After coming to over two dozen new banks last month, Apple Pay today has expanded to over 30 new banks and credit unions in the United States. The new banks join the increasingly large list of existing banks and credit unions that support Apple’s mobile payment service. Below are the new banks and credit unions that now work with Apple Pay: 121 Financial Credit Union Acclaim Federal Credit Union Boston Firefighters Credit Union Catholic Vantage Credit Union Clackamas County Bank Costal Community Federal Credit Union Commonwealth Community Bank Cumberland Valley National Bank Discovery Federal Credit Union Easthampton Savings Bank First Bank & Trust (IL & TX) First Federal Lakewood First National Bank of Carrollton First National Bank of Fort Smith First Security Bank & Trust First State Bank of Wyoming Home Bank Members Credit Union Nebraska State Bank Origin Bank Pegasus Bank Sandia Area Federal Credit Union Siouxland Federal Credit Union State Farm Bank Summit Bank Synergy Federal Credit Union Texas First State Bank The Bank of Monroe The Honesdale National Bank Wayne County Bank Willis Credit Union A week ago, Apple Pay came to BMO, TD, and Scotiabank in Canada, rounding out Apple Pay support by all of Canada’s “big five banks....

Apple Pencil 2 falls to new all-time low at $99 in today’s 9to5Toys Lunch Break, plus Twelve South’s BookBook V2 MacBook Case hits $32, and Apple’s AirPods Wireless Charging Case is $46. You’ll find all that and more down below. Apple Pencil 2 falls to new all-time low Twelve South BookBook V2 hits $32 Snag Apple’s AirPods Wireless Charging Case for $46 Pad & Quill New Years sitewide is live The Pad & Quill New Years sale is now live....

Apple has released multiple new betas for testing ahead of release. iOS 11.2.5 beta 7, watchOS 4.2.2 beta 5, and macOS 10.13.3 beta 6 are all now available on Apple’s developer center and over-the-air. Excluded is any new tvOS 11.2.5 beta, although a new version was released earlier this week. Each new beta has a large download size which suggests these will be the final release and the same versions that go out of customers, possibly next week....

Apple has released watchOS 6.2.1 to the public today, bringing bug fixes and performance improvements specifically related to FaceTime. Today’s update for Apple Watch users comes following yesterday’s release of iOS 13.4.1 and iPadOS 13.4.1. watchOS 6.2.1 includes a fix for a FaceTime Audio bug that affected Apple Watch users. Apple explains: Fixes an issue where devices running watchOS 6.2 could not participate in FaceTime audio calls with devices running iOS 9....

A new report from the Wall Street Journal today details Apple’s dependency on China for its supply chain, and how that is unlikely to change in the near future. According to the report, some Apple executives suggested relocating manufacturing of at least one product to Vietnam, but the idea was “rebuffed” by senior management. The report explains that operations executives at Apple suggested “as early as 2015” that the company should “relocate assembly of at least one product to Vietnam....

You might think that Apple’s 29W power brick would be more than capable of powering both an iPhone 12 and Apple Watch on the MagSafe Duo charger. The combination of devices can, after all, be charged using as little as 15W. But this isn’t the case – you instead need the replacement 30W power brick … AppleInsider spotted the information in a new support page. This starts out by saying that a power brick of 20W or more is enough....

Apple has recently gained a new TV provider for its Single Sign-on feature on iOS 10 and up as well as tvOS 10 and up. WOW!, or Wide Open West, joins 13 other providers that let customers authenticate once through the Settings app to access content in paid video apps in the United States. Wide Open West, which is the ninth largest cable provider in the country, hasn’t yet been added to Apple’s list of TV provider partners since it was updated earlier this month, but WOW!...

Following yesterday’s news that Qualcomm is seeking an import ban on iPhones as part of its patent royalty dispute with Apple, Imagination Technologies has filed a formal dispute over its own licensing arrangements with the iPhone maker … Reuters reports that the company made the decision after informal talks failed. The dispute between the two companies is over GPU designs that Apple licenses from Imagination for its iOS devices. Apple currently pays the company around 30 cents per device, but last month informed Imagination that it expected to begin using its own designs within two years....

