After several hours of downtime, Apple’s Online Store is slowly coming back up and the iPhone SE and iPad Pro 9.7-inch are both now available for pre-order. The iPhone SE starts at $399 off-contract, while the iPad Pro starts at $599. Deliveries will begin in one week on March 31st.
Apple’s latest iOS devices are set to go on sale in just a few hours at 12AM PT/3AM ET and as usual the company has taken its online store offline to prepare for the release. The store will stay down until pre-orders open later tonight.
Apple earlier this week released the public stable version of OS X 10.11.4, but for a number of users the update process has been less than pleasant. A plethora of users are voicing issues on Apple’s support forums centered around logging in to iMessage and FaceTime following the update to OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan.
Many have long wondered just how many users are actively watching content on the Apple, and starting soon we’ll get a deeper look into those numbers. Nielsen, the company behind tracking statistics related to all sorts of entertainment, has announced today that it soon plans to start breaking out metrics for connected devices, including the Apple TV (via Variety).
According to a new report from Re/code, Apple is set to expand its Apple Pay mobile payments solution to the web before this coming holiday shopping season. According to the report, Apple has been telling potential partners that with this expansion, users will be able to use Apple Pay instead of entering their card information on the retailer websites.
On Monday at its special event, Apple introduced a new set of nylon Apple Watch bands that we first reported earlier this year. The new straps come in both 38mm and 42mm versions with seven color options available. Officially called Woven Nylon, these bands which are paired with either aluminum and stainless steel models or sold separately mark the first time Apple has introduced new entry level strap options. Check out our hands-on below for our early impressions and more photos.
If you haven’t caught up on Apple’s special event from Monday, you can now catch it in its entirety on Apple’s YouTube channel or down below. Apple introduced a new 4-inch iPhone SE, updated 9.7-inch iPad Pro, new Apple Watch models, and much more.
Update: Pike’s Universum has done some more digging and discovered which processors Apple plans to use in its 12-inch MacBooks this year:
Intel® Core™ m3-6Y30 Processor (4M Cache, up to 2.20 GHz)
Intel® Core™ m5-6Y54 Processor (4M Cache, up to 2.70 GHz)
Intel® Core™ m7-6Y75 Processor (4M Cache, up to 3.10 GHz)
Earlier this week Apple introduced a new 4-inch iPhone SE, a smaller iPad Pro, and all new Apple Watch bands at its ‘Let us loop you in’ March event. Just as we expected, news about any update in the MacBook line wasn’t announced. But thanks to a tipster, we’re now discovering references to an ‘early 2016’ 12-inch MacBook with Retina display, which is presumably a follow up to the first generation hardware released last April.
Walt Mossberg, “Friend of Apple” and Personal Technology Columnist at The Verge, is out today with his take on the iPhone SE announcement from Monday. His not terribly hot take?
Ouch. That’s not a great sign. Neither is the fact that Apple’s Chief Design Officer Jony Ive didn’t make the 2-building over commute to see the show.
With the New York International Auto Show taking place this week, car makers are showing off the latest vehicles featuring Apple’s CarPlay platform including new 2017 models from Hyundai, Honda, Volkswagen, Chevrolet, Subaru, Kia, and others.
During their March event this week, Apple announced a new 9.7-inch iPad Pro. While on the surface it looks like a miniaturization of it’s larger predecessor, the new iPad includes some newer features as well. One of these features that didn’t get any time on stage was the inclusion of an embedded Apple SIM in this new iPad Pro.
As we noted earlier, the Pangu team has released a jailbreak for the Apple TV 4. This jailbreak allows Apple TV 4 owners running tvOS 9.0 and 9.0.1 to jailbreak their devices.
Although it is possible to jailbreak the Apple TV with a paid developer account, it’s also possible to do so with a free account as well. In this tutorial, we’ll show you step by step how to jailbreak the Apple TV 4. Watch our video walkthrough inside to see how. Expand Expanding Close
This week, Zac and Benjamin discuss the recent Apple event and all of the announcements that came from it. There’s a new 4-inch iPhone SE and a 9.7-inch iPad Pro, but what’s all the hype about? The Happy Hour podcast is available for download on iTunes and through our dedicated RSS feed.
Adding to a report from VentureBeat earlier this week, today’s report offers more details on what Apple is doing with“Project McQueen” that could see the company replacing third-party vendors with more of its own cloud infrastructure. The Information reports that Project McQueen is actually just one of at least six internal efforts at Apple including building its own servers, networking equipment, and “systems that could one day help developers to power their apps.”
