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We’ve already seen that analysts are expecting big things from Apple’s earnings in the final quarter of last year, and the latest numbers from Counterpoint Research lend support for that optimism. The company estimates that within the USA Apple sold a total of 22.39M iPhones across all models in Q4 2017 – pushing its US market share to a record 44% … Counterpoint says this is particularly impressive given consumer reluctance to upgrade....

This Friday afternoon, Apple has opened up an iPhone 5 battery replacement program after discovering that a “very small percentage” of units “may suddenly experience shorter battery life or need to be charged more frequently.” The iPhone 5 was originally launched in September 2012, and Apple says that the affected units were sold between that month and January 2013. Apple’s support website includes a tool to check if your serial number belongs to a faulty iPhone 5…...

China Daily (via ZDNet) reports that Apple has been ordered by a court to pay 730,000 Yuan ($118,000) to three Chinese authors as their books were apparently uploaded to the iTunes Store without permission. The uploads appear to have been made by third-parties rather than by Apple directly, and it’s unclear who did upload them, but the court ruled that Apple has a duty to ensure that uploads don’t breach copyright....

Apple has opened up iPhone Upgrade Program pre-approvals for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro lineups. This allows iPhone Upgrade Program members to get a head start on their iPhone 12 upgrade before pre-order day rolls around. Here’s how to get pre-approved for your iPhone 12 upgrade through the iPhone Upgrade Program: Open the Apple Store app on your iPhone Choose your preferred model Complete the upgrade process within the Apple Store app You can also double check your eligibility under the “For You” tab of the Apple Store app, where you should see a “Check upgrade eligibility” button....

It looks like Apple’s Developer Center is getting a visual refresh as the developer center account page has been updated today with some notable changes. The main view after signing in has gone through a reorganization, making accessing various sections much easier. Moving primary links into a left sidebar view, developer’s can now quickly access their CloudKit Dashboard, Documentation, and even the Bug Reporter. Though none of the links or resources on the visually refreshed page are considered new to developers, Apple has done a nice job of making them more prominent and easier to find....

This year’s Apple Earth Day initiatives have been announced, alongside the company reminding us of its more recent actions and commitments on the environmental front. Earth Day is an annual event on April 22, encouraging people to express their commitment to the environment through learning, volunteering, and charitable donations – and Apple always plays its own role in promoting the day … Apple says it wants to help customers “appreciate the beauty of the planet, learn about key issues, and support worthy causes....

Apple has announced that it is expanding the availability of Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager features to new locations. The expansion covers China mainland, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Vietnam. With this rollout, apps in the App Store in these locations are now available for volume purchase on Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager. Apple detailed more about these changes on its developer website: You can learn more about distributing apps on Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager on Apple’s website....

According to a report from Foss Patents (and confirmed by Reuters), Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and Samsung Chief Executive Officer Gee-Sung Choi will meet within the next 90 days for settlement talks over ongoing patent disputes. Judge Lucy Koh, who is presiding over the two cases in California, initiated the meeting after ordering the companies to submit their CEOs and legal counsels to an Alternative Dispute Resolution. The report called the talks “semi-voluntary,” because the companies did not have to submit to the Alternative Dispute Resolution....

At WWDC today Apple has announced changes to Apple Music. Eddy Cue first noted that Apple Music has 15 million paying subscribers, which is the most of any streaming service during the first year. As expected, Apple has entirely redesigned the Music app interface with a new design. Now, when you open the Music app the first screen you will see is the “Library,” as opposed to previous versions when the “For You” screen was shown....

Pros Thanks to E-Ink, the display on Kindle device reads like paper without glares in bright sunlight. Also, the text is designed to read like a printed page with the pixel level set for maximum readability. Additionally, Kindle devices offer great battery life with the time between charges measured in weeks, not days. Kindle also comes with Goodreads, a social cataloging website that allows you to search for annotations, quotes, and reviews of the current book....

Apple today is continuing its Apple Pay Cash ad campaign. The latest ad comes a day after Consumer Reports crowned Apple Pay Cash as the top peer-to-peer payment platform… In the latest ad, Apple Pay Cash is used between friends to split a dinner bill. The ad is a continuation fo Apple’s ‘Just text them the money’ series, which it has been gradually rolling out over recent months. Just yesterday, Consumer Reports crowned Apple Pay Cash as the top peer-to-peer payments platform, citing its focus on user and data security, as well as additional authentication steps, as its advantages over services like Zelle, Venmo, and Square Cash....

Apple has so far made one move designed to help it sell more HomePods: a price drop from $350 to $300 back in the spring. Indications are that this didn’t really help. Other efforts seem… limited. Click the Search button on Apple’s website and AirPods – and even iPod – come up as Quick Links; HomePod doesn’t. Even on the Music page, HomePod gets second billing after Apple Music. Part of the challenge for Apple is that decent-quality audio is one of those product categories that has to be experienced before you appreciate the value....

Since being flagged, all user data is no longer accessible. Prior to that, an exploit enabled completed submissions with personal data to be publicly accessible, and retrieval of said data was trivial. So what happened? Essentially, Exposure is an automation tool that companies like Apple can use to speed up the collection of photo licensing. When an Apple employee finds an image they like, they use the Exposure app to send the Instagram account a message with a link to a form to fill out....

Following the release of macOS 10.14 Mojave this afternoon, Apple has published a pair of support documents with details for specific machines. These documents relate to installing Mojave on older Mac Pro machines, as well as Boot Camp support on select iMacs. First off, Apple outlines the graphic cards that support Metal and are therefore compatible with macOS Mojave on the mid-2010 and mid-2012 Mac Pro models: MSI Gaming Radeon RX 560 128-bit 4GB GDRR5 SAPPHIRE Radeon PULSE RX 580 8GB GDDR5 SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7950 Mac Edition NVIDIA Quadro K5000 for Mac NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition Apple says that “some other third-party graphics cards” based on certain AMD GPU families “might” also be compatible with Mojave on the mid-2010 and mid-2012 Mac Pro models:...

Apple has slowly been expanding mobile phone billing (or carrier billing) to additional countries, and three more have been added to the short list of supported countries this week. Customers in Austria, Italy, and Singapore can now use mobile phone billing with select carriers where available. Mobile phone billing lets customers roll charges for the iTunes Store, App Store, iBooks Store, and Apple Music memberships into monthly phone bills from the carrier as an alternative to storing debit or credit cards with Apple....

Apple patents all sorts of crazy things, mostly just concepts that never see the light of the day. We would have classed this one under the ” highly improbable” drawer had it not been for the company’s past patents which toy with various aspects of laser-based projection systems. This one surfaced in the United States Patent & Trademark Office database under the code 20110075055 and entitled “Display system having coherent and incoherent light sources”....

Not only has Apple charged me $100 to use my 30 inch screen with my Unibody MacBook, but the adapter is huge and takes a USB port for power. Oh, and there was a one month wait for these parts initially. Also, the way this technology works, I can’t use a regular DVI adapter on a 30 inch monitor. If I try, I get the same resolution as on my MacBook’s built-in display, not normal 1920×1200 resolution that the normal DVI supports....

Apple has announced that it now has two million Final Cut Pro X users – or ‘seats,’ in the terminology used when speaking to an audience at the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual conference. Apple said that it hit the milestone some five and a half years after launching version 10 of the professional video editing app. Notably, it said that the pace of adoption was increasing. While the company didn’t provide specific dates, it said that it had taken much less time to grow from 1M to 2M users than it had taken to hit that first million....

It’s been quite an exciting week for those glued to the latest out of Cupertino, and this morning it gets better. As promised, Apple made the iPad mini available on its website for pre-order. The .68-pound tablet that is “thinner than a pencil” offers users a 7.9-inch experience on top of Apple’s traditional iOS. Apple is offering the iPad mini at $329 for 16GB, $429 for 32GB, and $529 for 64GB....

Last year, a report explored Apple’s crackdown on third-party screen time and parental control following the implementation of Screen Time as a native feature in iOS 12. Now, a new report from The New York Times notes of Apple’s continued efforts to push users towards its first-party time tracking feature. The report details that over the past year, Apple has “removed or restricted” at least 11 of the 17 most popular screen time and parental control applications on the App Store....