MacRumors

Apple has slashed the number of app categories listed in the Mac App Store's Categories tab, an apparently intentional move that may irk Mac users and developers who rely on the tab to aid app discoverability.

The tab now lists just 10 categories, down from the 21 it had listed since the revamped Mac App Store debuted with the launch of macOS Mojave in September. The missing categories include Finance, Lifestyle, Sports, Weather, Medical, Travel, Education, Reference, Entertainment, Health & Fitness, and News. That leaves the following 10 categories that users can still browse individually:

When a developer submits their app to Apple for inclusion on the Mac App Store, they can assign the app a primary category and a secondary category. The primary category is particularly important for discoverability, as this is the one in which the app appears when users browse the Mac App Store or filter search results. Up until yesterday, it also determined the app's placement among the 21 categories listed in the Categories tab.

It's unclear at present why Apple has decided to hamstring the Categories tab, as the categories that are missing are still being used to classify apps in the Mac App Store, and Apple's documentation for developers on choosing a category for their Mac app hasn't changed. Currently, iPhone and iPad users remain able to browse all 21 iOS app categories individually in the iOS App Store app.

We've reached out to Apple for comment regarding the change to the Mac App Store and will update this article if we learn more.

Update: Apple brought back the 11 missing categories in the Categories tab as of Saturday morning. Why they were removed in the first place remains a mystery.

The first benchmark for the 2018 MacBook Air surfaced on Geekbench today, giving us our first look at how the low-power 7W Amber Lake Intel chip in the machine measures up to the performance of other Macs in Apple's lineup.

Equipped with a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-8210Y chip and 16GB of RAM, the benchmarked MacBook Air earned a single-core score of 4248 and a multi-core score of 7828.

As should be no surprise, it's significantly better than the previous-generation MacBook Air equipped with a 1.8GHz Broadwell processor, which earned a single-core score of 3335 and a multi-core score of 6119.

It's faster than the fastest Core M chip in the 2017 MacBook models, but not by much. The 1.4GHz MacBook earned a single-core score of 3925 and a multi-core score of 7567, while the base model with a 1.2GHz Core M chip earned a single-core score of 3527 and a multi-core score of 6654.

Compared to MacBook Pro models, it's not too far off from the 2018 13-inch Touch Bar MacBook Pro with a 2.3GHz Intel Core i5 processor when it comes to single-core performance, but it can't compete with the four cores in the 2018 MacBook Pro. That machine earned a single-core score of 4504 and a multi-core score of 16464.

It's also slower than the 2017 13-inch MacBook Pro sans Touch Bar that Apple still sells, which earned a single-core score of 4314 and a multi-core score of 9071.

Single-Core Performance

• 2018 MacBook Air - 4248
• 2017 MacBook Air - 3335
• 1.4GHz 2017 MacBook - 3925
• 1.3GHz 2017 MacBook - 3630
• 1.2GHz 2017 MacBook - 3527
• 2.3GHz 2018 MacBook Pro - 4504
• 2.3GHz 2017 MacBook Pro - 4314

Multi-Core Performance

• 2018 MacBook Air - 7828
• 2017 MacBook Air - 6119
• 1.4GHz 2017 MacBook - 7567
• 1.3GHz 2017 MacBook - 6974
• 1.2GHz 2017 MacBook - 6654
• 2.3GHz 2018 MacBook Pro - 16464
• 2.3GHz 2017 MacBook Pro - 9071

Previous MacBook Air chips used 15W U-series chips from Intel, but the 2018 model is using a lower-power 7W Y-series chip, and there were some concerns about its performance relative to the rest of the Mac lineup.

Based on these Geekbench scores, which aren't necessarily indicative of how these machines will perform in the real world, the MacBook Air is superior to the MacBook lineup at this time, but falls short of the base-level MacBook Pro, which is about right given its price point ($1,199 for the Air vs. $1,299 for the Pro). What the Mac lineup will look like if and when the 12-inch MacBook is refreshed remains to be seen.

