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Apple has been expanding its development and use of custom chips over the last few years. Last month we first heard that Apple was looking to poach employees from Qualcomm on its home turf of San Diego to potentially create custom radio chips. Today, a new report from The Information says that Apple is indeed actively working on a custom cellular modem. The report includes a recent job listing that confirms the new chip effort....

Digitimes is reporting that Apple is looking to transition iPhone battery production from labor-intensive processes to fully-automatic machine production lines in 2014. Although the reliability of Digitimes’ reporting is often poor, in this case the trustworthiness of the report is much more likely to be solid. Unlike some of their previous stories in recent memory, automating battery production is a direct matter of the supply chain — which is Digitimes’ area of expertise....

Update: Apple confirmed that its cash reserves now sit at $256.8B. Apple’s cash reserves now exceed more than $250B, reports the WSJ. The company will report the actual number in tomorrow’s earnings report. While there’s as yet no official confirmation of the number, it seems a pretty safe bet … The last number Apple reported was $246.09B as of December, so it was already close to the quarter trillion mark then....

When Is the September Event? Apple’s next event is scheduled for September 7, 2022 at 10 AM Pacific Time, or 1 PM Eastern Time (more time zones). Unlike this year’s earlier Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), there won’t be any follow-up presentations or other events around the same time. How to Watch the September Event Just like in previous years, there are a few official options for watching WWDC 2022. You can watch it from the Apple Events page, Apple’s official YouTube channel, or the Apple TV app....

In addition to announcing its App Store Best of 2019 today, Apple is also launching its first-ever Apple Music Awards. The company says it handpicked winners for Global Artist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year and Breakthrough Artist of the Year. It also gave awards to the most streamed song and album. With Billie Eilish picking up three awards, Apple is celebrating the first year of Apple Music Awards with a performance from the artist held at Steve Jobs Theater....

As of today, Apple is no longer the world’s most valuable company. Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco has now taken over that title. According to Bloomberg, this reversal is because of a surge in oil prices due to current inflation increases. Aramco, which hit a $2.43 trillion market capitalization, has surpassed Apple for the first time since 2020. As of 1:05pm ET today the Cupertino company’s stock fell 3.9% on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)....

In what has become a tradition of sorts, Apple today published iTunes Rewind 2011, an annual list of the best iOS apps and games split across 21 App Store categories. Apple explains: In addition to apps, charts are also available for music, movies, television shows, e-books and podcasts. They named Snapseed for the iPad App of the Year and Electronic Arts’ Dead Space for the iPad Game of the Year. As for the iPhone, Apple put Instagram at the top (runners-up were VidRhythm and Band of the Day)....

Apple is now publishing public web pages for landmarks and POI in its Apple Maps database: here’s one such place. The website link shows details about the place such as location, name, telephone number and reviews. The design is identical to the cards in the iOS 10 Maps app. When on an Apple platform, these URLs appear to act as deep links into the native Maps app. If viewing in Chrome or on a non-Apple device like Android, the fallback webpage is loaded....

One particular piece of evidence that leads us to believe in a June 14th Lion launch is that Apple will be minimizing software presence in their retail stores on that day. Possibily meaning the removal of Snow Leopard from Apple’s retail outlets. This may mean a mid-June Final Cut Pro X launch as well, but that is purely speculative. Apple removing software from their retail stores is not exactly an issue for Mac OS X Lion customers as this particular software release will come through the Mac App Store....

Just before we heard Apple was not using an ARM-designed processor and instead its first custom CPU design for the new iPhone’s A6, we also heard reports that Apple was reducing component orders from Samsung due to the two companies’ ongoing patent disputes. While we knew Samsung was still—at the very least—manufacturing the new chip, a report from KoreaTimes gives more insight into the company’s involvement directly from a Samsung official....

