Apple extends AppleCare+ for Mac to New Zealand and Australia
Apple has today extended its AppleCare+ for Mac program, previously only available in the United States and Japan, to New Zealand and Australia
Apple Pay has officially gone live in New Zealand
Apple Pay has been slowly making its way across the world, and today it’s officially rolling out in New Zealand. Customers of ANZ are receiving emails now explaining that it is available to them, and readers are able to configure their cards within the Wallet app. This now marks the tenth country where Apple Pay is available, alongside Australia, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, UK, and the US.
Apple’s Back to School promotion returns to Australia and New Zealand w/ a Beats Solo2 promo
Apple’s annual Back to School program returns in Australia and New Zealand with a promotion to receive a pair of Beats Solo2 On-Ear Headphones with qualifiying Mac purchases. Customers may also alternatively choose to receive savings on a new iPad (although there is currently an error on both sites not indicating how much can be saved). Last year’s promotion in Australia and New Zealand included an Apple Store gift card up to A$100/NZ$125, so it’s nice to see them promoting the acquired Beats brand and giving away instant credit for the headphones.
iPhone 6s launch day kicks off as customers queue up around the world
via <a href="https://twitter.com/iPhonemods/status/647119325090807808" target="_blank">Twitter</a>
While at least one person in the United States has already received their iPhone 6s after pre-ordering with the rest of us, iPhone 6s launch day has officially kicked off on the other side of the planet. The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus go on sale at 8 am local time in a dozen markets around the world. New Zealand goes first at authorized resellers as there are no Apple Stores in the country, then the first Apple Stores in Australia two hours later, followed Japan and China and others before starting in the United States 16 hours from the start.
Earlier this week, all models and configurations of iPhone 6s and 6s Plus became sold out online for pre-ordering with launch day delivery. The larger iPhone 6s Plus models were among the first to sell out for launch day, although that may be in part due to display production issues and not just demand. Still, Apple Stores and carriers alike will have limited launch day inventory if you’ve waited and decide to take a gamble at getting the model you want.
Do you plan to queue up outside your Apple Store for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus this year or did you send your robot instead? Send your launch day photos to tips@9to5mac.com and check out the scenes below as you await your new iPhone.
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Tim Cook greets customers in Istanbul as Apple Watch launches in 3 new countries
As expected, Apple Watch launched today in three new countries. Starting today, Apple’s wearable is available in Turkey, Russia, and New Zealand. This expansion comes after a launch in seven new countries earlier this month. Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Istanbul, Turkey to celebrate the launch and took to his Twitter account to share his experience.
New Zealand & Turkey Apple Watch pricing revealed ahead of July 31st launch
Last week it was revealed that Apple Watch would be launching in New Zealand on July 31st, but without any sort of pricing information. Today, however, Apple has updated its New Zealand online store with more details regarding the launch. The entry-level 38mm Apple Watch Sport starts at NZ$599 and increases to NZ$699 for the 42mm model.
Apple Watch release date for New Zealand scheduled for July 31st
After its initial launch in nine countries in April, followed by seven more late last month and a handful of other countries launching later this week, Apple Watch will arrive for customers in New Zealand for the first time on July 31st. Apple has quietly made the announcement on an updated product page within its Apple Store iOS app, as pictured above.
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Apple announces CarPlay availability in five new countries
After expanding the feature to five new countries earlier this month, Apple today has again rolled out CarPlay to new countries. As noted on Apple’s iOS 8 Feature Availability page, CarPlay is now supported in Denmark, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, and Sweden. CarPlay is available in 25 countries total with today’s additions.
Apple’s Back to School sale returns to Australia and New Zealand w/ gift card promo
Apple’s annual Back to School sale in Australia and New Zealand has gone live with a promotion for qualifying students to receive Apple Store credit with the purchase of a Mac, iPad, or iPhone. Similar to last year, the Back to School sale includes the usual education pricing on Macs and iPads, but this year Apple is including Apple Store gift cards rather than App Store gift cards like last year.
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Apple Maps Connect for small businesses expands beyond the U.S.
Apple has notified Apple Maps Connect for Small Businesses users that the service has expanded beyond the United States into the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Singapore. As we detailed in October of last year, Apple Maps Connect is a web-based tool for businesses to either add or edit their listings to the Apple Maps database. The site is also used to bolster Apple’s indoor mapping data for future iOS Maps features. Thanks, Matt!
