Last month Apple hired Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, the law firm that has represented it in various patent cases against Samsung, to serve as the company’s lobbyists in Washington on matters regarding intellectual property and tech industry competition, PC World reports. This year alone Apple has reportedly spent somewhere around $3 million on lobbying efforts, especially in the areas of consumer health legislation and international tax policy. Apple has a diverse group of lobbyists on its payroll, including five firms (now six with WilmerHale) and several in-house lawyers....

After closing the Heart Study to new participants last month, Apple today has started sending notifications to participants informing them that their participation is nearly completed. When Heart Study participants launch the program’s application, they’ll see a new “Complete Survey” button along the top. Clicking through this link, users are taken to the Stanford Medicine website where they are informed their participation is “very close to completion.” The survey was first spotted by Nate Gorby on Twitter....

Long story short: Yesterday Gawker issued a bounty on information on the Apple tablet. Today, Apple’s famously heavy handed lawyers issued a cease and desist (and send us anything you get) order. The legality question is: Is anything that Gawker gets a violation of contract or theft of Apple’s trade secrets? Certainly most of what they are asking for would seem that way. But perhaps there is some gray area: Their $50,000 prize is for a picture of Steve Jobs with a tablet....

Apple is continuing its work to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 around the world. Apple today released a mobility data trends tool from Apple Maps, which provides insight into social distancing during the COVID-19 outbreak. The goal with this mobility data trends tool is to offer Apple Maps data that may provide insights to health authorities looking for ways to slow the spread of COVID-19. Apple explains: Apple says the new Mobility Trends Reports aggregate data from major cities and 63 counties or regions....

Ahead of its March 25th event, Apple continues to ramp up its original content efforts. According to a report from The Hollywood Reporter, Apple has given an eight-episode order to a series based on the book Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. Apple’s interest in the book was first noted last August, when it was reported that the company had gained rights to develop a series based on Pachinko. Now, however, Apple has given a straight-to-series order for the TV adaption of eight episodes....

Anthem can be daunting to new players. It’s a game that rewards people for adapting to the style that BioWare intended, and squad-based combat is a priority in virtually every design element present within the world of Anthem. Even those familiar with Destiny, the closest point of comparison for Anthem, will find the game’s focus on both a horizontal and vertical axes during combat and exploration takes some getting used to....

Apple has announced today that it is revising its App Store guidelines with a handful of notable changes. The latest version of the guidelines offers new details for template applications, cryptocurrency trading clients, VPNs, and more… Perhaps most notably, Apple has clarified its controversial language on template-based applications. It was reported earlier this month that the company was cracking down on apps generated using template services, but that decision ended up having a detrimental effect on many legitimate applications....

Apple and AT&T have been able to identify the man believed responsible for sending seizure-inducing tweets to Newsweek journalist Kurt Eichenwald. Tracing the perpetrator initially looked impossible, reports The Verge. In theory, it was the perfect setup: an anonymous Twitter account on a prepaid SIM card, bought with cash. With no credit card or other identifiable info tied to the account, there should have been no way to trace tweets back to a human …...

According to Jessica Lessin, Apple has acquired chip development firm Passif. The company’s chip technologies are focused on utilizing low-power and work with low-energy Bluetooth technologies. As Apple moves towards smaller devices, the talent and resources of Passif will be critical. Apple reportedly tried to buy the firm a few years earlier, but was only able to strike a deal within recent months. We previously reported that Apple has been poaching several employees from other chip makers to work on the upcoming iWatch....

The ongoing saga of Toshiba’s sale of its memory chip business seems destined never to end. First it was unclear whether it was Apple or Foxconn bidding for it, then it was both, but possibly neither, then Apple without Foxconn – and in the latest twist, the two are now bidding rivals … The WSJ reports that while Toshiba had previously been uneasy about accepting Foxconn’s offer, it is now considering approving the deal as Foxconn’s bid is higher....

