Following his interviews centered around the new Apple TV, Apple’s SVP of software and services Eddy Cue has now sat down with CNN’s Brian Stelter to discuss the News app the company launched alongside iOS 9. In the interview, Cue and Stelter discuss a variety of points surrounding News, including Apple’s main goal with the app, the expansion to additional countries, and revenue sharing.
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Report: Apple testing iPhone 7 models with USB-C, multi-touch 3D Touch, dual cameras, more
The iPhone 6s launched just two months ago, but rumors surrounding its successor are already circulating. Earlier rumors have claimed that the device will feature a waterproof and dustproof design, as well as a new casing material. Now, G For Games reports that Apple is currently in the process of testing five different iPhone 7 models, all with distinct differences.
PSA: Beats Music shuts down today, here’s what changes and how to move to Apple Music
Later today Apple is set to pull the plug on Beats Music and completely stop the service. The reason? After buying the subscription music service in a $3 billion deal that also included Beats headphones and speakers last year, Apple Music has now fully launched and replaces Beats Music. Any remaining subscribers will need to transfer from Beats Music to Apple Music immediately to avoid losing saved music libraries and playlists. The good news is Apple Music now has almost all of Beats Music’s features with only a few exceptions…
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Apple Pay support for JCPenney store cards in testing with spring 2016 rollout goal
JCPenney is following the lead set by Kohl’s and testing Apple Pay support for its store credit cards, according to a new report.
JCP shoppers in Texas are being added to a pilot program that allows them to set up their store cards on their mobile devices for use in stores. The program seems to be limited to only one store at the moment, with a full rollout planned for spring 2016.
AT&T to increase price of grandfathered unlimited plans in February (Updated)
AT&T subscribers who previously had unlimited data plans back in the iPhone 3G era and have managed to hang onto that plan are in for their first price increase in seven years, a source with knowledge of the matter has informed 9to5Mac.
Update: AT&T has now publicly announced the change. Additional information has been added below.
Apple’s Tim Cook to receive Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights 2015 Ripple of Hope Award
Early next month, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization will present Apple CEO Tim Cook with its 2015 Ripple of Hope Award honoring leaders in commitment to social change. Cook has described RFK as a personal hero on multiple occasions over the years.
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Mini-Reviews: Anker PowerCore+ 10050 / PowerPort 2, Just Mobile AluPlug and Mophie Powerstation 2X / 8X
Several brand-new iPad and iPhone accessories I’ve been testing recently aren’t necessarily worthy of full standalone reviews, but because they come from some of our readers’ and editors’ favorite companies, they’re still worth knowing about. Four of the five are sequels to prior products I’ve covered, while one is totally new — though similar to an earlier design.
Today, I’m taking a quick look at Anker’s PowerCore+ 10050 ($33) and PowerPort 2 ($14), Just Mobile’s AluPlug ($30), and Mophie’s “new” Powerstation 2X ($60) and Powerstation 8X ($150). The names may sound familiar, but each of these power accessories is actually different from what came before, and better…
Cyber Monday: The best deals on Apple accessories, software, & more
While Black Friday often gets the most promotion, the deals aren’t over. Some of the best deals aren’t available until today, Cyber Monday, as many retailers offer the same or even deeper discounts in order to help move as much stock as possible ahead of the Christmas holidays.
Below we’ve done the dirty work for you, compiling the best of the best deals on accessories, software, and more for all of your iPhone, iPad, Macs, and other Apple products.
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Apple Music streaming is coming to Sonos speakers on December 15th
Sonos users rejoice: Apple Music support now has a date, December 15th. Sonos support for Apple Music fulfills a promise made by Apple in June to bring the subscription service to the connected speakers by the end of the year. Opening the Apple Music catalog for subscribers and free trial members makes brings a massive collection of content to Sonos speakers. If you’re looking to jump into the Sonos ecosystem, 9to5Toys recently highlighted an excellent Play:1 Starter Set deal for $349, which includes two Sonos Play:1 units (reg. $199 each). Sonos also offers a medium-packaged Play:3 ($299) and a larger, all-new Play:5 ($499, previewed here).
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OS X El Capitan 10.11.2 beta 5 now available on the Mac App Store
If you’re running the latest OS X El Capitan Update Beta on your Mac, head over to the Mac App Store to grab today’s Update Beta 5 release. OS X 10.11.2 is currently being developed alongside iOS 9.2 for iPhone and iPad as well as tvOS 9.1 for the new Apple TV. If you’re already running the OS X 10.11.2 beta, launch the Mac App Store and open the Updates tab to download and install the new release, then restart your Mac. The update is available for both developers and public beta testers.
