Benjamin Mayo

The Nielsen TV ratings hold a prestigious place in at least measuring the popularity of traditional television watching. Whilst Nielsen is slightly less relevant when it comes to streaming, it does have widely-regarded streaming charts featuring Netflix, Disney+, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video titles.

For the first time, Apple TV+ is now also being tracked by Nielsen and Ted Lasso made its debut as the fifth-most watched original series for the week of September 20-26, in the United States.

Following the impressive debuts of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro, we are now waiting for Apple to finish the transition from Intel -> ARM CPUs. Remaining Intel Macs include the 27-inch iMac, the higher-end Mac mini and the Mac Pro.

As we’ve seen with the new laptops, switching to Apple Silicon is also an opportunity for the company to give the products other upgrades. This morning, display analyst Ross Young tweeted that he expects Apple to launch a 27-inch iMac in the first quarter of 2022, featuring a mini-LED 120Hz display, just like the displays seen in the MacBook Pros unveiled this week.

The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro were announced to much fanfare yesterday, with one of the hero features being the new Liquid Retina XDR display. In addition to larger physical size and smaller bezels, mini-LED high contrast ratio and 120Hz ProMotion refresh rates, the screens also feature increased native resolutions with higher pixel density.

This brings with it a new selection of scaled screen resolution options in System Preferences. Most notably, the high-end MacBook Pro once again features a native 2x resolution as standard…

As part of its October Unleashed event, Apple today unveiled the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro. The new MacBook Pro features the ‘M1 Pro’ chip, with 8 high-performance cores and 2 high-efficiency cores, a 16-core GPU and 32 GB RAM. There’s also an ‘M1 Max’ chip, which doubles RAM and GPU again. The 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1999 and the 16-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2499.

The design of the MacBook Pro has also been completely redesigned, now featuring thinner bezels albeit with a notch housing the webcam. The mini-LED display has more pixels, supports high contrast and 1600 nits of peak brightness, and also runs at 120Hz with ProMotion technology. The MacBook Pro now also features a HDMI port, SD card reader, and MagSafe for magnetic charging.

The Apple Store is down ahead of Apple’s October ‘Unleashed’ media event, which starts at 10 AM PT today.

We are expecting to see a major update to the MacBook Pro line, with redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch models incoming featuring next-generation ‘M1X’ Apple Silicon. AirPods 3 and an M1X Mac mini update are also rumored.

On Monday, Apple will unveil the highly-anticipated redesign of the MacBook Pro line as part of its ‘Unleashed’ October media event. It is expected to feature a whole new chassis design, industry-leading Apple Silicon, the return of MagSafe power connector and HDMI/SD Card slot, and a mini-LED display. This laptop has been in development for several years, and rumored for almost as long.

In the last few days, another idea has arisen. Some alleged leaks indicate that the new 16-inch and 14-inch MacBook Pro will also feature a notch in the top middle of the display, like an iPhone. This cutout would house the FaceTime camera and ambient light sensors, but Face ID biometrics is not expected.

Update: This issue is now resolved. If you have missing app icons on your watch screen, you can wait for the App Store to update the app or manually remove and re-add it. The redownloaded version will have the correct app icon and complication assets available.

Today, the first Apple Watch Series 7 units are being delivered to customers. Launch day bugs are to be expected and it seems the Series 7 is no exception.

Customers are noticing that the icons for some third-party apps are missing, leaving blank holes on the honeycomb grid home screen. PCalc developer James Thomson has noticed that his app is one of those affected, perhaps linked to the fact that he issued an app update embedding Apple Watch Series 7 specific assets.

Apple TV+ has teed up its third partnership with Bill Lawrence. Following the worldwide success of Ted Lasso, last month Apple announced that Lawrence would produce an adaptation of Bad Monkey starring Vince Vaughn.

This time, fellow Ted Lasso writer Brett Goldstein (who you may recognize as Roy Kent) is also in the mix for a new 10-episode comedy series called ‘Shrinking’, set to star Jason Segel.

Bloomberg is reporting that Apple has significantly cut its production schedule for the iPhone 13 series. Due to ongoing chip shortages, the supply chain is supposedly unable to deliver its original targets for iPhone 13 shipments.

The report says Apple is now expecting to make as much as 10 million fewer phones in 2021, than originally planned. Apple shares dropped 1% in aftermarket trading on the news.

Now that the October Apple event is official, we are seeing a flurry of last minute rumors about the 2021 MacBook Pro, which are widely believed to represent the first major redesign for Apple’s pro notebooks since the disastrous 2016 butterfly-keyboard generation.

Various sources indicate that these new machines will feature a boxier chassis design, a HDMI port and SD card slot, and a ‘M1X’ Apple-designed SoC, aimed at replacing the current 16-inch Intel configs with superior performance and power efficiency. On top of this, according to the (so far) reliable leaker @dylandkt, these laptops will also feature a higher-quality 1080p webcam.

Japanese Apple blog Macotakara today reported that the iPhone SE 3rd-generation will not feature a design change and instead will look like the current iPhone SE. This means it will keep the same 4.7-inch LCD display and Touch ID Home Button. Some earlier rumors had suggested a more significant design overhaul was on the way.

However, the new iPhone SE will pack in Apple’s latest A15 chip with support for 5G cellular networking. Macotakara expects production of the new iPhone SE to begin in December and start shipping to customers in spring 2022.

The Apple Store is down ritual continues, this time in preparation for preorders of the Apple Watch Series 7. The store will be back up at 5 AM PT.

The new Apple Watch line-up features a larger screen that wraps around the curve of the watch’s body, faster charging speeds, and a higher peak brightness when using the always-on mode indoors. The Series 7 models are expected to be priced the same as the equivalent Apple Watch Series 6 configurations.

While the long-term Apple-building-a-vehicle rumors continue unabated, Apple’s current presence in the car comes via CarPlay, which allows a connected iPhone to show maps, communication apps and more on the in-car infotainment system.

Bloomberg today reports that Apple wants to extend CarPlay to be able to interact more closely with the host vehicle. This could include controlling air conditioning, adjusting seats and other settings.

Via Reuters, the Dutch antitrust authority has reportedly ruled that Apple’s App Store policies around the mandatory use of Apple’s In-App Purchase are anticompetitive.

Apparently, the investigation ruled that the requirement to use Apple’s in-app purchase system exclusively is unfairly monopolistic. The ruling has not yet been made public apparently at Apple’s request, and is undergoing legal review.

Apple has been rolling out the Apple TV app to many different platforms, including smart TVs, games consoles, and third-party streaming devices like the Amazon Fire Stick or Roku streaming sticks.

In a slight twist, the company is also launching a ‘Apple TV+’ app for older LG webOS TVs. Update: The TV+ app is also now available on older Samsung smart TV models.

Earlier today, we reported that new firmware versions are gradually rolling out for Apple’s wireless headphone products. This new software enables Find My support for AirPods Pro and AirPods Max, which Apple first teased back in June at WWDC.

This means that the compatible AirPods models gain new functionality inside of the Find My app, including precise location, a new Nearby Finding UI, Lost Mode, and the ability to get notifications when your earbuds are left behind.

Apple is today commemorating the tenth anniversary of Steve Jobs’ passing with a special homepage takeover on Apple.com. Full bleed imagery of Jobs fills the page and there is a special film that relives some of Jobs’ most memorable quotes.

The website also features a special statement from the Jobs family, which reads “for all of Steve’s gifts, it was his power as a teacher that has endured, he taught us to be open to the beauty of the world, to be curious around new ideas, to see around the next corner, and most of all to stay humble in our own beginner’s mind'”.