A new job listing posted by Apple in the last week shows the company is looking to hire a “senior systems neuroscientist” capable of “building transformative neurotechnology.” The specific application for such a position is unclear, though Siri seems like a good candidate. The job listing first noticed by Ryota Kanai on Twitter. Apple requires any applicants for the position to have 5 to 10 years “designing experiments to investigate the neural correlates of perception, action, or cognition using human or animal models....

All of Tuesday’s best deals are now going live and marking down some notable Apple releases ahead of Christmas. Our top pick has the recently refreshed Magic Keyboard with Touch ID for $137 to go alongside LG’s just-released DualUp 16:18 Monitor at $597. Hit the jump for all of the best Apple Christmas deals and more in the latest 9to5Toys Lunch Break. Apple’s latest Magic Keyboard with Touch ID falls to $137 Apple’s latest Magic Keyboard elevates your desktop workstation with a metal build that complements the rest of your devices....

Apple Music appears to be in the process of renaming the Get Up mix to the Workout Mix. Some of us are already seeing the new name, while others continue to see the old one … MacStories managing editor John Voorhees spotted it, noting that he’s seeing the new name on his Mac and both names on his iPhone. The mix was first introduced in March. Apple Music offers some “Mix” playlists that are updated weekly with new songs, including Friends Mix, Favorites Mix, and Chill Mix....

A report that Apple would pay music labels a reduced royalty rate during the three-month free trial of Apple Music has been confirmed by labels who spoke to the NY Times. Apple had originally planned to pay them nothing before an open letter from Taylor Swift and complaints from others led to a swift change of plan. Spotify bases its royalty payment for free users on a 35% share, half of the 70% it pays for tracks streamed by paid subscribers … For each song that is streamed free, Apple will pay 0....

Looking for alternatives? Buy Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Cable for your Apple devices. Apple is finally offering its own brand of Thunderbolt 3 cables. More than a year after the Thunderbolt 3-equipped MacBook Pro debuted, you can now get a 0.8m Apple Thunderbolt Cable for $40 from the Apple Store. Prior to today, Apple stocked a third party Thunderbolt 3 cable from Belkin as it didn’t have one of its own....

Tim Cook said in January that “2015 will be the year of Apple Pay,” and we’re steadily seeing more support for the mobile payment service from banks, merchants, and apps. Released just this morning, Kickstarter version 2.3 for iPhone and iPad adds Apple Pay as a payment option for quickly making a pledge to a crowdfunding project. That means if you’re aren’t up for spending the $349-$17,000 on an Apple Watch next month, you can still back the Pebble Time or Pebble Time Steel … now with Apple Pay....

Apple is developing its own payment processing technology and infrastructure for future financial products in a multi-year plan, according to a new report by Bloomberg. It could also help the company expands its payment features beyond the US. As reported by Mark Gurman, this ambitious effort would “reduce Apple’s reliance on outside partners.” That effort would join Apple’s existing card and its recently launched peer-to-peer payment for businesses, although Gurman says it’s aimed for “future products, rather than Apple’s current lineup of services....

In a new move by Apple, they’ve gone ahead and published a 107-second recap video from today’s big event to YouTube. Apple’s appropriately titled ‘Don’t Blink’ recap video is tightly packed with content from the event, and something you don’t want to miss. Apple has also published the introduction videos of its latest products from its September event. The videos each show off Apple’s three big new products: the new iPhone 7, the Apple Watch Series 2, and the all new Apple AirPods....

Apple has today updated its iPhone features page on its website with a new label “iPhone can do what?” The site demonstrates both hardware and software features of the iPhone. The company has today released an updated iPhone features page on its website going through a handful of useful features, both new and old, about what iPhone can do. Some examples include iMessage being end-to-end encrypted, water resistance on newer iPhone models, AirDrop, Group FaceTime, and more....

Two weeks after launching the first public beta of macOS Big Sur, Apple has released the second iteration today. The update comes just one day after beta 5 of Big Sur arrived for developers. macOS Big Sur includes a big refresh to the UI that’s inspired by iOS. Other new features include Control Center, Safari improvements, new Messages app features like pinned messages, customizable widgets, and much more. If you’re already enrolled in the public beta, you can check to see if the macOS Big Sur beta 2 is available on your Mac by heading to System Preferences > Software Update....

