Apple

6,155 'Apple News' stories November 2008 - December 2013

Apple News and Brief History

Before you can properly understand Apple News, it’s important to know its history. Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976. In 1977, Apple’s sales were growing with the success of its early computers. Within a few years, Jobs and Wozniak hired designers and a production line crew. Apple went public in 1980 and was an instant success. Over the next few years, Apple shipped new computers featuring new graphical user interfaces, such as the original Macintosh in 1984. As the market for personal computers expanded through the 1990s, Apple lost market share to the cheaper Microsoft Windows on PC clones. Eventually, Wozniak and Jobs both left Apple. Jobs would go on to found NeXT and would return to Apple when NeXT was acquired in the late 90s. Apple then began a journey to the great second act in the history of the business world.

Since the release of the iPod in 2001, Apple has become a major player once again in the technology industry. After releasing the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010, and the Apple Watch in 2015, Apple is now one of the largest companies in the world. Apple’s worldwide annual revenue totaled $274.5 billion for its 2020 fiscal year.

Today, Apple operates retail stores all across the world, has a growing services division, and an ever-expanding hardware lineup. The technology industry follows Apple news to see where the company is headed in the future.

Keep reading for the latest Apple news

iOS 7 jailbreak installs pirate App Store if your device language is Chinese (updates)

Benjamin Mayo Dec 22 2013 - 10:02 am PT

22 Comments

Screenshot by <a href="https://twitter.com/saurik/status/414810297937838080">@saurik</a>.

(Updates below)

This morning, the evad3rs released the first public iOS 7 jailbreak. At the time, it seemed like something was off because other key members of the community had not been informed of the upcoming release. For instance, Jay Freeman (@Saurik on Twitter) had not been notified and as such the version of Cydia bundled was not official or up-to-date.

*sigh*: evasi0n, in China, installs an "app store" for cracked apps.
TaiG/cracked: http://t.co/shsanSqxSG
Apple/real: http://t.co/e5nvc5477F

— Jay Freeman (saurik) (@saurik) December 22, 2013

It turns out, however, that more questionable activity has taken place. The evasion jailbreak includes a Chinese ‘alternative’ app store, which is full of cracked versions of real apps and games found in Apple’s App Store.

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Flexibits discounting Chatology, Fantastical for Mac & iPhone for the holidays

Zac Hall Dec 20 2013 - 8:24 pm PT

3 Comments

Whether you’re in the market for great apps for yourself or gifting someone you know with apps you already love, it’s certainly a terrific time for buying some of the most notable apps on the Mac and iOS platforms. Just this morning we reported on a collection of indie developers who teamed up to create App Santa, a catalog of award-winning iOS apps including Tweetbot and 1Password with substantial discounts for the holiday season.

Joining in on the holiday spirit is Flexibits, the development team behind Chatology for Mac, Fantastical for Mac, and Fantastical for iPhone. All three are apps which reliably solve a specific problem.

Chatology makes searching through iMessage chat logs on OS X less of a nightmare with stable software that even supports link and image parsing. Fantastical for Mac and iPhone (review) both provide a streamlined calendar experience with consistent and impressive natural language input with real time feedback. Direct links, screenshots, and prices below…
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Delayed China Mobile iPhone launch may be due to renegotiations based on 5c vs 5s sales

Ben Lovejoy Dec 20 2013 - 4:30 am PT

0 Comments

Photo: arstechnica.net

KGI’s Mingchi Kuo has suggested in a note to investors that the mystery of the apparent delay in the iPhone launching on the world’s largest carrier, China Mobile, may be due to last-minute renegotiations with Apple on volume discounts across the two new models.

We believe weak sales of iPhone 5C may trigger a re-negotiation of the Apple-China Mobile partnership. While previously we estimated that Apple originally planned the TD-LTE version would account for 30% of total iPhone 5C shipments, our latest survey indicates that demand for the TD-LTE iPhone 5C has declined dramatically due to 5S being far more popular than 5C among China Mobile subscribers […]

We believe this would necessitate a re-negotiation of the Apple-China Mobile deal and therefore defer its finalization …

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Apple starts selling black Thunderbolt Cables alongside new Mac Pro

Mark Gurman Dec 19 2013 - 12:33 pm PT

7 Comments

The new Mac Pro is not Apple’s only new blacked-out product: to go with the new pro machine, Apple has released black versions of its 0.5 meter and 2 meter Thunderbolt cables. These cords have Thunderbolt ports on either side, and they work well for transferring data between Macs, connecting to hard drives, and connecting to various other Thunderbolt 1.0 or 2.0 peripherals. Apple is still selling the white cords, and the longer version is $39 per cable and the shorter is $29 (try Amazon for some less expensive options).

