Apple today has confirmed that it will acquire Intel’s smartphone modem business in a transaction valued at $1 billion. The deal is expected to close during the fourth quarter of 2019 and is subject to regulatory approval. Through this acquisition, Apple will beef up its wireless technology patent portfolio to over 17,000 patents. Apple also says that approximately 2,200 Intel employees will join Apple, as will Intel’s equipment and leases that pertain to the smartphone modem business....

Yesterday, a report detailed how certain apps used session replay frameworks to monitor user interactions. Now, Apple is cracking down on that practice, saying apps must remove such code or face being kicked out of the App Store. According to TechCrunch, Apple is notifying developers that are using session replay frameworks that they must remove the code due to privacy concerns. In a statement, an Apple spokesperson said that protecting privacy is “paramount in the Apple ecosystem....

As we noted earlier today, several media outlets have filed a motion that would allow them to air the videotaped deposition of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs that was played for jurors in the ongoing iPod antitrust lawsuit. Now the Verge reports that Apple is fighting back against the motion, with the company’s lawyers accusing the media of wanting to see “a dead man.” As Apple attorney Jonathan Sherman put it:...

Reform Government Surveillance is a coalition of major tech companies that looks to guide legislation for how the government can surveil individuals and access their information. Apple joined RGS back in 2013 and the coalition has recently issued a statement as talks have begun again about US officials pushing for a mandate to make tech companies build backdoors into their devices and services. Spotted by ZDNet, the new statement from the coalition reiterates the strong stance that Apple and others have shared consistently in recent years against creating backdoors to devices and services....

The Apple Store is back up and Apple has just announced a new cheaper iPad, going on sale Friday for $329. The product replaces the iPad Air 2 in the lineup and is simply called ‘iPad’, available in three colors with 32 GB storage. The $329 iPad features older internal components to enable the lower price point, featuring an Apple A9 chip although the 9.7-inch Retina display is brighter. It does not support Apple Pencil or include a Smart Connector like the ‘iPad Pro’ line....

Apple has sent out an email reminding developers about the new Kids category, originally announced at WWDC. The email explains that the category is intended to provide a ‘safe-haven’ for parents that want to find age appropriate apps for their children. For apps aimed at users below the age of 11, developers can now select from three more finely-grained age ranges; under 5, 6-8 and 9-11. Apple reiterates that the new Kids section will be distinct from the rest of the App Store and apps can still appear in other categories nonetheless....

Apple is celebrating Bastille Day on its homepage with a clever twist on the usual Shot on iPhone campaign. The Apple France homepage displays a series of blue, white and red images formatted to look like the French flag. It’s a clever way to incorporate a Bastille Day commemoration, which signifies the start of the French Revolution on 14 July 1789, and demo the photographic capabilities of the iPhone. The images are credited with the names of the people that took them....

Apple has today said that its accessibility feature VoiceOver is helping more blind people to read than any competing system. As an illustration of the power of the technology to assisted blind and partially sighted customers, Apple tells the story of Scott Leason, a blind veteran who regularly surfs off San Diego’s Mission Beach … Apple says that Leason was blinded when shot by a robber, but was helped by training from the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ Blind Rehabilitation Center – and Apple tech....

As Jeff detailed in his massive how-to earlier this week, the biggest changes in iOS 10 came with the all-new Messages app. One of the most highly-anticipated features was support for built-in GIF search, which pulls in GIFs from a variety of outside sources. As with any instance of pulling images in from third-party sources, there are bound to be a few inappropriate ones that slip through the cracks, and iOS 10’s GIF search is no different....

Reuters reports that the CEOs of both Samsung and Apple have agreed to sit down with their lawyers and hash out a settlement in the latest of the never-ending patent suits between the two companies. Legal teams from both companies decided on this course of action earlier this week. The meeting will take place some time next month, ahead of the actual court proceedings scheduled for March. If the two companies managed to reach a settlement, they could bypass the entire court process, saving both sides of the fight from financial and legal headaches....

