Image via GeekWire Apple today confirmed its rumored plans for expansion in Seattle. Apple’s Kristina Raspe and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan held a press event today announcing Apple’s expansion in Seattle that will see it grow to over 2,000 employees in the city with a new campus. As detailed by GeekWire, Apple plans to hire its first 200 new employees in Seattle by the end of this year. From there, it plans to hit 2,000 over the next five years....

Update: A law firm known for filing Apple patents now says that the listing of Apple as the patent assignee was a ‘typographical error’ and that the true assignee should be the inventor, BAE Systems. This suggests the firm may have used a boilerplate form and forgotten to remove Apple from the document. It could only be a matter of time before we started seeing vehicle-related patents for Apple, but the first one spotted by Patently Apple is an odd one: it’s assigned from another company, and it relates to articulated vehicles – not quite what one would expect for an Apple car....

Earlier today, a report suggested that Apple has been “secretly” buying ads for third-party applications in an effort to increase its commission earnings. Apple is now defending itself against some of those allegations, saying that it is a standard business practice in the industry… Today’s report came from Forbes. The report said that Apple has been running advertisements for third-party applications across social media and other platforms to drive in-app purchases....

If past iPhone sales are anything to go by, Apple is set to move a whooping hundred million iPhone 5 units. In other words, a fifth-generation iPhone will match sales of all previous models combined, helping Apple maintain a healthy 20+ percent market share in smartphones. The assumption is based on the above chart from Asymco that outlines monthly sales for all four iPhone models, approximated based on actual quarterly sales divided over the months according to the number of days available....

To complement the just announced 10th gen iPad, Apple has launched the new Magic Keyboard Folio. It comes with a built-in trackpad, a two-piece design with detachable keyboard, adjustable angle stand, 14-key function row, and more. The Magic Keyboard Folio comes as a great first-party case and keyboard option for the latest entry-level iPad. Apple has offered the Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro and Air for several years and now it’s debuted the Magic Keyboard Folio as the answer for its more affordable iPad....

At the Apple Distinguished Educator conference this week, Apple Vice President of Environmental Initiatives Lisa Jackson spoke to educators about the importance of the environment and Apple’s related work. Jackson showed the above photo and said “that little green leaf means a lot to me.” The leaf outlines multiple words expressing Apple’s work on the environment such as “Apple Campus 2” and “EPEAT.” During her talk, Jackson shared Apple’s work to trying to reach 100% renewable energy across its operations and she said that Apple is “not going to stop until we get to 101%…”...

You have to feel for The New York Times. I mean, Apple leaked the 7-inch iPad information to The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg over a week ago as orders for Google’s 7-inch tablet were opening up. Perhaps Apple was not pleased with the iEconomy series that The New York Times insisted on running. Nevertheless, Apple’s PR machine has a message to get out (even turncoats MG Siegler and Walt Mossberg love the Nexus 7!...

Apple is featuring apps from WWDC 2018 scholarship winners in a special editorial piece in the Today tab of the iOS 11 App Store. It’s a cool gesture that gives some exposure to apps from upcoming developers. The feature highlights scholarship winners from various regions, with a list of names and links to their apps already on the App Store. There are usually a couple hundred scholarship places given out at each WWDC, and this list only includes about twenty names....

Apple has reportedly acquired Platoon, a London-based music startup co-founded by iTunes veteran Denzyl Feigelson and LoveFilm co-founder Saul Klein. The acquisition is likely to allow Apple Music to tap emerging artists … Music Business Worldwide reports that the company has helped develop a number of big-name artists in its two short years of operation. Feigelson worked with Apple for more than 15 years, with responsibility for artist relations and live events – including producing the iTunes Festival in London....

As part of iOS 11, Apple is announcing a handful of improvements to Apple Music and AirPlay. Headlining the changes is Apple’s new AirPlay 2 protocol, while the Music app is also receiving improvements with new social features and more. With AirPlay 2, Apple is adding speaker control to the Home app. This means that users will be able to control speakers and manage multi-room audio directly from the Home app on their iOS device....

