As rumored, Apple Pay has indeed launched today in Austria. The supporting banks are Erste Sparkasse and N26, across Maestro, Mastercard, and Visa debit and credit cards. If you meet this criteria, open the Wallet app on your iPhone and press the Add button to start setting up Apple Pay. You may need to restart your phone to get the Wallet app to refresh. Apple has announced that additional Austrian Apple Pay partners are ‘coming soon’, including Bank Austria, Boon, Edenred, Revolut, and VIMPay....

Apple has quietly given the front end of its jobs site a facelift adding new employee testimonials and updated product shots. The refreshed layout matches the style of other new pages throughout Apple’s site with the landing page carrying this message: “Do your life’s best work here. With the whole world watching.” Notably, the updated jobs site now includes product shots of the upcoming Apple Watch, specifically an aluminum sport model with a green band and the sensors showing, as well as student in class wearing now Apple-owned Beats by Dr Dre headphones…...

Apple has today updated its News Publisher with a fresh design across the iCloud based media manager. The refresh brings a totally redesigned dashboard, bolder fonts, and an improved UI. At the top of the new design users will see Articles, Analytics, and Settings. Each with a clean sidebar style list on the left. The most prominent change many will notice will be the redesigned dashboard, which features a grid style layout of the various analytics....

Apple has removed around 25,000 illegal gambling apps from its Chinese app store following complaints by state-controlled media. Chinese media last month accused Apple of failing to do enough to block three three types of illegal content from its platforms … Apple was said to permit gambling, pornography and spam for counterfeit goods in is App Store and on its Messaging platform. Reuters reports that Apple has now taken action on the first of these....

Apple has renewed its Carpool Karaoke original series for a third season, according to a report from Variety. Apple’s Carpool Karaoke series is available to Apple Music subscribers and is a separate initiative from Apple TV+. Carpool Karaoke is a spin-off of James Corden’s popular segment from The Late Late Show on CBS. While reviews have been mixed, the star-studded lineup of the segment has proven to be popular, and it even won an Emmy last year....

As planned, Apple today announced its earnings results for the Q3 2013 quarter. Apple reported revenues for Q3 of $35.3 billion, which is within Apple’s estimates for the quarter of between $33.5 billion and $35.5 billion. This compares to $35 billion in revenues in the year-ago Q3. The Company sold 31.2 million iPhones, a record for the June quarter, compared to 26 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold 14....

Earlier this week, Apple rolled out stricter verification requirements for its Online Education Store in the United States after previously not requiring any sort of verification. Just a few days later, however, Apple appears to have reversed this decision and is no longer requiring verification of eligibility, but the stricter purchasing quantity limits remain. Similar to verification for Apple Music student plans, Apple started using UNiDAYS for verification through the Apple Education Store on Wednesday....

Earlier this week, Apple announced a “Shot on iPhone” competition. This contest allows photographers to submit pictures taken with their iPhone, with a panel of judges selecting the top 10 best photos. Those photos will then be placed on billboards and other Apple “marketing channels.” Today, Apple has made a notable change to the contest after criticism… Shortly after the contest’s announcement, there was backlash about the fact that Apple was going to use these images in marketing, but not compensate the photographers....

Apple has apparently been revising its app review strategy this week and has decided to reverse a previous decision that banned MassRoots, a marijuana-centric social app, from its software storefront. The application was booted from the App Store late last year (though it lasted much longer on the store than some other apps). According to App Store guideline 2.18: MassRoots announced today that Apple has agreed to allow the app back in the store as long as it is restricted to users located in one of the 23 states where medical (or recreational, in some cases) marijuana is legal....

Two of Apple’s important developer tools are seeing downtime. Apple says “some users” are seeing problems with App Store Connect App Processing and TestFlight. Apple noted the outages on its Developer System Status page today. Notably the App Store Connect App Processing has been ongoing since yesterday January 13 at 12:15 pm PT. Meanwhile, Apple says that problems with TestFlight started today at 12:34 pm PT. For the App Store Connect App Processing, Apple says “Some users are affected” and that “Users are experiencing a problem with this service....