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9to5Toys Last Call: 12″ MacBook $1,100, iTunes $100 Gift Card for $80, tons of discounted iOS apps, more
Keep up with the best gear and deals on the web by signing up for the 9to5Toys Newsletter. Also, be sure to check us out on: Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+ and Safari push notifications.
TODAY’S CAN’T MISS DEALS:
Last Call Updates:
Sports/Fitness: Fitbit Charge HR Wristband $105 (Orig. $150), Jawbone UP3 Activity Tracker $85 (Orig. $180), more
- USB Accessories: Sharkk 4 Outlet Power Strip w/ 4 USB Ports $20, more
- Pebble Time Steel Smartwatch for Apple/Android (black, silver or gold) $180 (Reg. $250)
- Save an extra 15% at the Amazon Warehouse: Polk Atrium Outdoor Speakers $56, more
- Barnes & Noble 30% off Toys: LEGO City Fire Station $70 (Reg. $100), more
- Free Xbox Live Gold Games for December: Thief, Adventures of Van Helsing, Sacred 3, more
- Free PS Plus Games for December: Far Cry 3, Gaunlet Slayer Edition, more
- Cyber Monday magazines from $3/yr ea: Wired, GQ, ESPN, Rolling Stone, many more
- Today Only: Download 1 DC Digital Comic get the 2nd one free (up to $30 value)
- Home: refurb Cuisiniart juicers/can openers/coffee makers from $14, more
[tweet https://twitter.com/9to5toys/status/671454035787030529 align=’center’]
Apple 12″ 256GB MacBook $1,100 (Reg. $1,299), 13″ 128GB Retina MacBook Pro (newest) $1,050 (Reg. $1,299)
$100 iTunes Gift Card for $80 with email delivery from PayPal (20% off), more
Apple’s Amazing Apps & Games sale 50% off: Threes!, Transistor, PAC-MAN, Sworkit Pro, iTranslate Voice, more
Cyber Monday brings big iPad Pro savings: 32GB $679 (Reg. $799), 128GB $807 (Reg. $949), more
Target offers a 15% sitewide discount for Cyber Monday: Nest Thermostat w/ $50 Gift Card $212, more!
Apple Watch Deals: Up to $100 off + $50 gift card – Sport from $299, Stainless from $449, more
B&H Photo’s Black Friday Mac Deals live! 5K iMac: $1579, Mac Pro: $500 off, Retina MacBook: $170 off (Tax in NY only)
MORE NEW GEAR FROM TODAY:
HDTVs: Samsung 48-inch 4K HDTV home theater bundle $600 ($755 value), Seiki 43-inch 1080p $260 (Orig. $400), more
- Cyber Monday magazines from $3/yr ea: Wired, GQ, ESPN, Rolling Stone, more
- Amazon is discounting everything a book lover could ever want
- Polaroid Cube HD 1080p Action Camera: $75 shipped (Reg. $100)
- Games/Apps: MGS V $30, 15% off amiibo, Nathan Drake PS4 + $50 credit $300, more
- Cyber Monday Fashion: Tommy Hilfiger 50% off, up to 60% off at Timbuk2, Amazon
- Media Stocking Stuffers: $4 Blu-rays, Harry Potter Complete Collection from $25, more
- Seagate Backup Plus Desktop 8TB External Hard Drive $180 shipped (Orig. $300)
- Cyber Monday deals: 50% off The New York Times, 40% off GNC supplements, more
- Daily Deals: Epson PowerLite Wireless 2600 Lumens 3LCD Projector $499, more
- CyberPower 1500VA/900W Mini-Tower UPS: $140 shipped (Reg. $215)
- Blue Condenser Mics: Spark Digital Lightning from $128 (Reg. $200)
- OtterBox Commuter Series iPhone 6/6s Case for $19 shipped (Reg. $28+)
- These men’s luxury watches are on sale for Black Friday & Cyber Monday
- O’Reilly eBook and Video 50% off Cyber Monday: El Capitan Missing Manual $15
MORE DEALS STILL ALIVE:
Nomad Black Friday Sale: Apple Watch Stand $40 (Reg. $60), more
- Anker iPad Accessories: Bluetooth Folio Keyboards for iPad Air 2, mini 4, more from $20
- eBay Gift Card Roundup: Toys R Us $100 for $85, Lowe’s $200 for $175, much more
- Black Friday Tablets – Amazon 7-inch Kindle Fire $35 (Reg. $50), more
- Grab extra MFi Apple-Certified Lightning Cables from Anker, Spigen & Mpow from $4
- Pencil by FiftyThree smart iPad stylus from $30 Prime shipped (Orig. $50), more
- GoPro HERO4 Cameras: Session $229 (Reg. $300), Black 4K $349 (Reg. $500)
- Yamaha 7.2-channel 4K Wi-Fi Network AV Receiver: $300 shipped (Reg. $400)
- Crucial & Lexar Storage up to 75% off: 256GB Flash Drive $55, 500GB SSD $120
- Two Chromecast Streaming Media Players (newest version): $50 shipped (Reg. $70)
- Take 50% off any album purchase from Google Play
- ecobee3 HomeKit Thermostat w/ 3 Remote Sensors: $249 shipped ($328 value)
- Nest Thermostat (3rd Gen) w/ free $50 Amazon Gift Card: $249 ($299 value), more
- Pixelmator for Mac gets a 50% discount today: $15 (Reg. $30)
- Apple AirPort Extreme 802.11ac Wireless Router (refurbished): $100 shipped (Orig. $199)
