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Apple impressed investors last night with strong quarterly earnings, reporting its best June quarter ever, despite the global economic uncertainty as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt daily life worldwide. AAPL stock opened today at ~$409, a new all-time high for the company, and up 6.5% from market close yesterday. Apple made headlines in August 2018 for becoming the first public company to hit $1 trillion market cap, and it is now well on its way to becoming the first public company to cross the $2 trillion mark....

[slideshow] Along with Apple’s refreshed Apple TV capable of 1080p video output, iTunes movies also got a bump up to 1080p with the introduction of iTunes 10.6. While there were some concerns over increased file sizes, iTunes users for the most part seem to be quite pleased with the quality of iTunes movies encoded in 1080p compared to the 720p they were stuck with before. On that note, Ars Technica decided to find out exactly how the 1080p movies compare to the same content on a Blu-ray....

Who Can Update to iOS 13.1? iOS 13.1 doesn’t support iPads. Instead, iPad users now use iPadOS. The iOS 13.1 update is specific to the iPhone and is compatible with the recently released iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max. Additionally, you can install the update on the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, iPhone X, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone SE, and iPod touch (7th generation)....

Last year, Apple teamed up with the University of Michigan to launch the Apple Hearing Study, focused on examining factors that impact hearing health. Apple and the University of Michigan are now reaching to participants to inform them of a bug in the study app that caused historical data to be shared with Apple. Consent for those data types was necessary to help researchers understand the link between long-term sound exposure and its impact on hearing health....

CEO Tim Cook has highlighted Apple’s new privacy features to European users, with a new video on the Apple UK YouTube channel (embedded below). Cook tops and tails a six-minute video, which mostly comprises privacy-related clips from WWDC … Apple likely chose to speak specifically to European users given the particular emphasis placed on privacy there. The European Union implemented the world’s toughest privacy law back in 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)....

Apple tonight has released the first beta of iOS 8.1.1 to developers. This update is packed with bug fixes, according to the release notes. Most notably, “this release includes bug fixes, increased stability and performance improvements for iPad 2 and iPhone 4s.” This marks the first time in recent history that Apple is seeding a beta for a patch update. A new seed for the Apple TV is also available. Apple released the first OS X Yosemite 10....

It looks like Siri and Google are friends again and Bing is in the rear view mirror. In a major shift, Apple is changing its search results provider for Siri and Spotlight on iOS and macOS from Microsoft’s Bing to the vastly more popular Google. The change has started to roll out today and should be in effect for all users by the end of the day. For users, this means Siri and Spotlight will now provide the same search results as Safari by default (and in a lot of cases show better search results)....

Apple today has updated its online store to indicate it will soon start selling the Wynd Plus Smart Personal Air Purifier. This accessory packs USB-C and an accompanying iOS app to let you “create a bubble of clean air around you.” The Wynd Plus is a small air purifier that you could theoretically take with you everywhere you go. It weighs in at less than a pound and is around the size of a bottle....

With both the iPad Pro’s Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil showing availability of 4-5 weeks, and neither available in-store, Apple has issued a brief statement to Mashable acknowledging the issue and promising ‘regular shipments.’ Customers are very excited for iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and the Smart Keyboard. We have limited supply of Apple Pencil and the Smart Keyboard in Apple Retail stores. Our stores will continue to receive regular shipments and we encourage customers to visit Apple....

Black Hat, famously known for its information security conferences, has just released the ‘Behind the Scenes of iOS Security’ video from this year’s USA event. The talk, led by Ivan Krstic, dives into some of the security methods that currently exist in iOS and what Apple does to keep users secure. This talk was also where Apple had introduced its first security bounty program. This year has been a major year in security for Apple....

According to our sources, Apple’s new, smaller 9-pin dock connector is dubbed “Lightning” internally. As of this evening, we believe that this name will extend to the new connector’s marketing name. The moniker makes sense for two reasons. One: it goes along with the Thunderbolt connector name on the Mac (Thunderbolt and lightning!). Two: perhaps “Lightning” means that the new dock connector will be able to sync via a computer at faster speeds than the current 30-pin connector....

