Benjamin Mayo

In June, Ming-Chi Kuo said that Apple would launch three new iPhones in 2020, two of which would feature 5G connectivity.

In a followup to the same report today, Kuo now says that all three iPhone models will support fast 5G cellular data. The 2020 iPhones are expected to feature significant redesigns compared to the current lineup, coming in new 6.7-inch, 5.4-inch, and 6.1-inch screen sizes.

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Apple will not be getting any tariff exemptions on the new Mac Pro, according to a tweet from the president.

Whereas the 2013 Mac Pro was made in the USA, the new ‘cheesegrater’ 2019 Mac Pro is going to be manufactured and assembled in China. It was reported that Apple had asked the Trump administration for relief from tariffs on Mac Pro parts, and it seems that the request has been rejected.

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Last night, Apple officially announced that it was buying Intel’s smartphone modem division in a $1 billion deal. Apple will acquire a patent pool and around 2,200 employees.

Naturally, Apple wants to use this talent to accelerate the development of its own modems. A Reuters report quotes sources that says Apple wants to ship an in-house 5G modem in its devices as soon as 2021.

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The Apple credit card was announced in March with the promise of a “summer” release timeframe. With support for Apple Card in the current iOS version, we are now waiting on Apple to flick the switch server-side to make the card available.

Bloomberg today says Apple and Goldman Sachs are targeting a launch for Apple Card in the first half of August, which means only a couple of weeks away.

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Apple appears to be expecting roughly stable demand for the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Max, and iPhone 11R, set to be announced later this year.

Bloomberg reports that Apple suppliers have been instructed to manufacture parts for about 75 million phones through the end of the year, approximately equal to Apple’s iPhone XS, XR, and XS Max sales for the same period last year.

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The Pixelmator team today released an update to their premier Mac app, Pixelmator Pro, with a new app extension, new zoom tool, updated crop options, and more refinements.

Impressively, the entire Pixelmator user interface is now available as a Photos editing extension. This means you don’t have to launch a separate app to perform complex edits when browsing your library in Photos. All layers, effects, and adjustments are available in the extension.

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With iOS 12.4 or later, there’s a new iPhone set up option. You can now perform a local iPhone data migration when setting up your new iPhone.

As part of Quick Start, you can now Transfer Your Data directly, without requiring the use iCloud or an iTunes backup. The iPhone defaults to using local WiFi, but you can transfer wired using the USB3 Camera Adapter and a Lightning cable.

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Apple is today launching the ECG app in two additional countries. With the release of watchOS 5.3, the ECG app and irregular heart rate notifications to Canada and Singapore.

The electrocardiagram sensor hardware is included in all Apple Watch Series 4 units, but is disabled through software in countries where it has not got approval. The good news is Apple Watch Series 4 owners in Canada and Singapore can now update to watchOS 5.3 to use the ECG app.

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In a profile of Apple SVP Jeff Williams, now widely expected to be next-in-line for the CEO job whenever Tim Cook decides to leave the company, Bloomberg cites employee sources that paint a picture of Williams as a Cook-doppelganger.

Williams now oversees all of Apple’s hardware development and design. The report says a weekly review meeting is formally called ‘New Product Review’, but some employees refer to it as the ‘Jeff Review’, as it is he who they need to impress.

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Apple is apparently in advanced talks with Taiwanese display manufacturers to introduce microLED displays into its products as soon as next year, via Economic Daily News.

The company is apparently readying an Apple Watch featuring a microLED screen, replacing the current OLED panel manufactured by LG Display.

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Apple is facing a new security threat, thanks to developments in the spyware/surveillance tool sold by the Israeli firm NSO Group. Via the Financial Times, the Pegasus phone software now not only harvests data from the user’s onboard storage, but also all communications with the connected cloud.

The vulnerability purportedly affects the iPhone and Apple’s iCloud as well as Google Android phones, and even third-party apps installed on the phone that communicate over “encrypted and secure” connections.

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An article from the Information today covers a breakdown of the lengths that factory workers have gone to get parts of unreleased iPhones out into the black market, and Apple’s countermeasures to tackle the issue and maintain high levels of product secrecy.

Most interestingly, the report says that Apple is actually reducing the number of staff it has assigned to catching leaks of factory parts and is instead focusing on cracking down on the leaking of CAD drawings and schematics, just like the schematics that we’ve seen this year showing the iPhone 11’s design.

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A Digitimes report this morning claims that Apple is working with supply chain partners to ready a time-of-flight 3D sensing camera system for the rear camera. This feature would debut in the 2020 iPhone revision.

A time-of-flight VCSEL is similar to the infrared TrueDepth camera system found in iPhones today on the front of the device, which enables Face ID. Adding such a 3D-sensing system to the back camera would enable higher-fidelity 3D photo captures, potentially opening up new augmented reality opportunities.

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Apple plans to use some of its spare cash to fund original podcasts for its platforms, according to a Bloomberg report. The news comes as the podcast game heats up with competitors like Spotify investing hundreds of millions of dollars in original content projects.

Up to now, Apple has participated in the podcast ecosystem by hosting the de-facto canonical directory of shows, which most third-party apps rely on to find new shows. The directory was free to join and did not require an Apple business relationship.

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The Retina MacBook Air was refreshed last week with a new price and the addition of a True Tone display. The refresh was minor, with the same CPUs as 2018, but a $100 cheaper price point: the 2019 MacBook Air starts at $1099 from Apple, with $999 student pricing.

It turns out that one downside to this latest revision is that the laptop actually features slower solid state storage than the 2018 model.

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According to Bloomberg, Amazon is working on a new addition to the Amazon Echo smart speaker lineup to more directly compete against Apple’s HomePod and Sonos speakers in terms of sound quality.

The new model is purportedly set to release “by next year” and current prototypes feature at least four internal tweeters. The HomePod cylinder contains seven beam-forming tweeters. The current Echo lineup will also “receive minor updates this fall”, according to the publication.

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The newly-announced $1299 MacBook Pro adds Touch ID, Touch Bar, and the latest 8th-gen Intel CPUs. At first glance, the CPU may seem a bit paltry given its 1.4 GHz base clock spec.

However, it turns out that this machine is probably faster than you’d think and compares quite favorably given its entry-level price point in the MacBook Pro lineup.

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