Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company – better known as TSMC – has posted record Q4 profits after taking around 60% of the orders for the A8 chip in the iPhone 6/Plus. Nasdaq reports the company’s net profits for the quarter rose 79% year-on-year. TSMC’s move into 20-nanometer chip production enabled Apple to reduce its reliance on Samsung for the A8 chip, with the chipmaker saying that it is making further investment in more advanced chip-making technology....

In cooperation with the 4th annual FCPX Creative Summit in Cupertino, Apple today showed off its latest updates to Final Cut Pro X, Motion, and Compressor. The new software was demoed on the latest pro hardware from both Apple and third-party vendors. Just yesterday, Final Cut 10.4.4 was released with features editors have long hoped would arrive. The highlight of the update is support for third-party workflow extensions, enabling more productivity and new ways of working in Final Cut Pro....

For the past two years, Apple has been using vehicles around the United States and other countries to collect data for Apple Maps. Now, the company has further expanded those efforts, deploying a fleet of vans in Connecticut for the first time… As noted on the company’s Apple Maps vehicles webpage, Apple is continuing its Apple Maps data collection in New England with camera and sensor-equipped vans for the first time....

According to an internal Apple memo (shown after the break), Apple is finally dropping the long-existing iPad purchase quantity limit of two units per purchase. The change goes into effect immediately at Apple’s Retail Stores worldwide (except in Hong Kong). The quantity limit is yet to be dropped on Apple’s official online store, but the change will appear on that digital storefront on June 11th, the date of Apple’s WWDC kickoff keynote....

Six years ago Apple dropped $3 billion on its largest acquisition ever to acquire Beats Electronics. Music mogul Jimmy Iovine and hip-hop legend Dr. Dre built the consumer electronics brand into a household name, and Beats-branded headphones were flying off the shelves. Apple could tell. It sold Beats headphones and speakers in Apple Stores so the success of Beats was no secret. Beats also had a months-old streaming music service that Apple used to build Apple Music, but it’s clear in retrospect that Apple also saw continued value in Beats as a hardware brand....

Confirming speculation, Apple is introducing new model Mac minis. There’s three in all, including a 2.26Ghz and 2.53GHz model with 160GB and 320GB drives respectively. The third model offers a 1 terrabyte drive and is configured as a media server. Starting at £499 (inc. VAT), or XXX in the US, the entry level Mac mini hosts a 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of DDR3 1066 MHz memory, a 160GB hard drive, five USB 2....

Apple announced today that it has invested $10 million to COPAN Diagnostics, as part of its Advanced Manufacturing Fund for US businesses. COPAN Diagonistics is a manufacturer of collection kits for coronavirus samples. The investment will help the company grow production levels to more than one million kits per week. In the past, Apple has used the Advanced Manufacturing Fund to invest in companies directly related to its supply chain, like Corning glass, or Finisar — the VCSEL laser manufacturer whose components form part of the Face ID TrueDepth camera system....

As promised, the folks at Nokia launched their alternative to Apple Maps for iOS: a new cross-platform solution called “Nokia Here”. Based off HTML 5, Here is now available on the iTunes App Store for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad this morning, offering users full map views, the ability to save maps for later viewing, coverage of 200 countries, search history, Facebook login integration, step-by-step voice-guided navigation for the car and walking, offline map viewing, and social features that allow users to share their location....

While Apple canceled its Apple Music festival back in 2017, it still hosts free shows from time to time. Today the service is promoting another free live concert in LA, this time featuring Tyler, The Creator. The application for free tickets is open now for those 16 years of age and older. Apple Music is putting on the free show next Wednesday, May 22nd (which will also be livestreamed on the platform) in LA at Territory of Promotion to celebrate Tyler, The Creator’s new album, Igor....

A new report from Bloomberg today offers additional information on Apple’s plans to adjust operations as the COVID-19 pandemic worsens in many areas. The report explains that Apple will vary its approach around the world based on local conditions. In the United States, Apple has told its employees that it does not anticipate a full return to physical offices “before the end of the year.” In Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions, however, Apple says it does “anticipate full resumption will take place over the coming months based on local conditions” for “many” offices....

