Apple today debuted a new Arabic version of Apple.com, bringing the language to its website and online store for the first time alongside a new font right-to-left text.
Minecraft developers Mojang today announced a new online gameplay feature coming soon to the Minecraft: Pocket Edition mobile apps called “Minecraft Realms.”
Realms aims to make it easy to play online with friends, sort of like desktop players have been doing for years running their own servers, but without having to do much more than set up a group of approved users:
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After initially launching same-day delivery in partnership with Postmates earlier this year in San Francisco, Apple today has revealed that the capability is expanding to more locations. Users today have started noticing that same-day delivery from Apple’s online store and Apple Store app is now supported in New York.
Apple has started the process of updating its website for the lineup of new products introduced today, including the iPad Pro, all-new Apple TV, new Apple Watch hardware, and iPhone 6s. You can also find out more information about the new iPhone Upgrade Program, available exclusively in Apple retail stores.
The OS X El Capitan page has also been updated to confirm the September 30th release date that wasn’t mentioned in the keynote, and was instead relegated to a one-off email screenshot joke.
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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If you’re reading this article, you already know Apple’s pre-order drill for major new releases: Apple announces a new product, says advance online orders will start at 12:01am on a specific day, and then — when most of its customers are either exhausted or groggy — re-opens its online store to a pent-up frenzy of reservations. Virtually every time, Apple’s most dedicated customers deal with delays and web site loading problems. Sometimes, even if their orders were placed in the first hour or two of sales, they may also face uncertainty over adequate supplies for launch day deliveries.
Despite Apple CEO Tim Cook’s suggestion that the Apple Watch rollout could not be going better, his customers have widely deemed it a disaster: some unlucky people who pre-ordered Apple Watches in the first 10 minutes still haven’t received anything a full month later. Meanwhile, a group of “luckier” people — notably including scalpers — have found ways to skip Apple’s pre-order lines, walking into boutiques such as Maxfield in Los Angeles, and buying bunches of the same Watches pre-orderers are still waiting for.
Sure, overwhelming demand for new products can be hard to manage, and business gurus tend to write this off as a “good problem” for any company to have. But at some point, that good problem becomes chronic, frequently dissatisfying customers, which is when it has officially become a “bad problem.” Whether he admits it or not, that’s the situation Tim Cook faces today. The good news is that he’s well-known as a supply chain genius, so if anyone’s capable of fixing the three key problems within Apple’s screwy pre-order system, it’s him. My hope is that discussing these issues — as well as solutions — will inspire the improvements Apple’s customers have been wanting for a long time…
Hackers of NY founder Dani Grant has discovered (via Engadget) a security flaw that enables Delta passengers to access the boarding passes of others, even those flying with different airlines like Southwest. Grant realized that she could share a link allowing anyone to download her boarding pass, and then change one digit in the URL and be presented with a completely different boarding pass belonging to someone else.
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Bloomberg reports this afternoon that Apple has ceased online sales in Russia due to “extreme” fluctuations in the value of the ruble. Apple has previously attempted to combat the unpredictable swings in the country’s official currency by adjusting the prices of its products, having most recently increased the price of the iPhone 6 by 25% in the country last month.
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A few months ago, Apple unceremoniously dropped Bose headphones and speakers from the Apple Online and Retail Stores. The move appears to have been temporary, however, as Apple has added some Bose sound products back to its online storefront this evening, including its popular Bluetooth-enabled SoundLink III and SoundLink Mini wireless speakers and QuietComfort acoustic noise canceling headphones.
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Although Apple continues to offer the Nest Learning Thermostat and Nest Protect despite Google’s acquisition of the smart device company, the iPhone maker has added a competing Wi-Fi-connected smart thermostat to the lineup. Apple has recently added the Ecobee3 smart Wi-Fi thermostat to the Connected Home section of its online store. The smart thermostat, which can be controlled with an iPhone or iPad, is available for $249.95.
