Tech Talk

All of Apple's retail locations outside of Greater China are closed right now, and customers who left their devices for repair are unable to pick them up until the stores reopen, an Apple spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider . Apple closed all of its stores on Saturday, March 14, but stayed open for a few extra days to allow customers to pick up devices ordered for in-store pickup or that were at the store for repair. There were, however, some people who weren't able to make it into stores to get their devices. "We made every possible attempt to get people's products back to them," an Apple spokesperson said. "There certainly are people that, for whatever reason, did not pick up their products before we closed and their products are at our stores." Apple's stores are closed "until further notice" with no specific reopening date, and an Apple spokesperson said there is no protocol in place for people to get their devices unti

Following in the footsteps of Netflix, YouTube is reducing the quality of its videos in Europe to reduce the strain on broadband networks caused by an upsurge in home usage following the coronavirus outbreak, Reuters reports. "We are making a commitment to temporarily switch all traffic in the EU to standard definition by default," the company said in a statement. Standard definition videos are more pixellated and not as sharp as high definition videos, but require less data transmission as a result. The decision follows news on Thursday that Netflix will comply with a request from the European Union to lower its streaming video quality in Europe to ease network strain from the millions of people working from home. Netflix said it would reduce the bitrate of its streams for 30 days. Internet traffic has increased with more adults switching to remote working to comply with social distancing measures. With schools closing in many countries, working adults also face th

Apple is still on course to launch a 12.9-inch iPad Pro with a mini-LED display later this year, according to Taiwanese industry publication DigiTimes . Apple reportedly prefers mini LED to OLED for its medium-size devices and will launch an ‌iPad Pro‌ with backlighting in the fourth quarter of 2020. The claim is made in relation to a separate paywalled article underscoring Apple's eagerness to adopt mini-LED technology, which allows for thinner and lighter product designs, while offering many of the same benefits of OLED displays used on the latest iPhones, including good wide color gamut performance, high contrast and dynamic range, and local dimming for truer blacks. Mini LED is expected to get a significant boost in applications as Apple is proceeding with R&D of devices adopting mini LED backlighting, and may commercialize more such devices in the next five years, according to industry sources. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has previously said that a mini-LED versio

Amid the coronavirus outbreak that has many people in the United States and other countries sheltering inside their homes to avoid spreading the infection, some game developers have opted to make their games available to play for free. Alto's Odyssey and Alto's Adventure, two popular endless runner-style games are available at no cost at the current time on iOS and macOS as the developer has dropped the price due to the coronavirus. Kingdom Rush and Kingdom Rush Origins, two popular strategy games for iOS, can also be downloaded for free . We're compiling a list of paid games that have gone free below, and we'll add to it if we find additional titles: Alto's Adventure Alto's Odyssey Kingdom Rush Frontiers Kingdom Rush Origins If you're at home because of the coronavirus, this is also potentially a good time to try Apple Arcade if you haven't already used your free trial, though it's also a worthwhile way to spend $4.99 for a month of

The United States International Trade Commission today announced an investigation into possible patent violations involving capacitive touch-controlled devices, computers, and components created by Apple, Amazon, Samsung, and others, reports Reuters . According to a document announcing the investigation [ PDF ], it stems from a February complaint filed by Irish company Neodron claiming Apple and other companies are infringing on Neodron-owned patents related to touch-based devices. The investigation is based on a complaint filed by Neodron, Ltd., of Dublin, Ireland, on February 14, 2020. The complaint alleges violations of section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 in the importation into the United States and sale of certain capacitive touch-controlled mobile devices, computers, and components thereof that infringe patents asserted by the complainant. The complainant requests that the USITC issue a limited exclusion order and cease and desist orders. The ITC will investigate the compla

France's competition watchdog on Monday fined Apple 1.1 billion euros ($1.23 billion) for anti-competitive behavior in its distribution network and an abuse of economic dependence on its resellers, reports Reuters . In announcing its largest ever fine against an economic player, France's L’Autorité de la concurrence also levied fines of $84.7 million and $69 million against Apple premium resellers Tech Data and Ingram Micro for their roles in the anti-competitive practices. Two of Apple's wholesalers, Tech Data and Ingram Micro, were fined 63 million euros and 76 million euros respectively, for unlawfully agreeing on prices, the authority said. "Apple and its two wholesalers have agreed not to compete with each other and to prevent distributors from competing with each other, thereby sterilizing the wholesale market for Apple products," it said. Apple in its October earnings call said that France's competition authority had alleged that some aspects o