As promised, Angry Birds Transformers hits USA and rest of the world today
Rovio’s latest game in the Angry Birds series, Angry Birds Transformers, has rolled out worldwide today after its earlier soft-launch last month in New Zealand, Finland, Canada and Australia.
Angry Birds and Transformers collide in this action-packed, 3D shoot ’em up adventure! The EggSpark has transformed the eggs into crazed robots who are destroying Piggy Island, but who can stop them?! Autobirds, roll out!
Gamers have been waiting for quite some time as the Transformers mash-up game was first announced back in June …
Apple kicks off iPhone 6 sales in 20 more countries starting w/ New Zealand
NZ carrier Spark offers customers life-sized cardboard emoji characters to reserve their spot in line for iPhone 6
Apple’s second wave of iPhone 6 sales has just kicked off with customers in New Zealand getting access to the device through retail stores and online as we roll into the morning of September 26 in the country. We’re also approaching the launch in a total of 20 countries today as the device goes on sale the morning of September 26 local time in the following locations:
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Instagram introduces Hyperlapse to stabilize and speed up your video
Facebook-owned Instagram is introducing a new video capturing app for iPhone and iPad (and Android soon) called Hyperlapse. The photo (and video) sharing social network recently soft launched a new app called Bolt in Singapore, South Africa, and New Zealand that focused on quickly photo messaging friends, but Hyperlapse is more like an advanced feature that could have been found within Instagram. Hyperlapse offers up a unique way to capture and edit video using processor smarts to make panning shots smoother and add a time-lapse effect similar to the iOS 8 camera app.
Apple expands App Store Volume Purchase Program to 16 new regions
Apple today expanded its App Store Volume Purchase Program (VPP) to 16 important new regions. Here are the new areas:
Apple adds 3D Yosemite Flyover to Maps ahead of new OS X
Apple has steadily been adding new cities and locations with support for its 3D Flyover feature to its Maps app this year. The latest Flyover addition to Apple Maps includes support for two new locations: Wellington, New Zealand and Yosemite National Park, California. The addition of Wellington marks the third location in New Zealand to support Flyover with Auckland and Christchurch both previously being supported. Newly added 3D Flyover support for Yosemite National Park in California is especially notable though as Apple prepares to ship its redesigned Mac operating system named after the national park…
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Get your Role Play on with new Angry Birds ‘Epic’ from Rovio
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCs_1NCLo90]
Rovio today launched Angry Birds Epic for free in the iTunes App Store globally after a brief soft launch in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.
Get ready for a bird-tastic FREE RPG adventure filled with “weapons” (whatever they could get ahold of), magic, bad guys and silly hats! Lead your feathery team into battle now – it’s going to be EPIC!
EPIC BATTLES! Turn-based battles between our heroic flock of warriors and those green snout-nosed scoundrels! It’s easy to play, but difficult to master!
EPIC WORLDS! Explore a fantasy Piggy Island with everything from tribal villages and frosty mountains to tropical beaches and mysterious caves!
EPIC CHARACTERS! Join Red, Chuck, Bomb and the other heroes as they face King Pig, Wiz Pig, Prince Porky and many more villains!
EPIC UPGRADES! Level up your characters, armor, weapons and potions to become a legendary hero ready to take on the mightiest pig warrior!
EPIC WEAPONS! Craft amazing battle-winning weapons like a wooden sword, frying pan or stick thingy with a sponge on top!
EPIC HUMOR! Plenty of offbeat humor and tons of quirky characters dressed in awesomely silly costumes – like a prickly cactus hat and a matching sword.
Phone Arena called it great for casual gamers but too simple and repetitive for hardcore gamers.
Overall, Angry Birds Epic is one of those must-try casual games. Chances are that hardcore gamers will find it too simple and shallow for their taste, but those who consider themselves casual gamers will surely love Rovio’s newest creation. The game is easy to learn, easy to play, and easy to put down when there’s more serious business to be done, which makes it a great choice for killing a few minutes while waiting for the bus. Although we wouldn’t mind spending an afternoon stashing loot, crafting weapons, and laying waste to those grunting green pigs. Best of all, we never had the feeling that we were being pushed towards buying extra in-game currency (which costs real money, by the way) so don’t be worried about IAPs spoiling your experience. The only thing you might be bothered by are the full-screen pop-up ads that appear from time to time.
iCloud goes down… down under
Several reports are coming in that Apple’s iCloud services have been experiencing an outage in Australia in addition to a few reports from New Zealand. Most appear unable to access any iCloud services such as Calendars and Mail, and others report Apple’s iMessage service is also down. The problems appear to have started late last night eastern time and continued into the morning today.
