Benjamin Mayo

The modern Apple TV features a very controversial remote. The Apple TV and Apple TV 4K use a trackpad-centric input method that inspires joy and causes frustration alike.

Whether you like it or hate it, what you might not know is there are actually many different ways to control the Apple TV. So if you don’t like the Siri Remote, one of these options might make you happy.

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Joining a wider industry shift, Apple announced that it is working to replace exclusionary language in its developer documentation and APIs with alternative terminology.

Renaming things takes time and effort as large parts of infrastructure have to migrate in response. For third-party developers in the App Store, Apple will be changing the names of APIs used in their code where appropriate, which will also necessitate engineering work to migrate.

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In 2016, Apple was ordered to pay 13 billion euros to Ireland as repayment for back taxes at a rate that the EU deemed was illegal. Both Apple and Ireland appealed the judgment.

Four years on, the first round of legal battles have come to a conclusion today: the EU court rejected the ruling which essentially means Ireland and Apple won. However, the EU commission will almost certainly appeal. A final decision on a corporate judgment of this scale will take many, many, years to resolve.

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The streaming wars adds a new contender today as NBCUniversal enters the ring with Peacock, a video streaming service that wants to take on the likes of Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, and Apple TV+.

Peacock is available today in the iOS and tvOS App Store. Peacock includes titles like Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Parks and Recreation, Downton Abbey, and will be the home of The Office when it leaves Netflix at the end of 2020. Peacock is offered in three tiers, including a free ad-supported plan.

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The move of Tom Hanks’ summer blockbuster Greyhound from box office to streaming stirred a lot of buzz, with Apple acquiring the film for a reported $75m. Based on a report from Deadline, It seems the investment paid off.

Whilst Apple doesn’t officially report viewing numbers, Deadline’s sources say that Greyhound’s opening weekend resulted in viewership ‘commensurate with a summer theatrical box office big hit’. This resulted in Apple TV+ seeing its biggest ever opening weekend.

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Beginning later this week, Verizon and Apple are partnering on a new promotion for Apple News+. Any iPad activated through Verizon will qualify for a free six-month subscription to Apple News+. The deal arrives as Apple is trying to juice interest in the News+ service, which includes access to a handful of newspapers and ~300 magazines for $9.99 per month.

The six-month free period will be available for any Apple ID that has not used News+ before. If you have already redeemed the free trial month, then buying an iPad through Verizon will still be eligible for five months free.

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Update: The issue now appears to have been resolved and normal app function is being restored.

In almost the exact same circumstances as we saw in May, a bug in the Facebook SDK is once again causing major third-party iOS apps like TikTok and Spotify to crash on launch. Third-party apps integrate with the Facebook SDK to enable things like account login, analytics, and ads platform integration.

Any issue that crops up in the logic of the underlying Facebook SDK will reflect in any apps that use it. Just like the May situation, improper handling of unexpected invalid data on Facebook part is resulting in the crashes.

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Ming-Chi Kuo previously said that the first ARM Mac would be a 13.3-inch MacBook Pro and ship before the end of the year, notably before Apple announced the two year transition timeline on the WWDC stage. Today, he follows up with a deeper outlook for the MacBook line as Apple moves from Intel CPUs to custom chips of its own design.

In today’s report, the reputable analyst still expects the 13.3-inch Pro to start shipping in the fourth quarter, but also expects an Apple Silicon-based MacBook Air to go into production around the same time, for a late winter or early spring launch. In 2021, Apple will launch a redesigned MacBook Pro line with 14-inch and 16-inch screen sizes.

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Apple Music gets a bunch of nice feature enhancements in iOS 14 including autoplay and a whole new iPad-optimized layout. However, it appears the app is adding something that has not been previously announced: animated artwork for Apple Music playlists.

Apple’s poster art for playlists has always looked amazing, and the company has commissioned much of it from artists that work on real album covers. Now, it is going one step further and actually animating that art …

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This morning, Asian technology publication Nikkei posted its latest report on Apple’s upcoming iPhone lineup, corroborating much of what has been known via other sources.

Nikkei says that the iPhone 12 will consist of four new models and each will be equipped with an OLED display. This will be the first time all of Apple’s flagship phones use OLED screen technology which offers true blacks and better contrast; for instance, the cheaper iPhone 11 models use LCD displays. Nikkei also confirms what has been previously reported about the iPhone’s lack of bundled accessories.

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Apple has today launched an online dashboard for Apple Card users to manage their account online. Previously, all interactions for the Apple Card took place through the Wallet app on the iPhone.

This now means you can view your statements and pay your Apple Card bill online, for the first time. Before today, the only way to pay off your balance if you lost your iPhone was to call Goldman Sach’s telephone support.

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Apple developers have started receiving their Developer Transition Kit hardware, which Apple is distributing to developers to help them get their apps ready for the upcoming range of Apple Silicon Macs, which will replace Intel CPUs with Apple-designed ARM CPUs.

Despite the confidentiality clauses in the developer agreement, benchmarks for the Developer Transition Kit have already surfaced on Geekbench. Note that these tests are running under virtualization, using Apple’s Rosetta technology, as the Geekbench testing software has not yet been optimised for Apple Silicon.

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Apple is set to be significantly slimming its packaging for its upcoming iPhone line. The analyst previously said that Apple will no longer include wired earbuds with the iPhone 12, and today reports that he also expects the power adapter to now be sold separately too.

Kuo says that Apple wants to keep selling the iPhone 12 at a similar price to the iPhone 11 and removing in-box accessories will offset the cost of the 5G networking components. This will presumably reduce the size of the iPhone packaging considerably, helping lower Apple’s freight costs and be better for the environment.

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