Apple has again declined a request to testify at a congressional hearing scheduled for March, focused on the technology industry’s relationship with China. This is the second such hearing that Apple has declined to attend since November. The Washington Post reports that Republican Senator Josh Hawley invited both Apple and TikTok to appear at a hearing scheduled for March 4. Both companies have denied to attend, though TikTok said it would “dispatch a top aide to appear at an unspecified later date....

A 2016 patent from Apple has been made public this week, and it imagines a keyboard that’s more resistant to debris and crumbs As noted by The Verge, this patent was filed back in 2016, but only now has become public information.. Essentially, the patent shows how Apple could make its Butterfly keyboard technology more resistant to various crumb and dust particles that make their way underneath the keyboard design. The company refers to this as “ingress prevention” and explains that things such as liquid can damage electronics, sugar can corrode electrical contacts, and solid contaminants can block key movements:...

Apple Pay today added more banks and credit unions that now support the payment service, including over 20 for the U.S. and two new banks in Russia. The full list of newly added banks is below. Today’s wave of newly supported banks and credit unions follows the launch of Apple Pay in Taiwan and Ireland last month, those latest additions brings Apple to a total of 15 countries where the service is now available....

Apple Pay Cash, Apple’s upcoming person-to-person payment product that debuted at its WWDC developer conference this past June, is scheduled to be released in late October. This according to a footnote at the bottom of its Apple Watch Series 1 website. Apple Pay Cash will allow Apple Pay users to quickly send and receive secure payments between friends and family. iOS 11 and watchOS 4 users will be able to use the Messages app, or utilize Siri to pay someone using credit and debit cards available in the Wallet app....

During Apple’s Q2 2019 earnings call this afternoon, Tim Cook revealed that Apple Pay will be expanding to more users this year. Cook revealed that Apple will come to MTA in New York, as well as Ticketmaster’s website and app. Apple Pay support for MTA users has been in the works for a while now, but Cook today said that the functionality will start to roll out in early July. This means commuters will be able to travel using Apple Pay Transit from their iPhone and Apple Watch....

Apple Pay support for any card in Europe has become at least indirectly available through Curve… Curve is similar to other prepaid Mastercards, like Revolut, in connecting a physical card to an app, which then lets you top-up the card on demand, freeze and unfreeze it and so on. Although primarily intended for travel, with mid-market currency rates and fee-free ATM withdrawals, you can also use the Curve card in your own country....

Image via Sean Percival Our spidey sense has been tingling over the past few weeks on this “Late May, 10th anniversary meeting” we’ve been hearing much about. Today BGR lays the groundwork for such an event: There’s an overnight shift planned for around 10-15 individuals at each Apple Store to work from late Saturday all the way through mid-Sunday. During the overnight shift, it’s going to be required that employees lock cell phones in the main office....

Years of rumors and speculation met with an iPad market that has faced growth issues in recent quarters has finally led to this: iPad Pro. The long-awaited, larger iPad is here and it’s real. iPad Pro name is official Larger display: 12.9-inch Enhanced custom keyboard Higher resolution than 15-inch MacBook Pro at 2732×2048 A9X processor, 1.8X faster than A8X, 2x faster graphics 10-hour battery Can simultaneously edit 3 4K streams at once 4 speaker audio system (stereo) 6....

The video accompanying the memo Ahrendts sent to staff last week has been published by Mac4Ever. Apple retail boss Angela Ahrendts clarified some of the details of the Apple Watch and MacBook rollouts that are starting this week. The executive confirmed that for the time being, watch orders will only be available online due to extremely limited supply. Regarding the new products, Ahrendts says customer feedback is “overwhelmingly positive” and says the call to limit orders to online-only for the time being was “not an easy decision....

The WSJ is suggesting that Apple’s growing presence in Israel is focused on expanding the company’s chip design capabilities, reporting that it has hired most of the local employees of a chip design company shut down by Texas Instruments and is advertising new positions in silicon and semiconductor design. While the report contains more speculation than hard fact, we noted yesterday that Tim Cook–who is currently visiting the country–is accompanied by Johny Srouji, whose bio on the Apple website says that he “leads all custom silicon architecture and development” …...

Apple and Genius today announced a partnership which sees Genius apps gain a new inline Apple Music player, and Apple gets a new data source for its lyrics database. Apple has offered lyrics as part of its Apple Music subscription service since iOS 10. This announcement means Apple will now gather lyrics data from another source, expanding the quantity and accuracy of lyrics available on songs in the Apple Music library …...