Earlier this year it was reported that Apple is developing augmented reality features that will eventually appear in glasses after coming first to iPhones. Now a newly leaked document may have accidentally acknowledged Apple’s prototype AR glasses for the first time. Gizmodo reports that it has acquired a safety incident document accidentally distributed to Apple employees that mentions a prototype device that has caused eye strain for testers. Incidents in the report appear to have occurred in February and March which offers a timeline for the possible AR glasses prototype testing based on the document’s title: Impact Descriptions Reported in [Santa Clara Valley] from Last Month....

Apple has finally gone on the record regarding the ongoing story about iOS location tracking by putting out a press release this morning. The document entitled “Q&A on Location Data” begins by saying that “Apple would like to respond to the questions we have recently received about the gathering and use of location information by our devices.” It immediately flatly denies allegations of deliberate location tracking for unknown purposes. “Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone....

Apple announced plans for two new European data centers back in 2015, one in Ireland, the second in Denmark. The Irish one hasn’t had the smoothest of rides when it comes to planning permission, so it’ll be hoping for better luck with the Danish project, now confirmed to be situated in Foulum, a small village in Central Jutland. The Danish foreign minister Kristian Jensen told CPH Post that the DKK6.3B ($950M) project would represent the largest foreign capital investment in the country’s history....

Apple’s Employee Giving Program saw its best year ever, says the company. The iPhone maker said that 2020 was “a landmark year of giving” by its employees. Apple supports charitable donations and volunteering by its employees by matching every dollar donated and giving an additional sum for every hour of voluntary service by its staff … Apple didn’t break down 2020 specifically, but did highlight the totals achieved since the program was launched back in 2011....

In an open letter being sent to artists today (below), Apple for the first time broke down how it pays artists for streams on the service. It said the average play rate is $0.01 per stream, but it didn’t break down specific streaming rates that vary based on geography and discounted Apple Music plans. Some of the highlights: Apple said it paid an average of $0.01 per stream for individual paid plans last year It paid the same 52% headline rate to all labels Royalties were paid out for more than 5 million recording artists worldwide in 2020 The number of artists that generated recording and publishing royalties over $1 million per year increased over 120% since 2017 The number of recording artists that generated over $50,000 per year has more than doubled....

Apple today has shared a new commercial for the Apple Watch Series 2. The new ad is titled “Live Bright” and highlights using the Apple Watch to live an active and healthy lifestyle. Throughout the ad, the Apple Watch is shown in a variety of different environments, including swimming, running, and even skydiving. The new ad also showcases features that can help improve a sedentary lifestyle, such as the Stand feature of the Activity app and the Breathe app....

Speculation about plans for an Apple search engine to compete with Google has been around for many years now, ever since the company was first seen to be using its own web crawler back in 2014. Apple confirmed the existence of the Applebot crawler in 2015. A report in the Financial Times claims that Apple is now ‘stepping up’ efforts to create its own search engine as its lucrative deal with Google comes under threat …...

Apple has launched a new page on its website dedicated to showcasing the capabilities of augmented reality on iOS, made possible by the introduction of ARKit in 2017. The new page highlights several apps in the areas of productivity, gaming, and learning that have embraced AR in unique or novel ways. While ARKit was first made available to developers at last year’s WWDC and arrived on customer phones last fall with the release of iOS 11, Apple says that iOS is already the world’s largest AR platform....

Apple today has officially stopped signing iOS 12.0.1, which was originally released back at the beginning of October. This means that downgrading from the most recent version of iOS, which is iOS 12.1, is no longer possible. Apple regularly stops signing older versions of iOS as part of its efforts to keep users on the most up-to-date and therefore secure versions of the operating system. Apple most recently stopped signing iOS 11....