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In case you missed it, Microsoft finally released its suite of Office apps for iPad today with the introduction of standalone Word, PowerPoint, & Excel apps in the App Store. The Office app for iPhone remains the same apart from dropping the requirement of a 365 subscription (it’s now free for all!), but the new iPad versions of the Office apps WILL require an Office 365 subscription to create or edit documents. So, if you plan on using the Office apps on your iPad in the future, you’ll want to take advantage of a big discount on 365 subscriptions currently on Amazon.
Normally $99/year or $10/month, you can grab a 1 year Office 365 Home Premium subscription for $67.15 with free shipping. That’s a savings of $32.84 (33%) and gets to an access code for 5 Macs or PCs with access to all Office 365 app and services. That includes 20GB OneDrive storage for each for up to 4 household member, 60 minutes of Skype calls per month and all the apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, and Access.
1 year Office 365 Home Premium subscription for $67.15
Word, PowerPoint, and Excel are now available on the App Store.
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With the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics officially kicking off with opening ceremonies today at 11 AM EST/ 2 PM PST, you’re probably wondering how to watch live streams and keep up to date with events from your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. NBC will be delaying the TV broadcast of the opening ceremonies until 7:30pm tonight in the US, but you can still catch everything live on your Mac or mobile device using the apps below:
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Apple has launched a new online store through Tmall, a Chinese popular e-commerce site Tmall, reports the Wall Street Journal. Tmall, which is owned by the Alibaba Group, is already home to thousands of official retail outlets for other brands, such as Nike. The new storefront will not replace Apple’s own first-party store, but will instead complement it.
Like the store on Apple’s website, the Tmall store will be participating in Apple’s “Red Friday” sales event later this week. Unlike Apple’s eBay store in the United States, the Tmall site sells brand-new products rather than refurbished ones.
Apple has announced its “Red Friday” sale for the Asian online and physical retail stores. The sale will offer one-day discounts on Apple products, much like “Black Friday” in the United States, to celebrate the new lunar year at the end of January.
Apple hasn’t specified exactly what specials will be offered, but price cuts on Macs and mobile devices is the usual for these sales.
During this year’s WWDC keynote address, Apple surprised pro users with a look at a completely redesigned version of the Mac Pro, a machine many thought had long been abandoned by the company. At the time, the only availability information that was available was an ambiguous “shipping by December,” though Apple recently gave a more specific release date: today.
After about an hour of downtime, the Apple Online Store has come back up with the option to order the latest-generation Mac Pro. The quad-core model starts at $2,999, with a 6-core model available starting at $3,999.
While Apple’s Black Friday deals started going live in Australia and elsewhere today with Apple Store Gift Cards in place of traditional discounts, it appears Apple will be offering discounts and not gift cards in at least some countries. The UK, France, Germany and other European Apple Online Stores have now started posting Black Friday promotions with discounts on iPads, MacBooks, iPods, Apple TV, and many accessories.
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The iPad mini with Retina display went on sale through the Apple Online Store early Tuesday morning in an uncharacteristically soft launch. The news was prefaced by an internal memo that leaked from Apple’s GSX tool. The device is available in the United States, Australia, China (no LTE models yet), Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, and Singapore.
The release comes at an unexpected time. Apple didn’t officially announce the release date ahead of time, saying only that the device would be available sometime this month. In fact, aside from a memo that was released to employees only hours before the tablet went live on the Apple Online Store, there was no indication that it would be released this week at all.
Update 2: Shipping times in at least Hong Kong started at 1-2 weeks then quickly to changed to “currently unavailable”.
Update: The Australian Apple Online store and others are back up and listing all iPad Air models as shipping in 24 hours.
Lines have started to form at Apple stores around the world. Send pics of your Apple Store line to tips@9to5mac.com. Images below.
