Earlier this year around WWDC, Square announced that it would be selling new hardware that will allow small businesses to easily accept Apple Pay later this year. Now Square is setting up 100 small businesses around the US with their new Apple Pay-ready contactless card reader. These allow customers to pay merchants using Apple’s mobile payment service through iPhones and Apple Watches securely and without sharing credit card information. Expand Expanding Close
The San Francisco-based company Square has always focused on using technology to make commerce tools accessible to businesses of all sizes, and their latest app adds another resource to their growing lineup of mobile payment solutions.
Square Appointments for iOS is an iPhone-only app that lets clients book appointments and businesses manage schedules. Perks include appointment reminders for clients through push notifications and appointment history for businesses. Square highlights these specific features in their new app:
Manage appointments on the go: Set up and edit your appointments anywhere your business takes you.
Carry all your clients with you: Access and edit your client profiles.
Accept appointments instantly: Accept or decline appointments directly through your iPhone notifications screen.
Complete payments anywhere: Check clients out directly on your iPhone seamlessly through the Square app.
Businesses can use the new Appointments app even if they don’t process payments payments with Square.
Square Appointments is available for free on the App Store and joins Square Register, Cash, and Analytics.
In her latest video to retail store employees, Apple Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores Angela Ahrendts discusses upcoming deeper integration of business sales across Apple Retail Stores as well as new back to school sales tactics for the Apple Watch. Currently, sales to small and medium-sized businesses via Apple Stores are mostly handled by a small group of specialized employees. Ahrendts says that she wants all employees to “own” business sales in order to provide a better experience to business customers.
Data from Appsee claims to have identified information regarding the as-yet-unannounced larger iPad Pro, expected to feature a display ranging between 12.3 and 12.9 inches. The app analytics firm says an iPad with identifier ‘iPad6,8’ appeared in its logs with a reported screen resolution of 2732×2048. Internally, the larger iPad models are referred to as J98 and J99. The resolution is especially notable as it was previously spotted within code for iOS 9. For comparison, the current iPad Air 2 has a screen resolution of 2048×1536 with a ‘iPad5,1’ model identifier.
The jump in pixels for both axis is substantial although somewhat expected given the screen will also be increasing in area by about 80%. AppSee says its logs indicate the device has been used to open several apps from the App Store. The company has also identified ‘iPhone 8,1’ and ‘iPhone8,2’ devices corresponding to the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus.
Congratulations to Jaime Marin—the winner of the Bushel Challenge! Jaime manages Apple devices for a mid-sized produce company that specializes in providing quality fruits and vegetables for their customers, 365 days of the year. They’ve been able to utilize features from Bushel such as Wi-Fi configuration, app deployment, password policies, and more to streamline work processes for the team.
Thanks to all who participated in the Bushel Challenge—we hope you had a little fun along the way! While there’s only one lucky winner, everyone who participated can still manage up to three devices for free, for life. If you missed the Challenge, head on over to Bushel to learn more and get started for free today.
If you need to deploy iOS or OS X devices to your employees or organization, having cloud access to setup, deploy, and manage your fleet these days seems like a no-brainer. That’s why our go-to recommendation is Bushel, a super easy-to-use and slick web-based app that offers cloud access to deploying and managing Apple devices. The perfect supplement to Apple in the workspace, Bushel — created by JAMF Software — is a few steps ahead of the game. In this article, we walk you through how to use Bushel (which is free for up to 3 devices) to manage your fleet of Apple devices.
In special collaboration with 9to5Mac, Bushel is also offering a challenge to businesses: Try out Busheland get entered to win free Bushel for life, as well as a free iOS device for your company. Expand Expanding Close
The always-doubted sometimes-accurate Digitimes is reporting that Apple will release the long-rumored iPad Pro in mid November this year. The ‘iPad Pro’ is expected to feature a large 12.9 inch screen with stereo speakers and targeted at business and education uses. Digitimes says that Apple has asked suppliers to ramp up in late September which should mean a November debut, with manufacturing by Foxconn.
