Apple has officially announced its Black Friday promotions for this year. Starting November 29, you can score an up to $200 gift card when you buy an eligible Apple product from Apple’s website, app, and retail stores.
I don’t have a good answer. It feels like every week for the next six or eight, I’m going to have a moment of weakness where I click around on Apple’s website, configuring stuff and looking at the final price and realizing it’s a bit high and then closing that browser window. Until the next moment of weakness.
This is what they call the tyranny of choice, right?
Whenever I write about this, some readers will comment that, to their minds, a paid subscription like Apple News+ should bestow a completely ad-free experience. That’s how streaming video and music subscriptions tend to work, but even there — as I just posted regarding Disney+ — many people are choosing lower-priced streaming subscriptions subsidized by ads. The economics for ad-free news just doesn’t work, and never has. News+ isn’t like TV+, where Apple owns or has paid for the rights to all of the content.
I really think Apple should get out of the ads business, starting with the App Store. I find it corrupting, ugly, distasteful, and most of all an anti-premium experience.
Apple China on Monday published an article on its official website that cited a report by a Shanghai University of Finance and Economics researcher, saying that the local App Store paid over 95 per cent of the 3.76 trillion yuan (US$519 billion) in revenue it generated last year to Chinese developers and various companies.
“We’re proud that the investments we make in the App Store have helped it become a powerful growth engine for local businesses of all sizes,” Apple chief executive Tim Cook wrote on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo. He said that the company is committed to the success of entrepreneurs across China.
If Apple’s locked-down approach in the App Store era is our future, it’s a bleak one indeed. But there’s good news: Apple has also built a system that provides security, flexibility, and responsibility while letting device owners run the software they want to run.
It’s called the Mac. When we consider the future of computing devices, the Mac is the model we should aspire to, not the iPhone.
There are certainly plenty of people who believe Apple should be able to do with the iPhone what it wishes, and that — thanks to the power of the free market — people who do not like those changes will simply go buy something else. Perhaps. But perhaps, too, Apple’s influence over a billion users worldwide is something worth checking on. If Apple had responded more amenably to concerns raised over the past decade, maybe it would not find itself in this position today — but here we are.
“Despite Whip Media having complied with the DMCA and explaining that to Apple, the complainant notified Apple that its claim was ‘unresolved,’ and Apple decided to remove TV Time from the App Store,” he says. The company has since resolved the matter with the complainant. As of the time of writing, the TV Time app was in the process of returning to the App Store.
However, Inman warns this is another case where Apple had too much power over the companies doing business on its App Store platform.
Apple Music has kicked off its year-end celebration with a collection of playlists recognizing ‘The Best of 2024.’
Let’s look at some common security threats iPhone users face and how you can protect yourself. From sneaky shoulder surfers to tricky phishing attacks, it’s time to uncover the hidden risks lurking in your pocket.
From the music you buy and the apps you download, to the video you shoot and the messages you receive, all of that content has to live somewhere, either on your device or in cloud storage. When your iPhone or iPad storage is full, it's not like you can increase it. What you can do, however, is free up your existing storage. Here's how.
The app allows you to easily keep track of your reading list while also organizing your book collection. Getting started is easy as you can quickly search from more than 40 million books to add to your library in seconds.
I now feel I have some knowledge about plant care and a helpful digital assistant to assist me when needed, which makes a huge difference.
Silicon Valley tech giants and others who together process more than 13 billion financial transactions annually through digital wallets and payment apps will be subject to government supervision, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said.
The new rule finalized on Thursday will bring a burgeoning consumer service under the same scrutiny faced by banks while helping protect the privacy of vast amounts of consumer data and preventing fraud and the illegal closure of their accounts, the agency said.
Apple urged a federal judge to dismiss the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against it, saying the government’s complaint includes speculative arguments and the government doesn’t plausibly argue it has monopoly power.
“The court is allowed to use common sense,” countered DOJ counsel Jonathan Lasken at a hearing in New Jersey on Wednesday. “We’re here today based on the idea that it’s not plausible that [Apple] has monopoly power, but instead is at the mercy of supposed global behemoths who are a fraction of its size.”
Southeast Asia’s largest nation confirmed that it had received Apple’s latest investment offer, which entails building a manufacturing plant to produce accessories and components, the Ministry of Industry said in a statement on Wednesday evening. Its minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita, who had blocked the permit allowing the sale of the iPhone 16 in October, is set to hold a meeting on Thursday to discuss the proposal.
The meeting “means that the industry minister welcomes Apple’s investment commitment,” ministry spokesperson Febri Hendri Antoni Arif said in the statement.
Tech analyst Benedict Evans captured the company’s decline in a July 2013 essay called “The Irrelevance of Microsoft.” “No one’s afraid of them,” he wrote. The next month, the board pushed out Ballmer. Contenders for his job included the CEO of Ford and the former president of Skype. But Nadella wrote a 10-page memo arguing that Microsoft’s revival would come from a growth mentality. As he later put it, he wanted to change the corporate personality from “know-it-all” to “learn-it-all.” The board—along with Gates and Ballmer, who were on the search committee—agreed that he was the one.
“Obviously, I’m a consummate insider,” Nadella says, talking to me in July after his speech and a lusty ovation. He saw firsthand how the company had lost its way. “You forget what made you successful in the first place. And hubris sets in.” Microsoft, he says, needed more than a great caretaker or efficient manager. “The metaphor I like is re-founding. Founders create magical things from nothing.”
I've finally downloaded the Chat GPT app onto my iPhone. And I asked three questions. The first question -- asking for a list of podcast recommendations -- returned with a list that are mostly made-up. The second question -- a follow-up by asking the list of podcasts published by a particular company -- returned with another list that are mostly made-up. The third question -- asking for the secondary school I've attended -- returned with two paragraphs, the first is accurate (by copying from Wikipedia), and the second paragraph is, yes, you guessed it, mostly made-up stuff.
And that's why I am not excited with the upcoming December installment of Apple Intelligence.
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Thanks for reading.