Jimmy Iovine has never been one to stick to Apple’s talking points. Sitting right next to Eddy Cue in 2014, the Beats co-founder publicly criticized the earbuds that ship with the iPhone just as Apple announced plans to buy his company for $3 billion. Now, in a new interview with Billboard, Iovine is quoted speaking quite candidly about the business of streaming music and what it would take to knock out Spotify…...

Announced on stage at WWDC today, Apple is ready at last to deliver a major upgrade for users of its Apple Maps service. Coming in iOS 9, Apple’s Maps application will include integrated transit directions for commuters for the first time since Apple shifted from relying on Google Maps as the software’s data provider. Since Apple introduced its own mapping application and backend with iOS 6, users have needed to rely on third party apps for transit options....

Apple previewed its new virtual debit card and person-to-person payment feature called Apple Pay Cash back at WWDC in June, but the feature wasn’t present in iOS 11 and watchOS 4 betas over the summer. Apple shared the final version of iOS 11.0 and watchOS 4.0 with testers last week, and Apple Pay Cash was still not enabled. Now Apple has acknowledged the missing feature and shared an update for when we can expect to see it ship....

Belgian paper De Tijd is reporting that Apple Pay is launching in Belgium in November, initially for customers of BNP Paribas Fortis. The report says that it will initially be exclusive to the leading bank. Alongside VISA and MasterCard payment cards from Fortis, the initial rollout may include subsidiaries Hello Bank and Fintro. It wouldn’t be the first time a mobile wallet rollout in Belgium has initially been exclusive to Fortis – the same happened with Android Pay back in March 2017....

Apple today released the official trailer for its next original movie, CODA. Apple TV+ will release the film on August 13, alongside a limited theatrical release. CODA first debuted as part of the 2021 Sundance film festival. At Sundance, the film was warmly received and it was awarded the Grand Jury prize. Apple acquired the film in a record-setting $25 million deal. Watch the trailer below … The movie centres on lead character Ruby, played by Emilia Jones, who is a child of deaf adults or ‘CODA’....

Shortly after announcing that its pro photography app Aperture is being discontinued, Apple released a number of updates to its remaining professional desktop applications. Final Cut Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage on OS X all received updates via the Mac App Store today. See the changes for each professional desktop application below: Final Cut Pro 10.1.2 • Optimized, proxy, and rendered media can be stored at any location outside of the library • Easily delete optimized, proxy, and rendered media from within Final Cut Pro X • Used media indicators for Compound clips, Multicam clips, and Synced clips • Option to show only unused media in the Browser • Apply a standard (Rec....

One of the standout features of the new Apple TV is its support for gaming, but now Apple has reversed its stance and placed a new limitation on that capability. Apple has said from the beginning that third-party controllers will be supported on the new Apple TV. The SDK for the device carries Game Controller support and the company mentioned it on stage at its unveil event. Apple also mentioned that games that worked only with third-party controllers were okay, meaning the games wouldn’t necessarily have to be compatible with the company’s bundled Siri Remote....

Apple’s Personal Pickup service – where you place your order online but can pick it up from a local Apple Store as early as an hour later – just hit six more European countries today: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. Long limited to the U.S. only, it made its way to Australia and Canada a couple of weeks ago, and the UK a few days later. German site Macerkopf first noticed its availability in Germany, before updating with the additional five countries....

As rumors suggest that Apple’s long-rumored mixed reality headset will be announced sometime in 2022, we’ve been hearing several rumors about it recently. Now Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is back with more details about the product, this time claiming that the device will feature advanced hand gesture detection. More specifically, the new headset will have four sets of 3D sensors, while iPhone has only one. This should allow the device to capture gestures and detect objects more accurately than the current TrueDepth camera, which is also capable of detecting motion – as seen in features like Animoji....

Update: Both relevant photos have since been removed from Instagram. Following a report earlier today that Apple and French fashion retailer Colette were teasing a one day in-store experience, there’s now more evidence the collaboration might be for Apple’s upcoming Apple Watch. It appears that Apple’s design team could also be headed to the event or at least to the same city, lending more weight to the idea that Apple Watch is about to get some stage time during Paris Fashion Week....

