Posts

Update: This outage appears to have been a brief one. iMessage is coming back online for most users. Apple hasn’t yet commented on what happened. Original story below. Apple’s System Status dashboard now acknowledges the outage and says it has been resolved. Apple’s iMessage is experiencing an outage this afternoon, according to a number of affected users. The outage appears to have started shortly after 12pm ET and is affecting users across the United States....

Apple could announce the date for its iPhone 12 event as soon as this week, as suggested by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman on Twitter. At the event, Apple is expected to announce new Apple Watch hardware and offer details on the release schedule for iOS 14 and watchOS 7 alongside the new iPhone. Gurman’s tweet follows a post from Jon Prosser, who claims that that Apple has a press release scheduled for Tuesday, September 8, at 9 a....

Over the summer, Apple held a series of Up Next Live concerts at Apple Stores around the world. The series wrapped up last weekend with a performance by Khalid at Apple Carnegie Library in Washington D.C. Now, Apple has released a collection of seven live EPs on Apple Music covering the summer concert series. The live EPs each offer one of the Up Next concerts from this summer. They include releases from Bad Bunny, King Princess, Khalid, Omar Apollo, Daniel Caesar, Ashley McBryde, and Lewis Capaldi....

Following earlier reports that Apple was eyeing Taiwan for its next Apple Pay launch, Focus Taiwan published that at least seven banks in the country have gained necessary government authorizations to begin supporting the service. According to the report, regulators in the country from the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) over the weekend confirmed they’ve granted the first round of approvals to banks for Apple Pay. Among the banks are “Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank, Cathay United Bank, E....

Apple has had to work hard to promote Apple Pay in China due to the popularity of existing, local mobile wallet apps like WeChat Pat and Alipay. The company had already bowed to the inevitable in allowing local apps to be used for online payments, but is now set to go even further … Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has announced that its mobile wallet app Alipay is to be accepted in physical Apple Stores in the country....

The long wait for Apple to announce WWDC 2021 has come to an end. Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is coming on June 7 in an all-online event. Aside from this being the first keynote the company has confirmed for 2021 so far, it uses the Craig Federighi meme that went viral from last fall’s M1 Mac event. As we can see in the featured image, a Memoji with glasses stares at its MacBook, and the screen brightness of the Mac shines back on its face....

Apple announced and opened up applications for its first Entrepreneur Camp for Black founders and developers back in October last year. Now the inaugural camp has launched and Apple has shared the 13 app companies to take part in the program. Apple shared the update on the Entrepreneur Camp for Black founders and developers in a Newsroom post. The developers in the first cohort are focused on everything from health/fitness to music, education to gaming....

While most developers are probably already giving iOS 9 a test drive, Apple is still working on the upcoming iOS 8.4 update and just released a new version. iOS 8.4 build 12H4125a is now available on Apple’s developer center and as an OTA update for testers on the previous version. Today’s release marks the fourth beta version of iOS 8.4 after first being seeded out in April. The update includes a redesigned Music app, audiobook playback through iBooks and CarPlay, and iBooks Author textbook support on iPhone....

Apple today released the second version of the OS X Yosemite Public Beta. The update is available via Software Update on the Mac App Store for those running the initial beta release; the first beta was released at the end of July. It appears Public Beta 2 is nearly the same build as the Developer Preview 6 (build r, up from f) released to Yosemite developers earlier this week. Apple has also released an updated version of the redesigned iTunes 12:...

Apple today overhauled the Shazam iOS app with a new look, modernizing the user interface and bringing the design language in line with recent UI updates to Apple Music. Upon launching the app, the screen is dominated by the central Tap to Shazam button with access to recently identified music revealed by swiping up. Apple is also adding the ability to identify songs through a web browser for the first time, available in beta now at Shazam....

Apple has finally been granted permission to build its €850M ($1B) European data center in Ireland, more than two-and-a-half years after it was first announced. The decision was made by Ireland’s High Court this morning, after a lengthy planning battle. The decision was so long delayed that Apple not only had time to complete construction of the Danish data center announced at the same time, but to announce a second one there – raising concerns that the company may have given up on Ireland …...

Apple’s annual Back to School promotion was supposed to end yesterday, Friday, September 6, but we understand that the cut-off date has been slightly extended by Apple. The promotion offers a $100 iTunes gift card with the purchase of a new Mac or a $50 gift card with the purchase of an iPhone or iPad. The promotion will be extended until the end of the weekend through Apple’s Online Store, and we’re told that the extension is also occurring at Apple’s retail stores....

Apple officially unveiled its entrance into textbooks with the new “iBooks 2” app and “iBooks Author” e-book authoring tool. If you are wondering just how much the textbooks are going to cost you, Apple announced that initially high school textbooks through partners Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will be available through the new iBookstore textbooks category for $14.99 or less. Compare that figure to textbooks from publishers like McGraw Hill that can sell for as high as $75....

Apple launched this week its inaugural Entrepreneur Camp for Hispanic and Latin founders. The company invited leaders and developers from nine app companies from the US, Brazil, Guatemala, and Portugal to “build the next generation of cutting-edge apps.” According to Apple, in this first tech lab, developers received one-on-one guidance from Apple experts and engineers to help accelerate their apps. “We are so excited to bolster the impact of Entrepreneur Camp with the addition of this new cohort for Latin technologists,” said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives....

Apple is unveiling the next iPad at a press event at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. Apple execs just hit the stage to announce —after their usual brief introduction of company statistics—Siri will officially come to Japan in iOS 5.1, which is available starting today. However, Japanese users will get their hands on iOS 5.1 as it rolls out over the coming weeks. Developing… Apple March 7th iPad event Liveblog (9to5mac....

For some unknown reason, the company has backtracked and is no longer letting users stay on iOS 14 with security updates. Instead, it has reverted to the traditional method of updates where users are forced to install the latest version of the operating system (which is iOS 15) to get the security improvements. As we mentioned earlier today, (via GitHub) the change was implemented after the release of iOS 15.2 in December 2021....

Apple today has announced that it is partnering with NASA to produce a short film to celebrate the Juno spacecraft reading Jupiter’s orbit. The film is available on iTunes and Apple Music for free and is called “Visions of Harmony.” To go along with the short film, Apple has created a new featured section on Apple Music called “Destination: Jupiter” that highlights the short film as well as the exclusive music that appears in it....

Ahead of the launch of Apple TV+ on November 1, Apple continues to expand its collection of feature films. According to a report from the Hollywood Reporter, Apple is in “final negotiations” to acquire the rights to a “music reimagining” of A Christmas Carol starring Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. Apple is said to have come out on top of a bidding war for the rights to the film. Specific terms haven’t been disclosed, but Apple reportedly moved “aggressively as it seeks to make an impact in the original features space....

Apple’s reliance (some would say over-reliance) on China has been a hotly-debated topic for some time. The company’s efforts to boost Apple production outside China have never been of greater interest than now, however, when the coronavirus outbreak is having a substantial impact inside the country. India has been one of the countries making a concerted effort to win more of Apple’s manufacturing business, but a couple of reports have highlighted some of the challenges to making this a workable option …...

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off in just a few weeks on June 13th in San Francisco, but high demand and limited venue space means Apple can’t accommodate every developer who wants to attend. This year Apple is responding positively by promoting other developer community events taking place in San Francisco during the week of WWDC. Apple shared this message on its developer news portal today: The update links to the official WWDC attendee site, which now promotes four non-WWDC events happening in San Francisco where developers can potentially meet up without attending Apple’s conference....