Apple

The NYT reports that Rite Aid has joined CVS in disabling Apple Pay as a payment method in its stores. Like CVS, Rite Aid is a member of the Merchant Customer eXchange (MCX) consortium promoting a rival mobile payment service, CurrentC.

Consumers are responding by threatening to boycott stores which disable Apple Pay, with more than 2,000 comments across several Reddit threads on the topic. Android users are joining in, as disabling NFC also blocks alternative mobile payment services offered by higher-end Android handsets … 
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The WSJ is reporting that Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus went on preorder in South Korea on Friday, following their official launch this Friday, October 31st, as part of the next wave of iPhone rollouts. Analyst estimates show that presales for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus topped 100,000 units. By comparison, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 recorded a third of that number (around 30,000) in preorders in a similar timeframe when it launched in September.

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[tweet https://twitter.com/JohnLegere/status/526089456898809856]

There’s been some confusion about the new Apple SIM that is included in many of the new iPad Air 2 and Mini 3s. On Friday it was revealed that AT&T would lock the Apple SIM effectively making the Apple SIM an AT&T SIM and rendering the whole excercise pointless.  T-Mobile and Sprint, on the other hand, will let you trade back and forth between their networks at will and we found out this morning that makes buying roaming data less expensive when travelling.

But there is a lot of confusion to the “why’s and how’s” of the Apple that T-Mobile’s CEO breaks down below. Note that Legere just pulled off a coup becoming the only US wireless carrier to allow Apple’s iPhone to use Wifi calling and clearly Apple and T-Mobile like what each other are doing.

The whole “tweetstorm” is below.  
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Apple today emailed out registered authors for iBooks to announce some interesting changes and enhancements to the program. Some notable enhancements, via Apple’s email:

• To help you get your book to readers quickly, we review 95 percent of all book submissions within one business day. Note that you do not need an ISBN to deliver a book to iBooks.
• You can now request up to 250 promo codes per book. Promo codes allow you to provide free copies of your book to reviewers, bloggers, or others to build momentum for your book.
• Screenshots can now be delivered or updated after a book is available for sale on iBooks.

The email to authors also tells developers about recent updates to both the iTunes Connect app on iOS and the iBooks Author application on the Mac. Like it usually does for App Store app developers, Apple tells authors how to prepare for the upcoming break for book reviewers. “To account for an anticipated increase in book deliveries during the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday week, books scheduled to go live between November 24, 2014 and December 1, 2014, should be delivered by Friday, November 14, 2014,” the notice reads.

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Update: A spokesperson for Amazon confirmed Amazon Rewards Visa cards now support Apple Pay: “Amazon Rewards Visa Cardholders can now pay with Apple Pay. The website (https://www.chasedigitalpayments.com/) has been updated and cardholders can now start provisioning their cards.”

Just two days after Amazon said it was working to enable its Rewards Visa card in Apple Pay, the company has made good on its promise. Reddit users are reporting success in adding the card, and TechCrunch posted the above photo of a card loaded into the app … 
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On the final day of Tim Cook’s four-day visit to China, he told state news agency Xinhuanet that Apple Pay was top of the list of things the company wanted to take to China.

“China is a really key market for us,” said the CEO. “Everything we do, we are going to work it here. Apple Pay is on the top of the list.”

Cook said that Apple would be working to understand the steps needed to bring the new service to China before meeting with local carriers, banks and merchants …

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Apple’s developer guidelines on explicit content

An iOS developer said Apple demonstrated that their app could be used to surf for porn by sending them a screenshot containing a pornographic image. Carl Smith shared the story of the rejection of Wave, an app for browsing Instagram and public images, in a blog post.

It turns out Apple thought the best way to tell us our app could be used to surf porn was to surf for porn using our app. Then send us some pictures and say take a look at these! Except they said, “Please see the attached screenshot for more information.” So with no warning […]

They sent us a picture of a guy masturbating.

