A pair of Apple marketing team members joined the Mac Admins Podcast this week to talk about Apple’s role in enterprise and business, the T2 chip found in recent Macs, and more. Topics included Apple Business Manager, adoption of Apple hardware by companies like SAP and IBM, and more. Jeremy Butcher, product marketing for enterprise software, and Doug Brooks, product marketing for Mac hardware, appeared on the Mac Admins Podcast this week....

Following today’s Apple event, all-new MagSafe iPhone cases have been made available to order on the Apple Store. This new Spring collection includes a wide variety of tones for Apple’s silicone and leather case. The company also debuted new colors for the iPhone 12 leather wallet and leather sleeves. The new collection of cases include silicone models in Capri Blue, Pistachio, Cantaloupe, and Amethyst. The leather case and wallet now come in a dark Arizona color....

Apple has reportedly sent executives to Korea to meet with Samsung over fears of iPhone chip shortages — with concerns about both DRAM and NAND production. The manufacture of iPhone displays could also be affected. The problem arises from a dispute between Japan and Korea, raising the possibility that Samsung may not be able to secure sufficient supplies of a chemical essential to its production process … The Korea Herald reports....

Update: Several readers report that games were previously held up by a dispute with the Films and Publications Board responsible for approving movies, games, and other content before going on sale in the country. No word on the resolution with Apple, but it appears they are now allowing Apple to sell games to iOS users in South Africa. Apple has flicked the switch on the ability for developers to offer their games in the iTunes App Store in South Africa....

Apple has announced a handful of changes designed to improve the privacy of AirTag item trackers. The company is adjusting the time it takes for AirTags to sound an alert after being separated from their owner, and Apple plans to release an Android app for detecting AirTags later this year. As first reported by CNET, Apple is rolling out this AirTag firmware update starting today. AirTags will update automatically when in range of a connected iPhone....

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has today announced the formation of Woz U, an online university designed to make tech education more affordable. While the initiative is an online-only one for now, Woz says that the plan is to offer brick-and-mortar campuses in more than 30 cities across the U.S. and around the world … Woz U is intended to benefit both students and businesses alike, helping bring people into the workforce and providing a new source of trained tech workers for companies looking to hire....

As Apple continues its original TV and movie efforts, the company has hired another executive from Sony Pictures TV Studios. Chris Parnell is leaving his co-president post at Sony to join the Apple TV+ team in a senior role. Reported by Variety, Parnell will be working in his new senior position at Apple TV+ on original series development. Notably, Apple TV heads Jamie Ehrlicht and Zack Van Amburg left Sony back in 2017 to lead Apple’s worldwide programming efforts....

We appear to have hit that time when everyone starts looking forward to the first Apple event of the year. There are quite a few new Apple products and services in the wings, which means there’s plenty of room for rumor and speculation about the date of the spring event. A Greek iPhone rumor site, iPhonehellas.gr, cites sources in the supply chain to suggest that the new second-generation AirPods, the AirPower wireless charging mat and the new entry-level iPad will be available next month, Friday March 29th....

As the first M1 Macs make their way to consumers, Apple executives Greg Joswiak, Johny Srouji, and Craig Federighi recently spoke with Om Malik to offer more details on Apple Silicon. The three Apple executives also detailed how Apple Silicon gives the company more control over the Mac’s roadmap. Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, spoke to Malik about how Steve Jobs used to push Apple to “make the whole widget....

AirPods have become the favorite truly wireless earphones for many people, and this has put the product in the top-selling position in its category. According to a new report from Counterpoint Research, Apple’s AirPods still leads the wireless hearables segment, but the company has lost some space in the market with the competition steadily increasing. The report says that more than 33 million true wireless hearables have been sold by the third quarter of 2019, a 22% increase over the second quarter....

