During Apple’s Q4 2019 earnings call, Apple’s Senior Director of Investor Relations, Nancy Paxton, announced her retirement after serving during two decades at the company. Nancy Paxton has become a very familiar voice to those who tune in to Apple’s quarterly earnings calls. She’s served in her current role as Senior Director of Investor Relations and Treasury since 2007. Apple CFO Luca Maestri announced her retirement today before the Q&A session at the end of the Q4 2019 earnings call and congratulated her on her years of impactful service and noted that her sense of humor will be missed....

Following several reports from readers earlier today that Apple’s iCloud Mail service was experiencing an outage, Apple has now updated its system status page to reflect the downtime. Apple says that “some users are affected” and that “users may be unable to receive iCloud mail”. Apple’s system status page says the outage started a little before 12PM ET this morning and continues for some. iCloud Mail service also went down last month with a relatively small number of users experiencing an outage for as long as 18 hours....

Apple is rolling out a small but useful improvement to developers today. It has overhauled the Payments and Financial Reports section of iTunes Connect with a modern interface and new design that combines all relevant financial numbers into one table. This screen was long overdue for a redesign, until today featuring ugly iOS 5 era buttons and textured backgrounds. The new look reflects Apple’s modern design philosophy: flat, white and clean....

Apple’s refreshed 21-inch Retina 4K iMac sees its first discount, plus you can save on 10.2-inch iPad and Samsung’s latest external SSDs. Hit the jump for all that and more in today’s 9to5Toys Lunch Break. Apple’s refreshed 21-inch 4K Retina iMac No, this model didn’t get the fancy Nano Textured display, but there’s still a lot to like here as a back to school machine. This model offers a 21-inch Retina 4K display with 256GB of storage and 8GB worth of RAM....

A couple of weeks before Apple announces its long-awaited streaming video service, a firm of analysts has suggested that 100M subscriptions could be ‘a realistic medium-term goal’ for the company. This compares to the roughly 150M Netflix subscribers. Wedbush cautions that the number is predicated on Apple bringing on board major content partners, as well as purchasing content owners, as it would take too long to rely solely on creating original content …...

Apple has announced that July was a record setting month for App Store revenue following its earnings report last month where the company reported strong iTunes results for the three-month period that ended June (via CNBC). The company also told CNBC today that it saw “a record number of customers making transactions” for the App Store during the month: During its fiscal Q3 earnings call last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook noted that iTunes was its fastest growing business thanks to strong App Store results....

One day after sending out invites to press in the US for its iPhone event scheduled for September 10 in Cupertino, Apple has just sent invites to Chinese media outlets inviting press to a special event in Beijing on September 11. Attached to the invite (above) is the same image and tagline hinting at iPhones in various colors that Apple included on the invites for its US event. Not only will it be the first time Apple hosts such an event in China, it is also a good indication that China Mobile, the world’s largest telecom, could soon finally announce a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to its approximately 700M subscribers....

Following the official release of the iPad Pro yesterday, Apple this evening has launched a pair of new featured sections on the App Store showcasing apps that take advantage of the massive 12.9-inch Retina display the iPad Pro has. The first featured section showcases games that are optimized for iPad Pro. Apple touts that the size and power of the device takes gaming to a whole new level. Apps featured in this section include Shadowmatic, Geometry Wars, Broken Age, Smash Hit, Lumino City, Horizon Chase, and many more....

Apple has unveiled its first Macs with custom M1 chips. For its notebooks, those include the 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro and they come with what looks like some huge performance upgrades thanks to Apple’s custom M1 chip. While they also include improved FaceTime cameras, unfortunately, they’re still 720p. This year with the amount of remote work skyrocketing around the world during the pandemic, it’s become more apparent than ever that the 720p FaceTime camera on MacBooks offers a subpar experience....

