Apple has scheduled its next Apple Watch Activity Challenge, this time for Thanksgiving later this month. The challenge encourages Apple Watch users to complete a workout of at least 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) in length on November 26. You can earn this award by completing any walk, run, or wheelchair workout of at least 5K in distance. If you complete the challenge, Apple will reward you with exclusive badges in the Activity app, as well as stickers for use in Messages and FaceTime....

As it continues to refocus its strategy in India, Apple has reportedly stopped selling the iPhone SE, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and iPhone 6s Plus in the country. This comes as Apple is reportedly shifting its plan in the country to focus on newer and more expensive iPhones. According to The Economic Times, Apple is now focusing on increasing its revenue from India, as opposed to increasing iPhone volume. Apple’s distributors in India have reportedly informed retailers that the new “entry level” iPhone will be the iPhone 6s....

Apple updated its support site today to give customers the option to initiate screensharing sessions with AppleCare representatives. Previously AppleCare reps could ask a customer to begin screensharing if they thought it would be useful in helping solve the issue, but as of today customers can now decide whether to use the utility during support calls. Customers have always been able to request screensharing, at which point the AppleCare representative would instruct them to download an application from Apple’s site that facilitates the connection....

Apple TV+ today announced that the service’s animated musical series Central Park will be getting a third season. The second season of the cartoon will debut on June 25. The first three episodes of Central Park season two will arrive on Apple TV+ on June 25, with the remainder of the season rolling out weekly. A release date for season three has not yet been announced. As it is a musical, each episode of Central Park features three or four original songs....

We mentioned last week that an Apple TV software update would allow owners to stream content from a friend’s Apple TV box elsewhere, and AllThingsD now has a little more info on how this will work. It’s yet another move by Apple to embracing the cloud, which is perhaps also why the rumored 128GB iPhone 5S didn’t make an appearance: local storage is rapidly becoming old-hat. The key part is that they will be able to tell an Apple TV box they don’t own to stream the media they do own, directly from the cloud....

New banks and credit unions across the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Japan have joined Apple’s list of participating partners as part of the first expansion of Apple Pay this month. Check out the latest Apple Pay banks below: In the United States: Bank Forward Campus Federal Credit Union Farmers Savings Bank First Bank & Trust (SD) Franklin State Bank Frost Bank Glenwood State Bank of Minnesota Kerr County Federal Credit Union mBank My Community Credit Union NRL Federal Credit Union Orrstown Bank Our Community Credit Union Perennial Bank State Bank of Cherry Tropical Financial Credit Union Union Bank & Trust United Citizens Bank of Southern Kentucky United Community Bank (ND) Valley National Bank Wymar Federal Credit Union And around the world:...

As Apple Pay continues to expand to more banks in the United States and around the world, it’s slowly coming to more retail locations, as well. Next on the docket for Apple Pay support appears to be Chick-Fil-A, according to a tweet from the restaurant chain. Last year, it was reported that Apple Pay support was coming to Chick-Fil-A locations around the country, but the rollout never fully began, though a handful of users have been able to use the service sporadically....

If you are an iOS user, you must be very familiar with the Apple Podcast app. Well, it’s a pre-installed app that comes with your iOS machine. And with the iOS 12 update, you can now see a lot of improvement in it, which makes it far better than the others. However, at certain times we might come up with the question that if there’s any better alternative to Apple Podcasts?...

Update: Mark Gurman breaks down what it all means here Apple today announced a few leadership changes including a new COO and changes to App Store leadership. Jeff Williams, previously Senior Vice President Operations, is officially being promoted to Chief Operating Officer which is CEO Tim Cook’s old title. Williams, notably, has been heavily involved in the Apple Watch team as well as the open source ResearchKit initiative. Phil Schiller, Apple’s Worldwide Marketing SVP, will add to his responsibilities the task of overseeing all the App Store leadership....

The website for the Apple Beta Program has gone down ahead of the WWDC 2016 keynote, due to start at 10 AM PT (in about 40 minutes). With Apple about to unveil iOS 10, macOS 10.12, watchOS 3 and new tvOS, the Beta Program site going down indicates that at least something new will be available for wider release today. There’s a chance iOS 10 will be available for public betas today but it is slim given tradition; a developer beta for iOS 10 will almost certainly debut today....

Amid its ongoing encryption battle with the FBI, Apple has published its latest biannual transparency report. This report reveals how many requests were made for user data by governments around the world, and how many with which Apple could comply. This data covers January 1, 2019 through June 30, 2019. Apple is required by Justice Department rules to delay the release of these figures by six months, as noted by TechCrunch’s Zack Whittaker....

For the first time, Apple has released an Apple Store app optimised for the iPad, via TechCrunch. The app uses the now-standard iOS 7 colour scheme and design elements, focusing on white space and text. The app is a separate download to the iPhone app, but offers all the same functionality you would expect, although some of the location-based features for retail are absent due to the different use cases of the devices....

Following the launch of iOS 13.5 last week, Apple today has released macOS Catalina 10.15.5 as well. This update brings a new feature to improve the lifespan of Mac notebook’s battery, besides bug fixes and performance improvements. The biggest change in macOS 10.15.5 is a new Battery Health Management feature. The goal of the change is to reduce the chemical aging of a MacBook’s battery and extend its lifespan, but without comprising battery life....

Alongside beta 3 of iOS 8, Apple has released the third preview of OS X 10.10 Yosemite to developers. The update is available in the Mac App Store and under Software Update. We’ll be updating this post with new discoveries. You can let us know what you find at tips@9to5mac.com. – New QuickTime icon – Bookmark folders are now accessible via the address bar in Safari. – Dark Mode has also been enabled....

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is now in talks with Comcast about the possibility of a collaborative television streaming service. The plan, according to the report, is for Comcast to provide preferential streaming treatment to an Apple-built set-top box like the existing Apple TV. The service would allow subscribers to stream live TV shows as well as on-demand content provided by Comcast. The agreement between the two companies would allow Apple’s box to continue streaming smoothly even when other connections were bogged down by high traffic and bypass bandwidth issues....

Washington Post columnist Allan Sloan observes that Apple’s plan to buy back $60b of its own stock will reduce the company’s tax bill by more than the cost of the loans it will take out to fund the share repurchase program. If you’re wondering why a company with a cash balance of $145b would need to borrow $60b, it’s all about tax … Around two-thirds of that cash hoard is held by Apple subsidiaries outside the USA, and if Apple brought the cash back home it would have to pay 35% corporation tax....

When this February Apple rolled out the new MacBook Pro family with Sandy Bridge chips and Thuderbolt I/O, the company surprised many with a SATA3 interface for the hard drive and disappointed at the same time by leaving the Superdrive in SATA2. SATA3 allows for theoretical data transfer speeds of 600 megabytes per second versus 300 megabytes per second for SATA2. Real-life numbers, as always, are lower and dependant on a number of factors, such as the speed of both your processor and the peripheral attached to the SATA interface....

Asymco’s Horace Dediu has put together a couple of charts showing that while the number of visitors to Apple’s retail stores continues to climb, the rate of growth is flattening off. The underlying reason appears to be a slow-down in the rate at which Apple is opening new stores, as the average number of visitors per store has remained stable for the past three years … Dediu also observes that the average spend-per-visitor has remained pretty constant at around $50 – Apple’s latest SEC filing shows that average revenue per store dipped marginally, from £51....

Apple Stores in China were closed on February 1st in response to the coronavirus, with the company stating that they would remain so through February 9. Store webpages say that they will re-open on Monday, but a memo to local staff from retail and people head Deidre O’Brien suggests this is now unlikely. The Chinese government had suggested February 10 as the date on which businesses would resume operations, but it appears Apple may take a two-stage approach…...

Apple today has rolled out an update to the Apple Support app on iOS. The update brings the app to version 2.3 and includes region and country expansions and more. Apple says the Apple Support app for iOS is now available in 20 new countries and regions. While the company has not specified the exact countries and regions in which the app is now available, it does note that new languages are also included in today’s update....