Apple

6,154 'Apple News' stories November 2008 - August 2014

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 files for HealthKit trademarks w/ classifications for watches, fitness sensors, & medical devices

Jordan Kahn Aug 5 2014 - 9:33 am PT

Apple has just filed for HealthKit trademarks in both the US and Europe ahead of iOS 8’s launch this fall and in at least one filing includes watches in a list of goods that could take advantage of the health-tracking software.

While the filing in the US (filed July 31) only includes classifications for computer software and covers the HealthKit text, a filing in Europe (published yesterday) extends classifications to include health, fitness, and exercise sensors, medical devices, and watches:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple Store iPhone 5s screen replacements coming to Europe next week

Mark Gurman Aug 5 2014 - 9:00 am PT

Earlier this week, Apple started replacing iPhone 5s glass screens in Apple Stores for the first time. But the catch is that the service is only available in the United States and Canada. That will change, though, next week. Sources say that the program will expand across Apple’s official retail locations in Europe as soon as Monday, August 11th. The pricing for the screen replacements will likely come in around the equivalent of $150. iPhone 5c screen replacements started across Apple’s locations earlier this year.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple’s recent buybacks brought highest 4-month returns of any company since 1998

Jordan Kahn Aug 5 2014 - 8:44 am PT

Data from Bloomberg today shows just how profitable Apple’s recent buybacks have been with the company experiencing the highest returns of any company in over a decade. The buybacks, which were also the biggest ever since Bloomberg and S&P started tracking these numbers, came as Apple stock increased 77 percent over the last 15 months and 25 percent since its $18 billion buyback last year:

Those are the highest four-month returns among the 20 biggest quarterly repurchases by any company since 1998, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Standard & Poor’s. S&P 500 constituents have spent $211 billion on their own stock this year amid concern the five-year bull market is prone to selloffs such as last week’s 2.7 percent retreat.

The report notes that other companies have been less successful with Microsoft experiencing a 16 percent increase in 2014 following its $3 billion buyback, while others including EBay and Boeing experienced shares falling. The average for the 100 largest buybacks being tracked by Bloomberg is a 5.5 percent increase this year.

Bloomberg adds that “the ratio of Apple’s per-share profit growth to its overall earnings has increased due to buybacks.” That includes an increase of 19.6 percent year-over-year as of last quarter compared to an increase in net income of 12.3 percent.

Samsung’s SoC profits down as Apple chooses TSMC for A8, although rumor says it will produce processors for iPhone 7

Benjamin Mayo Aug 5 2014 - 5:01 am PT

Samsung has been having some issues lately, reporting falling profits in the most recent quarter. Although most of this is due to shrinking growth in phone sales, where Apple continues to dominate in terms of profit share, Apple has also affected Samsung’s income from its microprocessor production business. With TSMC having exclusivity over Apple’s A8 production, to be used in the upcoming iPhone 6, Samsung’s outlook for ‘logic chips’ is also gloomy, as The Wall Street Journal highlights in a new report.

Samsung executives admitted on a recent conference call that the outlook isn’t so bright for this business.

“Sales and profitability from System LSI (logic chip business) worsened as demand from main customers continued to decline,” Robert Yi, Samsung’s head of investor relations said last week. His comments confirmed, albeit indirectly, how Apple’s gradual shift away from Samsung as a customer of microprocessors was eating into its profits.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Architects hate Apple’s spaceship design, but Pixar president says they don’t understand

Ben Lovejoy Aug 5 2014 - 4:58 am PT

Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt says that even at an international conference of 6,000 architects, he couldn’t find a single one who liked the spaceship design of Apple’s new campus building. Though if the single quote given is representative of the quality of the critiques, this may not be saying much.

“Does it have to be a spaceship?” asked an official at the American Institute of Architects.

Pixar president Ed Catmull wrote in his book Creativity Inc that they are failing to understand a key feature of the building, derived from a lesson Steve Jobs learned when leading the design of Pixar’s headquarters …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple’s third Dutch store opening in The Hague on Saturday

Ben Lovejoy Aug 5 2014 - 4:03 am PT

IfoAppleStore drew our attention to the fact that Apple is opening its third Dutch retail store on Saturday, in Den Haag (The Hague). Apple’s existing stores in the Netherlands are in Amsterdam and Haarlem.

