Apple's efforts to bring Apple Pay technology to China, a region that could help boost payment numbers, are stalling, according to Caixin Online.
Despite earlier word that a deal between Apple and China's UnionPay is close, Caixin Online says neither party has reached any agreements and no timetable for cooperation has been set.
Apple's annual summer pilgrimage for its Mac and iOS developers, the Worldwide Developers Conference, is kicking off on Monday, June 8, 2015 and lasting through Friday, June 12, the company confirmed this morning.
The five-day conference, twenty-sixth in a row, will take place at San Francisco’s Moscone West, “with more sessions than ever before streamed” online.
Like prior WWDCs, this year's conference will give Apple's developer community and users around the world much more than a glimpse into the future of iOS and OS X.
IBM announced on Monday that it will be expanding its partnership with Apple in an effort to help transform medical research. Utilizing its Watson artificial intelligence tech, it's created a new Health Cloud platform that can support health data gathered by iOS apps using Apple's ResearchKit and HealthKit frameworks.
Apple first introduced HealthKit in the summer of last year, as a platform for developers to create apps that integrate with iOS 8's new Health application. This year, it decided to build on that premise with ResearchKit, which allows medical researchers to collect app data from users with diseases such as diabetes or cancer.
IBM will push things even further with Health Cloud, which will de-identify and store health data in a secure, scalable cloud system that enables researchers to access and share data in an open ecosystem environment. Apps that use HealthKit and ResearchKit will be able to easily store, aggregate and model data, enriching research.
Those of you who enjoy app deals may be interested to know that Rules! has gone free for a limited time. Apple is currently offering promo codes for the popular brain-teasing puzzler, which typically costs $2.99, within its Apple Store app.
For those who haven't played it before, Rules! is a well-designed puzzle game that puts your memory and reflex skills to the test. Players are presented with a 16-card board, and asked to remove cards based on increasingly difficult guidelines.
Apple seeded the first beta of iOS 8.4 to developers on Monday, less than a week after releasing iOS 8.3 to the public. Today's beta includes an all-new stock Music application, which Apple says will make exploring your music collection "easier and more fun."
The app features a beautiful, more-simplified design, with quick access to things like recently-added music and your custom playlists. It also offers a more streamlined iTunes Radio experience, a new Global Search option, Up Next queuing and much more.
Good news today for those hoping that their Apple Watches will arrive before their estimated ship dates. MacRumors reports that a reader, who emailed Tim Cook over the weekend regarding the lengthy lead times for the wearable, received a response from the executive team saying that preorders will most likely ship sooner than expected.
"[Apple] said that June preorders will most likely ship sooner than June," said reader Andrew Turko, after speaking with someone on Apple's executive relations team. "Of course he didn't make any promises, but that's the reason Apple is announcing such an extended ship date after all - to avoid disappointment through false guarantees."
Apple's customary 30 percent cut on content sold through iTunes has been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because participators get to enjoy a frictionless payment system without having to host content themselves or cover bandwidth fees.
A curse because some high-profile sstudios wouldn't bend to Apple's rules of doing business. But the Cupertino firm may have softened its stance, at least when it comes to the Apple TV, as Re/code revealed Monday that Apple is actually taking a fifteen percent cut for premium Apple TV video networks.
Both review versions of the Watch Apple sent to journalists and demo units available in retail stores sport a hidden, undocumented port that Apple chose not to talk about publicly.
Resembling the Lightning connector on iPhones and iPads, it's reportedly used for diagnostics and direct access to the Watch's operating system, TechCrunch said in March. Slipping off the bottom strap connector slot of the Watch reveals the hidden port.
Based on social media postings and images Daring Fireball's John Gruber shared last weekend, it's basically a 6-dot brass contact array.
In this post, I'm going to lay down a few possible uses for the mysterious port and explain why I think it's crucial that Watches that'll be shipping into customers' hands on April 24 come outfitted with it.
Monday, Apple announced a major update to its pro-grade video editing and processing programs for the Mac — Final Cut Pro X, Motion and Compressor — with a bevy of new features for motion graphics and key enhancements available to accelerate video editing, packaging and delivery.
“From Hollywood blockbuster directors to first time movie makers, Final Cut Pro X is changing the way we edit movies today,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. “The updated Final Cut Pro X, Motion and Compressor make it even easier to edit, title and package everything from short videos to feature-length films.”
Final Cut Pro 10.2 introduces new easy to use 3D titles, improved masking for color grading and effects, and native support for more camera formats, as well as GPU-accelerated RED RAW processing.
If you use desktop file managers such as PhoneView, iFunBox, iTools, iExplorer and others to browse app folders on your non-jailbroken iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, you have another reason to stay away from the latest iOS 8.3 update as it prevents those programs from functioning properly.
As first reported by Joe Rossignol of MacRumors, developers of these apps have confirmed that iOS 8.3 imposes additional restrictions on sandbox access.
In iFunbox, trying to access an app folder on an iOS device running iOS 8.3 produces a message saying “App Sandbox access is restricted by Apple to ones with iTunes File Sharing enabled since iOS 8.3”. This change does not affect jailbroken devices which can access app sandboxes as usual via OpenSSH for complete filesystem privileges and command line access.
When Apple's design chief Jonathan Ive opined ahead of the Apple Watch unveiling last year that Switzerland was in trouble, many commentators waved off the comment as pure marketing talk.
But surveys cited in today's note by Key Banc researches clearly show that a much stronger-than-anticipated reception to the device may indeed give fashionable watch brands a pause.
The truth is, sales of traditional watches have already slowed as would-be buyers were holding off purchases in the wake of the Apple Watch's arrival.
The “disappointing” Apple Watch has seen an estimated 957,000 sales on its first day of pre-orders in the United States alone, filing as better-than-expected initial success than its first iPhone or the iPod. By comparison, Apple sold a millionth iPhone after 74 days. It took 28 days to get to that milestone with the iPad and two years with the iPod.
According to a poll of 9,080 online shoppers by Slice Intelligence, which measures digital commerce by tracking consumer e-receipts, an average of 1.3 Watches were purchased per customer, with $503.83 spent per item, indicating some fans bought more than one device.