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Chip production for the first Apple Silicon Macs is reported to be on schedule for launch before the end of the year. A new supply-chain report today says that mass-production is set to kick off in the final quarter of the year … Digitimes carries the report. The number of chips per wafer varies considerably, depending on a range of factors which obviously include the size of the chip and the diameter of the wafers, but can also be significantly impacted by the defect rate....

arsTechnica drew our attention to some unusually forthright comments from Apple’s lawyers on the subject of patent trolls, in a public FTC filing. Apple revealed that it had been the subject of 92 lawsuits by patent assertion entities over the course of the past three years, more than any other company. Apple’s legal team used particularly direct language when referring to Lodsys, a company which claims to hold a patent on in-app purchases and which litigates against small developers who cannot afford the legal costs of fighting the case … It would be interesting to see what would happen if Apple offered to fund the legal costs of the next developer to be targeted …

IfoAppleStore drew our attention to the fact that Apple is opening its third Dutch retail store on Saturday, in Den Haag (The Hague). Apple’s existing stores in the Netherlands are in Amsterdam and Haarlem. While Amsterdam is the official capital of the Netherlands, Den Haag is where the country’s government is based, being home to its parliament and Supreme Court. The Hague is best known for the International Criminal Court, where war crimes and crimes against humanity are heard … Apple recently obtained a European trademark for the design of its stores, and has been busy updating everything from the visuals through the organizational structure to the customer service approach of its retail store network....

Apple has published a new series of videos in celebration of Earth Day that both highlight the company’s green energy efforts and explain some of the science behind clean energy today. The video series includes comical illustrations and narrations from Apple execs including VP Lisa Jackson. Each video poses a question and features an Apple employee explaining the company’s environmental strategy: Do solar farms feed yaks? Can we produce zero waste?...

Maybe Jobs’ liver transplant ordeal gave him the final answer. During his stay in the hospital, he had to have seen what an absurd nightmare of a bureaucracy the US health care system was and at the same time what benefit a tablet could bring to the whole operation. Doctors often use bulky, three pound tablets to do their work. Can you imagine Jobs in the hospital seeing people running around with an unreliable Windows Vista tablet....

Apple’s North Carolina datacenter has been kept shroud in secrecy since the work began on the 500,000-square foot site. Apple being Apple, they even prevented aerial imagery of the $1 billion facility to appear in mapping services such as Google Earth, explains Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt: Apple has conveniently pinged Google just days before the iCloud announcement, likely asking them to lift the embargo on the North Carolina satellite imagery in their mapping services....

Apple’s Black Friday sales started going live online earlier today in a number of Apple Stores around the world, including: Australia, New Zealand, Germany, United Kingdom, and more. Now, Apple’s deals for the United States and Canada are live with the expected $100 in savings on MacBooks and smaller savings for iPads, iPods, and select accessories. While Apple’s deals are in line with what we expected from previous years, most of these products can be found even cheaper through third-party retailers today....

Apple’s original content and video efforts have been described as scattered at best in earlier reports, but now it looks like the company is trying to do something about that. According to a new report from The Information, Apple is currently in the process of searching for a programming chief to spearhead its video efforts… The report explains that former HBO programming head Michael Lombardo recently met with Apple about the position and could be a candidate....

Along with Apple quadrupling its recycling program, the company today shared its 2019 Environmental Responsibility Report which details the progress its has made over the last year. Among its results include a 35% reduction in carbon footprint over the last three years, progress towards its goal of a mining-free future, and more. Apple updated its home page today highlighting some of the environmental achievements it has made over the last year along with its full 2019 progress report....

The Apple Watch’s launch is scheduled to occur in the “spring,” according to Apple Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores Angela Ahrendts, later in 2015 than some had originally anticipated. Ahrendts stated the timeframe to retail employees in a video message, a transcript of which was provided by a source. While explaining that employees need to conserve energy for upcoming shopping seasons, Ahrendts stated, “we’re going into the holidays, we’ll go into Chinese New Year, and then we’ve got a new watch launch coming in the spring:”...

