Benjamin Mayo

Apple Music officially announced that it is bringing lossless music quality options to its entire catalog at no extra cost, starting in June. Apple says lossless quality will be available for more than 75 million tracks in the Apple Music library.

It is also launching support for Spatial Audio music with songs authored in Dolby Atmos. Users will be able to listen to select albums with an immersive 3D sound-space on AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods Max and Beats headphones with a H1 or W1 chip. Apple says thousands of Dolby Atmos songs will go live in June.

Update: Designer Stijn de Vries has found an apparent logo for the Apple Music Lossless feature.

Apple Music is currently promoting a teaser for a special announcement later this week. Several different signs point to it being the addition of a lossless audio streaming option for Apple Music subscribers.

9to5Mac has now found more code references to back up the hype. In the source code of the Apple Music web app, we have found new references to ‘Lossless’ and ‘Hi Res Lossless’ music …

Apple Music has started teasing a special announcement coming soon, on the main Browse tab in the Music application.

The teaser comes as Apple is rumored to announce a new lossless audio tier for its music subscription service, perhaps with Spatial Audio enhanced 3D music.

In April, Apple participated in a judiciary competition subcommittee hearing on App Store policy and monopoly power. Representatives from Spotify, Match (parent company of Tinder), and Tile made their case as to Apple’s anticompetitive actions.

In a formal letter today, Apple’s Chief Compliance Officer Kyle Andeer has directly responded to their complaints. Apple characterized the companies’ testimony as “focused more on grievances related to business disputes with Apple than on competition concerns with the App Store”. Apple then goes into detail with the issues raised by each company …

The Find My network is used by Apple to report locations of items and devices via the data connection of any nearby iPhone, Mac, or other Apple device. Security researcher Fabian Bräunlein has today released a blog post demonstrating how the Find My network can be exploited as a generic data transfer mechanism.

By faking the way that an AirTag broadcasts its location as an encrypted message, the hack allows packets of arbitrary data to be transmitted over the Find My network, and therefore arbitrarily using the data connection of any nearby Apple device with Find My enabled.

Tech industry heavyweights including Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and more are forming a coalition to lobby the US government to fund additional production capacity for chip fabrication. The “Semiconductors in America Coalition” is backing the CHIPS for America Act, in which President Biden is requesting Congress fund for $50 billion.

The money will be used to build out additional chip manufacturing capacity in the United States. The main casualty of the global chip shortage is carmakers like Ford, but Apple admitted on its last earnings call that supply of some MacBook and iPad models will be affected too.

The legal battles surrounding Apple’s App Store continue to mount up. A class action lawsuit was filed this week at London’s Competition Appeal Tribunal, alleging that UK Apple users have been overcharged for apps for years.

The suit argues that Apple’s dominance in the app market enabled it to charge ‘excessive’ fees, citing Apple’s typical 30% commission of paid apps and in-app purchases. If upheld, possible compensation for UK consumers could top £1.5 billion (or about $2 billion).

After first being teased during the original Apple TV+ announcement back in March 2019, Apple TV+ today officially unveiled ‘The Me You Can’t See’. It will premiere on May 21st.

The docuseries will feature stars and athletes discussing their battles with mental health, as well as personal stories from people across the world, and interviews with psychological experts.

Apple has already awarded $450 million from Apple’s Advanced Manufacturing Fund, and today it announced an additional $45 million investment. Apple says that its prior funding helped Corning to develop the resilient and durable Ceramic Shield glass, which debuted as the cover glass in the iPhone 12.

It remains unclear whether Corning’s supply of Ceramic Shield glass is an exclusive deal, or if its research will be extended to other phone manufacturers in the future. The press release says the strengthened glass-ceramic was a result of collaborative research by Apple and Corning experts.

Apple has seen strong sales of its first 5G iPhone lineup, the iPhone 12 series. All iPhones today use custom Apple silicon for their CPU/GPU and such, but the cellular modem is external and manufactured by Qualcomm.

For a while, it has been reported that Apple is developing its own in-house 5G modem. The rumored timelines on when this work will be complete have varied. Today, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that he expects Apple to include its 5G modem with the 2023 iPhone ‘at the earliest’.

Deezer is the latest music streaming service to announce native HomePod integration. When the HomePod first launched, it required an Apple Music subscription to play music, without using AirPlay. But last year, Apple opened up the APIs to support third-party services …

A user on Reddit has found a secret debug mode for the AirTags Precision Finding interface, seemingly out of frustration.

Alex Magri-Olson discovered that tapping on the name of the accessory four times makes a secret debug menu appear, which was clearly used internally by Apple employees whilst the feature was in development.

Following years of rumors and leaks, the Apple AirTag is finally available to buy. I received mine on launch day last week, along with a Belkin Secure Holder to attach it to my keys.

The real test of any Bluetooth tracker is when you actually lose the item they are attached to, and so far I haven’t lost my aforementioned keys. After a few days of artificial testing, though, I am generally very happy with the AirTag and would easily recommend them. The breadth of the Find My network is going to be hard for any other company to beat …

As part of the documents turning up in the ongoing Epic vs. Apple trial that commenced today, various details have leaked out about Epic’s planned road map for the game.

Seemingly, when Apple and Epic were on better terms, the companies plotted a services bundle that would offer a bundle subscription of Fortnite Club (a Fortnite subscription tier, which was later released in the US named “Fortnite Crew”), Apple Music, and Apple TV+.

It is an open secret that the App Store is a huge revenue and profit driver for Apple but to date Apple has not disclosed figures that break out exactly how profitable the App Store is. Apple has previously told senators that its business does not calculate profit and loss for individual products and services.

However, new court testimony in the Apple-vs-Epic trial (which commences next week) seemingly reveals a number that Apple has tried to keep quiet. Via Bloomberg, the App Store ran at a 78% profit margin in 2019.