Apple generates a lot of news, and it can be hard to keep up. If your mind was on other things this week, our roundup of Apple-related headlines will bring you up to date.
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Inductiv charging
We don’t know how much it cost – the only detail that could justify that semi-pun headline – but Apple this week confirmed that it bought Inductiv, a company that specialises in machine learning and data cleaning, back in April.
Inductiv works on a technology for eliminating errors in large quantities of data. This tech is expected to help Siri to learn and improve its performance; maybe Apple will finally catch up to Google Assistant in this area. (Read our Siri vs Google Assistant comparison to see how things stand at present.)
iPhone 11 rules the world
Analysts report that as many iPhone 11 units sold in the first quarter of this year as the next three most popular handsets put together. Apple has an advantage in these kinds of charts, because its sales are concentrated on a smaller number of models, but still: it’s a huge success.
We feel slightly vindicated here, having put the iPhone 11 top of our best iPhones chart. The 11 is a superb phone and a good deal.
News in brief
The Powerbeats Pro will be available in four new colours – Spring Yellow, Cloud Pink, Lava Red and Glacier Blue – from 9 June. The announcement was made on Instagram, where the new headphones were dropped off by drone.
Apple has acquired the rights to Martin Scorsese’s next film project, Killers of the Flower Moon. The company won a bidding war with Netflix, which had the rights to Scorsese’s last film, The Irishman.
The Financial Times reports that Tile has written to the European competition commissioner, accusing Apple of favouring its own location-tracking app in iOS 13. As a background to the two firms’ disagreements, it’s strongly believed that Apple will soon launch its own hardware too: the AirTag.
It emerged this week that Bill Gates – or, to be more exact, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – bought half a million Apple shares earlier this year, and has seen the share price increase by 25 percent since. Profit on that.
iOS 14 will be unveiled officially in June, but some people got a sneak preview a little earlier than that. I’m not talking about Tim Cook: a bunch of jailbreakers and hackers have had it since February. One of them bought a development iPhone from China. Apple’s secrecy really isn’t what it used to be.
Talking of jailbreakers, the iOS 13.5 jailbreak is available already. That was quick – but note that it’s tethered, and won’t persist if you restart your phone.
Businesses around the world are gradually getting back to the beginnings of normality. We’ve put together a regularly updated guide that will help you work out when your local Apple Store will reopen.
And this is an unusual problem to have, but the brother of the late drug lord Pablo Escobar is suing Apple for $2.6bn. He says a flaw in FaceTime made it possible for an enemy to find his address, so he had to move. Tough times to be the brother of a late drug lord.
Off down the Arcade
I finally finished an extremely long-term project this week and published our complete ranking of every Apple Arcade game. That’s 122 games played, reviewed and ranked. I’ll never have to look at another… what’s that? Apple’s already released number 123? Aaaagggghhh
While we’re at it, here’s our separate guide to which Apple Arcade game you should play depending on which genre or style of game you’re into. The service is absolutely packed with high-quality RPGs, adventure games and puzzles, but fans of shooting and board games are a little less well served.
Rant corner
Isn’t it annoying, the way Apple nickel-and-dimes its customers on things like storage, headphone dongles and fast chargers? In the first instalment of a regular Sunday column called Different Think, our man advises the company to stop being so cheap. Tune in tomorrow for his thoughts on success (spoiler: he’s not in favour of it).
I, meanwhile, have been ranting about the prospect of a kids’ Apple Watch. We know Apple is exploring child-friendly software features in watchOS 7: a new SchoolTime mode will let parents monitor and control the apps and contacts that are accessible on a child’s watch, for example. That’s all very well, but dedicated hardware isn’t the answer.
Bugs and problems
Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away. The latest update to macOS Catalina, version 10.15.5, fixes a number of issues – it patches a Finder bug and adds battery health management – but adds one more: it causes major problems with backups, according to the developer behind Carbon Copy Cloner. Keep an eye out for that one.
We’ve recently been hearing a lot of about a bug in iOS 13.5 (and iPadOS 13.5) that affects Family Sharing: apps that had previously been shared are no longer accessible and, most recently, there were associated problems with updates. Happily Apple seems to have moved fast on this one, and now reports that it’s fixed.
The rumour mill
This week we’ve been hearing, not for the first time, that Apple will ditch Lightning on the iPhone 13 next year. That’s not in favour of USB-C, to be clear: the company will jump straight to portless.
The AirPods Studio are reportedly in production already, and will launch in the summer. (If half the rumours are true, the WWDC 2020 keynote will last 17 hours.)
A leak has revealed (alleged) new Apple Watch leather bands.
And don’t get angry, okay? But we’ve already started gathering rumours about the next iPad Pro update for 2021.
And that’s it for this week. Stay Appley!
Author: David Price, Editor
David has loved the iPhone since covering the original 2007 launch; later his obsession expanded to include iPad and Apple Watch. He offers advice to owners (and prospective owners) of these devices.