Apple will be offering two new workshops at Apple Stores in the new year, CNET reports, each designed to help customers bring out their artistic side. One is geared to creative photography techniques on the iPhone, while the other is about using iPads for sketching, drawing and painting. Both workshops are part of Apple’s Start Something New campaign, first launched a year ago by using retail stores as temporary art galleries …...

If you plan on attending Apple’s annual developers conference, the window for WWDC 2017 registration is now open. Apple is expected to unveil iOS 11 and macOS 10.13 at the upcoming conference. The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on June 5 and runs through June 9. After being held in San Francisco for the past several years, Apple is bringing the conference back to San Jose this year at the McEnery Convention Center....

Apple has added a fifth partner to its list of iPhone distributors in India as it continues its sales push in the country. Optiemus Group will now begin distributing iPhones with a focus on expanding to “neighborhood cellphone stores” in India. Apple is said to be targeting 2 million iPhone sales in the country during its fiscal year 2015… News that Optiemus will begin distributing the iPhone in India comes from The Times of India, which cites three industry executives and says more partnerships are expected to follow....

Like a light early Christmas, Apex Legends players on PlayStation 4 have a free pack of exclusive goodies sitting under the tree. Respawn is giving away a small bundle of skins dubbed the PlayStation Plus Play Pack. This marks the second instance of this bundle with the first being offered back in February. The surprise drop of content comes at the heels of larger shake-ups hitting the popular battle royale as of late....

Apple bought keyboard app maker Dryft sometime last year and brought on talent from the company to lead development of its onscreen iOS keyboards, according to a new report from TechCrunch. The report points to the LinkedIn profile of Dryft’s CEO Randy Marsden, which confirms he joined Apple last September and now leads iOS keyboard development for iPhones and iPads. Marsden also happens to be the co-founder of popular keyboard app Swype....

According to Rapidus.se (via TechCrunch), Apple has purchased a Swedish firm called AlgoTrim for an undisclosed price. The small company specializes in image and video, specifically JPEG, compression techniques on mobile devices which allow faster processing of images on power-constrained mobile devices. Apple could use these codecs in its camera and image viewing and manipulation apps on iOS. It is probable that the cost of picking up the company and owning the technology outweighed the cost of licensing the technology over its hundreds of millions of devices....

We’d heard back in 2012 that Apple CEO Tim Cook spent 80-90 percent of his time on an iPad, but the WSJ reports today that Cook thinks that’s the way it should be for all of us – and he believes the partnership with IBM can help make that vision a reality. “There’s no reason why everyone shouldn’t be like that. Imagine enterprise apps being as simple as the consumer apps that we’ve all gotten used to....

With the service launching in the United States last month, it may seem a little late, but Apple has very recently launched a website dedicated to iTunes Match. Previously, iTunes Match was given a slab of the iTunes in the Cloud website. The new iTunes Match website is very descriptive and tries to clear up much of the confusion that has surrounded the product since its announcement. Apple thoroughly explains the basics of iTunes Match with a paragraph worded similarly to their previous literature on the subject:...

If you’re eligible for education pricing, iGeneration noticed that the discounts available on Macs through the Apple Store for Education have now been extended to iPads. The discounts are modest, ranging from $20 to $30, but it all helps. Education pricing is available to pretty much everyone working or studying in higher education: students, faculty, staff – even parents of students – as well as employees of K-12 schools. Discounted iPad prices for the base spec 16GB wifi models are:...

A federal judge ruled that a lawsuit against Apple and several other companies can proceed as a class-action suit today after determining that a significant number of employees across the tech industry were hurt by “do-not-hire” arrangements between their employers and other companies. The policies in question were practiced by Apple, Google, Adobe, Pixar, and more as a way of keeping their own employees from defecting to competitors for higher pay....