With an increasing number of countries and states urging people to stay at home, a new set of seven Apple Music Come Together playlists are designed to help people cope with home lockdowns. Each of the playlists is designed to meet a specific need, from working or studying at home to forgetting the world’s troubles for a while … Isolation Icebreakers Work From Home Hustle Virtual Hugs Home-School-Strumentals Living Room Dance Party...

Suggestions that Apple will pay music owners just 58% of subscription payments for its Apple Music service are not true, says the company. Robert Kondrk, the Apple VP who has been working with Eddy Cue on negotiating deals with music labels, says that company actually pays a little more than the industry-standard 70% figure. The 58% number doing the rounds earlier this month appears to be based on a misunderstanding: that’s the usual cut for the label, which owns the recording; the publisher, which owns the rights to the song itself, gets a 12% cut....

Kanye West continues to face repercussions for his antisemitic and anti-Black rhetoric, this time by Apple Music. After being dropped by companies like Adidas and Balenciaga, Rolling Stone reports today that Apple has removed its curated “Kanye West Essentials” playlist from Apple Music. West’s full discography, however, remains available via the streaming service. This move makes Apple Music the first streaming platform to take action against West following his many hateful and offensive comments....

All of today’s best deals are up for the taking and headlined by an Apple Pencil 2 discount hitting $100. That’s alongside 20% off OtterBox’s collection of iPhone 13 MagSafe cases and VIZIO’s new MQ6 AirPlay 2 TVs at $152 off. Hit the jump for all that and more in the latest 9to5Toys Lunch Break. Apple Pencil 2 discount drops price to $100 Whether you recently picked up the new iPad mini 6 or one of the flagship iPad Pros, bringing Apple Pencil 2 into the mix helps get the most out of what iPadOS has to offer....

Apple has publicly turned on its March 25 event live stream early this time around, teasing eagle-eyed viewers by occasionally raising the curtain to reveal … something. The stream is playing what appears to be a live feed from inside the Steve Jobs Theater. However, it is most likely a pre-recorded video, complete with faux-CRT CGI effects. There’s about five different camera angles that is cycling through. You can admire the structural craftsmanship of the underground architecture, but apart from that nothing is happening....

Just as it did for the iPhone XS, Apple has issued a press release citing the best bits from a dozen iPhone XR reviews. Apple obviously picked positive remarks from each, but in this case it wasn’t hard to do – the reviews we’ve seen for the latest iPhone were overwhelmingly positive. The company has aimed to highlight different positives from each review, but a commonality to several of the quotes is that the iPhone XR offers great value for what you’re getting....

Apple has released the first developer beta of macOS Big Sur 11.0.1, even though macOS 11 Big Sur has not yet even been released to the public. This comes as rumors about a potential Apple event circulate for sometime in November. Two weeks ago, Apple released macOS 11 Big Sur beta 10 to developers, continuing its focus on making bug fixes and performance improvements to the operating system ahead of its general release....

In addition to launching a new 15-inch MacBook Pro with Force Touch and a cheaper 27-inch Retina iMac, Apple has also introduced its first official iPhone Lightning Dock with compatibility for both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Of course, being this late to the charging dock game means a number of fine solutions already exist at competitive prices. To accommodate both the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhone models with a single dock, Apple has departed from its usual design of placing the charging connector in a groove fit for the bottom of the iPhone....

Apple today released a long-awaited update to Final Cut Pro X, its video editing software which fell on def ears with pro video editors. CNET reports that the new version takes into account a number of issues professional users took with the application: XML support gives users who previously couldn’t import old projects a workaround solution, requiring them to first export Final Cut Pro 7 projects in XML and then import them into the new Final Cut Pro X....

Apple has just released an updated version of the Safari browser for users on OS X Yosemite, Mavericks, and Mountain Lion. The update doesn’t add any new features, but does fix several important security flaws in the WebKit engine that powers the app. Users on any of the three most recent versions of OS X can download the update for free through the Updates tab of the Mac App Store. The details of the security changes are listed below....