Along with a few other fun freebies, iPhone users updating to iOS 16.2 will now have a helpful new app automatically installed on their devices. Freeform is an interactive sandbox whiteboard that can be shared effortlessly with friends, family or professional colleagues. Read on to discover why we’re excited about this new Apple tool. If you’ve already got the update, we encourage you to try it ASAP. Why you and your friends need to try Apple Freeform Apple Freeform was recently in beta testing but is officially ready for public consumption....

Coming off the heels of Apple’s March event, it’s clear that Apple is all in on services. After all the services are released, you could easily spend $50+ with Apple on recurring charges for Apple Arcade, Apple News+, and more. Services don’t have the massive margins that a $1200 iPhone XS Max does, but one advantage is that they are recurring. Once Apple gets your $9.99 per month for an Apple Music subscription, you will likely have it for a while, and you are likely to continue to buy at least some of Apple’s hardware devices....

Earlier this week, it was discovered that Apple Music in China had been censored to remove a reference to the Tiananmen Square massacre. Now, Apple is facing backlash from politicians in the United States for ceding to the Chinese government’s request. The song in question, titled The Path of Man and performed by Hong Kong singer Jacky Cheung, features lyrics that “directly” refer to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Last week, that song was seemingly removed from Apple Music, as well as other streaming services in China such as QQ Music....

The Dutch Court of The Hague today banned Samsung Galaxy products infringing on an Apple patent related to navigating through photo galleries, according to a report from IDG News Service. Courts in the Netherlands already ruled in favor of Apple in preliminary proceedings regarding the same patent last year, leading Samsung to implement a workaround with its own proprietary photo gallery software and replace Apple’s “bounce back” feature “with a ‘blue flash’ that illuminates the edge of the image....

Apple has shared a variety of new videos highlighting the new iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR after announcing the new devices at Steve Jobs Theater this week. Now Apple has released an ad that focuses just on iPhone XS, attempting to tell all there is about the new features in under a minute. Titled, iPhone XS – Everything to know in :54, the new ad comes with the same style as the 108-second Apple event recap video that the company released with fast cuts and bold text....

Apple has officially announced iOS 8, the next version of the iPhone and iPad mobile operating system, at its developer conference in San Francisco. The update includes some noticeable user interface and design changes from iOS 7 while maintaining the same design language. Continuity between the Mac and iPhone has already been previewed at length during the OS X Yosemite demo prior to iOS 8’s unveiling. Specific features and press release below:...

Apple has started training its AppleCare technical support staff on the changes and feature-set of iOS 7, according to multiple AppleCare employees. These people say that training began today, and AppleCare employees are required to complete the iOS 7 training by the second week of September. The second week of September is around the date that Apple will be holding its iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C, and iOS 7 media event, so it would make sense that Apple would want its support staff to be ready for questions about the new software....

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5WYvFOMtAA] Apple has today posted its latest Environmental Responsibility report, together with a new Better Starts Here video, celebrating a number of recent environmental issues and its commitment to “leave the world better than we found it” … The company said that true innovation goes beyond product design and includes everything from energy-generation to packaging. The new report says that Apple set three environmental priorities: We take our passion for innovation beyond our products and into our practices....

The Eurasian database continues to be a good indicator of Apple’s forthcoming product releases. Some of the model identifiers unearthed earlier this month were unveiled yesterday as the new MacBook Pro laptops. Consomac today noticed that Apple has now registered a fleet of new iPhones running iOS 12, almost certainly destined to be the 2018 iPhone lineup launching in September. The iOS 12 iPhone model identifiers are A1920, A1921, A1984, A2097, A2098, A2099, A2101, A2103, A2104, A2105, and A2106....

Today has seen the announcement of the second Apple antitrust investigation in two days. Just one day after Italy announced that it was investigating the fairness of iCloud terms and conditions, Australia says that it is launching a broad investigation into both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said that it will be examining the fairness of the two app stores from both consumer and developer perspectives …...

Apple typically begins shipping devices shortly after charging credit cards, but so far it appears to have not yet changed the status of orders to provide an expected delivery day. Apple usually changes orders from “Processing” to “Shipped” after charging cards, at which time customers should have a more accurate estimated delivery date provided compared to Apple’s original estimated week-long window. Apple first unveiled the new MacBook Pros on October 27 and began accepting orders the same day....

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company – better known as TSMC – has posted record Q4 profits after taking around 60% of the orders for the A8 chip in the iPhone 6/Plus. Nasdaq reports the company’s net profits for the quarter rose 79% year-on-year. TSMC’s move into 20-nanometer chip production enabled Apple to reduce its reliance on Samsung for the A8 chip, with the chipmaker saying that it is making further investment in more advanced chip-making technology....

In cooperation with the 4th annual FCPX Creative Summit in Cupertino, Apple today showed off its latest updates to Final Cut Pro X, Motion, and Compressor. The new software was demoed on the latest pro hardware from both Apple and third-party vendors. Just yesterday, Final Cut 10.4.4 was released with features editors have long hoped would arrive. The highlight of the update is support for third-party workflow extensions, enabling more productivity and new ways of working in Final Cut Pro....

For the past two years, Apple has been using vehicles around the United States and other countries to collect data for Apple Maps. Now, the company has further expanded those efforts, deploying a fleet of vans in Connecticut for the first time… As noted on the company’s Apple Maps vehicles webpage, Apple is continuing its Apple Maps data collection in New England with camera and sensor-equipped vans for the first time....

According to an internal Apple memo (shown after the break), Apple is finally dropping the long-existing iPad purchase quantity limit of two units per purchase. The change goes into effect immediately at Apple’s Retail Stores worldwide (except in Hong Kong). The quantity limit is yet to be dropped on Apple’s official online store, but the change will appear on that digital storefront on June 11th, the date of Apple’s WWDC kickoff keynote....

According to Rapidus.se (via TechCrunch), Apple has purchased a Swedish firm called AlgoTrim for an undisclosed price. The small company specializes in image and video, specifically JPEG, compression techniques on mobile devices which allow faster processing of images on power-constrained mobile devices. Apple could use these codecs in its camera and image viewing and manipulation apps on iOS. It is probable that the cost of picking up the company and owning the technology outweighed the cost of licensing the technology over its hundreds of millions of devices....

We’d heard back in 2012 that Apple CEO Tim Cook spent 80-90 percent of his time on an iPad, but the WSJ reports today that Cook thinks that’s the way it should be for all of us – and he believes the partnership with IBM can help make that vision a reality. “There’s no reason why everyone shouldn’t be like that. Imagine enterprise apps being as simple as the consumer apps that we’ve all gotten used to....

With the service launching in the United States last month, it may seem a little late, but Apple has very recently launched a website dedicated to iTunes Match. Previously, iTunes Match was given a slab of the iTunes in the Cloud website. The new iTunes Match website is very descriptive and tries to clear up much of the confusion that has surrounded the product since its announcement. Apple thoroughly explains the basics of iTunes Match with a paragraph worded similarly to their previous literature on the subject:...

If you’re eligible for education pricing, iGeneration noticed that the discounts available on Macs through the Apple Store for Education have now been extended to iPads. The discounts are modest, ranging from $20 to $30, but it all helps. Education pricing is available to pretty much everyone working or studying in higher education: students, faculty, staff – even parents of students – as well as employees of K-12 schools. Discounted iPad prices for the base spec 16GB wifi models are:...

A federal judge ruled that a lawsuit against Apple and several other companies can proceed as a class-action suit today after determining that a significant number of employees across the tech industry were hurt by “do-not-hire” arrangements between their employers and other companies. The policies in question were practiced by Apple, Google, Adobe, Pixar, and more as a way of keeping their own employees from defecting to competitors for higher pay....