Apple has announced the opening of a new Design and Development Accelerator in Shanghai as part of an effort to support engineering talent and boost growth in China's iOS developer community.
Located in Pudong District, the Accelerator is being launched to give Chinese developers a chance to work closely with Apple experts to enhance their app development skills, learn how to take advantage of the latest Apple software and hardware, and get tips on app marketing and distribution.
"Developers here in China are leading the world with some of the most popular apps on the App Store, and we are proud to be providing this additional support for them," said Enwei Xie, Apple’s head of developer relations, Greater China. "From education to health to entertainment, the innovation we see here is incredible and we can't wait to see what these talented developers will come up with next."
The first Accelerator program focused on how to implement Apple's augmented reality technologies, with an in-depth look at the latest updates to ARKit 3, AR Quick Look, Reality Composer, and RealityKit. According to Apple, the range of activities includes lectures, workshops, labs, guest speakers, train the trainers, and networking on a regular basis.
Apple says Greater China has over 2.5 million app developers, and since 2010, local developers have earned over 200 billion RMB through App Store sales, with over 30 percent of those earnings made in the past year alone.
Shanghai's Accelerator follows a similar scheme Apple launched in 2017 in Bangalore, India. To attend programs, attendees must be registered members of the Apple Development Program and have an Apple ID registered in the region.
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...
Helping China win the technology competition. Remember. every time you purchase an Apple product you are helping China, not the US. Straight out "sell them the rope to hang you by".
Sure. Because no Americans make their living developing the OS, engineering the hardware, etc. And those American engineers who don’t exist don’t spend the paychecks they don’t receive in the US, thus keeping other Americans employed.
The only jobs that matter are jobs putting things together, right?
Apart from a lucky and talented few there are not many that can live on App Store income in the USA, whereas Singapore is expensive in terms of cost of living, the neighboring countries are not.
And there must be 3 dozen Xiaomi and Huawei corporate spies (infiltrators) embedded within that Apple app design group in China. Makes their job of pilfering Apple's software IP and ideas so much easier.
The more, the merrier. Why this is looked at in a negative light is beyond me. Increasing iOS development in the most populous country on earth seems like a winning strategy. Similar to increasing iOS development in the 2nd most populous country on earth as mentioned in the story.
