Taiwanese manufacturer Compal Electronics is expected to be a supplier of the so-called iPad mini 5 when the tablet launches later in 2019, according to DigiTimes. This would likely entail final assembly of the device.
iPad mini 4
Rumors suggest Apple will release the new iPad mini as early as this spring, likely alongside a new seventh-generation iPad with a slightly larger 10-inch display. Apple's plans to release a new iPad mini have been reported by Ming-Chi Kuo, Mark Gurman, DigiTimes, and the China Times.
Apple has debuted new iPads in March for three consecutive years, including the 9.7-inch iPad Pro in 2016, the fifth-generation iPad in 2017, and the sixth-generation iPad in 2018, so there's a good chance that Apple will unveil the iPad mini 5 and the new 10-inch iPad in a little over a month from now.
Kuo said the new iPad mini will feature an upgraded processor and a lower-cost panel, but few details are known beyond that.
The current iPad mini 4 was released in September 2015. The tablet features a 7.9-inch display with 326 PPI, A8 chip, 2GB of RAM, Touch ID, 8-megapixel rear camera, a Lightning connector, dual speakers, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It is available with 128GB of storage for $399 (Wi-Fi) and $529 (LTE).
Feral has pushed out an update to ROME: Total War that brings some welcome enhancements to the acclaimed strategy game on iOS.
First up, v1.10 adds eight more playable factions to the war theater, significantly increasing the strategy options available in the game.
Using the new Unlock All Factions option in the settings screen, players are now free to choose from up to 19 factions, including the Greek Cities, Egypt, the Seleucid Empire, Carthage, Gaul, Germania, Britannia, and Parthia.
This update also introduces a new range marker feature, which indicates the firing distance of selected missile units, as the picture above shows.
In addition, units in a group can now be commanded to adopt ta uniform pace when traveling towards their target location.
With the App Store update applied, ROME: Total War also gains support for both landscape orientations on the iPhone X, XS, XS Max, and XR.
Lastly, third-generation 11-inch iPad Pro owners should see an improvement in graphics speed and an optimized game interface.
ROME: Total War is available from the App Store for $9.99 as a universal app for iPhone and iPad.
Nintendo has announced that its upcoming Mario Kart Tour game for iOS devices won't be ready until the summer (via The Verge).
The news came in Nintendo's quarterly earnings report released today, exactly a year since the company first revealed it was bringing the game to smartphones.
Little is known about Mario Kart Tour, but the game was originally scheduled for launch before the company's fiscal year ending March 2019.
Nintendo said the decision to delay it had been made "in order to improve the quality of the application and expand the content offerings after launch."
When it eventually arrives, Mario Kart Tour is expected to use the same free-to-play model of other Nintendo mobile titles, with in-app purchases that help players with certain tasks.
Out of Nintendo's five mobile games so far, four have followed this model (Miitomo, Fire Emblem Heroes, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Draglia Lost). Only Super Mario Run has used the pay-once price tier.
Apple was the number two smartphone vendor in the world during the 2018 holiday quarter with an estimated 68.4 million iPhones shipped, according to new data shared today by IDC.
IDC's new iPhone shipment estimates come one day after Apple's Q1 2019 earnings call, which corresponds to the fourth calendar quarter of 2018. Apple no longer provides unit sales of iPhone, iPad, and Mac, leaving it to analysts to guess just how many devices were sold.
Samsung was the number one smartphone vendor during the quarter, according to IDC, with 70.4 million smartphones shipped for 18.7 percent market share.
Apple, as the number two vendor, held 18.2 percent market share, but saw an 11 percent decline in iPhone shipments. During the holiday quarter of 2017, Apple shipped 77.3 million smartphones, so if IDC's 68.4 million estimate is correct, Apple sold 8.9 million fewer iPhones.
Apple saw iPhone volumes drop 11.5% in 4Q18 marking one of the more challenging iPhone quarters in terms of growth, despite the three new models. Total iPhone volumes were down 3.2% for the full year, which is understandable considering its two largest markets (the United States and China) both experienced the worst year for smartphone performance ever. Apple is certainly not out of the game, but the likelihood of not having a 5G iPhone in 2019 means it will need to tell a strong iPhone and, more importantly, ecosystem story to succeed. If anyone can do it, it is Apple. But it certainly won't be easy when faced with all the other downward market pressures.