Apple has just announced that preorders for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have topped all previously set records, achieving 4 million sales in the first twenty-four hours. In the press release, Cook said he is thrilled that customers love them “as much as we do”. The issues with Apple’s online sales system do not seem to have deterred interested shoppers. Although the iPhone 5s did not have preorders at all last year, for comparison, Apple sold 9 million iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c’s in their opening weekend....

Until today, the only way to get a premium Apple Watch Hermès band was to buy the band and watch together from the Apple Store, or buy a very-similar (and cheaper) knockoff band and pretend it is genuine. It was also only offered in one color, fauve brown. That is all about to change however. Apple has announced that it will soon start selling Apple Watch Hermès bands standalone and in several new colors....

Apple has been promoting its device trade-in program quite a bit this year after rebranding it as “GiveBack” in April. Now, Apple is giving customers up to an extra $100 on top of normal trade-in values when picking up a new iPhone XS or XR. Ahead of its iPhone XS and XR event, Apple updated its GiveBack trade-in program to let customers get an instant credit, even with online purchases. In September, Apple offered competitive trade-in values for devices when the 2018 iPhone lineup launched, giving up to $525 for the iPhone X....

On Electrek today, we reported that Tesla’s battery research partner announced that they managed to double the lifetime of the batteries in Tesla’s products 4 years ahead of time. They achieved that through a new method to test battery cell longevity and we now learn that Apple also bought the same machines developed through the method. Jeff Dahn is a renowned battery researcher credited for several inventions that led to the succesful early development of li-ion cells, which is now the battery of choice for personal electronics and electric vehicles....

Apple business and education customers using the Device Enrollment Program (DEP) or Volume Purchase Program (VPP) will need to upgrade to a new program no later than the end of November … Apple is replacing them with new Apple School Manager and Apple Business Manager systems, and deprecating the existing services on December 1 of this year. It has issued almost identical notices for each. The business version directs users to business....

Apple has published a new document today that offers additional detail on its recently announced child safety features. The company is addressing concerns about the potential for the new CSAM detection capability to turn into a backdoor, with specifics on the threshold it’s using and more. One of the more notable announcements by Apple today is that the system will be able to be audited by third parties. Apple explains that it will publish a Knowledge Base article with the root hash of the encrypted CSAM hash database....

Apple’s WWDC festivities are officially about to kick off at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST) with the company’s keynote presentation, but it appears to already be hinting at car related announcements with several sports cars, classic cars and other vehicles displayed around the Moscone West venue. Apple officially launched CarPlay, an iPhone feature that enables an iOS-like interface on in-car touchscreen systems, earlier this year after first unveiling the feature at WWDC last year....

After announcing its $100 million Racial Equity and Justice Initiative last month, Apple has today announced that it is expanding its education partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Notably, the learning opportunities and workforce development will go beyond the newly added campuses and impact local communities as well. Apple announced the expansion of its coding and creativity education efforts with 10 new Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in a Newsroom post:...

Earlier this week, a new third-party Instagram app dubbed “OG App” launched on the App Store. This app offered an ad-free Instagram experience, among other improvements. Just a day after its launch, however, Apple removed OG App from the App Store, and we now have more details on the reasoning behind this removal. Apple said that it discovered OG App was using Instagram’s service in an unauthorized manner, which is a violation of App Store Review Guidelines as well as Instagram’s terms of use....

Bet you forgot about ol’ Apple Expo Paris didn’t you? Well, from September 25-29th, 2007, Paris will be LE place to be for Apple aficionados the world over. The Fall event is held at a perfect time for a European iPhone announcements in front of the home crowd – a month ahead of the release. Additionally, the Eurocentric crowd will likely get their own version of country-specific television shows on iTunes and an expanding iTunes Movies coverage....