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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Apple today said that it will require developers to support the iPhone XS Max and 12.9-inch 3rd-generation iPad Pro (if available on iPad) for all new apps and updates starting March 27.
Apple has just launched the second generation of its Apple AirPods. The new earbuds and come with the long-promised wireless charging case, a new H1 chip, hands-free Hey Siri, longer battery life and faster connections to devices.
The new AirPods are available now for $199 with the wireless charging case, or available with the standard case for $159. Existing AirPods owners can purchase the wireless charging case separately for $79.
Apple has quietly updated the iMac Pro build-to-order options to include new Radeon Pro Vega 64X graphics and a 256 GB RAM option. These upgrades don’t come cheap. The 256 GB RAM memory option will set you back a cool $5200, on top of the cost of the $5000 iMac Pro base model.
Apple has just dropped new iMacs on the Apple Store: the same design with new internals. The 21.5-inch iMac features 8th-generation Intel CPUs in quad-core and six-core SKUs. The 27-inch iMac houses 9th-generation Intel CPUs, with 6-core and 8-core configurations. Apple says these new processors deliver up to 2x the performance of the previous generation iMac.
In terms of GPU, Apple now offers Radeon Pro Vega graphics upgrades on both 21.5-inch and 27-inch form factors. The new iMacs are available today in the Apple Store, starting at $1299 and $1799 for the 21.5- and 27-inch models respectively.
The Apple Events app for Apple TV has now been updated to include the details for Apple’s first event of the year. It’s showtime.
Apple today announced updates to its iPad line. There’s a new iPad mini and a new iPad Air, with a 10.5-inch screen. The iPad Air features a thinner design with a 10.5-inch display and the Apple A12 Bionic chip.
The iPad mini keeps the same 7.9-inch screen, but gets the same A12 spec bump. Both the Air and the Mini are compatible with the first-generation Apple Pencil. The iPad mini starts at $399 for the 64 GB model, and the Air starts at $499. You can order them today from Apple.com.
In a lengthy profile over the weekend, the New York Times sets up its narrative for the upcoming Apple spring event; specifically the state of Apple’s TV service.
Echoing other publications, the NYT believes that Apple’s shows will likely debut in the fall. It says there are five shows that have finished filming and about six more are in the middle of production. In fact, it goes on to name the five projects that are now at the post-production stage.
Update: The store is back up — and there’s two new iPads available now.
The Apple Store has just gone down, a move usually associated with new products. Whilst there is an Apple event next Monday focused on software and services, it is about time for Apple’s spring hardware updates.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman cryptically tweeted over the weekend that Apple was planning updates to the iPad and iMac lines ahead of the ‘It’s showtime’ event.
The idea that the iPhone 11 would feature a triple-camera system in a rectangular formation — three cameras plus the flash — was first raised by Onleaks back in January. Japanese blog Macotakara today corroborates the mockups with sourcing from Chinese suppliers.
The site says the design of the new iPhone camera system is similar to the camera module seen in the Huawei Mate 20 and may be available on both the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max successors, but limited to higher-capacity storage tiers. Macotakara has proven reliable several times in the past.
On Wednesday, Spotify filed a complaint with the European Commission regarding Apple’s App Store policies and started an aggressive PR campaign to back it up. Apple has today published a public statement in response to Spotify’s argument.
Apple says that Spotify is spreading a ‘misleading rhetoric’. They cite how Spotify makes most of its revenue from advertising and mobile carrier partner deals, of which Apple takes no cut at all. The In-App Purchase subscriptions are a small percentage of Spotify’s business — and Spotify wants to pay Apple zero for those subscription sales meaning they are essentially taking the benefits of a free app and Apple receives no compensation at all from Spotify’s operations.
Digitimes today reports that its sources indicate that flexible printed circuit board manufacturers Flexium, Zhen Ding Technology, Compeq and Unitech are ramping up to supply parts in volume for imminent new Apple hardware.
Flexium and Zhen Ding will make PCBs for new iPad models whereas Compeq and Unitech are on tap for AirPods production.
Spotify has filed a complaint with the European Commission regarding Apple’s App Store practices, the company announced in a blog post. Spotify says Apple’s App Store rules limit choice and stifle innovation.
