MacRumors' Mac Blog: Mac Apps, News and Rumors

Apple's retail expansion efforts over the past few years have primarily focused on China, where it has opened over 15 new stores since the start of 2015. Over that time, the company has only opened 7 new retail stores outside of the China region, including two locations in New York City and one in Abu Dhabi, Brussels, Dubai, Sao Paulo, and Miranda, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. But if recent...

Apple today updated Final Cut Pro X, Compressor, and Motion, its software designed for professional video editors. Today's updates, the first since September, add a couple of new features and introduce a long list of bug fixes. Final Cut Pro X now includes a Customizable Default Effect that allows users to choose a video and an audio effect to assign to a keyboard shortcut, a 4K export preset...

The New York City Landmarks Conservancy today announced that Apple has won its 2016 Chairman's Award, due to the Cupertino company's preservation and restoration of a few architecturally important locations within New York City (via iFun.de) [Google Translate]. Apple's retail location in Grand Central Terminal The Landmarks Conservancy specifically referred to Apple's SoHo, West 14th Street, U...

There's sometimes a stigma against purchasing refurbished electronics because many companies don't have rigorous quality control programs for refurbished devices, but that's not the case with Apple. Some companies may sell refurbished items with cosmetic defects and other issues, but Apple's refurbished products available from its online store are "as good as new" products, but with a lower price ...

The United States Patent and Trademark Office today published a patent filed by Apple last March, which details how inline proximity sensors could be used in tandem with a touchscreen display to detect non-contact hover gestures (via AppleInsider). The patent, titled "Proximity and multi-touch sensor detection and demodulation", reveals how photodiodes or other proximity hardware work in...

For this week's giveaway, we've teamed up with Softorino to offer 15 MacRumors readers a chance to win a copy of WALTR for Mac. WALTR is designed to make it easy to upload any music or video file to an iOS device. With WALTR, you can drag and drop a wide variety of media files onto your iPhone or iPad, and they'll be automatically added to the appropriate native Music or Video app on the...

London Mayor Boris Johnson tried to convince Apple to fund the UK capital's project to build a "Garden Bridge" across the River Thames, as reported by Business Insider. The report cites an article published today in The Architects' Journal which details how Johnson secretly travelled to California in early 2013 to meet Apple executives and pitch the ambitious project, before he had received...

Apple is preparing to open a third retail store in Turkey, reports MacReports, citing a source familiar with the company's plans. Set to open in Istanbul, the store will launch later in 2016. Apple is said to be in the process of hiring for retail positions at the store and has posted advertisements on job sites in Turkey. The store will reportedly be located at the Emaar Square Mall in...

Angela Ahrendts spoke yesterday to Fast Company about her first two years as Apple's retail chief and her strategy to improve the company's customer experience at its global chain of retail stores. In an interview titled "Apple's Angela Ahrendts On What It Takes To Make Change Inside A Successful Business," the Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores explains that, in her first six...

Apple today released a minor update to OS X Snow Leopard with a refreshed version of the Mac App Store. According to Apple's release notes, the Mac App Store has been updated to ensure the future compatibility of the app with the OS X Snow Leopard operating system. Today's Mac App Store update is available to all OS X Snow Leopard users and can be downloaded through the Mac App Store's...

The San Jose city council has approved a development agreement for Apple that will give the company fifteen years to build "a maximum of 4.15 million square feet of space" within an 86 acre piece of land in north San Jose (via Silicon Valley Business Journal). Apple is still ironing out plans on exactly what it wants to do with the massive site, according to Kristina Raspe, senior director of...

Apple's longtime public relations executive Natalie Kerris, who retired last April after 14 years at the company, is the leading candidate for Twitter's head of communications, according to Re/code. Kerris initially sought to succeed longtime Apple PR head Katie Cotton, who retired in 2014, but fellow Apple PR veteran Steve Dowling was named as Cotton's permanent successor last April....

Finding a reliable backup solution for the Mac that runs in the background and isn't a drain on system resources was once considered a challenging prospect. With the arrival of OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple changed that preconception by introducing its native backup solution, called Time Machine. This article explains the benefits of using Time Machine and runs you through the setup and restore...

The CEO of German automotive company Daimler, Dieter Zetsche, may have given a small update on the progress of the long-rumored Apple Car (via Reuters). After visiting with about 70 companies in total on a trip to Silicon Valley, Zetsche told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag [Google Translate] that "these companies can do more and know more" about the automotive process than he previously...

Apple has announced that its 33rd retail store in China will open in Qingdao, a port city bordering the East China Sea, on Saturday, January 30 at 10:00 a.m. local time. The store will be located in the new MixC luxury shopping mall, the largest in China, on 6 Shandong Road in the city's coastal Shinan District. A render of the MixC shopping mall in Qingdao, China MixC Qingdao is an...

Apple's Thunderbolt Display, for myriad reasons, may not display an image from your Mac, recognize USB peripherals, connect to Ethernet, or power on whatsoever. In many cases, the display is not broken. Before contacting Apple, follow these troubleshooting steps to see if you can reset your Thunderbolt...

For the past couple of months, Twitter users who click shortened "t.co" links with an HTTPS URL have noticed a frequent, irritating bug that prevents content from loading. Oftentimes, when a "t.co" link is clicked, it opens up a blank web page and hangs at a loading screen for several minutes before giving an error message. There are threads about this issue on the MacRumors forums and the Appl...

Microsoft has opened up its Office Insider program to users on Macs, following the launch of the service on Windows Desktop, Windows Mobile, and Android devices last November (via ZDNet). The program lets users who are signed up as Office 365 subscribers gain early access to new features and innovations within the suite of Microsoft Office applications. To sign up for the program on a Mac,...