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Apple CEO Tim Cook pulled in a total of $9.2M during Apple’s fiscal 2014, over double his 2013 earnings, according to numbers in Apple’s just released proxy statement. The filing details executive compensation and new board member nominations, among other items of business, ahead of Apple’s upcoming annual shareholders meeting. According to the report, Apple CEO Time Cook made a total of $9.2 million during the year including $1.7 million in salary and the rest in additional forms of compensation....

Wall Street analysts as well as their unaffiliated colleagues polled by Fortune’s spreadsheet wizard Philip Elmer-DeWitt are modelling up to 19 million iPhones in the first calendar quarter, Apple’s second fiscal quarter. The estimates range from as low as 13.24 million units (Goldman Sachs’ Bill Schope) to an astounding 19.80 million iPhones (Jeff Fidacaro of Susquehanna). Apple sold 16.24 million iPhones in the lucrative holiday quarter and 8.75 million units in the year-ago quarter....

In the recent past, customers who purchased an iPhone directly from the Apple Online Store and in Apple Retail Stores have had 30 days to return the device for any reason. The only stipulation was that it had to be undamaged and include all of the original accessories. According to an internal document provided by one of our retail sources, Apple plans to change its iPhone return policy to just 14 days beginning on March 13th....

Apple’s mixed reality headset is set to feature iris scanning biometrics features, enabling capabilities similar to the Face ID biometrics system found in modern iPhones and iPads. According to a report from The Information, ‘Iris ID’ would allow the user to authenticate payments without entering a password, and would enable seamless user switching. Apple’s augmented reality and virtual reality capable device has been in the works inside the company for many years, and is finally expected to be unveiled to the public sometime in 2023....

Apple recently changed its App Store policies in a move intended to bolster privacy, specifically regarding apps that access user contact databases. As reported by Bloomberg, Apple is cracking down on a contacts harvesting technique that has been in use for years: Apple already makes contact sharing an opt-in option for users, but what apps can do with those contacts after they’re accessed has been less restricted until now. Apple had announced several privacy-focused changes at its WWDC conference this past week, however, what it didn’t emphasize was its updates to the App Store Review Guidelines....

The anti-poaching case rumbles on … After an antitrust class-action suit last year accused Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe of secretly agreeing not to poach staff from each other, the case appeared to be all over back in April when the parties reached a $324M settlement. Settlements have to be signed-off by a court, however, to ensure that it is considered fair to all parties. Earlier this month, Judge Lucy Koh rejected the settlement, saying the amount should have been $380M....

In a surprising twist, both Apple and patent troll Uniloc have asked a court to keep secret the license fees paid to the patent assertion entity. However, while a ruling has been granted for now, the case has been referred back to the original judge to determine whether the secrecy is justified… Background Uniloc is a frequent flyer in the courts, buying very general patents and then seeking license fees from a variety of companies, and filing lawsuits if they don’t pay....

As reported by iHelp BR (via Google Translate), Mercado Livre/Mercado Libre (Free Market) is one of the most popular third-parties to buy and sell electronics and more in Latin America. The retailer has had a few partnerships with specific brands to sell products through its website and Apple will be the latest to offer a storefront. Apple was spotted on Free Market’s website and iHelp BR was able to get confirmation that it is an official partnership that brought the Apple “Loja Oficial” (official store) to Mercado Livre customers....

Apple has asked Foxconn to increase iPhone 14 Pro production by 10%, according to the latest survey by Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. This analysis comes after another report said that the Pro models were selling better than the regular versions. In a Twitter thread, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo writes: This change is also evident in Apple Store availability, as iPhone 14 Pro models are widely unavailable and iPhone 14 stock is plentiful....

In a post on its official developer blog, Apple this evening outlined a new Customer Support role that is now available on iTunes Connect. This addition, Apple says, is useful for developers who may want to hire someone dedicated to customer support and responding to questions, comments, and concerns left in App Store reviews… Developers can now give someone the ability to respond to App Store reviews via iTunes Connect:...

