Apple

According to a report from Politico, Apple has told Republican leaders that it will not be providing support in any way, including financial, for the party’s upcoming convention. The report says that Apple’s reasoning for this decision is Donald Trump and the comments he has made regarding immigrants, minorities, and women.

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In this week’s top stories: iOS 10, macOS Sierra, watchOS 3, and new features for Apple TV with the upcoming tvOS 10 release, our coverage of Apple’s WWDC 2016 announcements make up the majority of this week’s top stories.

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What if Apple brought the OLED display function key row that is rumored for upcoming MacBooks to its Apple keyboard too? Completely disregarding what it might require technically to integrate and drive such a display in the keyboard, this concept from Curved imagines bringing that feature to iMac, Mac Pro, Mac mini and other Mac users via a new version of Apple’s wireless keyboard.

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Prior to WWDC, a report emerged claiming that Apple would at long last unveil iMessage for Android. Seeing how Apple had made its streaming music service available on Android, many found this report to be somewhat plausible. As you’re probably aware of by now, however, iMessage for Android was nowhere to be found at WWDC this week. Now, we’ve gotten a little bit of insight into Apple’s reasoning for not bringing its messaging service to Google’s smartphone platform…

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New in iOS 10 and macOS Sierra, Apple’s AirPrint is getting some welcomed improvements including ‘AirPrint Bluetooth Beacon’, the ability to create PDFs from the print panel in iOS, and support for multi-user and password-only printing.

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Apple today started inviting its retail employees to participate in testing macOS 10.12, the latest version of Apple’s Mac operating system unveiled earlier this week during a press event at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. An excerpt from Apple’s memo to employees below:

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[UPDATE: Apple’s Back To School program has now launched in China, as well.]

Apple’s 2016 Back to School Beats kicked off in the United States at the beginning of the month and has today expanded internationally across Europe. Students in United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands and more can now take advantage of the summer promotion at Apple Stores in their country as well as online.

Like the US, eligible purchases of certain Macs come with free Beats Solo2 wireless headphones worth $299 at retail. For iPad and iPhone, select iOS device purchases come with free Beats Powerbeats2 wireless headphones, worth $199 at retail.

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Alongside various new features (Siri, Auto Unlock, Apple Pay) coming in macOS Sierra, Apple’s next major desktop operating system, it also ships with the brand new version of Safari, Safari 10. Safari 10 introduces a major change in the way the browser handles plugins. In short, proprietary plugins like Adobe Flash will be disabled by default when browsing the web.

This means that websites will serve modern HTML5 representations of content as often as possible as they will not be able to detect an installation of Flash at all. Safari is smart however — it will allow you to enable Flash temporarily on demand …

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In this week’s top stories: WWDC coverage kicked into full gear ahead of Apple’s event on Monday, we discussed USB-C and upcoming MacBook Pros, and Apple announced welcomed subscription and revenue changes for the App Store.

Apple’s plan to become an energy company by selling off its excess renewable electricity was revealed this week, and we also showed you how to drive a 4K display at 60 Hz with the new 2016 MacBook in this week’s top video.

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Update: Apple has nearly finished the large outdoor white logo on Moscone West building and is also hanging ASCII-art theme banners on the opposite street at the Metreon. More photos below.

Apple has started decorating its venues for WWDC 2016, which kicks off on Monday, with workers starting to apply a massive Apple logo onto the side of Moscone West. Apple will use Moscone West for all of the week apart from Monday; the WWDC keynote will be held at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.

Apple usually puts up banners teasing the announcements in the theme of the invites to build excitement for the show, often revealing tidbits about the new software OS’s. Apple has put a small logo up at Bill Graham but due to the split venue (and late scheduling), there’s a chance the banners tradition will not continue this year until after the Monday keynote at 10 AM …

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At WWDC on Monday, Apple will unveil the latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 10. With the conference being light on hardware, expectations are high for Apple to announce some major new features for iOS 10 on iPhone and iPad. The rumor mill is quieter than usual, so there’s definitely a bigger opportunity to be surprised with this year’s keynote.

We have some idea about what to expect but we want to hear what you want to see Apple announce next week. Join in the poll after the jump to have your say on what you want to see in iOS 10 …

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In what feels like a never-ending patent battle, the Department of Justice today filed an amicus brief regarding the ongoing case between Apple and Samsung. Back in December, it was announced that Apple and Samsung had reached a $548 million settlement, but shortly after that Samsung asked that Supreme Court hear an appeal of its case, saying that the lower courts misapplied the design patent law. Apple then asked the Supreme Court not to hear the appeal and argued that the case was closed, but in March the Supreme Court agreed to hear Samsung’s appeal over the case.

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Earlier this week, Apple continued to climb the Fortune 500 ranking to 3rd, and now Glassdoor’s annual CEO ratings have been released with Tim Cook moving towards the top. Last year, Cook barely cracked the top 10 and was ranked 10th, but this year he’s moved up to 8th.

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There are a ton of deals on tech and more right now in the lead up to Father’s Day. Together with 9to5Toys & Canary, we’re keeping track of all the best deals and we’ve collected all the handy links in the hub below.

Bookmark this page and keep checking back for more as we add the latest from 9to5Toys ahead of Father’s Day on June 19.

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After updating the iOS WWDC app and launching a tvOS version last week, Apple today has added a new page to its WWDC website that confirms its plans to live stream the kick off keynote. As usual, Apple will open WWDC week with a keynote event on June 13th at 10AM PT/1PM ET.

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In addition to unveiling a pair of new Apple Music ads starring DJ Khaled, Apple today has uploaded a series of new videos as part of its “Shot on iPhone” ad campaign. Last month, Apple returned to the Shot on iPhone ad series for Mother’s Day, but this marks the first big release of videos for the campaign in a while. The company initially rebooted the ad campaign in February with all-new images from the iPhone 6s.

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Apple is inviting staff to vote for one of 20 different ‘community themes,’ a list of worthy projects ranging from using technology to boost environmental sustainability to empowering the elderly. One of the projects is geared to making Apple products more available to those who would not normally be able to afford them.

Our themes are a result of global collaboration, innovation, and passion. They’re rich with intention and supported by detailed ideas. Each one reflects our belief that we can leave the world better than when we found it.

The internal document references Apple’s approach of ‘a thousand no’s for every yes’ and says that votes will determine which themes go forward into further development and testing …

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Earlier today Apple announced the start of their annual Back to School promotion for 2016. This year eligible purchases of a Mac, iPad, or iPhone will come bundled with a pair of wireless Beats headphones. This is reminiscent of last year’s Back to School promotion, save for the fact that during this year’s promotion for the wireless headphone is the default and doesn’t require an extra $100 expense. The small, but obvious connectivity choice signals a new direction in which Apple wants its customer to think.

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