Over the past four months, Apple has been revamping its retail stores across the world with a series of interactive demos that spotlight Apple subscription services. Collectively, the new displays fundamentally change the customer relationship with the Apple Store and represent a significant evolution of Apple’s retail experience. Step inside an Apple Store with the latest design, and the world of Apple services will unfold. Glowing signs for Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, and large text announcing Apple Fitness+ dot the Avenues around the store perimeter....

For this upcoming holiday season, Apple will be celebrating with a front Apple Store window display that several Apple Retail employees have described as spectacular. A photo of the display, sent in by a source, is above. The display highlights both the iPad Air and iPhone 5c and is made up of several LED lights shaped into snow flakes. The design is simple, but unique and impressive… The displays will begin going up in many countries across the world later this week, and they will remain up until early January....

Alongside the release of Apple’s supplier responsibility report today highlighting working conditions within its supply chain, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Operations Jeff Williams has also sent out a letter to employees. In the past, CEO Tim Cook has been known to send out an email to employees following the supplier report. In today’s letter, Williams went over some of the key points from the supplier responsibility report and noted, “to drive accountability, we are now publishing a quarterly list of the names, countries, and participation status of the smelters and refiners in our supply chain....

Apple’s upcoming release of iOS 6.1 will include a new feature for Siri: the ability to get movie tickets. The feature, according to developers who are beta testing the new iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch operating system, works via Fandango. To purchase movie tickets, a user simply needs to ask their iOS device to buy tickets for a certain movie. Apple even describes the commands in the Siri information menu:...

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Apple is about to unveil an upgraded iCloud service at WWDC in June. Citing the usual sources “familiar with the matter,” the report also claimed the features would include new photo-sharing capabilities for sharing and commenting on sets of photos. It also mentioned the ability to sync video to iCloud, which sounds a lot like a Video Stream feature that we mentioned last year....

It’s been long time coming and it’s finally here. The U.K. online Apple Store now lists the Apple iPhone Micro USB Adapter, available for £8.00 and shipping October 14. From Apple: Standards bodies in Europe had agreed last year that all mobile phones sold in Europe should drop proprietary connectors in favor of standard USB jacks. Apple’s been ignoring the initiative up to the point when some watchers questioned whether the European Union should fine the Cupertino, California-based gadget maker....

With today’s updates to the Mac mini, Apple has made the decision to stop selling the “server” version of the computer. In doing so, the company has also lowered the maximum storage available in the machine from 2 TB to just 1 TB. The server model was also the first version of the Mac mini to forego the optical drive, though the change was soon carried over to the rest of the line....

According to a new report out of the Wall Street Journal, Apple is in talks to acquire Tidal, the Jay Z owned streaming service. While specific details are unclear at this point, Apple acquiring Tidal would give it an incredible leg up when it comes to negotiating for exclusive streaming rights. Tidal is currently owned by Jay Z and a variety of other artists, including Kanye West, Beyonce, Chris Martin, Jack White, and many more....

AAPL stock has been on a tear recently, as investors were surprised by demand for the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Although the units may still sell less than the iPhone 6s, the gap appears to be far closer than expected. Before the devices went on sale, many business and financial analysts predicted iPhone sales would fall by about 10% year-over-year. Now, it seems that sales will be about the same....

Apple has once more been dubbed the world’s favorite company after last year losing out to Google. Each year, FutureBrand looks at the world’s 100 largest companies and asks 3,000 consumers and industry professionals to score them on a range of factors, and to explain how they feel about their preferred companies. The two top feelings respondents had toward Apple were passion and admiration. Apple was ranked highly for individuality, authenticity, innovation and thought-leadership....

Following the release of iOS 5.0.1 to developers to test the new software against applications in addition to test for battery life and Siri improvements, Apple is now seeding iOS 5.0.1 to certain end users for testing. A small number of customers who have complained about battery life issues in iOS 5 have been seeded the bug fix release through Apple’s AppleSeed program. Apple warns program participants that their devices will not be able to be downgraded to iOS 5....

. Almost two weeks after the seeding of the initial OS X 10.7.4 beta, Apple has released a new build to developers. The new build is numbered 11E35 and, according to Apple, includes “no known issues.” Apple tells developers to focus on the App Store, graphics, QuickTime, Mail, and iCal. The new seed is available only to registered developers, and Apple has provided no public timeline for the 10.7.4 release. The release notes for the new build can be viewed after the break....