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Apple has once again updated its App Store data chart with the latest statistics on iOS 9 adoption. iOS 9 came out of the gate with a ridiculously-high >50% adoption rate just a few days after it launched. This pace has definitely slowed following the initial rush of users upgrading, but achieving 61% penetration of iOS devices is still a strong result. This appears to be keeping up with Phil Schiller’s prediction that iOS 9 will be “downloaded by more users than any other software release in Apple’s history.” Remember, iOS 9 can be installed on any iPhone, iPad or iPod touch that runs iOS 8.

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Just a few days after CEO Tim Cook joined the Council for Sustainable Urbanization to fight climate change in China, Apple this evening has revealed a handful of new programs in China that promote the use of clean energy. Apple says that the programs will help avoid 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution in China between now and 2020, which is the equivalent of removing 4 million vehicles from the road for one year.

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Following a slew of updates for iOS, OS X, tvOS and watchOS, Apple has also given its web portal iCloud.com some love too. Last week, Apple took iWork for iCloud out of beta. Today, Apple has added the Find My Friends web app to the site.

Mirroring the app for iOS, the web app shows a map of friends who have opted in to sharing your location with them; pins for each person are displayed on an Apple Maps map.

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Writing in his column in The Verge, Walt Mossberg – who says he spent “scores of hours” in conversation with Steve Jobs across 14 years – says that the man depicted in the Sorkin/Boyle movie is not the Steve Jobs he knew.

Steve Jobs wasn’t perfect. He was difficult. He was unnecessarily rude and brusque at times. He lied. But he also mellowed and grew as a person, and that mellowing coincided with the best part of his career. Mr. Sorkin opts to hide all of that from his audience. The best of the real Steve Jobs begins to unfold just as Steve Jobs ends.

A lengthy piece in Hollywood Reporter earlier this month – leaning heavily on emails leaked from the Sony hack – provides a lot of insight into what was going on behind the scenes in the run up to the making of the movie. This included the fact that Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures, knew from the start that the project was going to be challenging … 
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A former Apple Store employee has been charged with grand larceny and other crimes after allegedly using fraudulent credit and debit card details to purchase an incredible $997,000 worth of Apple gift cards in just three months.

24-year-old Ruben Profit is accused of carrying out the fraudulent purchases while working at the Apple Store in the Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst, the company’s first retail store in Queens. All of the purchases were made between August and October, reports NBC New York … 
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With Tim Cook stating that Apple is “not announcing the numbers” for Apple Watch sales, it’s been left to the analysts to estimate – or perhaps, ‘take a wild guess’ would be the better description in this case. While Fortune reports the average estimate of 3.95M sales, the range is so wide as to be meaningless: from a low of 2.5M to a high of 6M.

Cook did, however, give one clue that those analysts coming in on the low side are likely to be wrong … 
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Apple this evening has continued its outspoken attitude when it comes to protection of user rights and privacy. The Washington Post reports that the company has spoken out against a controversial cybersecurity bill that, if passed, would give the government a variety of new powers to access user data. Supporters of the bill say that it would protect users from hackers in the long run, but Apple’s not buying it.

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Reuters today reports that Apple has informed a federal judge that it has no way of accessing data that is stored on an iPhone that is locked with a passcode and running iOS 8 or later. Apple revealed this information in a court filing recently in response to the U.S. Justice Department asking if the company would help authorities access data on a seized iPhone.

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It was revealed last week that Apple would be sponsoring the 2016 Met Gala, with Chief Design Officer Jony Ive serving as a co-chair for the event. Now, Ive, along with Vogue editor Anna Wintour, another Gala co-chair, and Costume Institute Curator Andrew Bolton, has sat down with The Wall Street Journal for an interview on Apple’s foray into the fashion industry.

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The big question mark over Apple Music has been how many customers would choose to try it out, and – crucially – how many of them would be willing to pay for the service once the free trial ended. Tim Cook answered both questions yesterday, revealing that the service currently has 15M subscribers, of whom 6.5M are paying customers.

There are still plenty of unknowns, of course. We don’t know the exact split between individual and family subscriptions (though family subs were around 18% back in August), and we don’t know how subscribers map out across the countries – both of which we’d need to know to accurately calculate how much Apple is earning from the service.

But if we do a back-of-an-envelope guesstimate and say that the split between solo and family accounts is around 80/20 and that the costlier countries like those in Europe cancel out the cheaper ones like India, then an average monthly subscription of $11 times 6.5M customers gives us $72M a month. Multiply that by 12 months, and we can get $858M Apple Music revenue per year. Given that this is all very rough and ready, let’s call it a billion dollars a year in round numbers … 
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As expected, Tim Cook today took the stage at the Wall Street Journal Digital Live conference for an interview. During his time on stage, Cook discussed a variety of topics, ranging from iPhone to Apple Watch and to Apple Music. The main points are below:

1. New Apple TV available next Monday, Oct. 26, shipping later that week
2. 6.5 million paying Apple Music customers, 15 million total subscribers
3. A focus on CarPlay in the short-term, but the car industry is at an “inflection point for massive change”

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The Paulson Institute today announced that Apple CEO Tim Cook is joining its CEO Council for Sustainable Urbanization, run in conjunction with the China Center for International Economic Exchanges. The Council for Sustainable Urbanization was initially formed nearly a year ago and includes 17 CEOs from various companies around the world.