Today at Apple’s WWDC keynote, Apple took some time to announce some improvements to Notifications, as we expected. The majority of the improvements that Apple has demoed so far include new features for Notifications on the Mac coming in the just announced OS X Mavericks, such as quick replies, the ability to receive iOS push notifications, and lock screen access. Apple showed off a new quick reply feature for Notifications on the Mac that will allow users to mouse over a notification and quickly reply from a dialog that pops depending on the app....

Apple has started sending emails to registered iOS developers today inviting them to participate in a WatchKit lab held at the company’s Sunnyvale, CA campus. The lab will run from March 16th until April 30th, so developers will still have the ability to take advantage of the offer even after the device has shipped. The lab will give developers a chance to test their software on the actual device instead of the simulator built into Xcode....

Timothy Cook, Apple’s chief of operations and a temporary Steve Jobs replacement, called iPad “the mother of all backlogs” in a recent conference call with Wall Street analysts. He was defending sales of just 4.69 million iPads during fiscal 2011 second quarter, which is below the 6-7 million consensus and the 7.33 million units shipped during the December quarter, even though the new iPad 2 was only on sale during the quarter’s last two weeks....

Possibly the most highly anticipated announcement from its special event today, Apple announced that customers will be able to purchase the newly announced Apple Watch starting “early next year” in 2015. The Apple Watch will be available in various configurations differing from collection, size, and band. Price wise the wearable will start at $349 and go up. Compatibility for the Apple Watch and iPhone, which it requires, works with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus....

Apple today has officially stopped signing iOS 13.3 and iPadOS 13.3. This means that users can no longer downgrade from iOS 13.3.1 to iOS 13.3. iOS 13.3.1 was released last month with improvements to Screen Time and the Mail app. Now that Apple has stopped signing iOS 13.3, it means that no one can downgrade from iOS 13.3.1 to that version via iTunes/Finder. Reverting to older iOS builds is common for those in the jailbreak community and can sometimes also be useful for users who experience significant bugs after updating to the latest version of iOS....

Apple has added a nice banner to the top of its homepage today in celebration of American veterans, as today is Veterans Day. The banner reads “Here’s to the brave ones”, a clever homage to both Veterans Day and Apple’s classic “Here’s to the crazy ones” ad campaign. The homepage reminds visitors that veterans and current members of the military can get a 10% discount on Apple store products, through the special Veterans and Military Purchase Plan....

In line with our reports from earlier this week, Apple has announced that its Apple Store iPhone trade-in-program has launched today. The confirmation comes by way of comment to CNBC. The trade-in-program is officially called the “iPhone Reuse and Recycling Program” and it is available in Apple Stores across the United States. It is powered in-part by BrightStar… The trade-in process can be conducted on the store floor, or at the Genius Bar....

Rumors that Apple might be creating its own search engine started doing the rounds last fall, when webmasters started seeing web crawler visits from IP addresses starting with 17 – the IP address block owned entirely by Apple. Apple has now officially confirmed in a support document that it is operating its own web crawler called Applebot. While the wording is clearly intended to suggest that this is just business as usual, both the fact that Apple is running its own web crawler at all, and the somewhat vague wording, are interesting … Applebot is the web crawler for Apple, used by products including Siri and Spotlight Suggestions....

Concerns as to the health of Jobs, who suffered a rare form of pancreatic cancer four years ago, were raised following his appearance at WWDC this week, when the Mac web noted that he seemed to have suffered some weight loss. Responding to these concerns, an Apple spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal Jobs was hit with a “common bug” in recent weeks but that he still felt it was important to participate in the Apple conference....

After announcing virtual WWDC 2021 in March, Apple today officially unveiled the full schedule for the event. Apple has confirmed that the all-virtual WWDC will include a keynote address, Platforms State of the Union, engineering sessions, 1-on-1 labs, and more. Here are the full details on the schedule: Apple has also announced a new Pavilions initiative for WWDC 2021. Pavilions will provide “an easy way for developers to explore relevant sessions, labs, and special activities for a given topic....