Apple

Amazon pulls all Apple TV hardware from sale

Responding to the Apple TV 4 launch day and the warm reception the device has received from reviewers thus far, online retail giant Amazon has now removed all Apple TV models from sale on its online stores.

Earlier this month, Amazon warned customers that it would stop selling both Google's Chromecast HDMI dongle and Apple's set-top box in an effort to prevent “customer confusion” over devices that don’t “interact well” with its Prime Video service.

EDGE Extended is free for a limited time

Remember Edge, a puzzle game developed by Mobigame? Originally released in the App Store in December 2008, it was one of the best looking, most addictive and innovative games available on the iPhone at the time.

The highly popular title was followed by the official sequel, called Edge Extended, which made its App Store debut in August 2011. Edge Extended has gone free briefly just once since its inception and now Mobigame has discounted the game to zero bucks for a limited time to celebrate the launch of the new Apple TV.

Bloomberg: Apple’s penchant for secrecy slowing down its AI development efforts

According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple's artificial development efforts are being hampered by the company's legendary penchant for secrecy as the company is finding it difficult to hire top engineers in the field.

While Apple researchers attended an artificial intelligence industry conference in Montreal last year, they kept a low profile and “didn’t say who they worked for unless asked.”

The best Apple TV apps and games for your big screen TV

The Apple TV launch will be accompanied by a surprisingly comprehensive list of third-party apps and games, some of  which were shown off on stage during Apple's media presentation last month. Ahead of tomorrow's launch, a much larger selection of premium triple-A games and apps is available for the device.

We've compiled a list of the games and apps that we think are going to make a difference on the big screen. If you have pre-ordered your Apple TV, bookmark this article as you'll want to download these apps as soon as your shiny new box drops on your doorstep.

Apple launches new app on iOS and Android for controlling its Beats Pill+ speaker

Apple on Thursday released a new application for Android and iOS called Beats Pill+. As the name suggests, the app allows device users to manage and control their Beats Pill+ Bluetooth speaker, which was announced earlier this month.

In the description, Apple says the Beats Pill+ app "puts you and your friends at the center of your music like never before." You can use it to easily pair your device with your Pill+ speaker, rename it for fast identification and much more.

Minimal puzzler ‘rop’ goes free as Apple’s App of the Week

Heads up gamers, Apple has just named MildMania's 'rop' its App of the Week for this week. This means that from now through next Thursday, you can pick up the popular puzzler for free for both iPhone and iPad, a $1 savings over its usual price.

For those who haven't played it, rop is described as a mind-bending, minimal puzzler with nearly 200 beautiful levels. In each of those levels, you must rearrange the different pieces of rope on a hexagonal grid to match the shape that you are given.

Watch Apple’s Cue explaining Apple TV benefits

Eddy Cue, Apple's Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services, gave CNN a tour of the new Apple TV, which hits Apple's retail stores tomorrow.

Reiterating that to Apple, television is about apps, Cue called the fourth-generation box “absolutely” more than a hobby project for Apple.

“We have over 20 million Apple TV's in households today,” he said. “We think this is really going to revolutionize television. So this is a big deal for us.”

Google launches YouTube Red, charges iOS users Apple tax

Following its official announcement less than two weeks ago, Google today formally launched a new music and video subscription service—YouTube Red.

In exchange for a monthly fee of $9.99, Red provides ad-free access to videos across all of YouTube, the ability to save clips and playlists for offline use and support for background playback. All these perks are available to Red members users across desktop, mobile and the web.

Due to Apple's 30 percent cut on In-App Purchases, Google has decided to raise Red's subscriptions on iOS devices to $12.99 per month in order to compensate for the Apple tax. A free 30-day trial of YouTube Red (US only) is available to those who want to try out the service and see if it's worth the asking price to them.

Microsoft folds Sunrise functionality into much-improved Outlook for iOS app

Developers of Microsoft-owned calendar app, called Sunrise, announced in a blog post that the app won't be receiving updates going forward as the team has worked hard on integrating Sunrise functionality into the Windows maker's much-improved mobile Outlook client for iPhone and iPad.

Sunrise Calendar was last updated in the App Store more than four months ago, adding integration with Office 365 events. Just yesterday, Outlook for iOS received a fresh new look alongside a brand native Apple Watch app built on watchOS 2.

At the same time, Microsoft announced that the mobile Outlook app has gone from a couple hundred downloads to more than thirty million installs on smartphones and tablets.

New Apple TV lacking Siri search for Apple Music and App Store apps

As the new Apple TV is scheduled to hit Apple's retail stores tomorrow, first reviews are now in. Journalists who were given a chance to spend some quality time with review units are praising evolutionary improvements to the living room experience while highlighting untapped potential for the refreshed $149 device.

One of the common complaints focuses on Siri and its inability to search apps for the Apple TV in a dedicated App Store. In addition, reports are noting that users won't be able to search Apple Music with their voice at launch, the omission Apple claims will be addressed with a software update due at the beginning of next year.

How to go into and exit Split View multitasking mode from within Mission Control on your Mac

macOS has a nifty little productivity boost that makes it both easy and fun to run two apps side-by-side in your Mac's native full-screen mode.

This can be indispensable when focusing on specific tasks at hand while disregarding everything else, like online research and taking notes, or blogging and writing, or reading news while keeping tabs on your Twitter feed and so forth.

This mode, called Split View, is normally activated by dragging an app to either side of the screen by its window's upper left green button, and then choosing another app to fit the other half of the screen.

But the multi-step process is often a tad confusing for novice users, especially those accustomed to Windows 7's effortless window snapping. Thankfully, your Mac supports creating Split Views right within Mission Control, which in macOS has been tidied up and made clearer and more obvious.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to go, and exit, Split View just by dragging app windows inside your Mac's Mission Control.

Apple’s marketing honcho discusses pursuit of perfection, intense team collaboration and more

Phil Schiller, 55, is a man of many superlatives, not least of which is the famous 'can't innovate anymore, my ass' message to Apple haters during the unveiling of the radically revamped Mac Pro workstation.

And as a guy who oversees Apple's marketing initiatives across the globe and acts as the steward of the company's relationship with developers, it's his nature and his job to promote collaboration between engineers, designers and executives.

In a rare and interesting interview with Mashable editor-at-large Lance Ulanoff (Mashable? This is the new Apple, get used to it), Schiller talks in detail about internal collaboration that makes radical products like the new 12-inch MacBook possible.

He and John Terns, who is Vice President of Mac and iPad engineering, also touch on a bunch of topics that are dear to the hearts of Apple's many fans, including an upcoming flying saucer-shaped campus, hybrid computing devices, Apple's design processes and much more.