Apple’s Didi investment back in 2016 was hailed by the Cupertino company’s CEO Tim Cook as a “great financial investment.” Sadly, that very much turned out not to be the case. The investment has instead seen Apple’s billion-dollar stake lose at least 80% of its value, and the company’s sole representative on the Didi board has now quietly resigned … Apple’s Didi investment Lyft-backed Didi has been described as China’s Uber – but by 2016 was suffering badly from competition by the actual Uber....

ZDNet just published a story claiming Apple’s percentage of revenue has “been on the decline for years”. The story claims that percentage is currently 2.2 percent of sales which seems pretty low compared to other technology players (especially when Apple is so innovative). But this isn’t factoring in how items such as a reported $200 million investment in Siri technology, a new CEO, and investments in the company’s 175-acre Spaceship campus contribute to overall growth…...

Research firm IDC is out today with new data on the state of the tablet and 2-in-1 market in the first quarter of 2014. As you might expect after Apple’s most recent earnings report, Q1 unit shipments of iPad were down by 3 million from 19.5 million to 16.4 million between 2013 and 2014. For its part, Apple attributes its Q1 2013 iPad sales as inflated due to demand for iPad mini in Q4 2012 being fulfilled in the following quarter when supply was less constrained....

[Update: Apple has confirmed the policy with us. Statement below.] [Update #2: Reports are now surfacing that Apple is now reinstating some apps with the Confederate flag to the App Store. The company is working with developers who use the Confederate flag, but not in a mean-spirited manner.] [Update #3: TouchArcade specifies that affected games are able to change their app icons and App Store screenshots to avoid removal.] Touch Arcade noticed that many Civil War games like Ultimate General: Gettysburg and the Hunted Cow series have all disappeared....

A federal appeals court today has upheld the 2013 ruling in Apple’s long-winded and high-profile ebooks case. The case, which centered around Apple price fixing content in the iBooks store, went through three years of litigation thanks mostly to Apple. Today’s ruling by a federal appeals court will see Apple pay $450 million in damages at long last. Most of that $450 million will go to e-book customers as part of the agreement it made last year....

All of today’s best deals are headlined by an up to 40% off sale on official Apple MagSafe chargers and cases. That’s alongside AirPods Pro at $160 and a new low on the latest iPad Air at $70 off. Hit the jump for all that and more in the latest 9to5Toys Lunch Break. Apple MagSafe Charger deals take 40% off Verizon Wireless is launching a new buy more and save sale that’s taking up to 40% off a selection of smartphone accessories....

The original iteration of Apple Maps relied mostly on data from partners. Over time, Apple has worked to bring more of the mapping experience directly under its own control, such as with the new ground truth map initiative that it rolled out in the US last year and is expanding to several more countries before the end of 2021. As of the latest iOS 14 beta, it appears that Apple is looking to remove dependencies on Foursquare and Yelp as sources of reviews and user photos of restaurants, bars, shops, parks, and other points of interest....

Apple has updated its Investor Relations website with a modern design. The site features the clean lines and thin fonts now standard with Apple’s new design direction. The homepage of the portal currently features the Istanbul Apple Store, but otherwise the site seems the same in terms of content. The visual redesign is a massive shift for the investor site, which felt largely abandoned until today. The site now shows off Apple’s stock price with a large chart, in the iOS 7 ‘flat’ style....

Update 7/21: The auction closed just over its estimated value price at $10,500. Plenty of Apple execs have auctioned meet ups and keynote tickets for charity over the years, and now Apple Music’s Bozoma Saint John is joining the club. Saint John, who joined Apple through the Beats Music acquisition, made her on-stage debut last month during the Apple Music demo at WWDC 2016. The auction is specifically for a ‘power lunch’ in LA with Boz, who is the Head of Global Consumer Marketing for Apple Music and iTunes, with the estimated value for the meet up set at $10,000....

Users of Apple’s services on Monday experienced several issues as the company’s servers were completely down for a few hours. After just one day, Apple Music is currently down for several users around the world. It’s unclear what’s causing today’s outage, as Apple has yet to confirm that Apple Music is down on its System Status webpage. On Twitter, multiple users have been reporting in the last hour that they are unable to use Apple Music....