- iTunes HD Movies: Godfather Trilogy $10, Rocky Collection $30, more
- Panasonic Sound Rush Plus On-Ear Headphones $15 shipped (Reg. $60)
- Save on the 3rd Gen 1080p Apple TV with this refurb deal: $40 shipped (Orig. $69)
- Herman Miller takes rare 15% off world’s best office chairs + desks
- Car Tech: iOttie Easy One Touch iPhone 6s/Plus Car Mount $10 (Reg. $17+), more
- Implosion – Never Lose Hope for iOS goes free for the first time ($10 value)
NEW PRODUCTS & MORE:
Unboxing and Review: Star Wars Battlefront limited edition PS4 is out of this galaxy [Video]
Mohu launches a “high-end” speaker with built-in Android display, save 10%
- Leica introduces a new low-cost M series camera, but don’t expect bargain pricing
- D-Link takes all the smart things and puts them together in one Komfy light switch
- Curate With Me, Win A Prize: 2015’s Most Coveted Holiday Tech Gifts List!
- The ultimate 4K set-top box battle [Video]
- GENII’s CAST streaming box skirts copyright rules to beam your content to friends
Apple iPhone 6s Leather Case now available in (PRODUCT)RED
Apple has today released a (PRODUCT)RED version of its iPhone 6s Leather Case, available to buy now from Apple.com with Wednesday shipping. The omission of the color was odd back in September, as the Silicone Case was offered in (PRODUCT)Red since the iPhone 6s launch. Apple has just about got stock of the item in time for the holidays, if you still happen to be hunting for an official red iPhone case (there are plenty of third-party red iPhone cases available).
9to5Mac’s iPad Holiday Gift Guide: best picks for every budget
Welcome to our iPad Holiday Gift Guide! There’s currently a lot of excitement around the world of iPad, and rightfully so.
On the software side, Apple injected new life into prior models by adding side-by-side apps and picture-in-picture video with iOS 9. In hardware, the smaller 7.9″ iPad mini family got major speed and notable display quality improvements with the iPad mini 4, while brand new 9.7″ iPad Air 2’s are being sold at prices lower than minis, and a completely new class of iPad debuted in the just-launched 12.9″ iPad Pro.
There are essential accessories in all price ranges for every iPad regardless of which size you’re addressing, and we’ve tested a lot of products over the years. Read on and please share our iPad Holiday Gift Guide so you and your loved ones can buy the best iPad accessories for the holidays.
Opinion: Get ready to wave goodbye to the MacBook Air, and say hello to additional MacBooks
Trying to predict the future of technology is a risky endeavor at best, and never more so when attempting to do it with one of the most secretive companies in the field.
But never let it be said I don’t ‘fess up when my predictions don’t pan out. Two years ago, I reckoned that the MacBook Air and Pro ranges would have merged by now. When the MacBook Air was first launched, it made a lot of compromises to fit into that slim casing. But over the years, the Air got more powerful and the Pro started to make similar compromises in pursuit of a sleeker form-factor. Both went SSD, both went non-upgradable RAM, neither had an optical drive, neither had an Ethernet port.
It seemed to me then that the differences between the two ranges would continue to dwindle until there was really nothing to separate them. But as things turned out, Apple had one surprise in store for me …
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Samsung’s recently unveiled patents show an unhealthy obsession with Apple
A recently unearthed patent published by the USPTO, and discovered by Patently Mobile shows a unique folding mobile device concept by Samsung. Although the idea of bending and folding electronic products is really interesting, perhaps more noteworthy is the Korean company’s choice of onscreen icons. We have WhatsApp, Phone and Messages which are all platform agnostic apps. But they’re followed by iPod. Certainly an unusual choice for a company which claims it doesn’t copy Apple. And one with which Cupertino has long been in legal battle with…
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First look inside the A9X chip that powers the iPad Pro, showing custom GPU
Chipworks has provided our first look inside the A9X chip that powers the iPad Pro, thanks to a die shot obtained by Motley Fool.