IDC's data suggests that Apple sold more devices than Huawei, with Huawei shipping 60.5 million smartphones during the quarter. Huawei and Apple have been fighting for the number two position, with Huawei surpassing Apple during the second calendar quarter of the year.
Huawei is the smartphone vendor that saw the most growth during the quarter, with shipments up 43.9 percent. Oppo and Xiaomi were the number four and five smartphone vendors, respectively, with 29.2 and 28.6 million smartphones shipped.
Overall, IDC says that 375.4 million smartphones were shipped during the quarter, down 4.9 percent year over year and marking the fifth consecutive quarter of decline.
"Globally the smartphone market is a mess right now," said Ryan Reith, program vice president with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers. "Outside of a handful of high-growth markets like India, Indonesia, Korea, and Vietnam, we did not see a lot of positive activity in 2018. We believe several factors are at play here, including lengthening replacement cycles, increasing penetration levels in many large markets, political and economic uncertainty, and growing consumer frustration around continuously rising price points."
IDC is more generous with its iPhone shipment estimate than Strategy Analytics. Yesterday, Strategy Analytics said that Apple shipped an estimated 65.9 million smartphones for a 15 percent decline year-over-year. Canalys, meanwhile, is more optimistic and says that Apple shipped an estimated 71.1 million smartphones for a decline of just 7.3 percent year-over-year.
With Apple no longer offering a breakdown of unit sales of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, analyst estimates from sources like IDC and Strategy Analytics won't be able to be confirmed.
New York Attorney General Letitia James and Governor Andrew Cuomo are investigating the FaceTime eavesdropping bug on iOS devices that allowed a person to FaceTime another person and hear conversations and see videos even when the call was not answered.
According to Bloomberg, the New York officials will be focusing on Apple's failure to warn consumers about the bug and its slow response.
How the FaceTime eavesdropping bug worked
The FaceTime eavesdropping bug was widely publicized on Monday, and several hours after information on how to execute the exploit spread, Apple disabled the Group FaceTime servers.
"This FaceTime breach is a serious threat to the security and privacy of the millions of New Yorkers who have put their trust in Apple and its products over the years," James said in the statement on Wednesday.
"We need a full accounting of the facts to confirm businesses are abiding by New York consumer protection laws and to help make sure this type of privacy breach does not happen again," Cuomo said in the statement.
Apple is planning to release a software fix that will solve the bug and will allow the company to bring Group FaceTime back online. That update is expected sometime this week.
While the glitch was not widely known until Monday afternoon, Apple was informed about the bug more than a week prior. The person who contacted Apple said that Apple did not respond to multiple attempts to notify the company about the issue.
It's not entirely clear if Apple knew about the bug and was working on a fix internally at the time that it became widespread, but if so, Apple certainly left it functional and did not move to disable Group FaceTime until forced to do so. For that reason, it's not known how long the bug has been present in iOS and how long people may have been quietly exploiting it.
In addition to the inquiry from New York officials, Apple is also facing a lawsuit over the issue. Yesterday, an attorney said the FaceTime bug allowed an unknown person to listen in on sworn testimony during a client deposition.
Apple is working on an updated version of the $329 6th-generation iPad and a new, cheaper iPad mini, Bloomberg today confirmed in an extensive report on Apple's future product plans.
The new version of the iPad will feature a "roughly 10-inch screen," which would be slightly larger than the 9.7-inch model that is currently available. The device is also expected to have a faster processor and a Lightning port instead of a USB-C port.
Apple is also working on an iPad mini 5, a followup to the 2015 iPad mini 4. The iPad mini 5 will be cheaper than the existing model, but no other details were provided.
Prior rumors have suggested both the new iPad and the iPad mini 5 will feature Touch ID Home buttons rather than Face ID, which would be appropriate as both are seemingly positioned as lower-cost devices.
Code found in iOS 12.2 indicates the two new tablets could potentially offer support for the Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard as well.
According to Bloomberg, Apple could be planning to introduce the new iPads "as early as this spring," which is in line with other recent information.
