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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After a long wait, Channel 4’s on demand service is finally available for Apple TV. This means the last major UK TV channel is now officially onboard with Apple’s set-top box.
Apple Books has published six exclusive audiobooks this week, showcasing six great first listen titles read by celebrity narrators. The books themselves are all public domain works from Pride and Prejudice to Winnie the Pooh, recorded by Apple and released in the Book Store for free.
The modern world of life is simple. People that use technology spend a lot of time at their desks. As both a developer and writer, I am in front of my MacBook Pro for tens of hours a week.
Here’s some tech picks that can complement your own desk life, and they make great gifts for others too.
Read on for a breakdown of my picks: HomePod, the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock, LIFX Z Light Strip, Fermata headphone stand and the JOBY iPhone Tripod Mount. Treat yourself (or a friend) …
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has significantly reduced his forecast for iPhone unit shipments in the upcoming quarters. In a new report today, Kuo says that lower demand for iPhone XR means he sees iPhone sales falling year-over-year significantly.
For calendar Q1 2019, Kuo predicts sales in the 38-42 million range (down from 50 million in the year-ago quarter for 2018). Kuo also sees significantly lower iPhone sales for 2019 compared to current consensus estimates …
Apple may shift a larger portion of iPhone production to Pegatron, in order to comply with the iPhone sales ban injunction announced by a Chinese court on Monday. According to a report from Nikkei, iPhones assembled by Foxconn and Wistron are in infringement of Qualcomm patents … but Pegatron-produced iPhones are not (Qualcomm confirmed Pegatron is exempt).
Pegatron has a patent licensing agreement in place with Qualcomm that covers the two patents at the center of the ban. Apple believes that if its hand is forced, it can (at least partially) substitute Foxconn and Wistron assembly with Pegatron.
Apple today announced plans to build a new campus in North Austin, representing a $1 billion investment. It will also add thousands of new jobs across the United States by 2023, with new offices set up in Seattle, San Diego, and Culver City.
Apple also announced plans to expand its presence in Pittsburgh, New York, and Colorado.
Apple is currently embroiled in a wide-ranging legal battle with Qualcomm over patents and royalties. Earlier this week, Qualcomm got an injunction on iPhone sales in China but iPhones remain available for sale …
As reported by Bloomberg, Apple is set to relaunch its Texture acquisition as a paid news and magazine subscription service, likely built into the Apple News app, as soon as spring 2019.
Just like Apple Music, subscribers would pay a single monthly fee to Apple to unlock access to the library. However, the report notes that publishers are concerned that revenues from the Apple service may not be able to match what they could get on their own, in addition to ceding customer control to Apple.
Apple is currently sending out emails to Apple Music subscribers with promo codes to buy a brand new HomePod with a significant discount. So far, UK customers are receiving codes worth £50, bringing the price of a HomePod down to £269 direct from Apple.
A £50 discount beats average eBay prices. Some third-party outlets are selling HomePod as low as $250 and we’re seeing it for even less at 9to5Toys, so the deal isn’t unprecedented, but represents a significant discount from Apple itself. It’s not yet clear if Apple will also be sending out these emails to other regions like the US.
iOS 12.1.1 added Haptic Touch support for notification previews on iPhone XR. It also added a new menu in Accessibility settings that lets you change the Haptic Touch settings …
Throughout November, we saw reports of cuts at many iPhone suppliers, supposedly due to order cuts from Apple regarding demand weakness in iPhone XS and iPhone XR.
However, arguably the two most important members of Apple’s supply chain, Foxconn assembly and A12 chipmaker TSMC, just reported good revenues for November (via Bloomberg).
Apple is continuing to increase the prominence of its limited time iPhone sales offer, which enables customers to buy iPhone XS and iPhone XR for cheaper when trading in an existing iPhone model …
Apple is continuing to promote upgrades to the iPhone XR today with an item in the Today view of the App Store. The editorial describes key features of the iPhone XR and then highlights apps that take advantage of the new hardware like the Face ID sensor or the speed of the A12 chip.