Almost the exact 2x Apple promised and great for people doing big videos. Also notable from Macsfuture: So it seems that Apple’s processors are about 3-4 years behind Intel’s currently. If Apple’s Ax processors keeps doubling speed every year and Intel struggles to keep up with Moore’s law, it doesn’t take a Computer Science major to see what’s going to happen in a few years. Fasten your seatbelts, Mac Pro CPU cracks 30,000 in updated Geekbench tests (9to5mac....

Apple’s lead over Intel when it comes to laptop chips is undeniable, even by the US chipmaker itself. A deep dive showed that the new MacBook Pro competes against even the best desktop PCs powered by Intel chips, with a similar story emerging against ultra-high-end GPUs. There have, though, been those suggesting that the lead is either slim or temporary. Two high-profile names dispute this claim: former Mac chief Jean-Louis Gassée, and ex-Windows president Steven Sinofsky....

Overnight, the Apple Music service has received a server-side upgrade which results in a redesigned ‘Browse’ tab in the Music app for iPhone and iPad. The new look seems to be rolling out slowly, as some readers are reporting they are still seeing the previous design. Previously, the Browse tab was laid out with a single horizontally-scrolling carousel of featured content and then a list of navigation options, which would start deep navigation hierarchies before users of the app would actually see any real content....

Throughout the construction of Apple Park, drone update videos became monthly occurrences. They offered beautiful overhead updates on Apple Park’s construction progress, but as construction wrapped up, Apple started to crack down on drone videos. Today, however, Duncan Sinfield is back with his first Apple Park drone update in six months. One interesting thing to note is that in today’s drone video, there is some sort of mystery stage in the center of the Apple Park spaceship ring....

Disney today announced the latest expansion of its ‘Dream Big Princess’ program, which it hopes will empower young women from around the world to create digital shorts. The latest expansion includes a notable partnership with Apple… Disney announced today that it will give 21 young woman the opportunity to create digital shorts telling the stories of inspiring female role model. Each filmmaker will be paired with an “inspirational interview subject spanning a diverse range of professions” and tasked with capturing the “stories of these incredible individuals” and their advice for achieving success....

With Apple Pay continuing its ongoing rollout across U.S. banks and credit unions, Apple’s mobile payment service has added over 30 new partners. Here is the full list of new Apple Pay banks: Anderson Brothers Bank, Bank & Trust Company, Bank of Labor, Bank of Yazoo, BankWest, Brown County State Bank, Busey Bank, Campbell & Fetter Bank, Central Bank of Oklahoma, Collinsville Savings Society, Core Bank, Covantage Credit Union, Diversified Members Credit Union, Farmington Bank, Florida Parishes Bank, Fort Worth Community Credit Union, Great Midwest Bank, Horizon Bank (not Horizon Bank, N....

Apple currently plans to expand its retail store presence to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil early next year, according to information provided by a source. This person says that Apple is targeting a store opening between February and March 2014, but delays due to construction and staffing are always possible. Approximately one year ago, Apple confirmed to various media outlets in Brazil that it is planning to open a store in the country....

Michael Tchao joined Apple on Monday as Vice President of Product Marketing. He will report to Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing. This is a much different role than that which he had 15 years ago during his first stint at Apple. You see, Mr. Tchao was one of the guys who convinced then-Apple CEO John Scully of releasing the groundbreaking but ultimately flawed Newton tablet back in the early 90’s....

The update follows version 10.3.2, released a couple months ago. Looking through the contents page for iOS 10.3.3, this is definitely a bug fix and security focused release; one you will definitely want to grab immediately. Numerous exploits have been closed, which include: arbitrary code execution, buffer overflows, remote attacks and several other low-level issues. Editor’s note: It took me about 20 minutes to download and install iOS 10.3.3. Not only that, I seemed to have gained back about half a gigabyte of storage space afterward....

Apple is rolling out iOS 12.5.5 to older iPhone and iPad models today. The company says the update includes notable security fixes and improvements, and is recommended for all users. The update is available for the iPad Air, the iPad mini 2, and iPad mini 3, as well as the 6th gen iPod touch, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus. All of these devices were dropped from support with iOS 13, but Apple has continued to update them with important security fixes since then....