Following on from the Apple Watch native apps hack, Steve Troughton Smith has also found that the keyboard view in iOS 9 has much better adaptability support on Apple’s latest operating system. As shown by the screenshots, at larger resolutions, the iPad keyboard rearranges itself to make use of the space. Tab and Caps Lock keys are notably added onto to the left side as well as an entirely new top row of symbols.
This new row reflects the symbols normally found on hardware keyboards above the number keys: @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ +. Next to the ‘p’ on the first row, the keyboard also gains curly braces and a pipe symbol.
During its F8 Developer Conference today, Facebook announced a new Facebook Messenger Platform that will allow third-party apps to integrate with its popular Messenger app. Expand Expanding Close
Google is packing even more useful information into the latest version of its Maps app for iOS. Google Maps 4.3.0 for iPhone and iPad adds several contextual data points to locations like nearby businesses for address searches, quick facts for notable locations, and even event information for select venues. Expand Expanding Close
Users of Intuit’s Mint Personal Finance app for iPhone will be seeing a workflow speed boost with the latest version. Finance data like recent transactions and used accounts, fee and high spending alerts, and budget information is now available for tracking faster in an added Updates section. You can see an example of the new view in the screenshot above.
The newly added Updates section follows previously added features including the ability to track your credit score for free without having to add a credit card as well as support for unlocking the app with your fingerprint using Touch ID for iOS 8 users with iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus.
Tim Cook isn’t the only CEO to favor an iPad over a computer to run a company: Starwood Hotels CEO Frits van Paasschen told the WSJ that he dumped his PC and now does all his work on an iPhone and iPad – with the assistance of a Bluetooth keyboard.
I thought, you know what, I actually don’t use [my PC]. I do all of my work via mobile so essentially my office is wherever I go, and I can be much more productive.
Some of the limitations of a smaller device encouraged changes in behaviour that boosted productivity, he said.
Meetings at Starwood are paperless, emails are shorter, and Mr. van Paasschen won’t open bulky spreadsheets. “When I get the massive file, the first thing I’ll do is send it back and say tell me the key points that I actually need to understand.”
While van Paasschen admits that not all roles can be performed without a PC, one of his senior VPs, Chris Holdren, has followed his example, saying he no longer uses a PC even when working on presentations: “Now I just use my iPad.”
A new Apple-focused meetup for consultants is kicking off its inaugural conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, this coming up May. The event is called the ACEs Conference and it’s put on by two members of the Apple community, Justin Esgar and Luis Giraldo, both of whom run Apple consultant businesses in Manhattan and Canada, respectively. The two describe the event as being for Apple consultants by Apple consultants:
The Aces Conference is the first of its kind. Apple consultants teaching Apple consultants not only tips and tricks of tech, but of business too. Learn how to be a better consultant, a better technician, a better everything at Aces Conf.
Apple is today expanding its Device Enrollment Program, its service for business and education customers deploying and managing large fleets of iOS and Mac devices, to new countries. It’s also opening up the program to third-party resellers. Expand Expanding Close
Update: Apple has removed support for prepaid cards from American Express. It also added a column for corporate cards, hinting that support for those cards might be on the way.
With Apple’s launch of its new Apple Pay payments service in the US yesterday, it has now published a support document detailing supported card types from each of its initial banking partners. We already knew that MasterCard, Visa, and American Express cards would be supported initially through a growing list of banking partners, but the support document shows certain types of cards, like business and corporate cards, aren’t yet supported through some banks. Expand Expanding Close
Square launched its app Cash last fall making the process of sending money from your bank to other people over email, and today the company is introducing the next major version of its app. Square Cash 2.0 introduces a list of new features including the ability to now send a transaction over text messaging in addition to email and attach notes to payments for adding context to a transaction. Below you can see the full list of changes in the new version.
