A report earlier this week alleged that one of Apple’s European resellers told a customer it would receive first AirPods stock on November 17 and start selling the earphones by November 18-19.
Contradicting the story, Barclays analysts heard chatter in the Asian supply chain that mass production of the delayed accessory is scheduled to kick off in December in time for Christmas, but in limited quantities, Yahoo Finance reported Friday.
After analyzing the latest chatter in Apple's supply chain following a trip to Asia this week, Barclays Research analysts predicted the Cupertino firm will offer a next-generation 'iPhone 8' in 2017 in two sizes, one with a screen measuring five inches and the other featuring a 5.8-inch display.
Because the handsets will utilize curved screens, they're expected to have a bezel-less design allowing them to increase display size while retaining the same overall size as the current 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhones.
Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s top contract manufacturer and the biggest assembler of Apple products, reported rising revenues for the September quarter and a decline in net profit. Revenue for the July-September quarter climbed from NT$1.066 trillion ($33.43 billion) a year earlier to NT$1.075 trillion ($33.7 billion) thanks to brisk sales of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
However, losses produced by Foxconn-owned electronics maker Sharp caused net profit to fall to NY$34.6 billion ($1.09 billion) from NY$37.9 billion ($1.19 billion) a year earlier.
According to Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom in the Financial Times newspaper this morning, the popular photo-sharing service will be gaining the ability to stream live video. “Live is really exciting for us,” Systrom said without detailing when it'll launch in the mobile app. Russian news outlet Tjournal.ru was first to report that Instagram appears to have been testing the upcoming feature with a subset of its Russian users.
Spotify's desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux has been found to be continuously writing massive amounts of data to local storage for no apparent reason—even when the app is simply sitting idle. As noted in Spotify's support forum, on Reddit and elsewhere, users are seeing the desktop app write tens of gigabytes of data to local storage every minute or so. On systems outfitted with SSDs like most Macs, excessive data writes can reduce the lifetime of flash storage.
That's because SSDs have a finite amount of write capacity and are prone to wear and tear. A Spotify spokesperson told ArsTechnica that a fix was underway via an update that's being rolled out as we speak.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple supplier Japan Display could receive a bailout of around ¥75 billion ($703 million) from the government-backed fund Innovation Network Corp. of Japan (INCJ), which is its largest shareholder with a 36 percent share.
People familiar with the matter said that the display maker might receive new financing from INCJ through an issuance of subordinated bonds and may possibly get “additional support” from the fund.
The Unicode Consortium has proposed adding 51 new emoji to the upcoming Unicode 10 release. Emojipedia points to the filing, which has been posted on the Unicode.org website and features a full list of the suggested new characters.
As you can see in the image above, the proposed emoji include a giraffe, cup with a straw, a vampire and a zebra. And digging through the list in the filing reveals even more interesting images such as "shocked face with exploding head."
In August, the European Commission slammed Apple with a tax bill from hell over a sweetheart deal it received from Ireland—which, in the Commission's view, constitutes “illegal state aid”.
Dublin promptly promised to join Apple's fight against EU and it's put its money where its mouth is.
Michael Noonan, Finance Minister in the Irish government, said that Dublin today challenged the EU judgment by submitting an appeal to the European courts in a bid to block the decision, ArsTechnica reports.
About a year ago, a certain California firm quietly snapped up VocalIQ, a UK-based startup that used machine learning to build conversational virtual assistants. Subsequent reports noted that Apple kept most of the startup's employees to work out of their unmarked Cambridge, UK office on integrating VocalIQ technology into Siri.
Citing sources with knowledge of the matter, Business Insider reports that Apple is now looking to increase the size of the Siri team in Cambridge.
You no longer need to have Instagram's standalone Boomerang app installed on your iOS device to create looping videos: thanks to the latest Instagram update that went live on the App Store today, Boomerang features are now available to you from within Instagram 9.7 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Instagram for iOS also includes other enhancements, such as support for @mentions and links in Stories.
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”.
Daydream, Google's new Android-powered virtual reality platform, was announced at the company's annual developer pilgrimage in May. Daydream View, Google's first virtual reality headset, is now available for purchase from a number of retailers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia for $79 apiece.