New iPad models were registered with the Eurasian Economic Commission earlier this month, something that is generally done shortly ahead of a product launch, and references to new iPad models have been found in iOS 12.2.
For the last several years, Apple has held an event in March, and the company could be planning to do the same thing this year. If that's the case, we could see the new iPad and the iPad mini 5 at some point in March.
As for the iPad Pro, Apple is said to be planning a major upgrade for 2020 with a laser-powered 3D camera for augmented reality purposes. No major changes are planned for 2019, and it is unclear if the iPad Pro will get a 2019 update at all.
Apple's iOS 13 operating system, which will likely be previewed this summer at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, will include a number of major updates that iOS users have been desiring for years.
According to Bloomberg, iOS 13 will include a dark mode to match the dark mode that was first introduced on macOS with macOS Mojave. It will allow for "easier nighttime viewing."
Improvements to the CarPlay interface are expected, and many iPad-specific upgrades are in the works. Apple will introduce a new Home screen, an option to tab through multiple pages of a single app as you can do in a web browser, and improvements to file management.
Previous rumors have suggested Apple will also introduce a multitasking feature for displaying two windows of the same app side by side, and Apple is expected to expand the availability of its cross-platform apps initiative to developers, making it easier to port apps created for iOS to macOS.
Apple is planning on introducing triple-lens cameras in its 2019 iPhone lineup, reports Bloomberg, confirming many triple-lens camera rumors that we've previously heard.
Like The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg says the followup to the iPhone XS Max will feature a triple-lens camera arrangement, with the iPhone XS and iPhone XR successors to use dual-lens camera arrangements. The third camera will allow for a larger field of view, a wider zoom range, and it will capture more pixels.
A rendering of a triple-lens iPhone prototype Apple is said to be working on
Apple is apparently working on a feature that would use that extra pixel data to provide tools for automatically repairing a photo or a video to fit in a subject that "may have accidentally been cut off from the initial shot." An enhanced version of Live Photos is also in the works, increasing the length of the attached video to six seconds.
Some versions of the 2019 iPhones Apple is testing use a USB-C connector instead of a Lightning port, which could mean Apple plans to switch from Lightning to USB-C at some point. An upgraded A-series processor and a new Face ID sensor are planned, but the devices are expected to look similar to this year's model.
iPhone camera technology will become even more advanced starting in 2020 as part of a push to further Apple's augmented reality ambitions. According to Bloomberg, the company will debut laser-powered time-of-flight 3D cameras that will result in significant improvements to AR experiences on the iPhone.
A time-of-flight (ToF) camera system uses a laser to calculate the time that it takes for the laser to bounce off of objects in a room, using the data to create an accurate 3D image of the surrounding area. This allows for more accurate depth perception and better placement of virtual objects, and it will also result in photos better able to capture depth.
Bloomberg says that the camera will be able to scan areas up to 15 feet from the device. Apple's front-facing TrueDepth camera uses 3D technology but because it's infrared and not laser-powered, it only works at distances of 25 to 50 centimeters. Sony could be Apple's supplier for the new system, with Apple in talks with Sony over sensor tests.
Prior to when the new iPhones are released, we could see the first appearance of the 3D camera system in an iPad Pro upgrade planned for spring 2020. Apple is not planning a major iPad Pro update for 2019.
There were originally some rumors suggesting Apple would introduce a 3D camera system in its 2019 iPhones, but reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that wouldn't happen as Apple needs 5G connectivity, augmented reality glasses, and a more powerful Apple Maps database to truly take advantage of the AR capabilities afforded by a ToF camera.
Bloomberg confirms that Apple was indeed aiming to put the 3D camera system in this year's iPhones, but ultimately delayed its plans.
Apple's 2020 iPhones will also feature triple-lens arrangements, improved photo capturing tools, and more powerful processors. Bloomberg suggests it could be a prelude to an AR headset, and past rumors have indicated Apple could launch that device as early as 2020.
According to TechCrunch, Google has been distributing an app called "Screenwise Meter" using the enterprise certificate installation method since 2012.
Google has been privately inviting users aged 18 and up (or 13 for those part of a family group) to download Screenwise Meter, an app that is designed to collect information on internet usage, including details on how long a site is visited to apps that are downloaded.
