[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hDXSSi1qStA] Charlotte Observer is reporting that Apple has begun work building a 174 acre solar farm to power their new Maiden, North Carolina data center. The data center, located in Catawba County, was revealed by Steve Jobs during the iOS 5 keynote at WWDC this year, and will be partly responsible for powering iCloud. It was revealed earlier this year that Apple was purchasing land around the data center. Now we know why....

Apple has climbed two places in this year’s Fortune 500 list, a ranking of U.S. companies by revenue. Apple moved from 5th place last year to 3rd this, overtaking both Chevron and new AAPL investor Berkshire Hathaway, though still sitting behind Walmart and Exxon Mobil. Reading Fortune‘s write-up of Apple, however, you might be forgiven for thinking it had fallen in the ranking rather than climbed … It seems the only positive comment bar the note on profitability is what Fortune sees as the future prospects of the Apple Car....

Apple’s iPad trademark dispute with cash-strapped display company Proview has continued to drag on despite the Chinese company claiming it was in negotiations with Apple as recent as February. Today, several reports suggested Apple and Proview are now involved in court-moderated mediation with senior officials who are boasting Apple could lose the right to the iPad trademark in China. The mediation would be the first confirmation of settlement talks between the two companies....

Speaking to the Guardian, Pascal Cagni, Apple’s general manager and vice-president, EMEA, came on strong: “We have right now the best ever product line, we keep saying this, and it’s fuelled by the fact you have got the portable line where we display growth of 35% year-on-year.” Cagni confirmed that Europe’s education markets are falling for Apple products, with “immense success all over Europe” in back to school sales. Not just that, but also in market share the Apple star is shining, he confirmed, “We have typically above 20-25% market share in each of the [European] countries....

Apple design chief Ive pictured with Ikepod designer Newson Apple is building a device for the wrist, and it may even launch later this year. One of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ most famous sayings is that “we build the products that we want to use.” Apple was not pleased with the crop of phones that existed prior to the iPhone, and the iPhone arrived in 2007 and has changed the entire smartphone landscape....

As promised by Apple CEO Tim Cook at WWDC, Apple has expanded the App Store’s reach to 155 total territories, by adding 32 new territories today. An email to registered iOS and Mac developers went out this evening detailing the change. Apple did not specify the 32 new regions at WWDC, but today’s announcement does. The new regions are mostly within Africa, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific. Here’s the full list:...

Apple was today granted a patent on the way it displays apps on the Apple Watch. It’s one of the briefest patent descriptions around, merely pointing to the associated illustration. The illustration itself is simply a representation of the apps screen of the Apple Watch. Only a monochrome version is shown online, though the USPTO notes that color version(s) are held on file. The ornamental design for a display screen or portion thereof with graphical user interface, as shown and described....

Reuters this evening reports that Apple is investing $1 billion in Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing. In a statement, CEO Tim Cook explained that the investment will give Apple a chance to learn more about certain segments of the Chinese market, while it will also deliver a strong return. Additionally, Cook noted that this is simply what Apple is doing currently in the car market, teasing that “we will have to wait to see what the future holds....

Even though Gmail is the most widely used email service all over the world, being an Apple user, you need to look for something other than this. Obviously, Apple mail would be your first consideration, at least for a start. Not to mention, there are tons of email apps available for iOS or MacOS, and users keep looking for better alternatives more often. However, Apple mail holds a really good position, but the list of competitors is also very high....

Nearly a year after Apple Music’s debut, Apple is preparing to announce its streaming music service’s first end-to-end overhaul, according to multiple sources familiar with the changes. The changes are expected to be shown off at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in mid-June, and Apple currently plans to launch the updated service across its product lines that currently support Apple Music this fall as part of new operating system versions. The updated version of Apple Music has been in the Apple product development pipeline since the end of last year, and work in earnest on the updated service began at the end of February, according to sources....