Popular photo editing app Darkroom received a significant update over the weekend, introducing major under-the-hood changes to the rendering engine that should bring dramatically improved performance, stability, and reliability. The substantial rebuild has touched over 50 percent of the app's code, so while the update doesn't bring any new features, the developers say that every existing feature is better and feaster as a result of the changes. First up, the new depth engine should provide much more accurate blur rendering results that are on a par with Apple's Photos app. Now when you open a Portrait photo, we match the simulated aperture that the photo was captured by, and when available, we use the same blend of available depth images to provide a very high quality editable Portrait image that the system camera does. In addition, a year-long reworking of the entire RAW editing feature has also been undertaken that should provide a faster, smoother, and more stab

Apple may be planning to release iOS 13.4 on Tuesday, March 17, according to details found in AliPay marketing materials discovered by Chinese language site IT Home and shared by Twitter user KhaosT . Screenshots shared by IT Home suggest iOS 13.4 will introduce Apple Pay and Wallet support for AliPay, a popular Chinese mobile payments platform, with the update expected to launch in the early morning of March 18 in China, which would align with a March 17 release in the United States. Given this information, we could be seeing an iOS 13.4 release on March 17 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, the standard time that Apple releases new iOS updates. iOS 13.4 will be accompanied by iPadOS 13.4, and will likely be released alongside watchOS 6.2, tvOS 13.4 and macOS 10.15.4. Apple seeded the first betas of iOS and ‌iPadOS‌ 13.4 on February 5, so the software will be available after about six weeks of testing . iOS 13.4 includes a new Mail toolbar with a more logical design, iCloud Fold

Apple's unreleased A14 chip is rumored to be the first Arm-based mobile processor to officially exceed 3GHz, according to a new report by  Research Snipers . Apple's A14 processor, the successor to the A13 chip in both the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro , is expected to debut this fall in Apple's " iPhone 12 " models. The report highlights the suspected Geekbench 4 score of the A14 chip, with a frequency reaching 3.1GHz. This would be 400MHz higher than Apple's current A13 Bionic chip with a frequency of 2.7GHz. At such a frequency, the chip's Geekbench 5 running points have surged. The report mentions that the A14's single-core performance shows a score of 1658 (up 25% from the A13), and a multi-core score of 4612 points (up 33% from the A13). The extra processing power will be helpful in running simultaneous workflows, navigating through apps, and more. Apple chipmaker TSMC is expected to ramp up production of Apple's 5nm-based A14 chipsets

According to new research by Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk , dozens of popular iOS apps are reading the contents of the pasteboard without user consent, which could include sensitive information. The investigation discovered that many popular apps, such as TikTok, 8 Ball Pool™, and Hotels.com, quietly read any text found in the pasteboard every time the app is opened. iOS and iPadOS apps have unrestricted access to the system-wide pasteboard, also known as the clipboard, as of iOS 13.3. Text left in the pasteboard may be inconsequential, but it could also be highly sensitive data such as passwords or financial information. The potential security risks of this vulnerability have previously been investigated by Bakry and Mysk, where they found that precise location information was leaking through the system pasteboard. A diverse range of apps, from popular games and social networking apps, to news apps of major news organizations such as Fox News or The Wall Street Journal ,

Apple Card holders today received an email informing them that should they need financial assistance due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, they can enroll in a new customer assistance program that will allow them to skip their March payment without incurring interest charges for that billing cycle. The email was shared by Reddit user exjr_ : Tags: Apple Card , COVID-19 Coronavirus This article, " Apple Card Assistance Program Will Allow Customers to Skip March Payment Without Interest Due to Coronavirus " first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums Source: http://bit.ly/2IOasY8

It was a massive week for news and rumors, led by Apple officially announcing that this year's WWDC will be a digital-only event due to the impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic. Apple is also closing all of its retail stores outside of China for the next two weeks. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. On the rumor front, there were a ton of iOS 14 leaks this week, while we also heard some rumors from several sources about upcoming notebook updates, so check out our video above and read on below for all of the details! Apple Announces WWDC 2020 Will Be a Digital-Only Event Set to Take Place in June In what shouldn't come as a tremendous shock to anyone, Apple has announced that this year's Worldwide Developers Conference will be a digital-only event with no physical gathering due to the ongoing spread of the coronavirus around the world. The online-only event will take place in June. We don't yet the know exact dates or just ho