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.
A patent troll is currently suing Apple, Samsung and half the automotive industry – as well as other companies – over the use of a vague, decade old patent that covers operating certain functions of a vehicle, like starting the engine and locking/unlocking doors, through a “watch” – now known as a “smartwatch”.
Intellectual Capital Consulting (LCC), the plaintiff in the lawsuit (which we embed below), claims that the defendants are using patented technology in smartwatch products and software that they are selling or contributing to sell. Expand Expanding Close
The new Apple TV is slated to go on sale in retail stores this coming Friday after going up online earlier this week, and now early reviews of the device have hit the web. The new Apple TV includes a variety of enhancements, feature additions, and more, including a smarter Siri, a new remote, a redesigned interface, and an App Store. But how do all of these new features add to the overall experience of the device?
Yet another developer has tapped into Apple’s new pressure sensitive 3D Touch display technology on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus to create a real digital scale app, but this time Apple has given word that it won’t allow the apps on the App Store. Expand Expanding Close
Apple today has continued its barrage of new advertisements for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. This company this evening shared yet another new video to its YouTube channel promoting the device. This ad, called “Prince Oseph,” features SNL star Bill Hader.
Much like the ads debuted over the weekend, this ad focuses on the ‘Hey Siri’ functionality of the device. Hader can be seen using Siri and asking her to read him his unread emails. Hader then uses Siri to reply to an email that claims it offers a “once in a lifetime opportunity for the making of millions of currency.”
The description for the video reads:
The iPhone 6s is here, and the only thing that’s changed with Siri is everything. Because now you just say “Hey Siri” and Siri’s there, hands-free. Which can come in handy.
Apple has officially posted its Q4 2015 earnings results with $51.5billion in revenue and $11.1 billion in profit from the July to September quarter. While Apple isn’t breaking out Apple Watch sales, Q4 is only the second quarter to include numbers for the product (grouped with iPods, Apple TVs, and more in the Other category) and the first to include any iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus sales. Apple previously announced over 13 million iPhone 6s and 6s Plus launch sales with purchases completed by Saturday, September 26th included in today’s numbers.
Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2015 fourth quarter ended September 26, 2015. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $51.5 billion and quarterly net profit of $11.1 billion, or $1.96 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $42.1 billion and net profit of $8.5 billion, or $1.42 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 39.9 percent compared to 38 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Here’s Apple’s breakdown of iPhone, iPad, and Mac sales from the quarter:
iPhone: 48 million units
iPad: 9.8 million units
Mac: 5.7 million units
Apple’s “Other” category, which holds Apple Watch, Apple TV, Beats hardware, iPods, and accessories, reported $3.04 billion in revenue. That’s update from $2.6 billion in the prior quarter.
Apple CEO Tim Cook had this to say about the quarter:
“Fiscal 2015 was Apple’s most successful year ever, with revenue growing 28% to nearly $234 billion. This continued success is the result of our commitment to making the best, most innovative products on earth, and it’s a testament to the tremendous execution by our teams,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We are heading into the holidays with our strongest product lineup yet, including iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, Apple Watch with an expanded lineup of cases and bands, the new iPad Pro and the all-new Apple TV which begins shipping this week.”
And Luca Maestri, chief financial officer at the company, said this:
“Apple’s record September quarter results drove earnings per share growth of 38% and operating cash flow of $13.5 billion,” said Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO. “We returned $17 billion to our investors during the quarter through share repurchases and dividends, and we have now completed over $143 billion of our $200 billion capital return program.”
How do these numbers relate to past performance? Apple’s Q4 results compare to the prior quarter’s $49 billion in revenue, 47 million iPhone sales, 10.9 million iPad sales, and 4.7 million Mac sales. In the same quarter a year ago, Apple reported $42.1 billion in revenue, 39 million iPhones sold, 12.3 million iPads sold, and 5.5 million Macs sold. Apple reported $10.7 billion in profit in the prior quarter and $8.5 billion in profit in the year ago quarter.
Read on for Apple’s full Q4 earnings report, and stay tuned as we await Apple’s quarterly conference call at 2 p.m. PT/ 5 p.m. ET to discuss these results. Tim Cook and Luca Maestri are expected to deliver prepared commentary on the earnings results then field questions from analysts participating on the call. Expand Expanding Close
While we can’t say for sure that an Apple Car will ever go on sale, it’s a certainty by this point that the company is devoting substantial development resources to the project. Tim Cook said recently that there would be “massive change” in the car industry, and that “autonomous driving becomes much more important.”
