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The row between Apple and the Indian government over an anti-spam app has intensified. Apple was last month warned that it had six months to comply with the government’s demands, or have iPhones banned from Indian networks. In the latest development, a letter from Apple asking for the threat to be withdrawn has been rejected … For those who haven’t been following the story, cold calls and text message spam are a massive problem in India....

I have been using a Kindle for many years now. Most recently, I was using a Kindle Oasis as my primary book reader. As I was looking at some upcoming books a few weeks back, I realized that I was not too fond of the purchasing process on iOS for Kindle. I started thinking about if the Kindle (and the Kindle apps) were still the best place for me to purchase books....

Apple today announced its own continuous integration system called ‘Xcode Cloud’. Xcode Cloud allows developers to commit code which is then built on Apple’s servers. Test suites can then be performed in parallel whilst the local developer continues to do other things. Apple is also bringing TestFlight to the Mac for the first time. This allows developers to easily distribute beta builds of their software to a test pool of users....

Three former members of the Apple Supplier Responsibility team say Apple was complicit in labor law violations in China. They are supported by a former Apple senior manager familiar with the company’s Chinese operations. They say Apple was aware of the violations by its suppliers, but took no action because it feared that to do so might delay product launches … The Information says that a new law was introduced in 2014, stipulating that no more than 10% of employees be hired on temporary contracts....

Apple has confirmed to The New York Times that a “very limited” number of iPhone 5s units could experience shortened battery life as the result of a manufacturing problem. The exact number of affected units is not clear, but the statement is said to imply that the number is in the few thousands range. Apple sold 9 million iPhones total over its opening weekend. The NYT notes that a manufacturing problem does not equal a defective battery, so it is unclear what the actual source of the issue is....

As is tradition, Apple is just about the only big consumer tech company not making a public appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. In fact, Apple hasn’t attended CES in any official capacity since John Sculley’s keynote introduction of the Newton in 1992. But Apple exec Eddy Cue, the company’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, is reportedly speaking at a super exclusive, private CES event being held by Rupert Murdoch today in Vegas....

Apple today announced updates to its iPad line. There’s a new iPad mini and a new iPad Air, with a 10.5-inch screen. The iPad Air features a thinner design with a 10.5-inch display and the Apple A12 Bionic chip. The iPad mini keeps the same 7.9-inch screen, but gets the same A12 spec bump. Both the Air and the Mini are compatible with the first-generation Apple Pencil. The iPad mini starts at $399 for the 64 GB model, and the Air starts at $499....

New iPad Pro The all-new iPad Pro has a thinner design with a new touch display the company calls “Liquid Retina” and includes support for Apple Pencil and Face ID. The smaller model comes with a larger display at 11” – the previous one was 10.5-inches. You can also go larger with a 12.9” display. Each iPad Pro contains a new A12X Bionic processor and 7-Core GPU and up to 1TB of storage space....

During Apple’s September event, the Tim Cook announced that all new iOS devices purchased after September 1st would be given the option to get iWork and most iLife apps for free. Some users who had purchased iOS devices after the first of the month, however, had already paid for those apps prior to the announcement, or paid for them after the announcement due to confusion about how to claim the free versions....

A couple weeks following the closing of Apple’s acquisition of Beats Electronics and the Beats Music streaming service, Apple has cut the price of all Beats by Dr. Dre products by 10% in both its physical retail stores and official online store… The 10% off discount will last through August 23rd, according to a source. Beats products, including over-ear headphones, in-ear headphones, and speakers are all covered by the deal, but those seeking those “Beats Pill Dude” speaker covers will still (fortunately) have to pay the full price of $49....

Earlier today, we reported that Apple was looking at a spot in North Carolina to expand its operations on the East Coast. However, now The Washington Post is reporting that Apple is also considering a spot in Northern Virginia. The company is reportedly looking for 4 million square feet of office space, and will be accommodating roughly 20,000 jobs. To put this into perspective, the space Apple is requesting is roughly two-thirds the size of the Pentagon....

Apple’s polarizing butterfly keyboard design is now causing the company some legal issues. A new class action lawsuit has been filed against Apple, alleging that the company knew about the reliability issues of the design before launch, yet released it anyway… As outlined by AppleInsider, the lawsuit was filed in the Northern District Court of California and includes both the 12-inch MacBook and the MacBook Pro. The lawsuit alleges that “thousands” of users have suffered from problems with the butterfly keyboard device that render it ultimately useless....

Apple has officially announced plans to open its new Wuxi, China retail store on August 2nd, according to a listing on the company’s website. The new establishment, which will be the 12th official Apple retail store in the country, will be located in the Center 66 Mall (pictured above). However, there don’t seem to be any photos of Apple’s new space available just yet, as the company still undoubtedly has some work to do before it’s ready for the public eye....

If the probe does go ahead, Apple and Google are likely to be investigated by the Justice Department rather than the FTC … Reuters reports. Tech giants may even face two parallel investigations. The potential scope of any investigations is as yet unknown, but Apple has come under fire for alleged anticompetitive practices in respect of the App Store. It currently faces a formal antitrust investigation in Europe in connection with a complaint by Spotify, and a lawsuit in the US after a recent Supreme Court ruling....

Apple today announced that its retail store at the Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall in Paris, France will close permanently on October 27th. The store’s imminent replacement was announced in September, but no definitive date was given at the time. In November, Apple will open a new global flagship store on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, a historic hub for tourists and retail activity. Last month, Apple confirmed to French publication La Chaîne Info that alongside the store’s opening, some employees from Apple Carrousel du Louvre will be transitioned to the new store at a later date....

After opening the platform to a few thousand artists earlier this year, Apple is further expanding beta testing of its ‘Apple Music for Artists’ dashboard, the company announced via a tweet. Apple describe it as “everything you need to understand your music’s impact across Apple Music and iTunes.” While not particularly interesting for the end-user, it gives artists a way to view listening data, trends, hot tracks, and much more....

Apple has continued its focus on augmented reality this year, adding LiDAR scanners to the iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Pro lineups. In a new interview with CNET, Mike Rockwell, Apple’s head of AR, and Allessandra McGinnis, senior product manager for AR, reiterated Apple’s bullish opinion on AR. Rockwell emphasized that one of the ways Apple can help ensure the success of augmented reality is to make sure it’s available in the Apple device ecosystem....

Apple has filed a trademark for “iWatch” in Japan, according to a filing with the Japan Patent Office from early June. The filing, which was reportedly made publicly available last week, is in reference to an Apple “handheld computer” or “watch device.” Earlier this month, reports had claimed that Apple filed for an “iWatch” trademark in Russia, but the claims at the time seemed uncorroborated. Now, with Apple having filed the same trademark in Japan, perhaps the claims from Russia are accurate…...

Apple’s Campus iBike photo credited to Everaldo Coelho “Computers are like a bicycle for our minds”, Steve Jobs said in the early days (see the below clip). Believe it or not, the Cupertino company has literally come full circle since this famous quote. Apple took a page from Google’s environment-friendly book by offering its employees bicycles to commute across their vast Cupertino campus. MacMagazine.br writes: It’s a clever – and green – move on Apple’s part....

Every time there’s some Apple Card news, it prompts the same question from Brits: When is Apple Card coming to the UK? Substitute France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and so on as appropriate. Only Apple knows the answer to this, but the truth is, it doesn’t much matter – because those tasty 1% to 3% Apple Cash rewards are never going to be offered in Europe … To understand the reason for this, we have to delve a little into the economics of debit and credit cards....