Last week, Apple began offering customers the option of having their online orders shipped to their local retail store for pickup, a service especially valuable for those who have difficulty receiving shipments at their home or office. The "ship to store" option initially rolled out in the company's three San Francisco stores, and quickly expanded to include all sixteen Bay Area stores before the four New York City stores jointed the program earlier this week.
Apple has been said to be taking the service full-scale as of today as part of a series of retail enhancements that will also allow customers to use self-checkout for shelf-stocked items at Apple retail stores using the company's iOS app.
Evidence of Apple making minute-by-minute tweaks to the ship to store program is visible in Apple's online store, where just a short time ago customers had the option of using the service throughout the company's 51 California and four New York City stores.
The new expanded program did not last long, however, as Apple now appears to have completely shut down the ship to store option, with all stores listing online-only items as "unavailable for pickup". Items stocked in-store can still be purchased through the system, with California and New York City stores listing those products as "available now".
Apple is said to be viewing in-store pickup and self-checkout as major changes for the future of its retail stores, expecting that the majority of its customers will utilize in-store pickup as their default delivery method for Apple purchases.
Thursday January 23, 2025 6:41 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 should be released to the public next week, following beta testing since mid-December. While the software update is a relatively minor one, it still includes a handful of new features, changes, and bug fixes for iPhones.
Below, we recap everything new in iOS 18.3.
Notification Summary Changes
Examples of inaccurate Apple Intelligence notification summaries
Apple Intelligence...
Friday January 24, 2025 1:55 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is set to release iOS 18.3 next week, bringing further refinements to Apple Intelligence features, a couple of neat new capabilities to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 devices, and bug fixes.
While not quite as packed with new features as Apple's preceding iOS 18 point releases, iOS 18.3 still introduces capabilities that aim to make your iPhone smarter and more intuitive. Below, we've...
Friday January 24, 2025 8:16 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 is expected to be widely released next week, and that means the first iOS 18.4 beta for iPhones should be just around the corner.
Apple has previously implied that iOS 18.4 will be released in April, as that is when it promised to make Apple Intelligence available in even more languages.
Below, we outline what to expect from iOS 18.4 so far.
Apple Intelligence for Siri
Siri ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 7:32 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Walmart still does not accept Apple Pay or other NFC payments at its more than 4,600 stores across the U.S., and it stood firm on its reasoning for that today.
A spokesperson for Walmart today informed MacRumors that its position on contactless payments has not changed since we last reached out about the matter in 2022. The big-box retailer said it remains focused on its own convenient...
Wednesday January 22, 2025 6:01 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
A new Apple TV is expected to be released later this year. In this article, we recap rumored features and changes for the device.
The next Apple TV will be equipped with Apple's own combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He said the chip supports Wi-Fi 6E, which would be an upgrade over the current Apple TV's standard Wi-Fi 6 support. Wi-Fi 6E extends the...
Tuesday January 21, 2025 4:31 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 18.3 today, and with it comes release notes confirming what's new. While we knew about several of the features that are in the update, there are some lesser known tweaks and bug fixes.
The update adds new Visual Intelligence features for iPhone 16 models, it tweaks Notification summaries on all...
Friday January 24, 2025 9:09 am PST by Juli Clover
The upcoming iPhone 17 models that Apple plans to release this year will not feature a smaller Dynamic Island, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said today.
On social media, he said that he is expecting the size of the Dynamic Island to remain "largely unchanged" across the iPhone 17 lineup. His statement is contrary to prior rumors that we've heard about planned changes for the iPhone 17 models.
...
Saturday January 25, 2025 5:07 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple's retail stores will be rolling out "merchandise/floor marketing updates" next week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman did not explicitly say if the store updates are related to any upcoming product announcements, but he did mention that next week is around the time that Apple rolls out its annual Black Unity watch band for the Apple Watch.
In each of the past four years, ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 2:48 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
It's also time for Apple's first product announcement of the year.
Last year, Apple said it would be launching Powerbeats Pro 2 in 2025, and the wireless earbuds are expected to launch very soon.
Powerbeats Pro 2 images found in iOS 18 code
In his Power On newsletter last weekend, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the Powerbeats Pro 2 are "due imminently." In addition to Apple filing the...
Who needs their local store pick-up these days? It's a complete waste of time and in some cases money.
Apple offers free shipping on any order over $50. And the shipping is quick. Only a moron with a ton of free time on his/her hands would want to drive/take local transportation to the local store and then still wait in line.
Some "morons" work and do not trust having little boxes containing stuff that costs hundreds or thousands of dollars being left by their front door all day. Rather than having to work the deal to go pick it up at UPS or Fedex or similar, this gives them the option of picking it up at their local Apple store instead. If the Apple store is closer than the Fedex, etc pickup point, it's not so moronic after all.
Who needs their local store pick-up these days? It's a complete waste of time and in some cases money.
Apple offers free shipping on any order over $50. And the shipping is quick. Only a moron with a ton of free time on his/her hands would want to drive/take local transportation to the local store and then still wait in line.
Just because UPS delivers to your parent's basement, doesn't mean everyone has that same luxury. People have concerns over package drop offs, security, PO boxes only, don't want someone to see their gift, etc.
Plus, someone might want one-on-one help, to ask some additional questions before opening ... we could probably come up with dozens of scenarios where a store delivery would be preferable.
Who needs their local store pick-up these days? It's a complete waste of time and in some cases money.
Apple offers free shipping on any order over $50. And the shipping is quick. Only a moron with a ton of free time on his/her hands would want to drive/take local transportation to the local store and then still wait in line.
Some people like to stand in line. That way other people can see them standing in line at Apple.
