During this year’s WWDC keynote address, Apple surprised pro users with a look at a completely redesigned version of the Mac Pro, a machine many thought had long been abandoned by the company. At the time, the only availability information that was available was an ambiguous “shipping by December,” though Apple recently gave a more specific release date: today. After about an hour of downtime, the Apple Online Store has come back up with the option to order the latest-generation Mac Pro....

Every time there’s some Apple Card news, it prompts the same question from Brits: When is Apple Card coming to the UK? Substitute France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and so on as appropriate. Only Apple knows the answer to this, but the truth is, it doesn’t much matter – because those tasty 1% to 3% Apple Cash rewards are never going to be offered in Europe … To understand the reason for this, we have to delve a little into the economics of debit and credit cards....

Apple just posted a slew of new SEC filings to their Investor Relations site. Back in 2011, the company’s Board of Directors approved an amendment that requires all restricted stock unit (compensation not actually issued until vested a certain time later) to be performance-based, rather than stock price-based. In an effort to “lead by example”, Tim Cook worked with the Board to change his large 1-million RSU 2011 award into performance-based compensation....

Ahead of the Apple Watch making its way onto the wrists of consumers, Apple has published a new support page detailing the device’s heart rate monitor. As we know, the Apple Watch includes a heart rate reader to measure a person’s intensity during workouts. With knowledge of this intensity data, the Watch is able to more accurately measure the amount of calories a person burns per day. Additionally, a user can check their heart rate at any time using a feature known as the Heart Rate Glance....

Apple has released a statement today sharing that it will be donating $1 million towards relief efforts for ongoing Southern California wildfires. This adds to the millions the company has donated this year for disaster relief. KTLA’s Rich DeMuro shared a statement from Apple this morning in a tweet. Apple has consistently donated to to recovery efforts with the slew of natural disasters we’ve seen this year. In October Apple donated $1 million for the Northern California fires and also matched employees’ donations....

Update, Nov. 8: After complying with court orders and posting a new, revised apology to Samsung on its website, many were calling out Apple for the way the new apology was displayed. As noted by users on Reddit, Apple updated its website to ensure users would never see the message unless scrolling all the way to the bottom of the homepage. Following the complaints, as noticed by CNET, Apple has apparently pulled the code from its UK site that forced users to scroll in order to see the apology....

Following an announcement last week from Apple that it was delaying support for iOS 9’s App Thinning feature due to a bug with iCloud backups, Apple today released Xcode version 7.0.1 to developers to fix related bugs. The feature was implemented in iOS 9 to allowing developers to trim down the size of large applications by marking assets for each specific type of device. At the time of Apple’s announcement, it said the feature would be delayed “due to an issue affecting iCloud backups created from iOS 9 where some apps from the App Store would only restore to the same model of iOS device....

Apple has an Indoor Survey app on the iOS App Store, designed to help pinpoint locations inside a store, restaurant or other business – but it doesn’t show up in a search, and you need to register in Apple Maps Connect to download it. By dropping “points” on a map within the Survey App, you indicate your position within the venue as you walk through. As you do so, the indoor Survey App measures the radio frequency (RF) signal data and combines it with an iPhone’s sensor data....

Apple has hired Josh Elman, a former venture capitalist at Greylock Partners, to work on the App Store with a specific focus on app discovery. Elman announced his new role on Twitter this afternoon, saying that he is “excited to get to build ways to help over a billion customers and millions of developers connect.” As Bloomberg explains, Elman led early investments in Discord as well as the precursor to TikTok during his time as a venture capitalist at Greylock Partners....

Apple this week has greatly expanded the availability of its Apple ID two-step verification, bringing the feature from 11 countries to 59 countries. Two-step verification for Apple IDs uses either iOS’s Find my iPhone application or SMS to provide login verification in addition to a password. The feature first rolled out for both Apple ID and iCloud IDs in early 2013 and it expanded to a few more countries later that year....

Update: Kapeli’s developer updated his blog post today indicating that Apple found evidence of App Store review manipulation, something the developer denies ever doing. This decision is final and Apple will not allow for an appeal. Phill Schiller has also responded (after the jump) … For unknown reasons, the developer account associated with popular developer app Dash, a utility tool providing offline API documentation, has been terminated by Apple. Consequently, both Dash apps for iOS and macOS have been pulled from the respective App Stores, crippling the developer’s business model in an instant without any explanation....

Rita Lane, Apple’s vice president of operations for the iPad, Mac desktops, and Mac accessories, has retired from the company, according to her public LinkedIn profile. As vice president of operations, Lane was in charge of the supply chain and manufacturing for iPads, computers like the iMac, and Apple’s Mac accessories. Due to her position, Lane was likely instrumental in the iPad’s rapid growth as a product and emergence in society over the past few years, making the departure a significant loss for Apple....

Some of you noticed the Apple online store was down briefly this morning, but now the website is live again with some welcomed tweaks to the shopping experience. Now, when visiting the store.apple.com, users are presented with a new scrolling navigation bar for each product category (as pictured above). The most notable aspect of the change is that the new menu is touch-friendly on iOS devices, allowing users on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch to swipe to scroll through the list....

The Apex Legends datamining leaks that have made headlines over the past few weeks aren’t necessarily as accurate as they might seem. Developer Respawn Entertainment’s community manager took to Reddit yesterday to caution fans about putting too much stock in any datamined leaks, suggesting that none of them are confirmation of future content and to temper expectations as a result. Apex Legends is growing faster than Fortnite and has quickly become one of the biggest launches of 2019, but Respawn has been struggling to keep many of the game’s planned updates under wraps....

Apple kicked off digital software distribution on Macs with the Mac App Store and Lion, a major operating system revision released exclusively as a four gigabyte download. As a consequence, folks no longer get an elegant USB key for restoring the operating system if your machine goes south. Instead, new Macs now have the Lion Internet Recovery feature that boots your Mac from Apple’s servers if something goes wrong. As useful as Lion Internet Recover is, however, having a bootable Lion installer on an USB thumb drive is recommended for everyone, not just for those plagued with a slow Internet connection or users that upgrade multiple Macs to Lion....

Patently Apple reports that Apple has successfully transferred the “Airdrop” trademark from Urban Airship, Inc., a company behind the AirDrop service that provides marketing services to Android developers. AirDrop in Apple’s hemisphere, of course, is a new Lion feature that lets the user easily share files with other nearby users. The trademark was transferred to Apple on May 11 and effective on June 9. Apparently, “there was no financial transaction disclosure made available with this transfer”....

Rumors about Apple Car have become more frequent in recent weeks, and it seems there’s more to come. The Verge reported today that Apple had talks last year with Canoo, a startup focused on electric vehicles and related technologies, to push the development of the long-rumored Apple-branded car. According to the report, both companies discussed the possibility of investments and even an acquisition by Apple in the first half of 2020....

Update: We have received this unconfirmed message from a reader who attended the event, seemingly indicating a January launch for the Apple Watch — the earliest of Apple’s quoted ‘early 2015’ timeline. The mysterious invitation was indeed for the Apple Watch. Apple has already confirmed it will not be revealing any more information (via Engadget) about the product at this demo area, such as pricing or availability. The device is also — unsurprisingly — locked behind glass running the same UI video loop that was shown at Apple’s media event on September 9th....

Apple today announced in a press release that it is bringing Apple Pay to China. The company revealed that it is partnering with UnionPay in the country to bring support for its mobile payment solution to iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad users in the country. In China, Apple Pay will support 15 of the country’s leading banks. At this point, however, it’s unclear what banks will be supported. In China, Apple Pay will work with the UnionPay Quickpass, which is an existing contactless payment method in the country....

As drones continue to rise in popularity, the ultra-portable Hover Camera Passport today became available from Apple.com and in Apple retail stores. Created by Zero Zero Robotics, the Hover Passport is a lightweight drone made from a carbon fiber material, so it’s portable and easy to take with you everywhere you go. In addition to being for sale on Apple.com and in retail stores, Apple is taking its partnership with Zero Zero Robotics a step further and offering in-store demos of the product....