MacRumors

American Express today launched a new Instant Card Number Apple Pay feature that's designed to allow new Amex users to add their cards to ‌Apple Pay‌ immediately after approval, without the need to wait for the physical card.

This will allow customers who have been approved for a card to begin using it on compatible devices right away while the physical card is shipped from American Express.

The card can be added right to Apple Wallet on iPhone and Apple Watch and can be used in apps, on the web, and in stores where ‌Apple Pay‌ is accepted. The feature is available to American Express Card Members from AmericanExpress.com when approved for a new U.S. Consumer Card.

American Express says that new customers will be able to use the benefits of an American Express Membership, such as earning rewards on purchases, as soon as card approval happens with no need to wait.

The new M1 Macs are now arriving to customers, and one of the first people to get the new ‌M1‌ 13-inch MacBook Pro with 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, and 8GB unified memory has run a much anticipated R23 Cinebench benchmark on the 8GB 13-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ with 512GB of storage to give us a better idea of performance.

Cinebench is a more intensive multi-thread test than Geekbench 5, testing performance over a longer period of time, and it can provide a clearer overview of how a machine will work in the real world.

The ‌M1‌ ‌MacBook Pro‌ earned a multi-core Cinebench score of 7508, and a single-core score of 1498, which is similar in performance to some of Intel's 11th-generation chips.

Comparatively, a 2019 16-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ with 2.3GHz Core i9 chip earned a multi-core score of 8818, according to a MacRumors reader who benchmarked his machine with the new R23 update that came out last week. The 2.6GHz low-end 16-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ earned a single-core score of 1113 and a multi-core score of 6912 on the same test, and the high-end prior-generation MacBook Air earned a single-core score of 1119 and a multi-core score of 4329.

Other Cinebench R23 scores can be found on the CPU Monkey website for both multi-core and single-core performance.

It's worth noting that the new ‌M1‌ Macs are lower performance machines that aren't meant for heavy duty rendering tasks. The ‌M1‌ ‌MacBook Pro‌ replaces the low-end machine, while the ‌MacBook Air‌ has always been more of a consumer machine than a Pro machine.

Apple does have plans for higher-end Pro machines with Apple Silicon chips, but the company has said that it will take around two years to transition the entire Mac lineup to Arm-based chips. The Cinebench scores for the ‌MacBook Air‌ bode well for future Macs that are expected to get even higher performance M-series chips.

Apple last week announced the first Macs that use the new M1 Apple Silicon chips, debuting new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini models.

The first ‌M1‌ Macs were supposed to be arriving to customers on November 17, but a few people have been receiving their orders today and ‌M1‌ machines are now in the hands of customers.

Several users on Twitter and the MacRumors forum have shared photos and videos of their new ‌M1‌ Macs, and many more users will be receiving their devices tomorrow.

Apple has even been shipping custom configuration ‌M1‌ Macs earlier than expected, and some of these Macs that originally had delivery dates right around November 24 are arriving a full week early on the launch date for the standard configuration machines.

Apple's ‌M1‌ Macs are faster in single-core performance than any other Mac that Apple makes, and when it comes to multi-core performance, are faster than the high-end 16-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ models.

The ‌M1‌ Macs are even faster in single-core performance when emulating x86 under Rosetta 2, and as for GPU performance, the integrated graphics outperform the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 560.

We'll be getting each of the new Macs for unboxing and testing purposes this week, so make sure to stay tuned to MacRumors to see our initial impressions and hands-on overview if you're considering purchasing one of these machines.

Starting today, Apple is making an Apple Podcasts web player that can be embedded on webpages available to everyone through the Apple Podcasts Marketing Tools website or through ‌Apple Podcasts‌ Preview pages.

As TechCrunch points out, this tool will let creators, marketers, and podcast fans create embed codes for any of the podcasts that are available on the Podcasts service.

The Podcasts Marketing Tools website can be used to search for any podcast, with the results providing embed code. On a Preview page for either a show or an individual episode, there's a new embed button under the "Share" icon that can be used to generate code.

The web player allows podcasts to start playing right on the website where it is embedded, and it also provides an option to open the Podcasts app on iOS, iPadOS, or macOS. The ‌Apple Podcasts‌ web embed is available to everyone as of now.

Today is the HomePod mini's official launch day, and as customers who pre-ordered await their devices, Apple has also started in-store sales. Customers who weren't able to pre-order can place an order on Apple's website or in the Apple Store app and arrange for in-store pickup at a local retail location.

A quick spot check suggests that most stores around the United States have available stock for customers, and in-store pickup may be one of the only ways to get a ‌HomePod mini‌ ahead of the holidays if you're looking for a specific color.

Orders placed today for shipping to the home won't arrive until at least December. For the white ‌HomePod mini‌, orders will come between December 2 and December 10, and for the black ‌HomePod mini‌, orders won't arrive until December 16 to December 24.

The ‌HomePod mini‌, priced at $99, is Apple's new, smaller and more affordable version of the HomePod. Reviews and first impressions from customers have been largely positive, and most people have praised the sound quality and the small size.

Today is HomePod mini launch day in the United States and nine other countries, and as orders begin arriving to customers, first impressions of the speaker are beginning to surface on the web. While we've already seen HomePod mini reviews from media outlets and YouTubers, customer opinions provide additional perspective.

MacRumors forum member "boultonn" said the HomePod mini "really is mini," yet delivers "great" sound for a study room. They also complimented the HomePod mini's simple setup process, which involves plugging in the speaker, holding an iPhone or iPad near the speaker, and following the onscreen instructions on the iPhone or iPad.

UK-based developer Matt Cheetham said "the sound quality is great," a sentiment shared by Tokyo-based developer Enrico Pangan.

Of course, not everyone has been as impressed. UK-based writer and PR director Max Tatton-Brown said that he was "deeply underwhelmed" by his HomePod mini.

UK-based designer and photographer Oliur had a mixed opinion. He said that the HomePod mini has "amazing" sound quality that "can get loud," but he added that it "lacks bass," which he said "makes sense" since it's a small speaker.

Last week, KTLA tech reporter Rich DeMuro tested the sound quality of the HomePod mini and Google's Nest Audio speakers, both priced at $99. While the video is a rather trivial way of comparing audio, many users who commented on the video believed the HomePod mini was the better sounding of the two.

HomePod mini offers many features of the full-size HomePod, including Siri, HomeKit, Apple Music, Intercom voice messaging, and stereo pairing, but a few customers have been surprised to learn that HomePod minis cannot be set as the Apple TV's default audio output, something that is only possible with the full-size HomePod.

HomePod mini pre-orders began November 6 in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The speaker will also be available in China, Mexico, and Taiwan later this year.

Apple retained its position as the fourth-largest global notebook PC vendor in the third quarter of 2020, shipping six million units in total, according to a new report by Strategy Analytics.

Apple shipped 1.7 million more notebook PC units in the third quarter of this year compared to last year, achieving growth of 39 percent. This is in line with significant increases across the industry, which has seen an average 34 percent growth. HP surpassed Lenovo for the first time in years by a slim margin to regain leadership in the notebook PC market. Dell kept its position as the third-largest notebook PC vendor, followed by Apple.

The market saw 34 percent year-on-year shipment growth as a whole, and was actually constrained by limited supply in the face of record demand.

"The third quarter would have been even more productive for some vendors if they were able to deliver more devices to meet high demand. Supply will remain a key concern as demand is expected to stay high... consumers have started their purchases before the holiday season to prepare for the new 'normal' of working and studying from home," Strategy Analytics Senior Research Analyst Chirag Upadhyay said.

Apple has been contending with higher than expected demand and a range of component shortages. As a result, the company is now facing supply constraints across multiple devices, leading to long wait times for orders. At the end of last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook told investors that the company is "working really, really hard" to remedy the ongoing supply issues. Going into the fourth quarter, vendors' ability to meet increasing demand will reportedly be a key factor in the extent of growth.

Apple's M1 processor often surpasses the graphics performance of desktop GPUs, including the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 560, according to a new benchmark submission spotted by Tom's Hardware.

According to Apple, the ‌M1‌'s octa-core GPU can simultaneously handle close to 25,000 threads and deliver up to 2.6 TFLOPS of throughput. This is the same TFLOPS achieved by the Radeon RX 560, and just below the GeForce GTX 1650's 2.9 TFLOPS.

The GFXBench 5.0 benchmarks were tested under Apple's Metal API, and show that the ‌M1‌ often performs better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 560 by a fair margin. There is not yet a Metal benchmark for the GeForce GTX 1650 for the sake of comparison.

In the Aztec Ruins Normal Tier test, the Radeon RX 560 achieves 146.2 FPS, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti achieves 159 FPS, and the ‌M1‌ achieves 203.6 FPS. Similar results are seen across the board, with the ‌M1‌ almost consistently surpassing the performance of the two desktop GPUs.

It is worth noting that GFXBench 5.0 benchmarks are primarily used to test mobile devices, and the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and Radeon RX 560 are older GPUs. Nonetheless, the ‌M1‌ contains integrated graphics and the fact that it can surpass 75W desktop graphics cards is impressive. More detailed GPU comparisons will likely be coming soon as the first Macs equipped with the ‌M1‌ arrive to customers this week.

Apple has begun sending foldable iPhones to assembly partner Foxconn for testing purposes, with a projected release set for September 2022, claims a new Chinese report out today.

Citing supply chain sources, Economic Daily News says the testing involves evaluating the use of OLED or Micro-LED display technology, because the choice of either screen will affect the subsequent assembly methods.

Apple is also said to have asked Foxconn to evaluate the bearings (the folding component) of the devices with over 100,000 opening and closing tests. The report notes similar tests for regular laptops requires them to be opened and closed between 20,000 and 30,000 times.

The report offers no additional information on the design of the foldable device, but does note that Samsung will provide the panel for the screen, potentially corroborating rumors that Apple has ordered foldable display samples from the Korean company.

According to leaker Jon Prosser, Apple is working on a foldable iPhone prototype that features two separate display panels that are connected by a hinge rather than a single display like the Samsung Galaxy Fold.

Prosser says that the foldable ‌‌iPhone‌‌ has rounded, stainless steel edges similar to the ‌iPhone‌ 11 and no notch, but a "tiny forehead" on the outer display for Face ID.

Rumors about Apple working on a foldable ‌iPhone‌ date back to 2016, and there have been a number of foldable phone Apple patents, including one describing a device with two separate displays that could be brought together to create a single bendable device with a hinge. That said, foldable ‌iPhone‌ rumors offer no consensus on if or when such a device will come to market.

Following its iPhone 12 and 12 Pro teardowns, iFixit has shared its teardown of the iPhone 12 mini, providing a look at the similarities and differences between the small form factor smartphone and its larger siblings in Apple's iPhone 12 series.

The first thing that's evident from the iPhone 12 mini teardown is the smaller 8.57 Wh battery. iFixit notes that its capacity is actually more than the larger iPhone SE 2020, which has a 6.96 Wh battery. As expected, however, it's short of the 10.78 Wh battery found in the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro.

The teardown also reveals that Apple has included some iPhone 12 components in the iPhone 12 mini but in smaller versions to save space, including the Taptic Engine, speakers, and MagSafe ring. The cameras, on the other hand, are the same ƒ/1.6 wide-angle and ƒ/2.4 ultra wide-angle cameras found in the iPhone 12. The wide-angle module also features optical image stabilization.

Elsewhere, Apple does away with the plastic spacers found in the iPhone 12 due to the close quarters inside the camera shield, but otherwise the arrangement of components on the L-shaped logic board are very similar. Compared to the regular iPhone 12, the mini only has two displays cables instead of three, and iFixit also notes "increased grille asymmetry," which it says is likely because the device needs more space for the 5G antenna band.

Like the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro, the iPhone 12 mini earned a repairability score of 6 out of 10. iFixit said that many components are modular and are easy to replace, but the site bemoaned Apple's continued use of proprietary screws, the devices' increases in waterproofing that can complicate repairs, and the increased chance of breakage due to glass on the front and back of the two devices‌.

Apple's device identifier service for advertisers is being targeted by privacy advocates in two complaints to Spanish and German authorities, reports Bloomberg.

A Vienna-based group called NOYB ("None Of Your Business") has filed complaints with data protection authorities in the two countries, calling for them to outlaw Apple's "Identifier for Advertisers" (IDFA) service.

Each ‌iPhone‌ that Apple sells comes with the unique identifier, which lets advertisers track the actions users take when they use apps. The group argues that the service allows Apple and various apps to track users and collect data on their web use without their consent.

"With our complaints we want to enforce a simple principle: trackers are illegal, unless a user freely consents," NOYB lawyer Stefano Rossetti said in a statement. "Smartphones are the most intimate device for most people and they must be tracker-free by default."

App developers have historically used IDFA to help target users with ads and track the performance of ads across different devices. Next year, however, Apple will require apps to seek customer consent before the IDFA can be used in iOS 14 to track user behavior and preference across apps and websites for ad targeting purposes.

The requirement was announced in June alongside iOS 14 and was originally expected to go into force with the release of Apple's latest mobile operating system, but Apple chose to delay the anti-tracking feature until 2021 to "give developers time to make the necessary changes."

The delay was announced only after major app developers and ad networks like Facebook spoke out against the feature, with Facebook warning advertisers on its platform that it could cause a more than 50 percent drop in Audience Network publisher revenue due to the loss of personalization from ads within apps. Apple is also facing an antitrust complaint from French advertisers who say it could force their revenue to plummet.

Last year, Mozilla launched a petition urging Apple to implement an automatic monthly reset on identifiers to make it harder for companies to build a profile about users over time. "It's like a salesperson following you from store to store while you shop and recording each thing you look at," argued the petition. "Not very private at all."

Following the release of macOS Big Sur on Thursday, Mac users began to experience issues with opening apps while connected to the internet. Apple's system status page attributed the situation to issues with its Developer ID notary service, with developer Jeff Johnson specifying that there were connection issues with Apple's OCSP server.

Shortly after, security researcher Jeffrey Paul shared a blog post titled "Your Computer Isn't Yours," in which he raised privacy and security concerns related to Macs "phoning home" to Apple's OCSP server. In short, Paul said that the OCSP traffic that macOS generates is not encrypted and could potentially be seen by ISPs or even the U.S. military.

Apple has since responded to the matter by updating its "Safely open apps on your Mac" support document with new information, as noted by iPhoneinCanada. Here's the new "Privacy protections" section of the support document in full:

macOS has been designed to keep users and their data safe while respecting their privacy.

Gatekeeper performs online checks to verify if an app contains known malware and whether the developer's signing certificate is revoked. We have never combined data from these checks with information about Apple users or their devices. We do not use data from these checks to learn what individual users are launching or running on their devices.

Notarization checks if the app contains known malware using an encrypted connection that is resilient to server failures.

These security checks have never included the user's Apple ID or the identity of their device. To further protect privacy, we have stopped logging IP addresses associated with Developer ID certificate checks, and we will ensure that any collected IP addresses are removed from logs.

Apple clarifies that user-specific data is not harvested during the security check and that it plans on removing all IP information from the logs. In addition, it plans on introducing several changes to the system over the next year, including:

• a new encrypted protocol for Developer ID certificate revocation checks
• strong protections against server failure
• a new preference for users to opt out of these security protections

Some users have advocated blocking the traffic to Apple's authentication servers, but it appears that Apple will provide this option to end-users in the future as well.

HomePod mini launch day is officially underway in countries such as Australia and Japan, where the calendar has already turned to November 16, and the first orders are beginning to arrive to customers. Track your shipment in the MacRumors forums.

Instagram user shiology shared a photo of the white HomePod mini and its box.

Daniel Feodoroff was one of the first customers in the world to purchase a HomePod mini at an Apple Store in Miranda, Australia.

Priced at $99, the HomePod mini is a more budget friendly competitor to the Amazon Echo and Google Home, while still offering many features of the full-size HomePod, including Siri, HomeKit, Apple Music, Intercom voice messaging, and stereo pairing. HomePod mini is equipped with the same S5 chip as the Apple Watch Series 5, enabling "computational audio," and many reviewers have been impressed by the speaker's sound quality.

HomePod mini is also launching in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

The first native benchmarks of Apple's M1 chip appeared on the Geekbench site last week showing impressive native performance. Today, new benchmarks have begun showing up for the M1 chip emulating x86 under Rosetta 2.

The new Rosetta 2 Geekbench results uploaded show that the ‌M1‌ chip running on a MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM has single-core and multi-core scores of 1,313 and 5,888 respectively. Since this version of Geekbench is running through Apple's translation layer Rosetta 2, an impact on performance is to be expected. Rosetta 2 running x86 code appears to be achieving 78%-79% of the performance of native Apple Silicon code.

Despite the impact on performance, the single-core Rosetta 2 score results still outperforms any other Intel Mac, including the 2020 27-inch iMac with Intel Core i9-10910 @ 3.6GHz.

Initial benchmarks for the ‌MacBook Air‌ running ‌M1‌ natively featured a single-core score of 1,687 and multi-core score of 7,433. Additional benchmarks with ‌M1‌ have since surfaced and are available on Geekbench.

Meanwhile, a full chart of Geekbench results is available that will let you compare these scores to any other Mac.

Apple today shared a new shot on iPhone video called "Everyday Experiments," which is designed to show off the photographic capabilities of the ‌iPhone‌ 12.

The video showcases water-filled balloons, liquid moving around, popsicles freezing, and more, before going into a tutorial on how to make "beautiful images with stuff you can find around the house."

Apple's tutorial teaches customers how to use water balloons and slo-mo to make slow motion animations and how to make psychedelic liquid formations using oil, water, and food coloring. There's also a tutorial on using glow sticks for night time shots.

‌iPhone‌ 12 features showcase camera features that include slo-mo, Dolby Vision HDR recording, and Night Mode Time-Lapse, plus it highlights editing video in iMovie.

Apple has done several of these "Experiments" videos that take advantage of ‌iPhone‌ cameras in unique situations to get interesting photos, but this is the first that's included a tutorial for people to recreate the effects at home.

A large number of late 2013 and mid 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro owners are reporting that the macOS Big Sur update is bricking their machines. A MacRumors forum thread contains a significant number of users reporting the issue, and similar problems are being reported across Reddit and the Apple Support Communities, suggesting the problem is widespread.

Users are reporting that during the course of updating to macOS Big Sur, their machines are stuck displaying a black screen. Key reset combinations, including NVRAM, SMC, safe mode, and internet recovery, are all reportedly inaccessible after attempting to install the update, leaving no way to bypass the static black screen.

It appears that the overwhelming number of users experiencing problems are owners of the late 2013 and mid 2014 13-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌, but it is unclear exactly how many users of these models have been affected. It is also of note that these are the oldest models supported by macOS Big Sur.

One commenter on Reddit said that they were told by Apple support to book their ‌MacBook Pro‌ in for a repair. Another on an Apple Support thread said that the issue has been escalated to Apple's engineering team, so Apple should now be aware of the problem.

Until it is clear what may be causing the issue and Apple releases a fix, late 2013 and mid 2014 13-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ may wish to hold off on installing macOS Big Sur.