But as a recent opinion piece on sister site Electrek argued, and Elon Musk warned, actually manufacturing a car is massively more complex than making consumer electronics devices. Apple will therefore be looking for partners to pull together different elements of the car. Re/code has put together an interesting look at the most likely candidates … Expand Expanding Close
The ad shows Curry shooting a half-court shot while a teammate watches and snaps a photo right after Curry releases the ball. The two then use the Live Photos feature of iPhone 6s to view the image. Live Photos is the iPhone 6s capability that automatically records a short snippet of time before and after taking the actual image. In this case, it allows us to see Curry’s release as well as his reaction when the shot goes in.
Yesterday’s ads showed off the “Hey Siri” and camera features of iPhone 6s. Curry also made an appearance in one of these, using the slo-mo recording capabilities of the device.
You can view today’s new ad entitled “Half court” below:
If you’re a Facebook user, you’re definitely familiar with the Notifications tab in the company’s iOS app. Although it has barely evolved from being a simple stream of your notifications since its introduction many years ago, Facebook has today come out to outline some changes on the way to make it more useful and personalized.
Assumably since most of us rarely use or view notifications that are more than a day old, Facebook has decided to use the space in the Notifications tab in other, more useful, ways. With the new version, you’ll find the 5 or so most recent activity notifications at the top, with handfuls of additional — and hopefully useful — information below.
Among the things that Facebook says it is adding to the Notifications tab are friends and family “milestones” (which include birthdays, major life events, and the like), sports scores and television notifications based on the pages you have already liked, as well as events that are around the corner (but, seemingly, only those that you’ve already joined).
Facebook says that if you head into the app settings and allow it to see your location history (which many users already have), you can see things like local events based on your physical location, as well as weather updates, movies that are playing at nearby theaters, and even places to eat. Unsurprisingly, most of these features will connect you with many locations’ Facebook pages.
Facebook says that the update is rolling out “gradually,” so it should appear on your device sometime in the next few days.
AAPL is down significantly today ahead of Apple’s fiscal Q4 earnings call scheduled to take place tomorrow, despite the usual predictions of growth across the board by the market and the majority of analysts. Expand Expanding Close
Apple TV 4 isn’t the only new hardware coming out of Cupertino today. Announced earlier this month, the new Beats Pill+ is now available to order for $229 in black or white finishes. The new portable Bluetooth speaker is the first new design to come out of Beats since Apple bought the headphones and speaker company last for $3 billion last year in part to use its Beats Music service as the foundation for Apple Music. The rechargeable speaker uses a Lightning port and cable, the same as iPhones, to power up for up to 12 hours of use. Expand Expanding Close
Apple is now faced with yet another class action lawsuit claiming that the company failed to properly educate or warn users over the potential for iOS 9’s Wi-Fi Assist to use substantial amounts of cellular data. The lawsuit arose after users complained that Wi-Fi Assist resulted in significant overages after going over their data allowance…
Earlier this week, Apple stated that it would be nearly impossible for it to access the data on a passcode-locked iOS device running iOS 8 or later. The company also noted, however, that even if it were possible, it would not feel comfortable doing so as to not tarnish the trust it shares with its customers. The Department of Justice has now dismissed that argument, saying that Apple should be required to unlock encrypted data because iOS is “licensed, not sold” to customers (via DailyDot).
Following CEO Tim Cook saying that the car industry is ripe for a major disruption, Re/code reports that Apple has hired Jonathan Cohen, Nvidia’s director of deep learning. While many only associate Nvidia with phone and computer chips, the company has recently been entering the car market, specifically in the form of autonomous vehicles.
“In a way you could say that was the craziest thing we ever did.”
In a Bloomberg interview this morning former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spent some time discussing competition with Amazon for talent in Seattle and then moved on to Apple and Tesla.
With regard to Apple, Ballmer first said that Apple has “done a good job” and took credit for saving Apple with an investment in 1997 when Steve Jobs returned – which was part of a patent lawsuit over Windows 95/stolen Quicktime code. Ballmer went on to describe the investment this way: “In a way you could say that was the craziest thing [Microsoft] ever did.”