The Golden Globes are today announcing their nominations and it turns out Apple has a chance to make a splash this awards season with The Morning Show. Apple’s flagship original show received multiple nominations across a couple of categories, most significantly as a candidate for best TV series drama. Stars Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon also picked up best actress nominations for their roles in Apple’s show. Update: Apple highlights Golden Globe nominations and notes “Apple TV+ Becomes First Streaming Service to Earn Nominations in its Launch Year....

Today’s best deals include Apple’s M1-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro, plus you can save on various iPads, and Samsung storage. Hit the jump for all that and more in the latest 9to5Toys Lunch Break. Take $100 off Apple’s M1-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro Apple’s new MacBook Pros feature the brand’s first silicon chips, which promises a “giant leap in CPU, GPU, and machine learning performance.” This model offers up to 20 hours of battery life, the best ever for a MacBook Pro, 8GB worth of RAM, and 512GB worth of solid-state storage....

Apple has officially launched its Black Friday promotions in the United States. As usual, the company isn’t offering straight cash discounts on any of its products, but rather rewarding customers with an Apple Store gift card with select purchases. You can get up to a $150 gift card with your purchase, but that hardly compares to deals we’re seeing elsewhere. We’re also seeing significant accessory deals across the web… Apple has never been one to go all-out with Black Friday discounts and this year is no different....

Apple recently hosted a Mario-creator Shigeru Miyamoto interview with Katie Linendoll at one of its retail stores to promote Super Mario Run for iOS, and now you can view that interview on iTunes or Apple’s Podcasts app. Apple published both audio and video versions of the 41 minute interview over the weekend (via MacStories) which you can download or stream for free. Here’s the description: Super Mario Run launches exclusively on iOS Wednesday as a free download with a single $9....

In the latest development of the Epic vs Apple battle, the former is giving a heads up to customers who have used the Sign in with Apple feature to change their login credentials for Epic accounts. That’s because Apple will stop allowing the login option for Epic games accounts on September 11. Follow along for what to do if you have been using Sign in with Apple. Yesterday we saw Apple officially file a countersuit seeking damages from Epic Games breaking its developer contract....

Apple’s Campus 2 project will also house a 1,000-person auditorium off the main R&D ‘Mothership’, though this structure looks even more other-worldly. The Norman Foster mockups from Cupertino.org, and dug up by Apple Gazette last week, show an auditorium entrance surrounded by glass and with a metal roof. The auditorium itself will be underground from the glass-surrounded auditorium. For its product launch events, Apple has typically either used its own Town Hall at its main Cupertino HQ or buildings in San Francisco such as Moscone West or the Yerba Buena Center....

However, a figurative trademark is much stronger as it “confers the exclusive right to the trademark in its concrete figurative version, whereas a word trademark confers the exclusive right to the word(s) in any font with or without figurative elements”, the publication explains. The patent application was filed today with the Patent & Trademark Office in China and covers covering cases, sleeves, sheaths and pouches for computers as well as business cases, claiming the above three-dimensional shape as an element of the trademark....

Earlier this week, Apple announced a “Shot on iPhone” competition. This contest allows photographers to submit pictures taken with their iPhone, with a panel of judges selecting the top 10 best photos. Those photos will then be placed on billboards and other Apple “marketing channels.” Today, Apple has made a notable change to the contest after criticism… Shortly after the contest’s announcement, there was backlash about the fact that Apple was going to use these images in marketing, but not compensate the photographers....

Apple has apparently been revising its app review strategy this week and has decided to reverse a previous decision that banned MassRoots, a marijuana-centric social app, from its software storefront. The application was booted from the App Store late last year (though it lasted much longer on the store than some other apps). According to App Store guideline 2.18: MassRoots announced today that Apple has agreed to allow the app back in the store as long as it is restricted to users located in one of the 23 states where medical (or recreational, in some cases) marijuana is legal....

Two of Apple’s important developer tools are seeing downtime. Apple says “some users” are seeing problems with App Store Connect App Processing and TestFlight. Apple noted the outages on its Developer System Status page today. Notably the App Store Connect App Processing has been ongoing since yesterday January 13 at 12:15 pm PT. Meanwhile, Apple says that problems with TestFlight started today at 12:34 pm PT. For the App Store Connect App Processing, Apple says “Some users are affected” and that “Users are experiencing a problem with this service....