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It’s been an interesting journey for Apple as it has figured out its manufacturing plans for the new Mac Pro. While the US factory that produced the 2013 Mac Pro in Austin, Texas is indeed handling the 2019 Mac Pro after all, that’s not the case for international customers. Back in June, not too long after the Mac Pro was first unveiled, we heard that Apple was reportedly going to use its vendor Quanta to manufacture the pro desktop in China, marking a shift from the previous generation Mac Pro that was made in the US....

Refreshed 2015 MacBook Air and Pro models are now available at major US retailers following their announcement at Apple’s Spring Forward event on March 9th. B&H offers $5 off and no tax at the time of purchase outside of New York on the new MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros as well as a free copy of Parallels. 2014 versions are discounted. MacMall also offers $5 off the new MacBook Airs and Pros and tax only in a few states....

With Samsung having argued in its opening statement that the $2B sum being claimed by Apple for five alleged patent violations was “a gross, gross exaggeration,” Apple called two expert witnesses to explain why it believes the sum is reasonable. Re/code reports that first MIT professor John Hauser carried out a form of trade-off analysis to determine the value of individual features to customers. Apple used a similar analysis from Hauser in the first Apple-Samsung trial in which he found customers might pay as much as $100 more for a Samsung phone that included patented features …...

If you were wondering why manufacturers seemed to be rather slow in launching HomeKit-compatible devices, it may all be down to Apple’s stringent security requirements. Forbes reports that manufacturers are finding it hard to incorporate the extremely secure encryption standards demanded by Apple in order to achieve MFi certification for their products. While mains-powered WiFi kit is coping, the processing workload in battery-powered Bluetooth LE devices is leading to extremely slow response times, say manufacturers … Apple is requiring device makers using both WiFi and Bluetooth LE to use complicated encryption with 3072-bit keys, as well as the super secure Curve25519, which is an elliptic curve used for digital signatures and exchanging encrypted keys....

Apple this evening has released a handful of new resources for developers who are building augmented reality applications. The company has outlined the best practices for building such applications in its Human Interface Guidelines, it said in a blog post. Apple published an update to its developer website this evening announcing the release of the new Human Interface Guidelines for ARKit. The company has made the documentation available via its ARKit website, as well....

The latest drone flyover of Apple’s under construction Campus 2 headquarters in Cupertino arrives today showing recent progress at the site expected to officially open its doors early this year. The footage comes courtesy of drone pilot and YouTuber Matthew Roberts. In the video, we can see that Apple has done a lot of cleaning up in recent weeks as it continues with landscaping and earthwork on the surrounding site. Apple expects to wrap up the landscaping work sometime in Q2 this year, according to its latest general project schedule, but it could begin moving in as early as later this month....

After 25 hours to make its case in the Apple vs. Samsung trial in San Jose, Calif., Apple wrapped up 14 hours this afternoon by calling CPA Terry Musika to the stand. The Verge reported that, while on the stand, Musika broke down just how much money Apple lost due to Samsung’s patent infringement, which is the highlight of the entire case. According to Musika and Apple’s calculations, the company lost 2 million iPhone and iPad sales or $488....

Earlier today a new survey over Apple Music usage surfaced with data over Apple’s new venture into the streaming music space, and Apple has decided to respond (vaguely) to at least one data point. MusicWatch’s survey results said that some 61 percent of its participants have turned off the auto-renew function on Apple Music, hinting that they would not be paying subscribers after the three-month free trial period. With the message being potentially interpreted that only 39 percent of current Apple Music users planning to become paid users this fall, Apple has responded to the survey by clarifying (somewhat) that a higher 79 percent of users that started the trial are continuing to use it, leaving only 21 percent of Apple’s 11 million subscribers as defectors....

Apple Store, UTC in San Diego has been hit with a “Notice of Failed Inspection” through the county’s Price Accuracy Inspection Program for charging customers a higher than advertised price. The notice, which Apple has to display in the window of the Apple Store for ten days through November 22, reads: We spoke with an employee at the Apple Store, UTC who told us the pricing discrepancy wasn’t related to pricing on Apple’s own products, but rather a third-party accessory....

