Apple is again resisting a shareholder proposal to boost diversity at board and senior management level, reports The Verge. This year, Maldonado has backing from Zevin Asset Management, an investment firm specializing in socially responsible investing, but that isn’t cutting any ice with Apple … In 2014, Apple began publishing an annual Diversity Report, which last year reported that it had increased its hiring of women and underrepresented minorities, and was working to improve pay equity....

February is Heart Month and Apple is taking the opportunity to offer customers better trade-in deals for Apple Watch Series 2 and 3 when upgrading to Series 5. The promotion sees the older Apple Watch models valued at the same $100 that Apple is giving for Series 4. Last week we learned about the Apple Watch Heart Month Challenge that begins February 8th and today, Apple boosted the trade-in values of Apple Watch Series 2 and 3 to incentivize any current customers wanting to upgrade to a Series 5 watch (via MacRumors)....

In addition to several new software betas and new Tech Talks today, Apple has more developer news to share today. Starting today, TestFlight will now support up to 2,000 external testers for iOS and tvOS. TestFlight allows developers to easily share pre-release versions of their apps with a large group of external testers outside of their own development team. TestFlight was previously limited to 1,000 external testers on iOS and tvOS....

Fortune reported that Apple is likely to achieve record revenues in Q2—but the first fall in its earnings in a decade. Apple’s revenues are expected to grow from $41 billion to $43 billion, another record for Q2, but margins are expected to have fallen substantially from a peak of just over 47 percent last year to ‘between 37.5 and 38.5 percent’ this year. Margins tend to fall with new products, due to high initial investments and reduced yields when pushing the limits of what can be achieved (as with the new iMacs), and it’s this falling margin that has impacted Apple’s earnings per share…...

Apple is yet again putting its voice and name behind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, policy. The United States Supreme Court is set to review the policy this term, and Apple has filed a new amicus brief in support of DACA. This also marks the first time that both Apple CEO Tim Cook and senior vice president of retail and people Deirdre O’Brien have put their names on the brief as well....

Jamf, an Apple-focused mobile device management system, announced that it has acquired Wandera for $400 million, which is its biggest acquisition to date. Wandera provides zero trust cloud security and access for mobile devices. By acquiring Wandera, Jamf will continue expanding its enterprise security offering for both remote and in-office employees. Jamf announced the deal during its Q1 2021 fiscal results. During the quarter, Jamf: Jamf and Wandera are able to take advantage of the immense market opportunity to shape the future of the zero trust cloud....

Apple has today listed 20 new Flyover locations on its iOS 9 feature availability page, five of them in the USA, the rest overseas. The latest U.S. locations are: Columbus, Ohio Louisville, Kentucky South Bend, Indiana Springfield, Missouri Tucson, Arizona … The new international locations are: Adelaide, Australia Amiens, France Berne, Switzerland Bremen, Germany Dresden, Germany Eindhoven, Netherlands Johannesburg, South Africa La Rochelle, France Middlesbrough, UK Nantes, France Salzburg, Austria Taormina, Italy Toulouse, France Toyama, Japan Virgin Islands This brings the worldwide total to 240 places....

If Congress delivers on a proposed tax holiday, Apple could soon join a slew of American companies with large dollar amounts of offshore money eager to repatriate their earnings without being subject to the current corporate tax rate. News of the tax holiday being discussed comes via a report from Reuters: In the past, Apple has made no secret that it does not favor the current corporate income tax rate. With current policy, Apple’s repatriated funds would be subject to the 35% corporate income tax meaning it could really only keep 65% of its earnings…...

Apple has begun a new promotion in the US encouraging users to add funds to Apple ID accounts with their iPhone for app, music, movie, and game purchases. The new offer is giving up to $20 in bonus credit to users who use the iPhone funding method. Apple started sending out emails with details on the new promotion offering the 10% bonus: While this may sound confusing to US customers, in other countries, this funding/payment method is common for the App Store and iTunes Store and has been previously promoted by Apple....

At its Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple has officially taken the wraps off of its oft-rumored speaker in the form of HomePod. The device acts as a standalone way for users to interact with Siri, play music, and more. Tim Cook touts this as Apple’s effort to “reinvent home music” just as it did with products like the iPad. Schiller explained that a successful speaker must: Rock the house Have spatial awareness Be a musicologist To offer strong sound quality, the HomePod features a 7 tweeter array with precision acoustic horns and directional control....

Apple has updated its homepage to include a new microsite officially welcoming the Beats Electronics and Beats Music team to the company. The new site marks the first official mention on Apple.com of the Beats acquisition since the initial press release describing the deal. The site features a silhouettes view of Beats headphones in the background, one of the marquee products of the company acquired by Apple, and the site contains a link to the newly refreshed BeatsByDre....

An Apple patent spotted by Patently Apple shows a spring-loaded pop-up iPhone home button that acts as gaming joystick when in the raised position. Or, in patent language: It’s a fun idea, for sure, but personally I think Apple is more likely to head in the opposite direction over time: to find ways of losing a physical home button and turning it into either a touch-only device, perhaps eventually embedding it into the screen in order to lose the extended bezel at the bottom of the device....

The early buzz surrounding Apex Legends has quickly devolved into a cacophony of cries for balance and bug fixes, as popular Twitch streamer Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek commented earlier this week that he was extremely close to quitting the game “forever.” Shroud’s complaints stem from a number of issues that have been plaguing publisher EA and developer Respawn Entertainment’s battle royale title, many of which have been persistent over a lengthy span of time that has left players feeling as though fixes should have been rolled out already....

Apple @ Work is brought to you by Kandji, the MDM solution built exclusively for organizations that run on Apple. Kandji is a modern, cloud-based platform for centrally managing and securing your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV devices, saving IT teams countless hours of manual work with features like one-click compliance templates and 150+ pre-built automations, apps, and workflows. Request access. For the past few weeks, we’ve been working through a ‘Back to the Basics’ series around managing Apple devices in schools and enterprise organizations....

Apple has launched its Back to School promotion for 2020. In a change from previous years where Apple has included a free pair of Beats headphones, this time around the deal sees the massively popular AirPods included with Mac and iPad education purchases at no cost. Update 7/8: Apple is now bringing its Back to School deal to students and teachers around the world in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Mexico....

Apple has announced that the App Store had its best ever holiday season in 2015, setting records for Christmas and New Year’s Day. January 1st 2016 saw $144 million of App Store spending, the best day in App Store history. It beat the previous record set just a week earlier on Christmas Day. In total, in the two weeks up to January 3, customers spent over $1.1 billion on apps and in-app purchases …...

Others on reddit confirmed they’re seeing the same problem. When I finally got someone from amazon on the phone, I was told that it was because their systems are starting to recognize the card number as Apple Pay, and amazon does not accept Apple Pay. Huh. Mine was removed, too. No notification. What the heck? — Jason™ (@yuusharo) October 23, 2020 I experienced this on my iPad, but switched to my phone and had no problem...

Apple today has continued its barrage of new advertisements for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. This company this evening shared yet another new video to its YouTube channel promoting the device. This ad, called “Prince Oseph,” features SNL star Bill Hader. Much like the ads debuted over the weekend, this ad focuses on the ‘Hey Siri’ functionality of the device. Hader can be seen using Siri and asking her to read him his unread emails....

Nearly 1,000 Apple employees have signed an internal letter that calls on CEO Tim Cook to publicly condemn violence against Palestinians. As reported by the Verge, the authors of the letter are asking that Apple acknowledge that “millions of Palestinian people currently suffer under an illegal occupation.” The letter was initiated by the Apple Muslim Association, which is an internal official employee group. The letter has nearly 1,000 signees, according to the report, and was sent on Monday directly to Cook....

It was reported back in February that all new apps submitted to the App Store had to support the iPhone X’s Super Retina display starting last month. Today, Apple has informed developers that all new apps, whether updates or new submissions, will be required to support the iPhone X’s screen resolution, beginning in July of 2018. With this new rule, means that all apps must now be built with the iOS 11 SDK, in addition to supporting the iPhone X’s edge-to-edge display....