U.S lawmakers on Friday sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook expressing concern over Apple's decision to remove the HKMap Live app from the App Store after complaints from the Chinese Government.

The letter [PDF] calls Apple's removal of the HKMap Live app "disappointing" and points out a prior quote from ‌Tim Cook‌ that reads "At Apple, we are not afraid to say that our values drive our curation decisions."

The HKMap Live app, which was used by protestors in Hong Kong to crowdsource information about street closures and police presence, was...

It's clear that Apple has been torn between supporting Hong Kong protesters and appeasing those in Mainland China. In the end, Mainland China won with apple complying and removing the HKmap app in a nanosecond

Google has ignited security concerns over the facial authentication system in its new Pixel 4 smartphone by admitting that it will unlock the device even when the user's eyes are shut.

Google unveiled the Pixel 4 this week to mostly positive reviews, many of which praised the phone for is super-fast new face unlock system, which replaces the fingerprint sensor and works much the same as Apple's Face ID on iPhones, except for one key security feature.

The BBC has discovered that the Pixel 4 can be unlocked even with the user's face even if they're sleeping (or pretending to be asleep). That contrasts with Apple's Face ID system, which engages by default an "Attention Aware" feature that requires the user's eyes to be open for the iPhone to be...

Apple CEO Tim Cook this week tweeted in support of the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, urging the U.S. Senate to move quickly to pass the bipartisan bill, which would eliminate per-country limits on employment-based green cards and increase per-country limits for family-sponsored green cards.

"Immigrants make this country stronger and our economy more dynamic," said Cook. "As a first step toward needed comprehensive reform, I urge the Senate to move quickly to pass the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. The contributions of these workers are critical to America's future."

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the High-Skilled Immigrants Act in July, but the Senate has so far blocked the bill.

Apple and Cook frequently back pro-immigration legislation. Earlier this month, for example, Cook lent his name to...

The European Commission says it is taking a look at antitrust concerns involving Apple Pay, the digital payment tool for iPhones

On Tuesday, Apple's Beats brand introduced the new Beats Solo Pro headphones, the company's first on-ear headphones with active noise cancellation. The new $300 headphones don't launch until October 30, but we've already had a chance to test them out so check out our video below for our early impressions.

Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.

Starting with the unboxing experience, you'll find that the Beats Solo Pro headphones come with a new soft case covered in a nice felt-like material, as well as a few accessories such as a Lightning to USB-A cable for recharging the headphones. While USB-C rather than Lightning might have been a bit more universal, at least you can charge your headphones with the same cable you use for your iPhone.

The Solo Pro headphones come in six colors including...

Today the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that relates to dynamic image stabilization built into mobile devices so that users will be able to view messages or read content when walking, Jogging, running on a treadmill or riding in a car with bumpy roads.

A major flaw in Samsung's Galaxy S10 smartphone has been discovered that basically means any fingerprint can unlock the device with the help of a cheap screen protector.

According to the BBC, a British woman discovered the authentication flaw after she applied a cheap gel screen protector bought off eBay to her Galaxy S10.

She soon discovered that she was able to authenticate as the owner by pressing her left thumbprint against the phone's onscreen fingerprint sensor – the problem being that she hadn't registered her thumb with the device's biometric authenticaton system.

Her suspicions were confirmed when her husband was also able to unlock the phone by pressing either one of his thumbs on the screen's built-in sensor. The screen protector was then applied to another relative's Galaxy S10 and the same thing occurred.

Responding to the incident, Samsung said it was "aware of the...

Apple has posted the first stats for iOS 13 adoption since its launch on September 19th for iPhone.

Apple shared the statistics on the App Store Developers page which was updated today. Apple reports that ‌iOS 13‌ is installed on 55% of all iPhones introduced in the past four years, and 50% of all iPhone devices, as measured by App Store activity. The pace puts ‌iOS 13‌ approximately on par with iOS 12 adoption last year which hit 53% of active devices in a slightly shorter timeframe and a different device breakdown.

This year, Apple has broken down the stats between both ‌iOS 13‌ and iPadOS...

In January Patently Apple posted a report titled "Apple and Studio A24 have Chosen their first Joint Project Called "On the Rocks" Starring Bill Murray. Today we're learning that their second project has been chosen. It's being reported today that Apple has announced the second feature that will be produced under its pact with indie studio A24

Quanta Computer will likely stop taking assembly orders for the Apple Watch at some point in 2020 due to profit concerns, and may sell its manufacturing plant in Changshu, China dedicated to assembling the wearable device, according to industry sources cited by Taiwanese publication DigiTimes.