One of the fascinating things about the incredibly small processes used for today’s chips is that even a die shot doesn’t provide a definitive answer to what is found inside one. There’s still a certain amount of interpretation involved, though both Chipworks and Motley Fool‘s chip specialist Ashraf Eassa agree on what we are looking at in the full image (below) …
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iPad Target’s best-selling product on Black Friday, and the deals aren’t done yet: 15% off everything
Target said that the iPad was its top-selling item, both in-store and online, on Black Friday – outselling even TVs. The company revealed that it sold one iPad every second, reports Forbes. The company also noted that the Apple Watch “was especially popular in stores.”
The deals aren’t done yet, either: 9to5Toys notes that Target is today offering a 15% discount on almost every product it sells – even the iPad Pro. Just enter coupon code CYBER15 at the checkout.
“One port to do it all” – the new integrated USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 port makes it into the first laptop
Apple’s decision to equip the 12-inch MacBook with just a single port was a controversial one, but the USB-C port Apple chose just got a whole lot more powerful. Intel announced back in June that it was integrating USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 to create “one compact port that does it all” – and that port just hit the market in the form of the revamped Dell XPS range.
That means that a single port combines superspeed USB, Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, PCI Express and power. The DisplayPort channel can simultaneously handle two 4K monitors.
Dell has opted to include two of the new ports, and this is an approach I think we can expect Apple to take with the new MacBook Air models (whatever they are actually called) and, in time, the MacBook Pro …
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New redesigned thinner MacBook Air rumored for mid-2016, perhaps including a 15 inch model
2015 isn’t over yet but the rumor mill is now churning for Apple’s 2016 product pipeline. According to a somewhat-sketchy report from Economic Daily News, the MacBook Air will be getting a major upgrade in mid 2016. The new design will be thinner and lighter with substantial internet component changes, as per the report. In terms of rough timeframe, the product could be announced at WWDC 2016, around June. The MacBook Air has not seen a significant hardware change since 2010, so a major update is certainly due.
The fate of the MacBook Air has been in question for some time, with the early 2015 Retina MacBook seemingly taking center stage in Apple’s thin and light laptop range, albeit priced slightly higher than the respective Air. Perhaps most interestingly in the Economic Daily News story is that Apple is considering a ’13 inch and 15 inch MacBook Air’ bringing the Air into the 15 inch screen size form factor for the first time.
The Logic Pros: Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals – MIDI keyboards, Lightning/USB mics, iOS synths, plug-ins, more
In this week’s episode of The Logic Pros, we will be taking a short break from the usual routine to stock up on discounted iPad synth apps, plug-ins for Logic, keyboard controllers and more as we transition from Black Friday to Cyber Monday. We have been tracking all the deals to be had over the holiday weekend on 9to5Toys, so we thought a roundup of the best music production and home recording gear/software was in order for this week’s episode:
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Amazon Instant Video app to launch on tvOS ‘within a few weeks’
Since the new Apple TV launched last month, one notably missing app has been Amazon Video. There’s been a lot of speculation as to what the reasoning for the unexplained absence, with some accusing Apple of blocking Amazon from launching the app on tvOS and others accusing Amazon of not developing for the platform as to encourage users to use its own Fire TV products. Now, however, it looks like Amazon is planning to release a tvOS app after all…
The Best Black Friday Games/Apps Deals: 2Do, MacID, Pixelmator, Infinity Blade, Kingdom Rush, Parallels, many more
This year’s Black Friday games and apps deals are now in full swing. We have rounded up all the best console bundles, games/amiibo and packed our daily roundups full of some of the best deals of the year. Along with the new Free App of the Week, Apple has now launched a 50% off holiday apps sale and we have been seeing very notable price drops on popular titles all week long. So we thought we would bring all the best deals into one helpful roundup.
Below you’ll find all the best freebies/discounts that we have seen on the App Stores thus far, plus a few more notable sales on Mac games and productivity apps:
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Report: Apple plans to nix 3.5mm port on iPhone 7, require Lightning for wired headphones
Citing a reliable source, a report from Japanese blog Macotakara claims that Apple plans to remove the 3.5mm headphone port from the upcoming iPhone 7, helping to achieve a “more than 1mm” reduction in thickness compared to the iPhone 6s. While the screen shape and radius will remain similar, the device will once again become Apple’s thinnest iPhone ever, albeit with a new restriction: headphones will only be able to connect over Lightning or Bluetooth…
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Review: Apple’s iPad Pro is a giant expensive tablet w/ a couple of pricey accessories [Video]
Meet Apple’s largest Netflix display ever: iPad Pro. I’ve been using it for a little while now and have gathered some thoughts regarding its functionality, uses, and even the accessories like Apple Pencil and the new Smart Keyboard. Is it all worth the hype? Let’s go ahead and find out…