If you’re looking for a pair of headphones with a Lightning connector, either because you want better quality or for future-proofing, there aren’t yet many options out there. Apple has now added one option to its online store – but they’re not cheap at $799.99. The Audeze EL-8 Titanium Closed-Back Headphones are the real deal, however. An audiophile brand whose headphones more typically run into four figures, the EL-8 gets you a 28-bit DAC and the company’s planar magnetic driver – four times larger than most other headphones – borrowed from its high-end LCD Series....

Apple announces Swift Playgrounds for iPad allowing iOS users to play with Swift code on their device for the first time. Apple wants to bring many more people into coding; this is their solution. The app incorporates lessons and challenges — it’s very much a teaching tool. Swift Playgrounds will be available in the App Store this fall; a developer preview is to be released later today. The app is completely free....

Apple appears to be further preparing for the official launch of iTunes Radio, Apple’s Pandora-like streaming music service, by asking streaming radio stations to provide cover art. iTunes Radio is included in the Music app in iOS 7, as seen in our hands-on video. While cover art is already available for many radio stations, some of it is very small and wouldn’t scale well on a Retina iPad. Cover Art...

Apple has today kicked off its latest round of exclusive Apple Pay promos. This time, the promotion offers discounts from six different retailers for the next two weeks, celebrating the back to school shopping season. Apple regularly offers weekly promotions for customers using Apple Pay. From now through August 14th, however, the company is taking things up a notch with six exclusive deals from major retailers: Adidas – 20% off Apple Pay purchases in the adidas app....

Alongside its new MacBook Air in three new colors today, Apple has quietly discontinued the rose gold 12-inch MacBook. In its place, however, the 12-inch MacBook’s standard ‘gold’ color has been updated to match that of the new MacBook Air. The 12-inch MacBook Air was the only Mac to be offered in the rose gold color option, and its removal means that you can no longer buy any Mac in the color shade....

At a time when Apple has just launched its cheapest ever iPhone, and when Phil Schiller caused a few raised eyebrows over what some interpreted as an elitist remark, Apple seems to be aiming for a more egalitarian image where the Apple Watch is concerned. Apple has quietly revamped the Apple Watch section of its website, rendering the Edition almost invisible unless you specifically go looking for it. In addition, we’re hearing reports that Apple’s most expensive Watch is also being removed from some retail store displays …...

Jane Horvath, Apple’s Senior Director of Global Privacy, is speaking at the Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection (CPDP) conference. The event takes place May 23-25 in Brussels, Belgium, in which Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are among the sponsors. Horvath will speak on Tuesday the 24th in a session called “The future of privacy. How is multistakeholderism shaping privacy worldwide?” There are not too many details on what she’ll cover, but one can imagine it’ll be something of interest....

Apple appears to be preparing for increased focus on the Chinese market, with more than 200 (mostly) senior job openings appearing on LinkedIn, reports the WSJ. Some of these were added in the past three weeks, many within the last few days. Digitimes reported yesterday on Apple also seeking senior engineers in Taiwan. With the developed market close to saturation point, the BRIC markets – Brazil, Russia, India and China – are key to Apple’s future expansion....

One of the things that really spoils live concerts these days is that half the people there don’t seem to want to watch it live at all – they’d rather watch it through their phone screen, holding the device up and blocking the view of those behind them. This is a problem Apple is seeking to solve in a patent first applied for in 2011 and granted today … The patent describes the camera detecting an infrared signal and interpreting the data....

Update: John Weaver did a deeper dive on this over at Electrek Apple has quietly created an energy subsidiary, ‘Apple Energy’ LLC, registered in Delaware but run from its Cupertino headquarters. The company was seemingly formed to allow it to sell excess electricity generated by its solar farms in Cupertino and Nevada, with plans to sell electricity across the whole of the US. Given Apple’s expertise and huge commitment to using renewable energy to power its operations, it is no surprise that it wants to ensure that its solar farms generate sufficient power to meet its needs....