Additional benchmarking results should be available soon, as the MacBook Air is set to arrive to the first customers on Wednesday, November 7, and MacBook Air reviews should come out before then.

Overall smartphone battery life may be declining due to the increasing demands new technologies place on lithium ion batteries, according to smartphone testing done by The Washington Post.

In a series of battery life tests where multiple smartphone models from the past few years were set at the same brightness and forced to reload the same sites, newer smartphones were not able to last as long as older devices.

When it comes to the iPhone, for example, the iPhone XS died an average of 21 minutes earlier than the previous-generation iPhone X. Battery life impact was most noticeable with the Google Pixel 3, which lasted an hour and a half less than the Pixel 2.

According to The Washington Post, the iPhone XR, which uses an LCD instead of an OLED display, was a notable exception, performing well on the battery life tests. The iPhone XR boasts the longest battery life of any iPhone with 25 hours of talk time, 15 hours of internet use, 16 hours of video playback, and 65 hours of audio playback.

It lasted the longest in the battery test, besting the Pixel 3XL, the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, and the iPhone XS Max.

Apple's iPhone XR, the new phone I recommend to most people, has a different approach. It scales back on the screen tech -- lower resolution, less bright and lower-quality color -- in ways that benefit battery life tremendously: The XR lasted 3 hours longer than the top iPhone XS, even though the its screen is actually a smidge larger. (Bonus: It also costs $250 less.)

Nadim Maluf, CEO of battery optimization firm Qnovo, told The Washington Post that batteries improve at about "5 percent per year" but smartphone power consumption is growing faster than that.

The Washington Post consulted with other tech sites like Tom's Guide and CNET, and came to the conclusion that high-resolution OLED displays and cellular connectivity are major factors that impact battery life.

Turning down display brightness and using WiFi when possible, two well-known techniques for preserving battery life, are among the site's recommendations for eking more juice out of a smartphone.

The Washington Post's battery life test focused on the display, but other battery life tests, such as one conducted by Consumer Reports using a machine that opens up apps, had different results, with the iPhone XS beating the iPhone X due to improvements Apple has made with the processor.

Variations in battery life due to different tests and different real-life usage situations can make it difficult to tell whether overall battery life is increasing or decreasing over time, says the site.

Battery company Onavo's CEO believes that consumers should "start getting ready for compromise," settling for smartphones with increasingly bigger batteries that result in larger, heavier devices or lesser technologies like the LCD display in the iPhone XR.

Apps created for the Mac often don't receive as much attention as apps made for iOS devices, so we have a bi-monthly series here at MacRumors that's designed to highlight useful and interesting Mac apps that are worth checking out and potentially investing in.

This week's picks include apps focused on Dark Mode, a new feature introduced in September with the launch of macOS Mojave, along with some useful apps for customizing text, keeping your eyes safe while working, and keeping your Mac awake. Many of our highlighted apps this week were chosen by MacRumors forum members.

