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.
Follow @bzamayo on Twitter and follow @bzamayo on Threads.
Over the weekend, Bloomberg said that its sources indicated that the Apple AirPods Pro were beating sales expectations.
Now, Nikkei is also corroborating that line of thinking quoting supply chain sources in China who say that Apple has doubled AirPods Pro orders from 1 million to ‘at least’ 2 million units per month. The standard AirPods with wireless charging case have sold well throughout their lifetime and AirPods Pro are very much set to continue that trend.
Joining Uber, T-Mobile, and Walgreens, Nike is the latest partner to sign up for the 3% cashback offer with its Apple Card credit card.
Apple is reportedly telling its supply chain partners to expect in excess of 100 million orders for the iPhone 12 next year, as reported by Digitimes.
For 2019, the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro is expected to sell around 80 million units. A jump to 100 million or more would represent a significant increase in sales demand. This level of customer interest is apparently fueled by the 5G ‘super cycle’ although the iPhone 12 is also expected to feature significant hardware upgrades compared to the last couple of years.
Apple has announced its official Black Friday shopping event, which runs from Black Friday (Friday 29th) through Cyber Monday (December 2nd).
Following the release of Apple’s official guide, Apple is teasing its Apple Store deals today with a homepage banner, inviting customers to ‘save the date’. The company will offer up to $200 gift cards with the purchase of eligible Apple products like iPhones, iPads, and Macs. As is usual, third-party sellers like Amazon will almost certainly beat Apple on deal prices.
iOS 13, especially the first couple of versions, quickly gained a reputation for being riddled with bugs and issues.
Bloomberg reports that Apple is changing the way it develops internal builds of operating systems in an attempt to stop history from repeating itself, with work on iOS 14 already using the new approach.
Apple and Intel have filed an antitrust lawsuit against Fortress Investment Group, a company backed by SoftBank, reports Reuters.
The lawsuit essentially claims that Fortress is an extreme patent troll who is fielding repeated nonsense cases against the tech giants. It alleges Fortress stockpiled patents for the primary purpose of suing companies in a manner that violates antitrust laws.
A judiciary committee in July asked questions surrounding antitrust and competition concerns of big tech. The documentation from those hearings has now been released.
Apple addressed its policies on the App Store, competition in markets where Apple offers first-party apps, disallowing alternative browser engines, among other topics. On the subject of Apple’s role in the repair industry, the company said that the ‘cost of providing repair services has exceeded the revenue generated by repairs’, implying it does not tightly control repairs for financial gain.
Apple Music is now partnering with businesses to play music at retail stores. In a partnership with PlayNetwork, businesses can sign up to Apple Music for Business plans and get licensed music to be played in their retail locations with Apple providing human-curated playlists and even custom recommendations matched to the individual store brand.
Businesses can control the music being played using a special iPhone or iPad app. The Wall Street Journal notes the program has been piloted for a while and is now expanding to larger stores.
The Salesforce Dreamforce conference is hosting a fireside chat interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook and Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff …
Update: We have since heard from reputable source that the ‘laptop theft’ part of this story is highly unlikely to be true, or at least represents a heavily embellished version. Original post follows, but make of it what you will.
Andy Miller started Quattro Wireless in 2006. The company was acquired by Apple in 2009 and Miller led the Apple mobile advertising group that created the iAd effort which launched to much fanfare in 2010 but interest from advertisers petered out quickly and Apple as a company has distanced itself from the advertising business ever since.
Nevertheless, in a new video interview, Miller tells a never-before-reported story of how Quattro Wireless was acquired and (in retrospect) a hilarious anecdote about the stresses of working with Steve Jobs, which involved Miller accidentally stealing Jobs’ laptop from his office… and he says he still has Jobs’ mouse at his home. Watch the video after the jump…
Following the announcement at the September event, the Apple Research app is now available to download for iPhone and Apple Watch. Users in the United States can sign up to be part of three health studies; Women’s Health, Heart and Movement, and the Hearing Study.
The Women’s Health study draws data from the Cycle Tracking app on watchOS 6 with the aim to improve scientific understand of menstrual cycles. The Heart and Movement Study uses a variety of signals from the watch, including movement and health rate information. The Hearing Study examines the impact of sound exposure on hearing health and stress levels.