The explicit image was attached to an email rejecting the app on the basis that the process for flagging inappropriate content was inadequate … 
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Following news this week that Apple had reached at a settlement with bankrupt sapphire manufacturer GT Advanced, today the company has responded to the situation in a comment to Recode. While GT previously said it would wind down sapphire production operations at its Mesa, Arizona plant and sell furnaces to repay the $439M owed to Apple, today Apple hinted it might have its own plans for the facility.
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Along with Apple’s iPad Air 2, the iPad mini 3 also hit store shelves during a silent weekday release. If you don’t currently own an iPad mini, it’s probably a better time than ever to pick one up, but I wouldn’t really recommend getting Apple’s latest and greatest. Let me tell you why…

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iPhone assembler Foxconn is apparently hoping to move beyond its relatively low-margin work into more profitable high-end component manufacturing in order to take a bigger slice of revenue from Apple, reports the WSJ.

Apple Inc.’s major assembler Foxconn is in preliminary discussions with a provincial government in northern China for an investment in a new factory that would make high-end screens for iPhones and other mobile devices, people familiar with the talks say.

Foxconn already manufactures some iPhone components, but currently only low-margin ones like metal casings and cables … 
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Tim Cook noted during Monday’s earnings call that Apple was “investing like crazy” in China, but he took the opportunity of his current visit to the country to put a specific number on the company’s retail expansion plans: it will open 25 new Apple Stores in Greater China within the next two years. Greater China includes both Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Speaking to local media, Cook also said that China would in time become Apple’s biggest market, reports the WSJ … 
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Today we’re taking a look at Apple’s fastest and thinnest tablet to date. The iPad Air 2 is more than just a pretty shell. This tablet packs some decent performance over its predecessor. While we haven’t had enough time with it to put together a full review, there are some main points we wanted to go over.

First up, this thing is crazy thin. Apple wasn’t exaggerating when claiming that it was thinner than a pencil. It’s 18 percent thinner than the iPad Air measuring a mere 6.1mm in thickness. This may not be a good thing for everyone, but for the most part it was comfortable to hold while playing games, watching movies, or any other tablet-based task. I’d hate to sound redundant, but damn this iPad is thin. Anyway, let’s jump in and take a look…

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The early reviews are out for the iMac with Retina 5K display, and the tl;dr version is: if you can afford it, buy it.

Everyone of course agrees that the key market for the machine is video professionals (beating even the base-model Mac Pro in benchmarks), the 5K resolution offering the ability to display full-size 4K video while still leaving enough room for editing tools.

But while the new iMac may be overkill for more mundane tasks, reviewers also agreed that the display is so good that even if you don’t need one, you’ll still want one … 
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Two days after evidence emerged of a phishing attack on iCloud, allegedly due to the Chinese government firewall redirecting traffic to a fake login page, the Chinese state news agency Xinhuanet is reporting a meeting in Beijing between Tim Cook and Chinese vice premier Ma Kai.

Chinese Vice Premier Ma Kai and Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday exchanged views on protection of users’ information during their meeting in Zhongnanhai, the central authority’s seat. They also exchanged views on strengthening cooperation in information and communication fields.

The Chinese government censors access to the Internet by deploying a country-wide firewall which blocks certain sites and which can redirect traffic from sites the government dislikes to officially-sanctioned ones …

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While early Apple Pay experiences appear to have been mostly positive, Eddy Cue’s admission that there is still “a lot of work left to do” has been demonstrated in a number of glitches in the system – some of them resulting in multiple payments being taken for the same transaction … 
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Following the recent attack by Chinese institutions on iCloud.com to attempt to steal account information, Apple has posted a new how-to article about verifying the page you visit when you type iCloud.com into your web browser is the genuine Apple site.

The page doesn’t offer a fix per se, but walks through how to check the certificates of the page in Safari, Chrome and Firefox.

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iFixit and MacminiVault have both completed their teardowns of the new Mac mini, with Macminicolo planning theirs soon.

We already knew the main bad news: soldered RAM means you can’t upgrade the memory later, so you have to decide how much you want and pay Apple’s pricing for it. Both iFixit and MacminiVault described replacing the RAM as “impossible.”

Getting access to the inside of the new Mac mini is more difficult than it used to be … 
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