After using legal action to block alternative developer conference AltConf from streaming the Monday, June 8th Worldwide Developers Conference keynote to its attendees, Apple has reversed course and will allow the conference to go on as originally planned. In a phone call today, lead AltConf organizer Rob Elkin told us that Apple has now agreed to allow his conference to stream the WWDC Kickoff Keynote and the State of the Union address geared toward developers to his audience…...

Apple’s HomePod is officially available for preorder. As announced earlier this week, preorders begin today with the first orders arriving in two weeks, on February 9th. HomePod costs $349 and is initially available in the US, UK, and Australia… HomePod was originally supposed to be released last year. Apple first announced the device at WWDC in June, but ended up delaying its release until this year. Apple didn’t offer a specific reason for the delay, only saying that it needed a little more time to make sure things were perfect for customers....

Apple last year confirmed a rumor that it was buying Shazam, but that plan stumbled last month when European antitrust regulators said that they were launching an investigation into the deal. Apple yesterday sought formal approval of the deal, and the European Commission said today that it will make a decision by April 23 – though not necessarily a final one … Reuters reports that the issue was referred to the EU competition agency after seven European countries asked it to take charge of the investigation....

Apple has a pair of new Apple Watch Activity Challenges coming this month. In addition to the annual Earth Day Challenge, Apple is also launching a new International Dance Day Challenge for the first time. This comes after the launch of Apple Fitness+, which includes an entire category of dancing workouts. Here are the details on the two challenges coming this month for Apple Watch users. April 22, 2021: Earth Day Challenge: Let’s get out and celebrate the planet on Earth Day, April 22....

To commemorate HomePod launch weekend, Apple has shared a trio of tutorial videos for the smart speaker on YouTube. Each video covers a specific topic ranging from the touch controls on top of the device to Siri control… One video, for instance, convert using the Home application to adjust HomePod settings. In the video, Apple walks users through adjusting setting such as the linked iCloud account, explicit content, and more....

Apple today released an updated aerial shot of the construction progress of its Campus 2 project in Cupertino, California. The new shot was made available on the City of Cupertino’s official website and continues to show the steady progress including more groundwork made on the future headquarters. The latest image shows a different angle of the scene and some signs of progress on the ground, and the general project schedule remains unchanged....

We’ve heard a few whispers (3 and counting) that Apple Stores both in the United States and overseas have planned overnights for Tuesday, July 24th. With OS X Mountain Lion launching “in July”, according to Apple, we believe that it is sensible to speculate that this overnight may point to a public launch the following day. This purported launch would be July 25th, a date that we speculated when Apple announced that its Q3 2012 earnings would be announced on the 24th....

Back at the September 2020 event, as part of the Apple Watch Series 6 announcement, Apple said it was collaborating with the Seattle Flu Study and the University of Washington to determine if the Apple Watch can predict respiratory illnesses, including COVID-19 … The Apple Respiratory Study is now recruiting for participants. If you want to volunteer, you must live in the greater Seattle area and be aged 22 or over....

Apple is rolling out the third macOS 10.12.4 beta for developer testing. The upcoming version of macOS Sierra is the first to bring Night Shift to the Mac. macOS Sierra 10.12.4 beta is currently only available to developers and public beta testers. Public beta versions usually come a few days after developer versions if not the same day. macOS 10.12.4 beta also includes changes to Siri, Dictation, and Apple’s PDF API:...

Apple’s Black Friday shopping event is now live in Australia, which gives a glimpse of what we can expect to see around the world when Apple’s promotions begin in the United States on Friday. As expected, Apple is giving gift cards of value up to $200 USD ($320 AUD) with select older iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, AirPods, Apple Watch and Mac purchases. The Apple deals break down as follows: Apple is giving away an $80 AUD gift card on iPhone XR and iPhone 8 models....

We told you a couple months ago that Apple was likely planning its first retail location in Sweden after job listings were discovered on Apple’s website. There were reports at the time that the store would end up somewhere in Stockholm’s city center, but the exact location was otherwise unknown. Today, local reports from 99mac and others claimed Apple is now confirming to new employees that the store will be located in the NK mall in Stockholm....