By asking Screenwise Meter users to download the app using an enterprise certificate, Google is able to bypass App Store rules that prevent apps from gathering this kind of data from iPhone users.
Apple just this morning revoked Facebook's enterprise certificate for this exact same activity, which has rendered all of Facebook's internal apps nonoperational and has created chaos at Facebook's headquarters. Facebook employees are not able to use any of the internal apps that they rely on to get work done.
The Screenwise Meter app that Google uses lets users earn gift cards for sharing their traffic and app data. It is part of Google's Cross Media Panel and Google Opinion Rewards programs that provide rewards to people for installing tracking software on their smartphones, web browsers, routers, and TVs.
According to TechCrunch, Google is more forthcoming about the kind of data that it's collecting than Facebook, but that doesn't change the fact that Google is using an app installation method that appears to violate Apple's enterprise certificate rules in the same way the Facebook Research app did.
Additionally, people who install these kinds of apps for rewards may not fully understand the extent of the data that's collected.
Putting the not-insignificant issues of privacy aside -- in short, many people lured by financial rewards may not fully take in what it means to have a company fully monitoring all your screen-based activity -- and the implications of what extent tech businesses are willing to go to to amass more data about users to get an edge on competitors, Google Screenwise Meter for iOS appears to violate Apple's policy.
Apple and Google have not yet commented on the Screenwise Meter app, but if Apple does decide that Google is also violating its enterprise rules, which clearly state that the enterprise program is for distributing internal employee apps only, Google too could see the enterprise certificate used for the Screenwise app revoked.
Apple could also punish Google in the same way that it punished Facebook by revoking all of the company's internal apps that use the same certificate.
Update: Google has issued an apology and has disabled its Screenwise Meter app on iOS devices. "The Screenwise Meter iOS app should not have operated under Apple's developer enterprise program -- this was a mistake and we apologize. We have disabled this app on iOS devices. This app is completely voluntary and always has been. We've been upfront with users about the way we use their data in this app, and we have no access to encrypted data in apps and on devices, and users can opt out of the program at any time."
The United States FBI this week accused a Chinese citizen working for Apple of attempting to steal trade secrets that are related to the company's autonomous vehicle program, reports NBC Bay Area.
Apple launched an investigation into the employee, Jizhong Chen, when another employee spotted him taking photographs "in a sensitive work space." Apple Global Security employees searched his personal computer and found "thousands" of Apple files, including manuals, schematics, photographs, and diagrams.
Chen had recently applied for a position with a China-based autonomous vehicle company that is a direct Apple competitor. Chen was arrested a day before he was set to fly to China. Apple in a statement said that it is working with the authorities.
"Apple takes confidentiality and the protection of our IP very seriously," the company said in a statement Tuesday. "We are working with authorities on this matter and are referring all questions to the FBI."
Interestingly, at least one of the photographs Chen took depicted an assembly drawing of an Apple-designed wiring harness for an autonomous vehicle, suggesting Apple's work does indeed go beyond simple autonomous software.
Apple's autonomous car plans have been up in the air for the last few years because the project has been restructured several times, has been put under new leadership, and many employees have been laid off or moved to other areas of the company.
There has been some question as to whether the Cupertino company is still planning a full autonomous car or if its focus has shifted to autonomous software, but the most recent rumors indicate a car is in the works with a launch planned for 2023 to 2025.
This is not the first time an employee has been caught trying to steal secrets from Apple's car team. Back in July, the FBI charged former Apple employee Xiaolang Zhang with theft of trade secrets for stealing hardware and software that included prototypes and detailed prototype requirements.
Facebook is no longer able to use or distribute important internal iOS apps after Apple disabled the Enterprise Certificate Facebook was abusing to surreptitiously gather data from iOS users right under Apple's nose.
Since 2016, Facebook has been paying teens and adults $20 per month to install a data gathering "Facebook Research" app that harvested all kinds of sensitive details from participants.
Facebook abused its enterprise certificate to get customers to install a "Facebook Research app
Apple had already banned Facebook's attempts to gather data through the Onavo VPN app, so Facebook used its enterprise certificate - provided to companies to install and manage internal apps for employees - to get participants to sideload the Facebook Research app, bypassing the App Store and Apple's oversight.