Apple announced at the start of this year that its iAd network was going away over the summer, which affected advertising in its story aggregating News app in iOS 9 and later. Today Recode is reporting that Apple has inked an exclusive deal with NBCUniversal that lets them run ad sales for Apple News. The report notes that Apple will still allow publishers to sell their own ads, but NBCUniversal is picking up the ad sales business that Apple decided it didn’t want a part of earlier this year....

The latest estimates from Strategy Analytics show that Apple continues to take home the lion’s share of total profits in the worldwide smartphone market. While Apple’s slice of the profits has fallen from the 92%+ it has achieved in previous years, it still hit an impressive 79.2% last year, reports Korea Herald. Samsung took a distant second place, while Chinese brands – despite their rapid growth in market share – are still barely profitable, says the company …...

A new patent application published by the US Patent & Trademark Office (via Patently Apple) today reveals Apple’s possible plans to radically change the implementation of antennas in future iPhones and other small form factor devices. The majority of the patent describes a new composite material made up of a “foam substrate formed of a plurality of foam cells”. However, possible uses for the composite, as detailed in the patent, include a possible new antenna window on mobile devices....

Apple has added a second round of new Apple Pay banks and credit union partners in the United States for the month of August. These are the latest banks to work with Apple’s mobile payment service: Bank of St. Francisville Bank of Winnfield & Trust Company Billings Federal Credit Union Central Bank (OK) Citizens Business Bank City County Employees Credit Union First Community Bank (both Arkansas and Michigan now) First Federal Bank of Florida First International Bank & Trust First Internet Bank of Indiana First Volunteer Bank HOMEBANK Industrial State Bank Kitsap Credit Union KleinBank LA Capitol Federal Credit Union Member One Federal Credit Union Midwest Bankcentre National Bank of Commerce Needham Bank Northwestern Bank Park Side Credit Union Park State Bank & Trust Redstone Federal Credit Union Scenic Community Credit Union Services Credit Union Springs Valley Bank and Trust State Bank of Chilton Summit State Bank Sun Federal Credit Union The Arlington Bank The Bank of Hemet U....

Apple earlier this week announced a handful of retailers that will be the first to offer loyalty card support through Apple Pay, but there’s one company planned for the initial launch that it didn’t mention: Whole Foods. Expect the roll out of other rewards cards to be slow, however, as NFC terminals work to enable support with retailers… The adoption of loyalty cards through Apple Pay will likely be slower than credit and payment cards as NFC terminal makers, such as Verifone, have to enable each program on a case by case basis, according to sources close to the situation....

Just last week, Apple announced an expansion of its App Store Search Ads program with two new ad placements in the iOS App Store. Apple currently presents ads in apps like the App Store, News, and Stocks as well as more recent launches such as during Apple TV Friday Night Baseball streams. And recent accelerated hiring trends in the ads platform unit indicate that Apple’s advertising expansion is not slowing down, via Digiday....

After the announcement of its Podcasts app coming to Apple Watch yesterday, Apple has shared an update on its podcast platform with some new milestone achievements today at WWDC. The last time we heard an update on numbers for Apple Podcasts was at the end of April, where the platform hit over 50 billion downloads with 525,000 active shows. As reported by TechCrunch, Apple shared a few new metrics, along with some of the same data from April....

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHsXH6CO8Tg] After showing more journalists around its solar-powered North Carolina data center (where it is building a third solar farm), Apple says that its new focus for renewable energy is its supply chain. The Guardian reports that the sapphire factory in Arizona forms part of this initiative. Apple’s VP of environmental initiatives Lisa Jackson said that the company is conscious that its supply chain cannot claim the same green credentials as Apple itself … The company is also moving to install solar and geothermal power at a plant in Mesa, Arizona that has been manufacturing sapphire glass....

Apple announced today that it will make a donation in support of the National Park Foundation for all purchases made through the Apple Store in the US this week using Apple Pay. There’s also an Apple Watch Activity Challenge on the schedule for this week.. Apple is celebrating national parks in partnership with National Park Foundation. At apple.com, users can read at the end of the page: On its support page, Apple explains that this promotion is limited to the first 100,00 transactions, subject to a $10 minimum purchase....