MacRumors

MacRumors has learned that a high-level executive at Barclays, one of the largest banks in the United Kingdom, anticipates "imminent" support of Apple Pay in the country. Apple Pay in the U.K. is expected to go live on Tuesday, although it remains unclear if Barclays will be a first wave launch partner because of its delayed negotiations with Apple about the mobile payments service.

Apple confirmed at WWDC last month that Apple Pay will be available in the U.K. in July, but stopped short of providing a specific launch date. Recently released employee training documents have suggested the launch could come next week, on July 14, and some Santander customers were able to add their cards to Passbook for use with Apple Pay and make purchases ahead of that date.

Barclays was notably absent from Apple's list of banks that will support Apple Pay in the U.K. at launch or soon after, which presently includes HSBC, Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland, First Direct, Halifax, M&S Bank, MBNA, NatWest, Nationwide, Santander, TSB and Ulster Bank. The bank's subsidiary Barclaycard has offered an Apple Rewards Visa Card for several years.

Barclaycard recently expanded its "bPay" lineup of wearable solutions for contactless payments to include a wristband, key fob and sticker, leading to speculation that Barclays may be electing to use its own mobile payments services as opposed to Apple Pay, similar to how some retailers maintained exclusivity to the CurrentC platform last year. Today's confirmation, however, indicates otherwise.

Apple will announce a refreshed lineup of iPod touch, iPod nano and iPod shuffle portable media players around July 14, according to usually reliable French website iGen.fr. The report claims the new iPod touch (codenamed "N102") should be a more significant update, likely including a bump to a 64-bit A-based processor, while the iPod nano ("N31A") and iPod shuffle ("N12D") may be refreshed with new colors only.

iPods in unreleased colors were spotted in iTunes 12.2 earlier this month, including a darker blue for the iPod touch, a new gold or beige color for the iPod nano and a brighter pink color for the iPod shuffle. Notably, a few eagle-eyed readers noticed that the Calendar app on the iPod touch displays "Tuesday" and "14," which lines up with Tuesday, July 14 and information shared by iGen.fr's sources.

MacRumors subsequently discovered a full lineup of six new colors for the iPod touch, nano and shuffle hidden within iTunes resource files, including silver, space gray, red, bright pink, deep blue and light gold. Beyond new colors, storage capacities and other minor changes, Apple last updated the iPod touch and iPod nano in October 2012 and the iPod shuffle in September 2010.

Update 1 PM Pacific: iPod touch shipping times have slipped to 3-5 business days on the Apple Online Store in the U.S. and Canada.

Samsung is planning to move up the launch of the Galaxy Note 5 by one month to avoid competing with Apple's annual iPhone event in September, according to The Wall Street Journal. The South Korean handset maker will reportedly unveil the next Galaxy Note in mid-August instead of announcing the smartphone at the IFA Berlin trade show in early September as it has done for four consecutive years.

Apple introduced the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus just six days after the Galaxy Note 4 was announced on September 3 last year, shifting much of the media coverage and consumer attention away from Samsung. With the launch of the so-called "iPhone 6s" and "iPhone 6s Plus" also likely to be in September, Samsung is reportedly looking to avoid the same fate with the Galaxy Note 5.

Apple tonight debuted two brand new iPhone 6 ads that appear to be a part of a new marketing campaign. The ads feature a voice over detailing what makes an iPhone unique compared to other smart phones and smart phone platforms while showing off multiple iPhones doing different things on a white background. Both ads end with a new tagline: "If it's not an iPhone, it's not an iPhone."

The first ad, "Loved", talks about the iPhone's high user satisfaction rate, claiming that 99% of people who have an iPhone love their device. It shows off people messaging, sending emojis, FaceTiming and having a good time on a multitude of iPhones before cutting to the new tagline.

The second ad, "Hardware & Software", explains how Apple is one of the few smart phone manufacturers to design both the hardware and software parts of the device. It goes on to say that this allows the device to function as a whole better than other smartphones can. It shows off games, intensive apps like GarageBand and iPhone-exclusive features like Apple Pay and FaceTime.