Facebook yesterday said that it was not violating Apple's enterprise rules, but as it turns out, Facebook was wrong. Apple this morning revoked Facebook's enterprise and said the social network had clearly violated the Enterprise Developer Program.
We designed our Enterprise Developer Program solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organization. Facebook has been using their membership to distribute a data-collecting app to consumers, which is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple. Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked, which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data.
Facebook's revoked certificate wasn't just used for the Facebook Research app. According to The Verge, Facebook needed that certificate to run all of its internal apps, and with access revoked, none of those apps are working.
That means Facebook isn't able to distribute internal iOS apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger for testing purposes, and internal employee apps for purposes like food and transportation are nonfunctional.
All of the apps that used the certificate "simply don't launch on employees' phones anymore," and Facebook is said to be treating the issue as a critical problem internally.
After the certificate was revoked, Facebook this morning said that it would shut down its Facebook Research app, though the company defended it and claimed that those who participated went through a "clear on-boarding process." The Facebook Research app for Android continues to be available.
Facebook is not going to be able to properly operate and distribute iOS apps on a wide scale basis without access to its certificate, so it's not clear how this situation will play out. Apple's tools are essential for internal apps, though Facebook will likely still be able to use alternatives like TestFlight if the certificate isn't reinstated.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been highly critical of Facebook's lack of respect for user privacy in the past, and the two companies have had a dispute over the Onavo app, but this is the first time that Apple has directly punished Facebook and shut down one of its illicit activities.
Update: Facebook says it is "working closely" with Apple to reinstate access to internal apps. Employees, meanwhile, are said to be angry and unable to do their work without the apps.
Update 2: In a statement to The New York Times, Facebook says that Apple has restored its Enterprise Certificate. "We have had our Enterprise Certification, which enables our internal employee applications, restored. We are in the process of getting our internal apps up and running. To be clear, this didn’t have an impact on our consumer-facing services."
DirecTV Now today reported that it lost 267,000 subscribers during the fourth quarter of 2018, causing the service to dip from 1.8 million subscribers in Q1 2018 to 1.6 million in Q4 (via TechCrunch). Despite the decline, DirecTV Now is still at the forefront of the streaming TV market, second to SlingTV as of last fall.
In AT&T's fourth quarter earnings report, the company attributed this loss to the closure of several discount bundles that were heavily featured on the service's website, and shared online. This includes the popular Apple TV bundle (which expired in June 2018) and a few Roku deals.
The company attributed the decline to the end of promotional package pricing, which sometimes saw the service priced as low as $10 per month for an introductory period. It had also offered device giveaways – like Roku streaming sticks or Apple TV boxes – to encourage sign-ups.
AT&T says its “discounted introductory offers ended,” which resulted in the dramatic loss.
At its peak, the DirecTV Now deal for Apple TV required you to prepay for three months of the streaming TV service for about $105. Once you did this, AT&T would send you a 32GB Apple TV 4K at no cost. In essence, customers were paying $105 for a 32GB Apple TV 4K, down from around $170, and getting three months to try out DirecTV Now as a bonus.
Of course, you could still cancel DirecTV Now before those three months ended and not pay to continue using the service, and it appears that's what many people did last year. Although DirecTV Now has a large channel lineup, it also has numerous problems with its service, which also likely led to subscriber churn noted in this week's earnings report. This includes a barebones cloud DVR with low storage and unreliable recordings, various performance issues, outages, and more.
AT&T also raised the price of DirecTV Now last summer, increasing every tier by $5/month to stay "in line with the market." This increased DirecTV Now's "Live a Little" plan from $35/month to $40/month, matching rival services like Hulu with Live TV, which starts at $40/month, and YouTube TV, which also raised to $40/month to compete with Hulu.
Although many were hoping that the Apple TV offer would return in the fall of 2018 as it did years prior, AT&T never resurfaced the deal.
The Music Business Association today announced that Beats 1 anchor Zane Lowe will be the keynote speaker at its 2019 conference on May 5 at 5 p.m. local time. The event will take place at the JW Marriott in Nashville.