Spotify targets Apple’s 30% cut — it refers to as a ‘tax’ — as a key element of its complaint but also references rules about how Apple restricts third-party app developers from communicating with customers. Ultimately, Spotify wants Apple Music to be forced to abide by the same rules that Apple imposes on third-party apps.
A report from Bloomberg this morning indicates that Apple is planning to launch the TV service with little of its own original content TV shows, which are still in development and targeting a fall launch ‘at the earliest’.
Bloomberg says Apple is rushing to finalize deals with networks like HBO, Showtime and Starz ahead of the March 25 event. There is apparently a Friday deadline, with Apple ‘offering concessions’ to secure deals. The report also implies that Apple will debut its new Apple credit card offering on stage, alongside the TV and magazine/news subscription service.
According to Longbow Research (via Bloomberg), Apple is still facing challenges in the China market as far as iPhone sales are concerned. They track search volumes on the Chinese search engine Baidu and note that iPhone searches are almost half what they were a year ago.
Apple has just announced its March 25 event and — unlike last year’s March education event — this one will be live streamed. You will indeed be able to watch Apple’s TV event on your Apple TV.
US senator Elizabeth Warren announced a radical plan today to ‘break up big tech’. As a candidate for the 2020 presidential race, Warren proposes new restrictions on how much freedom tech firms have to control proprietary platforms.
She wants to stop companies, including Apple, from taking advantage of the monopolistic power granted by app stores to levy fees on other developers whilst promoting their own services above others.
Apple acquired Texture last year but it has not pulled the Texture app from the iOS or Android app stores. In fact, the company released a miscellaneous app update this morning ahead of the expected March 25 event where Apple will announce its Apple News subscription service, essentially incorporating a (rebranded) Texture service into the News app.
As announced last month, the Eve Flare is now available to buy in the US, and I’ve been testing one for the last week or so.
It’s a spherically shaped multicolor mood light that illuminates in either shades of white or most RGB colors. You can control it with Siri through HomeKit, which of course means you get the fun of shouting colors at your HomePod to change the lighting in the room. Read below for my full hands on …
Apple talks about augmented reality at any opportunity it gets, but so far its fierce ambition has only materialized to consumers as ARKit apps on the iPhone and iPad. It has been widely reported that Apple is developing an AR glasses / headset product.
Today, Ming-Chi Kuo reports that Apple’s first augmented reality product will go into mass production as soon as the fourth quarter of this year, but hedges the timeframe slightly and says it will be mass-produced by the second quarter of 2020 at the latest.
The iPhone XS and XS Max will experience slight animation stutters after about ten seconds of inactivity. This is usually most visible when swiping to go home after reading static content in the foreground app for more than ten seconds without touching the screen. We’ve been tracking this issue for a few months now and the problem continues to be present in the iOS 12.2 betas.
As first rumored late last year, Apple’s manufacturing partners are full steam ahead on setting up production facilities in India, to make current generation iPhones. Domestic manufacturing is key to avoiding India’s hefty import taxes on foreign goods, allowing Apple to lower prices in the country.
Today, India’s IT ministry signed off on plans for a new $1m Wistron factory in India. It is expected that the factory will produce iPhone 8 phones whilst an ongoing factory proposal from Foxconn will manufacture ‘Made in India’ iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max models.
Apple plans to add 1200 new jobs in San Diego over the next three years with some posts occupied by the end of 2019. Company representatives and San Diego’s mayor made the announcement this morning at the UTC mall Apple Store.
MacRumors is purporting to have got their hands on video of an upcoming ad campaign for new AirPods 2. The sequence shows a woman taking her AirPods out of ears and ends with a title card that reads ‘AirPods 2’. Update: MacRumors is now saying this is fake and was created as a marketing stunt by a PR company. Show’s over folks.
Weakness in Chinese smartphone sales in the holiday quarter led Apple to report its first guidance miss in 16 years. Both Tim Cook and external analysts have tentatively said that market conditions are slowly improving.
In January, major Apple Chinese resellers cut the price of iPhone XR models. This week, the same resellers are pushing iPhone XS with price promotions, as first reported by the Taipei Central News Agency.