Apple is yet to update its System Status page to reflect the outages, but users continue to report problems. A long list of tweets from users in both Australia and New Zealand note the system was still down as of this morning.
[tweet https://twitter.com/peterchaly/status/462186048710512640]
[tweet https://twitter.com/dreasaez/status/462183077885001728]
[tweet https://twitter.com/justinholst/status/462194257323757571]
Rovio’s next Angry Birds game is a turn-based RPG, called Angry Birds Epic
Rovio has announced details of its latest game in the Angry Birds series(Via Kotaku). The game is a turn-based role player, a significant departure from the mobile mini-game physics puzzler Angry Birds is known for. The game will feature turn-based combat and a crafting system — players can craft armor, potions and weapons. This item system will apparently be funded through a game currency, or via in-app purchases.
The game is launching in Australia and Canada this week (likely tomorrow), with more countries to follow. Rovio is touting it as the most ‘epic’ soft launch ever.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Nh92eGP8I]
Plants vs Zombies 2 for iOS launches in Australia & New Zealand App Stores
EA already said that Plants vs Zombies 2‘s July 18 release date would be delayed slightly until later this summer, but today PopCap announced that it is kicking off a soft launch today in Australia and New Zealand to fine tune the experience. In fact, the game is already available on the App Store in both Australia and New Zealand (and of course any user can access the download with an Apple ID associated with one of those locations).
we are launching the game a bit early in Australia and New Zealand to help us test out all of the new systems and features we’ve built into the game. We’ve added a bunch of new features that allow us to take advantage of new technologies to make a better experience for our players, and those innovations require us to perform some large tests to make sure we are ready for our worldwide audience to play.
PopCap already announced that the game would be a free-to-play experience, but today noted that it will “be testing all sorts of different aspects of the game’s functionality, pricing, stability, etc.”
Hahaha crashes on iOS 7! RT @9to5mac: Plants vs Zombies 2 for iOS launches in Australia & New Zealand App Stores http://t.co/RC3YbBshFK
— Lars™ (@larsetc) July 9, 2013
A break down of new game features from iTunes below:
Game Features
NEW PLANTS! NEW ZOMBIES!
Meet B**k Choy, Bloomerang and Lightning Reed: Just a few of the powerful new plants that will defend your lawn through time. Go toe-to-missing-toe with dozens of new zombies including Ra Zombie in Ancient Egypt, Swashbuckler Zombie on the Pirate Seas, or Chicken Wrangler Zombie in the Wild West. In every new world, clever new zombies and brain-teasing challenges will test your zombie-zapping skills.
AMAZING NEW WAYS TO PROTECT YOUR BRAIN
New Plant Food and power-ups will take your game to new dimensions. Plant Food will supercharge your plants when you need it most. Use your fingers to pinch, flick and zap zombies off your lawn.
LOOK OUT! ZOMBIE CHICKENS!
Seriously.
NEW LEVELS OF EXCITEMENT
Battle the fun-dead on land, on sea and… on the rails? Unlock ultra-challenging (and ultra-fun) endless levels — Pyramid of Doom, Pirate’s Booty and the Big Bad Butte.
THE FUN NEVER DIES
Gather keys to unlock brain teasers and new plants. Collect coins to purchase potent power-ups. Earn stars to take you to new worlds. Survive long enough and you’ll be rewarded with piles of prizes and achievements. And that’s just the beginning! The future holds many mysteries. Also, zombies. Lots and lots of zombies.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for iOS now available on the App Store
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_VBXRZuHTc]
Rockstar has been teasing the iOS edition of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the game for a few weeks now. The game officially makes its way to the App Store today, starting with the New Zealand and Russian stores, and it should make its way to the United States and elsewhere shortly. The app is selling in New Zealand for around $5 USD.
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iPad mini & iPad 4 officially go on sale starting with New Zealand
Some customers have already been able to get their hands on iPad minis in-store through resellers ahead of tomorrow’s official 8 a.m. launch. With only hours to go, New Zealand is one of the first countries to officially start selling the device.
