An Apple Big Ten bid – seeking to buy at least some of the TV rights for the college football division – has been described as not credible, but that may change. Apple had been in earlier discussions with the Big Ten conference, but those hadn’t made any progress. However, when the news broke that USC and UCLA were coming aboard, an Apple exec picked up the phone … Sports Business Journal reports....
Apple and Goldman Sachs are readying a joint credit card, according to the Wall Street Journal. The new credit card will integrate with the Apple Wallet app on the iPhone to offer special features like the ability to set spending goals and track purchase rewards. The card would purportedly offer rewards like 2% cashback, and maybe more when buying Apple gear. The report says the new card will be tested with employees in the next month or so with a launch later in the year....
After celebrating the back to school season with exclusive Apple Pay deals last week, Apple has today announced a new promotion aimed at supporting national parks in the U.S. The company is promising to donate $10 to the National Parks Foundation for every Apple Pay transaction made at Apple over the next week. The promotion officially kicks off on August 17th and runs through August 25th. If you spend $10+ with Apple Pay, Apple will make a $10 donation to the National Parks Foundation....
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has indeed scheduled an event on September 12. On that date, Apple is set to announce the new iPhone models, as well as cellular Apple Watch and a 4K Apple TV set-top box. We are still waiting for Apple to send out invites to press to make the event official, although it is all but confirmed at this point. In terms of event location, the report says that the company is ‘aiming to use’ the Steve Jobs Theater in Apple Park for the first time …...
Following the announcement of major updates to both OS X and iOS, Apple has begun seeding versions of the new operating systems beyond its own engineers and third-party developers. Beginning this week, several sources say, Apple has begun seeding the initial preview of OS X Mavericks to Genius Bar and on-floor Apple Retail employees. These select employees received the following message: This program is designed in order to gauge feedback in a more controlled environment about the major Mac OS update....
Apple has used the home page of the App Store today to celebrate the WWDC scholarship winners and share their apps and games. In a featured App Store story, Apple has given recognition to all of the WWDC scholarship winners and also shared the students’ apps and games, which cover a wide variety of subjects. Apple notes that this year’s winners come from more than 20 different countries. Brazil and the US have the most scholarship winners with over 20 recipients each....
We’ve already seen a few high profile companies detail new corporate wellness programs that use the Apple Watch, and now Apple is promoting the initiative with a microsite dedicated to helping more companies launch their own Apple Watch corporate wellness programs. The move further promotes the Apple Watch as a health and fitness tracker with a focus on using it at work. Apple promotes apps including Vitality, Lose It!, and Virgin Pulse that are available on the Apple Watch and have been used in wellness programs so far....
Apple has shared more about its recent partnership to help support Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), this time with Huston-Tillotson University. With a multi-year program, Apple is offering scholarships, hardware, software, as well as professional development to help support the next generation of Black male educators. The partnership with Huston-Tillotson University is the latest of Apple’s Racial Equity and Justice Initiative (REJI), something it’s pledged $100 million for. Apple highlighted partnership in a Newsroom post today:...
An obsessive Apple fan has created what he describes as perfect reproductions of the original Apple I manuals. To do so, he says, he had to position individual letters by hand … If you want a set of original Apple I manuals, you can expect to pay a five-figure sum for them. Reproductions are available, but these are based on relatively poor-quality scans. Apple fan Armin decided that wasn’t good enough....
The world of reboots and remakes is plentiful at the moment, as it seems every major studio has at least one project in the hopper that would fit into either category. One such remake is Universal’s planned Scarface update from director Antoine Fuqua. Itself a remake, this new film was seemingly set to hew closer to the 1983 Al Pacino film from director Brian De Palma, but now it seems this remake will take a little longer getting to theaters....
