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Apple this morning has announced its first iOS App Development Center for Europe. The facility will be located in Naples, Italy and offer a place for students to learn who to develop iOS apps. The App Development Center will feature on-site teachers and a curriculum to facilitate a strong and diverse development community. In a press release, the company said that it hopes the App Development Center will create even more jobs in the iOS community, which has already created more than 1....

Update: It turns out the iPhone 12 is $30 more expensive than originally thought. Apple today announced the new iPhone 12, featuring a 6.1-inch OLED display. The iPhone 12 is one of four models unveiled today as part of the new fall iPhone lineup. iPhone 12 will go on sale for $799, and the smaller iPhone 12 mini starts at $699. iPhone 12 will be available to order starting this Friday, October 16....

You can now take out an Apple Arcade annual subscription for $49.99 per year, instead of $4.99 per month. This works out at $4.17 per month or the equivalent of getting two months a year free. The equivalent deal is also available in other countries: CAD$59.99 in Canada, £49.99 in the UK and €49.99 in Eurozone countries… The deal – spotted by iFun.de – brings Apple Arcade into line with Apple Music and Apple TV+ in offering a lower-cost annual subscription option....

A number of readers notified us that their Lightning to 30-pin adapters have begun shipping with deliveries expected tomorrow. Both readers were in Australia, but we expect global orders to start being filled shortly. There was some controversy with the original iPhone 5 online order forms due to a bit of text on store.apple.com that said an adapter was included free with the purchase of an iPhone 5. MacRumors also received shipping confirmations, but it noted both the $29 direct-plug adapter and the $39 adapter with a short cable are available....

The latest Apple/FBI war of words in the Pensacola case has once again highlighted the huge challenge Apple has in communicating the reality of the debate, in a world in which most people have no understanding of the core issue. To a non-technical person, the debate appears to be a moral one. The FBI says that it needs access to data from terrorists and criminals, and Apple wants to prevent this....

The lawsuit, which was filed in a German court (namely the Düsseldorf Regional Court), and it involves no less than 10 smartphones including the Samsung Galaxy S II and Galaxy S Plus, according Peter Schütz, spokesman at the court, quoted by PC World. Another lawsuit, linked to a September ruling, has also been filed on the tablet front. The September ruling had banned Samsung from selling the Galaxy Tab 10....

But the demand for the iPad 2 has obviously cooled off, since Apple currently sells the iPad Air and iPad Mini 2 line as well as the original iPad Mini; not to mention the many promotions big retailers are running in the United States. So, Cupertino has decided that now is the time to bring back the iPad 4, or iPad with Retina Display, as it is officially called. This means that at the moment there is only a single iPad officially on sale which lacks the Retina panel – the original iPad Mini....

The software developer credited by Apple for discovering last year’s developer center flaw says that he informed Apple of an iCloud weakness that may have been used to obtain celebrity nudes more than six months before the photos were accessed. The Daily Dot reports that Ibrahim Balic advised Apple in March of a Find My Phone weakness that would allow brute-force attacks on iCloud accounts. It has been suggested that this may have been one of the methods used to access the accounts – or even complete iPhone backups – of celebrities … While Apple issued a statement that appeared at first glance to deny this vulnerability was used, some suggested that the wording used may have been carefully chosen....

Apple is officially putting its weight behind new LGBT anti-discrimination legislature currently being proposed in Congress. The company said in a statement to the Human Rights Campaign that it actively supports the Equality Act. Apple’s support for the bill that would expand federal protections in the workplace to LGBT Americans in all states follows several years of Apple CEO Tim Cook calling on Congress to pass such legislation, and Apple’s backing is in line with its own company policies....

Apple has become the first public company to hit the magic milestone of having a $2 trillion market capitalization, just two years after it crossed the $1 trillion mark. Market cap is the value of a share multiplied by number of shares, thereby seen as the overall value of a publicly traded firm. Apple has seen its stock almost double this year off of COVID pandemic lows in March. Investor confidence rebounded as Apple delivered strong revenue growth in many business divisions last quarter, with its services division offering promising monetization opportunities over the next few years....

The long-awaited Siri Speaker will likely be finding its way onto home countertops later this year. Apple has begun manufacturing the speaker and could find its debut at this year’s WWDC 2017, according to Bloomberg. Bloomberg sources stated that the Apple smart speaker will differ from its competitors by bringing in “virtual surround sound technology” and deep integration with Apple’s current lineup. Prototype testing began months ago as Bloomberg also previously reported....

As Apple expands its businesses, with the iPhone and iPad reaching more nations, and their upcoming iCloud service, Apple has opened up the iOS App Store and Mac App Store in 33 new countries. Developers who wish to sell their applications in these new territories can do so by adding them to their sales territory lists in the iTunes Connect web application. Here are the new countries: Algeria, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua, and Barbuda, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Cayman Islands, Cyprus, Dominica, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Iceland, Montserrat, Nigeria, Oman, St....

Apple has just announced a brand-new Retina 27-inch iMac. Apple is spreading Retina displays across the lineup, with the iMac leading that charge. This is the highest resolution screen in the world, according to Apple, with 14.7 million pixels. This is a 5K display — more than seven times the pixels of a HDTV. The screen builds on the technology Apple built on the iPhone and iPad, but to a whole new scale....

Just days before Apple’s big March 25th event where it will unveil a new subscription news service, the company has revealed plans to support three media literacy programs in the United States and across Europe. Each program shares a similar goal in combating so-called fake news (fictitious stories intended to drive traffic and not spread truth). Apple will offer support for the News Literacy Project and Common Sense in the US as well as the Italy-based Osservatorio Permanente Giovani-Editori across Europe as part of the new initiative....

After launching a new ad campaign on Tumblr for the iPhone 5c a few weeks ago, Apple has today attempted to bring the campaign to a more mainstream audience on the Yahoo! homepage. The ads were also run on the New York Times homepage this week, though they seem to have disappeared now. The new ad features an interactive grid of eight patterns, each of which plays a different video that uses the design of the iPhone 5c and its case to create an animated scene....

After the US Supreme Court gave the go-ahead for an antitrust case against Apple in regard to its App Store practices, Apple responded with a brief statement. It has now expanded on that with a new webpage entitled App Store Principles and Practices. The company takes a pretty strong line, stating that while it welcomes competition, it also needs to protect its customers. The web page opens by explaining Apple’s twin goals for the platform and goes on to explain the protections the company chooses to put in place....

Australian readers are reporting that Apple’s iPods had dropped in price up to AU$50. 3rd party retailers haven’t all reflected the price drops. Full price details below. Anyone else seeing a price drop out there? MC297ZP/A iPod classic 160GB – Black $329.00 $299.00 MC293ZP/A iPod classic 160GB – Silver MC689ZP/A iPod nano 8GB – Blue $199.00 $179.00 MC688ZP/A iPod nano 8GB – Graphite MC690ZP/A iPod nano 8GB – Green...

Now, we know we’re all incredibly curious as to just what Apple’s hatching up for its future product road map, but company executives have so far declined to disclose just what it is they’re planning to send into flight. And they don’t seem to want anyone else to be too excited about it – so ditch those tablet rumour-writing pens, folks. All execs have said at this point is that these increased air freight costs are “nothing to do with iPhone”, and “are about getting units into the channel for the holiday....

One of the new features introduced with iOS 14 last year was the ability to see Air Quality in the Weather app, but this is restricted to only a few regions. However, with the first beta of iOS 14.7, the company is finally expanding this feature to more countries. As reported by multiple users on Reddit and Twitter, iOS 14.7 beta 1 brings the Air Quality feature in the iPhone Weather app to more regions....

In Apple’s latest Machine Learning Journal entry, the Siri Speech Recognition Team shares an overview of the work behind improving Siri’s understanding of names for regional points-of-interest by incorporating the user’s location. Based in part on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Apple has been able to tune Siri to better understand users based on where they are and what POIs they’re more likely to ask about. Apple says machine learning on its own has helped improve automatic speech recognition for general language over the years, but “recognizing named entities, like small local businesses” has proved a performance bottleneck....