Ballmer then moved to the current landscape where he said that Microsoft is the only company (in addition to Samsung) really competing with Apple with its SurfaceBook in a new category.
Ballmer currently is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team and now owns around 4% of Twitter stock. The relevant clip can be found here with Apple conversation starting halfway through.
Apple today, just a short while after updating iMovie, has pushed an update to its iTunes U app on iOS. The update bumps the app to version 3.1 and includes a handful of new features, enhancements, and under-the-hood fixes. Expand Expanding Close
Apple yesterday released iOS 9.1 to the public with a handful of improvements, but the one that the general public was most excited about was new emoji. While most of the emoji additions were self-explantory, one piqued the interest of many users: an eye inside of a speech bubble. Wired and Jeremy Burge both now note, however, that this emoji is Apple’s way to show its support for a new anti-bullying campaign launched today by the Ad Council.
Called the “I Am A Witness” campaign, the movement hopes to give teenagers the courage they need to speak up whenever they see or experience bullying. The Ad Council hopes that Apple adding the emoji to iOS 9.1 will help raise awareness for its campaign and bullying in general.
The design of the emoji is actually the combination of two already existing emojis, the eye emoji and the left speech bubble. By creating the emoji from preexisting images, Apple was able to fast track the emoji’s addition to its keyboard.
“When we first asked about bringing this emoji to the official Apple keyboard, they told us it would take at least a year or two to get it through and approved under Unicode,” says Wittmark. The company found a way to fast-track it, she says, by combining two existing emoji.
In addition to Apple, companies including Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Tumblr, and Google have expressed their support for the I Am A Witness anti-bullying campaign.
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.
Just two weeks after unveiling an initial six new Apple Watch advertisements, Apple this evening has shared seven more, all being part of the same campaign. The ads all highlight certain capabilities of Apple Watch and are short, 15 second TV spots.
Alongside the release of iOS 9.1 today, Sprint announced that the update officially enables access to the iPhone’s Wi-Fi calling feature for all of its users. That means Sprint users will join T-Mobile and AT&T customers in the US in being able to take advantage of the feature that offers Wi-Fi-assisted voice calling for poor coverage areas and the ability to accept calls on other Apple devices including iPods, iPads, Macs, and Apple Watch.
Following today’s release of iOS 9.1, iPhone customers on Sprint will gain access to Apple’s enhanced Wi-Fi calling feature… “Customers already enjoy seamlessly responding to texts and email from a variety of great Apple devices,” said David Owens, senior vice president, Product Development at Sprint. “Now they can bring that flexibility to the primary phone number their friends, family and colleagues know best. This great feature puts the power of device choice in our customers’ hands.”
Sprint customers will have to update their iPhones to iOS 9.1, released earlier today, make sure Wi-Fi Calling is enabled in the iPhone’s Settings, and sign into the same Apple ID and iCloud account across devices.
Apple’s iOS 9.1 release includes enhancements to its Live Photos feature, over 150 new emoji, refreshed wallpapers, and the usual fixes and improvements for a long list of other features and bugs. We have the full rundown here.
Apple’s recent release of the new Magic accessories … left us all a bit disappointed. Is the new Magic Keyboard, Trackpad 2, or Mouse 2 worth buying? Let’s find out. Along with that, we get into some new information regarding an official Apple TV release date and Apple Music by the numbers. Big thanks to 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.
Twitter doesn’t exactly have the best track record in supporting its loyal third-party developers, which is something that could be forgivable if it built half-decent first party applications. The company’s official apps for the iPhone and iPad have dramatically improved as of late, but the official Twitter for Mac client has felt almost abandoned for years.
Today, at the Twitter Flight developer’s conference, the company has confirmed that a much-needed overhaul to the Mac app is on the way… Expand Expanding Close
Not to be left out on ‘Back to the Future Day‘, Apple too is joining in on the Internet’s celebrations for reaching the day, October 21, 2015, in which fictional character Marty McFly time travelled to in 1989’s “Back to the Future Part II”. What better way to officially celebrate being in the future than to have our pocket-sized electronic assistant updated with a few witty remarks related to the occasion.
Here’s a sampling of the Back to the Future related responses from Siri:
While some of the predictions about what the world would look like in 2015 actually came true— video chat, 3D movies, hoverboards, for example— I’m not holding my breath for the Chicago Cubs winning the 2015 World Series as the film depicted, although it’s still a possibility.
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.