Update: Continuing the black theme, the Apple stickers that come with the Mac Pro are black (see above):

The Mac Pro ships with black Apple logo stickers.

— Mike Beasley is on Mastodon and Bluesky (@MikeBeas) December 20, 2013

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Apple releases software update for new Mac Pro to fix reliability and graphics issues

Mark Gurman Dec 19 2013 - 11:35 am PT

5 Comments

Only hours after the new Mac Pro became available for order (and months before you’ll be able to get your hands on one), Apple has released an EFI software update for the machine. The update is said to resolve multiple hardware-related issues:

This update is recommended for all Mac Pro (Late 2013) models. This update improves system reliability during reboot, resolves an issue with memory self-test, and improves graphics power management when using Boot Camp.

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Trouble in Austin: Apple repeats last year’s iMac holiday shortage with the Mac Pro

Mark Gurman Dec 19 2013 - 11:15 am PT

42 Comments

The December supply of Mac Pros?

The new Mac Pro is an awesome machine for those with several thousand dollars to spend on a computer and a need for all the power that comes with that thermal core, but managing to get one is going to be difficult for the next few months even if you have the credit card ready. Yesterday, Apple announced that the Mac Pro would go on sale today, December 19th. The store went live last night with the Mac Pro shipping the very last non-holi-day of 2013, December 30th.

As we noted earlier today, Apple’s customers in its home state of California awoke to Mac Pros being quoted to ship in February. But it gets worse…

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Hours after release, Mac Pro shipment estimates slip to February 2014

Benjamin Mayo Dec 19 2013 - 7:46 am PT

10 Comments

On Apple’s website, only a few hours since it went on sale, delivery estimates for the Mac Pro have slipped to February next year.

This morning, the store opened with delivery estimates of December 30th with some variants quoting a January timeframe. Now, it appears the initial allocation has sold out as Apple’s website now reports February shipment for all models.

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Apple explores customizable layers for future Apple Maps app – new patent application

Ben Lovejoy Dec 19 2013 - 7:35 am PT

3 Comments

We’re pretty selective in the Apple patent applications we cover here, simply because Apple patents all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons, and for every one of them that makes it into an Apple product, there are hundreds of others that never will. But this is one we think might.

The core concept is nothing new: layered maps. The existing Apple Maps app already allows us to choose between standard mapping, satellite view or both, and Google Maps on the web allows us to switch on or off layers like traffic, weather, public transit lines and so on. But what the Apple patent application describes would, if you’ll excuse the pun, take this idea to a whole new level …
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Mac Pro appears on 3rd-party reseller sites where money can be saved

Ben Lovejoy Dec 19 2013 - 5:47 am PT

0 Comments

Shortly after going live on the Apple Store site, the Mac Pro is starting to appear on third-party reseller sites. While you’re unlikely to get your hands on one any sooner than buying via Apple (which currently lists Dec 30th as shipping dates), it can’t hurt to make a few calls.

You may also be able to save yourself the sales tax. B&H, which has the machines on pre-order, only charges sales tax in NY, and MacMall charges sales tax in just five states (and that’s in addition to the whopping $5 discount off the base price!) …
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Miss Teen USA spied on via MacBook camera while indicator light was off

Ben Lovejoy Dec 19 2013 - 4:44 am PT

4 Comments

The Washington Post reports that when a high school classmate of Cassidy Wolf (aka Miss Teen USA) spied on her via the iSight camera in her MacBook, he did so using software that allowed him to keep the green indicator light off while viewing.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University were able to replicate the exploit, demonstrated in the above video, but only on MacBook and iMac models released before 2008.

Stephen Checkoway, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins and a co-author of the study. “Apple went to some amount of effort to make sure that the LED would turn on whenever the camera was taking images,” Checkoway says. The 2008-era Apple products they studied had a “hardware interlock” between the camera and the light to ensure that the camera couldn’t turn on without alerting its owner […]

In a paper called “iSeeYou: Disabling the MacBook Webcam Indicator LED,” Brocker and Checkoway describe how to reprogram the iSight camera’s micro-controller to allow the camera and light to be activated independently. That allows the camera to be turned on while the light stays off.

While this particular exploit appears limited to older Macbooks, it was recently revealed through court papers that the FBI has the ability to do the same thing with a variety of current laptops including Apple products.

iTunes-exclusive Beyoncé album breaks a million sales in five days

Ben Lovejoy Dec 19 2013 - 4:03 am PT

1 Comment

Beyoncé’s surprise move in releasing a previously-unannounced album exclusively on iTunes seems to have paid off big-time: after setting a new iTunes record as the fastest-selling album ever, the self-titled BEYONCÉ album has now sold more than a million copies in just five days.