Apple finally commented late this evening on the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust suit against the company. What did Apple think up with those extra 48 hours? Peter Kafka got the scoop from Apple’s Tom Neumayr: The civil antitrust suit alleged that Apple’s move to let publishers set their own prices—and it is a requirement that publishers do not sell their digital books for cheaper elsewhere—forced consumers to pay millions more for books than they should have....

The Apple Green Bond initiative has now helped create 1.2 gigawatts of clean energy, as Apple says it has allocated $2.8B of the $4.7B total raised. Some of the projects funded are directly linked to Apple, generating power for the company’s own data centers, while others are more general, feeding clean power into the grid. A green bond is like a conventional bond, where a company raises money by selling paper that offers a fixed return by a fixed date, but where the proceeds are specifically earmarked for environmentally friendly projects …...

As part of today’s earnings calls, Apple execs Peter Oppenheimer and Tim Cook gave “some color” on their future thinking. Some notable hints: (From Macworld’s transcripts): To me at least, this seems to indicate that Apple will offer a lower price of entry on iPads. If I had to guess, I’d say Apple is going to do what they do on iPhones and keep a previous version around after the iPad 2 is released in the coming months....

Asus Zenfone Max Shot and Zenfone Max Plus M2 (codename: A001D) launched in March 2019. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install the AOSP Android 11 on Asus Zenfone Max Shot. Recently, Google released its latest stable Android 11 for the general public. And with that, many OEMs were quick to adopt the same. First in the line were the Pixel devices, which were anyways along the expected lines....

We’ve been hearing tips and all over the web from articles on Engadget, The Next Web and twitter that the iTunes store might have been compromised. Apparently a Vietnamese developer might have juiced the “Books” section of the App Store, as well as several iTunes accounts. As you can see in the screenshot below a plethora of the books in the Book section are these oddly named titles (eg: Conan 1, Conan 2, 7 Vien....

Apple has been no stranger to environmental concerns regarding their manufacturing and supply chain abroad, most recently a report from five independent environmental organizations in China in August accused the company of taking “advantage of the loopholes in developing countries environmental management systems” and awarding contracts to known polluters. Yesterday Apple responded to the accusations in a three-hour meeting with five Chinese environmental NGOs, admitting fifteen of their current manufacturing partners are contributing to pollution in surrounding areas by agreeing to perform audits of the companies....

Apple has agreed to back a new initiative along with a host of Android manufacturers and all of the major U.S. cellular carriers that would require all smartphones manufactured after July 2015 to come with specific anti-theft features. The program is the latest attempt to prevent theft of smartphones, which some have blamed for increasing crime rates. To this end, Apple introduced a first-of-its-kind system in iOS 7 that blocks freshly-restored iPhones from being used until the original owner logs in with the Apple ID associated with the device....

The company’s reported after-tax profit came in at AU$319.5 million, above the AU$288 million recorded in the previous financial year. Total revenue increased by double digits with AU$11 billion reported following last year’s AU$9.79 billion. This was mostly achieved through the sales of its products, which contributed a whopping AU$9.5 billion to total revenue, leaving services accounting for the remaining AU$1.65 million. “During 2021, aspects of the group’s business continued to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, with many of the group’s retail stores, as well as channel partner points of sale, temporarily closed at various times, and a significant number of the group’s employees working remotely,” Apple stated....

Apple this evening has quietly stopped signing iOS 13.2.3 and iPadOS 13.2.3 following the release of iOS 13.3 last week. What this means is that it’s no longer possible to downgrade from iOS 13.3. Now that Apple has stopped signing iOS 13.2.3, it means that no one can downgrade from iOS 13.3 to that version via iTunes/Finder. Reverting to older iOS builds is common for those in the jailbreak community and can sometimes also be useful for users who experience significant bugs after updating to the latest version of iOS....

Apple has confirmed via iMore that a fix for the Telugu message bug is coming soon on all of its major platforms. The bug has already been fixed on the current beta versions of iOS, tvOS, watchOS, and macOS, and that the company plans on pushing out an update sooner (in an iOS 11.2.x update, for example) to the public. As for a current temporary fix, simply have someone else send a message to the app that is crashing, jump into the notification and delete the thread with the offending message....