Posts

An Apple report on the business impact of climate change shows how extreme weather conditions could have benefits for the company as well as downsides. The report was published by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a non-profit which aims to encourage companies to make the right choices about their environmental impact. Its reports collate company responses to questions about their policies, targets and performance – but the most interesting section is on the ‘risks and opportunities’ …...

Update (15/10/2015): Apple services again experiencing outages across App Store, iTunes Store and more services as reported by their system status page. Not a good week for Apple’s cloud uptime. Following a similar outage yesterday, some iTunes users are continuing to experience service disruptions as Apple confirms the downtime. Apple recently updated its system status page tracking issues with its services, stores and iCloud to note the ongoing problem with the iTunes store for some users:...

Tim Cook and U2 announced that the band’s new album “Songs of Innocence” would be automatically gifted to Apple’s over 500 million iTunes users last week following the announcement of the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, but many iTunes users were not happy with seeing music from U2 added to their iTunes libraries (even for free). While iTunes supports a way to “hide” previous purchases, the complaints and confusion apparently grew loud enough to warrant a dedicated support site for permanently removing the free U2 album from iTunes purchase history....

Apple has announced that one of iOS 9’s big new features, App Thinning (or “app slicing”), has been delayed due to an issue with iOS 9. App Thinning was announced at WWDC as a way to help trim down the size of large applications by letting developers mark assets for each specific type of device. When users download the app, the App Store will determine which device they have and only require them to download the assets necessary to run on their device....

WWDC 2020 will begin next Monday, on June 22, and Apple is getting ready for its first totally virtual conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In preparation for the event, Apple has just released a new update for its official Apple Developer app, which will let users and developers watch the entire sessions online. Previously named as the WWDC app, the Apple Developer app offers access to videos and articles for developers, including technical videos of new features in recently released hardware such as new iPhones or iPads....

iPodtouch? Check (We’re getting a 16Gb yesterday). Video iPodnanos? Check. (Wife gets that one.) The new shuffle colors? :/ No comment The new iPod Classic? Reality distortion at its most profound? I guess the “We couldn’t sell enough of these things before the new ones were ready iPod” didn’t really have the Zing! 160GB is nice I guess but that screen is so..tiny… Cheaper iPhones? Really? We bet the early adopters are happy Apple snagged that $200 tax for 2 months of early adoption....

The Sacramento Business Journal is reporting that Apple has started work on a major new expansion at the company’s Elk Grove campus, which currently employs around 2,500 staff. As evidence for the jobs claim, the city’s economic development director Darren Doan says that Apple is adding 1,450 new parking spaces as well as working with the city’s transportation department on new bus services for employees … Construction work quietly underway at Apple’s campus in Elk Grove is for a major expansion that could mean several thousand new jobs, city officials say […]...

Last week we learned that the Texas Attorney General was leading a multi-state probe against Apple and could potentially file a lawsuit over an unnamed violation of consumer law. Today, another multi-state probe is making the news for investigated Apple’s throttling of older iPhones. Reported by Reuters, the Arizona AG is heading up this multi-state investigation concerning the throttling of older iPhones leading to unexpected shutdowns. Specifically, the probe is looking at whether the “deliberate slowing of older iPhones violated deceptive trade practice laws” which is the same concern that the multi-state probe led by the Texas Attorney General has....

As schools across the world adjust to distance learning, Apple has announced some new tools that aim to ease the transition to distance learning. Apple is announcing a free 30-minute one-on-one virtual coaching sessions with Apple Professional Learning Specialists and a new Apple Education remote learning video series. Virtual one-on-one coaching sessions with Apple Professional Learning specialists are being made available for free to help educators improve their approach to online teaching and workflows....

Apple has today announced an expansion of ResearchKit into studies for autism, epilepsy and melanoma. ResearchKit enables people to conduct distributed scientific research studies from an iPhone app, enabling higher participation rates than traditional medical research can provide. The new studies are being run by researchers in Duke University, Johns Hopkins and Oregon Health and Science University. ResearchKit is open-source. In the same statement, Apple says that over 50 researchers have already contributed to the project....