• Amphetamine (Free) - Amphetamine is a Mac app keeps your Mac and your Mac display off by adding a simple on-off switch or customizable triggers. With Amphetamine activated from the menu bar, your Mac will be prevented from going into sleep mode. You can choose to keep your Mac awake indefinitely, for a specific amount of time, while a file is downloading, when a specific app is running, and more.
• Dark Mode for Safari ($1.99) - Dark Mode in macOS Mojave introduces a darker theme across the operating system, but this doesn't extend to individual apps like Safari. Some websites are implementing Dark Mode support, but for those that haven't, the Dark Mode for Safari extension changes them to a darker theme that's easier on the eyes at night time or in low lighting environments. This is not a perfect app and doesn't work well with all websites, but improvements are being introduced on a continual basis and it can be easily toggled on or off.
• Textlicious ($1.99) - Textlicious is a simple, inexpensive app that's designed to let you insert styled text in places that normally only accept plain text. If, for example, you've wondered how people are getting those custom fonts that you see sometimes on social networks like Twitter, it's quite possible they're using this app. Textlicious lets you highlight any text you're typing in an app, right click, and then select a style from the pop-up menu. There are options like typewriter, strikethrough, small, script, bold, italic, circled, and more. Something to be aware of with Textlicious and similar apps - Unicode symbols like these break the screen readers that vision impaired people use.
• Breaks For Eyes ($9.99) - Mojave's Dark Mode is meant to cut down on eyestrain, and the same is true of Breaks for Eyes. When looking at an iPhone, iPad, or Mac, taking frequent little breaks is a good idea to prevent dry eyes, eyestrain, and headaches. Breaks for Eyes reminds you to look away from the Mac screen every 20 minutes for 20 seconds, letting your eyes take a rest. There's a three-day trial, and then the full app costs $9.99 to unlock.
• NightOwl (Free) - [Update: While we originally featured this app for its ability to add a quick Dark Mode toggle to your Mac's menu bar, as of 2023 a number of users are reporting suspicious network activity related to it, so we've removed our link to it out of caution and users who have installed it may want to consider removing it.]

If you have a favorite must-have Mac app that we haven't highlighted yet, let us know in the comments, and we might feature it in a future video. Many of this month's app picks came directly from recommendations from our forum members, and it's these recommendations that have helped make this series useful.

For more of our Mac app picks, make sure to check out our Mac app recommendation archives.

Though iPhone revenue was up in 4Q 2018, fourth quarter iPhone XS and XS Max sales were not as strong as expected, and iPhone sales growth was essentially flat. Apple sold 46.9 million iPhones during the quarter, compared to 46.7 million in the year-ago quarter, missing analyst estimates.

Apple's $89 to $93 billion revenue forecast for the first fiscal quarter of 2019 is rather also cautious, which Apple blamed on foreign exchange costs, issues with supply/demand balance, and weakness in emerging markets.

"Virtually every foreign currency has depreciated against the dollar over the last 12 months," said Apple CFO Luca Maestri. "That adds 200 basis points of headwinds to the tune of $2 billion to our revenue."

Uncertainty in emerging markets is also a factor. "There's some level of uncertainty at the macroeconomic model in some emerging countries where consumer confidence is not as high," said Maestri.

Maestri also said that Apple has launched an "unprecedented number" of new products over the course of the last six weeks, and Apple has "some uncertainty" around supply/demand balance for some of these products. The launch timing of the new iPhones is also a factor, with the iPhone XR coming later than the XS and the XS Max. This had an effect on Apple's Q4 revenue and will also impact Q1.

Despite the cautious guidance for the first fiscal quarter of 2018, Apple is "very excited" about its lineup of products and services entering the holiday shopping season, and Maestri said that Apple has the "strongest lineup" it's ever had.

Going forward, Apple does not plan to break down unit sales of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, a major change to the way that earnings data is presented. Apple will, however, continue to provide details on overall iPhone, iPad, and Mac revenue.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Apple CFO Luca Maestri explained during today's earnings call that Apple does not believe that providing unit sales is relevant for the company at this point.

During today's fourth quarter earnings call, Apple CFO Luca Maestri announced that going forward, Apple will not provide unit sales of iPhone, iPad, and Mac during its quarterly earnings reports.

This marks a major change to the way that Apple reports data and it will make estimating iPad, Mac, and iPhone product sales a more difficult task. Apple is perhaps making this change because its unit sales are decreasing while revenue is growing due to rising ASPs.

This quarter, for example, iPhone unit sales were flat at 46.9 million, but iPhone revenue was up 29 percent.

According to Maestri, Apple does not believe that unit sales over the course of a 90-day period are an indicator of the underlying strength of its business.

Apple also plans to rename the "Other Products" category to "Wearables, Home, and Accessories," a change that will also be made in the December quarter. This category will continue to include the Apple Watch, Apple TV, AirPods, HomePods, Beats headphones, and more.