Forrester Research today published an interesting and extensive analysis (via CNET) based on a large-scale poll of 10,000 information workers from North America and Western Europe, including 3,350 higher-ups that make purchasing decisions. The report, titled “Apple Infiltrates The Enterprise And Reshapes The Markets For Personal Devices At Work,” found out that 21 percent use one or more Apple devices (the figure includes gear they had brought in). Nearly half of businesses, or 46 percent, now issue Macs to their workers....

Apple is now so focused on marketing-driven goals that its software quality has “taken a nosedive” in the last few years, argues a blog post by Instapaper creator and former Tumblr lead developer Marco Arment. People are sticking with OS X not because they love it, he suggests, but because Windows is worse and desktop Linux is too much hassle. The issue, believes Arment, is that Apple is so focused on releasing a major new version of OS X each year that it is making it impossible for engineering teams to maintain quality....

Update: Apple didn’t secure the rights. They were sold to Fox, CBS, NBC for $7B. The Big Ten is one of the most prominent conferences in the United States for college athletics. In fact, the Big Ten got a major boost earlier this summer with the addition of USC and UCLA, turning it into a potential “super conference.” As we’ve seen throughout the coverage of Apple’s interest in obtaining NFL Sunday Ticket streaming rights, the world of sports licensing and media rights is incredibly complex....

Apple today has updated its Apple Music app for Android with a pair of notable improvements. First, the update includes the revamped “Browse” tab that came to iOS last week. There is also Chromebook support with today’s update. The new Browse tab makes it easier to find playlists and other music of interest. It dramatically simplifies the interface and makes it far quicker to start playing music, significantly reducing the number of required taps....

In the just released beta of iOS 5.1, Apple has outed yet another new device. We recently brought you the first references to the upcoming, faster Apple TV internally dubbed 3,1, and now we have iPad 2,4 on our hands. With references to iPad 3,1 and 3,2 – likely the new iPads launching in March – having appeared months ago, we’re thinking this iPad 2,4 could be the Sprint version that Apple recently completed work on – but only if it has WiMAX....

Apple is planning to build an additional “tactical datacenter” at its facility in Maiden, North Carolina, according to a report by the Hickory Daily Record. The new building will be smaller than the previous addition, coming in at only 14,246 square feet, and will house additional server hardware along with new offices. The previously-constructed “tactical datacenter” is around 21,000 square feet. The datacenter is powered by a combination of solar energy from a 100-acre solar farm and a much smaller biogas fuel cell installation nearby....

After announcing the availability of a new Pride Edition Woven Nylon Band and watch face at this past week’s WWDC keynote, Apple is promoting the new products and Pride Month in select retail stores. The new Apple Watch band and face first became officially available on Monday, when orders opened online and the custom face was unlocked for all Apple Watch owners immediately following the WWDC keynote. Widespread retail availability began on Thursday....

Excitement over Apple’s new MacBook Pro announcements has been weakened a bit in the UK customers due to sticker shock when looking at the prices. Prices for new MacBook Pro’s have risen in the US a bit already, in the UK this has been amplified by the weak GBP currency following the Brexit vote. Apple has adjusted UK prices for its entire line of Macs, including those it didn’t update, with prices increases of hundreds of pounds....

As spotted by Consomac, Apple has registered three new Macs in the Eurasian regulatory database. The new model numbers are A2615, A2686, and A2681. One of these models is described as a laptop. A couple of weeks ago, we also saw the Eurasian database register iPhone and iPad models, likely signalling the forthcoming unveiling of a new iPhone SE generation with 5G support, and a spec-bumped iPad Air. Bloomberg recently said that Apple is planning its first (virtual) media event of the year to take place on March 8, hinting that ‘a new Mac’ may be ready to show off there....

Apple has just seeded a new developer build of iOS 8.3. The beta can be downloaded on Apple’s developer website. iOS 8.3 beta 2 was released just over two weeks ago. Apple also released a new 10.10.3 build today with Force Touch APIs. There are also new developer seeds for Xcode and Apple TV. Previous betas of iOS 8.3 have shown that the release will include new features like wireless CarPlay, more diverse Emojis, a new Emoji keyboard for input, tweaked login for Google services as well as support for Apple Pay in China....