporting, the iPad mini 6 design depicted by these molds looks a lot like a smaller iPad Air, with the removal of the Home Button in favor of a full-screen design featuring symmetrical, thin, bezels and a Touch ID power button on the side.

Apple has apparently put plans to shift more production of its products, including iPad and MacBooks, from China to Vietnam on hold, as COVID-19 disruptions complicated proceedings and limited engineering resources.

That’s according to a new report from Nikkei, which also says AirPods 3 are now entering mass production in China, rather than Vietnam as Apple originally hoped.

Apple has renewed its long-running non-fiction original Carpool Karaoke: The Series for a fifth season. The show was one of Apple’s first forays into original content, before the TV+ division had been set up, alongside the quickly-cancelled Planet of the Apps.

Up to now, the series has been branded as hailing from Apple Music video department and made available via the Apple Music and Apple TV apps. Starting with season five, it will now be branded as an Apple TV+ original series and appear alongside Apple’s other flagship premium titles.

In a video interview with the Wall Street Journal, Apple SVP Craig Federighi discusses the reaction to the iCloud Child Safety features announced last week.

Federighi admits that the simultaneous announcement of the Messages protections for children and CSAM scanning, two similar features but work in very different ways, has caused customer confusion and Apple could have done a better job at communicating the new initiative.

Apple is about a month away from announcing the new flagship iPhone lineup for 2021, colloquially dubbed the iPhone 13.

While the exterior industrial design of the phones won’t change much this year — aside from a visibly smaller notch cutout at the top of the display — Bloomberg reports that a big focus for the higher-end iPhone 13 Pro  and iPhone 13 Pro Max will be camera upgrades with new features when shooting video and taking photos …

The comedy Ted Lasso has been Apple TV+‘s biggest hit to date, and the streaming service is keeping executive Bill Lawrence in the family with his next project — a drama series — receiving an official series order today.

‘Bad Monkey’ is written and executive produced by Bill Lawrence, and stars Vince Vaughn in the lead role. The series is based off of the 2013 novel of the same name.

Update: This has now been officially announced: notably your phone will only be scanning photos uploaded to iCloud, in line with policies of all major social networks and web services. (Original story below for context.)

Apple is reportedly set to announce new photo identification features that will use hashing algorithms to match the content of photos in users’ photo libraries with known child abuse materials, such as child pornography.

Apple’s system will happen on the client — on the user’s device — in the name of privacy, so the iPhone would download a set of fingerprints representing illegal content and then check each photo in the user’s camera roll against that list. Presumably, any matches would then be reported for human review.

Apple TV+ has signed yet another major movie onto its slate of original film projects. Directed by Matthew Vaughn, ‘Argylle’ follows the word’s greatest spy around the globe. Deadline reports that Apple snagged the package for around $200 million.

The film will star Henry Cavill, Sam Rockwell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, John Cena and Samuel L Jackson. Artist Dua Lipa will also feature, as well as providing music for the film’s score.

Some users are getting increasingly frustrated with the Apple TV app as they are paying money to buy or rent movies from the store, only to find that when they go to play the content, there is no sound at all.

This appears to be happening across platforms where Apple offers the TV app, including on tvOS, smart TVs, and third-party streaming sticks like Roku.

Apple today released the full official trailer for its post-apocalyptic drama series ‘SEE’. The second season of SEE debuts on August 27 on Apple TV+.

This season, lead character Baba Voss (Jason Momoa) must face off against his estranged brother Edo Voss (Dave Bautista), the latter of which is holding Baba’s daughter captive.

Apple today sent out an email to developers letting them know that a handful of Siri intents are no longer supported. If customers invoke these commands via Siri for a supporting app in iOS 15 or later, Siri will simply reply that the request cannot be handled.

Affected Siri domains include ride booking, configuration of vehicles via Siri over CarPlay, and third-party Photo Search. Many of these SiriKit intents were introduced when third-party Siri support was first added to the system back in iOS 10. Apple didn’t provide a reason for their abrupt removal.

As usual, Apple is not releasing hard numbers on how well Apple TV+ is doing. However, the company told Deadline that the premiere of Ted Lasso season two yielded new highs for viewership.

Apple TV+ set records for viewership on a single day and viewership across the weekend. The company says 6x more people watched on season two premiere weekend than when the first season launched last year.

Update: Although communication on this subject is still lacking, users are reporting that their grandfathered subscriptions are once again renewing correctly. So, this may have been a weird glitch after all. Original story below.

With seemingly no warning, Apple TV+ users are noticing that their grandfathered $9.99/mo Paramount+ and Showtime bundle subscriptions are now expiring.

Apple launched the 50% discounted bundle to much fanfare last year, before CBS All Access was rebranded as Paramount+. The bundle was discontinued for new subscribers in February ahead of the Paramount+ launch, but existing subscribers were able to continue taking advantage of the deal. Seemingly, no more.

Ted Lasso returns with its second season on the Apple TV+ streaming service, following the phenomenal success of season one. Season two will have twelve episodes in total, including a Christmas special debuting in August, with episodes releasing weekly from now until October 8. If you haven’t yet joined the Diamond Dogs, here’s how to start watching one of the funniest and heartwarming comedies of recent times …

Apple today commemorated its 40 year history in Singapore, where it first set up offices in 1981.

Singapore serves as Apple’s base for its Asia-Pacific operations. Today, Apple says it employs more than 3500 people and supports a further 55,000 Singaporean jobs with the iOS app economy. Tim Cook celebrated the occasion with a new interview with local radio, in which he discusses his first ever Mac experience.