Apple Pay has been steadily growing as Apple continues to add support for new banks and rolls out the service to users in more countries, but we have less data on how much its been adopted in retail and among users. Giving some insight to usage, Apple analyst Gene Munster at Loup Ventures today released his “Apple Pay State of the Union” giving a look at adoption among retailers and much more....

Following reports that Apple Pay will launch in Japan next year, the service today has expanded to a handful of new banks in the United States. Apple today updated its Apple Pay support document to add over 20 new banks and credit unions in the United States. The new Apple Pay banks and credit unions come following an expansion to dozens of new institutions last month. The new banks and credit unions for September are listed below:...

Apple is continuing its expansion of its NFC mobile payments service, Apple Pay, today. This time around, Apple Pay has made its way to Switzerland, the second European launch after the United Kingdom. iPhone users in Switzerland can now setup their Visa and MasterCard bank cards in Apple Wallet and start using contactless payments at merchants from today. Apple Pay requires an iPhone with integrated NFC chip: iPhone 6, iPhone 6s or iPhone SE....

Apple has also released, as promised, its brand new iOS app for mailing gorgeous cards, right from the palm of your hand. The Cards app, according to Apple: The killer feature? If you mail your card within the United States, Apple will slap their own custom-designed stamp and use the United States Postal Service Intelligent Mail barcode to send you a notification the day the card is due to arrive – so you know when you’re about to make someone’s day....

With WWDC 2016 just an hour away, developers in the area have begun noticing that Apple has created custom Snapchat geofilters for the event. Embellished with this year’s WWDC 16 banner designs, the filters we’ve seen continue to play on the pseudo-code Apple has been showing off on the official developer site. At the end of February this year, Snapchat had introduced the ability for anyone to create custom geofilters at a cost....

Apple has just released a new Mac application called iAd Producer and if the name isn’t an indication, it lets you create awesome graphic and motion-rich iAds for iOS devices. As you can see in the image above and on the screenshots after the break, iAd Producer is very powerful and has a very streamlined interface. It allows you to create iAd interfaces that include cover flows, image carousels, grids, and many other iOS elements....

Apple today has released a few new color options for its ever-growing accessory lineup. The company quietly made the Apple Watch Sport band available in new color choices, while the color lineup for the iPhone X’s Silicone Case was also slightly expanded. For the Apple Watch, Apple has released three new color options. Headlining the new color options is the Flash Sport Band, seen above. This is a bright yellow color shade, perfect for dark environments as we head into the winter....

Update: Now available, alongside the tvOS 13.3 public beta. Apple today will release the first public beta of iOS 13.3. This comes after yesterday’s release of the first developer beta. iOS 13.3 includes performance improvements, Screen Time Communication Limits, and more. One of the biggest issues in iOS 13.2 is RAM management problem that is causing applications to be killed when running in the background. Early tests indicate that iOS 13....

Flickr today released their list of most popular cameras and brands used for photos shared on their site this year, and it’s no surprise that Apple’s iPhone continues to top the list. The iPhone 6 alone tops the list of most popular camera on Flickr in 2015, accounting for 5% of all photographers on the photo sharing site this year. Various models of the iPhone from 2015 and earlier still in use take 8 out of the 20 slots on the top camera list this year....

Apple’s new 16-inch MacBook Pro offers a range of great improvements headlined by a more reliable scissor switch Magic Keyboard. However, there are a couple of notable components that didn’t see an upgrade. The 16-inch MacBook Pro features a return to the scissor switch keyboard, can be configured with up to 64Gb of RAM, has a new six-speaker system, improvement thermal system, and much more. However, it unfortunately still uses an 802....

Apple’s Services growth is likely to slow during the current quarter, say two separate analyst surveys. Services revenue is going to be increasingly important to Apple at a time of flat iPhone sales. But while the market does expect Services to continue to grow, the rate of growth is expected to be dramatically slower in the March quarter … A report on PED 3.0 cites its own analyst survey, together with one carried out by Visible Alpha....

[0034]The device supports a variety of applications, such as one or more of the following: a game application, a telephone application, a video conferencing application, an e-mail application, an instant messaging application, a blogging application, a photo management application, a digital camera application, a digital video camera application, a web browsing application, a digital music player application, and/or a digital video player application. If this patent comes to fruition, the next iPhone/iPod/tablet interface might be nothing like anything we’ve seen before, and it could perhaps explain why we’ve been hearing the possibility of a “new type of interaction” to accompany the tablet....

Apple has sent an email developers alerting them to the fact that certain older betas of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite will no longer be able to take advantage of CloudKit functions like MailDrop, iCloud Photo Library, or iCloud Drive. This is likely due to an older sandbox server being taken offline as the operating systems come closer to reaching their public releases. Developers who wish to keep testing against these features will need to update to at least beta 5 of each operating system....

Signage for a new Apple Store in Brisbane, Australia has started appearing. The store will be located in the MacArthur Chambers building. The store doesn’t have an official opening date yet, but the second week of January seems to be a pretty decent estimation. [tweet https://twitter.com/ifostore/status/417444455042400256 align=’center’] The new location will be the twenty-first Apple Store in the country. The new store will also help push forward Tim Cook’s vision of selling even more Apple devices through first-party retail stores....

December 1st is World AIDS Day and as expected, Apple is turning its retail store logos red to commemorate the event. Additionally, Apple has published a pair of stories in the App Store highlighting its partnership with (RED) and how you can “help save a life.” As the clock turns to December 1st around the world, Apple retail stores are turning their logos red in honor of World AIDS Day. Stores in Japan, Australia, and more have already made the switch....

Apple told employees during a week at the flagship Berlin Apple Store in Germany that the company will increase its focus on product accessibility by putting executive Lisa Jackson in charge of the efforts, according to people in attendance. Asked by an Apple Store employee if the Apple Watch will include accessibility features, Cook reportedly replied: Lisa Jackson joined Apple in 2013 as its Vice President of Environmental affairs, previously serving as the head of the U....

While there’s been no change to the prices of standard-configuration Macs, it seems Apple has quietly increased the prices of build-to-order Mac models in many countries … Two MacRumors readers spotted the price increases, which have been applied to many countries outside the US. The site’s readers noticed because they had Macs saved in their baskets, and saw the total price increase. Delving into the details then revealed the reason for this....

Apple today will release the fifth betas of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 to developers. Today’s release of iOS 14 beta 5 comes two weeks after the release of beta 4, which included features such as new TV app widgets, support for the COVID-19 Exposure Notification API, and more. Update: iOS 14 beta 5 is now available to developers. iOS 14 beta 5 details: iOS 14 beta 5 is available to developers via an over-the-air update....

UPDATE [Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 5:35am ET]: Bloomberg reports that Apple confirmed the acquisition, whose cost the company wouldn’t disclose. Last week’s big Apple rumor was Apple’s purported talks to purchase an Israeli flash memory firm called Anobit. Now, Israeli news website Calcalist reports that the rumored deal is finalized. Anobit’s purchase price is still up in the air, but the report is calling for a dollar amount between $400 million and $500 million dollars, likely making Anobit Apple’s most expensive acquisition thus far....

Apple is testing a new version of the Apple TV set-top box for release ‘as soon as this year’, according to Bloomberg. The box is apparently codenamed ‘J105’ and would be an incremental upgrade over the current fourth-generation box with new internals to support output at ultra-high definition 4K resolution. The report also details many of Apple’s internal attempts to revolutionize the living room, which are yet to see the light of day....