The full DigiTimes story is not yet available, but a paywalled preview reads as follows:Quanta may stop assembly for ‌Apple Watch‌ in 2020, say sources:

Quanta Computer is likely to stop taking assembly orders for the ‌Apple Watch‌ next year due to profit concerns, and may sell its Changshu plant in China dedicated to assembling the wearable device, according to industry sources.Quanta has been the primary manufacturer of the ‌Apple Watch‌ since the original model was released in 2015, while Compal Electronics...

AnandTech today published its in-depth review of the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro, including a detailed overview of the processor and graphics performance gains of Apple's latest A13 Bionic chip.

Starting with CPU performance, AnandTech found the A13 chip is around 20 percent faster than the A12 chip in last year's iPhone models, consistent with Apple's advertised claims. However, to fully achieve that improvement, the site claims Apple had to increase the peak power consumption of the CPU cores:In virtually all of the SPECint2006 tests, Apple has gone and increased the peak power draw of the A13 SoC; and so in many cases we're almost 1W above the A12. Here at peak performance it seems the power increase was greater than the performance increase, and that's why in almost all workloads the A13 ends up as less efficient than the A12.In terms of efficiency at the A13...

On September 13th Patently Apple posted a report titled "A U.S. House of Representatives Panel Sent Apple's CEO a Letter Demanding Internal Emails, Financial Information & More." We're learning today that the leaders of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee have said that they've begun receiving data from Apple ....

Goldman Sachs announced their Q3 2019 Results today. On the bad side, they lost $80 millon on WeWork investment. On the good side, Apple Card ...

Alongside iOS 13.1.3, Apple today also released a supplemental update for macOS Catalina, addressing several bugs from the initial public release version, including a problem with Setup Assistant hanging during Catalina installation.

The ‌macOS Catalina‌ Supplemental Update includes installation and reliability improvements, and is recommended for all users.




This update:

- Improves installation reliability of ‌macOS Catalina‌ on Macs with low disk space

- Fixes an issue that prevented Setup Assistant from completing during some installations

- Resolves an issue that prevents accepting iCloud Terms and Conditions when multiple ‌...

Apple today released iOS 13.1.3 and iPadOS 13.1.3, minor updates to the iOS 13.1.2 software that was released two weeks ago. This is the fourth update to the iOS 13 operating system that came out in September.

The iOS and ‌iPadOS‌ 13.1.3 updates are available on all eligible devices over-the-air in the Settings app. To access the updates, go to Settings > General > Software Update.

According to Apple's release notes for the software, the iOS 13.1.3 update introduces bug fixes and performance improvements. Full details below:iOS 13.1.3 includes bug fixes and improvements for your iPhone. This update:

- Addresses an issue that could prevent a device from ringing or vibrating for an incoming call

- Fixes an issue that may prevent opening a meeting invite in...

Apple is currently engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with persistent kids looking to circumvent Screen Time restrictions, but the company has been receiving some criticism for not moving quickly enough to lock down some of the loopholes, reports The Washington Post.

A few of the loopholes and ways for parents to shut them down are documented on the site Protect Young Eyes, while these and others are frequently shared by kids through various social channels.“These are not rocket science, backdoor, dark web sort of hacks,” says Chris McKenna, founder of the Internet safety group Protect Young Eyes. “It blows me away that Apple hasn’t thought through the fact that a persistent middle school boy or girl can bang around and find them.”...

The Apple Card was "the most successful credit-card launch ever," according to Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon (via CNBC). The quote came from a Goldman Sachs conference call held earlier today, in which Solomon discussed the bank's new initiatives with its investors.

Apple created the ‌Apple Card‌ in partnership with Goldman Sachs and Mastercard, launching the credit card in August. Solomon stated that since the August launch, the bank has seen a high level of consumer demand for the ‌Apple Card‌.

“In three short years, we have raised $55 billion in deposits on the Marcus platform, generated $5 billion in loans, and built a new credit-card platform and launched ‌Apple Card‌,” Solomon said, adding “which we believe is the most successful credit-card launch ever.”...

Roku today announced that the Apple TV app will be available on its platform starting today, allowing users to access their iTunes libraries of movies and TV shows, the Apple TV Channels feature, and soon Apple TV+.

The Apple TV app can be downloaded from the Roku Channel Store on smart TVs that either have Roku preinstalled or have a Roku dongle connected, although select older Roku models are not supported.

The Apple TV app is available to Roku users in the United States, Argentina, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

In addition to Roku, Apple TV+ will be available through the Apple TV app on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, select 2018 and newer Samsung smart TVs, and on select LG, Sony, and VIZIO smart TVs in the...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 59 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover Apple's patent relating to electronic devices for virtual/augmented reality, including but not limited to electronic devices for measuring physical spaces and/or objects using virtual/augmented reality environments. While the invention technically covers Apple's iOS "Measuring" app, it also covers ...

