Apple

6,155 'Apple News' stories November 2008 - October 2015

See All Stories

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

Apple says it has no way to access data on devices with a passcode running iOS 8 or later

Chance Miller Oct 20 2015 - 3:41 pm PT

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.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Jony Ive explains motivation behind Apple’s decision to sponsor the 2016 Met Gala

Chance Miller Oct 20 2015 - 2:56 pm PT

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.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Opinion: As a $1B business, Apple Music appears to be off to an impressive start

Ben Lovejoy Oct 20 2015 - 7:24 am PT

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 …
Expand
Expanding
Close

Tim Cook says new Apple TV coming next week, reveals 6.5m paying Apple Music subscribers

Chance Miller Oct 19 2015 - 8:44 pm PT

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:

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

Expand
Expanding
Close

Tim Cook joins Council for Sustainable Urbanization to fight climate change in China

Chance Miller Oct 19 2015 - 3:13 pm PT

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.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Opinion: Is Apple getting too greedy, and could that again backfire on the company?

Ben Lovejoy Oct 19 2015 - 8:25 am PT

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 … ?
Expand
Expanding
Close

What OS X El Capitan’s license really says, according to a programmer/lawyer

Zac Hall Oct 19 2015 - 7:19 am PT

We all know the features of OS X El Capitan pretty well by now: Split View multitasking, new San Francisco system font, overhauled Notes app, and smaller changes throughout. Before anyone upgrades to El Cap, however, we’re all faced with the usual scrolling wall of text that we’re asked to read and agree to before ever using OS X: the licensing agreement.

I’m guessing virtually no one reads beyond the first paragraph if even that, but Robb Schecter, a self-described programmer/lawyer, took for one the team this year and translated El Cap’s license into plain English. These 7 points tell me more than I admittedly knew before:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple removing hundreds of App Store apps as advertising SDK found to collect sensitive user data via private APIs

Benjamin Mayo Oct 19 2015 - 6:40 am PT

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.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Intel reportedly partnering with Apple to provide chips for the next-gen iPhone

Chance Miller Oct 16 2015 - 11:05 pm PT

According to a report out of VentureBeat, Intel has built a team of more than 1,000 people to build chips for the next-generation iPhone. Specifically, Intel hopes to supply its 7360 LTE modem chip to Apple for the device, and if all goes well, even take part in the manufacturing.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple to pay University of Wisconsin $234M for infringing on its chip efficiency patent

Chance Miller Oct 16 2015 - 10:36 pm PT

Earlier this week, Apple was found guilty in an ongoing patent lawsuit initiated by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At the time, Apple was said to potentially owe the university’s patent licensing arm $862 million in damages. Today, however, Reuters reports that the jury in the case, after much deliberation, has ordered Apple to pay $234 million in damages.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple’s web-based iWork for iCloud finally out of beta, adds new features

Cam Bunton Oct 16 2015 - 5:05 am PT

Yesterday, Apple updated its iWork apps for iOS and OS X with added features including Split View for iPad, 3D Touch for iPhone 6s, and bonuses for El Capitan. Missed at the time was the fact that Apple also deemed the web-based version of iWork worthy of full consumption by the public, too. Apple removed the ‘beta’ label from iWork for iCloud, while also adding a number of new features. The browser-dependent iWork suite now supports commenting on documents, and has support for ten new languages.

As well as removing the ‘beta’ labels, Apple has also created new splash pages for each of the new web apps showing off some of the new features. Apple lists the previously mentioned upgrades, as well the following:

Pages

Create custom colors
Word count
Version history
Preview on mobile browsers
Comments
Open Pages ’08 and ’06 documents
View documents with tracked changes
Insert pages and sections

Numbers

Edit pop-up menu cells
Create custom colors
Open Numbers ’08 spreadsheets
Filter tables
Version history
Animate interactive charts
Preview on mobile browsers

Keynote

Show, hide and resize slide navigator
Preview on mobile browsers
Version history
Comments
Create custom colors
Copy and paste slides
Open Keynote ’08 and ’06 files

If you want to check out the new web-based apps for yourself, head on over to iCloud.com.

