MacRumors

Nautilus, the company behind the Bowflex line of exercise equipment, today announced that its Bowflex Max Trainer models have gained HealthKit integration, making them one of the first fitness products to support Apple's new health initiative. Support will also be coming in the near future for the company's Nautilus 616 cardio product lineup.

With HealthKit integration, Bowflex users can now see their Bowflex workouts displayed in Apple's Health app, which is able to offer up dashboard data like calories burned, heart rate, time spent working out, and distance traveled. Data is acquired from the existing Bowflex Max Trainer app that transfers workout data from the exercise equipment using Bluetooth.

The Bowflex Max Trainer workout equipment, which starts at $999, is designed to burn more calories than competing treadmills and ellipticals, featuring 14-minute interval workouts. Nautilus's line of cardio equipment, which is gaining HealthKit support in the near future, includes a range of elliptical, treadmill, and upright and recumbent bikes.

"As one of the first fitness equipment companies to support Apple HealthKit, Nautilus, Inc. continues to lead the category by offering the latest health and fitness tools to help consumers achieve their fitness goals," said Rob Murdock, Vice President/General Manager of Nautilus, Inc. "Studies prove that digital connectivity and the ability to track progress play a critical role in keeping people motivated and engaged. We are dedicated to leveraging these tools and engaging consumers to better understand and manage their health and fitness."

Introduced alongside the iOS 8 Health app as part of a fitness and health-focused initiative, HealthKit is designed to tap into data from sensors within the iPhone and integrate with existing health and fitness apps and hardware. Information gathered from third-party apps like the Bowflex software is aggregated in the Health app to provide an overall picture of a person's activity levels.

HealthKit experienced a few hiccups when iOS 8 was first released, with Apple initially withholding HealthKit functionality from third-party apps due to a bug, but as of the iOS 8.0.2 update in September, HealthKit has been fully functional.

With HealthKit widely available to third-party developers, several fitness-related apps have begun to support the feature, including Pocket Yoga, 7 Minute Workout, CARROT Fit, and more. Several hardware products with accompanying apps have also gained HealthKit support, including the Jawbone UP and the Withings Smart Body Analyzer.

Just two days after introducing a tool allowing users to deregister their phone numbers from iMessage, a judge has ruled that Apple will face a federal lawsuit over the issue. Apple allegedly failed to notify consumers that leaving the iMessage system and switching to an Android phone would prevent them from receiving messages from other iPhone owners.

According to Reuters, Judge Lucy Koh has ruled that former iPhone customer Adrianne Moore's lawsuit, filed earlier this year, will be allowed to continue. Moore's lawsuit alleges that she ceased receiving messages after she switched to the Samsung Galaxy S5 from an iPhone 4, which interfered with her contract with Verizon Wireless. Moore is seeking both class-action status and unspecified damages from Apple.

In court documents, Apple argued that there's no law covering technology that "simply does not function as plaintiff subjectively believes it should," and that it did not claim iMessage and Messages would be able to recognize when iPhone users switched to non-iPhone devices.

In a Monday night decision, Koh said Moore deserved a chance to show Apple disrupted her wireless service contract and violated a California unfair competition law, by blocking messages meant for her.

"Plaintiff does not have to allege an absolute right to receive every text message in order to allege that Apple's intentional acts have caused an actual breach or disruption of the contractual relationship," Koh wrote.

An inability to receive messages after switching from an iPhone to an Android or Windows device is an issue that has affected many former iPhone users over the years. It occurs when iMessages sent from other iPhone owners are routed to a deactivated iPhone rather than being forwarded as a text message to an active smartphone.

Earlier this week, Apple introduced a tool that allows users to deregister their phone number from iMessage in order to prevent the issue from occurring. Prior to the launch of the web tool, there was no way for users to effectively remove themselves from the iMessage system.

Construction at Apple's spaceship is progressing at a rapid pace, with workers on site at the campus seven days a week. A new photo shared by the City of Cupertino suggests Apple is almost finished with the foundation of the structure and has begun construction on the actual circular-shaped building.