Tony Fadell, the Nest CEO who was Senior VP of Apple’s division from 2006 to 2008, says that Apple built prototypes of a similar device to Google Glass but “didn’t have time” to turn them into actual products. Interviewed as part of Fast Company‘s Oral History of Apple Design series, Fadell said: From the description, the prototypes sound rather more like virtual reality headsets than Google Glass so there may be some exaggeration going on here....

Apple today has officially opened applications for its new Impact Accelerator for Black- and Brown-owned businesses addressing environmental challenges. The company has also added a completely new Racial Equity and Justice Initiative page to its website. Apple explains on its new REJI webpage: The new Racial Equity and Justice Initiative webpage on Apple․com comes after Apple announced major new projects last month to help tackle systemic racism. You can view the new webpage right here....

A report from CNBC this morning says Apple has cut over 200 employees from its top-secret “Project Titan” autonomous vehicle program. In a statement, however, the company says it still sees a “huge opportunity” in the space. An Apple spokesperson acknowledged the changes, but attributed them to staff restructuring rather than layoffs. News of Apple layoffs shouldn’t come as a complete surprise, as just days ago we reported on ‘hiring reductions‘ being planned by the company....

Earlier this month Apple started selling a special edition version of its Woven Nylon Apple Watch band called Pride Edition. Featuring colors of the rainbow, the Pride Edition Woven Nylon band is very similar to the limited edition rainbow Apple Watch band gifted to employees who participated in last year’s San Francisco Pride parade. Since making the Pride Edition Woven Nylon band available for anyone to purchase, Apple has updated its store page to say that a portion of sales from the Pride Edition bands will benefit LGBTQ advocacy groups....

Apple is known for its secrecy when it comes to ongoing product development, but the company is operating a little different with its efforts around artificial intelligence and machine learning. Apple’s director of machine learning, Carlos Guestrin, openly discussed Apple’s plans to grow its engineering presence in Seattle in a new GeekWire interview. Guestrin joined Apple through the company’s acquisition of AI firm Turi last fall, and now the University of Washington is naming a $1 million professorship after him to help discover and support new talent in the machine learning field:...

Flyover is a built-in feature in Apple Maps that allows users to navigate around a city through 3D buildings instead of standard satellite images. Today the feature is being expanded to Amsterdam, Haarlem, Zandvoort, and other cities in the Netherlands. Although Apple introduced Flyover in 2012 with iOS 16, the company has been slowly expanding the feature around the world. Users can see buildings, mountains, trees, and more in 3D. Flyover navigation is fully interactive, so you can zoom in and rotate the image....

Apple has now rolled out Lossless and Spatial Audio streaming to its subscribers. Eddy Cue sat down with Billboard regarding Apple’s new hi-fi music streaming just after Apple Music’s Zane Lowe dropped a quick hint pertaining to upcoming Logic Pro integration for music producers. We recently did some digging around to see if independent artists would be able to take advantage of Spatial Audio and Lossless streaming with major distributors all but confirming as much....

If Apple hasn’t yet made the Ethernet network port on your Mac obsolete by not including it, as is the case with most Macs sold today, then it may have accidentally broke the port last week in an OS X kernel extension update. Many users complained about the issue online: they had randomly found their Macs no longer connecting to the Internet and their Ethernet port simply not working. Apple has now officially acknowledged the problem on its support pages....

We’ve gradually been learning more about Apple’s plans to transition away from iTunes on the Mac in favor of new standalone Music, Podcasts, and TV applications. This afternoon, Apple published a full support document detailing what happens to iTunes when macOS Catalina is released to the public this fall. Apple explains in the support document that “all of your favorite iTunes features” will be available in the trio of new apps included in macOS Catalina....

As part of the iPhone 7 event, Apple has announced brand new truly wireless AirPods, premium wireless headphones that work in concert with the iPhone 7. The AirPods are independent separate earbuds, that have sensors in the buds to know when they are actually inside your ear. The AirPods automatically switch between output to your iPhone and Apple Watch, so its a seamless experience to listen to music across all your devices....