‘ifo Apple Store’ creator Gary Allen, “Apple’s biggest fan,” dies aged 67

Jeremy Horwitz Oct 15 2015 - 7:50 am PT

Gary Allen, creator of the now-defunct but historic web site ifo Apple Store, died Sunday at age 67, reports The Washington Post. ifo Apple Store tracked Apple Store retail openings and changes from their earliest days, when the Stores were considered by some to be a risky gamble, until well after the Stores had become ubiquitous in higher-end shopping malls and profoundly lucrative for Apple. Allen’s articles discussed opened stores, as well as details about unannounced stores that were expected to open in the future.

Having announced in March that he was shuttering ifo Apple Store based on increasingly widespread reporting on Apple Store openings and changes, Allen was actually suffering from brain cancer, his brother confirmed to the Post. During the years he ran ifo Apple Store, Allen traveled to over 140 new Store openings across the country and internationally, notably including locations in Europe and China. ifo Apple Store’s site currently reads “Please come back later,” without links to its past content.

Apple increases Mac prices in Malaysia, Norway, Brazil and New Zealand

Chance Miller Oct 14 2015 - 8:24 pm PT

Update: Apple has also increased the price of Macs in Australia by AUD $80-$200, depending on the model. Mexico and Thailand have seen similar price increases, as well.

The same week as it increased the price of apps in Australia, Indonesia and Sweden, Apple today has raised the prices of its Mac line in a handful of countries. The company has increased the prices of its MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, and Mac mini in Brazil, Norway, New Zealand, and Malaysia to account for the fluctuation of foreign currency against the United States dollar.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Bell faces $1.25M fine for posting fake reviews of its app in the App Store

Chance Miller Oct 14 2015 - 3:45 pm PT

Canadian telecommunications company Bell has been fined by Canada’s Competition Bureau today for posting deceptive reviews online. Bell has agreed to pay $1.25 million in fines to the organization. The investigation originally began when Bell acknowledged that its employees were “overzealous” in their reviews for the MyBell Mobile app on the App Store.

Expand
Expanding
Close

iPhone 6s Plus vs Galaxy Note 5: Camera Comparison [Video]

Dom Esposito Oct 14 2015 - 1:40 pm PT

Today we’re getting into the ultimate camera battle between Samsung’s Galaxy Note 5 and Apple’s iPhone 6s Plus. These are without a doubt packing the best camera sensors in mobile right now, but which one will take the throne as 2015’s best smartphone camera? We’ll be taking a look at pictures and video from both devices to find out…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Happy Hour Podcast 036 | Thoughts on Apple’s new iMacs and Magic accessories

Dom Esposito Oct 14 2015 - 12:51 pm PT

Apple has recently released a new lineup of Magic accessories for Mac, but are they worth the hype? Along with that, we get into some discussions on the new 21.5-inch 4K Retina iMac and how it compares to the 27-inch model. 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.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/228404312?secret_token=s-Ip08T” params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”150″ iframe=”true” /]

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple delays launch of iPhone 6s in Turkey due to recent terror attack

Jordan Kahn Oct 14 2015 - 9:38 am PT

While the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus was scheduled to arrive in 40+ more countries for Apple’s second wave launch this month, the company is delaying sales of the device in one of those countries, Turkey, due to recent terror attack that killed 97 people in the country’s capital Ankara. Apple confirmed that sales of the device would be delayed in an email to partners in the country that was obtained by appletoolbox.com.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple clarifies how Wi-Fi Assist handles cellular data usage in iOS 9

Zac Hall Oct 14 2015 - 9:24 am PT

Buried deep in the Cellular section of the Settings app in iOS 9 is a new networking feature called Wi-Fi Assist that lets your iPhone use cellular data over Wi-Fi during poor connectivity. Intended to remedy those times when your iPhone gets stuck trying to load data on a weak Wi-Fi connection due to range or other issues, Wi-Fi Assist raised a concern for many iPhone users on tiered data plans after iOS 9 was released.