Apple has agreed to pay out $30 million to settle a lawsuit from employees who say they were forced to face security bag checks off the clock. This comes after over 8 years of back and forth in the case, which was first filed by employees against Apple in 2013. Apple discontinued the controversial bag check policy in 2015. This has been a long-running case for Apple. Apple retail workers filed the class-action suit against Apple in 2013, saying that they were required to submit to search before leaving for the day, including searches of their bags, purses, backpacks, brief cases, and personal Apple devices....

As expected, Apple has unveiled a brand new iPad Pro with a 10.5-inch with narrower bezels. The side bezels are 40% smaller, and the screen can display a full size keyboard. Apple is also launching an update to the 12.9-inch iPad with both running on an A10X Fusion chip. New iPad Pros include a 50% brighter True Tone display and ‘ProMotion’ technology which increases refresh rates up to 120Hz. This means the display is buttery smooth and Apple Pencil drawing is even better....

Right on schedule, Apple has shared its Q3 2015 earnings results reporting revenue of $49 billion and $10.7 billion in profit during the April to June period. Notably, the company’s Q3 period is the first that includes initial Apple Watch sales as the device first launched on April 24th. While Apple isn’t specifically breaking out Apple Watch sales (or iPod sales for that matter), the company does disclose iPhone, iPad, and Mac sales by unit:...

Apple surprised the developer crowd with the unveiling of a brand new SwiftUI framework, a modern UI interface coding structure that is built from the ground up to take advantage of Swift. The new framework uses declarative paradigms to let developers write the same UIs in less code. SwiftUI enables a realtime UI programming environment inside of Xcode. Developers declare the kind of UI components they want to show in their app’s UI and it appears immediately on the right-hand side of Xcode....

But one important fact that isn’t checking out – if Apple were building a search engine, they’d be hiring search experts and engineers. We’ve talked to a ton of them at all the big companies, and while some of them heard the same rumors, none have lost search employees to Apple, or heard of any specific hirings. That alone almost certainly rules out a full on search competitor. You can’t do it without people who know what they’re doing....

Apple today added eight new countries to its iTunes in the Cloud for Movies service, allowing customers to re-download any movies previously purchased from the iTunes Store. iFun and MacRumors note that the service has been rolled out to Japan, and seven European countries: Austria, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia and Switzerland. U.S. customers were first to get movies added to the iTunes in the Cloud service in March last year....

Apple has confirmed with press that its next media event — the opening keynote of WWDC — will take place on June 3rd at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET. The keynote will be held in San Jose, California, at the McEnery Convention Center where Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference is held. We don’t expect this keynote to be hardware-packed like WWDC 2017, but we do anticipate a major hardware teaser. WWDC 2019 runs June 3rd through 7th with developer sessions on Apple’s latest platform technology scheduled throughout the week, and the opening keynote is where Apple first debuts its latest platform changes....

I’ve been a longtime Apogee user and currently use the company’s excellent Quartet as my main audio interface for my Mac and home studio. Today Apogee introduces its latest line of audio interfaces, the Element Series, introducing Thunderbolt connectivity and a new design somewhere between its more expensive pro line and its popular prosumer products like the Quartet and Duet. The Element Series is more of a traditional rack mounted-style design compared to the Duet and Quartet that are both made to be desktop audio interfaces....

Apple on Monday acquired AI Music, a startup that has developed a platform capable of creating songs using artificial intelligence. The acquisition, according to sources familiar with the matter, was completed in recent weeks. As reported by Bloomberg, AI Music’s technology can create royalty-free soundtracks using AI.The soundtracks are dynamic and can change based on user interaction in real time. As an example, a song can have a different tone during more intense parts of a workout....

Alongside releasing the second OS X 10.10.3 preview release and iOS 8.3 beta 2, Apple shared Xcode 6.3 beta 2 through the Mac and iOS Developer Center today. The latest beta version of Xcode, which developers use to build and manage software, includes a new crash log reporting system to show developers issues users may experience with their apps. For developers, this means issues with apps can be pinpointed much faster through Xcode....