The photos below, courtesy of AMA Creative, are of the iPad mini launch at New Zealand Apple reseller YOOBEE. The store opened at 8 a.m. local time on Friday, officially kicking off the iPad mini’s launch. It’s unclear how supplies of the new iPads will be in comparison to the recent iPhone 5 launch, but we expect Apple and third-party resellers to sell of out of iPad minis quickly due to pre-order delays.
Microsoft providing mapping data for Apple’s new Maps app
Update: A reader just sent the images above that show Apple’s maps are identical to Microsoft’s for certain locations.
Evidence surfaced yesterday that showed Apple was crediting TomTom, in addition to OpenStreetMap, for at least some of the data used in its new in-house Maps app. Today, a report from TechPP (via TheNextWeb) pointed to proof that Apple’s Maps data appears to come from Microsoft too:
our friend, Cody Cooper, a New Zealand based developer, found something more interesting. While playing with Apple Maps on iOS 6 beta, Cody found that some of the Maps images had Microsoft attribution. Check out the image below showing the response headers with attributions to Microsoft Corp 2012. Click on the image for a better view.
We have not been able to confirm the evidence, so we are marking this as unconfirmed for now. Apple’s full list of acknowledgments for its Maps app can be viewed here, while the full-sized image of the evidence is below:
Apps & updates: Diet Coda goes live, Draw Something & Opera Mini go Retina, more
A few newsworthy apps and updates already landed in the App Store today including the Diet Coda development platform that we told you about a few days ago, and some Retina graphics updates for popular apps such as Draw Something and Opera Mini. Another notable app in the news today is Blizzard’s recently released Diablo III. The company announced on its site that it sold more than 4.7 million copies on launch day and more than 6.5 million in a week.
We will update the list throughout the day as more notable apps and updates are released:
Draw Something: OMGPOP’s massively popular Pictionary-style drawing game was updated today with “Bright, high resolution graphics” for users of the new third-generation iPad’s Retina display. Other improvements included in the update are a new password recovery system, a new loading screen, and the usual bug fixes. The free version of the app received the same update.
Diet Coda: We told you a couple days ago that developer Panic planned to release an iPad version of its Coda developer platform, and the app has already landed on at least the New Zealand store today. It is listed as $13.99, but it should go for $9.99 USD when it hits the U.S. App Store later today. That is a 50 percent discount as a launch special good until Thursday.
Some of the app’s features include remote editing of documents, FTP and SFTP File Management, Syntax Highlighting, and a “Revolutionary Super-Loupe” that allows for easy positioning of the cursor in iOS. It also has an “AirPreview” feature that allows you to use “your iPad as a dedicated preview window for Coda 2 on the Mac.”
Opera Mini Web Browser: Opera’s Mini web browser app for iPhone and iPad has always been a great third-party browser option on iOS, and it gets even better with a new UI today for the third-generation iPad’s Retina display, as well as a Data Usage option in the main menu, and various bug fixes and stability improvements.
Mint Personal Finance app: Intuit has updated its universal Mint.com Personal Finance iOS app today adding “two of your most requested features.” On both iPhone and iPad, you can now create and edit budgets as well as spilt transactions into multiple categories.
Sony releases ‘Music Unlimited’ Spotify competitor as iOS app
Looking to usurp rival competitors like Spotify and MOG, Sony today launched its Music Unlimited streaming service as an iOS app. We told you in January that it was coming, but today the free app officially hits the App Store with subscriptions starting at $3.99 a month for varying access to the service’s 15 million+ songs and playback features. There is also a 30-day free trial of the premium service.
Previously only available to Android users and Sony products such as PlayStation 3 and Blu-ray players, the service offers two paid subscriptions options, including: a $4 Basic plan that provides basic channels and access to your own library; and a $10 Premium account giving you access to on demand playback for Sony’s catalogue, offline listening. The more expensive packages also offers the ability to create playlists, and access charts, new releases, and premium channels. Unlike Spotify, which recently debuted its iPad app, the Music Unlimited app does not have an iPad-specific version.
The Sony Music Unlimited app is available in the New Zealand App Store now, and it should hit the United States and other supported markets soon. As of March, Sony offered the service in 14 countries including the U.S., Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. A full list of features for Basic and Premium subscribers is below:
