MacRumors

Apple has published three new support documents with further details about the Mac Pro's new AMD Radeon Pro W6000 series MPX graphics modules, which became available earlier this week. The support documents walk through the many different display setups that can be used with the GPUs and how to use AMD's Infinity Fabric Link technology for increased performance and faster data transfer between the modules.

One notable detail from the support documents is that the Infinity Fabric Link bridges for the new Radeon Pro W6000 series modules are not compatible with previous-generation Radeon Pro MPX modules, according to Apple.

• Use the Radeon Pro W6800X MPX Module with your Mac Pro
• Use the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo MPX Module with your Mac Pro
• Use the Radeon Pro W6900X MPX Module with your Mac Pro

Three new modules are available for the latest Mac Pro as built-to-order upgrade options on Apple's online store, including the Radeon Pro W6800X, Radeon Pro W6800X Duo, and Radeon Pro W6900X. The modules can also be purchased on a standalone basis for customers who already own the latest Mac Pro, with prices ranging from $2,800 to $6,000.

Apple said the new graphics options provide up to 84% faster performance when running the Octane X rendering app and up to 23% faster performance when using the video editing and color correction app DaVinci Resolve on the Mac Pro.

In iPadOS 15, Apple introduced a new productivity feature called Quick Notes that aims to provide a quicker way to jot down things on your iPad without you having to go in and out of the Notes app.

Whether you're on the Home Screen or within any app, you can bring up a floating Quick Note window at any time using your finger or an Apple Pencil, by swiping diagonally up from the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.

If you're using a connected keyboard that has a Globe key, simply press the Globe key + Q to launch a Quick Note. You can also add a Quick Note button to Control Center: Go to Settings -> Control Center, then add the Quick Note option from the "Included Controls" section.

The note you call up can be the last note you used, so you can just keep adding to it, or you can create a new note with a tap of the New Note icon in the top-right corner of the interface.

When you tap on the note, it will bring up the virtual keyboard so you can begin typing. If you're using ‌Apple Pencil‌ and you have the Scribble toggle enabled in Settings -> Apple Pencil, you can just start jotting down handwritten notes, and they'll be transcribed into standard text.

Also at the top of your Quick Note window, there's also an ellipsis icon top-right to share the note, and to the left of that, a square quadrant icon that takes you into the Notes app proper, which is where all your Quick Notes live.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the interface, there's a Markup icon in the right corner to bring up standard Markup tools, and if you've created several Quick Notes, you'll see three dots along the bottom of the currently viewed note to indicate that you can swipe between them within the editor window.

Quick Notes can also detect the app you're currently using or just recently used, and will show a dropdown menu at the top of the editor window for you to add a link to the specific message you're viewing in Mail or the website you were just viewing in Safari, for example. Whenever you're viewing a note with a link, just tap the link and you'll be taken directly to the related content.

If the Quick Note window is obscuring your view of something, you can drag it to any corner of the screen. To dismiss a Quick Note at any time, tap the Done button in the top-left, or swipe diagonally towards the corner of the screen it's closest to – you can recall it at any time by tapping the reveal bar off to the side.

That's Quick Notes on ‌iPad‌ in a nutshell. You can also create them on a Mac running macOS 12 Monterey, but be aware that Quick Notes can't be created on an iPhone running iOS 15. However, because Quick Notes live in the Notes app, you can access any that you've created elsewhere on your ‌iPhone‌, just as easily as any other note.

Apple has featured a number of apps with disproportionately expensive subscriptions on the App Store, arousing the ire of some developers.

The ‌App Store‌ feature on the Australian ‌App Store‌, first highlighted by Beau Nouvelle on Twitter, is called "Slime relaxations" and reportedly features apps that are non-functional and seek to charge disproportionately costly in-app purchase subscriptions.

One of the apps, called "Jelly: Slime Simulator, ASMR," features a $13 per week subscription to get past its paywall, amounting to $676 per year. Apple's App Store Review Guidelines state (with emphasis our own):

If we can't understand how your app works or your in-app purchases aren't immediately obvious, it will delay your review and may trigger a rejection. And while pricing is up to you, we won't distribute apps and in-app purchase items that are clear rip-offs. We'll reject expensive apps that try to cheat users with irrationally high prices.

The fact that such apps have passed the ‌App Store‌ review process to be awarded a special feature from Apple on the ‌App Store‌ has induced outrage in some developers, such as Simeon Saëns of Two Lives Left, who took a closer look at one of the apps.

Given that at least some of these apps charge $13 per week, it is difficult to not see them as breaking ‌App Store‌ guidelines, so it is particularly surprising that they were actively featured by Apple on the ‌App Store‌.

Serif today announced across-the-board updates for its popular suite of Affinity creative apps, including Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and the Apple award-winning Affinity Publisher for Mac, all of which were among the first professional creative suites to be optimized for Apple silicon.

For Affinity Publisher, a total rewrite of memory management now enables instant loading times for very large documents, even those with thousands of pages and many gigabytes' worth of linked images. These rewrites have also allowed for smooth live editing and fast scroll, pan and zoom across the whole document.

"We've been excited to see the scale of some of the projects our customers are creating in Affinity Publisher, and knew we could do better to ensure the app remained fast when pushed to the limits," said Ashley Hewson, Managing Director of Affinity developer Serif. "We completely reimagined our memory-handling architecture and the result is that there's really no limit to the size of document you can work on while maintaining that stunning performance."

This performance improvement also extends to Affinity Designer, where the benefit will be most felt by users who import PDF files generated in a CAD app or similar that include hundreds of thousands of objects. Even with less-complex projects, though, everything should feel a lot smoother and snappier, according to the developers.

Elsewhere, Affinity Photo has received "extensive" performance tweaks, so users can expect greater efficiency when blending layers together, while retaining a non-destructive workflow. This version also introduces some options to ensure editing speed remains slick even after building up a complex stack of hundreds of pixel and vector layers, and filter effects, while still maintaining the full layer stack.

Lastly, IDML import in Affinity Publisher is said to be up to four times faster, text flow speeds have nearly doubled, a series of other smaller tweaks and stability improvements have been made to the Affinity suite for version 1.10.

The update is available across all Affinity apps on macOS, Windows and iPad from today and is free to existing users. All Affinity apps are currently available to purchase individually for $60 each on the Affinity website, no subscriptions required.

Walter Isaacson, the biographer of Steve Jobs, is penning a book about entrepreneur and business magnate Elon Musk, according to Musk.

"If you're curious about Tesla, SpaceX & my general goings on, @WalterIsaacson is writing a biography," tweeted Musk on Thursday.

In subsequent tweets, Musk revealed that Isaacson had been shadowing him "for several days so far," and said he thought all the author's biographies were good, but he "particularly liked" Isaacson's biography of Benjamin Franklin.

Apple and Tesla have been at odds since Apple started working on the ‌Apple Car‌ project and have notoriously poached employees from one another. Back in 2015, Musk famously called Apple the "Tesla Graveyard," and said "If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple."

In December, Musk claimed that he had attempted to speak with Apple about a possible acquisition of Tesla at one point in Tesla's early days, but Apple CEO Tim Cook refused to meet with him.

More recently, Musk criticized Apple's use of cobalt in its products and implied that its business model was a "walled garden" because Apple dictates what software can be installed on the iPhone and requires companies to use its ‌App Store‌.

Just last month, it was reported that Musk once demanded that he be made Apple CEO in a brief discussion of a potential acquisition with ‌Tim Cook‌. Musk has since personally refuted the claim, and even denied that he and Cook have ever spoken or written to each other.

As for Isaacson, since the publication of his best-selling Jobs biography in 2011, the writer has spoken variously about Apple-related topics with keen insight, likely as a result of his deep dive into the company when Jobs was at the helm.

In 2017, he remarked that Apple was no longer the most innovative company, and singled out Apple's lack of movement in the virtual assistant space as an example of where the company had been left behind by the likes of Google and Amazon.

In 2019, Isaacson also revealed that he had "softened" parts of Jobs' biography, particularly criticisms Jobs had made about ‌Tim Cook‌ for not being a "product person."

Isaacson's biography of Jobs went on to be the basis for Aaron Sorkin's screenplay of the Danny Boyle-directed film "Steve Jobs." The film was well received by critics, earning four Golden Globe Award nominations and two Academy Award nominations.

IMDb has released standalone iPhone and iPad apps for its free, ad-supported TV streaming service, meaning users looking to access its video offerings no longer need go searching for it in the standard IMDb app.

IMDb TV offers viewers free access to a range of popular shows and movies, such as "Mad Men," "Malcolm in the Middle," "Wolf of Wall Street," and "How to Train Your Dragon." It also features originals from Amazon Studios, and the company says IMDb TV has half as many ads as traditional terrestrial TV.

The Amazon-owned subsidiary originally launched the free service as Freedive in January 2019, before renaming it IMDb TV. After first rolling out to Roku, IMDb TV apps were released in March for LG smart TVs, PlayStation 4, NVIDIA Shield, and TiVo Streak 4K. The IMDb TV app is also available on Amazon's Fire TV and as a free channel on the Prime Video app.

The launch of iOS and Android apps completes the platform rollout, and should allow the service to expand its U.S. mobile audience. A report last year suggested the company is planning to make the free service available globally, with Mexico and the U.K. possibly becoming the first regions to gain access, with more European countries and Latin America following suit.

(Via Variety.)

