Follow Benjamin on Threads to keep up with his latest projects. Benjamin blogs about Apple news and rumors and posts insightful product and app reviews. Read his work on 9to5Mac and his personal blog.
Benjamin Mayo also creates apps for iOS as a professional indie developer and contractor; more details here. Email to discuss making your iOS project.
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Directed by Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert DeNiro and Lily Gladstone. The film hit theaters in October.
The three-and-a-half-hour epic is wrapping up its run across thousands of cinemas worldwide. But when will it be available to stream on Apple TV+?
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With iOS 17.2, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max users are able to record 3D spatial videos, which will be rendered for playback on the soon-to-be-released Apple Vision Pro headset.
However, on the iPhone 15 Pro, spatial video is limited to 1080p resolution at 30 FPS. However, there are already some tech spec upgrades swirling in the rumor mill that suggest Apple may be able to offer 4K spatial video quality with the iPhone 16.
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Although the iPhone 16 is not coming until later this year, the rumor mill doesn’t wait and analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today reports that the front camera specifications are one of the upgrades to expect arriving with the iPhone 17 lineup next year.
In a blog post, Kuo said that manufacturer Genius is the primary lens supplier for the iPhone front camera, and it can expect to see a revenue boost from a higher spec iPhone 17 front camera module. This will reportedly include an upgrade in resolution to 24-megapixels, up from 12-megapixels in the current phone models (and the forthcoming iPhone 16 lineup).
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Update: Here’s Apple’s statement to 9to5Mac on this decision:
At Apple, we work tirelessly to create products and services that meaningfully impact users’ lives. It’s what drives our teams — Clinical, Design and Engineering — to dedicate years to developing scientifically validated health, fitness and wellness features for Apple Watch, and we are inspired that millions of people around the world have benefited greatly from this product. We strongly disagree with the USITC decision and resulting exclusion order, and are taking all measures to return Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 to customers in the U.S. as soon as possible.
The December 25 ban on Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales, due to a patent dispute between Apple and Masimo was first reported by us last week. Apple ended watch sales on the online store a few days ago, and now the Apple Watch is also unavailable at Apple retail stores.
The ITC confirmed this morning that the Biden administration chose not to overturn the ban. “After careful consultations, Ambassador Katherine Tai decided not to reverse the ITC’s determination”, the agency said in a statement.
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Apple’s streaming service, Apple TV+, continues to rack up awards and garner industry prestige. How popular the service is exactly remains unclear, although Apple shows did appear on the Nielsen charts streaming three times this year.
But exactly how much content did Apple release in total this year? By our count, Apple released 50 original TV shows and movies in 2023, overall. A solid figure, however it is actually down 10% compared to 2022. There are some reasons for the year-over-year slowdown and Apple’s overall commitment to producing original content appears strong …
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Apple today announced a new partnership with The Athletic and Wirecutter, which will see their content included in the Apple News app. The Athletic sports coverage is now accessible to News+ subscribers, and Wirecutter product review articles will be coming to the News app for all users early next year.
Notably, these publications are owned by The New York Times, which pulled its content from the News app more than three years ago.
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With the tvOS 17 update, Apple TV now supports native VPN apps. Today, NordVPN launches its VPN app for Apple TV, allowing simple on-device setup to connect to its swarm of fast and secure servers.
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Apple TV+ today debuts a new comedy action adventure film The Family Plan, starring Mark Wahlberg. Wahlberg stars as Dan Morgan, an undercover assassin trying to live a new life as a family man. Here’s how to watch.
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The new Pixelmator Pro update, version 3.5, brings full support for HDR image content. With the new Pixelmator, users can shoot HDR photos on their iPhone, edit with HDR layers inside Pixelmator Pro and then export into a variety of standard HDR image formats.
You can get the new Pixelmator as a free update for existing users, and for new purchases it’s currently on sale at just $25 in the Mac App Store.
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The Taylor Swift Eras Tour is now available to watch on Apple TV. The record-breaking worldwide tour was filmed and shown in theaters since October, and is now available to rent to watch at home on digital.
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Apple has offered to open up the iPhone NFC system that Apple Pay uses, in response to an ongoing EU antitrust investigation, according to a report this morning from Reuters.
In lieu of being served with formal EU antitrust charges, Apple’s offer aims to head off the regulator’s concerns.
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With iOS 17, Apple changed the default iPhone notification sound – and many users didn’t like it. Some said it was too quiet; others simply preferred the old sound. But there wasn’t much you could do about it – until now.
With the release of the iOS 17.2 software update for iPhone, iPhone users can now customize their alert tone and choose their own sound for default notifications. Here’s how.
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After being leaked earlier, it’s now official. The Apple Podcasts app will be available on Tesla’s in-car entertainment system with the holiday update, rolling out next week.