While Amsterdam is the official capital of the Netherlands, Den Haag is where the country’s government is based, being home to its parliament and Supreme Court. The Hague is best known for the International Criminal Court, where war crimes and crimes against humanity are heard …
Expand
Expanding
Close

Adobe developing Aperture to Lightroom migration tool, releases step-by-step transition guide

Mark Gurman Aug 4 2014 - 11:38 am PT

Approximately a month after Apple announced it is discontinuing Aperture and iPhoto in favor of the new Photos app on OS X Yosemite and iOS 8, Adobe is today taking advantage of the Apple shift with a couple of key announcements. First, Adobe has published a new website detailing the advantages of Lightroom over Aperture. More importantly, Adobe has released a comprehensive, step-by-step transition guide for moving from Aperture to Lightroom. The guide also includes some answers to frequently asked questions.

It can be accessed here. Adobe has also announced that it working on software to bring a more automated transition experience:

At Adobe, we’re working on a migration tool to help you bring your photos into Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® from Aperture, but if you’re eager to switch before the tool is ready, this guide can help ease your transition. We recognize that this migration may be a challenging process and offer the following resources and methodology to help get you up to speed with Lightroom and provide a road map for successfully migrating your photos.

The first challenge is that the terminology, layout, and controls of the two applications are different. It’s a good idea to start processing photos in Lightroom and become familiar with it before you migrate your photos from Aperture. You can do so by taking some new photos, importing them into Lightroom, and then using Lightroom.

The new Photos app for OS X launches in early 2015, but despite Apple’s claims of significant functionality, a look at what Apple has shown about the app reveals that the functionality mostly mirrors what iOS 8 will gain in September. Adobe has also previously detailed some future Lightroom plans in order to appease professional photo editors.

Expand
Expanding
Close

New Apple TV beta brings refreshed look with iOS-like icons and thinner text (Gallery)

Mark Gurman Aug 4 2014 - 11:13 am PT

In addition to issuing updates to the iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite betas, Apple has released a new beta version of the Apple TV software. While earlier Apple TV betas did not bring more than new Family Sharing and iCloud Photos support, today’s update brings a refined look to the Apple TV Home screen. Taking cues from iOS and OS X, the new update brings completely redesigned icons to the Apple set-top-box and a new thinner font first introduced last year with iOS 7. A couple more images of the new interface are below:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple releases OS X Yosemite Developer Preview 5 with Safari improvements, UI changes

Mark Gurman Aug 4 2014 - 10:05 am PT

Apple this morning has released OS X 10.10 Yosemite Developer Preview 5. The new update brings various performance improvements and bug fixes. The previous Developer Preview brought some minor user-interface enhancements and significant speed improvements. Apple also released iOS 8 beta 5. We’ll be updating this post live with new discoveries as they are made. You can send us what you find to tips@9to5mac.com. You can find what’s new in this developer preview, below:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple releases iOS 8 beta 5 to developers with Health enhancements, UI tweaks

Mark Gurman Aug 4 2014 - 9:58 am PT

As expected, Apple has released iOS 8 beta 5 for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch to developers this morning. This update, like the past betas, includes various performance and bug fixes. The previous beta brought various minor user-interface touch-ups and a new Tips app to iOS 8. We’ll be updating this post as new discoveries are made in iOS 8 beta, and you can send us what you find to tips@9to5mac.com. You can find what’s new in beta 5, below:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple hires Angela Ahrendts’ confidant & former Nike exec to lead social media efforts

Mark Gurman Aug 4 2014 - 9:49 am PT

Apple is giving its social media department a significant shot in the arm this week. The Cupertino-based company has hired Musa Tariq, the former social media chief for both Nike and Burberry. At Nike, Tariq ran general social media marketing as well as social media partnerships with athletes across all Nike product platforms, and at Burberry he led “strategy and innovation” for social media…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Make OS X Yosemite’s dark mode turn on automatically with this neat utility