After upgrading to macOS Catalina, you may be surprised to discover a shortcut on your Mac's desktop to a Relocated Items folder that wasn't there previously. The generation of this folder is actually normal behavior when upgrading an older version of macOS to Catalina, but we're highlighting it in this article because a lot of users are confused about why the folder exists and what to do with its contents.

What Are Relocated Items?

Relocated items are older files and data from previous macOS installations that Apple is not sure what to do with after upgrading to Catalina.

Catalina is the first version of macOS to adopt wholesale the relatively new Apple File System (APFS), which is optimized for the flash storage used in recent Macs. Aside from introducing a bunch of other new technical features, an APFS-formatted disk uses a space-sharing "container" that can house multiple secure "volumes" or...

Following user concern over Apple using Chinese company Tencent as one of its Safe Browsing partners for Safari, Apple has issued a statement assuring customers that website URLs are not shared with its safe browsing partners.

For those unfamiliar with the feature, Safari sends data to Google Safe Browsing to cross reference URLs against a blacklist to protect users against scams and malicious sites. It recently came to light that Apple is also using Tencent for this purpose, and there was concern that data from users outside of China was being sent to Tencent.

According to Apple's statement, that is not the case, and Tencent is used for devices that have their region code set to mainland China. Users in the United States, the UK, and other countries do not have their website browsing checked against Tencent's safe list.Apple protects user privacy and safeguards your...

According to Apple analyst Guo Minghao, better known as Ming-Chi Kuo of TF Securities, Apple will be introducing an SE2-like smartphone in Q1 2020. Kuo believes the new SE2 will attract iPhone 6 and 6S series users that number between ...

Bose and Sonos, both well-known speaker manufacturers, recently came out with new AirPlay 2-enabled speakers that are designed to work with Apple's latest ‌AirPlay‌ protocol and offer an alternative to products like the HomePod.

In our latest YouTube video, we went hands-on with the Bose Portable Home Speaker and the Sonos Move to see what the speakers have to offer and how they compare to one another.

Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.

Both the Bose Portable and the Sonos Move are designed to offer a premium audio experience and are more expensive than the ‌HomePod‌. The Sonos Move costs $399 and the Bose Portable costs $349, but each company is known for its audio quality and audiophiles won't flinch at that price point.

When it...

Following the release of iOS 13.2 beta 2 yesterday, some 2018 iPad Pro owners found that the update failed to install properly, ultimately bricking their tablets and requiring a full restore.

We've seen several complaints from ‌iPad Pro‌ owners who were affected by the issue, and in some cases, even a restore from DFU mode failed to work. From the MacRumors forums:

My ‌iPad Pro‌ 11" is in the same position, it failed during the update of iOS 13.2 beta 2. What you can try is putting it into DFU mode (press volume up, volume down, then hold power for 5 or so seconds) and plug it into iTunes via cable to restore it that way.

However, unfortunately mine gets an error when i try this so i have an Apple appointment tomorrow to get them to fix it.Amid these reports,...

Apple shares are currently trading above the $234 mark on the intraday market, setting a new all-time high for the company. As noted by CNBC, the stock's previous all-time high was $233.47 in October 2018.

AAPL has surged nearly 10 percent over the past month, fueled in part by multiple reports indicating that iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro sales have been better than expected so far in several countries, including the United States, China, and India, something that Apple CEO Tim Cook alluded to in a recent interview.

Apple is set to report its fourth quarter earnings results on...

After buying Intel’s 5G modem business earlier this year, Apple is wasting no time building its own 5G modem for the iPhone. The company is pushing to have its modem in iPhones by 2022

Yesterday morning Patently Apple posted a report titled “Under Extreme Pressure Apple Reverses Course and Pulls both ‘HKmap.live’ and Quartz App from their Chinese App Store.” Apple justified the move by stating in-part that they had learned that the HKmap.live app had been used in way that endanger law enforcement and residents in Hong Kong. The reaction to Apple's move has been swift.

Film director has Alfonso Cuarón has signed a multi-year deal to develop television projects for the Apple TV+ streaming service, reports Variety.

Cuarón is primarily known for his work on films, and has not done much television, so his partnership with Apple will mark his first major foray into TV. He did previously co-create 2014 NBC drama "Believe," and he directed Mexican anthology series "La Hora Marcada," but other than that he has focused on movies.

Image via The Telegraph

Cuarón directed award-winning films that include "Y Tu Mamá También," "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," "Children of Men," "Gravity," and "Roma."

According...

The first beta of iOS 13.2 brought a handful of changes like Deep Fusion support, Announce Messages With Siri and HomePod handoff options, but iOS 13.2 beta 2 introduces even more significant changes.

There are new emoji and new Siri privacy settings as we outlined earlier today, but there are also some other smaller changes worth highlighting.

- Rearrange Apps - The "Rearrange Apps" option that pops up when 3D Touching or using a Haptic Touch on an app icon is now "Edit Home Screen."

