Now that the calendar has turned to November, Apple is gearing up for the ever-important holiday shopping season. In a new banner, currently showing on the Apple Store Online, Apple is encouraging customers to get a head start on holiday shopping amid widespread supply constraints. Apple also announced that its extended holiday return window is now in effect. Apple has warned that all of its products will face significant supply constraints during the holiday shopping quarter, including iPhone, iPad, and Mac....

As drama related to Apple’s 5G modem efforts continues to unfold, the company has reportedly lost one of its lead hardware engineers on the project. According to The Information, Rubén Caballero has departed Apple in wake of the company’s settlement with Qualcomm and a notable Intel hire. At Apple, Caballero was in charge of working with suppliers to integrate modems into the iPhone. Today’s report described his role as “leading Apple’s charge into 5G,” citing a person familiar with Caballero’s work....

Update: AP reports that Wikileaks has decided to address the first problem by giving tech companies details of the tools. The WSJ reports that Apple engineers are working to address the remaining iOS exploits reportedly used by the CIA, but they and other tech companies are being hampered by two factors. The first is lack of any access to the code itself. BREAKING: Julian Assange: WikiLeaks has decided to give details of CIA hacking tools to tech companies ....

Earlier this week, a report explored Apple’s continued struggles in India and the decline in iPhone popularity in the country. Now, India commerce and industry minister Suresh Prabhu has revealed that he will be meeting with Apple’s “top leadership” next month to discuss manufacturing plans with the company. Prabhu told reporters that the Indian government is still in communication with Apple. He added that India would like Apple to set up “offices” in India and noted that the situation for both India and Apple has changed a lot over the last few years:...

Last month, Apple unveiled its all-new iPad lineup with a new 8th generation iPad and a new iPad Air that will be available this month. Following those announcements, Apple’s Bob Borchers and John Ternus recently sat down with Justine and Jenna Ezarik on the “Same Brain” podcast to talk about the new iPad lineup. Bob Borchers serves as vice president of product marketing for Apple, while John Ternus is vice president of hardware engineering....

Since the cellular model of the iPad isn’t subject to typically two-year contracts, users have always been free to start or end pre-paid cellular data plans at will from the device’s settings. In the past, however, this meant buying your iPad from one carrier and being locked into that carrier’s plans. With tomorrow’s launch of the iPad Air 2, however, Apple is changing that by including its own SIM card with each unit....

Apple is making its App Store a bit more social. The company today opened up a new Twitter account dedicated to the App Store’s gaming section. The account, @AppStoreGames, is yet to be officially verified by Twitter, but it was retweeted this morning by the official and verified @AppStore account, which launched a few years ago. The description for the new gaming-focused account indicates that posts will be curated, as the description reads: “Embrace the future of gaming....

It’s no secret that Apple’s App Store makes more than Google’s Play Store when it comes to revenue. However, the latest data recorded by Sensor Tower (via TechCrunch), shows that in Q3 of 2018, Apple widened the gap by a huge amount. According to the data, the App Store earned nearly 93% more in revenue than Google Play, making it the largest revenue gap recorded by Sensor Tower (since at least 2014)....

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Update: Trump has called Apple’s announcements today a “huge win for American workers and the USA.” Apple today has announced a new commitment to contribute $350 billion to the US economy over the next five years. The news also includes the company’s expectations to create thousands of new jobs and how its US operations will grow with a new campus. I promised that my policies would allow companies like Apple to bring massive amounts of money back to the United States....

Apple beat Samsung in Q4 2019 smartphone shipments, but dropped from second to third place behind Huawei when looking at the year as a whole. That’s the picture painted by Strategy Analytics, which estimated that Apple shipped 70.7M iPhones in Q4 2019 against 68.8M Samsung smartphones in the same quarter. It’s a reversal of the same quarter last year when the Korean company was comfortably ahead… The market intelligence firm said that global smartphone shipments for the quarter were flat, so it was all about which company grabbed the biggest slice of the pie....

Ahead of WWDC officially kicking off next week, Apple has started decorating the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. The company has begun hanging banners on the outside of the building touting the developer conference, though we’ve not yet gotten a peak inside… The signage hung on the outside resembles the initial WWDC announcement, depicting an overhead shot if people in colorful outfits. Apple has also hung various smaller banners around the outside of the venue on lamp posts....

We’ve already seen a number of renders showing Apple’s ambitious Campus 2 project as well as the progress in Cupertino, California at the site of the future spaceship-like building. Now photos shared today by German site ifun.de depict an early shot of architectural samples with the design slated for Apple Campus 2. According to the site, the structure was spotted on the premise of Josef Gartner GmbH in Gundelfingen, Germany. The sample structure of this segment of Apple Campus 2 presumably exists to test the materials being used for the building as the site has previously mentioned Gartner’s believed role in the project....

Interestingly, Cue is now responsible for Apple’s iAd division which has been struggling since its promising launch in the summer of 2010, culminating with the resignation of Apple’s former vice president of mobile advertising Andy Miller earlier this month. In fact, Eddy Cue is now in control of Apple’s entire cloud-based operation that encompass the iTunes Store, App Store, iBookstore and iCloud services, the CEO wrote in his email message. Here’s Cook’s email to troops:...

Five days after Apple’s child protection measures were announced, there has been no let-up in the controversy surrounding the upcoming new features. Latest to comment is Facebook’s former security chief and now Stanford cybersecurity professor Alex Stamos. Stamos says that there are no easy answers here, and calls for more nuanced discussion than the prevailing narratives that this is either a great move or an unacceptable one … Stamos used a Twitter thread to make his points, starting with the need for a balanced understanding of the issues....

With iOS 12, Apple launched a new Screen Time functionality for monitoring device and app usage. As part of that, TechCrunch reports today that Apple is cracking down on third-party screen time trackers in the App Store with stricter reviews and in several cases, removal from the App Store. What’s important to note is that these applications had not been using any official, Apple-approved frameworks or methods for tracking screen time....

Apple has filed its latest M1 Macs in the Bluetooth SIG database this week. This includes the MacBook Air, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro — but a mysterious “B2002” device remains in the database, and it’s unclear what it could be. Apple first filed this mysterious “B2002” device, which is labeled in the “Personal Computer” category, back in October. At the time, it was speculated that it could be a new M1 Mac or Apple Silicon Mac of some sort....

According to a new report from TechCrunch, Apple recently acquired a virtual/augmented reality startup out of Montreal, Canada called Vrvana. The deal was worth radon $30 million, the report says. A “number” of Vrvana’s employees have reportedly joined Apple’s team in Cupertino. While the startup’s website is still live, it has been silent on social media since August. Vrvana is the startup behind the Totem virtual reality headset, which never actually shipped to consumers but had excellent reviews from those who got an early hands-on....

Apple has officially announced (at least) two new iPhones: iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. Both the front and back are now glass, and the band is still aluminum. Silver, space gray, and a “beautiful new gold finish” are available color options. RIP matte black, jet black, and rose gold. Both iPhones have a new Retina HD display and improved water resistance. Both new iPhones feature True Tone display like the iPad Pro lineup for white image balancing....

Apple today has announced a variety of new environmental initiatives for its China operations. Through a press release, the company announced a new multi-year partnership with World Wildlife Fund to increase responsibly managed forests throughout China. Apple also announced that it intends to expand its renewable energy projects to manufacturing facilities in China. Apple, which launched its first major solar project in China three weeks ago, will parter with Leshan Electric Power Co....