Apple

Last week on our sister-site Electrek, we reported on Faraday Future (FF), a well-funded California-based startup looking to invest $1 billion to build an electric vehicle factory in the US. Due to the company refusing to disclose its CEO or investors, some media outlets have been reporting that it could be a front for Apple’s Project Titan.

But it isn’t likely for Apple to have any involvement with the company since everything points to it being backed by the Chinese technology company LeTV.
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Nearly a year ago, a federal judge dismissed a class action lawsuit Apple employees filed against the company for wages they lost while standing in bag-check lines for 10 to 15 minutes before and after their shifts. The case, however, lived on in California. Until today, that is. According to a report out of Bloomberg, a San Francisco judge has today sided with Apple in the case, saying employees could have easily avoided the checks.

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The Apple TV has been available for a week now and the tvOS App Store is estimated to include over 1,000 apps, with more coming online every day. There’s a pretty good selection of titles, with a heavy focus on gaming. Developers are still figuring out how to use the touchpad Siri Remote in interesting and new ways but the initial launch is promising for sure. We’ve rounded up our favourite apps and games for the new Apple TV so far …

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Theo Levey’s early iPhone 6 render wasn’t perfect, but it was usefully close

Reporting on future Apple products isn’t easy — it’s actually one of the biggest challenges in the world of technology journalism. Back in April 2011, The Verge’s predecessor (This Is My Next) ran a much-discussed report on the “iPhone 5,” which was claimed to be teardrop-shaped, with an enlarged, gesture-sensitive Home Button, and a bezel-less 3.7″ screen. NFC, inductive charging, and a speaker and sensors hidden behind the screen were also said to be possibilities for the new iPhone. Not surprisingly, the report lit up the Internet, generating a lot of attention (and over 500 comments) for a fledgling web site. Though some people were skeptical, accessory makers actually took the report seriously enough to manufacture cases matching the claims.

As it turned out, the report was wrong — very wrong. Exactly none of those features actually arrived in either the “iPhone 4S” Apple announced in October 2011, or the real “iPhone 5” that debuted in September 2012. The report also didn’t forecast actual iPhone design trends in any useful way. From my standpoint, that’s the critical difference between most Apple rumors and the ones that are actually worth caring about: some early information, even if it’s imprecise, can help you make a better buying decision about an Apple product today or six months down the line.

A small group of nitpickers — notably including people who are fed information directly by Apple, off-the-record — have been taking shots at people who report independently-researched rumors, attempting to undermine the value of big, “not from Apple” scoops versus small, “not (officially) from Apple” tidbits. This may be an inside baseball topic that most people really don’t care about, but it’s worth at least considering for a moment…

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As expected, Apple Watch is now available for purchase in India. The launch of the device comes a month after Apple made its iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus available in the country. In India, Apple Watch is available from Apple’s official retail channels and starts at Rs 30,900.

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Original story from Electrek.

Digital license plates are a relatively new concept that could open up the transport industry to an array of new features. Beyond the Big Brother-like properties the implementation of the technology could enable, like location tracking or alerts for expired registrations, it could also greatly facilitate fleet management and transfer of ownership – things that are crucial for the future of mobility to embrace autonomous driving and ride-sharing.

We learned that among Apple’s hundreds of recent hires with automotive experience, the company hired a veteran software engineer with an expertise in fleet management software and especially digital license plates.
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Apple released the first tvOS 9.1 beta to developers earlier this week, but it lacked the addition of one major feature many have been calling for: folder support on the homepage. Now, well-known developer Steve Troughton-Smith has discovered that out of the box, the tvOS user interface features “pretty complete” folder support…

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This week, we’re talking about the new Apple TV and everything you need to know about it. We’ve been using It for a little while now and have a lot to discuss. Big thanks to Audible and Bushel for sponsoring this week’s episode. The Happy Hour podcast is available for download on iTunes and through our dedicated RSS feed.Thanks to Audible.com, get your free 30 day trial at audible.com/happyhour and Jamf Now (formerly Bushel) for sponsoring this week’s episode. To find out what awesome cloud-based mobile device management can do for you, check out https://www.jamf.com/happyhour.