Benjamin Mayo Aug 4 2014 - 4:39 am PT

Although OS X Yosemite is still a few months out from public release, the public beta and developer seeds means the OS is already seeing wide adoption — hence, apps for Yosemite are already starting to surface. In fact, the unreleased OS already makes up 18% of Mac users on 9to5Mac, already the second most popular version of OS X.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Claimed next-gen iPad Air rear shell photos show redesigned speaker, recessed volume controls

Mark Gurman Aug 3 2014 - 5:35 pm PT

In June, photos of purported physical mockups for the next-generation iPad Air (the next full-sized iPad) appeared on the web showing a similar design to the current model, but with some tweaks. Closely mimicking the improved design, images posted to Weibo this weekend purport to show a next-generation iPad Air frame with a redesigned speaker, recessed volume controls, and a new microphone next to the camera lens (like on the latests iPhones and iPods).

The photos do not show us much else, but they do provide some additional confirmation that a new iPad Air is on its way, and that the new tablet will not look much different externally from the current generation. While the exterior will be mostly the same, customers can count on the next full-sized Apple tablet to rock the iPhone’s Touch ID fingerprint scanner and a faster A8 processor. The same Weibo poster of the above photos also recently shared an engineering diagram for the next iPhone:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple & Beats use Siri and Pills to promote Dr. Dre’s celebratory party in new video ad

Mark Gurman Aug 1 2014 - 6:28 pm PT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK4MYERlCS0&feature=youtu.be

Continuing today’s celebration of Beats officially becoming an Apple subsidiary, Beats’ official Twitter account has posted a fun video advertisement that uses Siri and the Beats Pill to promote the deal. The video pokes fun at a private Dr. Dre party, and perhaps this is some joke tied to Dre spilling the beans about the Apple deal in the weeks before the official announcement in May. The end of the video also appears to poke fun at Siri not always working properly.

https://twitter.com/beatsbydre/status/495363203740618752

Expand
Expanding
Close

Angela Ahrendts continues debut tour with employee Q&A, New York City Apple Store visits

Mark Gurman Aug 1 2014 - 5:01 pm PT

New Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores Angela Ahrendts is continuing her Apple debut tour this week. The former Burberry Chief Executive Officer today toured through Apple’s many stores in the New York City area and she also held a question-and-answer session with select Apple Retail Store managers earlier this week week. Ahrendts today sent a memo with a transcript of some of the Q&A points to all retail employees, and a full copy of that transcript, sent in by a source, is below:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Beats Music CEO Ian Rogers to also lead iTunes Radio at Apple, according to report

Benjamin Mayo Aug 1 2014 - 12:20 pm PT

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Ian Rogers, the head of Beats Music, will now also lead iTunes Radio following the Apple acquisition. Apple wants to increase collaboration between both Beats Music and iTunes Radio by having both streaming services led by Rogers. Up to now, iTunes Radio has been headed by Jeff Robin’s team, best known for creating the software that became iTunes.

The Journal says that Rogers’ leadership will increase ‘cohesion’ between the services, which currently offer a lot of app in their end-user experiences. It is still unclear whether Apple has plans to consolidate the brands.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple formally takes ownership of 13 percent of Beats from Vivendi/Universal Music Group

Ben Lovejoy Aug 1 2014 - 6:29 am PT

Apple’s $3B acquisition of Beats was never going to be completed overnight, and it’s only today that Apple actually completed its purchase of the 13 percent of the company that was owned by Vivendi/Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record label.

In a one-sentence press release, Vivendi announced that the sale of its shares had been completed for a total of $404M. It was expected that Apple would have acquired all of the Beats shares by the end of September, but based on the formal welcome message, it appears this may complete the sale.

While Wall Street may have been unimpressed by the acquisition, Tim Cook described it as an exciting new chapter in Apple’s history, and Eddy Cue said that the deal would help music grow again.

Apple is in the process of determining which Beats staff will join Apple, and which positions will be eliminated.

The 12 reasons Apple employees love working for the company

Ben Lovejoy Aug 1 2014 - 5:31 am PT

Business Insider did some trawling through the employee reviews site Glassdoor to find out what Apple employees love about working for the company.