Apple today announced at WWDC 2021 that HomePod mini is coming to more countries. Following the announcement of new features for Home with the upcoming major updates to tvOS and HomePod Software, the company confirmed it will bring the HomePod mini to Austria, Italy, and more countries. HomePod mini will be available later this year in Austria, Ireland, New Zealand, and Italy. With HomePod Software 15.0 and iOS 15, users will receive support for Siri in the languages of these respective countries....

We learned back in March that Apple wanted to trademark its concentric rings logo of the Apple Park – and it has now applied for four more trademarks relating to its new campus … Patently Apple spotted the applications, two of which are for the name ‘Apple Park’ itself, with the other two for the figurative representation – that is, the Apple logo followed by the word ‘Park.’ When you apply to register a trademark, you have to list the uses to which it will be put....

A day after announcing the Apple Watch pricing and availability as well as an all-new 12-inch MacBook, Apple has revealed in an interview with Fortune that it will partner with a number of non-profit organizations and donate more than $50 million toward the effort of recruiting women, minorities, and veterans to Apple. The new effort follows the company’s diversity data report released last August. At the time, Tim Cook sharply expressed that he was “not satisfied with the numbers....

Google’s Stadia platform has helped start a new form of gaming, streaming from the cloud. In the past year, Stadia, Microsoft xCloud, and Nvidia’s GeForce Now have made a big splash, but they still aren’t available on iOS. Why? Apple has confirmed it won’t allow services like Google Stadia on its platform. Speaking to Business Insider this week, Apple has directly confirmed that it won’t allow game streaming services on iOS....

Apple has shared a new AirPods ad today on its Korean website and YouTube channel. The most recent ad for its fully wireless earphones shows off a fun look at a bunch of ways AirPods users have creatively approached customization with lively and colorful cases. Spotted by MacRumors, the ad showed up at the top of Apple’s Korean homepage. The nearly 40-second video shows off a bunch of neat ways users have made their AirPods unique in a series of fast-paced cuts synchronized to the song Focus by Charli XCX (Yaeji remix)....

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Apple has hired a seasoned veteran from the automotive industry for its rumored car initiative. The report claims that Apple has hired Doug Betts, who previously led global quality control at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Betts worked at Fiat Chrysler until last year and started at Apple earlier this month. While details of Betts’ role at Apple are sparse at this point, he has updated his LinkedIn page to reflect his new position....

Apple stock ($AAPL) has once again crossed the $1 trillion market cap level as its shares rose 6% in early trading following its Q2 earnings call. AAPL stock is currently priced at $212.68, with a market cap of approximately $1,003,000,000,000. The company stock closed at around $200 yesterday but rocketed upwards in the wake of Apple reporting its financial results for the financial quarter just gone. Although iPhone revenue declined 17% year over year, the sharp downturn in iPhone sales seen in the holiday quarter is steadily recovering with Tim Cook describing November and December as ‘the trough’....

October 23 marks 10 years since the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the iPod in 2001. It wasn’t the first MP3 player, but it was the first to take the world by storm. Even if it did cost $399 and only work with Macs at first. Read the original Apple press release here. “What is iPod? The biggest thing about iPod is it holds a thousand songs! Your entire music library fits in your pocket — this was never before possible,” Jobs told media in a low key event on Oct....

As detailed in a new piece from Billboard, Apple Music has officially crossed the milestone of having 20 million paying users. The achievement comes 17 months after Apple Music first launched, but growth numbers still lag behind Spotify… Three months ago at the unveiling of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, Apple announced that Apple Music had crossed 17 million paying users, so the company has added 3 million new paying subscribers in that three-month gap....

On Monday, Spotify announced it was going to raise its subscription prices starting next month. With Apple Music prices staying the same, for now at least, the Apple One bundle could become even more tempting for users to subscribe. In fact, for many Apple fans, now could be the time to make the jump. As for now in the US, only the Spotify Family plan will see a price increase, but in Europe, the UK, and several other countries, like Brazil, users will see an increase of up to 30%....