It’s quite an achievement, especially at a time when music downloads may have passed their peak, but as music industry analyst Bob Lefsetz observed (via AtD), it doesn’t mean other artists can expect to pull off the same trick.

It’s a stunt. No different from Radiohead’s “In Rainbows.” Unrepeatable by mere mortals, never mind wannabes and also-rans […]

The bottom line is Beyonce is a superstar. And superstars get traction. And everybody else is close to ignored. And you become a superstar by having a bunch of money and power behind you.

Alongside Final Cut, Compressor and Motion get 4K support and other improvements

Benjamin Mayo Dec 19 2013 - 1:00 am PT

1 Comment

Alongside the update to Final Cut, sister apps Compressor and Motion have also been updated with various improvements, such as 4K content sharing and performance optimisations to take advantage of the dual GPU’s in the newly-released Mac Pro.

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Final Cut Pro updated to version 10.1, 4K monitoring, Mac Pro optimisations and more

Benjamin Mayo Dec 19 2013 - 12:29 am PT

4 Comments

Alongside the release of the new Mac Pro, Apple has updated Final Cut Pro in the Mac App Store to take advantage of the machine’s immense raw processing power. Specifically, Apple says that playback and rendering has been optimised for the Mac Pro’s dual GPUs.

Final Cut 10.1 also adds 4K support, including monitoring across Thunderbolt 2 and HDMI displays as well as 4K titles, transition and generators. The update also adds a whole slew of other minor features and changes to the modern (if controversial) video editing suite.

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Jordan’s holiday gift guide – the perfect companions to your Mac & iOS setup

Jordan Kahn Dec 18 2013 - 3:37 pm PT

4 Comments

We’ve already heard from Michael, Zac, and Ben on their last minute gift picks for the holiday season. For my gift guide, I’ve decided to only include products that I’ve personally been using on a daily basis. I review a lot of products in all of these categories, and below you’ll find only the best of the best that have earned a permanent place in my setup for both at home and on the go:
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AAPL stock down as market ponders the mystery of the missing China Mobile deal

Ben Lovejoy Dec 18 2013 - 6:59 am PT

8 Comments

AAPL stock took a 1.8 percent hit in pre-market trading as China Mobile not only failed to announce its iPhone launch today as had been expected, but its chairman Xi Guohua specifically told reporters that the world’s largest carrier had no announcement to make.

While neither Apple nor China Mobile ever officially confirmed today as the launch date, the Chinese government confirmed the date as the one on which 4G service would begin, China Mobile had said it would launch “a new brand” today and the WSJ seemed confident last month that today was the day.

The deal has been a very long time in the coming, but all the pieces of the puzzle looked to have fallen into place …
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Review: Airmail, an exceedingly pretty but Gmail-centric alternative to Apple Mail

Ben Lovejoy Dec 18 2013 - 6:21 am PT

51 Comments

9to5Mac readers know a thing or two. When I reviewed Postbox, after explaining that I had lost patience with the flakiness of late of Apple Mail, several of the commentators recommended Airmail, a lightweight email client based on the popular but discontinued Sparrow app. It’s also the only alternative to Apple Mail and (of course) Outlook for those who need Exchange support.

Since then, Apple released OS X 10.9.1 with Mail fixes. It’s definitely better, but those unread mail counts still don’t update promptly, and my jury is still out (to put it nicely) on Gmail integration and other issues. As I mentioned before, so long as you use IMAP, switching back-and-forth between email apps is trivial, so I decided to give Airmail a try …

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Apple releasing ‘assembled-in-USA’ 2013 Mac Pro tomorrow

Zac Hall Dec 18 2013 - 5:39 am PT

8 Comments

After three years without a substantial update and several months of teasing and promoting, Apple has finally announced that tomorrow it will begin selling the newly designed and more powerful Mac Pro it first showed off at WWDC back in June. (Full press release below.)

We have begun manufacturing the Mac Pro in Austin. It’s the most powerful Mac ever. Orders start tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/Jrd1Gic3Ya

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) December 18, 2013

The road was certainly not rapid between update cycles with two years of nary a word on whether or not the Mac Pro line had any life left in it and a full year of teasing and promoting the 2013 model being released tomorrow. Let’s take a look at the Mac Pro saga that led to today’s debut…
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Tears everywhere: Apple features its new holiday commercial on its homepage

Ben Lovejoy Dec 18 2013 - 5:21 am PT

3 Comments

Apple clearly loves its new holiday ad: it has now featured it on the Apple.com homepage, with links to both the ad and the ‘full home movie.’