Apple today announced financial results for the third calendar quarter and fourth fiscal quarter of 2018.

For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $62.9 billion and net quarterly profit of $14.1 billion, or $2.91 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $52.6 billion and net quarterly profit of $10.7 billion, or $2.07 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue, profit, and EPS were all-time records for the September quarter.

Gross margin for the quarter was 38.3 percent, compared to 37.9 percent in the year-ago quarter, with international sales accounting for 61 percent of revenue. Apple also declared an upcoming dividend payment of $0.73 per share, payable November 15 to shareholders of record as of November 12.

For the quarter, Apple sold 46.9 million iPhones, up slightly from 46.7 million in the year-ago quarter. iPad sales fell to 9.7 million from 10.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2017, while Mac sales dipped to 5.3 million from 5.4 million.

For the full fiscal year, Apple generated $265.6 billion in sales with $59.5 billion in net income, up from $229.2 billion in sales and $48.4 billion in net income for fiscal 2017. Both figures are also all-time company records, exceeding standards of $233.7 billion in sales and $53.4 billion in net income set in fiscal 2015.

“We’re thrilled to report another record-breaking quarter that caps a tremendous fiscal 2018, the year in which we shipped our 2 billionth iOS device, celebrated the 10th anniversary of the App Store and achieved the strongest revenue and earnings in Apple’s history,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Over the past two months, we’ve delivered huge advancements for our customers through new versions of iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad and Mac as well as our four operating systems, and we enter the holiday season with our strongest lineup of products and services ever.”

Apple's guidance for the first quarter of fiscal 2019 includes expected revenue of $89-93 billion and gross margin between 38 and 38.5 percent.

Apple will provide live streaming of its fiscal Q4 2018 financial results conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and MacRumors will update this story with coverage of the conference call highlights.

Conference call recap ahead…

➜ Click here to read rest of article...

Apple is set to report its earnings results for the fourth quarter of its 2018 fiscal year at 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time today.

The quarter began July 1, 2018 and ran through September 29, 2018, according to Apple's fiscal year accounting calendar.

Apple provided the following guidance for the quarter back on July 31:

• revenue of $60 billion to $62 billion
  

• gross margin between 38 and 38.5 percent
  

• op. ex. of $7.95 billion to $8.05 billion
  

• other income/expense of $300 million
  

• tax rate of approximately 15 percent before discrete items

Apple's guidance suggests it will report its best fourth quarter results ever, by revenue, comfortably topping its 2017 record of $52.6 billion:

• 2014: $42.1 billion
  

• 2015: $51.5 billion
  

• 2016: $46.9 billion
  

• 2017: $52.6 billion
  

• 2018: $60+ billion

Wall Street analysts forecast that Apple will report $61.5 billion revenue, above the midpoint of its guidance, and earnings per share of $2.78, according to 32 estimates averaged by Yahoo Finance.

Key Takeaways and What to Look For

• iPhone unit sales of around 47.5 million, according to a FactSet estimate. Apple began accepting iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max pre-orders September 14, just over two weeks before Apple's fourth quarter ended. Apple sold 46.7 million iPhones in the year-ago quarter.
  

• Apple doesn't break out iPhone sales on a model-by-model basis, but the iPhone's average selling price should reveal whether customers are leaning towards higher-priced iPhones such as the iPhone XS Max. iPhone ASP was $617.99 in the year-ago quarter.
  

• Mac unit sales should be boosted by 2018 MacBook Pro models, released on July 12, nearly two weeks into the quarter. Apple sold 3.72 million Macs last quarter, its fewest in any single quarter since the third quarter of 2010, due to seasonality and a largely outdated lineup. Mac sales totaled 5.39 million in the year-ago quarter.
  

• Apple's guidance for its first quarter of fiscal 2019, which began September 30 and encompasses the launch of the iPhone XR and the new iPad Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini models. Analysts expect record revenue of $92.9 billion, based on 31 estimates averaged by Yahoo Finance.
  

• Continued growth of Apple's Services category, including the App Store, Apple Music, iCloud, iTunes, Apple Pay, and AppleCare. Last quarter, Apple's services brought in a record $9.5 billion revenue. Apple said it is still on target to double its fiscal 2016 services revenue by fiscal 2020.
  

• Continued growth of Apple's Other Products category, including the Apple Watch, Apple TV, HomePod, AirPods, Beats, iPod touch, and accessories, as Apple diversifies revenue beyond the iPhone.

Apple's CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri will discuss the company's earnings results on a conference call at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time today. MacRumors will loosely transcribe the one-hour call as it occurs live.

Normally, an Apple product becomes vintage once five years have passed since it was last manufactured, meaning that Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASPs) will no longer repair or service the product.

In late January, however, Apple launched a pilot program that permits Apple Stores and AASPs to continue servicing select vintage products, subject to parts availability. The program started in the United States and Turkey with the Mid 2011 iMac and expanded worldwide with the 2012 MacBook Air in August.

Now, Apple is further expanding the program to include the iPhone 5, which became vintage on Wednesday. In an internal document, Apple says Apple Stores and AASPs worldwide are authorized to continue servicing the CDMA variant of the device through October 31, 2020, and the GSM variant through December 30, 2020.

Apple's internal document, obtained by MacRumors from multiple sources, also outlines other soon-to-be vintage iPhones and Macs that will also be added to the pilot program at various dates throughout the remainder of this year:

Effective November 30, 2018:

• iPhone 4S
  

• MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012)

Effective December 30, 2018:

• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Retina, Late 2012)
  

• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Retina, Early 2013)
  

• MacBook Pro (15-inch, Retina, Mid 2012)
  

• MacBook Pro (15-inch, Retina, Early 2013)
  

• Mac Pro (Mid 2012)

If parts are unavailable for a specific repair for these vintage products, Apple Stores and AASPs are instructed to decline service. This is a pilot program to begin with, so it is subject to change or end at any time.

The exact reason for the pilot program is unclear, beyond Apple apparently having a surplus of service parts for these specific vintage products. Apple's internal document states that inventory of service parts will not be replenished, so repairs under the pilot program are certainly not guaranteed.

Apple today seeded the first beta of an upcoming iOS 12.1.1 update to its public beta testing group, one day after seeding the same beta to developers and two days after the release of the iOS 12.1 update.

Beta testers who have signed up for Apple's beta testing program will receive the iOS 12.1.1 beta update over-the-air after installing the proper certificate on an iOS device.

Those who want to join the beta testing program can sign up on Apple's beta testing website, which gives users access to iOS, macOS, and tvOS betas.

The iOS 12.1.1 update introduces some significant improvements to the FaceTime interface, and it re-adds the feature that's designed to let you take a Live Photo while on a FaceTime call.

In iOS 12.1.1, FaceTime features a reworked bottom bar that includes quick access buttons for muting a call and flipping the camera. Sliding up on the bottom bar brings up additional options with conversation participants.

Previously, FaceTime users were required to tap on three dots to access a secondary menu with these features.

The update also includes a new option in the Apple News app that lets you hide the side bar if desired.

Apple's 2019 iPhones will come equipped with an upgraded Face ID camera system, according to a new note to investors from often reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

According to Kuo, next-generation iPhones will feature a new flood illuminator that will improve Face ID by lowering the impact of invisible light from the environment. Kuo believes the upgraded sensor will be included in all 2019 iPhone models, which he has previously said will again consist of two OLED iPhones and one LCD iPhone.

We believe that Apple will raise the output power of the flood illuminator VCSEL to lower the impacts from invisible lights of environment in order to improve the Face ID user experience. The higher power VCSEL with higher ASP needs increased requirements of design and production, increased materials for array design, and longer testing times. Therefore, the VCSEL supply chain can add higher value.

Kuo's note also suggests a Time of Flight (ToF) 3D camera will be introduced in iPad models in late 2019 or early 2020, and could expand to the iPhone in the second half of 2020. He continues to believe that Apple has no plans to adopt ToF in 2019.