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Tony Fadell, often called the “father of the iPod” and now CEO of Alphabet’s Nest, is on Bloomberg TV today to discuss his time at Apple, the future of mobility and his current effort in the connected home industry. During the interview, Fadell revealed that back in 2008, he had discussions with then Apple CEO Steve Jobs about what an ‘Apple car’ would look like and how the company could approach such a project…
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While Apple didn’t have an official presence at the New York Times DealBook Conference yesterday (not counting former US Vice President Al Gore who sits on Apple’s board), the Cupertino company still got plenty of airtime on stage. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty explained her company’s relationship with Apple and how their partnership is beneficial for changing how iPhones and iPads are used, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings addressed Amazon’s recent move to block Apple TVs and Google Chromecasts from its store, and activist investor Carl Icahn shares how he discovered Apple, which he calls “the greatest company in the world.” Check out each video appearance below from yesterday’s conference to see what they had to say:
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Generally reliable KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has today shared an investment note in which he breaks down what Apple will do in terms of its smartphones come 2016. In the note, Kuo claims that Apple is still working on a refreshed 4-inch iPhone model…

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More than a year ago, Apple’s sapphire supplier GT Advanced Tech announced that it was filing for bankruptcy under Chapter 11, with the company parting ways with Apple as part of the restructuring. Despite the parting being amicable, GT still was in debt $439 million. Today, however, The Wall Street Journal reports that GT and Apple have come to an agreement on how to pay off that debt.

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While iOS and Android have for the most part caught up to one another from a software feature perspective, lack of a handy back button is still one of the biggest sources of embarrassment for iOS devices. BoxWave’s new glass “ClearTouch SmartButtons” screen protector has built-in buttons that aim to solve some of the back button issue on iPhones, so I took it for a test drive…
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Angela Ahrendts, SVP Retail and Online Stores, is the latest Apple executive to make a public conference appearance this fall. Bloomberg announced today that Ahrendts is set to speak at its third annual ‘The Year Ahead’ business summit happening next week. Michael Bloomberg will open the two-day event on Monday, November 9, in New York City. Angela Ahrendts’s appearance follows the next day at Park Hyatt where Apple’s evolving retail strategy is likely to be a focus of the conversation.
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Continuing its efforts in supporting various equal rights campaigns in recent years,  Apple has voiced its support for a new equal rights bill in Houston through a statement issued by the Human Rights Campaign organization. Business Houston Journal reports that the organization issued the statement below on Apple’s behalf in support of the bill known as Proposition 1, or Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), ahead of voting on the bill ending October 30.

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Following through on a threat made earlier this month, Amazon has pulled all Apple TV hardware from its online stores, regardless of whether it was being sold by Amazon directly or third-party vendors in Amazon’s Marketplace. The removal coincides with today’s official release of the fourth-generation Apple TV, Apple’s first model to launch with an App Store full of third-party apps.

Amazon notified third-party merchants that it planned to remove both Apple TVs and Google’s Chromecasts from its listings, claiming an interest in reducing “consumer confusion” over streaming media players that don’t “interact well with Prime Video,” Amazon’s streaming video service. Apple TV and Chromecast pages currently lead to 404 Document Not Found error pages, while attempts to search for the products now redirect to Amazon’s own Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, PlayStation TV, and a collection of off-brand alternatives. Certain Apple TV accessories remain available for purchase, however…

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Apple can’t catch a break on Android. When Apple released its first app on Google’s platform last month called Move to iOS, Android fans were quick to negatively rate the app that only existed to help people switch from Android to iPhone. To date, Move to iOS has roughly 30,000 1 star reviews to only 10,000 5 star reviews with not much happening in the middle.

Now Apple has its second Android app on the Google Play Store called Beats Pill+. It’s a companion app to Apple’s new portable Bluetooth speaker with the same name, allowing both Android and iPhone users to pair two speakers as stereo or amplified and use a DJ feature for queueing up tracks from multiple phones.

And the reviews? Just as extreme despite Beats speakers working with both iPhone and Android and only recently being bought by Apple…
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Adobe today has rolled out updates to a pair of its iOS apps, adding support for features introduced in the latest version of Apple’s operating system. Adobe Photoshop Fix and Adobe Photoshop Mix have both been updated this evening, the former being bumped to version 1.1 and the latter to version 2.1.

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A little more than a week after it released iOS 9.1 to the public, Apple today has stopped signing iOS 9.0.2. This means that users are no longer able to downgrade from iOS 9.1 to iOS 9.0.2, which was initially released almost exactly a month ago.

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Former OS X chief Bertrand Serlet is finally ready to talk about his cloud startup UpThere after founding the company in 2011. While Sertlet isn’t completely taking the wraps off the company he assembled after leaving Apple four years ago, UpThere is opening a beta for its cloud service today following nearly three years of silence. The service is said to be similar to iCloud, Dropbox, and similar cloud solutions, but UpThere’s strategy is fast access to data stored online and not syncing content across devices. The beta will preview two products coming down from UpThere…
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