- Delete...

Today's iOS 13.2 beta introduces a new option that allows iPhone and iPad users to delete their Siri and Dictation history and opt out of sharing audio recordings, features that Apple promised after being called out for its ‌Siri‌ quality evaluation processes.

Earlier this year, it was discovered that Apple hired contractors to listen to a small percentage of anonymized ‌Siri‌ recordings to evaluate ‌Siri‌'s responses with the purpose of improving the assistant's accuracy and reliability.

A report from one of those contractors who spoke to The Guardian said that the employees working on Siri "regularly" heard "confidential details" while listening to the audio recordings. The contractor also criticized Apple for not making it clear to consumers that some of their ‌...

Apple today seeded the second beta of an upcoming iOS 13.2 update, and the beta adds new emoji characters that are part of the Unicode 12 emoji release.

Apple previewed its new emoji earlier this year, and now the new options are set to roll out when iOS 13.2 becomes available. Unicode 12 adds 59 new emoji characters, 75 when gender variations are counted, and 230 when gender variations and skin tones are counted.

Image via Emojipedia

Orangutan, sloth, otter, skunk, and flamingo are the new animals included in the update, while new food items include garlic, onion, waffle, falafel, butter, oyster, beverage box, maté, and ice cube.

New faces, gestures, and poses include yawning face, pinching hand, person kneeling, person standing, and new people holding hands options that are both gender and skin tone inclusive.

Several new...

Apple today shared a new full length trailer for its upcoming series "Truth Be Told" starring Octavia Spencer and Aaron Paul.

Spencer, known for her former roles in movies like "The Shape of Water" and "Hidden Figures," plays podcaster Poppy Parnell who aims to reopen a murder case that she was involved in solving 18 years earlier, putting Warren Cave, played by Aaron Paul ("Breaking Bad"), behind bars.

Spencer's character is unsure if she made a mistake when she helped put Paul's character (Warren Cave) in prison, and with her podcast, she tries to discover the truth and determine whether Cave was wrongfully convicted.

"Truth Be Told" is based on the novel "Are You Sleeping" by Kathleen Barber, which has been described as a psychological thriller. Sarah Koenig, who created and produced "Serial," a podcast similar to the storyline in "Truth Be Told," consulted on the series.

Other stars in "Truth Be Told" include Lizzy Caplan ("Masters of Sex"), Ron...

Today the US Patent & Trademark Office published Apple’s fourth next-gen Touch ID patent application for 2019 that involves the user simply touching the display to have their fingerprint captured for authentication. The patent states that the finger could be statically positioned to work or even in action like sliding a finger across the sensor area.

Patently Apple's blog will be undergoing maintenance with our service provider this week while integrating new backend hardware. This has the potential of knocking out our service for ...

Apple has added a new selection of accessories to its online store this week.

For starters, the Logitech Crayon is now available in a new gray finish, complementing the existing silver option with red accents.

Priced at $69.95, the Logitech Crayon is a lower-cost alternative to the Apple Pencil. The drawing tool features a slim aluminum body and an Apple Pencil-like tip, with the same latency, tilt, and palm rejection that you get with the Apple Pencil. Unlike the Pencil, however, it lacks pressure sensitivity.

The Logitech Crayon is compatible with the sixth- and seventh-generation iPad, as well as the latest iPad Pro, iPad Air, and iPad mini models.

Also new to Apple's online store...

Apple has added the Xbox Wireless Controller to Apple.com, although the accessory is currently unavailable to purchase at the time of writing. Apple sells a few different gaming controllers on its website to connect to iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS devices, but as of yet the company has never directly sold Microsoft or Sony's own gaming controllers.

Now that players can connect the Xbox Wireless Controller to their iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV to play games on Apple devices, it appears that Apple has worked out a deal with Microsoft to sell its controller on the Apple...

On Monday Patently Apple posted a report titled "Apple Approved HKmap.live late on Friday, an App that Shows Police activity within Hong Kong that they initially Rejected." What does China's government think of Apple's move? Well ...

Apple today began adding the 13-inch MacBook Air and the lower-end 13-inch MacBook Pro to its online store for refurbished products in the United States, offering the machines at a discount for the first time.

Both of the new machines were first released in July 2019. The updated MacBook Air features a True Tone display, an updated butterfly keyboard that's more durable, and a lower price point.

As for the lower-end MacBook Pro, the July 2019 update brought Touch ID, a Touch Bar, faster processors, and a True Tone display to Apple's entry-level machines.

Pricing on the MacBook Air starts at $1,099 new and pricing on the entry-level MacBook...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple 64 newly granted patents today. Our final granted report of the day covers the 'Auto Unlock' feature with Apple Watch and a Mass transfer system for micro LED displays. We wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.