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Apple’s rollout of iPhone 7 continues early next month as the company today confirms a November 4 launch date for four additional countries. iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will arrive in Armenia, Mali, Guinea-Bissau, and Central African Republic on November 4. Apple still has over 30 countries that it has yet to confirm a launch date for, including much of Latin America and the Caribbean. It has, however, already launched the device or confirmed launch dates for over 75+ countries....

I love iCloud Drive. I love how integrated it is into macOS and iOS, and I long ago moved most of my documents away from Dropbox (except for Shared Folders). I am always looking for new ways to back up my photos, though. Since I keep an active Microsoft Office subscription, I thought I would use the 1TB of storage as another place to upload my photos. When I was using the OneDrive app, I noticed it had a Personal Vault section that I thought would be a great addition to iCloud Drive for storing sensitive files....

What is all of Apple’s money for? According to some analysts, it might be for a rainy day – perhaps the tech industry will hit a dry spell? Maybe Apple will hit an innovation wall? More likely however, Apple wants to give itself the ability to make a megabuy – like the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. (But one that makes more sense hopefully) The trends have implications for both companies. Cash translates into the ability to consider acquisitions and other potentially business-boosting deals....

Yesterday, Apple blocked Samsung’s Galaxy Tab in the EU as it had in Australia previously. Today, it is blocking Motorola’s XOOM. According to Reuters, this is a high risk strategy for Apple maintaining its market share lead. The cases could take months, if not years to come to court and Apple will have to provide more substantial evidence in subsequent court cases that the design of the Galaxy infringed its patents or copied their designs in order to make any bans permanent....

Two new reports today provide some intel on Apple’s future retail store plans. First, a report from SocketSite (via sfist.com), citing a “plugged-in tipster,” claimed Apple is eyeing an old Bank of America building at 400 Castro Street and the corner of Market for a new San Francisco retail store: Apple also plans to open its first retail store in Berlin in the capital’s upscale shopping district known as Ku’Damm, according to a report from Bloomberg that cited “a person with knowledge of the plan....

Apple’s Clips app for iPhone and iPad has been updated with new creative assets including content from Pixar’s Incredibles 2 movie. The latest update includes six more Selfie Scenes that use the TrueDepth camera on the latest iPhones and iPad Pros, and the new version powers them with the Neutral Engine on the new A12 Bionic Chip. Apple first teased today’s release with a quick mention back in September at the iPhone XS event....

As we head into the holiday season, Apple is continuing to push its latest iPhone 7 lineup. This evening, the company shared a new advertisement highlighting the dual-camera capabilities of the iPhone 7 Plus and its real-world applications. The ad starts by showing a professionally shot clip of kids reenacting Romeo and Juliet. The video then cuts away to show that what we’re actually seeing is a school production of the play with a parent proudly video taping their child in the play....

Apple’s record-breaking holiday quarter catapulted the stock north of $500 a share for the first time, and now the company’s market size is skewing some pretty important market indices, including the S&P 500 index. Already Apple of California passed 10 percent of all of NASDAQ value and now the company won an “ex-” designation on the S&P 500 index. Beginning in 1957, S&P has published prices of 500 large-cap common stocks actively traded in the United States through the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ....

We learned last week that a second Apple employee has been accused of stealing trade secrets from the company’s Project Titan research into self-driving car technology. The FBI was called in, and the criminal complaint now filed by the FBI reveal some of the steps Apple takes to protect product development secrets … We already knew that Apple has monitoring systems in place to prevent or detect certain approaches to data theft, likely including disabling or logging screen captures....

Apple has just posted the latest iPhone 7 ad on their YouTube channel today, entitled ‘Balloons’ for obvious reasons. The video follows a balloon throughout various scenes as it eventually finds it way to other balloons, and into someone’s window. It’s only clear at the end that the ad spot is for the iPhone 7 with the balloon tie-in promoting the new Messages features on iOS 10. At first glance the ad looks like a potential showcase for the iPhone 7’s wide color gamut display, something that has been lauded as being record-breaking and one of the best performing displays ever tested....