With Apple’s iPad Air launch about to kick off on the morning of Nov. 1 local time in over 40 countries, Apple has now started taking online stores down around the world to prepare for the launch. That includes Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Netherlands, Thailand, China, and others, which will be the first regions to get their hands on the device as we roll into tomorrow morning local time in those countries.
Yesterday we reported that iPad Airs had started arriving at Apple Stores and other retailers and that supplies were likely to be plentiful as large stores received as much as 500-1000 units of the device. We also heard that business discounts will be available for the new device on day one, which wasn’t the case in previous years.
Apple will begin selling the iPad Air at 8 a.m. local time Nov. 1 through its Apple retail stores in the following countries:
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Apple has been slowly restoring various services and overhauling its Developer Center since the company shut down all services to investigate an attempted breach into the system late last month. After outlining its plan to restore remaining services earlier this week, today the few developer services that remained down are now back online. That includes the Member Center, Program Enrollment and Renewals, and Technical Support. In addition, Apple has extended all developer memberships by one month as a result of the service interruption.
Following the security threat last month, Apple said it would work to completely overhaul its developer services, including “updating our server software, and rebuilding our entire database.” Since confirming the security issue and shutting down the developer center, it’s taken the company just over 3 weeks to rebuild its developer system and restore all services.
Apple provided extensions for developer memberships set to expire during the outages, and also launched a new System Status page for developers that shows the status of each developer service.
Here is the email that was sent out to developers:
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Update: The no-contract, Virgin Mobile iPhone 5 and promotional discounts are now live on RadioShack’s website.
We reported last week that the iPhone 5 would be coming to Virgin Mobile tomorrow starting at $549.99 on its usual no-contract, $30/month unlimited plans. RadioShack will be one of the first to carry the device and is also planning to offer a number of promotional discounts to celebrate the launch.
RadioShack will start carrying the Virgin Mobile iPhone 5 tomorrow both online and in-store for $549.99 (that’s for the 16GB model), but will also be offering $50 for eligible trade-ins until the end of next month. On top of the same $50 trade-in for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4, the retailer is also slashing prices on those two devices to $399.99 and $299.99 until July 6th.
Virgin Mobile will have both the black and white versions of the iPhone 5 available on its monthly no-contract plans starting at $35/month and its $30/month auto pay plan.
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Today, Apple has finally launched a version of its official online store for customers in Russia. The online store is similar in style to Apple’s online stores in other countries. Customers in Russia are now able to order iPhones, iPads, iPods, Macs, accessories, and more directly from Apple to their homes. Apple is celebrating the launch by taking up Apple Russia’s homepage to announce the new store (image above)…
Update: 8PM ET – Just 4 short hours after we first started hearing issues, iMessage and FaceTime are back
Update: 8:45PM ET – Apple’s status website also saying the issues are resolved
As many have reported on Twitter, iMessage and FaceTime have been down for the past half hour, but Apple just updated its Services Status page. Meanwhile, Apple is aptly offering the opportunity to complete a survey regarding its online Apple Support quality.
An Apple patent granted on Tuesday would allow you to buy some music and other iTunes content even when offline.
It appears that iTunes would proactively download locked versions of new recommendations (and perhaps more generally new releases) which you could later unlock by using credit stored on the device. So if you are both very impatient and without wireless data access, Apple may one day have you covered.
Last week we told you about a new online lottery system for reservations that Apple setup for iPhone 4S sales through its Hong Kong stores to combat scalpers after it was forced to suspend sales of the device in various locations throughout Mainland China. Unfortunately, until this week, Apple’s online store for China has been out of stock since the overwhelming launch.
After implementing the new reservation policies on Tuesday, and in Beijing on Wednesday, Apple has now resumed online sales of the device with shipments arriving to customers no later than March 2, reported ChinaDaily. Apple’s online store for Mainland China now lists the iPhone 4S with an expected delivery time of “February.” Customers are limited to two devices with all three models currently available in both black and white. An Apple employee confirmed the March 2 date to ChinaDaily: