MacRumors

With Christmas under two weeks away, we're now entering last-minute holiday shopping season. Although some of the best deals may have already come and gone this year, many brands and retailers still offer solid discounts online and in stores, giving shoppers a chance to finish off their shopping lists just in time.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

For this reason, in this article we've accumulated as many notable Apple-related sales we could find across the internet, ranging from accessory brands like Mophie and Twelve South, to discounts on Apple products like the HomePod. Of course, shipping estimates and costs will vary greatly from store to store, but if you place an order soon, most of these retailers are still ensuring delivery by Christmas day.

We also have a few exclusive discounts mixed into the sales below, letting our readers save a little extra at places like Mophie, Twelve South, Pad & Quill, Nimble, and more. These sales allow our readers to save on portable chargers, iPhone battery cases, screen protectors, and much more. Be sure to check out all of these deals in the lists below.

Pad & Quill

MacRumors has partnered with Pad & Quill to give our readers a chance to save on Apple accessories all the way through Christmas day. With our first discount code, you can save 20 percent on any Apple related product, including those for iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad and MacBook. Enter the code MR20 to access this sale.

Otherwise, you can use the code MR15 to take 15 percent off Pad & Quill's other products, like its premium leather bags, wallets, and desk accessories. These two codes essentially cover the entirety of Pad & Quill's website, and are a perfect opportunity to shop for anyone on your holiday list who loves high-quality accessories for their Apple devices.

Nimble

Eco-friendly brand Nimble is offering our readers 30 percent off sitewide this holiday season with the exclusive promo code MACRUMORS30. With this promotion you can save on Nimble's portable chargers, wireless chargers, iPhone cases, and more.

Nimble's products are made from highly sustainable materials and come inside plastic-free packaging. The company also runs a one-for-one tech recovery project, placing a disposable bag with every product it sells. In these bags, customers can send back their old or unused tech so that it can be recycled responsibly.

In terms of shipping, Nimble offers free two-day shipping and returns, so be sure to browse the retailer's website soon to place your order in enough time before Christmas.

Twelve South

At Twelve South, you can get 15 percent off your entire order with the promo code MacRumors15. This promo code will last through December 31 at 11:59 p.m. ET for users in the United States.

Twelve South has numerous accessories that are specifically made for Apple products, like AirSnap for AirPods, HiRise Wireless for iPhone, and BookBook Vol. 2 for iPad Pro. You can browse for some holiday shopping ideas of your own in Twelve South's gift guide.

Mujjo

At Mujjo, MacRumors readers can save 15 percent by using the coupon code MacRumors15. This code will last through December 19. Mujjo offers a collection of leather Apple accessories, including iPhone cases and iPad sleeves, so be sure to head to Mujjo.com to check out their products before Thursday.

Best Buy

Best Buy still has Apple's HomePod at its current best price of $199.99, down from $299.99. This is the discount we previously saw on Black Friday last month, and Best Buy has brought the sale back just in time for Christmas.

The retailer also has some discounts on Beats headphones, Apple Watch Series 4, and more in its ongoing 12 Days of Discounts sale event. More information on the event can be found on BestBuy.com.

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Repair site iFixit managed to get a Mac Pro on Friday, and has kicked off its traditional teardown with an uncasing and first impressions video.

The video shows the process of removing the ‌Mac Pro‌'s aluminum case and it takes a look at some of the internal components.

For those interested in a quick look at what's inside the ‌Mac Pro‌ and how the different components work, the video is worth checking out.

iFixit plans to share a full ‌Mac Pro‌ teardown next week, likely on Tuesday.

Through Apple's AC Wellness services that offer health benefits to Cupertino employees, Apple has begun providing its staff with free genetic testing, reports CNBC.

AC Wellness operates on-site health clinics on and near Apple's Cupertino campuses, and through a partnership with Color Genomics, employees are able to get genetic screenings for diseases.

Genetic testing is expected to help employees uncover health problems that could turn into risks later in time, allowing patients to take preventative steps. Color's test is able to look for gene mutations associated with cancer and cardiovascular disease.

The test created by Color is not sold directly to consumers and is instead ordered by clinicians at AC Wellness, with a follow up appointment required to discuss the health results.

A year to the day after Apple announced plans to spend $1 billion on a new corporate campus in Austin, Texas, to initially support 5,000 employees with the potential to grow to 15,000, television station WRAL in Raleigh, North Carolina, has shared an update and a few new details related to North Carolina's attempts to attract the new campus.

While it didn't conduct a public competition like Amazon, Apple was open about its plans to construct a new corporate campus, announcing its intentions in January 2018. A number of cities emerged as top contenders to land Apple's new campus, but by May 2018, sources were reporting that it was all but a "done deal" that the new campus would be located in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park (RTP) near Raleigh and Durham, with a temporary location for up to 1,000 employees planned for an existing office building in nearby Cary.

Months went by without an official announcement from Apple, and with Apple ultimately revealing the campus would be built in Austin, many have wondered what went wrong in what appeared to be late-stage negotiations between Apple and North Carolina.

The December announcement seemed to surprise the governor and state legislative leaders, who hours later released a joint statement touting economic growth in North Carolina and pledging to "keep doing everything we can" to attract jobs. [...]

Since then, there's been little explanation about how or why the deal dissolved by year's end.

But given the company's notorious penchant for secrecy, [North Carolina Senate Majority Leader Harry] Brown said, media coverage of the potential plans for North Carolina didn't help.

"Apple and companies like it are very sensitive to information getting out, and there's a possibility that could have hurt the negotiations with Apple a year ago," he said.

Even since the Austin announcement, there have been some curious developments in North Carolina that have hinted Apple may still have plans for the area. Most notably, in December 2018 just weeks after the Austin announcement, a mysterious entity known as Acute Investments purchased several tracts of land in RTP totaling around 280 acres, a massive investment that did not come with any public announcements. The Acute Investments representative listed on the deeds for the properties is local attorney Bruce Thompson, who is registered as a lobbyist for Apple, among other companies.

As a result, Apple has long been suspected of being the mystery buyer in RTP, and today's report from WRAL indicates that North Carolina Commerce Secretary Tony Copeland has finally confirmed that the land is indeed "controlled by Apple."

In an interview with WRAL News last week, Commerce Secretary Tony Copeland declined to provide specifics about the state's active recruitment of Apple. But he did point to a purchase of about 280 acres of Wake County land in Research Triangle Park for almost $50 million in late December 2018, just weeks after Apple's Austin announcement. [...]

Reached this week by phone, Thompson declined to comment.

But Copeland confirmed in the interview that the land is "controlled by Apple."

In addition, the state of North Carolina continues to refuse to release any information regarding its negotiations with Apple for the new campus, claiming that the project remains "open." Governmental authorities are typically required to release information to the public about their corporate recruitment efforts once a given project has ended, but North Carolina continues to insist the Apple project, known by its code name of "Project Bear," has not been closed.

So given that the new campus has been announced for Austin and ground has now been broken there, it's unclear what Apple's plans are for North Carolina. Are negotiations actually still underway for yet another Apple campus to be located in RTP, or is the continued "open" status of the project simply a ploy by Apple to try to keep its negotiations secret for as long as possible? And why spend tens of millions of dollars on RTP land when Austin had already been chosen?

Is Apple looking at yet another significant campus in the near future, or is it banking land and leaving negotiations with North Carolina open as a backup plan or to provide options for much further down the road? It's not clear when we'll have answers to these questions, but given Apple's appetite for office space, it would not be surprising if the company finds itself looking to expand again in the not too distant future.

Shortly after the Pro Display XDR became available to order this week, Stephen Hackett of Relay FM noted that the iMac Pro was not included in the list of Mac models compatible with the display on Apple's website.

Fortunately, video editor Thomas Grove Carter has since demonstrated that the iMac Pro can in fact drive the Pro Display XDR, but only at a 5K resolution. This is likely because the iMac Pro uses Intel's older "Alpine Ridge" Thunderbolt 3 controller without enough bandwidth to drive a 6K display.

To use the Pro Display XDR at its full 6K resolution, the display must be connected to the new Mac Pro with MPX Module GPUs, a 2018 or later 15-inch MacBook Pro, a 16-inch MacBook Pro, or a 2019 iMac. To our best knowledge, all of these models are equipped with Intel's newer "Titan Ridge" Thunderbolt 3 controller.

The Pro Display XDR also works at full 6K resolution with any Mac with Thunderbolt 3 ports paired with a Blackmagic eGPU or Blackmagic eGPU Pro. Those external GPUs are equipped with the "Titan Ridge" controller as well.

The Pro Display XDR is aimed at professional users, with a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and a peak brightness of 1,600 nits. It is priced at $4,999 and up.

(Hat tip to Myke Hurley!)

AT&T today announced that it has launched its 5G network in its first ten markets: Birmingham, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Providence, Rochester, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose. AT&T has PDF maps of coverage areas within these cities in its press release, and the carrier is aiming for nationwide 5G coverage in the first half of next year.

For the time being, customers with the new Samsung Galaxy Note10+ 5G will be able to access AT&T's 5G network, with more devices coming in the future. Apple is expected to launch its first 5G iPhones next year, likely in its usual September timeframe.

The 5G network AT&T is launching today is for the sub-6GHz spectrum, which offers broad coverage at speeds that are a step up from LTE. A separate flavor of 5G operates on the mmWave spectrum and offers even faster speeds but with shorter range, and is thus best suited for very dense, highly trafficked areas. AT&T refers to its mmWave 5G service as 5G+, and it launched in pockets of 12 markets almost exactly a year ago.

Noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes there will be four flagship 2020 iPhones next September, with all of them capable of supporting both sub-6Hz and mmWave 5G technology in select markets such the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Other countries will see only sub-6Hz support, while 5G may be disabled entirely in other countries where 5G isn't widely available, in order to reduce Apple's costs.

AT&T was of course notorious for branding some of its enhanced 4G LTE network as "5G Evolution" or "5GE," which began appearing in the iPhone status bar with iOS 12.2, confusing some users who thought they were able to access true 5G networks.

Tim Cook continued his tour of Asia this week with a trip to Bangkok, Thailand. The Apple CEO has been documenting the journey on his Twitter account.

Cook kicked things off with a visit to the Wat Arun Buddhist temple on the Thonburi west bank of the Chao Phraya River.

In a tweet, Cook thanked Thai photographer Jirasak Panpiansin for showing him the historic seventeenth century temple "through your lens." Jirasak's iPhone photography has previously been highlighted in Apple's annual World Gallery.

Following his visit to the Temple of Dawn, Cook traveled to Satit-Chula school to meet students using Apple's Everyone Can Create curriculum, which lets teachers integrate iOS device-driven drawing, music, filmmaking or photography into their lesson plans for a variety of subjects.

After that, Cook met up with the Thai women's gold medal-winning national volleyball team to witness how they use iPad and Apple Watch in their training.

Also today, cook spent time with two WWDC scholarship winners, and then met "studygrammer" Peanut Butter, "who brings intricate Thai handwriting to life on ‌iPad‌."

During his Asia trip, Cook has stopped in Tokyo, Japan and Singapore to meet with local employees, developers, healthcare experts, plane pilots, and others. We'll keep this post updated as Cook continues his tour in Asia.

Apple today announced the addition of "Ultimate Rivals" from Bit Fry Game Studios to its Apple Arcade gaming service.

Ultimate Rivals is a sports game franchise that brings athletes from hockey, basketball, football, and soccer into one video game, which Apple says is a first in sports gaming.

The first title in the franchise, "Ultimate Rivals: The Rink," allows players to choose from more than 50 athletes to compete in two-on-two hockey matches. There are licensed athletes from the NHL, NBA, NFL Players Association (NFLPA), MLB, WNBA and the US Women's National Soccer Team Players Association (USWNTPA), plus retired legends like Wayne Gretzky.

Different combinations of players will unlock unique ways to play and win against the AI or other gamers in online multiplayer matches. According to Apple, the game features 60 frames-per-second graphics, tight controls, leading-edge visuals, and sound design.

"With Apple Arcade, we are committed to delivering a curated catalog where every title offers players a new, innovative experience that pushes the boundaries of what a game can be. The 'Ultimate Rivals' franchise does just that," said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "'Ultimate Rivals: The Rink' is a great new addition to Apple Arcade and we are excited for everyone to try it out."

Ultimate Rivals: The Rink is available today on ‌Apple Arcade‌, and it will be followed by an NBA licensed basketball game "Ultimate Rivals: The Court" in the spring of 2020.

Apple won't be hit with hefty tariffs on the iPhone, iPad, and MacBooks as U.S. President Donald Trump this afternoon signed off on a trade deal with China.

Speaking in a note to investors shared by Bloomberg, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said that the new tariffs could have added approximately $150 to the price of iPhones during the holiday season.

"Trump delivered an early Christmas present to Apple. If this tariff went through it would have been a major gut punch for semi players/Apple and could have thrown a major wrench into the supply chain and demand for the holiday season."

If Apple absorbed the cost of the tariffs, the company's earnings per share would have shrunk by approximately four percent, according to Ives. Raising prices could have caused ‌iPhone‌ demand to shrink by an estimated six to eight percent in 2020.

Apple is paying tariffs on the Apple Watch, AirPods, iMac components, and HomePod speaker, which could potentially be eliminated now that a deal has been reached. Apple in November also applied for tariff waivers on these items.

The tariffs that were avoided today were originally set to be put in place in August, but were delayed until December 15 to give the U.S. and China more time to reach an agreement.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been speaking with Trump about the tariffs, and in August reportedly made a "good case" arguing that tariffs would put Apple at a disadvantage with rivals like Samsung. Apple earlier this year also sent a letter urging the Trump administration not to proceed with the tariffs.

Cook in late October said that he was confident the United States and China would resolve the trade dispute. "I don't know every chapter of the book, but I think that will eventually happen," said Cook.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Apple in iOS 13 added a Voice Control feature as an Accessibility option designed for those who need to use their iPhones and iPads without their hands. It allows for complete control of the operating system using voice commands.

Voice Control is designed for people who need an alternative to physical control, but it has the potential to be useful even for those can use their devices with their hands. Check out our latest YouTube video below to see Voice Control in action, and read on to see how to enable it and what it can do.

How to Enable Voice Control

Voice Control can be turned on in the Settings app by following these instructions:

1. Open up the Settings app.
2. Scroll down to Accessibility and tap it.
3. Select the Voice Control option.
4. Tap on Set Up Voice Control.

The setup screen for Voice Control will walk you through the different things you can do with your voice, which ranges from opening apps and adjusting settings to tapping buttons and dictating and editing text.

After tapping on Set Up and checking out the various options, Voice Control will be toggled on.

What Voice Control Can Do

With Voice Control enabled, there's a little microphone icon that's active and visible on the iPhone's display. When Voice Control is active, you don't need to invoke Siri or use any other kind of wake word to navigate the ‌iPhone‌.

Simple commands like "Open Settings" work to open up an app, and then you can navigate by saying things like "Go Back." You do need to learn the specific commands for control, which can take some time. Selecting an item in the Settings app, for example, requires saying "Tap Accessibility" rather than "Select" or "Choose."

Voice Control is a powerful tool and it can do almost anything that you can do with physical access. A sample list is below:

• Swipe left, right, up, or down on the screen
• Zoom, scroll, rotate, two finger tap, long press, pan up/down, double tap
• Tap items on the screen
• Open Control Center
• Open Notification Center
• Open third-party apps like Twitter
• Start a new tweet, add text, and send the tweet
• Show numbers (to add little numbers to items in a list)
• Tap number (to tap one of the numbered items - you can also just say the number without tap)
• Show grid (adds a grid to the screen with numbers so you can tap a specific spot on the screen)
• Show names (displays app or item names)
• Open Notes
• Tap New Note
• Select that/all/[specific phrase]
• Copy [text]/Paste [text]
• Drag and drop
• Tap and hold
• Type [phrase]
• Go Home
• Go back
• Open ‌Siri‌
• Search web for [phrase]
• Go to sleep
• Take screenshot
• Reboot
• Open Apple Pay

You can do specific sequences within apps for things that would normally require hand control. Here's an example Voice Control sequence in the Messages app:

1. Open Messages
2. Tap [person's name]
3. Tap iMessage
4. Speak your text (whenever a keyboard is showing on the screen, whatever you speak will be typed in)
5. Tap emoji
6. Show numbers
7. Tap 25 (heart eyes emoji)
8. Tap Send

That's the entire Voice Control sequence to type out a message with an included emoji and send it out to someone. The "Show numbers" command is super useful in situations where there are a lot of options on the screen (such as the emoji list) and you need to choose one.

Here's a similar sequence in the Notes app, using voice commands:

1. Open Notes
2. Tap new Note
3. Speak your title
4. Tap return
5. Speak your text
6. Period

For editing in Notes:

1. Select [phrase]
2. Copy selection
3. Show grid
4. Tap number (where the cursor should be)
5. Paste that
6. Tap done
7. Go Home

There are tons of Voice Control commands to work with, which can all be seen by going to Settings > Accessibility > Voice Control > Customize Commands or simply saying "Show Commands" with Voice Control turned on. Apple also has a support document that's worth checking out if you want to get deeper into using Voice Control.

It will take some time to learn all of the appropriate commands and then to create custom commands that fill in the missing gaps that are needed when it comes to control, but the effort will be well worth it for those who need this functionality.

Voice Control Options

There are several customization options for Voice Control, located in the Voice Control section of the Settings app as outlined above.

You can create custom commands, selecting an activation phrase, an action such as insert text or run a Shortcut, and an app for that custom phrase to work with. Voice Control integrates with Shortcuts, which means it's highly customizable and extremely powerful for those who need to use it for most ‌iPhone‌ and iPad functions.

For the insert text customization, for example, you can create a "home address" option that enters your home address whenever the phrase is spoken, useful for filling out forms.

There are also options to turn off various functions if something specific needs to be turned off or if you want to enable features not turned on by default such as music controls or making phone calls.

Through the "Vocabulary" section" you can teach Voice Control new words simply by tapping the "+" button and adding a phrase that Voice Control should recognize.

Settings for confirmation, playing sounds when a command is recognized, and showing usage hints can also be toggled on or off, with the latter option being particularly useful for those who are new to Voice Control.

Availability

Voice Control is an iOS 13 feature available on iPhones and iPads, but it's also available in macOS Catalina for those who want to control their Macs with their voice.

People who are able to control their iPhones with their hands or another physical manner may find Voice Control to be difficult and tedious to use, but it is an incredibly powerful and thorough option for those who have limited dexterity or mobility.

Apple has purchased UK-based photography company Spectral Edge, reports Bloomberg. The Spectral Edge website is now defunct, but the company had developed a mathematical technique for improving photographic imagery in real-time.

Created in 2014 from academic research at the University of East Anglia, Spectral Edge's algorithm is able to enhance low-light smartphone images, something that could be potentially useful for Night Mode and other photographic capabilities in future iPhones.

Spectral Edge's technology captures an infrared shot and then blends it with a standard photo to make images crisper and to improve color accuracy. Bloomberg suggests that Apple could use Spectral Edge's machine learning techniques to further improve the quality of iPhone photos.

In court filings, Apple corporate lawyer Peter Denwood has been named a director of Spectral Edge, with other advisors and board members now terminated. According to Bloomberg, the documents indicate that Apple is now in control of the company.

There is no word on what Apple paid for Spectral Edge, and Apple did not respond to Bloomberg's requests for comment.

Apple on Tuesday released iOS 13.3, a new update that includes Communication Limits for Screen Time, designed to allow parents to limit who can contact their children and who children can contact.

As it turns out, though, there's a bug in the feature that's allowing children to communicate with anyone who texts them.

As outlined by CNBC, Communication Limits is designed to prevent children from communicating with people not in their Contacts list (it can be set to Everyone or Contacts Only).

When an unknown number texts a child, there's an option to add that number to the list of Contacts, allowing the child to then text, call, and FaceTime that person even without parental permission.

This particular workaround only works when there is active Screen Time available. In the Downtime mode, when a child is not supposed to be using an iOS device, there is no option to add a number to the Contacts app.

CNBC says that children can also skirt the contact restrictions when there's available Screen Time by using an Apple Watch paired to an iPhone to call or text a phone number, regardless of whether that number is in the contacts list.

Apple told CNBC that a fix for this workaround is in the works, but parents can take the following steps to prevent children from exploiting the bug:

1. Open Settings.
2. Open Contacts.
3. Select Default Account.
4. Change it to iCloud.

Forcing contacts to sync with ‌iCloud‌ apparently prevents the bug from occurring on devices that default to syncing contacts with Gmail or other services.

CNBC suggests Apple can address the bug by removing the "Add Contact" option when a child receives a text from a number that's not already in the address book, or Apple could require a PIN before allowing a contact to be saved.

Apple Pay with Express Transit mode is coming to the Washington Metro in 2020, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority announced today. No specific timeline has been provided yet.

Starting next year, riders in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area will be able to add their reloadable SmarTrip fare card to the Wallet app and simply hold their iPhone or Apple Watch near a contactless payment reader at Metrorail stations or on Metrobus buses to pay their fare.

Express Transit mode allows for tap-and-go payment, eliminating the need to authenticate with Face ID, Touch ID, or a passcode. The device does not need to be waked or unlocked, either.

This announcement comes less than two weeks after Transport for London rolled out Apple Pay with Express Transit mode across its system. Apple Pay with Express Transit mode is also rolling out to 85 additional MTA stations in New York City this month, including the busy hub of Penn Station.

Express Transit mode is also supported in Portland, Beijing, Shanghai, and Japan.

Update: As noted by the blog Ata Distance, Apple Pay support for the Shenzhen Tong and Lingnan Pass fare cards is also planned for 2020. This will mark a major expansion of Apple Pay across transit systems in Shenzhen and several other cities in the Chinese province of Guangdong.