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.
If you’d like to get regular roundups of breaking Apple news, sign up to our newsletters.
Mr Cook goes to Washington
Tim Cook was due to face questions from the US House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee on Monday, but this was postponed to the Wednesday. You can read his prepared statement, which was a mixture of conciliation and defiance.
Watching the actual questioning – which was conducted online, so he didn’t technically have to go to Washington – was a strange experience. One was reminded of how bizarrely split US politics is at the moment, as Republicans and Democrats used their time to attack the subject from radically different viewpoints: at one point Jim Jordan tried to get the CEOs to agree with his concerns about the “cancel culture mob”, and Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg politely fielded questions about why conservative voices had been removed from Twitter.
This freewheeling format appeared to be good news for Tim Cook, who spent much of proceedings looking on while congressmen focused on the other companies and their more politically appealing transgressions. When he did come under fire, however, I was struck by how well he stood up for Apple’s business practices, despite being unconvinced by his arguments before the hearing began.
For a longer account, read Tim Cook defends App Store before antitrust subcommittee.
Apple profits shatter expectations
Apple reported its quarterly earnings this week, and they were good. In fact they shattered expectations, with numbers up across the board.
This was all excellent news for Cupertino, but perhaps the most interesting part for us humble customers was the surprising admission by CFO Luca Maestri that the iPhone 12 will be delayed. (More on the iPhone 12 in the rumour mill section.)
It’s not clear how much it will be delayed, or what the originally planned date was, or even if the delay refers to actual announcement or just sales. But it’s incredibly rare to hear Apple comment publicly on its upcoming product release plans.
One other announcement from the earnings call: Apple is doing another share split. That’s good news if you’re looking to buy shares, or offload part of your portfolio.
Good news for Apple TV+
We’ve written recently about Apple’s struggles to get more people to sign up for TV+, but the streaming service got two doses of good news this week: it won twice in the Daytime Emmy Awards, and then picked up 18 nominations for the Primetime Emmy Awards.
This is all travel in the right direction, but it’s worth remembering quite how far ahead Apple’s streaming rivals are right now: Netflix, for example, won six times at the Daytimes and got 160 Primetime nominations. Yes, you read that right: 160.
News in brief
Apple’s been named the world’s most innovative company. Phil Schiller will be pleased.
Taylor Swift – making her long-awaited debut appearance in Apple Breakfast – has broken all sort of streaming records with her latest LP, Folklore. In the first 24 hours it was streamed 35 million times on Apple Music. I estimate that 34 million of those can be traced to my colleague Scott.
A magazine cover signed by Steve Jobs back in the 1980s has gone on auction starting at $11,000. Jobs signed the cover for his limo driver and then, characteristically, went and complained to the limo company. Honestly, that guy.
An app has been released that lets you run Mac OS 8 on a modern Mac, including a bunch of retro games.
Bugs and problems
Users are having headaches with macOS 10.15.6, which appears to be crashing virtualisation apps. According to VMware’s forums, the crashes are due to a bug in the App Sandbox.
A bug is causing the Instagram app, when running under the iOS 14 beta, to claim the camera is on when it’s not. Users have been understandably alarmed by this, but the makers have insisted that “We only access your camera when you tell us to.”
The rumour mill
Let’s start with the iPhone 12, which has seen a bumper week for rumours. For a start, it may get the latest version of Gorilla Glass – a material known as Gorilla Glass Victus, which is twice as drop-resistant as the last version and four times as scratch-resistant as its rivals.
We’ve also got our first glimpses of the smaller 5.4in iPhone 12 model, and of the device’s braided Lightning cable, which looks like it will be available in both white and black finishes. We’ve even seen photos of the new A14 processor.
Apple has apparently ordered 95 million OLED displays for the new handsets. And finally, some weirdly specific Twitter predictions suggest we’ll be seeing the iPhone 12 on 8 September, alongside the Apple Watch Series 6. This will be followed, the leakers claim, by a Mac- and iPad-focused event on 27 October.
Face ID is coming to the Mac! And a new iMac is coming in August! There’s also going to be a new MacBook Air soon, if an application for approval of a new battery is any indication.
Patent activity suggests haptic feedback is coming to the Apple Pencil.
And that’s it for this week. Stay Appley!
