MacRumors is pleased to announce our Twelfth Annual MacRumors Blood Drive, throughout the month of May 2021. Our goal is to save lives by increasing the number of life-saving donations of blood, platelets, and plasma. While most blood drives are specific to a geographic location, our blood drive is online and worldwide.
Over the past 11 years, MacRumors Blood Drives have recorded donations of 827 units of blood, platelets, and plasma, and celebrated new signups for the organ donor and bone marrow registries. We've heard from people whose lives were saved by blood donations from strangers.
With a worldwide health crisis, blood donations are more important than ever. Donation centers have taken necessary precautions to protect donors.
This year we pay special tribute to user Timelordprime, whose MacRumors Blood Drive totals exceed 130 units of platelets and plasma. He will reach his 400th lifetime blood and platelet donation next month, having donated well over 500 units to strangers in need!
How to participate in the MacRumors Blood Drive - during May 2021
If you are an eligible donor, schedule a blood, platelet, or plasma donation (see FAQ), at any donation center near you. Then post in the MacRumors 2021 Blood Drive! thread to tell us about it. You'll be added to our Honor Roll.
Also post if you register as an organ donor or register for the bone marrow registry (see FAQ). You'll be added to our Honor Roll.
If you aren't eligible to donate or are deferred, please encourage someone else to make a donation, and let us know. If they donate, you'll both be added to our Honor Roll.
Share our message with friends, relatives, and followers. Thank the people who post in the MacRumors 2021 Blood Drive! thread.
How to participate in the MacRumors Blood Drive - from June 2021 to April 2022
In between the MacRumors Blood Drives each May, record your donations on our Team MacRumors page. We'll tally your donations and count them for the MacRumors Blood Drive next May.
Go to the Team MacRumors page and click PLEDGE TO GIVE BLOOD. (Bookmark the page for the future.)
Fill in your MacRumors username as your first name. Fill in @ macrumors as your last name.
In the comments field, tell us what type of donation and how many units, e.g., 1 unit of whole blood, 2 units of platelets, etc.
The email address and zip code fields don't matter. MacRumors won't use that information.
We look forward to another successful MacRumors Blood Drive.
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...
For those of us in the UK who are gay/bisexual, note that the rules will soon be changing to lift the current wide-ranging ban on blood donations and replace it with a more granular assessment of risk.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55296525
Sadly not in time for this year’s MacRumours Blood Drive, but should be ready for the next one… :cool:
This is an unpopular opinion, but I think everyone should boycott blood donation.
The United States has absolutely absurd laws about who they ALLOW to donate that aren’t based in science, and they specifically disallow guys who are into other guys based on AIDS hysteria that lingers from the 80s (which is when these laws were concocted). Just because a guy has sex with dudes doesn’t mean he automatically has AIDS, and in any case, they test EVERY donation anyway. It’s just antagonistic Puritan policy that only serves to otherize a group of people.
And Macrumors’ little “if you’re deferred just go beg someone to donate on your behalf” line is garbage. You might as well be telling deferred people to say “hey pal I can’t donate blood because the government says my blood is contaminated, will you please go do it on my behalf since your blood is cleaner?”
If everyone stopped donating, politicians would probably feel more compelled to change the laws. If they don’t, then let them carry the guilt for the people who died because blood banks were empty.
Boycott blood drives.
I understand the rules need to change, but people will die without blood. So if you boycott you will get someone killed so that’s not the answer
This is an unpopular opinion, but I think everyone should boycott blood donation.
The United States has absolutely absurd laws about who they ALLOW to donate that aren’t based in science, and they specifically disallow guys who are into other guys based on AIDS hysteria that lingers from the 80s (which is when these laws were concocted). Just because a guy has sex with dudes doesn’t mean he automatically has AIDS, and in any case, they test EVERY donation anyway. It’s just antagonistic Puritan policy that only serves to otherize a group of people.
And Macrumors’ little “if you’re deferred just go beg someone to donate on your behalf” line is garbage. You might as well be telling deferred people to say “hey pal I can’t donate blood because the government says my blood is contaminated, will you please go do it on my behalf since your blood is cleaner?”
If everyone stopped donating, politicians would probably feel more compelled to change the laws. If they don’t, then let them carry the guilt for the people who died because blood banks were empty.
Boycott blood drives.
That makes zero sense. The issue is the absurd law, not the blood drive. You're protesting the wrong thing here.
For those of us in the UK who are gay/bisexual, note that the rules will soon be changing to lift the current wide-ranging ban on blood donations and replace it with a more granular assessment of risk.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55296525
Sadly not in time for this year’s MacRumours Blood Drive, but should be ready for the next one… :cool:
In my country (Belgium) gay people can only donate blood if they haven't been in a sexual relation for 1 year. Absurd.
