Apple has announced its favorite apps, music, movies, TV shows and books of the year, with Elevate – Brain Training declared iPhone App of the Year while number puzzle game Threes! won iPhone Game of the Year. For the iPad, ‘desktop-class’ image editor Pixelmator took the top slot, with the gorgeous Monument Valley winning best game. Both Threes! and Monument Valley previously won Apple Design Awards at WWDC back in June … For music, Beyoncé (who set a new iTunes sales record last year) took best artist, with Sam Smith best new artist....

Alongside AirPods, Apple has announced Beats will be launching a range of new headphones with wireless Solo3 and wireless Powerbeats 3. They are also launching a new range called BeatsX, which is a cheaper collection that uses cables. All three use the Apple W1 chip for audio output. The Powerbeats3 Wireless provide 12 hours of wireless battery life and ideal for workouts. The Solo3’s go are like earmuffs with a connecting band....

In an update to its retail website, Apple has noted that its 11-year-old location in Simi Valley, California, will be permanently shuttered on September 15th. The closure will occur just after the introduction of the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and iPhone Edition, but likely before the new models officially go on sale. Apple’s statement regarding the store’s closure simply reads: No further explanation for the sudden announcement is provided, but one factor may be declining traffic to the Simi Valley Town Center where the store is located....

Apple has announced watchOS 4 for Apple Watch at WWDC 2017. First up is a new Siri-based watch face… Details below. The new Siri watch face is a dynamic, intelligent option that changes what information is presented based on what’s on your calendar and in other apps. There’s also a new kaleidoscope watch face. There are also new character watch faces joining Mickey and Minnie: Toy Story characters. Apple Watch is also gaining new monthly challenges in the Activity app with new, personalized monthly challenges and new flair on achievements....

. In a press release, Apple confirmed today that it would indeed launch its iconic flagship phone into the world’s biggest market next month. Apple CEO Tim Cook told an analyst at an earnings conference call in October that Apple planned to launch in China in December. Specific carriers or prices weren’t mentioned. Apple has sold iPhones, the new Mini, and Retina iPads in Hong Kong since launch, and many Chinese have bought in the gray market from there (and elsewhere) to avoid China’s high luxury taxes....

Ahead of pre-orders for the new iMac beginning on Friday, Apple’s Colleen Novielli and Navpreet Kaloty joined the “Upgrade” podcast on Relay FM to talk in-depth about the new product. In the interview, Novielli and Kaloty touched on the new design, including some of the more controversial design elements, as well as the M1 chip inside. Navpreet Kaloty serves as an engineering program manager at Apple, while Colleen Novielli is the company’s worldwide senior product marketing manager for the Mac....

Antoine Fuqua has revealed that Sony approached him to direct Morbius the Living Vampire. Fuqua and Sony have a working relationship that goes back twenty years, starting with the director’s feature debut on Chow Yun-Fat’s The Replacement Killers. The filmmaker has since then successfully rebooted The Equalizer and Magnificent Seven for the studio, so it’s only makes sense for them to approach Fuqua about tackling one of the more obscure characters from their burgeoning Spider-Man antihero universe that Tom Hardy’s Venom will kick off this fall....

Apple today updated Aperture to 3.0.2 to support iPad and fix some lingering problems from the previous releases. Apple says 3.02 “Enables support for importing photos from iPad to the Aperture Library, as well as syncing of photos to iPad.” Interesting. Why would you need to import photos from a device without a camera? Yes, the iPad has a camera attachment, but why wouldn’t you do that directly to your Mac?...

While people all over the world were celebrating Christmas, the developer behind Apollo for Reddit released a big update for the app, adding lots of new features. Head below for the full details on what’s new. With version 1.12, Apollo for Reddit received three new icons, including one to celebrate Christmas called Santapollo. This update also adds a new Markdown renderer using Apple’s library. With that, Apollo loads comment even faster and bring benefits like inline-table rendering, syntax-highlighted code blocks, better list, rendering, and more....

Earlier today, Apple issued a response to inquisitions from Senator John Thune regarding its iPhone battery debacle. Apple explained in the response that it is “considering” offering rebates to those customers who paid full price for battery replacements. The letter, shared in full by Business Insider, also offers some additional details on whether or not iPhone 8 and iPhone X users could soon be plagued by the same throttling… Thune, who heads the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, sent Apple a clear list of questions regarding how it throttles iPhone performance, its rollout of the feature, and more....