What’s New in Version 2.0
Everything is better in Cash 2.0!
• Send cash to any mobile phone number via text message.
• Faster, optimized sending interface.
• Import your address book for quick contact selection.
• Add a note to your payments.
• Pick a profile picture.
• Choose push notifications, text messages, or email notifications.
• Manage all of your email addresses and phone numbers in one place.
• Quickly approve incoming requests from a push notification or text message.
• Invite friends via text message and get $1 when they join.
Square Cash 2.0 is available for free on the App Store.
The latest enterprise market share data from Good Technology shows that iOS holds two-thirds of the market, at 67 percent, but has dropped five points to Android – which increased its share to 32 percent. Windows Phone remains flat (and irrelevant) at just 1 percent. (BlackBerry data is not included as the company uses its own servers and activations are invisible to Good Technology.) Expand Expanding Close
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, President Barack Obama is set to announce a new program called “SupplierPay” to help boost small businesses, and Apple is one of the 26 companies listed as having already signed on.
The program intends to send money down the supply chain and help strengthen contractors and smaller businesses by giving them access to lower-cost capital and thereby opening up opportunities for hiring more workers. This, the White House hopes, will increase investments at the small business level as well. Expand Expanding Close
Apple is about to roll out its Volume Purchase Program, which allows business and education customers to purchase and distribute iOS apps in bulk for deployed devices, into 16 new countries. Apple’s website for both the Volume Purchase Program for Business and for Education have been updated to announce the expansion and now list the following countries as coming soon to the program: Expand Expanding Close
SRI International, the team behind the technology that later became Apple’s Siri voice assistant feature in iOS, today announced a new product that it says “aims to improve the consumer experience on mobile devices through intelligent conversation.” Kasisto will be a similar intelligent voice assistant but the company will open it up to business customers to integrate into their own apps:
“Virtual personal assistant technology has revolutionized consumer interaction with mobile devices,” said Norman Winarsky, Ph.D., vice president, SRI Ventures. “Now consumers expect a more human-like experience when interacting online. Kasisto represents a new user experience—one that is context aware, personalized, and more effective.”
The company says Kasisto will allow businesses to integrate the virtual personal assistant features into mobile apps in days or weeks intend of months while greatly decreasing the costs currently associated with similar technologies. “It is context-aware and provides text, touch, and speech modalities, and natural language understanding and reasoning. The platform also includes a powerful software development kit (SDK) for easy customization and integration into existing mobile applications.
The company says it’s focus on security for business users makes its approach to collaborative note capturing and sharing differently than other offerings. Box’s new Notes feature on iPhone and iPad is presented in the same app as other media stored in the cloud service as it’s a single app to know and manage.
AppleToolbox says it took these images yesterday, so they should reflect the most recent state of the project. The spaceship imprint of the main building can now be clearly seen on the ground. The images also show quite a lot of construction activity is already underway. Images of the excavated plot for the ancillary buildings are also visible, which will be dedicated to research and development facilities.
Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer was leading the development of the project, but it still unclear who has taken over these responsibilities since he announced his retirement in March.
Apple is currently planning to open the new campus to its employees in roughly two years time. Expand Expanding Close
As highlighted by Fortune, analysts’ consensus on iPad sales for last quarter suggest that iPad sales will actually decline year-over-year by about 0.7%. Although the expected decline is small, this would represent a big shift in iPad momentum, especially since Apple saw a strong increase in sales for the holiday quarter, going from 22.9M units in the previous year to 26M this year.
If iPad sales have fallen, it wouldn’t be because of different market conditions to last year. Apple introduced the iPad Air at the end of 2014 around a year from the introduction of the iPad 4 at the end of 2012. Last year, Apple dropped the price of the iPad Mini a modest $30 while also introducing the highly anticipated retina iPad Mini. In 2012, it introduced the iPad mini. The product cycles are similar, so the decline isn’t due to any artificial inflation of sales last year.