We want a lot out of iOS 13, but there’s one issue that’s becoming increasingly problematic on iPhones for a lot of customers: spam calls. This is something any future version of the iPhone software should tackle — iOS 13 or a point update like iOS 12.1.3 — if only by giving customers more control over how phone calls are treated. There are subscription-based apps on the App Store that try to limit known spam callers from reaching you, but that’s a bit like paying a ransom to solve the problem....

As it did for the iPhone 5, Apple has begun its Personal Pickup program for the iPad mini. Personal Pickup allows customers to buy a device on Apple’s website or mobile app between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. and pick it up in store the next day (or whenever inventory is available). There are a number of stores across the country sold out of the iPad mini, so Personal Pickup may be your best bet at getting the 7....

Apple’s three main British subsidiaries – Apple (UK), Apple Europe and Apple Retail UK – paid no corporation tax in 2012 despite reporting profits of £68m ($103m), reports the Financial Times. While share awards to employees are a legitimate tax-deductible expense, questions are likely to be asked about whether the employees were genuinely based in the UK following previous allegations of creative tax-avoidance moves by Apple. Apple had previously been accused of agreeing a special 2 percent corporation tax arrangement in Ireland, an accusation the company denied....

The Eurasian database has turned up hit after hit recently. Once more, ahead of Apple’s October 30 event, the Eurasian Economic Competition database has listed filings for new Mac models running macOS 10.14. Four of these model identifiers relate to as-yet-unannounced machines. As spotted by Consomac, the A1932 laptop model was seen in an earlier filing. The three new Mac models likely relate to new versions of the Mac Mini and iMac....

Apple has released the first iOS 10.3 public beta for testing on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. iOS 10.3.2 public beta 1 follows one day after the first developer version of the upcoming software update. Apple’s public beta program is free to participate in unlike its paid developer program. iOS 10.3.2 will be released to everyone in the future, and the public beta allows more users to test pre-release versions of the software update before it’s finalized....

[Update: Public beta 6 is now also available for testers.] Once again after just a week since the last developer beta, Apple has released the seventh developer beta preview. iOS 11 brings new features like drag-and-drop and a redesigned multitasking interface for iPad, a new customizable Control Center, and much more. iOS 11 beta 7 is currently only available to registered developers for now. Apple typically holds new public beta versions for a few days for major updates....

Apple has released the fourth developer betas of iOS 14.7 and iPadOS 14.7 today. The company is also rolling out watchOS 7.6 developer beta 4, as well as tvOS 14.7 developer beta 4. Head below for the details. Update: Now available to public beta testers as well. Today’s new release of the iOS 14.7 beta 4 is available to developers via an over-the-air update in the Settings app. As usual, if the update does not immediately appear for download, keep checking, as it sometimes takes a few minutes to roll out to all registered developers....

The Apple Store has come back online following Apple’s media event that just wrapped up in San Francisco. We’ve gotten a look at several smaller products from Apple, and we’ve found one more. For the Euro-folk, Apple has released a Lightning to Micro USB adapter, available for £15.00 and shipping within three days. Presumably the fine men and women of Cupertino have made the adapter available to comply with certain regulations regarding the Micro-USB standard....

Seven months after releasing AirTag’s latest firmware update, Apple is now seeding a new version to owners of the item tracker. Here’s what you need to know about this new version. Today’s new firmware release is version 1.0.391, and it features build number 1A301. Prior to today, the most recent version of AirTag firmware was version 1.0.291 and featured build number 1A291e. To check the firmware version of your AirTag, open the Find My application on your iPhone, then choose the Items tab in the bottom navigation bar....

Apple has pushed out an update for developers running OS X Lion Developer Preview 4. The update comes in smaller than a full Mac App Store Developer Preview release (656.6 MB) and is available via the Mac’s software update application. Let us know what you find… tips@9to5mac.com Apple releases another software update for Mac OS X Lion Preview 2 (Xcode 4.1 preview 4 also) (9to5mac.com) Update for Mac OS X Lion Preview 2 available (9to5mac....