Following reports in February that Apple purchased roughly 160-acres of land in Prineville, Ore., for $5.6 million, The Oregonian reported today Apple has now started the first $68 million phase of construction. The new land will apparently consist of two 338,000 square-foot buildings behind a 10,000 square-foot modular data center it has already built on the property. The $68 million figure for the first phase of construction covers one of those two buildings, according to plans filed with Crook County and dug up by The Oregonian:...

Following a win for the Toronto Raptors last night in Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Championship, Apple is joining in on the celebration with a tribute via its Canadian website. Users visiting Apple.ca (the tribute only appears on the local Canadian version of its site) this morning are greeted with a short animation of floating basketballs, dinosaurs (T-Rex, close enough), and Canadian flag emojis, as pictured above. The win last night for the Raptors against the Golden State Warriors made for Canada’s first ever NBA Championship....

Apple’s Black Friday deals have gone live in the US and sure enough they match what we saw in the Australian market. You can get an Apple Store gift card up to $280 value with the purchase of Mac, or $70 when buying an iPhone 8 or iPhone 7. Check out the 9to5Toys deals hub for the best Black Friday promotions spanning all retailers, which will easily beat Apple’s first-hand sales with real discounts and savings on the latest iPhones, Macs, iPads and more....

A new story from CNET today highlights how employees at Silicon Valley companies, including Apple, are struggling to balance professional demands with childcare while working from home. For its part, Apple says it is taking several steps to help its employees through this transition. Apple says that it has increased communications with managers and employees during the coronavirus outbreak. This includes encouraging employees to ask “for help or accommodations,” but managers have also been told to “proactively help employees, too....

NYC Resistor recently found an old Macintosh SE on a Brooklyn street and noticed an interesting easter egg buried in the ROMs after doing some digital digging. According to NYC Resistor: So…an Apple team apparently hid four of its own images in the Motorola 68000-era Macintosh nearly 26 years ago. Cool. NYC Resistor is now calling upon readers to identify the mystery employees. Go to the hacker blog to also learn more about the discovery’s engineering-side....

Apple and Broadcom were hit with a more than $1 billion penalty in January for infringing upon patents held by the California Insitute of Technology. Following that decision, Apple pushed to get one of the Caltech patents in the case ruled as invalid, but that quest failed today. Bloomberg Law and Reuters report that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled against Apple’s bid to overturn the decision....

The German government has announced a change in policy over the weekend, and now favors the Apple/Google contact tracing approach for the coronavirus over the rival one proposed by the European Union. Apple, meantime, is pushing an alternative term designed to emphasize the benefits over the methodology … Germany had so far backed the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT). This works in a similar way to the Apple/Google API, but with one crucial difference: instead of Bluetooth codes being stored locally on your phone, they would be uploaded to a central database....

At its education event, Apple has announced new versions of its iWork suite. Updates to Pages, Keynote and Numbers for iPad will bring rich integration with Apple Pencil. Pages will also integrate book authoring features, as a replacement for the iBooks Author Mac app. With the new updates, users will be able to add drawings and annotations to Keynote, Numbers and Pages documents just by writing on it with the Apple Pencil stylus....

Apple announced its 2012 Apple Design Award winners this afternoon at Moscone West after the opening keynote. Apple opened this year’s award nominations in late April, but today we get a look at who won. The winners received a hefty load of prizes, including: a special lanyard to commemorate the event, a new MacBook Air, a new third-generation iPad, an iPod touch, and the good-looking ADA trophy seen in the image above....

Apple is making some big improvements for gamers in the coming releases of iOS and OS X, and not just the new standardized gaming controllers we told you about previously. Not only is Apple introducing enhanced leaderboards, improved challenge modes, and new turn-based gaming features, it is also providing developers with tools to combat and prevent cheating. Head below for details on everything Apple is doing in iOS 7 to improve the gaming experience…...