The feature is turned on by default, so users could mistakenly eat up expensive data on a weak Wi-Fi network without realizing cellular data was being used. Addressing concerns that have been raised over iOS 9’s Wi-Fi Assist feature, Apple issued a new support document this week that details how the feature handles certain situations (via Six Colors):
Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple to sponsor 2016 Met Gala with Jony Ive serving as a co-chair

Chance Miller Oct 13 2015 - 6:00 pm PT

As Apple continues its efforts to break into the fashion scene, it was today announced that the company will sponsor the 2016 Met Gala. For those unfamiliar, the Met Gala is an event held every year in New York to benefit the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute. Each year has a different theme and the 2016 theme will be “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology,” with Apple sponsoring the event and Jony Ive serving a co-chair alongside Taylor Swift.

Expand
Expanding
Close

B&H Photo begins offering 20 Apple Watch models in stores and online (Tax in NY only)

Chance Miller Oct 13 2015 - 4:59 pm PT

Apple today has further expanded the retail availability of Apple Watch, making the device available to purchase online and in stores from B&H Photo. The New York-based retailer currently is stocking 20 variants of the device in both the 38mm and 42mm models and only charges sales tax at time of purchase to customers in New York State.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Samsung rumored to bring ‘3D Touch’ pressure-sensitive features to its next Galaxy phones

Benjamin Mayo Oct 13 2015 - 5:07 am PT

Samsung is already eying the iPhone 6s’s most significant new feature, 3D Touch, for its next-generation Galaxy phones. A report on Weibo suggests that the Korean company will be adding pressure-sensitive screens next year following Apple’s lead.

Samsung will apparently be using screen technology from Synaptic, called ClearForce, which we reported on last week. Although right now pressure-sensitive screens are effectively exclusive to iPhone, the availability of Synaptic hardware to OEMs is seemingly allowing Samsung (as well as other manufacturers, not yet disclosed) to jump on board in the near future.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple expanding retail presence in India next month as significant growth continues

Chance Miller Oct 12 2015 - 4:28 pm PT

Apple looks to further expand its retail presence around the globe with a new partnership according to a report out of the Times of India. The report claims that Apple has inked a deal with the consumer electronics retail chain Croma that will see Croma build new Apple-dedicated retail spaces in six of its retail locations, very similar to how Best Buy does in the United States.

Expand
Expanding
Close

HTC One A9 dummy leak gives our best look yet at the unreleased iPhone copy

Cam Bunton Oct 10 2015 - 9:28 am PT

Yet another leak has shown up of the rumored HTC One ‘Aero’, also known as the One A9. Although it’s shown up a few times in the past, never has it been clearer as to where the design influences have come from. HTC is expected to officially unveil the smartphone during a virtual event on October 20. Today’s leak comes via Steve Hemmerstoffer (aka @OnLeaks) and shows the extent to which HTC has gone to be ‘inspired’ by the iPhone 6/6s..

Expand
Expanding
Close

Google’s app indexing links coming to Safari on iOS by end of month

Jordan Kahn Oct 9 2015 - 12:40 pm PT

Google first introduced app indexing for iOS apps in search back in May, allowing in-app content to appear in search results with links that send users directly to an app. The feature was originally only available in the Google app and Chrome browser, but now Google is launching an updated version of the framework that will make the app links also appear in Google search results in Safari.

Getting your app content found on Google just got easier. App Indexing is now compatible with HTTP deep link standards for iOS 9, as it has been on Android from the beginning. That means that you can start getting your app content into the Search results page on Safari in iOS, simply by adding Universal Links to your iOS app, then integrating with our SDK.

Developers simply need to support the Universal Links standard to get their apps to show up in search results. Users will begin to see the app indexing links showing up in Safari on iOS by the end October.

Devs can read more on how to support the feature here.