[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgXUh1HrYOw] TheNextWeb reports that Apple has begun returning the $299 purchase price of Final Cut Pro X to customers who are unsatisfied with the product’s features and capabilities. Cupertino has begun issuing refunds to those who have filed an official request using Apple’s Mac App Store Customer Service form. This is an interesting gray area because Mac Apps purchased through the Mac App Store aren’t usually up for return so long after they are purchased (unless you re in Taiwan)....

In line with our earlier report, Apple has just kicked off a big iPhone trade-in event at its U.S. retail stores that will see employees pushing upgrade offers for the iPhone 5s and 5c. We first reported on details of the event earlier this week noting Apple would add improved trade in options and significantly step up promotion of iPhone trade-ins during the initiative . Specifically, Apple has sent out a memo to Apple Store staff instructing them to push upgrades to iPhone 4 and 4s users with increased trade-in values....

Apple leadership profiles on the official company page and on social media transformed to Memoji ahead of the WWDC conference, where Apple is expected to unveil iOS 15, macOS 12, watchOS 8, and tvOS 15. This isn’t the first time Apple execs have been turned into Memoji forms. This was last done in 2018 to celebrate World Emoji Day. Apple has remade the avatar for each exec and everyone looks decidedly more human this time around compared to the square–faced, impish forms of 2018....

This full time specialist would work to ‘cancel fraudulent orders’ and ‘research and resolve fraud escalations from various sources.’ Hmm.. This person would have really come in handy the other day. Did Apple know that issues such as the Thuat Nguyen incident were looming? Was there a spike in App Store fraud the last few weeks? Well at least now we know Apple has been on top of things and this is evident through this job posting and their quick response to the recent event....

Apple appears to be rolling out a wide-reaching branding change about how it refers to its Mac portable lineup. Up until recently, Apple officially referred to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro as “Mac notebooks” or just “notebooks,” leaning on the relatively outdated industry terminology of notebook computers. But now, everything user-facing appears to be slowly converting to using a “laptop” nomenclature. Updates to the Apple Online Store product pages, articles in the Apple Support knowledge base, and even the Mac operating system is beginning to reflect this branding update …...

Following up on last month’s release, Apple Music has announced that Sigrid is May’s Up Next artist. Up Next is a new documentary artist series from Apple Music that focuses on up and coming musicians. The Up Next series started last month with R&B inspired hip-hop artist 6LACK (pronounced “black”). Apple Music’s Up Next page was dedicated to the artist including a personal documentary with the artist, and an interview with Zane Lowe....

When Apple released iPhoto for iOS on March 7, many quickly realized that Apple was not using Google Maps as it usually does for mapping, but rather maps from the OpenStreetMap project. Apple offered no official credit to the non-profit project, which collects a series of maps from over 500,000 people worldwide. However, it appears that Apple has finally credited OpenStreetMap in its latest iPhoto update, as the non-profit project tweeted the news last night....

Apple has overtaken Samsung as the mobile brand scoring highest in both awareness and loyalty in China, reports CNET. Samsung had previously held the top slot in the China Brand Power Index since 2012 … The rankings are based on a large-scale consumer survey conducted annually by the China Brand Research Center. The China Brand Research Center calculated this year’s rankings by polling 13,500 Chinese across 30 cities, aged 15 to 60, from August 2013 to January 2014...

Apple has partnered with Tynker, a San Francisco-based STEM education platform, to release two new game-based programming lessons aimed to help kids learn how to code. The new Space Cadet and Dragon Spells courses are available for free. The partnership includes free guides for teachers available through iBooks, and two free courses through the Everyone Can Code program for K-5 kids. The new courses are designed to help K-5 kids become familiar with Swift syntax at an early age before transitioning to Apple’s Swift Playgrounds app in sixth grade and up....

Apple is beginning final preparations to launch an iPhone trade-in program in its retail stores by next month, according to sources with knowledge of the initiative. This trade-in program will allow customers that own earlier versions of the iPhone, such as the iPhone 4S, to bring the phone into an Apple Store and exchange it for a new iPhone model, like the iPhone 5, at a discounted price… On the allure of a trade-in program, Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the last earnings call that he is “not opposed” to such a strategy....

Wintercore’s Ruben Santamarta claims Apple has failed to clean up some old code nested within QuickTime which can leave Internet Explorer vulnerable to yet another of the Microsoft browser’s long line of potential attacks. The exploit is simple to execute just by tricking a user into visiting a malicious site hosting the exploit code, a so-called “drive-by” attack. The attack code works when someone browses with IE on a machine running Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 that has QuickTime 7....

Apple today issued a firmware update for Apple TV after earlier this week rolling out a new iMovie Theater channel that allows users to view movies and other video content uploaded to iCloud through iMovie Theater on other iOS devices. Today’s firmware update brings Apple TV software up to version 6.0.1, build number 11B511d, and is available for second and third generation Apple TVs through Settings>General >Software Update. The update brings “general performance and stability improvements,” but we’ll update you here if we discover any new goodies....

Apple surprisingly released yesterday the first developer beta of macOS Big Sur 11.0.1, which came even before macOS Big Sur was officially available to the public. Today, the company released macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 as a public beta. macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 doesn’t bring any new features compared to the previous macOS Big Sur beta, but Apple has included several new wallpapers — which you can download all here. Apple is presumably holding the first public release of macOS Big Sur for its rumored event in November, in which the company is expected to introduce the first Apple Silicon Mac....

We’re sure many of you are anxiously waiting for the iPhone 5 to hit your doorstep in the coming days (or weeks—depending on when you ordered). In the mean time, the folks at Apple have something to calm your nerves: as anticipated, the hard-working men and women of Cupertino have pushed out iOS 6. If you own an iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, fourth- or fifth-generation iPod touch, iPad 2, or the new iPad, you can check out Apple’s latest offering for free right now....

Shortly after announcing its availability today, Apple has now released iOS 8.2 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. For iPhone users, the update adds support for the Apple Watch coming next month and improvements to the Health app. The update is available to download over-the-air through the Settings app. An updated version of the Apple TV software is also available for third-generation boxes. For developers, Xcode 6.2 is available in the Mac App Store....

After many beta releases on the Developer Center, Apple has just released OS X Lion 10.7.4 to the masses this afternoon via Software Update. The update weighs in at 729.6MB and fixes the horrible bug in OS X 10.7.3 that stored passwords in plain text, along with many other stability improvements among other things. It also includes Safari 5.1.6. Full release notes: Resolve an issue in which the “Reopen windows when logging back in” setting is always enabled....

Apple announced today that it will release iOS 14 to the public on September 16. iOS 14 includes a variety of new features and changes, such as home screen widgets, the App Library, and much more. iOS 14 is a significant update for iPhone users, bringing long-awaited support for Home screen widgets, as well as a new App Library feature for organizing apps that you don’t want to keep on your Home screen....

Apple published an open letter late Sunday night responding to recent allegations that the company had given customers’ personal information, including phone call logs, to the U.S. government as part of the National Security Agency’s secret “PRISM” program. In the letter, Apple notes that the government had in fact issued several thousand requests for such information, but that Apple’s legal department had carefully examined each request and turned over only the smallest amount of information necessary, sometimes rejecting requests outright....

Stories discussed in this episode: Follow Chance: Twitter: @ChanceHMiller Follow Rikka: Twitter: @rikkaaltland Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts Overcast RSS Stitcher TuneIn Google Play Don’t miss out on our other daily podcasts: Quick Charge 9to5Toys Daily Share your thoughts! Drop us a line at happyhour@9to5mac.com. You can also rate us in Apple Podcasts or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show!