Apple’s head of iTunes Eddy Cue is live on stage during Apple’s WWDC 2013 keynote presentation today and just unveiled a brand new, revamped version of Siri that includes a lot of new features on top of a redesign that fits in with the rest of the new look for iOS 7. It also announced a new service dubbed “iOS in the car” that will bring more functionality to the consoles of some vehicles through a partnership with several car manufacturers....

On iOS, all apps must go through the App Store. On macOS, the Mac App Store is just one method of distribution and developers are free to publish their apps independently on their own website. This means app rejection policies on macOS are not as painful as with iPhone or iPad, but they are nevertheless significant. Developers are reporting that apps made using Electron (which is a framework that allows companies to ship web apps in a native app wrapper) are now being rejected by the automated Mac App Store review process....

Two weeks after seeding developers with macOS 11.5 beta 3, the fourth beta has arrived for developers. The build comes just after the macOS Monterey beta 2 arrived yesterday. Update 1:10 pm PT: The fourth macOS 11.5 beta is now available for public testers too. If you’re enrolled in the developer or public beta program, the OTA for macOS 11.5 beta 4 should be showing up soon if it’s not already....

Apple has officially released its latest update for Mac with support for new Podcasts app features as well as the Studio Display webcam fix. While the Studio Display 15.5 beta came inside the macOS update, it’s now available as a separate release. Update: macOS 12.4 also comes with over 50 security fixes: Apple patches dozens of security flaws with iOS 15.5, over 50 fixes for macOS 12.4 macOS 12.4 is now available via OTA for all users....

Both the App Store and iTunes is currently experiencing a widespread performance issue resulting in missing content from the categories sections and errors when downloading new content. Apple’s official status page currently has no mention of the issue aside from a brief Apple Pay support problem earlier today. Apple’s services last suffered a widespread outage just two weeks ago which prompted an apology on behalf of the company. Update 11:36 EST: While the outage was very much widespread, the issues seem to be resolved....

First noted by The Next Web, recently promoted Bob Mansfield cashed in 35,000 shares of AAPL stock at $582.21 a share. That is worth a fat check of $20,377,507.50, as a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing also revealed today. This is Mansfield’s second time cashing in the stock that he was awarded in 2005. His first cash-in was in 2009. While Mansfield was set to retire from Apple in June, he was appointed Senior Vice President of Technologies under Apple’s major exec shake-up....

Apple has issued a rare recall notice on one of its products today: the Beats Pill XL portable Bluetooth speaker sold in Apple Stores and various other retailers. The voluntary recall cites a situation in which the battery can overheat and become a fire hazard. Apple purchased Beats Electronics and Beats Music for some $3 billion in 2014. The current Beats Pill XL hardware has remained the same since Apple purchased the speaker company....

Apple has today published a new video on its YouTube channel sharing that season two of Carpool Karaoke: The Series will be available via the TV app for free. The video says that Apple will be releasing a new free episode every week starting on October 12, and it will be made available via the TV app on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. Judging by the video, this will be a mix of previously released episodes that were put behind the Apple Music paywall, as well as an all new season featuring celebrities such as Weird Al “Yankovic”, Snoop Dog, and much more....

It’s not all bad news for Apple – the company is one of the two best firms in terms of energy efficiency in its products, with all of them meeting and, in many cases, exceeding Energy Star requirements. However, Apple missed a big chance to advance its score by not improving the environmental performance of the new version of the iPhone, Greenpeace notes. The latest Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics rates company performance on a range of categories, but this eighth edition introduces expanded and tougher criteria on toxic chemicals, electronic waste and new criteria on climate change....

After laying off some 30 employees last month, The Merchant Consortium Exchange, or MCX, announced today that it is ending its the ongoing CurrentC beta test and postponing all future releases. The beta test will be suspended on June 28th, according to an email sent to beta testers in Columbus, Ohio and obtained by The Consumerist. After the beta test ends, MCX will disable all customer accounts and end consumer access to the service....

Apple has once again distanced itself from its past efforts in order to market its new Apple Music streaming service. The company has begun promoting the service using a unique geofilter in the popular Snapchat messaging application. The geofilter has showed up in select areas of Los Angeles, including at The Grove mall where an Apple Store is located. It is unclear if this filter is meant to appear at specific highly populated areas like The Grove or around all Apple Stores....

Apple today has released iOS 12.4.2 for a handful older iPhone and iPad models that were not updated to iOS 13 last week. The update includes . 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....

Apple released their first update to the new iOS Version 5 yesterday — iOS 5.0.1. The update from Apple includes multitasking gestures for the original iPad, bug fixes with Documents in the Cloud and improved voice recognition for Australian users. The largest update however for most of us is a fix for bugs which were affecting the battery life of all devices running iOS 5.0 — iPhone 4S users in particular....

Image: Cult of Mac For those who are unable to use the web-based recovery tool for OS X Lion, Apple has released a new Mac application that allows users to create their own OS X Lion recovery/installation external drives. Specifically, this drive lets you reinstall Lion, repair the disk using Disk Utility, restore from a Time Machine backup, or browse the web with Safari. You need a recovery HD already setup to create this new drive....

Apple yesterday rolled out iOS 8.4 to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users and the big news, of course, was the addition of Apple Music and Beats 1. It appears now, however, that Apple removed a feature still used by many from the operating system. As pointed out by several users on Apple’s Support forum, the company appears to have removed Home Sharing support for music in iOS 8.4. The Home Sharing support page has also been updated to reflect that the feature is not present in iOS 8....

The Financial Times has officially been removed from the App Store after failing to comply with Apple’s in-app subscription model that requires payments to be processed through iTunes (giving Apple a 30% cut in the process). The publication used to have an iPhone and iPad app, which appear to have been removed from the App Store today. Fortunately for FT (not so much for Apple), they also have an HTML5 web app alternative that they’re urging iOS users to use instead....

After announcing in September that it would begin “removing problematic and abandoned apps” in an effort to clean up the App Store, new data shows Apple is now fulfilling that promise with removals dramatically increasing around 238 percent last month. The data below from research firm Sensor Tower (via TechCrunch) shows around 47,300 apps were removed in October, around 3.4 times more than the average month for the App Store prior to the new purging initiative....

Apple’s lobbying spend hit a new quarterly record high in the first quarter of this year, as the company continues its efforts to fight antitrust measures. Apple is feeling particular pressure from bipartisan support for both the Open App Markets Act and the American Innovation and Choice Online Act … Background Apple faces antitrust charges on a number of fronts. We last month outlined the background to just one of the antitrust threats to Apple....

Apple is today rolling out another new way to buy an iPhone at an Apple Store, a combination of its existing iPhone Upgrade Program and trade-in offers. Right now, on the normal iPhone Upgrade Program, customers can pay about $32 a month for a brand new iPhone 6s on a two-year agreement with an annual trade-in option. What the ‘Trade Up With Installments’ offers is a reduction of that monthly fee, in exchange for a trade-in of your existing smartphone....

(Tim Cook in China with Katie Cotton) Now that Apple’s PR chief and VP of Corporate Communications Katie Cotton has officially joined the growing group of retiring Apple leadership, Tim Cook is searching for the company’s next VP of Communications. Re/code reports that Apple is looking outside the company, however, rather than promoting someone internally to permanently fill the role. The move to find someone from outside Apple to follow Katie Cotton is not unlike Tim Cook’s decision to replace Apple Retail’s VP Ron Johnson first with outside hire John Browett, then CEO of Dixons, followed by current Retail VP Angela Ahrendts, formerly CEO of Burberry....