Back in October, the foundation was nearly done, so it is not surprising that construction has progressed to the actual structure itself. Though much of the construction is hidden behind privacy walls, Apple continues to have two enormous concrete mixers on site, as well as other heavy construction machinery.

Over the weekend, a YouTube user who has been capturing a series of videos of the Campus 2 site with a drone shared a new video, which depicts the walls that are going up now that the foundation is mostly complete.

The area around the campus continues to see heavy traffic at all times of the day due to ongoing roadwork, and several streets are seeing daily road closures as construction workers aim to complete necessary upgrades in a timely manner. Pruneridge Avenue has been permanently closed, and both Wolfe Road and Homestead Road are heavily congested.

According to Apple's project schedule, roadwork is expected to be completed by the end of 2014, while earthwork and the planting of trees will continue on until mid-2015. Full demolition is expected to end during the first quarter of 2015, while building construction is expected to last until the end of 2016.

Apple's completed campus will feature the iconic 2.8 million square foot ring-shaped main building, an underground parking facility capable of accommodating 2,400 cars, a 100,000 square foot fitness center, and a 120,000 square foot auditorium. A second phase of construction will see Apple building several additional satellite facilities for research and development.

Major retailers are gearing up for the upcoming holiday shopping season, which officially kicks off on the post-Thanksgiving shopping day of Black Friday. Following leaked Black Friday sales flyers from both Sam's Club and Target, Best Buy today published its door buster deals ahead of the November 28 shopping holiday.

Similar to Target, Best Buy is discounting all iPad Air 2 models, with prices starting at $399 for the 16GB WiFi-only version. While Target is offering a $140 gift card, Best Buy is offering a more straightforward but smaller $100 discount off the purchase price of the device. Best Buy also is slashing the price of the iPad mini 3 by $75, lowering the cost of Apple's latest tablet to $324.99 for the base 16GB WiFi model.

Customers looking for Mac hardware can save up to $200 on select MacBook Pro, Retina MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and non-retina iMac models. Other sale items include the 16GB iPhone 6, which is being sold for $100 with a new two-year customer agreement, the 5th generation iPod touch 16GB ($149), the Apple TV ($89), a $100 iTunes gift card ($85) and select third-party accessories.

Best Buy is opening its retail stores in the early morning hours on Black Friday, with times varying by region. Shoppers can visit Best Buy's Black Friday website to find the specific retail hours for their local stores. For additional Black Friday discounts, check out our Black Friday roundup, where we are aggregating published Black Friday deals on Apple products and related Apple accessories.

An Alibaba executive said today that the Chinese e-commerce company and Apple are currently in talks over a partnership to provide a payments solution for China, reports The Wall Street Journal. The comments were shared by Alibaba Executive Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai, who also noted that the partnership would focus on Apple's presence in China and that the details are still being worked out.

A partnership between both companies could potentially see Alibaba's Alipay electronic payments service integrate with Apple Pay to provide a comprehensive mobile payments solution for the Chinese market. The comments from Tsai come weeks after Alibaba founder Jack Ma noted that he was interesting in teaming up Apple in the payments sector.

Earlier this year, Alipay overtook PayPal to become the largest mobile payments platform in the world with an estimated $150 billion in transactions processed in 2013. Alibaba also noted that the service has 300 million registered users and 100 million mobile users. Integrating Alipay with Apple Pay would be the latest move by Apple to expand its presence in China, which has grown over the past few years. Last year, Apple struck a deal with country's biggest carrier China Mobile and has opened a number of new retail stores in populated areas like Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Apple is planning an aggressive expansion into the enterprise market, hiring a sales team focused on talking with key enterprise customers, reports Reuters. The sales team may also work alongside "a dozen or so" app developers.

