Earlier this year a rumor began floating around that claimed Apple had acquired Faceshift, the company behind the motion capture technology used in Star Wars. Now, TechCrunch reports that the acquisition has become official and Apple has acquired the Zurich-based Faceshift startup. Apple has not directly confirmed the acquisition, but issued its standard statement regarding its purchasing of smaller companies. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” the company said....

Apple has acquired Metaio, a company specializing in several application related to augmented reality. Metaio mysteriously announced that it will stop selling its services last night, and filings with the German government this week indicate that the Apple acquisition is a done deal: Metaio offers six distinct services related to augmented reality, ranging from an SDK to cloud services to business tools. A video from the company demonstrates some of its work:...

Apple today announced that it set a new single day record for the App Store, with $386 million worth of sales on New Year’s Day, an increase of 20% over last year. The App Store also set a new record for sales between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, with $1.42 billion in revenue. Apple announced the numbers as part of a press release that looked back on Apple’s “landmark” year of services offerings....

AAPL’s Q1 2020 earnings day is here, covering the lucrative holiday shopping season. For the first fiscal quarter of 2020, Apple had forecast revenue between $85.5 billion and $89.5 billion. That compares to the $84.3 billion it reported in the same quarter one year ago. So how did Apple perform during Q1 2020? The company has announced revenue of $91.8 billion and profit of $22.2 billion. That’s an all-time record for both net income and revenue, Apple says....

When Apple announced the transition from Intel processors to Apple Silicon chips, the company offered a custom Mac mini with the A12Z Bionic chip so that developers could update their macOS apps to support the new ARM platform. The company is now asking developers to return these DTK Mac minis as the M1 Macs were introduced in November last year. In an email sent to developers today, Apple says that soon developers will have to return the Developer Transition Kit (DTK) as it was only designed to test the apps on the Apple Silicon platform....

New additions to Apple’s website include: Life Cycle Impact, Product Usage Impact, and Product Environmental Reports. There is also a new section section dedicated to environmental updates which is both a news feed and a timeline of Apple’s history of green-ness. var so = new FlashObject (“http://bizweektv.pb.feedroom.com/businessweek/bizweektv/pboneclip/player.swf”, “Player”, “300”, “249”, “8”, “#FFFFFF”); so.addVariable (“Environment”, “”); so.addVariable (“SkinName”, “pboneclip”); so.addVariable (“SiteID”, “bizweektv”); so.addVariable (“SiteName”, “businessweek”); so.addVariable (“ChannelID”, “”); so.addVariable (“StoryID”, “ea5d517b5b8a07d4b69a955eb77ab8ad914b759a”); so....

Bloomberg reports that Steve Jobs will have to testify in an anti-trust suite which alleges that Apple operated a music-downloading monopoly. At issue was Apple’s blockage of RealNetwork’s Harmony software which briefly allowed users to use RealNetworks’ music in iTunes and on iPods. A few days after Harmony was released, Apple updated its own software to block Harmony from working in Apple’s Music ecosystem. Apple has tried to fight any testimony from Jobs....

Last week, a report suggested that Apple chip guru Johny Srouji was on Intel’s shortlist of CEO candidates. The Motley Fool’s Ashraf Eassa, however, now reports that Srouji is not a candidate for the CEO position and has told his staff at Apple that he’s not going anywhere. Eassa doesn’t share any additional details, but regularly covers Intel for The Motley Fool and is rather well-connected. Intel announced its Q4 2018 earnings on Thursday, but did not make any announcements regarding its vacant CEO position....

Update: New colors are also now available. Apple has simplified its lineup of BeatsX headphones. Prior to today, the company sold seven color options of the W1-enabled headphones at $149.95, but that lineup has been cut to just two colors and a more affordable $119.95 price point. Despite the BeatsX pricing changes at Apple, however, you can still find them for less at various other retailers. Up until today, BeatsX were available in black, silver, space gray, gold, blue, white, and a ‘Defiant’ brand option in red and black....

IDC has announced preliminary PC shipment numbers for the fourth quarter of 2013, with Apple dropping from third to fourth place on the list. Apple shipped about 438,000 fewer machines than the same quarter in the previous year, allowing Lenovo to catch up and overtake them, despite Lenovo’s gain of only 163,000 shipped units. HP, Dell, and Toshiba maintained the same positions as the previous year. While most companies lost a portion of their market share this year, Lenovo and Dell managed to claim most of the free space in the market....

Apple is holding its annual iPhone event in just a few hours. We expect full details on the iPhone 12 lineup, a new HomePod mini, new wireless charging accessories, and much more during the event. Apple’s live stream will begin at 10 am PT/1 pm ET, and you can follow along in our Apple Event News Hub for the latest coverage. Head below and refresh throughout the event for more....

Apple is continuing to expand its presence on social media services, today launching a brand new @AppleMusicHelp Twitter account to answer queries and support questions live over Twitter related to its Apple Music service. The account is manned each day of the week from 6 AM – 8 PM Pacific Time. Apple representatives will watch the account’s mentions timeline and try to help resolve people’s problems. The service is completely free, but the account will only help with Apple Music-specific questions....

Alongside a whole of other changes to the App Store, Apple is integrating TestFlight. This allows developers to do seamless beta-testing for free. There are also a whole host of ‘extensions’ apps can access, enabling integration into share sheets, Notification Center widgets and more. Apple is heavily stressing that this is the biggest developer release since the App Store was announced. The SDK includes over 4000 new developer APIs. This starts with extensibility, an inter-app communication system for apps....

Apple has lured away top Nike design director Ben Shaffer, according to a source at Nike with knowledge of the details behind Shaffer’s departure. At Nike, Shaffer was the Studio Director of the Innovation Kitchen. This is Nike’s research and development lab where new product designs are created. Under Shaffer’s lead, Nike was named the most innovative company in 2013 by Fast Company. Nike’s Innovation Kitchen has been connected to wearable products like the popular Nike Fuel Band, and most recently, the Flyknit shoe....

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JH47u8d1M4] Just released: 1. Karateka | $2.99: Jordan Mechner, creator of the popular Prince of Persia franchise, and developer of the original fighter classic “Karateka” for the Apple II, is today bringing an HD remake of the game to iOS. Available on the App Store now for $2.99 for iPhone and iPad, the remake of the original 1984 fighter looks to essentially be a port of work done on the HD remake released on consoles last month....

Should You Upgrade Your iPad or iPhone to iOS 10.2.1? The 10.2.1 update is relatively small, coming in at 72 Mbs. Users can download the latest iOS update by launching Settings > General > Software Update. This took about 15 minutes to download and install on an iPhone 6s. Although this is a recommended update, make sure you perform a backup just in case. I personally like waiting a bit just to see if early adopters come across any show stoppers....

Today we’re taking a look at Apple’s fastest and thinnest tablet to date. The iPad Air 2 is more than just a pretty shell. This tablet packs some decent performance over its predecessor. While we haven’t had enough time with it to put together a full review, there are some main points we wanted to go over. First up, this thing is crazy thin. Apple wasn’t exaggerating when claiming that it was thinner than a pencil....

Apple has launched a new website today that allows business owners to order Apple Pay decal packs for their stores. Each of these packs includes two glass decals in different sizes, two register decals (also in different sizes), and a tool for affixing the ads to the appropriate surfaces. Businesses can order up to five of these packs (for a total of twenty decals) absolutely free of charge, but those who need more than five will need to call Apple to place an order....

Apple has kicked off a new ad campaign for the iPad Pro that targets PC users skeptical of the tablet as a real computer. The new videos are quite different from recent advertisements from Apple and have a similar tone to Apple’s famous ‘I’m a Mac and I’m a PC’ ad era. Each ad features tweets from PC users with a reason they don’t think the iPad Pro is right for them, then a voiceover answers the critique with details about what the iPad can do better than a PC....

Apple has been denied an effort to move a consumer privacy lawsuit to private arbitration today. The case involves customer complaints against Apple and T-Mobile over iMessage and FaceTime not being as secure as they’re marketed. Reported by Bloomberg, the consumer lawsuit Ohanian v. Apple Inc. is based on multiple customers’ claims that an iOS bug + T-Mobile’s approach to recycling phone numbers created a privacy breach: Apple and T-Mobile made a request to handle the complaints through private arbitration, and US District Judge Lorna G....