Apple has recently updated its online support portal on Apple.com with a more modern look and feel. The new design puts easier access to support for each of Apple’s products, with large images and clean lines. The older design (screenshotted below) was much more boxy and cluttered. In the old layout, customers would have to click through to ‘All Products’ to get help about more obscure products. With the new design, the infinitely scrolling carousel puts everything on the portal homepage....

The iPhone-Dev team dashed avid jailbreakers’ hopes with a morning post (via Ars) explaining that with iOS 5 Apple upped the ante in its cat-and-mouse game with the jailbreak community. According to the team, starting at iOS 5 and onward you will no longer be able to use iTunes to restore to previous firmware versions using saved SHSH blobs (created with tools such as Cydia or TinyUmbrella). Previously, jailbreakers always had peace of mind knowing they could revert back to a previous firmware should anything go wrong....

Apple has reportedly ended its long-running credit card partnership with Barclays. The process of winding down the relationship started last year ahead of Apple launching Apple Card in the US. For many years, Barclays was the partner bank that Apple offered a rewards credit card. The partnership did continue on after Apple ended the Barclays Rewards Card last year with Apple promoting a basic Barclaycard Financing Visa. However, Apple Card became a more appealing option in a variety of ways....

Apple’s official Twitter account has been hacked this afternoon as part of a wide-ranging Twitter compromise. The official @Apple account is one of many high-profile accounts to have been hacked this afternoon as part of the Bitcoin scheme. Update: Twitter appears to have disabled the ability for verified accounts to tweet in wake of this compromise. Update: Twitter has restored tweeting power to verified accounts as of 8:40 p.m. ET on 6/15...

A small request for the Apple Store app … I mentioned recently dropping into an Apple Store to see whether they might be able to replace my broken Watch on the spot. It turned out they couldn’t, as they all need to go to the repair depot even when it’s obvious that a replacement will be needed. That disappointment aside, it was a relatively painless experience … Despite the online booking system often showing no appointments available for around a week, they had some walk-in slots on this occasion....

The North Carolina Utilities Commission approved (PDF) Apple’s proposal to build a 20-megawatt solar farm today. Early filings suggested Apple aimed to position the farm by Nov. 1 across the street from its Maiden, N.C., date center, with operations starting Dec. 21. According to MacRumors, the official proposal filed on Feb. 15, and then it underwent to staff review, a public notice/comment session, and feedback from the State Clearinghouse. The NCUC officially approved the proposal on Monday and completed the certificate issuance Thursday:...

Apple has just announced its fiscal Q1 2015 earnings call will take place on January 27 to report earnings for the three months ending in December of last year. As always, Apple will be hosting a conference call with investors and press and will also live stream audio from the call on its website. Last quarter, at its Q4 2014 earnings call, Apple announced revenue of $42.1b with sales of 39m iPhones, 12....

. Update: AAPL has briefly dipped below 400 and continues to trade around that mark. This morning, Apple’s stock has reached its lowest levels per share since late 2011. Since the beginning of 2012, Apple’s stock has rallied all the way up to over $700 per share, but since the end of the 2012, the stock has gone through a downward spiral. Today, the stock is trading at a little over $400 per share, with a daily low of $400....

Apple today has rolled out updates to a pair of its iOS applications. The Apple Store app has been updated to version 5.1 with some notable improvements to search, while the WWDC has received a post-event update with bug fixes… Firs and foremost, the Apple Store app now features a completely new search interface. Similar to the App Store and iTunes Store apps, the search interface now highlights trending searches in case you need some inspiration....

So the Apple Store went down again briefly last night. It goes down all of the time. Probably about once or twice a week. Sometimes for as much as a few hours. Much more than the Dell site or HP’s site. Or at least it certainly seems that way because just about every Mac and gadget blog announces each outage. When Dell’s online store goes down even for ten minutes, the losses to the company are counted in the millions of dollars....