Apple continues to expand its video content line-up by extending its partnership with Vice today as the duo have released the first episode in a new documentary series. Apple Music and Vice’s series, The Score, take a focus on various music scenes around the world. Episode one looks into the life of Minnesota’s Native American hip-hop scene and artists.
Apple deserves a great deal of credit for the iPhone SE. I outlined yesterday why I believe the product makes long-term strategic sense, and the vast majority of you agree. But Apple has also managed to tempt not just one but two 9to5Mac writers to do something almost unthinkable for tech junkies: downgrade our iPhones! Like Zac, I too am seriously considering selling my iPhone 6s and replacing it with the SE.
I’ve long been a fan of small-screened phones. I actually sat out both the iPhone 5 and 5s because neither seemed to me at the time to offer enough reason to upgrade. But there’s only so long I can be without the latest tech, so eventually I had to bite the bullet and buy first the iPhone 6 and then the 6s.
However, the iPhone SE comes very close to offering the best of both worlds: the latest tech and a smaller form-factor …
As promised, Pangu has released a jailbreak for the 4th generation Apple TV. This jailbreak, a first for the Apple TV 4, is capable of jailbreaking units running tvOS 9.0 and tvOS 9.0.1.
If you have an Apple TV that’s running a later version of tvOS, there is unfortunately no way to downgrade back to jailbreak-eligible versions. Instead, you can use our handy guide in order to find an eligible Apple TV at your local brick and mortar retail store. We’ll be sure to follow up with a full guide that shows you how to jailbreak the Apple TV 4. Expand Expanding Close
iOS 9.3’s headlining new feature is called Night Shift mode. By adjusting the color temperature of your iPhone or iPad’s display, Night Shift mode makes using your iOS device at night and in dark settings easier on your eyes.
Research has shown that by reducing the blue light emitted from a backlit display, it can become easier to fall asleep at night. Apple was very careful in its wording during yesterday’s iPhone SE event, letting us know that not everyone would enjoy similar results. That said, I’ve personally had good experience with like-minded utilities. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to get started with Night Shift on iOS 9.3. Expand Expanding Close
There’s never long between Apple launching a new product and the first sales forecasts. Digitimes has a somewhat mixed track record, but for whatever it may be worth its research wing is estimating that Apple will sell four million 9.7-inch iPad Pros in the first half of this year.
It’ll be interesting to compare this number with others that we’re likely to hear in the coming days.
The company is almost certainly right, though, that the newly-reduced $399 starting price of the iPad Air 2 is likely to see that as the biggest seller in the iPad range despite the launch of the new model – though to be fair, Air 2s have been selling for $100-$125 off on 9to5toys since before Christmas.
If the company’s forecast is correct, that could see Apple finally ending the two-year decline in iPad sales.
Israeili YNetNews reports that the so-far unnamed “third party” which has offered to help the FBI try to break into the San Bernardino iPhone is Cellebrite, a mobile forensics company based in Israel.
The FBI has been reportedly using the services of the Israeli-based company Cellebrite in its effort to break the protection on a terrorist’s locked iPhone, according to experts in the field familiar with the case. Cellebrite has not responded to the report. But if it is indeed the “third party” in question, and it is able to break into the terrorist’s iPhone, it would bring the high-stakes legal showdown between the government and Apple to an abrupt end. Cellebrite, considered one of the leading companies in the world in the field of digital forensics, has been working with the world’s biggest intelligence, defense and law enforcement authorities for many years. The company provides the FBI with decryption technology as part of a contract signed with the bureau in 2013.
Cellebrite declined to comment officially, and no information was given as to the method the company plans to use. One unlikely source claims to know …
We’ve been seeing a few reports of the iOS 9.3 upgrade bricking the iPad 2, with the devices failing to activate at the end of the update.
The specifics reported in an Apple Support Communities thread, tweets to @applesupport and via email suggests that it may be nothing more than Apple’s activation servers struggling under the load, but some are reporting that their devices have still failed to activate 24+ hours later.
As part of Apple’s Renew program, where the company is encouraging people to recycle their old devices to help the environment, Apple has posted some exclusive environmental wallpaper to download on its website. The URL (apple.com/thanks) is given out on cards in Apple Stores to people who recycle their old device in store, as a small gesture of appreciation.
However, the URL is open to anyone to visit and download some cute, exclusive, iOS 9 wallpaper that isn’t included in the default list of iOS wallpaper …