Benjamin Mayo

Timely for Valentine’s Day, Apple Music has launched two new personalized radio stations, available now for Apple Music subscribers.

The ‘Love Station’ has a romantic theme featuring songs about falling in love, whereas ‘Heartbreak’ features tracks about heartbreaks and sad love. Apple says these stations are deeply personalized to select the best music for each user, drawing from Apple Music’s catalog of more than 100 million songs.

Apple is persevering with foldable iPhone designs, according to a new report by The Information. The publication says Apple has been exploring foldable iPhones as early as 2018, and currently has at least two active prototypes of models that fold like clamshell.

The new foldable iPhone is described as being in early development, so don’t expect it to launch anytime soon. Apple has also been developing a larger form-factor foldable iPad, having faced challenges with the foldable iPhone project, according to the report ..

As part of the Television Critics Association winter tour, Apple is previewing its spring and summer slate for Apple TV+ with a dozen new original series featured in its latest sizzle reel teaser video.

The new series announcements include The New Look, Sugar, Franklin, Lady in the Lake, Presumed Innocent, Constellation, Manhunt, The Dynasty: New England Patriots, Dark Matter, Palm Royale, The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, and Land of Women.

A Reddit thread has popped up suggesting Vision Pro owners try wearing the headset in a non-standard configuration, without the large light seal attached.

As modelled by Ray Wong and Scott Stein in the photos above, this seemingly provides a more impactful sense of immersion and wider effective field of view as there is less distance between the wearer’s eyes and the headset’s lenses. The unit also carries less weight when worn like this.

The Apple Vision Pro headset has just launched today, and we already have our first drop tests. Courtesy of AppleTrack, it seems the Vision Pro glass actually holds up better than some people had initially feared.

In normal wear and tear scenarios, like bumping into a wall or cabinet while walking around your house with the headset on, the Vision Pro front glass gets scuffed but doesn’t sustain serious damage. In fact, the speaker audio pods stops working before the glass breaks. But, yes, dropping it from head height will probably shatter the front glass completely … but incredibly the unit remained mostly functional …

During the quarterly earnings call today, Apple CEO Tim Cook made a rare comment about the future of Apple’s products, referencing the company’s investments in artificial intelligence.

Cook said that Apple is “excited to share the details of our ongoing work in this space later this year”. This comment backs up rumors that iOS 18, which will be unveiled at WWDC in June, will feature comprehensive A.I features.

The Apple TV+ series Hijack is officially renewed for a second season, with Idris Elba confirmed to return as negotiator-and-hero Sam Nelson. The first season saw Nelson in the midst of a plane hijacking, unfolding in real time across seven one hour episodes.

Hijack was a bonafide hit last summer, becoming one of three Apple TV+ shows so far to appear on the Nielsen streaming charts.

For the first time, Apple is sharing active user numbers for the Apple Card, which is exclusively available in the United States. The company announced today that the Apple Card credit card has more than 12 million customers. 30 percent of those people are actively using the card, making two or more payments per month.

Apple Card Family has also seen strong uptake, with more than 1 million users sharing the card via Family Sharing, and 600,000 are set up as co-owners, building credit equally.

Apple Vision Pro launches this Friday, Apple’s first entrance into the AR/VR headset market. While it has a lot of bells and whistles, it’s also worth remembering that this is very much the first version of a first-generation device … and there will be weird constraints and limitations.

One such limit is that the Vision Pro home screen of apps is not organizable in visionOS 1.0. As noted by Brian Tong in his video review, the system currently does not let the user reorder their grid of apps …

Apple today officially launched MLS Season Pass for 2024, as part of its ten year exclusive deal to stream all Major League Soccer matches. This year, a new whip-around show will broadcast for Spanish fans, and the split-screen Multiview feature will be available on the iPad TV app for the first time.

The 2024 season kicks off on February 21, with four free matches for opening weekend. You can also watch Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami preseason matches from today. MLS Season Pass costs $99 for the season, or a discounted $79 price for Apple TV+ subscribers. You can also subscribe monthly, for $14.99 per month.

In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that the new iPad Pro and M3 MacBook Air are already in production in the Apple supply chain. They are set for an end of March release.

In all, Gurman expects March launches for the redesigned iPad Pro lineup with OLED displays, a spec-bumped iPad Air, a new larger 12.9-inch iPad Air, and a new generation of 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air with M3 chips.

The Apple Card savings account continues to increase its interest rate, making it ever more appealing to customers. On Friday, Apple notified Apple Card users that their money in the savings account are now accruing interest at 4.5%, the second increase in the same month.

The savings rate has gone from 4.25% in December to 4.35% earlier in January, to now 4.5%. For an account with no associated fees, these rises makes the account significantly more competitive with the wider market of high-yield savings accounts.

Apple TV+ today launched its new big-budget limited series, Masters of the Air, a long-awaited installment in the Band of Brothers and The Pacific franchise. Based on the book of the same name, Masters of the Air follows the 100th Bomb Group as they take on treacherous air raids, in broad daylight.

Executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, the show’s star-studded cast list includes Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Barry Keoghan, Ncuti Gatwa and more …

Apple announced a slew of App Store policy changes today to conform to the EU’s Digital Market Act, including supporting alternative app stores (Apple calls them ‘app marketplaces’) for the first time in Europe.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has immediately come out to criticize the changes, in a post on his X account. Sweeney says the new rules are an “anticompetitive scheme rife with junk fees”, and an example of “malicious compliance”.

In compliance with the Digital Markets Act, Apple is opening up the NFC chip on the iPhone for the first time. This will allow banking and wallets app to offer competition to Apple Pay for the first time, allowing users to choose an alternative payment system as the default app that appears when holding the iPhone near a payment terminal, as well as the double-click side button shortcut.

Developers of banking/wallet apps can apply to Apple to get an entitlement to support these features. To get approved, the developers will have to meet various industry and regulatory requirements.

Apple is updating its App Store policies to relent on a longstanding ban on game streaming apps. Developers are now allowed to submit a single app that can contain a catalog of games, where the game code is running off a server. This allows services like Xbox Cloud Gaming to finally release a native app for the iPhone and iPad.

Previously, Apple required developers submit a separate app for each game individually, a laborious and untenable affair.

To comply with the Digital Markets Act, Apple is announcing a sweeping set of changes to the App Store policy. This includes a new reduced commission structure.

iOS apps in the EU can now accept alternative terms with commission set at 17%, plus 3% if apps are using Apple’s In-App Purchase system. Either way, that’s a significant cut from the old 30% rate. Small business program developers will pay commission of 10%, plus 3%, down from 15%. There’s an additional new Core Technology Fee for ‘high volume apps’, which applies per install …

Apple will soon announce policy changes to conform to the Digital Markets Act in Europe, with an impending implementation deadline of March. The DMA will force Apple to allow iPhone app sideloading, with the goal of reducing Apple’s monopolistic control of software on iOS.

However, exactly how that will go down remains in question. The Wall Street Journal believes it has the inside scoop on Apple’s plans. Although apps will be available outside of the App Store for the first time, the Journal says Apple still plans to charge fees and conduct app review processes for sideloaded apps.

Project Titan, the Apple electric car project, has been underway since 2015. But the project has faced numerous delays and repeated executive turnover. Initially planning to make a fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel, those lofty ambitions have come crashing down to earth in recent years.

With Apple VP Kevin Lynch leading the project since 2021, the company has set a new release date for the launch of its first vehicle: 2028. That’s according to a new report today from Bloomberg.