On Friday night, at least eight people died and hundreds more injured due to crowd crush at a Travis Scott festival in Texas. Apple Music was an official partner of the Astroworld event and was live-streaming the show. In a statement shared on social media, Apple said “Our hearts go out to the victims who tragically lost their lives or were injured at Astroworld and their loved ones. We are devastated....

Apple has been slowly investing in gaming content with Apple Arcade, but there is still a whole market that the company could explore – and maybe it will. The company’s latest patents reveal that it has plans to introduce its own game controller. Patents related to game controllers have been granted to Apple by the US Patent & Trademark Office and the European Patent Office in the past two weeks (via Patently Apple)....

Apple celebrated the tenth anniversary of Steve Jobs’s passing on Tuesday with a special version of its website homepage dedicated to the company’s cofounder. Along with a letter signed by Jobs’s family, Apple also shared a video called “Celebrating Steve,” which is now available on the company’s official YouTube channel. The two-minute 48-second video features different moments in Steve Jobs’s life, including such highlights as him introducing the first Macintosh in 1984, the iMac G3 in 1998, the iPod in 2001, the first-generation iPhone in 2007, and the MacBook Air in 2008....

The new display is being developed under the codename J327, but at this point, details about technical specifications are unclear. According to sources, this display will have an Apple-made SoC, which right now is the A13 Bionic chip — the same one used in the iPhone 11 lineup. Along with the A13 chip, the external display features the Neural Engine, which accelerates machine learning tasks. Although rumors suggest that Apple has been working on a less expensive display for regular users, the new external display with a dedicated SoC will likely be a new model to replace the current Pro Display XDR in the future....

Today Apple announced the winners of its iPhone Macro Challenge. While some photos were produced by professionals, others were just taken by daily iPhone users that saw an opportunity to try the macro photography function of the latest iPhone 13 Pro. In an interview with photographer Tyler Stalman, Apple’s VP of iPhone Marketing, Kaiann Drance, talks about the context and the evolution of mobile photography. Not only that, but Stalman was also able to speak to some of the winners of the iPhone Macro Challenge....

Smart home products provider Aqara on Monday announced its new Smart Door Lock A100 Zigbee, which features advanced authentication technologies and support for leading home automation protocols. For Apple users, it works with HomeKit and Home Keys in the Wallet app. With a modern and elegant design, the A100 Zigbee lock is all equipped with the latest technologies available in the market. This includes support for Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant, so users can ask Siri or Google’s virtual assistant to unlock the door or check if the door is locked....

Netflix will debut a re-cut edition of Arrested Development season 4 that at last puts the fragmented story in chronological order. When canceled cult sitcom Arrested Development finally got a fourth season on Netflix, hopes were high that Mitchell Hurwitz and company would recapture the magic that made the show so beloved (though not by enough people to actually keep it on the air). Though the Bluth family was still up to their same old antics, and Hurwitz still had a wizard-like command of the show’s veritable galaxy of running gags, Arrested Development season 4 wound up disappointing a lot of fans....

[This is a review for Arrow season 4, episode 22. There will be SPOILERS.] - The penultimate episode of Arrow season 4 doesn’t lack for action. The hour features a number of frenetic chase and fight scenes interspersed with entire segments dedicated to Felicity, Curtis, and Noah (or the Calculator, if you prefer) typing away at their computers, narrating for the audience and one another what they’re doing, being certain to use computer jargon so that it sounds exciting....

The US Department of Labor has agreed to investigate an Ashley Gjøvik complaint against Apple. The former senior engineering manager alleged that the Cupertino company treated her unfairly, before first suspending and finally dismissing her. Gjøvik said that the saga began when she raised concerns over workplace safety in regard to previous contamination on the land beneath the building where she was based … The former employee says that the company intimidated her for raising the concerns, then took various retaliatory actions against her when she persisted....

After Musk announced that most banned Twitter accounts would be reinstated, a report says that around 62,000 accounts with more than 10K followers each have so far been restored. Other Twitter news includes a claim that the layoffs and resignations have left the company with just one person responsible for removing child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) … Background At the end of October, Musk promised that none of the suspended or banned Twitter accounts would be reinstated until a new content moderation council had been convened to consider the matter....

Warning: This post contains SPOILERS for Ant-Man and The Wasp. — The mid-credits scene for Ant-Man and The Wasp should have been the film’s actual ending. Over the last ten years, Marvel Studios has trained most audience members to wait through the credits of their films to catch clues on what is coming next. Some of these are just fun gags, but in the case of Ant-Man and The Wasp, it serves as a major development for the events of the film and the main characters....

The trailer for Ant-Man & the Wasp is an absolute visual delight. Marvel released the trailer only days after the theatrical release of Avengers: Infinity War, the blockbuster hit that broke all weekend records. It was a smart move on Marvel’s part; after the darkness of Infinity Way, they decided to give viewers a sunbeam of humor and delight. But one specific scene in the trailer stands out above the rest....

Apple’s App Store payment platform monopoly is ending in South Korea after an antitrust law was passed, affecting both the iPhone maker and Google. This is expected to encourage other countries to enact similar laws. Currently, the App Store is the only way for developers to sell iOS apps, and they are not allowed to direct users to any third-party payment platform within their apps. That will now change …...

A report shows the average price of in-app purchase has increased 40% on iOS since last year, and one of the main reasons is Apple’s App Tracking Transparency function that it’s making it more expensive to reach the right users. For once, inflation is happy to not be at fault for a change. According to the Apptopia report, the in-app purchase price increase on iOS comes much before inflation hit hard in 2022....

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Three years ago, Apple announced a $2.5 billion plan to help tackle the California housing crisis. Now, the company is addressing how this partnership is helping to bring new starts in communities across the state. According to a press release, Apple has now deployed more than $1.3 billion of that commitment to a diverse array of projects in conjunction with the California Housing Finance Authority (CalHFA), Destination: Home, and Housing Trust Silicon Valley....

Apple has seen a growing amount of negative feedback from its retail staff this year about working conditions and compensation in its retail stores. Efforts to unionize have ranged from its NYC Grand Central store to Atlanta, Oklahoma, Glasgow, UK, and more. Now the US Labor Board has issued an official complaint against Apple in NYC. Apple employees from the Grand Central store were some of the first this year to work on a unionization effort in April....

Apple has joined the “First Movers Coalition,” a partnership between the World Economic Forum and the US Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate to maintain its commitment to becoming a carbon-neutral company by 2030. In a Twitter post, Apple VP of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson announced that she’s attending COP26 in Glasgow and announced that Apple is part of the First Movers Coalition and will “help accelerate new decarbonization technologies....

Director James Wan will utilize one of Mera’s powers in Aquaman that was deleted from the final cut of Justice League. Amber Heard made her debut as the future queen of Atlantis last year in Warner Bros.’ big DC team-up, but her role wasn’t very big. Like many other characters, her screen time was reduced during post-production, so we didn’t get to see her ability to control water. After Zack Snyder stepped away from Justice League, the movie underwent several changes....