Apple Watch Series 4 is getting the hotly anticipated ECG feature today. The ECG app will appear for customers using Apple Watch in the United States, after updating to watchOS 5.1.2 (releasing later today). The 5.1.2 update will also include irregular heart rate notifications for Apple Watch Series 1 through Series 4.
To take an ECG, users simply place their finger on the digital crown and wait for 30 seconds whilst the Watch scans the electrical impulses in your finger.
Pixelmator Pro has already won Apple’s App of the Year award in the Mac App Store but its constant update schedule never ceases. Today, Pixelmator Pro adds a redesigned Color Balance tool to tint shadows, midtones and highlights. The UI exposes three color wheels, with brightness and saturation sliders flanking each side of the orb. Simply slide to adjust the cast and mood of an image.
Pixelmator Pro 1.2.4 also includes some new resizing modes, like the Lanczos algorithm for higher-quality downsampling and Nearest Neighbor for pixel artwork. As always, these new features are offered as a free update available in the Mac App Store.
We have already seen Apple aggressively promote trade in bonuses, moves that the company does not typically make in the wake of the release of new iPhones. However, it seems like Apple is working harder than ever to push unit sales this time around.
Bloomberg reports that Apple told some marketing staff to put their work on hold and switch to focusing on iPhone marketing, another sign that iPhone XS and iPhone XR sales are not as strong.
Apple’s biggest supply chain partner, Foxconn, is looking to start a new facility in Vietnam as a way to hedge against instability and uncertainty in its current production facilities due to the ongoing trade war between China and the US.
As reported by Reuters, Vietnamese state media are reporting Foxconn and the Hanoi People’s Committee are in active discussions to set up an iPhone factory.
Riffing on the tune of ‘Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer’, Microsoft has posted a new ad for the Surface Go which pokes fun at the iPad for not being a real computer …
In the latest post on its machine learning blog, the Apple audio software engineering team explains the challenges of speech detection for smart speakers, and how it uses machine learning models running on the HomePod’s A8 chip to help improve far-field accuracy.
Just as it has done in the past with the 3G and LTE transition, Bloomberg says Apple will bide its time and not jump on the 5G cellular train with the 2019 iPhone. Carriers will rollout 5G coverage in certain areas next year, and manufacturers like Samsung are set to launch 5G-capable phones at the same time.
The report says Apple will wait at least until the 2020 iPhone revision to add 5G radios. Bloomberg’s report, citing sources familiar with the matter, lines up with the supply chain mumblings we’ve been hearing.
The AirPods truly-wireless earbuds are on track to be Apple’s best growth product for the foreseeable future, according to Ming-Chi Kuo. Kuo said that Apple will release an “upgraded model with wireless charging support” in the first quarter of 2019.
Kuo also said an all-new design for AirPods is currently on track to launch in early 2020 …
For the first time ever, Apple partnered with The Ellen Show to give the whole audience an iPhone, the iPhone XR. In a rather cringey skit with Julia Roberts, Ellen DeGeneres announces to the crowd that they are all getting the brand new iPhone.
iOS 12 adoption continues to steadily increase, outpacing iOS 11 by several weeks. Last year, Mixpanel recorded 75% share for iOS 11 on December 17th. iOS 12 reached the same milestone yesterday, or about three weeks faster.
Mixpanel data comes from analytics frameworks inside apps and mobile websites, logging the OS version for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices it sees in the wild …
Apple Pay has today launched in Belgium. Just like everywhere else in the world, Apple Pay enables you to make transactions at retail stores using the contactless NFC chip inside the iPhone and Apple Watch. You can also pay using Apple Pay on the web in Safari for iOS or Safari for Mac.
The Belgium local launch partners include Fortis, Fintro and Hello Bank. Get started with Apple Pay now using the Wallet app on your iPhone.
Update: These three brands are seemingly all part of the same conglomerate, BNP Paribas. The other big banks in Belgium have yet to join the Apple Pay train.