Update: How much money can you save with Apple One? Apple today announced the Apple One bundle, comprising subscriptions from all of Apple’s services. The cheapest Apple One plan will cost $14.95 per month for individuals, offering Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade and 50 GB of iCloud storage. The same plan will be available for families for $19.95, with 200 GB storage. And a top-end Premier Apple One plan includes Apple News+ and the newly-announced Apple Fitness+ as well, and 2 TB of iCloud....

Update: The feature now appears to have propagated correctly, as the codename identifier is no longer visible. The app now correctly lists ‘Apple TV: Yes’ in the description for universal apps that support Apple TV. Apple is rolling out a way to see if an app in the App Store also has an Apple TV version. From this morning, App Store listings have included ‘SF.UniversalAppleTV’ labels. If present, it means that the app in question also has a universal Apple TV app available in the tvOS App Store....

Apple is expanding the repair services it offers to iPhone customers in the United States. The company has added a new onsite option where an Apple Authorized Service Provider will come to your location to perform select iPhone repair services. The new addition was first spotted by MacRumors. The onsite repair option is available in select metropolitan areas in the Untied States, including Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco....

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LyIwJgQlsc] During the opening ceremonies for this year’s Olympic Games in London, Apple aired a new television ad. The new ad is strikingly different than any other Apple ad that we’ve seen air before. This particular one is not about a product, but it is about the Apple Retail Store Genius Bar. The premise is an airplane about to land and an Apple Genius is on board to assist customers before landing (video via iClarified)....

Apple has released its fiscal year 2018 fourth quarter earnings results which include initial iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max sales as well as Apple Watch Series 4. iPhone XR launched earlier this month and didn’t make the previous quarter. Apple reports $62.9b in revenue and $14.12b profit from 46.89m iPhones, 9.69m iPads, and 5.3m Macs sold. Next quarter Apple forecasts revenue between $89 billion and $93 billion. FY18 Q4 results compare to the previous quarter’s $53....

China Mobile, the world’s largest wireless company with 665 million subscribers, confirmed Monday that it now hosts 15 million iPhones on its network with an average of 35,000 new iPhone activations each day. Back in October, its network hosted 10 million iPhones. People get excited about T-Mobile USA’s 1 million iPhones, so it is worth pointing out that China Mobile’s number is more than seven times larger than what Sprint has—and it is not even Apple’s official carrier yet....

A new poll by data research firm Toluna via Recode attempted to analyze the least trusted companies in the tech sector. Conducted between December 9 through December 15, the poll surveyed one thousand online participants asking which company they believe to be the least trustworthy with personal information. Facebook by no surprise took the number one spot, with a whopping 40% of the respondents doubting the social media giant’s ability to keep information safe....

Apple is one step closer in its plans to take Apple Pay into the company’s second-largest market, China. The WSJ reports that Apple has created a company in the Shanghai free-trade zone specifically to operate its Apple Pay business in the country, and seeded it with $13.4M of capital. With China already a bigger market for Apple than Europe, and looking set to overtake the USA in size, the potential for Apple Pay in the country is huge....

Yesterday we reported on a presentation by security researcher Jacob Appelbaum that reportedly showed leaked NSA documents in which the agency claimed to have a “100 percent success rate” at installing spyware on iPhones. Following those accusations, Apple has officially responded in a statement provided to TechCrunch: The leaked NSA documents detailed in Appelbaum’s presentation above and first released on German news site Der Spiegel claimed an NSA program called DROPOUTJEEP allowed officials to access almost all data stored on an iPhone, including location, text messages, contact lists, and the device’s microphone and camera....

The enterprise apps partnership between Apple and IBM has reached the goal the two companies set of bringing 100+ MobileFirst apps to the business and professional sectors. Many enterprise customers of course use these in conjunction with existing consumer apps. The companies plan to make future apps even more powerful … IBM today announced it has delivered more than 100 IBM MobileFirst for iOS apps, as part of its partnership with Apple, to transform work across 14 industries and 65 individual professions, from wealth advisors to flight attendants, first responders, nurses and retail buyers....