Benjamin Mayo

Apple impressed investors last night with strong quarterly earnings, reporting its best June quarter ever, despite the global economic uncertainty as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt daily life worldwide.

AAPL stock opened today at ~$409, a new all-time high for the company, and up 6.5% from market close yesterday. Apple made headlines in August 2018 for becoming the first public company to hit $1 trillion market cap, and it is now well on its way to becoming the first public company to cross the $2 trillion mark.

We haven’t much about this year’s hardware update to the Apple Watch so far. A report from Digitimes today suggests that Apple has made a manufacturing deal with supplier ASE Technology, as it prepares up the production lines for Apple Watch Series 6.

Most notably, the report claims that the Watch will include a blood oxygen sensor for the first time. 9to5Mac previously found evidence of forthcoming blood oxygen monitoring support in an early build of watchOS 7.

As part of the big tech monopoly judicial hearing yesterday, the court has released many pages of documentation to support its claims against Apple’s alleged monopolistic App Store practices. One of these emails shines a light on Apple’s dealing with Amazon.

During the proceedings, Apple CEO Tim Cook said they treat every developer the same, but the details of the Amazon Prime Video deal seems to fly in the face of that …

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Pushing back from the coronavirus-fuelled slump at the start of the year, Apple’s iPhone was the fastest growing smartphone brand in China in Q2, according to data from Counterpoint Research.

The resilience of the iPhone 11 popularity and the launch of the new iPhone SE saw Apple sell about 7.4 millions from April to June, up 32% year over year. Rival Huawei sold 36.6 million units there, up 14%.

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Twitter leaker @L0vetodream today posted photos of the purported iPhone 12 Lightning to USB-C cable, featuring a new braided cord design. The account originally said, on July 14th, that the next iPhone would come with the new braided cable.

The latest rumors indicate that Apple will stop including the power adapter and earbuds in new iPhone boxes, but seemingly it is upgrading the quality of the cable. Just like the Apple Watch, we believe the iPhone 12 will come with just the Lightning to USB-C charge cable, with Apple clearly expecting most users to already have plenty of chargers to plug into.

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There is now a way for security researchers to gain (legal) access to unlocked iPhone test devices which do not have the usual protections surrounding arbitrary code execution and other defences. Access to ‘rooted’ hardware enables security researchers to inspect core parts of the operating system more easily, which helps to track down exploits in the kernel and other low-level areas of the iOS operating system. Apple announced its plans to do this almost a year ago.

Researchers can apply to get this special hardware here. As you might expect, Apple will only let applicants who have a previous history of tracking down security bugs in its platforms apply.

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The modern Apple TV features a very controversial remote. The Apple TV and Apple TV 4K use a trackpad-centric input method that inspires joy and causes frustration alike.

Whether you like it or hate it, what you might not know is there are actually many different ways to control the Apple TV. So if you don’t like the Siri Remote, one of these options might make you happy.

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Joining a wider industry shift, Apple announced that it is working to replace exclusionary language in its developer documentation and APIs with alternative terminology.

Renaming things takes time and effort as large parts of infrastructure have to migrate in response. For third-party developers in the App Store, Apple will be changing the names of APIs used in their code where appropriate, which will also necessitate engineering work to migrate.

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In 2016, Apple was ordered to pay 13 billion euros to Ireland as repayment for back taxes at a rate that the EU deemed was illegal. Both Apple and Ireland appealed the judgment.

Four years on, the first round of legal battles have come to a conclusion today: the EU court rejected the ruling which essentially means Ireland and Apple won. However, the EU commission will almost certainly appeal. A final decision on a corporate judgment of this scale will take many, many, years to resolve.

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The streaming wars adds a new contender today as NBCUniversal enters the ring with Peacock, a video streaming service that wants to take on the likes of Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, and Apple TV+.

Peacock is available today in the iOS and tvOS App Store. Peacock includes titles like Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Parks and Recreation, Downton Abbey, and will be the home of The Office when it leaves Netflix at the end of 2020. Peacock is offered in three tiers, including a free ad-supported plan.

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The move of Tom Hanks’ summer blockbuster Greyhound from box office to streaming stirred a lot of buzz, with Apple acquiring the film for a reported $75m. Based on a report from Deadline, It seems the investment paid off.

Whilst Apple doesn’t officially report viewing numbers, Deadline’s sources say that Greyhound’s opening weekend resulted in viewership ‘commensurate with a summer theatrical box office big hit’. This resulted in Apple TV+ seeing its biggest ever opening weekend.

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Beginning later this week, Verizon and Apple are partnering on a new promotion for Apple News+. Any iPad activated through Verizon will qualify for a free six-month subscription to Apple News+. The deal arrives as Apple is trying to juice interest in the News+ service, which includes access to a handful of newspapers and ~300 magazines for $9.99 per month.

The six-month free period will be available for any Apple ID that has not used News+ before. If you have already redeemed the free trial month, then buying an iPad through Verizon will still be eligible for five months free.

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Update: The issue now appears to have been resolved and normal app function is being restored.

In almost the exact same circumstances as we saw in May, a bug in the Facebook SDK is once again causing major third-party iOS apps like TikTok and Spotify to crash on launch. Third-party apps integrate with the Facebook SDK to enable things like account login, analytics, and ads platform integration.

Any issue that crops up in the logic of the underlying Facebook SDK will reflect in any apps that use it. Just like the May situation, improper handling of unexpected invalid data on Facebook part is resulting in the crashes.

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