Perhaps unsurprisingly in a company co-founded by a man who saw his mission as changing the world, the feeling that you have a chance to do just that topped the list. It’s the philosophy reflected in the memo Apple gave to new employees on their first day, saying that people who join the company want their work “to add up to something … something big … something that couldn’t happen anywhere else.”
Expand
Expanding
Close

The Typo iPhone keyboard is back again after lawsuit, but maybe not for long

Ben Lovejoy Aug 1 2014 - 4:32 am PT

Seacrest’s Typo, the BlackBerry-like physical keyboard for the iPhone, didn’t last long the first time around. BlackBerry sued, describing it as “a blatant infringement against BlackBerry’s iconic keyboard,” and succeeded in getting an injunction against the $99 accessory.

Seacrest – the company co-founded by American Idol host Ryan Seacrest – responded by redesigning the keyboard and is now taking pre-orders for the Typo 2. The new model features a backlight, battery indicator and lock key, but otherwise looks strikingly similar to the original.

Shipping is scheduled for mid-September – assuming BlackBerry doesn’t have another injunction in place by then …

Wikipedia app re-launches on App Store ahead of iOS 8 integration

Mark Gurman Jul 31 2014 - 12:44 pm PT

The popular online service Wikipedia has re-launched its iOS app with a new native version that features editing and an offline mode. The free app has some unique features other than browsing through Wikipedia entires, as Wikipedia tells us:

Fastest way to get into the content. Other highly-rated unofficial free iOS apps have hurdles to access the content. Either downloading some content, or just simply not being able to dive right in to it. That doesn’t happen with the official app.
You can edit with this app, unlike other unofficial apps. And you can do it logged out, if you choose.
Wikipedia Zero for developing and emerging countries. If you’re on one of the participating operators, you can use Wikipedia free of data charges.

Wikipedia also shared some other important features:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple seeds first beta of OS X Mavericks 10.9.5 & Safari 7.0.6/6.0.6 to developers

Mark Gurman Jul 30 2014 - 1:05 pm PT

Apple today provided a few new seeds to developers. First on the list is the first beta build of the upcoming OS X 10.9.5. The build is labeled as 13F7, and it will likely come as the final update to OS X Mavericks, which will be succeeded by OS X Yosemite in October. The update is available for Mavericks users signed up for pre-release updates in the Software Update section in the Mac App Store.

It also now available on the official Developer Center. Apple asks developers to focus on Safari, USB, USB Smart Cards, and Graphics for this update…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple re-releases MacBook Air EFI 2.9 update after bugs discovered

Mark Gurman Jul 30 2014 - 12:56 pm PT

Earlier this month, Apple released a MacBook Air EFI update (version 2.9) with fixes for issues with the laptop waking from sleep. Approximately a week ago, the firmware update was removed by Apple because of bugs causing MacBook Airs to crash.

Today, Apple has re-released the update with fixes as version 2.9.1:

This update replaces EFI Firmware Update 2.9 and is recommended for MacBook Air (Mid 2011) models.

The update can be found for mid-2011 MacBook Air owners in the Software Update section of the Mac App Store.

Expand
Expanding
Close

1Password debuts extension for third party apps on iOS 8

Zac Hall Jul 30 2014 - 12:27 pm PT

http://vimeo.com/102142106

The popular password and security management app 1Password has already previewed its iOS 8 extension and Touch ID support for unlocking and accessing its content outside of its iOS app, and today AgileBits has announced its 1Password app extension for third party apps as you can see in the video above.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple TV overhaul not expected to debut until 2015

Zac Hall Jul 30 2014 - 11:49 am PT

A new report from The Information published today discussing the next generation of Apple TV says the new set-top box won’t be ready for prime time until at least 2015. This expectancy timeline aligns with previous 9to5Mac reporting on the Apple TV development progress.

According to the report, Apple employees managing the project have informed Apple TV engineers working on the next generation set-top box that it is currently not expected to reach completion in time to debut in 2014.
Expand
Expanding
Close