In addition to his Beats 1 role, Lowe is the Global Head of Artist Relations for Apple Music. The Grammy-nominated producer and DJ has been part of Apple Music since its inception in June 2015, building upon an established career in music broadcasting at MTV, XFM, and BBC Radio 1 in the United Kingdom.
The conference will also feature a series of digital music workshops hosted by Apple Music, Amazon, Pandora, Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube and interviews with other music industry executives. Registration is open now.
In related news, Apple during its earnings call yesterday revealed that Apple Music now has over 50 million paying subscribers. This was the first update on that front since May 2018, when Apple Music had 50 million paying and trial subscribers combined. Spotify had 87 million paying subscribers as of September 2018.
Popular Apple Watch heart rate monitoring app Cardiogram today launched a new premium service that includes data sharing options and a cross-platform Family Mode designed to allow remote monitoring of a loved one's wearable data.
If a person with an Android phone has an aging parent with an Apple Watch and wants to keep an eye on the parent's wearable data for health reasons, for example, that's possible with the new cross-platform mode.
Data shared includes heart rate, step counts, diagnostic tests, habits, and more. There's also a new Share with Doctor feature that lets you get a PDF of historical Cardiogram data so it can be emailed to a doctor or printed out.
Both Share with Doctor and Family Mode require the new Cardiogram Premium service. Cardiogram Premium is priced at $14.99 per month or $99.99 per year.
Cardiogram says that its new premium Family Mode was introduced because of requests from customers who wanted to be able to keep an eye on their loved ones' health. The Family Mode option works with Apple Watch, Garmin, and Google's WearOS.
Amazon and B&H Photo this week have introduced the first straight price discount on Apple's just-released Smart Battery Case for iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR. The sales are discounting the price of the new accessory by about $11.
The cases are priced the same across Amazon and B&H Photo. Check out the full list below, and note that Apple sells each case for $129.00 on its website.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
Foxconn is once again changing plans for its upcoming Wisconsin-based plant in the United States, according to a new report out today by Reuters. Originally set to produce large television displays, and then small to medium displays for smartphones, the location will now pivot to become largely focused on research and development.
Foxconn intends to hire "mostly engineers and researchers" instead of manufacturing workers at the Wisconsin plant. The plans to build smartphone displays, for companies like Apple, have either been greatly scaled back or shelved completely. This information comes from Louis Woo, assistant to Foxconn CEO Terry Gou.
Although the company has yet to formally announce this pivot, Woo says that Foxconn is "not building a factory" in Wisconsin at this point. According to Woo, the steep cost of making advanced screens for TV sets and other devices in the United States led to the decision.
Instead, Woo notes that Foxconn's more profitable solution is to make LCD panels in greater China and Japan, ship them to Mexico for final assembly, and import the finished products to the United States.
Rather than a focus on LCD manufacturing, Foxconn wants to create a “technology hub” in Wisconsin that would largely consist of research facilities along with packaging and assembly operations, Woo said. It would also produce specialized tech products for industrial, healthcare, and professional applications, he added.
“In Wisconsin we’re not building a factory. You can’t use a factory to view our Wisconsin investment,” Woo said.
The Wisconsin project was announced at the White House in 2017, and was used as an example by the Trump administration of a foreign company extending its manufacturing business into the United States. Now, Woo says that three-quarters of the Wisconsin plant will be staffed by people in R&D and design fields, or "knowledge" positions, rather than blue collar manufacturing jobs.
At the time, Foxconn said it would grow to employ as many as 13,000 workers at the site. In recent weeks, the company confirmed it had slowed its pace of hiring, down to about 5,200 people by the end of 2020. Now, a source within the company claims that figure is closer to 1,000 workers to start off. It's unclear if Foxconn still plans to grow to the full 13,000 workforce, and if so when that will happen.
Apple today announced that, starting February 1, Apple Music subscribers can access Apple Music on any American Airlines flight in the United States equipped with Viasat satellite technology with no Wi-Fi purchase required.
American Airlines is the first commercial airline to provide exclusive access to Apple Music through complimentary inflight Wi-Fi. This applies to the iPhone and likely extends to the iPad, Mac or PC, and Android smartphones.