Haiti is facing another crisis after being struck by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake on Saturday, killing at least 300 people and injuring over 1,800. Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted today that Apple will donate money to the country. “Our hearts are with all those in Haiti who are once again facing the consequences of a devastating earthquake,” wrote Tim Cook in this Twitter account today. “Apple will be donating to assist relief and recovery efforts in the affected communities....

Apple is in the process of purging “thousands of video game apps” from the App Store, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. This comes as China cracks down on unlicensed games in the country, but the removals extend beyond the gaming category in some cases. Over the last month, Apple has been warning Chinese developers that “a new wave of paid gaming apps are at risk of removal,” the report says....

According to a report from French Apple blog Mac4Ever, Apple has just dropped the outside public relations company, Rumeur Publique, that it has used in recent years to handle communications with journalists in France. Instead Apple will now be moving its public relations in the country in-house as it does in the US and most other countries. A separate report from Macg.co notes that Rumeur Publique tells them Apple’s decision to move its press relations to an internal team was “not a surprise”, hinting that the transition has been in place while Apple beefs up its internal PR teams in the country....

New IDC numbers released today reveal that Apple has jumped into the top five PC vendors worldwide by shipment this quarter, with Mac shipments coming in at 4.9 million units for 6.3% market share. That’s a year-over-year growth of just under 9%. Lenovo and HP held the top two slots with 20% and 18.8% respectively. The same report indicated that the Cupertino company had held steady in third place for domestic shipments....

Earlier this year Apple announced that it would expand its ad business by adding new ad slots to the App Store. Although details of when the new ad slots would become available to developers were uncertain at the time, a new CNBC report claims that Apple will put this expansion into action by the end of this year. According to the report, some developers received an invitation from Apple on Tuesday to an online session focused on App Store ads....

In honor of the passing of musician Prince, Apple is featuring a collection of albums, songs, movies and more on iTunes. In total, the Prince collection on iTunes features 268 tracks across the artist’s various studio albums, soundtracks, collaborations, movies, and music videos from the 70s through the 2000s. “Virtuoso, rebel, sex symbol, icon— Prince was a wildly versatile musical genius who electrified us at every turn. He was a prodigy who created a fusion of funk, R&B, rock, jazz, and pop, often playing all of the instrumental tracks that accompanied an acrobatic set of vocals that told stories of pleasure, pain, seduction, or revolution....

Apple is expanding its Fitness+ subscription service today with new workout categories and types, as well as more trainers and a new “Time to Walk” guest. Apple made these announcements in a press release today. First off, Apple says there are new workouts specifically for women who are pregnant. Apple says these are designed to help women “stay active during a healthy pregnancy and prepare for life with a new baby....

Earlier this week, Insider reported that Apple had plans to suspend hiring until the end of 2023. Now a new report from Bloomberg corroborates that Apple is indeed pausing hiring for several jobs outside of research and development. Apple freezes hiring for 2023 According to people familiar with the matter, Apple made the decision to freeze hiring last month ahead of the company’s quarterly earnings report. Sources told Bloomberg that the pause doesn’t apply to teams working on future products and long-term initiatives....

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z3SRLwSZfA] If you loved the i3D app which tracks your eye movement through the iPad 2’s front camera to create an illusion of a glasses-free 3D display, here’s another entertainment entry that you’d want to show off to your friends. It attempts to make your tablet’s display “invisible” by employing some back-camera wizardry in conjunction with accelerometer and gyroscope data. In a nutshell, the program tracks the movement of your iPad and updates the display accordingly in order to keep the background image aligned as if the display were transparent....

Apple has taken its push into consumer finance up a notch recently with Apple Card and the continued expansion of Apple Pay. Now, Apple Pay vice president Jennifer Bailey has hinted that Apple is also keeping a close eye on cryptocurrency, while also looking at ways to improve Apple Pay. At a private event in San Francisco this week, Bailey explained to CNN that cryptocurrency is something that Apple is “watching” and that the company believes it has long-term potential:...