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A tip we’ve received from an Apple Store employee indicates that Apple will be putting up celebratory LED window displays at Apple Stores, showing a stylised ‘3’ and a ‘Happy birthday, Mac’ message. iPhones and iPads in the window will reportedly be removed. The graphic came via special SD card. Happy 30th #Apple! A post shared by Bill Wilson (@level42) on Jan 24, 2014 at 1:47pm PST Boxes of special t-shirts have arrived for the occasion (photo below the fold) … If you see the window displays go up at your local store, please send photos to the tips email or Twitter account....

I have previously written about my frustration With iBooks Author and iTunes U, and Apple has now announced both of these products are being discontinued. iBooks Author will no longer be updated, and iTunes U is being discontinued at the end of 2021. iBooks Author will continue to work, but you’ll need to make preparations to transition to Pages in the near future. Much of the functionality from iBooks Author has made its way into Pages over the past few update cycles....

Even before Apple has built its first Chinese R&D center in Beijing, Tim Cook has announced that a second one is on the way. Reuters reports that the second one will be in the country’s largest manufacturing district, Shenzhen. Apple said that this center will be specifically focused on allowing Apple to work more closely with its manufacturing partners in the country … Strengthening relationships with local universities is a secondary aim, added Rosenstock....

Apple and Goldman Sachs are readying a joint credit card, according to the Wall Street Journal. The new credit card will integrate with the Apple Wallet app on the iPhone to offer special features like the ability to set spending goals and track purchase rewards. The card would purportedly offer rewards like 2% cashback, and maybe more when buying Apple gear. The report says the new card will be tested with employees in the next month or so with a launch later in the year....

After celebrating the back to school season with exclusive Apple Pay deals last week, Apple has today announced a new promotion aimed at supporting national parks in the U.S. The company is promising to donate $10 to the National Parks Foundation for every Apple Pay transaction made at Apple over the next week. The promotion officially kicks off on August 17th and runs through August 25th. If you spend $10+ with Apple Pay, Apple will make a $10 donation to the National Parks Foundation....

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has indeed scheduled an event on September 12. On that date, Apple is set to announce the new iPhone models, as well as cellular Apple Watch and a 4K Apple TV set-top box. We are still waiting for Apple to send out invites to press to make the event official, although it is all but confirmed at this point. In terms of event location, the report says that the company is ‘aiming to use’ the Steve Jobs Theater in Apple Park for the first time …...

Following the announcement of major updates to both OS X and iOS, Apple has begun seeding versions of the new operating systems beyond its own engineers and third-party developers. Beginning this week, several sources say, Apple has begun seeding the initial preview of OS X Mavericks to Genius Bar and on-floor Apple Retail employees. These select employees received the following message: This program is designed in order to gauge feedback in a more controlled environment about the major Mac OS update....

Apple has used the home page of the App Store today to celebrate the WWDC scholarship winners and share their apps and games. In a featured App Store story, Apple has given recognition to all of the WWDC scholarship winners and also shared the students’ apps and games, which cover a wide variety of subjects. Apple notes that this year’s winners come from more than 20 different countries. Brazil and the US have the most scholarship winners with over 20 recipients each....

Ahead of iOS 8’s release later this morning, Apple has released new versions some of its iOS apps. Remote, which allows you to control your iTunes library and Apple TV from your iOS device, received a performance improvement update with iOS 8 support. Logic Remote, which allows you to interface with both GarageBand and Logic X on the Mac, is also updated with iOS 8 support. An updated version of iTunes U is also available bringing iOS 8 support and the ability to add assignment due dates to the calendar....

At an event at the University of Arizona’s Department of Marketing, former Apple advertising lead Ken Segall has shared some additional details into the naming behind Apple’s massively popular smartphone. While Apple ended up calling its industry-changing smartphone the “iPhone,” Apple considered a few other names. Our own Scott Buscemi was on the ground at the event, and he has shared the details for this article. In addition to iPhone, Apple considered “Telepod,” “Mobi,” “Tripod,” and “iPad....

Apple’s Siri team has published a new Machine Learning Journal entry that details some of the process behind making voice-activated ‘Hey Siri’ work with just our voice. Apple previously documented part of the process behind pulling off voice-activated Siri in general last fall, and the first Machine Learning Journal entry of this year focuses on the challenge of speaker recognition. As referenced in the previous entry, Apple says the phrase ‘Hey Siri’ was chosen in part because a number of users were already using it naturally when activating Siri with a hardware button....

The Wall Street Journal summarizes information from court documents and various sources that points to Apple and Samsung being back at the bargaining table after the two companies spent much of 2012 in court proceedings regarding patent infringement claims. During the summer of 2012, Apple won a major lawsuit in California court against Samsung due to design patent infringement claims regarding the iPad and iPhone. Today’s report shares that since that time, the Cupertino and South Korean tech firms have met multiple times in private to come to some sort of settlement....

Image via GeekWire Apple today confirmed its rumored plans for expansion in Seattle. Apple’s Kristina Raspe and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan held a press event today announcing Apple’s expansion in Seattle that will see it grow to over 2,000 employees in the city with a new campus. As detailed by GeekWire, Apple plans to hire its first 200 new employees in Seattle by the end of this year. From there, it plans to hit 2,000 over the next five years....

Update: A law firm known for filing Apple patents now says that the listing of Apple as the patent assignee was a ‘typographical error’ and that the true assignee should be the inventor, BAE Systems. This suggests the firm may have used a boilerplate form and forgotten to remove Apple from the document. It could only be a matter of time before we started seeing vehicle-related patents for Apple, but the first one spotted by Patently Apple is an odd one: it’s assigned from another company, and it relates to articulated vehicles – not quite what one would expect for an Apple car....

If past iPhone sales are anything to go by, Apple is set to move a whooping hundred million iPhone 5 units. In other words, a fifth-generation iPhone will match sales of all previous models combined, helping Apple maintain a healthy 20+ percent market share in smartphones. The assumption is based on the above chart from Asymco that outlines monthly sales for all four iPhone models, approximated based on actual quarterly sales divided over the months according to the number of days available....

At the Apple Distinguished Educator conference this week, Apple Vice President of Environmental Initiatives Lisa Jackson spoke to educators about the importance of the environment and Apple’s related work. Jackson showed the above photo and said “that little green leaf means a lot to me.” The leaf outlines multiple words expressing Apple’s work on the environment such as “Apple Campus 2” and “EPEAT.” During her talk, Jackson shared Apple’s work to trying to reach 100% renewable energy across its operations and she said that Apple is “not going to stop until we get to 101%…”...

You have to feel for The New York Times. I mean, Apple leaked the 7-inch iPad information to The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg over a week ago as orders for Google’s 7-inch tablet were opening up. Perhaps Apple was not pleased with the iEconomy series that The New York Times insisted on running. Nevertheless, Apple’s PR machine has a message to get out (even turncoats MG Siegler and Walt Mossberg love the Nexus 7!...

As part of iOS 11, Apple is announcing a handful of improvements to Apple Music and AirPlay. Headlining the changes is Apple’s new AirPlay 2 protocol, while the Music app is also receiving improvements with new social features and more. With AirPlay 2, Apple is adding speaker control to the Home app. This means that users will be able to control speakers and manage multi-room audio directly from the Home app on their iOS device....

Apple has just announced that preorders for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have topped all previously set records, achieving 4 million sales in the first twenty-four hours. In the press release, Cook said he is thrilled that customers love them “as much as we do”. The issues with Apple’s online sales system do not seem to have deterred interested shoppers. Although the iPhone 5s did not have preorders at all last year, for comparison, Apple sold 9 million iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c’s in their opening weekend....

Until today, the only way to get a premium Apple Watch Hermès band was to buy the band and watch together from the Apple Store, or buy a very-similar (and cheaper) knockoff band and pretend it is genuine. It was also only offered in one color, fauve brown. That is all about to change however. Apple has announced that it will soon start selling Apple Watch Hermès bands standalone and in several new colors....