The ad has been generally well-received, with most describing it as endearing – replacing Apple’s usual product-focused approach with story-telling based on how the phone might be used. Apple used a similar approach with a recent iPad Air commercial, shown below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8Le9wvoY00]

Two of Apple’s most active Twitter users, CEO Tim Cook and SVP Marketing Phil Schiller have also tweeted out the YouTube link.

Happy Holidays to all of our amazing customers! http://t.co/eonnck8cDF

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) December 18, 2013

https://twitter.com/pschiller/status/412798014835535872

It is clearly something Apple is proud of and maaaybe its ad of the year?

Comparing the newest Apple, Nokia marketing spots makes us weep for humanity

David Beren Dec 18 2013 - 12:01 am PT

14 Comments

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7xVrI-tUIQ]

There’s been no shortage of debate regarding Apple’s latest holiday commercial as some have found it inspiring and emotional as others find it ridiculous and lacking a clear message. There will be debate in the coming weeks over Apple’s intentions with the message and whether or not they succeeded in tugging at our heartstrings. That being said, Apple looks like a gem, an angel, a bright light on a dark road compared to Nokia’s newest ad for the Lumia 2520. It’s true that Apple may have paused its traditional product-first advertising angle and replaced it with an arguably emotional holiday spot for the iPhone 5s, but it works leaps and bounds better than Nokia’s latest embarrassing excuse for advertising.

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Apple adds Sky Sports to Apple TV for UK users

Benjamin Mayo Dec 17 2013 - 6:34 am PT

5 Comments

Apple has added a couple of new channels to the Apple TV for UK users. The addition of Sky Sports (provide through Now TV) makes live sports available to UK owners of Apple TV for the first time without the need for a cable subscription. Users can buy £9.99 day passes and get unlimited access to all six Sky Sports channels encompassing the Barclays Premier League football matches, cricket, F1 racing and more.

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Qualcomm employee said Apple’s 64-bit A7 chip was Spinal Tap moment

Ben Lovejoy Dec 17 2013 - 4:54 am PT

18 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgx4k83zzc]

If Qualcomm seemed rather taken by surprise by Apple’s use of a 64-bit chip in a smartphone, first dismissing it as a gimmick and then hastily backtracking and announcing it would be making 64-bit smartphone chips itself, that’s because it was, says Dan Lyons in a nicely-written piece on HubSpot. The piece includes what has to be a strong contender for tech quote of the year:

The 64-bit Apple chip hit us in the gut,” says the Qualcomm employee. “Not just us, but everyone, really. We were slack-jawed, and stunned, and unprepared. It’s not that big a performance difference right now, since most current software won’t benefit. But in Spinal Tap terms it’s like, 32 more, and now everyone wants it.”

The reference is to a scene in the 1984 mockumentary This is Spinal Tap where the band proudly shows an amp that goes all the way up to 11, explaining that “it’s one louder.” What Qualcomm missed was that while 64-bit smartphone chips may be of limited immediate value, the A7 made for a compelling marketing sell, leaving other companies scrabbling to catch up.

Qualcomm has just created a 64-bit version of its Snapdragon SOC and expects to see it appearing in Android phones sometime in the second half of next year.

iPhones and iPads make up three-quarters of mobile devices used in small & medium businesses

Ben Lovejoy Dec 17 2013 - 4:04 am PT

2 Comments

Apple has a 76 percent share of the mobile device market among small to medium businesses (SMBs), according to SMB cloud services company Intermedia. Samsung took second place with 12 percent.

The company also reported seeing spikes in new device activations when Apple launched the new iPhones and iPads. Unsurprisingly, most businesses opted for the iPhone 5s over the 5c …
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Apple airs touching holiday commercial featuring the iPhone 5s and AirPlay

Michael Steeber Dec 16 2013 - 6:11 pm PT

35 Comments

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImlmVqH_5HM]

As is tradition, Apple is airing a new holiday commercial this evening, this time highlighting the iPhone 5s, its movie making capabilities, and AirPlay with the Apple TV. The ad is set to the tune of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”. As you may recall, last year Apple highlighted the iPad and FaceTime, with an ad set to “I’ll Be Home For Christmas”. In 2011, Apple featured Siri and the then-new iPhone 4S.

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Apple releases Mavericks OS X 10.9.1 with improved Gmail support, Shared Link improvements, more

Zac Hall Dec 16 2013 - 1:11 pm PT

24 Comments

Apple has released OS X 10.9.1 for Mac via the Mac App Store today. The update includes a number of Mail related fixes including improved support for Gmail as well as numerous bug fixes. The update also fixes a VoiceOver issue that prevented sentences with emoji characters from being read…

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