Apple this week began highlighting exclusive offers that are available for Apple Card holders, with the offerings presented right in the Wallet app when accessing the ‌Apple Card‌.

As noted by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is offering ‌Apple Card‌ users free access to Apple News+ and unlimited coffee with any order from Panera bread.

Apple has offered special promotions for ‌Apple Card‌ users before, usually in the form of extra cash back from select merchants or discounted prices on digital goods.

Extra cash back deals are also shown right in the ‌Apple Card‌ interface like the ‌Apple News‌+ offer, but this appears to be the first time that Apple has advertised one of its own services to ‌Apple Card‌ holders directly in the Wallet app.

It's not unusual for credit card companies to offer discounts and deals to their customers on various products, but Apple is in the unique position of having credit card customers and services to promote to its credit card users.

Apple in July began providing developers with access to a beta version of the AirPods Pro firmware to test new features ahead of their release. Last Friday, Apple released a second version of the ‌AirPods Pro‌ firmware (4A362b), but it went under the radar until today when it was shared on Reddit.

According to Apple's developer website, the second ‌AirPods Pro‌ firmware update adds support for Conversation Boost, a feature that was missing from the first beta.

Conversation Boost is an iOS 15 feature that uses the beamforming microphones in the ‌AirPods Pro‌ to boost the volume level of conversations, which is ideal for those with mild to moderate hearing challenges.

The initial ‌AirPods Pro‌ firmware beta added support for FaceTime Spatial Audio and Ambient Noise Reduction, two other ‌AirPods Pro‌ features that are coming in the iOS 15 update.

Only registered developers are able to install the ‌AirPods Pro‌ firmware, and the installation process is rather complicated and requires Xcode. We have a walkthrough on installing the profile for the beta, but as with all over-the-air firmware updates, it takes some time for new software to be seeded to users.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has fallen to eighth place on a list of the highest-paid CEOs and executives in the United States last year despite earning more than the previous year, according to Bloomberg.

Cook was paid $265 million in 2020, mainly comprising stock awards and a bonus as in previous years, making him the eighth highest-paid executive in the United States. Last year, Cook was paid compensation of $133.7 million, but ranked second after Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who was paid $595.3 million.

Cook has overseen Apple's rise to become the most profitable company in the world this year with revenue of $274.515 billion and profit of $57.411 billion, according to the Fortune Global 500 rankings.

In 2020, Cook was surpassed in terms of pay by the COO of Oak Street Health, the CEO of Palantir Technologies, the CEO of Opendoor Technologies, and the Co-CEOs of GoodRX Holdings. Elon Musk again overwhelmingly topped the list with compensation amounting to $6.658 billion.

Last month, it was alleged that Musk demanded to become the CEO of Apple as part of early discussions around a potential Apple acquisition of Tesla, though Musk denies this.

Apple's Senior Vice President of Retail and People Deirdre O'Brien and Senior Vice President and General Counsel Kate Adams also made the list in 93rd and 96th place, with pay of $45 million each. This makes O'Brien and Adams the fourth and fifth-highest paid women executives in the United States.

Apple remains "largely absent" in the U.S. smart speaker market while Amazon and Google continue to dominate, according to data gathered by Consumer Research Intelligence Partners (CIRP).

Since 2017, Amazon has been the dominant company in the smart speaker market, with over two-thirds of smart speakers in U.S. homes being Amazon devices. Google holds about a one-quarter share of smart speaker devices, while Apple and Facebook have the small remaining share.

Josh Lowitz, CIRP partner and co-founder, said that while the installed base of smart speakers added over 25 million units over the past year, reaching a total of 126 million units, Apple still "failed to make meaningful inroads." According to Lowitz, Apple's original HomePod strategy, "with a single premium-priced model competing against products that included low-priced entry-level devices" struggled to gain a significant share of sales, which has led to other brands growing faster and establishing a grip on consumers.

Last year, Apple discontinued the original HomePod and introduced the HomePod mini, a smaller smart speaker priced at just $99. In spite of the launch of the ‌HomePod mini‌, CIRP's data shows little change between Apple's market share in 2020 and 2021.

CIRP estimates that over 20 million U.S. households have more than one Amazon Echo device, while about eight million U.S. households have multiple Google Home units, meaning that 43 percent of Amazon Echo owners and 38 percent of Google Home owners have more than one smart speaker. By comparison, only two million households have more than one ‌HomePod‌.

Apple is rumored to be rethinking its smart home strategy, scrapping an updated model for 2022, and introducing new ‌HomePod‌ models, including one with a screen and a camera for FaceTime calls and one that is combined with an Apple TV.

CIRP's latest data was based on a survey of 500 U.S. owners of Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple ‌HomePod‌, surveyed from July 1 to July 8, 2021, who owned one of these devices as of June 30, 2021.