Podcasts app will be available for Model 3, Model Y, Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck owners. The app is free but the Tesla Premium Connectivity subscription is required to stream shows over the car’s cellular connection. Podcasts joins Music as the second Apple app on the Tesla platform. And it looks set to be a pretty full-featured release.
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Siri is rumored to be getting an overhaul next year as part of a wider AI features initiative inside Apple. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today posits that this goal may also be having implications on hardware design, in a post on his Medium blog.
Kuo says that all iPhone 16 models, expected to arrive in fall 2024, will feature significantly upgraded microphone hardware. The new mics will pick up the user’s voice better, helping improve the accuracy of dictation and Siri voice commands.
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As first reported in October, Apple will discontinue the standalone iTunes Movies and iTunes TV Shows apps on the Apple TV box, starting with tvOS 17.2 The warning message seen above has started appearing in the release candidate version of tvOS 17.2 beta, released yesterday.
Apple directs users to the TV app instead to manage their purchases, and buy and rent from the store. At least as far as Apple’s video content is concerned, the iTunes brand is on the way out.
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The Martin Scorsese epic starring Leonardo DiCaprio was financed by Apple, but how can you watch it?
Right now, Killers of the Flower Moon is available to buy or rent on the iTunes Store, Amazon Prime, and other VOD platforms. In the future, it will be streaming for Apple TV+ subscribers.
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The much-hyped Apple original film Killers of the Flower Moon (starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Lily Gladstone) will be available on video-on-demand services to buy or rent from tomorrow, Apple announced today. It will be available at “leading digital retailers” in over 100 countries. For instance, here’s where you could find Killers of the Flower Moon to watch on Amazon Prime.
This means you’ll be able to buy or rent the film, through the Apple TV Store or other VOD services, before it becomes available to stream on Apple TV+. An official streaming date has still not been announced.
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tvOS 17 added support for VPN apps on Apple TV set-top box, allowing simple on-device setup of a VPN provider running natively on the device. The number of compatible tvOS VPN apps has been slowly growing, and today major VPN provider ExpressVPN has debuted their app.
You can get ExpressVPN now in the App Store, with access included as part of your existing ExpressVPN subscription.
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As promised earlier this year, the popular video meetings app Zoom is now available on the Apple TV 4K. Of course, the Apple TV box itself does not have a camera, so the app relies on using your iPhone with a stand like the Belkin MagSafe Mount to take advantage of the Continuity Camera feature.
tvOS 17 brought the FaceTime app to Apple TV in the same manner. Now, Zoom has joined the party. Competitor WebEx previewed its Apple TV app a month ago, but it is not yet publicly available.
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Apple is said to be in early talks with Paramount about a possible streaming bundle deal, that would see Apple TV+ and Paramount+ sold together at a price less than the cost of purchasing both services separately.
The notion of a cross-platform streaming bundle is becoming increasingly common, as streamers experiment with new ways to attract and retain subscribers. Today’s Wall Street Journal report says talks between Apple and Paramount are still in the preliminary stages and it did not detail exactly what the Apple and Paramount bundle would look like, if a deal comes to fruition.
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One of Apple’s most successful British shows, Slow Horses, returns today for season three on Apple TV+ with a two-episode premiere. The remainder of the season rolls out weekly. Based on the books by Mick Herron, Slow Horses follows a department of MI5 reject spies led by Jackson Lamb (played by Gary Oldman).
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The official Apple Black Friday deals are now live on apple.com. As usual, Apple special offer is a free gift card (worth up to $200 in value) with the purchase of an eligible hardware product including iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod and some Beats headphones.
Amazon offers free money $15 Amazon gift card with purchase of a $100 Apple Gift card.
The gift cards are a nice perk if you really want to buy from Apple directly, but you’ll be able to find bigger and better discounts from other retailers, like this $1049 M2 MacBook Air or 22% off the price off a base model iPad on Amazon. Check out 9to5Toys for the latest best value deals.
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Apple TV+ today kicked off its holiday programming lineup with a new musical special ‘Home for Christmas’, in which Hannah Waddingham sings a variety of classic songs with cameos from much of the Ted Lasso cast. The 45-minute show was filmed earlier this year in front of a live audience at the London Coliseum, and includes duets with Leslie Odom Jr., Sam Ryder, Phil Dunster and more.
The service also premiered The Velveteen Rabbit, a loving and tender adaptation of the classic children’s novel. And due to the Thanksgiving holiday in America, all new episodes of TV+ content have been released earlier this week than usual.
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In the latest edition of Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter for Bloomberg, he writes that Apple had at one time planned for the Apple Vision Pro headset to be released in January 2024. However, the company is still preparing distribution plans for the product and doing final device testing.
For its part, Apple has officially said the Vision Pro will go on sale early next year in the United States. Gurman says he now expects that the device will debut “sometime around March”.
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