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Korea might be home base for Samsung (and LG), Apple’s biggest competitor in the smartphone world, but the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have been well received in the country as local reports indicate all major carriers have sold out of both models after officially launching in the country earlier today..
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I’ve been waiting for Apple to update the 2007-vintage Apple Wireless Keyboard and 2010 Magic Trackpad since the first time OS X displayed a “low battery” notification — since then, I’ve had years of near-daily pop-up reminders that either my keyboard or my trackpad (both fueled by Apple’s official Battery Charger, no less) were supposedly running low on power. Although I preferred the minimalism of a wire-free desk, I reluctantly switched back to Apple’s old but still excellent Wired Keyboard to cut “low battery” notices in half, hoping that Apple would leverage 5+ years of Bluetooth and battery improvements to produce better wireless input accessories.

Last week, Apple finally released sequels to its three major input devices: the new Magic Keyboard ($99) replaces the $69 Wireless Keyboard, the Magic Mouse 2 ($79) updates the $59 Magic Mouse, and the Magic Trackpad 2 ($129) vaults over the $69 Magic Trackpad. The signature improvement to each is the replacement of AA batteries with integrated Lithium-Ion rechargeable cells, refueled once per month with an included Lightning cable — previously only used for iPad, iPhone, and iPod accessories. Apple also tweaked each of the accessory designs, one more significantly than the others.

Having given up mice five years ago (and radically improved a carpal tunnel-damaged wrist in the process), I opted not to test the Magic Mouse 2, but my colleague Dom Esposito discusses it and the other Magic accessories in the video below. My review is focused on the Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad 2, neither of which I’d call “must-have” accessories, though each has a couple of worthwhile assets, and at least one surprising Apple device compatibility limitation. Should you buy Apple’s latest accessories, or go with excellent third-party alternatives such as Logitech’s K811 Keyboard and Rechargeable Trackpad for Mac instead?… (Updated November 2015 and December 2015 with new battery testing results.)

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In 1995, two years before his return to the company, Steve Jobs gave a characteristically blunt answer when asked why Apple found itself struggling in the early to mid 1990s. The issue, he said, was that Apple had gotten greedy.

What ruined Apple wasn’t growth … They got very greedy. Instead of following the original trajectory of the original vision, which was to make the thing an appliance and get this out there to as many people as possible, they went for profits. They made outlandish profits for about four years… What that cost them was their future. What they should have been doing is making rational profits and going for market share.

Much has changed since then, of course. Apple has a substantial market share in both the personal computer and mobile markets, demonstrating that the two goals – growth and profitability – are not mutually exclusive. This is not an ‘Apple is doomed’ piece, nor anything like it. But I do wonder whether the company is once more putting short-term profits ahead of long-term brand loyalty … ? 
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Code analytics platform SourceDNA has found hundreds of apps on the App Store that used private APIs to collect private user data, like email addresses and device identifiers, slipping under Apple’s radar in the approval process. The code got into these apps through the inclusion of a mischievous third-party advertising SDK, which secretly stored this data and sent it off to its own servers.

Apple has now verified the SourceDNA report and is removing all of the apps that included the advertising SDK from the store, as using private API calls is a breach of App Review Guidelines. Apple has also patched its approval processes to prevent any more apps that use this technique to make it onto the App Store.

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Apple has announced the grand opening of its latest retail store in China, this one in the city of Dalian, a major port and financial center. The store opens at 9.30am on Saturday 24th October.

The store, located in the six-storey Parkland Mall shown above and below, has been a long time coming. It was first announced way back in 2012, when the mall boasted that it would be “Apple’s World’s Biggest Flagship Store.” That claim is almost certainly out of date now, with the Dubai store set to open later this month rumored to be taking that title, but it is still likely to be one of the largest stores in the world … 
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The Sorkin/Boyle Steve Jobs movie has grossed $2.26M to date, reports Deadline, as it rolled out to a further 56 theaters over the weekend. The movie had earlier achieved the highest average earnings per theater of any movie this year on its opening weekend.

The limited rollout to a total of just 60 theaters meant it didn’t earn enough to make the top 10, headed by Goosebumps – which was on show at 3,500 locations.

While the movie has been criticized by some for the artistic liberties taken with the truth, with even Steve Wozniak and key system software designer Andy Hertzfeld saying that almost nothing shown really happened like that, scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin defended the movie at a London press conference … 
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Earlier in the year, a small-but-not-insignificant number of Apple customers complained about screen issues with their new Retina MacBooks and Retina MacBook Pros, specifically cases where the anti-reflective display coating leaves marks and stains on the screen, ranging from small corner blobs to large patches.

Several months later, Apple seems to have acknowledged the issue and launched a Quality Program to replace affected users’  hardware. The Staingate Facebook page now includes many reports of people successfully sending their MacBooks in for repair at Apple Stores. The existence of the program was first reported by MacRumors.

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