Jordan manages the internal Partner Program for sponsorships and partnerships across the 9to5 network’s media brands including 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, Electrek.co, SpaceExplored and DroneDJ.com.
Jordan also writes about all things Apple as a Senior Editor of 9to5Mac. He covers Google for 9to5Google.com, the best gadgets and deals on 9to5Toys.com, and EV and solar news on Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series and makes music sometimes.
Contact Jordan with partnership inquiries and long-winded complaints:
Microsoft’s Cortana for iPhone app gets an update today that introduces a redesigned user interface and a few new features and enhancements that offer an improved experience for the Siri competitor.
Capital One today announced “Eno,” a new text message-based assistant that it says is the first natural language SMS chatbot from a U.S. bank.
Popular PDF Expert app for Mac is getting a notable update today from developer Readdle with version 2.2 bringing a redesigned, new and improved UI alongside better search and more.
Imagination Technologies today unveiled its next-gen PowerVR Furian architecture, its upcoming next-gen GPU design that could give clues to enhancements ready for future iPhones. Most notably, the company says Furian enables enhanced power efficiency for mobile devices that will pave the way for high-resolution, immersive graphics content including AR and VR applications. In other words, the GPU could help upcoming iPhones achieve higher (4K?) resolutions with big computing and gaming performance improvements:
Following announcements from Porsche with the 911 GT3 and Honda with the Civic Type R earlier this week, today Honda announced its two latest vehicles that will get Apple’s CarPlay platform standard with the Clarity Plug-in Hybrid and Honda Clarity Electric debuting next month.
After prepping for and officially launching its Apple Pay service in Ireland today— the 14th country to get access to the payments service— Apple has also added 15+ additional banks and credit unions for two previously supported markets.
The company today added over a dozen additional banks and credit unions for users in the U.S., and in recent days added 8 new institutions & card issuers for users in Japan. A full list of the newly added banks is below.
Apple Music’s Head of Global Marketing Bozoma Saint John has increasingly become a face for the company as the exec has appeared on stage at Apple events to introduce features and milestones for the service. Today she is named one of the ‘Most Powerful Women In Business’ by Black Enterprise magazine, making a final list of other prominent African American women that includes Beyonce, ABC president Channing Dungey, and WNBA President Lisa Borders, among others.
Nest is getting a nice security improvement today with an update that brings two-step authentication for user accounts and all of the company’s products.
Jamf, makers of popular Apple device management software for businesses, today released its Annual Jamf Trends Survey measuring use of Apple products in the enterprise. The key takeaway: both iOS and Mac adoption grew among business users last year.
The report also offers additional insight into growth for Apple among enterprise users in 2016, collecting data from 300 IT professionals, managers and executives from commercial organizations of 50 to 10,000+ employees from around the world.
Some of the data highlights include:
Following earlier reports that Apple was eyeing Taiwan for its next Apple Pay launch, Focus Taiwan published that at least seven banks in the country have gained necessary government authorizations to begin supporting the service.
In the midst of an acquisition by Verizon and news of yet another data breach, Yahoo today introduced a new product called “Captain,” a bot assistant that aims to help you manage to-do lists and reminders with a text messaged-based AI.
In this week’s top stories: What to expect at Apple’s spring event, the latest iPhone 8 reports, USB-C vs Lightning, new apps and much more.
Some Apple Music users report being locked out of the service today from what appears to be a bug affecting those subscribed to a Family Membership.
This week’s 9to5Rewards partner is PhotoFast and its line of MAX flash drives for iOS devices.
As it has done in the past, T-Mobile today kicked off its latest promotion offering switchers a free iPhone 7 (or an iPhone 7 Plus or higher capacity mobile for an extra cost).
In addition, the company announced it will kick off a promotion April 4th that will offer a free season-long MLB.TV Premium subscription and MLB.com At Bat Premium via its T-Mobile Tuesdays app that offers weekly perks for customers.
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Apple’s iOS and macOS platforms both lost share to Chrome OS in the US K-12 education market last year, according to new data from Futuresource Consulting (via The New York Times).
IDC today released its latest numbers on the worldwide wearable market for 2016— including both smartwatches that run apps and more basic fitness and health trackers— highlighting gains during the fourth quarter for Apple, Xiaomi, and others at the expense of market leader Fitbit.
While McDonald’s was an early Apple Pay partner and saw the payments service adopted quickly among its customers, the fast food chain has been late to the game as far as mobile ordering goes. That will soon change as the company today announced plans to not only introduce mobile ordering and payment options through its mobile app, but also plans to introduce delivery (via Fortune).
The new mobile ordering and payment features will be available for all US stores by the end of the year:
Apple’s stock price continues hitting record highs as anticipation builds for the company’s upcoming spring iPad event and next-generation iPhones.
AAPL today closed at a high of 139.79 per share following several record breaking days over the last month. The stock price also hit a high for intraday trading today reaching 140.15 before closing. The record stock prices put Apple’s market cap at 733.74B, not far off from its highest ever $775 billion record achieved back in 2015.
After first introducing its $10/month ‘SoundCloud Go’ subscription service last March, the company is today introducing a mid-tier offering at a cheaper $5-6 price point with a limited catalog.
Mophie has long been considered a leader when it comes to iPhone battery cases, and for good reason. Its products in my experience usually have close enough to an Apple product-like finish to justify similarly high price points compared to the competition. Its new iPhone battery case came a few months after the latest device’s release, and I’ve been testing it in recent weeks to see how it compares to the alternatives and previous versions…
This week’s 9to5Rewards partner is CalDigit and we’re giving away their brand new TS3 Lite Thunderbolt 3 hub.
For last week’s installment of our Logic Pros series, I wrote about the new Touch Bar support in the recently released latest version of Logic Pro X. It turns out Final Cut Pro users have good reason to be jealous; and other apps could benefit a lot from implementing what Logic has done. It’s some of the best support yet, and one feature specifically, fully customizable banks of buttons for keyboard shortcuts, is something I’d love to see other apps adopt.
Final Cut Pro, GarageBand and other Apple apps got Touch Bar support at launch, but what Logic Pro X ended up getting beats them all.
With Logic Pro X 10.3, Apple introduced support for the new MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar, the small touchscreen panel that debuted on the device last fall. Logic users might have had to wait longer than Final Cut Pro or even GarageBand users as one of Apple’s main apps that didn’t get support right at launch, but what it did end up getting is some of the best Touch Bar support yet. Let’s take a look.