Apple has released the third watchOS 3.1.1 beta for developers testing the pre-release software update for Apple Watch. watchOS 3.1.1 includes support for new Unicode 9.0 emoji as well as the ability to change skin tones when picking certain emoji characters. watchOS 3.1.1 is a minor release that follows the major release of watchOS 3.0 in September. watchOS 3 is a major speed boost to Apple Watch with a simplified navigation structure and new, faster apps....

The BBC reports that Apple has removed the phrase ‘impact resistant’ from its description of the Apple Watch after losing a UK court case over a cracked screen. The owner said that he had been influenced by the description as he is “prone to knocking things about a bit.” Cross says that he still plans to buy a replacement Watch. Gareth Cross, 32, from Aberystwyth, [bought] his Apple Watch Sport, but spotted a crack in the glass face 10 days later....

If it went through with the idea, it would represent a pretty big shakeup to its set-top TV offerings, as its current Apple TV lineup is anything but ‘low-cost’. Apple introduced the tvOS based Apple TV in 2015 for $149. In 2017, it released the Apple TV 4K. Rather than dropping the price of the previous generation, it simply added the 4K Apple TV above it at $179 and kept the aging 2015 model around at the exact same price point....

Apple is reportedly working with Chinese server vendor Inspur as it seeks to bring the infrastructure for its cloud services in-house. While part of the motivation will be cost, it was also recently reported that security is another significant consideration, Apple being concerned that servers received from third-parties may have been tampered with prior to delivery … The Digitimes report is lacking in detail, but the report has credibility given that Inspur has more than a 60% share of the Chinese server market and its client base includes many big players....

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC4gPxc89Wg] Apple has a new 12W charger shipping with the iPad 4, and it is available online and compatible with a number of other iOS devices. Apple already told us the 12W adapter would indeed charge your iPad faster than the old 10W adapters, but it couldn’t give us an estimate on how much faster. Insanely Great Mac posted the video above today that shows the iPad drawing more power from the new adapter and claimed it was able to shave about 30 minutes to 45 minutes off the charge time....

Almost all the reports to date on the headset project commonly dubbed Apple Glasses have pointed to an augmented reality (AR) device, rather than a virtual reality (VR) one. But a new Bloomberg report suggests that Apple’s first headset will primarily be a VR device, with limited AR capabilities. It goes on to suggest that it will be the Mac Pro of VR devices. A VR focus would be surprising, as Apple CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly said that AR is of far greater interest to the company …...

As has been widely reported, it is all but confirmed that the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will not feature a 3.5mm headphone jack. This means buyers of the new iPhone will have to search for alternative types of headphones, whether that be via wireless Bluetooth or Apple’s Lightning cable. Right now, Apple bundles EarPods with every iPhone. It obviously makes no sense for Apple to continue bundling 3.5mm headphones with the headphone-jack-less iPhone 7....

Update: Apple hasn’t lost its star witness after all, now plans to testify next week. In its latest battle with Qualcomm that headed to court earlier this week, Apple planned on using a former engineer as its star witness. Today we’ve learned that the company has lost that witness and Apple’s counsel has accused Qualcomm’s defense of witness tampering. Update 3/8: In a fresh plot twist, Apple has confirmed today that its key witness will indeed testify and is expected to do so on Monday, March 11th....

As the first orders arrive to customers, early reviews of the M1 Mac mini, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air have officially been published. As expected, the reviews praise the M1 chip’s performance and battery life, and they note that Apple Silicon will only get better from here. The Wall Street Journal leads things off with a detailed look at the M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro performance using Chrome: The WSJ also got a quote from Intel on how its chips compare to the new M1 processors:...

I addressed one big issue with Apple Music last week – and was very surprised to see from the poll results just how widespread the issue was. But while discussing that issue, we happened across a Reddit thread that I thought contained a really great idea: give the iOS app Smart Playlist functionality via Siri. I may complain a lot about the bloated nature of iTunes, a single app that tries to do way too many different things, but I do really like it as a pure music player....