According to Kuo, a ToF 3D camera would allow for 3D models to be captured via the iPad and then edited with the Apple Pencil for an "all-new productivity experience." On the iPhone, eventual ToF support will allow for new AR experiences and improved photo quality.

We give a greater than 50% probability that the new iPad in 4Q19/1Q20 may adopt ToF (our previous forecast that the 2H19 new iPhone will not adopt ToF remains unchanged). We believe that 3D modeling captured by ToF and then edited by an Apple Pencil on an iPad will create an all-new productivity experience for design applications in a totally different manner from computers.

We estimate that ToF will likely be adopted by the new iPhone in 2H20 at the latest. The iPhone's adoption of ToF will create the new AR experience and improve photo quality. We expect that Apple's ToF design may adopt the higher-than-1,000nm wavelength VCSEL (vs. current Face ID's 935-945nm) for better system design and user experience.

A time-of-flight camera system is designed to determine the distance between objects by measuring the time-of-flight of a light or laser signal between the camera and the subject at each point in the image.

Kuo previously said he does not believe Apple is ready to implement this kind of camera system in the iPhone because it would not create the "revolutionary AR experience" that Apple is aiming for. Kuo believes that for the AR experience Apple wants, the company would need 5G connectivity, augmented reality glasses, and a more powerful Apple Maps database.

Though new iPhones are a good year away, we've been hearing rumors for months. We're expecting upgraded A13 chips in the upcoming devices, and there have been rumors of either a reduced notch or no notch at all, which could be a component of the improved TrueDepth camera system.

Rumors have also suggested Apple is considering a triple-lens rear camera system for at least some 2019 iPhone models, but it's not clear how that meshes with rumors suggesting a ToF implementation is off of the table for the 2019 lineup. A triple-lens camera could still provide benefits to photo taking, such as 3x optical zoom and better performance in poor lighting conditions.

Nearly six weeks after the release of macOS Mojave, web drivers for Nvidia graphics cards released in 2014 and later remain unavailable for the latest operating system, resulting in compatibility issues. This includes Nvidia graphics cards based on its Maxwell, Pascal, and Turing architecture.

While some customers have expressed frustration towards Nvidia, a spokesperson for the company informed MacRumors that "while we post the drivers, it's up to Apple to approve them," and suggested that we contact Apple. We followed that advice, but Apple has yet to respond to multiple requests for comment.

As a result of the lack of web drivers, external GPUs with an Nvidia graphics card released in 2014 or later have compatibility issues with any Mac running macOS Mojave. Likewise, any Mid 2010 or Mid 2012 Mac Pro upgraded with 2014-or-newer Nvidia graphics is incompatible with the operating system.

Nvidia warns that affected customers who upgrade to macOS Mojave may experience degraded rendering and performance on that version, according to discussions on the Nvidia Developers Forums and MacRumors Forums.

macOS Mojave requires a graphics card that supports Apple's graphics framework Metal, but until updated web drivers are released, many newer Nvidia graphics cards such as the GeForce GTX 1080 are incompatible with the operating system. In the meantime, some users have downgraded back to macOS High Sierra.

Nvidia's Quadro K5000 and GeForce GTX 680 are already Metal-capable and compatible with macOS Mojave, according to an Apple support document.

macOS Mojave is compatible with any MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, iMac Pro, Mac mini, and Mac Pro released in 2012 or later, in addition to Mid 2010-Mid 2012 models of the Mac Pro with a Metal-capable graphics card.

Nvidia graphics cards based on Kepler architecture, which Apple offered in various Macs between 2012 and 2014, are fully compatible with macOS Mojave. Apple has since switched to AMD as its dedicated graphics card provider.

There is some debate as to whether Apple, Nvidia, or both companies are to blame for the lack of web drivers, which are usually released within a few days after a major macOS release. If we learn any new information, we'll share it.