Apple is said to have formed partnerships with several app development startups, including ServiceMax and PlanGrid, both of which build customized industry-specific apps. ServiceMax, for example, already has customers that could be valuable to Apple, including Procter & Gamble and DuPont. Apple is also pursing other relationships with similar corporate app developers, possibly for an initiative aimed at providing custom-made apps for corporate customers.

Apps developers and other sources familiar with Apple's plans who could not speak publicly provided additional details on how the iPhone maker is working behind the scenes.

The iPhone maker has worked closely with a group of startups, including ServiceMax and PlanGrid, that already specialize in selling apps to corporate America. The two people familiar with the plans, but who could not speak publicly about them, say Apple is already in talks with other mobile enterprise developers to bring them into a more formal partnership.

In addition to forming partnerships with app developers, Apple is also said to be sending sales teams to speak with the chief information officers of major companies, including Citigroup, which is already in talks to sign up for an enterprise package with Apple.

Earlier this year, Apple announced a major enterprise-focused partnership with IBM, with IBM selling iOS devices to its corporate customers and developing more than 100 industry-specific native apps that are built from the ground up for the iPhone and the iPad in six sectors: banking, government, insurance, retail, travel, transportation, and telecommunications. According to the most recent earnings call, IBM's first apps will be coming before the end of the year. Apple has also developed a special AppleCare for Enterprise, which includes on-site repairs handled by IBM.

Apple's major enterprise push may be an effort to boost flagging iPad sales by attracting a new market and introducing new use cases. iPad sales have been on the decline in recent months, and during its October earnings call, Apple announced sales were down for the third straight quarter in a row.

In late October, Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage at the WSJ.D conference in Laguna Beach, California, where he commented on an array of topics including the Apple Watch, Apple Pay, Apple TV, the discontinuation of the iPod classic, and more.

While we covered the content of interview at the time, The Wall Street Journal has today posted the full 30 minute video of Tim Cook's appearance at the conference, which is well worth watching in its entirety.

Some highlights of the video include an explanation of why the iPod classic was discontinued (it's impossible to get the parts), the impressive early success of Apple Pay, Cook's thoughts on the Mac and iPad, and some details on the Apple Watch, including hints on the device's battery life. "You're going to wind up charging it daily," said Cook.

Just a week after new WireLurker iOS malware surfaced, there's yet another vulnerability in iOS that can potentially be used to install malicious third-party apps. Called Masque Attack for its ability to emulate and replace existing legitimate apps, the flaw was discovered by security research company FireEye.

Masque Attack works by luring users to install an app outside of the iOS App Store, by clicking a phishing link in a text message or email. For example, in a demo video, an SMS message with a link attached was sent with the following text "Hey, check this out, the New Flappy Bird."

Once clicked, the link directs to a website, which prompts the user to install an app. The app in the video isn't Flappy Bird, but a malicious version of Gmail that installs directly over the legitimate version of Gmail downloaded from the App Store, making it virtually undetectable.

Masque Attack can be used to install fake versions of apps over legitimate App Store versions using iOS enterprise provision profiles, which are used for beta testing or by companies to distribute apps to employees without the need for the official App Store.

As explained in a blog post, as long as both the existing App Store app and the malicious imposter app use the same bundle identifier (a unique identifying number), the fake version will replace the actual app in a way that's very difficult for the user to detect. The hidden malicious app is able to upload email messages, SMS messages, phone calls, and more, which is possible because "iOS doesn't enforce matching certificates for apps with the same bundle identifier."

While the attack cannot replace stock Apple apps like Safari and Mail, it is able to affect apps that have been installed via the App Store, and has the potential to be much more dangerous than other vulnerabilities like WireLurker.

Masque Attacks can pose much bigger threats than WireLurker. Masque Attacks can replace authentic apps,such as banking and email apps, using attacker's malware through the Internet. That means the attacker can steal user's banking credentials by replacing an authentic banking app with an malware that has identical UI. Surprisingly, the malware can even access the original app's local data, which wasn't removed when the original app was replaced. These data may contain cached emails, or even login-tokens which the malware can use to log into the user's account directly.