Flickr today released their list of most popular cameras and brands used for photos shared on their site this year, and it’s no surprise that Apple’s iPhone continues to top the list. The iPhone 6 alone tops the list of most popular camera on Flickr in 2015, accounting for 5% of all photographers on the photo sharing site this year. Various models of the iPhone from 2015 and earlier still in use take 8 out of the 20 slots on the top camera list this year....

Apple’s new 16-inch MacBook Pro offers a range of great improvements headlined by a more reliable scissor switch Magic Keyboard. However, there are a couple of notable components that didn’t see an upgrade. The 16-inch MacBook Pro features a return to the scissor switch keyboard, can be configured with up to 64Gb of RAM, has a new six-speaker system, improvement thermal system, and much more. However, it unfortunately still uses an 802....

Apple’s Services growth is likely to slow during the current quarter, say two separate analyst surveys. Services revenue is going to be increasingly important to Apple at a time of flat iPhone sales. But while the market does expect Services to continue to grow, the rate of growth is expected to be dramatically slower in the March quarter … A report on PED 3.0 cites its own analyst survey, together with one carried out by Visible Alpha....

[0034]The device supports a variety of applications, such as one or more of the following: a game application, a telephone application, a video conferencing application, an e-mail application, an instant messaging application, a blogging application, a photo management application, a digital camera application, a digital video camera application, a web browsing application, a digital music player application, and/or a digital video player application. If this patent comes to fruition, the next iPhone/iPod/tablet interface might be nothing like anything we’ve seen before, and it could perhaps explain why we’ve been hearing the possibility of a “new type of interaction” to accompany the tablet....

Apple has sent an email developers alerting them to the fact that certain older betas of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite will no longer be able to take advantage of CloudKit functions like MailDrop, iCloud Photo Library, or iCloud Drive. This is likely due to an older sandbox server being taken offline as the operating systems come closer to reaching their public releases. Developers who wish to keep testing against these features will need to update to at least beta 5 of each operating system....

Signage for a new Apple Store in Brisbane, Australia has started appearing. The store will be located in the MacArthur Chambers building. The store doesn’t have an official opening date yet, but the second week of January seems to be a pretty decent estimation. [tweet https://twitter.com/ifostore/status/417444455042400256 align=’center’] The new location will be the twenty-first Apple Store in the country. The new store will also help push forward Tim Cook’s vision of selling even more Apple devices through first-party retail stores....

December 1st is World AIDS Day and as expected, Apple is turning its retail store logos red to commemorate the event. Additionally, Apple has published a pair of stories in the App Store highlighting its partnership with (RED) and how you can “help save a life.” As the clock turns to December 1st around the world, Apple retail stores are turning their logos red in honor of World AIDS Day. Stores in Japan, Australia, and more have already made the switch....

This week we learned that the iPhone 11 Pro still tracks location data even when users have turned the features off. Apple gave a limited response saying that “We do not see any actual security implications,” and that it was working as intended. However, now Apple has followed up with more details about why the iPhone 11 Pro is doing this and that it will include a toggle in an iOS update to stop location tracking totally....

Apple Retina iMacs are up to $670 off, the latest iTunes movie sale is packed with $5 deals, and you can save a few bucks on Elago’s new Apple Watch Dock. All that and more is in today’s 9to5Toys Lunch Break. B&H discounts Apple Retina iMacs for July 4th B&H is now taking up to $670 off previous generation Apple iMacs, offering substantial savings and new all-time lows on various listings....

Gizmodo Brazil has gotten their hands on the cheaper iPhone 4, which is codenamed N90A. The cheaper iPhone 4 was spotted at Brazil’s new Foxconn plant, which means we’ll likely start seeing our first “Made in Brazil” devices from Apple next week. The phone looks identical to the iPhone 4 of today, and will likely pack less storage than today’s models; 8GB in all likelihood. Their report corroborates our claims of an N90A iPhone 4 appearing in Apple’s inventory system for an imminent launch....

Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) was introduced back in 2017 as a way to combat what the company described as overly-intrusive user tracking when browsing the web. The ad industry wasn’t happy about it, and something of a quarrel ensued. Today, it’s come up with a proposed alternative to ITP – but the idea is a hugely controversial one… Background I explained at the time why the ad industry was unhappy with ITP....