Benjamin Mayo

Via Digitimes, TSMC is set to prioritize chip orders from Apple and car manufacturers in the third quarter, as global shortages of silicon chips continues to plague manufacturing.

As so many products include silicon these day, the semiconductor shortage has impacted production of many industries, although the auto industry has been most prominent.

At the April Apple event, Apple released a teaser for the highly-anticipated second season of Apple TV+ hit comedy Ted Lasso.

Today, the company is releasing the official trailer ahead of season two’s debut on July 23rd. Watch the new trailer after the break …

After a month of having the new Apple TV in our household, I can firmly recommend that all Apple TV owners pick up the new generation of Apple TV Siri Remote.

The differences between the 2017 Apple TV and the new 2021 Apple TV hardware are negligible, but the remote redesign stands on its own as bringing happiness and joy to the living room. Everything about the Apple TV is expensive, but fortunately you can buy the remote separately. It’s compatible with any Apple TV that runs tvOS …

Here’s a funny bug: a security researcher has found that a carefully crafted network name causes a bug in the networking stack of iOS and can completely disable your iPhone’s ability to connect to Wi-Fi.

On Twitter, Carl Schou showed that after joining a Wi-Fi network with a specific name (“%p%s%s%s%s%n”), all Wi-Fi functionality on the iPhone was disabled from that point on.

Apple subsidiary Shazam has crossed the 1 billion Shazams per month milestone, the company announced on Thursday. The song recognition app has also tagged more than 50 billion songs since it first launched in 2002.

Apple acquired the company in 2018 and is slowly building Shazam discovery features deeper into its services and operating system, including a Shazam Control Center panel on iPhone a ShazamKit framework for developers in iOS 15.

Apple has launched its Back to School promotional offer for the 2021 season. Customers can get a free pair of AirPods bundled with the purchase of eligible Mac and iPad purchases.

Free bundled AirPods are available as standard, and customers can pay the extra to get AirPods Pro. Students, parents and school faculty in the United States can take advantage of the offer from now until September 27. Details after the break …

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Apple had considered setting up an in-house medical service that would offer primary care clinics with doctors employed by Apple. The Journal says the company was exploring how the Apple Watch could be used to improve healthcare.

This project was envisioned in 2016 but has seemingly been put on pause, partly because Apple’s dogfooding of a similar project for its own employees saw limited use.

Today, the UK’s competition watchdog (the Competition and Markets Authority) announced an official investigation into the mobile device ecosystem, citing Apple and Google’s effective duopoly.

The group will investigate dominance of iOS and Android and the control they wield over the App Store and Google Play Store, and Safari and Chrome.

After launching the one-year free trial with new Apple device purchases starting back in November 2019, Apple TV+ is reducing that free offer period to 3 months, starting from July.

The new terms are listed in a quiet update to the Apple TV+ marketing website. The ‘free year’ trials have been extended twice for up to an additional 9 months free, but these are now finally set to expire in July as well.

Apple is now rolling out its new podcast subscription and channels initiative. Apple Podcasts Subscriptions allow creators to host bonus content and ad-free versions of their shows, in exchange for a monthly subscription.

You can now listen to 9to5Mac Happy Hour ad–free, for instance. Apple has partnered with large podcasts networks including Wondery and Luminary to get their paywalled shows available inside Apple Podcasts app.

Update: Shortly after publishing, the app has been pulled from the store. Original story below.

A free-to-play app called Zoshy+ has been gradually climbing up the Puzzle game charts on the App Store. Based on its screenshots and app description, the app looks like an innocuous Sudoku client.

However, actually launching the app reveals a very different experience. Users are presented with thousands of movies and TV shows to stream illegally for free, including content from Apple’s own TV+ service. 9to5Mac has confirmed that the videos do indeed play, although users of the app must first endure several rounds of pre-roll ads.

Apple TV+ today announced that the second season of its hero drama ‘The Morning Show’ returns for a second season starting September 17, almost two years after season one aired.

Like many of Apple’s flagship properties, production on the season was delayed due to COVID-19 pandemic. The series stars Jennifer Aniston (Alex Levy) and Reese Witherspoon (Bradley Jackson) in lead roles, as presenters of a national news channel. In season one, the show is rocked by sexual misconduct allegations against Levy’s male TV companion, played by Steve Carell (Mitch Kessler).

Apple is said to be redesigning the Apple Watch this year, according to a report from Bloomberg. The ‘Apple Watch Series 7’ will feature thinner display bezels, a faster processor and include “updated ultra-wideband functionality”. Introduced last fall, the Apple Watch Series 6 was the first model to sport Ultra Wideband radios.

Apple was reportedly aiming to include a body temperature sensor as well, but that feature may have been delayed until the 2022 watch.

Apple announced that it was discontinuing the original HomePod back in March, with Apple focusing its efforts on HomePod mini. The product has been listed as available ‘while supplies last’ since that time.

The space gray model sold out within a couple days of the announcement. The white model remained available to buy (price unchanged) up until today, at least in the United States.

Following a Bloomberg report detailing the upcoming iPad roadmap, Jon Prosser has shared renders based on sources about the design of the upcoming iPad mini.

Prosser says that the sixth-generation iPad mini features almost the same chassis dimensions as the fifth-generation iPad mini. However, the design is radically new with the removal of the home button in favor of a Touch ID power button, larger display and proportionally smaller display bezels, as well as replacing the Lightning port with USB-C.

‘SEE’ debuted at Apple TV+’s launch all the way back in November of 2019 but production on the second season of this post-apocalyptic show was halted because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, Apple is now ready to announce the season two release date: August 27. Sign up to Apple TV+ and rewatch the first season ahead of the second season premiere. This season, Dave Bautista (Edo Voss) accompanies Jason Momoa (Baba Voss) in the lead role.

The Eurasian Economic Commission requires that all hardware using encryption technology is registered in its database. As usual, this year’s iPhone models have been added to the filings a few months ahead of their public announcement.

Consomac spotted the addition of new model identifiers A2628, A2630, A2634, A2635, A2640, A2643, and A2645. The iPhone 13 lineup is expected to launch in the fall, around September.

There were many rumors about a new MacBook Pro coming at WWDC, but it (sadly) didn’t happen. However, metadata attached to the WWDC keynote video indicates that Apple might actually have been planning to launch the new MacBook Pro this week after all.

In the keyword tags for Apple’s official WWDC YouTube video, the terms ‘m1x’ and ‘ M1X MacBook Pro’ can be found. This was first spotted by Max Balzer on Twitter.