Apple

We learned earlier this month that Apple and Amazon struck a deal that will see iPhones and iPads officially sold on the online marketplace, and now the first listings for iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, and other Apple products are starting to go live. The move puts Apple products in front of more customers just in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday when the most holiday shopping happens.

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Chase is expanding its rewards program for credit card holders with a new way to buy Apple products using points. The new Apple Ultimate Rewards Store includes a variety of Apple hardware including iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, Mac, HomePod, and Apple TV. Chase is also launching a limited time offer on eligible Apple merchandise to promote the new program.

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The latest round of the Apple versus Samsung patent trial kicked off yesterday with jury selection, and it proved so difficult to find unbiased jurors that choosing eight of them from the 74 candidates took the whole of the first day …

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Aluminum is Apple’s go-to material for making many of its products sleek and durable, and now the company is taking serious steps to ensure using its favorite metal is also good for the planet.

Two major aluminum producers are announcing a “joint venture to commercialize patented technology that eliminates direct greenhouse gas emissions from the traditional smelting process,” and Apple played a key role in getting to this step.

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It’s been two years since Apple introduced us to its iPhone disassembly robot Liam, and now it’s time to meet the company’s newest bot: Daisy. Apple says Daisy — who you can see in action below — offers “the most efficient way to reclaim more of the valuable materials stored in iPhone” with the robot capable of disassembling and sorting parts from up to 200 iPhones per hour.

Daisy’s introduction is accompanied with Apple adding Earth Day donations through its GiveBack program to the non-profit Conservation International. Apple’s GiveBack program lets customers return old devices to Apple Stores or Apple.com for recycling, and newer devices can even be traded in for Apple Store credit.

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Bloomberg has published a new report that includes a memo sent to all Apple employees with a clear message: employees who leak internal information will be fired, face legal action when possible, and risk becoming unemployable at other companies.

The memo specifically references 9to5Mac and the iOS 11 GM leak that we received last fall which led to discovering the iPhone X name and features, Animoji, and the cellular Apple Watch Series 3 ahead of Apple’s event.

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Apple is speaking out against the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to repeal efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Reuters reports. In a new filing, Apple cites “increased investment uncertainty” for the company and its supplier partners if the Clean Power Plan is reversed.

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A Korean report claims that Apple will drop the notch from its 2019 OLED iPhones. The company is said to be working on a new design where the screen will ‘completely fill the front of new iPhones.’

No details are provided about how Apple would deal with all of the technology currently housed in the notch. This includes the front-facing camera, separate infra-red camera for Face ID, dot projector, flood illuminator, speaker, microphone, ambient light sensor and proximity sensor …

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Nokia’s ownership of Withings has been incredibly messy. After buying Withings in mid-2016, Nokia sued Apple over unrelated patents which resulted in Withings digital health products being pulled from the Apple Store.

While that dispute has since been resolved, Nokia now says it is reviewing its digital health business altogether. The result could be positive or negative for Withings customers depending on where ownership lands.

As a Withings customer myself, my hope is that Apple buys the digital health product business from Nokia — if only to do the bare minimum to maintain hardware that works with Apple HealthKit.

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Apple’s top investigator Lee Freedman has departed the company for a new role at Facebook. Freedman previously served as the Director of Worldwide Investigations at Apple.

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Apple has started selling a mesh Wi-Fi system from Linksys both on its website and in stores. The move is notable as Apple hasn’t updated its own Wi-Fi base station hardware since 2013 and doesn’t currently offer its own mesh Wi-Fi system.

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As its legal battle with Apple drags on, Qualcomm is also in the middle of battling the Federal Trade Commission in a separate case. Making things all the more complicated, a judge on Friday ordered sanctions against Apple in the FTC’s case against Qualcomm…

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Update: Reuters reports that Michel Coulomb has been appointed to replace Kaul. 

Coulomb has worked with Apple since 2003 and was most recently the managing director for Apple in South Asia, according to his biography on professional network LinkedIn.

According to a new report out of The Economic Times, Apple’s head of India operations is leaving the company with “immediate effect.” Sanjay Kaul has been in charge of Apple’s operations in India for the last year and a half, during which Apple has faced mixed results in the country…

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Apple CEO Tim Cook and Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch are arguably at opposite ends of the political spectrum on many issues, but the two chief executives are speaking in unison on one major issue: immigration. Cook and Koch have co-authored an op-ed published by The Washington Post in which the duo calls on Congress to pass legislation that protects the children of undocumented immigrants.

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Update 12/11: Confirmed!

Apple may be planning to purchase the company behind the popular song tagging service Shazam, TechCrunch reports. The deal could be worth around $400 million (so not much for Apple) and announced as soon as next week.

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Apple’s ongoing legal battle with Qualcomm is heating up today in a serious way. The chip maker has reportedly filed a lawsuit against Apple in China in an effort to block the sale and manufacturing of iPhones in the country.

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Apple has pledged to donate $1 million to the wildfire relief effort in California, San Francisco Chronicle reports. The company has also encouraged employees to help individually by promising to match employee donations two-to-one.

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We’re still awaiting the first OLED iPhone to ship with the iPhone X in less than a month, and new rumors are surfacing about a future iPhone with a foldable display. According to The Bell (via The Investor), Apple is working with LG and not Samsung to create an iPhone with a foldable OLED panel. The report suggests that Apple’s rivalry with Samsung and concern over leaking may be a deciding factor in choosing suppliers.

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