With the Touch Bar, Apple gives us a glimpse into a future keyboardless MacBook

Apple have a proven track record of ardently pursuing their vision, no matter the cost. The latest MacBook Pro serves as another reminder that the company is wholly unimpressionable by outside opinions, keeping up the dream of more simplistic products with every iteration, all the while taking away your beloved USB ports or SD card slots.

The ends might be justifiable, but the means can regardless lead to frustration with the most patient customers and complete alienation of the more short-fused ones. This cycle repeats every other year, when Apple decides to roll out hardware that is often just a little ahead of the curve.

Much has been made of the MacBook Pro’s latest changing of guard in the USB department. For now, the story goes, Apple has simply done their homework and found USB-C to be the technology fit for the immediate future. But the days of all ports are numbered if rumours are to be believed, as Apple generally contends that less is more and wireless the ultimate endgame. It does not take a giant leap to draw that conclusion and granted its validity, focus on the port situation has drowned out another discussion we clearly need to have at this point: Apple plans to get rid of the physical keyboard, and with the launch of Touch Bar on MacBook Pro the process is well under way.

AirPods could launch next week, according to this Apple reseller

AirPods, Apple's Bluetooth earphones featuring the company's in-house designed W1 wireless chip, may be launching next week. That's the gist of a new report Thursday from German blog Apfelpage.de. The publication cited Apple's European reseller Conrad as confirming that it'll receive stock of the delayed earphones on November 17.

Conrad will reportedly make the AirPods sellable by November 18-19. The AirPods were originally advertised with a “late October” launch date until Apple said it needed more time to work out the issues. Apple.com currently lists them tentatively as “coming soon”.

YouTube for iOS gains Dreamy filter, better search & interactive timestamp links in comments

Google today pushed a small update to the native YouTube application for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. YouTube 11.43 for iOS, a 105-megabyte download from the App Store, packs in three interesting improvements.

YouTube creators can now take advantage of a new Dreamy filter that can be tried out by uploading a video, then hit the filters icon. You also get tappable timestamps in YouTube comments and recent history/personalized recommendations in search.

ROME: Total War hits iPad as a premium $9.99 download without In-App Purchases

As promised, the iconic PC strategy game ROME: Total War today launched on the iPad as a $9.99 download from the App Store. Yes, you can now enjoy the grandeur, glory and brutality of Ancient Rome on your Apple tablet.

The game contains no IAPs and was ported to the iPad by Feral Interactive. Originally developed for PCs by The Creative Assembly and released in 2004 by Activision, it's one of the best reviewed strategy titles of all time.

Here comes Apple’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide

Yup, it's that time of year again—with the holiday shopping season just around the corner, Apple's 2016 Holiday Gift Guide recommends various gift ideas ranging from the iPhone 7, iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and Apple Watch to the fourth-generation Apple TV, 12-inch MacBook and gift cards.

The guide doesn't stop there as Apple's recommendations include a bunch of first and third-party accessories for the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac, as well as other popular items such as app-enabled toys, photography and music accessories and more.

Refurbished 9.7-inch iPad Pro now available in Apple’s online store

Two days after it started selling refurbished iPhones through its online store, Apple has now added the 9.7-inch iPad Pro to the Special Deals section at Apple.com. Refurbished 12.9-inch iPad Pros are available as well. Prices of refurbished 9.7-inch iPad Pros range from $509 for a 32GB Wi-Fi model, a saving of $90, to $789 for a 256GB Wi-Fi + Cellular version, a $140 savings.

“Hey Siri, send Sébastien $100 using PayPal”

PayPal's iPhone and iPad application was updated on the App Store this morning with support for iOS 10's SiriKit integration for mobile payments, allowing you to send and request money in 30 countries around the world using just your voice.

With a simple voice command like “Send $20 to Dad using PayPal” or “Request $20 from John with PayPal”, Siri connects with the PayPal service and pulls up a custom sheet with details of your transaction before you authorize it.

Tim Cook calls for unity in a memo to troops issued after 2016 presidential election

Following an extremely divisive 2016 presidential election in which Donald Trump scored an upset victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Apple's boss Tim Cook issued a company-wide email to all employees, a copy of which was obtained by BuzzFeed's John Paczkowski.

In the memo, Cook urges employees to reach out to colleagues “if they are feeling anxious” about the election results and underscored that Apple celebrates the diversity of its employees regardless of “what they look like, where they come from, how they worship or who they love.”

7 USB-C cables you might need for your new MacBook Pro

There's a lot to love about Apple's new MacBook Pros. They're sleeker, smaller, have a larger trackpad and better speakers, and feature all-new USB-C ports. Unfortunately, these new ports also mean you're probably going to need to purchase some new cables.

Want to plug in your iPhone? You'll need a new cable. Connect your MacBook Pro to a non-Thunderbolt display? Yep, cable. You get the idea. So with this in mind, we decided to put together a list of some of the common cables you're probably going to need.

macOS Sierra 10.12.2 beta 2 available to public testers

Just about 24 hours after releasing macOS Sierra 10.12.2 beta 2 to developers, Apple has now pushed the software to public testers as well. Members of the public beta program can update to beta 2 directly from the Mac App Store.

macOS Sierra 10.12.2 doesn't seem to offer many new user-facing features besides a myriad of new emojis that are part of unicode 9. Other improvements are apparently under the hood, likely offering bug fixes and stability improvements.