FireEye has gotten the attack to work on iOS 7.1.1, 7.1.2, 8.0, 8.1, and the 8.1.1 beta. The company notified Apple about the vulnerability on July 26, but iOS users can protect themselves by not installing apps from third-party sources other than the official App Store, avoiding clicking on "install" popups in SMS messages or third-party websites, and avoiding apps/uninstalling apps that give an "Untrusted App Developer" alert.

iOS 7 users can check to see if they've been the victim of an attack by going to Settings --> General --> Profiles to see what provisioning profiles are installed. iOS 8 devices do not show installed provisioning profiles, making it more difficult to detect an attack.

Rumors have suggested that Apple is aiming to open a new research and development facility in Cambridge, England, over the coming weeks, and it appears the company has also made some hires in the area.

According to TechCrunch, Apple has hired five employees that created the Pin Drop mapping app. The hires are not part of an acquisition of the Pin Drop technology, but have included multiple former Pin Drop employees.

Pin Drop was a map app that allowed users to drop custom created tags and pins that could be shared with others to point out interesting landmarks and spots to visit. Pins could be kept private, shared with friends, or shared with the community. Pin Drop's service was shut down on October 31 and the app was removed from the App Store. On Facebook, the app's creators said they were unable to secure the necessary funding to "turn Pin Drop in to the world changing app we envisaged."

An initial Pin Drop blog post mentioned the core Pin Drop team had acquired their "dream jobs" ahead of the shutdown, and one former employee tweeted that he had been hired by Apple, though both hints of new jobs were later deleted. Currently, five former Pin Drop developers are listed as Apple employees, with the following jobs: Senior Product Designer, Software Engineer, Software Engineer, iOS Software Engineer, and Maps Data Analyst.

All of the former Pin Drop employees who now work at Apple continue to be located in London and have not moved to Apple's Cupertino headquarters, suggesting they could eventually be housed in the company's upcoming Cambridge office. It is unclear what their specific roles include, but at least one employee is working on Apple's Maps team.

Apple has worked hard to improve Maps over the last two years, acquiring several mapping companies including C3 Technologies, Broadmap, Embark, Hopstop, WifiSlam, and Locationary. Some major Maps improvements are said to be in the works, like transit directions and indoor mapping, both of which could come in a future iOS 8 update.

Apple's assembly partner Pegatron is boosting its production capacity in order to help Apple increase inventory of the popular iPhone 6, reports Nikkei. According to local press sources, Apple may also be turning to Pegatron to supplement production of the iPhone 6 Plus, which has seen tight supplies as Foxconn has struggled to meet demand.

Local press reports suggest Apple may also tap Pegatron to produce the iPhone 6 Plus since Foxconn has been struggling to cope with demand. Pegatron officials did not comment directly on the media speculation.

Pegatron's Chief Executive Jason Cheng confirmed in a recent earnings conference call that the company has invested more than $200 million this year in capital expenditures to boost production output, with an additional $300 million planned for 2015.

Pegatron repeatedly has benefitted from strong iPhone sales with an increasing amount of revenue coming from its communications products division, which is responsible for smartphone and tablet production. Though the company's overall Q3 2014 revenue fell due a dip in its computer assembly business, revenue from its communications division increased 10 percent year-over-year.

Pegatron is a long-time manufacturing partner for Apple, serving as a supplementary assembler for previous iPhone and iPad models. The company took a lead manufacturing role for the first time in the assembly of Apple's iPhone 5c, which was introduced alongside the iPhone 5s last year.

Barclaycard last week announced a revamped version of its credit card partnership with Apple, the Barclaycard Apple Rewards Visa, offering a new Apple rewards program and financing deals (via AppleInsider).

The new reward card offers three points per dollar spent at the Apple Store (iTunes and App Stores do not qualify), two points spent in restaurants, and one point on all other purchases. Once a customer breaks 2,500 points, they receive a $25 Apple Store gift card.