The new ads mark the third campaign centered around Apple's flagship device after the Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake ads explaining the differences between the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus and Apple's award-winning "Shot on iPhone 6" campaign.

Amid a decline in both U.S. and worldwide PC shipments, Apple has also seen a slight drop in its U.S. PC shipments in 2Q15, according to shipping estimates released today from Gartner. Apple shipped 1.92 million PCs during the second quarter of 2015, down from 1.97 million in 2Q14, marking a 2.5 percent decline.

Overall PC growth in the United States during the quarter was down 5.8 percent, with total estimated shipments at 15.1 million, down from 16 million in the year-ago quarter. With the exception of Lenovo, all of the top U.S. PC vendors saw declines in growth.

In the U.S., PC shipments totaled 15.1 million units in the second quarter of 2015, a 5.8 percent decline from the second quarter of 2014 (see Table 2). The decline was led by a double-digit decline of desk-based shipments, which offset single-digit growth of mobile PCs. Based on preliminary results, the desk-based PC shipment decline was the steepest since 2009 when the market was hit by the economic crisis.

During the quarter, Apple captured 12.7 percent of the market, up from 12.3 percent in 2Q14. Apple was ranked as the fourth largest PC vendor in the United States in 2Q15, based on Gartner's estimates, trailing behind HP, Dell, and Lenovo.

Market leader HP shipped nearly 4 million PCs during the quarter for a 26.2 percent share of the market, while Dell shipped 3.9 million for a 25.6 percent share of the market. Lenovo came in just ahead of Apple with 2 million PC shipments and 13.3 percent of the market, while Asus brought up the rear with shipments of 767,000 and a 5.1 percent share of the market.

IDC has also released its own estimates of Apple's U.S. PC shipments during 2Q15, which are quite different from Gartner's estimates. According to IDC, overall U.S. PC shipments totaled 16.4 million, a 3.3 percent decline from 2Q14's 17 million.

According to IDC, Apple shipped 2.2 million PCs during the quarter, for 13.5 percent market share and 11.9 percent growth year over year. Gartner and IDC often have different numbers because each company counts different products in their PC totals.

Apple does not rank as one of the top five worldwide vendors in Gartner's data, which ranks Acer and ASUS above Apple, but in IDC's data, Apple ranks higher than Acer/ASUS and is counted as the number four worldwide PC vendor. IDC's data suggests that Apple's worldwide PC marketshare climbed to 7.8 percent in 2Q15 with 5.14 million shipments, while Gartner's data suggests Acer was the number five worldwide PC vendor with 4.5 million shipments.

According to Gartner, worldwide PC shipments during 2Q15 totaled 68.4 million units, a 9.5 percent decrease from 2Q14. IDC's estimates, meanwhile, point towards 66.1 million shipments during the quarter, a 11.8 percent drop from the year-ago quarter.

It's important to note that data from Gartner and IDC is preliminary and that the numbers can shift somewhat, sometimes dramatically. Last year, for example, Gartner predicted Apple shipments of 1.68 million and 10.6 percent market share in 2Q14, a number that was later revised to 1.97 million shipments and 12.3 percent market share.

Update 2:40 PM PT: We've updated this post to add data from IDC.

Apple today updated its "Shot on iPhone 6" site to add five new videos to the film section of the gallery. First added to the site in early June, the gallery showcases videos that were created using the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, incorporating camera features like Slo-Mo, Time-Lapse, and more.

In addition to featuring these videos on its site, Apple also uploads them to YouTube and shows them on television. At least one of the videos added to the site today was previously used in a television commercial. Videos that Apple uploads come from iPhone users around the world, and today's videos are from Bolivia, Alaska, Hawaii, and Papua New Guinea, with two videos coming from the last location.

The first video features a car racing across salt flats in Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, while the second depicts a train in Anchorage, Alaska. All of the videos have music playing in the background, which is listed in the videos description, and they each end with the tagline "Shot on iPhone 6."

A third video features a massive wave cresting at Sandy Beach in Hawaii, while two videos from Papua New Guinea depict a Time-Lapse sunrise and an underwater shot of a school of fish near a coral reef.