Ahead of iOS 8’s release later this morning, Apple has released new versions some of its iOS apps. Remote, which allows you to control your iTunes library and Apple TV from your iOS device, received a performance improvement update with iOS 8 support. Logic Remote, which allows you to interface with both GarageBand and Logic X on the Mac, is also updated with iOS 8 support. An updated version of iTunes U is also available bringing iOS 8 support and the ability to add assignment due dates to the calendar....
At an event at the University of Arizona’s Department of Marketing, former Apple advertising lead Ken Segall has shared some additional details into the naming behind Apple’s massively popular smartphone. While Apple ended up calling its industry-changing smartphone the “iPhone,” Apple considered a few other names. Our own Scott Buscemi was on the ground at the event, and he has shared the details for this article. In addition to iPhone, Apple considered “Telepod,” “Mobi,” “Tripod,” and “iPad....
Apple’s Siri team has published a new Machine Learning Journal entry that details some of the process behind making voice-activated ‘Hey Siri’ work with just our voice. Apple previously documented part of the process behind pulling off voice-activated Siri in general last fall, and the first Machine Learning Journal entry of this year focuses on the challenge of speaker recognition. As referenced in the previous entry, Apple says the phrase ‘Hey Siri’ was chosen in part because a number of users were already using it naturally when activating Siri with a hardware button....
Apple has released a company statement in response to today’s decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade, which paves the way for states to make abortion illegal. Apple said it supports employee’s rights to make their own choices about their reproductive health. It reiterated that its company health benefits include paying for out-of-state travel for procedures, if care is unavailable in their own state. It is estimated that about half of the fifty US states will soon ban legal access to abortions, following the Supreme Court decision....
A new audio series called Project Unabom is joining Apple’s growing list of original podcasts. The true-crime podcast is based on new original reporting on serial bomber Ted Kaczynski. Listeners can look for the Apple Unabomber podcast to drop next week. Background Kaczynski, better recognized as the Unabomber, spent 18 years targeting people he believed were harming society and the planet through technology before being caught by the FBI in 1996....
Apple has defended the App Store app review process following formal complaints lodged by Epic Games and other developers to the Australian antitrust watchdog. In addition to complaining about Apple’s 30% cut, Epic had told the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that the app review process could delay the launch and update of apps; apps could be rejected by Apple without proper cause; and that it was hard to engage with the company when this happened …...
Update: Apple says its investigation has found no evidence of ‘inappropriate data transfers’ of photos from customer phones – via CNET. An Apple Store in Australia is under fire for accusations of employees stealing personal images from the phones of customers, as well as taking images of female customers and female staff without their knowledge. The employees then used the images to “rank their bodies” from 1 to 10. According to a report from The Courier Mail, which calls this “the biggest scandal to hit [Apple] in Australia,” more than 100 “close-up and explicit photos” were taken of female staff and customers without permission....
Shortly after dropping the price from $99 to $69, Apple has updated the Apple TV channel lineup with a few additions in the United States. New apps for viewing content from TED, Tastemade, and Young Hollywood are now available. The channels should appear automatically or after a restart on the latest Apple TV set-top box, and all three offerings are available without a cable or satellite subscription. The refresh does not yet include the new HBO NOW offering, which will enable Apple TV owners to subscribe to the premium network as a standalone service similar to Netflix starting next month....
Who will control video on the mobile web? Need evidence? If Apple were planning on releasing Flash on the iPhone, why would Youtube be converting their library to H.264? Yes, the Quicktime quality is better – but not that much better than Flash on a 480×320 inch screen. What is more important is that every Youtube video put on the web is effectively a interface for a Flash interfaced mobile video platform....
The Wall Street Journal summarizes information from court documents and various sources that points to Apple and Samsung being back at the bargaining table after the two companies spent much of 2012 in court proceedings regarding patent infringement claims. During the summer of 2012, Apple won a major lawsuit in California court against Samsung due to design patent infringement claims regarding the iPad and iPhone. Today’s report shares that since that time, the Cupertino and South Korean tech firms have met multiple times in private to come to some sort of settlement....