TwelveSouth today announced that its AirFly Pro Bluetooth adapter dongle, the latest addition to its range of AirFly accessories, is stocked at Apple Stores worldwide. AirFly lets you connect any 3.5mm headphone jack to Bluetooth headphones like AirPods. New to the AirFly Pro is the ability to also transmit in the other direction…
Apple is apparently working on changing its partner deals in order to launch a bundle of Apple Music, Apple News+ and Apple TV+ “as soon as 2020,” according to a new report today from Bloomberg.
Apple has reportedly negotiated a new deal with publishers participating in its News+ service that would see them take a smaller cut of revenue, when News+ is sold as a bundle with other subscriptions.
Apple today announced the new high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro which replaces the existing 15-inch lineup. The new MacBook Pro heralds the return of scissor switch keyboard with a ‘Magic Keyboard’, a six-speaker system, up to 8-core processor, and up to 64 GB RAM.
The new keyboard brings back a physical Escape key and 1mm of key travel. You can configure the new MacBook Pro with up to 8 TB of SSD storage. The new MacBook Pro is available today, starting at $2399.
Apple TV+ offers its original television shows and movies at a very high quality, with higher streaming bandwidth than any other service. However, this also means Apple TV+ uses a lot of data. Here’s how to change the playback quality settings to save on data usage, especially useful if you are streaming on cellular with data caps.
Update: The Apple TV app is now also available on the Amazon Fire TV Cube.
Apple today released the Apple TV app for Amazon TV devices, starting with the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K and the older HD model. Support for Fire TV (3rd generation penchant design) and some other models is coming soon.
The TV app experience on Amazon’s platform mirrors the functionality of the Roku app, which launched last week. Users can watch their purchased iTunes movies and TV shows, access Apple TV Channel subscriptions and watch Apple TV+ content when the streaming service launches on November 1st.
The Disney+ app is now available in the App Store: download it here. On Apple TV, search for ‘Disney+’ in the App Store app. (App Store servers are still propagating for some people at this time but others have confirmed they have been able to successfully download and install the app. If the direct link doesn’t work, try searching the App Store for ‘Disney+’ and scrolling down for the app listing.)
You can get the app now, sign up to Disney’s new streaming service, and start streaming its extensive back-catalog as well as start streaming The Mandalorian.
Apple has added a nice banner to the top of its homepage today in celebration of American veterans, as today is Veterans Day.
David Heinemeier Hansson recently brought attention to a potential issue with Apple Card applications, where his wife received a much lower credit limit than his own. Steve Wozniak also shared a similar story. The ‘algorithm’ was claimed by Hannson to be sexist and discriminatory. In a tweet, Apple card issuing bank Goldman Sachs has now released a statement in denial of these allegations.
Apple redesigned the Apple TV home screen with tvOS 13 allowing for full screen panoramic previews in the Top Shelf area. However, at the same time, it also changed the content of the Top Shelf for the TV app from the user’s personal Up Next queue to ‘What to Watch’, a selection of top television shows and movies chosen by Apple (essentially, a form of advertising).
This naturally caused a lot of complaints from users. Apple appears to have listened. In tvOS 13.3 beta, there is now an option in Settings to change it back.
The Netatmo Weather Station has existed as a product for a while, but only recently added HomeKit support, which is what piqued my interest. I’ve been testing the Netatmo Weather Station for about a week, and I think it is really great. Any drawbacks originate from weaknesses in the HomeKit standard; these are Apple’s problems to fix.
Apple is said to be “thrilled” with the initial reception to the Apple TV+ lineup and its four main shows; The Morning Show, See, For All Mankind, and Dickinson.
According to Hollywood Reporter sources, and corroborated by Variety, the four hero shows saw millions of viewers over the first three days of availability.
We now can work out what Apple’s exact schedule will be for Apple TV+. On a weekly basis, new episodes of its flagship shows are released at midnight Eastern Time.
The reliability of DXOMark’s testing is often questioned and argued about. Camera quality is subjective, etcetera etcetera. With that disclaimer out of the way, the publication today released its test results for the iPhone 11 Pro Max.
Apple’s 2019 flagship scored 117 on its smartphone camera test, ranking third behind the Huawei Mate 30 Pro and the Xiaomi Mic CC9 Pro Premium. The iPhone 11 Pro currently holds the top spot for audio quality with a score of 71.