Apple's Shot on iPhone 6 series has been running since March and has featured photographs and videos from more than 70 photographers in 24 countries. The image have been used in print media, transit posters, billboards, and television commercials around the world.

Just recently, Apple's Shot on iPhone 6 campaign won an Outdoor Lions Grand Prix award in advertising during the Cannes Lions International Festivity of Creativity, with one of the judges saying, "It's not just a great idea. It's a game changer. It's really opening a new way of doing things and changing behavior.

Just a day after releasing a new set of developer builds for iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan, Apple today launched its public beta program for both upcoming operating systems. Apple had announced at WWDC last month that it would launch the public betas in July, and a new support document published yesterday regarding changes to two-factor authentication hinted a launch was imminent.

iOS and Mac users interested in trying out the public betas can sign up on Apple's beta software program page.

We'll be looking for any changes specific to the public beta versions, but they are almost certainly essentially identical to the developer seeds released yesterday.

iOS 9 is the first major version of Apple's mobile operating system to see a public beta release, as the company did not initiate the program for iOS until iOS 8.3 earlier this year. OS X users may already be familiar with the public beta process, as a similar program was in place for OS X Yosemite last year.

Following a beta testing period that began in March, Microsoft today announced the official launch of its next-generation office software designed for Mac users, Office 2016. The new Office 2016 software is the first major Mac release since Office 2011, and it brings new versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with redesigned, Retina optimized interfaces, new features, and a focus on collaboration and cloud integration.

If you already use Office on a PC or iPad, you will find yourself right at home in Office 2016 for Mac. It works the way you expect, with the familiar Ribbon interface and powerful Task panes. Mac users will appreciate the modernized Office experience and the integration of Mac capabilities like Full Screen view and Multi-Touch gestures. With full Retina display support, your Office documents look sharper and more vibrant than ever.

Office for Mac 2016 has adopted many elements previously found in the Windows version of Office and the mobile Office apps for better cross-platform familiarity. For example, Office for Mac now uses the Ribbon to organize tools and formatting options, plus there's a task pane for improved graphics customization in all three of the main Office apps, along with new themes and styles.

The software includes a new Yosemite-style design that takes advantage of features like full-screen support, Retina displays, and multi-touch gestures, while cloud integration makes all Microsoft files available across a range of devices.

Word 2016 for Mac includes a new Design tab for quickly customizing layouts, colors, and fonts while working on a document, and the multi-author experience has been improved. There's a sharing interface at the top right of the app that allows multiple people to work on the same document at once, with threaded comments to communicate.

Excel 2016 for Mac's chart preview feature suggests the charts that best fit a set of data and it adds deeper data analysis functionality with PivotTable slicers for dealing with large amounts of data to find patterns. Shortcuts within Excel and the other Office apps have been updated to match their Windows counterparts, and there's improved autocomplete and a better formula builder that makes it easier to create spreadsheets and add data.

PowerPoint 2016 for Mac includes an improved Presenter view that shows current slide, next slide, speaker notes, and a timer, much like the PowerPoint for iOS app. In the top left, the presenter sees exactly what the audience sees, including animations in real time, for a better idea of how a presentation is going. There's also a new animation pane for designing and tweaking animations, plus new slide transitions.

Outlook for Mac, released last October, is also designed to work with the new Office apps, with push mail support, an improved conversation view, and message previews, as is OneNote for Mac, released in March of 2014.

According to Microsoft, several major changes like improved Mail Merge for Word, Propose New Time in Outlook, and support for External Data Connections in Excel were added based on user feedback during the beta testing program. Microsoft plans to introduce new updates to the software at least once per quarter going forward.

Office 2016 for Mac is available for all Office 365 subscribers users beginning today, and is officially supported on machines running the latest version of OS X, Yosemite. Office for Mac will also be available as a one-time purchase in September.

Office 365 Personal, which includes Office access for 1 computer, 1 phone, and 1 tablet, is priced at $69.99 per year or $6.99 per month. Office 365 Home, with access for 5 computers, 5 tablets, and 5 phones is priced at $99.99 per year or $9.99 per month. There are also Office 365 plans designed for students and businesses at different price points.