Within the first thirty days of opening an account, users can also finance purchases made through Apple with deferred interest. Purchases under $498 can be financed for six months, $499-$998 for twelve months, and $999 and over for eighteen months.

The last Barclaycard with iTunes Rewards didn't have a triple-points reward tier for customers. It started at paying out two points for every dollar spent at the Apple Store or iTunes Store, and one point for every dollar spent everywhere else. Instead of an Apple Store gift card, the payout at 2,500 points was an iTunes gift card.

The card isn't yet confirmed to work with Apple Pay, but is expected to as both Visa and Barclaycard are participating partners. The new card also supports Chip & Pin security, not Chip & Signature like most other new cards in the United States, with an embedded EMV Chip for security.

The Barclaycard Apple Rewards Visa can be applied for today on Barclaycard's Official Website. Apple is also promoting the new card, touting its reward and financing options, on the company's online store.

Apple is planning to open a new facility that includes research and development operations in Cambridge, England within the next few weeks, reports Business Weekly (via MacGeneration).

The company's new offices are said to be located at 90 Hills Road, which is described as a prestigious corporate building and is located near the likes of headquarters belonging to Microsoft and Sony. More than 1000 technology companies have established offices in Cambridge since 1998, with the region earning the nickname of "Silicon Fen" in reference to Silicon Valley. Other companies including microprocessor manufacturer ARM and wireless communications company Broadcom also have campuses in Cambridge.

According to the report, Apple is aiming to start with 20 employees in its new offices, and will look to grow to a total of 40 employees in the coming year. The UK was also said to be working hard for the past 25 years to persuade Apple to establish an office in Britain. Apple has numerous R&D centers around the world, including buildings in Israel, Shanghai, Taiwan, and more.

Apple today released a new web tool for users to deregister their phone number from iMessage in the event they switched to a non-Apple device. To deregister a phone number from iMessage, users simply enter their phone number in Apple's web tool, receive a free text message containing a code, and submit the code to complete the process. Users who still have their original iPhone can also transfer their SIM card back to the device and go to Settings -> Messages to turn iMessage off.

Users switching from an iPhone to another device were often unable to receive SMS messages from another iPhone due to their phone number still being linked to iMessage. These specific errors with iMessage have been a well-known issue since 2011, which is when the messaging service debuted with iOS 5. They were also made even more apparent this past May, where a server glitch caused widespread message delivery problems. Apple was even sued over the matter in a California court, although the company claimed that it was aware of the issue and could not provide a fix.

Apple's web tool for deregistering phone numbers from iMessage is available now.

The Pangu development team today updated its jailbreak for iOS 8 and 8.1, bringing full support for the Mac. The update comes a week after the program saw an update for Windows that brought an automatic installation of Cydia and support for the English language.

Pangu's jailbreak tool for iOS 8 is the first that is compatible with any device running iOS 8.0 to iOS 8.1, including newer devices such as the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air 2, and iPad mini 3. The jailbreak method allows users to install content like themes, tweaks, and apps from other sources than the App Store. The Pangu development team recommends that users backup their iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches before using the tool, and notes that devices upgraded over-the-air may need to be restored before being jailbroken.

Cydia administrator Jay Freeman noted on his Twitter that the Pangu jailbreak is "stable enough" and said that developers on Cydia are now able to mark their own apps as iOS 8 compatible. Members on our forums are also maintaining an active list of which Cydia apps are compatible with iOS 8 and Pangu's jailbreak, and interested users should look there for more specific information.

Pangu can be downloaded for OS X and Windows as an untethered jailbreak, meaning that users only have to apply the method once. The release of the tool follows an announcement by the Electronic Frontier Foundation yesterday stating that a new petition was filed with the Librarian of Congress to extend an exemption that allows jailbreaking to be legal. The exemption was last renewed in 2012 and created by the U.S. Congress in 2010.