MacRumors

Apple Pay has overtaken the Starbucks mobile app to become the most popular mobile payment system in the United States, claims a new report out today.

According to eMarketer, ‌Apple Pay‌ became the market leader last year, when 27.7 million Americans used the app to make a purchase. Since then, however, ‌Apple Pay‌ has grown even faster than expected.

In 2019, ‌Apple Pay‌ will have 30.3 million users, or 47.3 percent of mobile payment users. That compares with Starbucks' 25.2 million customers via its mobile app in the same year, representing 39.4 percent of mobile payment users.

"Apple Pay has benefited from the spread of new point-of-sale (POS) systems that work with the NFC signals Apple Pay runs on," said eMarketer principal analyst Yory Wurmser. "The same trend should also help Google Pay and Samsung Pay, but they will continue to split the Android market."

Citing data from Digital Trends, the analysis predicts ‌Apple Pay‌ will be available in 70 percent of U.S. retailers by the end of 2019. In contrast, the Starbucks app has commanded a 40 percent market share of mobile payments for the last few years, but growth potential is limited because it can only be used in Starbucks stores.

Total spending via contactless mobile payments will approach $100 billion this year in the U.S., according to eMarketer. On average, that is equivalent to a user spending $1,545 per year, up more than 24 percent over last year.

Nearly 64 million people (30 percent of all U.S. smartphone users) are expected to make use of mobile payments this year, a 9.1 percent increase over 2018. In terms of demographics, nearly 50 percent of all smartphone users are adults aged 25 to 34, so the growth of mobile payments is expected to be strongest in this age group, although digital wallet use is said to be growing across the board.

"Although a growing number of millennials feel secure using payment apps, virtually all still find credit and debit cards equally convenient," said eMarketer forecasting analyst Vincent Yip. That bodes well for Apple Card, which launched earlier this year. ‌Apple Pay‌ is now in 47 markets and in the June quarter, started adding more new users than PayPal, with monthly transaction volume growing four times as fast.

Selena Gomez today released a new song and video entitled "Lose You to Love Me," and the entire video was shot in black and white using an iPhone 11 Pro.

Apple has released quite a few different types of photos and videos in its "Shot on ‌iPhone‌" series, including stills, sports-themed videos, and short films. More recently, Apple has expanded the campaign to include musicains and bands on tour and even ASMR videos.

Google last week announced its newest flagship smartphones, the Pixel 4 and the Pixel 4XL, both of which are meant to compete with the iPhone 11 and ‌iPhone‌ 11 Pro, Apple's newest devices launched in September.

In our latest YouTube video, we went hands-on with a Pixel 4XL and an iPhone 11 Pro Max to compare the cameras in the two devices to see how they measure up against one another.

Each smartphone does well with highlights and shadows, but the Pixel 4XL has a feature for adjusting these settings in real time while they need to be post processed on the ‌iPhone‌. The ‌iPhone‌ does have one edge - a third ultra wide-angle camera lens. The Pixel 4XL is limited to two cameras, a standard wide-angle and a telephoto lens, so it can't quite match the capabilities of the ‌iPhone 11 Pro Max‌.

Google pioneered Night Sight (the equivalent of the ‌iPhone‌'s Night Mode) last year, and the feature continues to be impressive this year. Night Side and ‌Night Mode‌ are quite similar, and it's tough to pick a clear winner for low-light photos. The ‌iPhone 11 Pro Max‌ tends to produce photos that look a bit more natural, while the Pixel 4XL offers up sharper, more vibrant night time images that sometimes have blown out highlights.

When comparing Portrait Mode, the Pixel 4XL seems to produce sharper images and it has superior edge detection in most cases. It's imperfect and there are times that the ‌iPhone‌ wins out, but in most of our test images, the Pixel 4XL does a better job with Portrait Mode photos.

For the front-facing camera, the Pixel 4XL has a new wide-angle lens that can capture more around you, plus it produces some super sharp photos, especially in Portrait Mode. There's an option for a wider-angle field of view with the ‌iPhone‌'s camera too, but the images from the Pixel 4XL appear to be just a bit better even though they have a warmer tone.

The Pixel 4XL has a Night Sight option for the front-facing camera, which gives it an edge over the front-facing camera of the ‌iPhone 11 Pro Max‌ as it can take better selfies in low lighting conditions.

When it comes to video, the ‌iPhone 11 Pro Max‌ wins. Google appears to have focused more on photo quality than video quality, and both the front and rear-facing cameras are a bit lacking. The Pixel 4XL supports 4K video but maxes out at 30 frames per second, while the ‌iPhone 11 Pro Max‌ supports 60 frames per second. Both have solid stabilization capabilities, but the ‌iPhone‌ 11 Pro has a preferable color profile and look compared to the Pixel 4XL.

All in all, both of these smartphones have high-quality cameras capable of producing some impressive images, which makes it difficult to choose a clear winner. Preference is generally going to come down to platform choice and small aesthetic differences between features like color profile.

Which smartphone's camera do you prefer? ‌iPhone 11 Pro Max‌ or Pixel 4XL? Let us know in the comments.

LG is in talks with Apple to supply LCD displays for the successor to the iPhone SE, with the panels currently undergoing last-minute quality checks, according to industry sources cited by Korean website The Elec. The report claims the budget device is scheduled to be released in early 2020.

Apple sticking with an LCD for the device would be no surprise given cost considerations, with previous reports claiming the so-called "iPhone SE 2" will sport a 4.7-inch display like the iPhone 8. This has disappointed some fans of the original iPhone SE, which has a smaller 4-inch display ideal for one-handed usage.

There have been several reports about the iPhone SE 2 in recent weeks. The most detailed information has come from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who expects the device to look similar to the iPhone 8, including thick bezels and a Touch ID home button, but with a faster A13 Bionic chip and 3GB of RAM.

Kuo also expects the device to come in Space Gray, Silver, and Red, with 64GB and 128GB storage options. Like the iPhone 11 lineup, the ‌iPhone SE 2‌ is expected to ship without 3D Touch, which Apple has replaced with a software-based Haptic Touch solution. Kuo predicts pricing will start at $399 in the United States.

As we mentioned yesterday, ‌iPhone SE 2‌ might not be the final name of the device, with iPhone 8s and iPhone 9 speculated as other possibilities. The device is expected to be released by the end of the first quarter of 2020.

Apple premiered its futuristic thriller "See" at the Regency Village Theater in Westwood, California, on Monday night. The show is set to debut on Apple TV+ when the service launches on November 1.

The epic post apocalyptic drama takes place in a world in which much of the human population has been wiped out by a virus and the remaining survivors have been left blind. According to Apple, dozens of visually impaired and blind actors were cast for the show, and consultants on blindness, biology and survival were hired to make the drama as realistic as possible.

Jason Momoa plays the lead role of Baba Voss, a fearless warrior, leader, and guardian. Momoa is well-known for his role as Khal Drogo in "Game of Thrones," as well as roles in "Aquaman," "Stargate Atlantis," and "Conan the Barbarian."

The first three episodes of "See" will be available to watch on ‌Apple TV‌+ in over 100 countries and regions around the world from November 1, with new episodes scheduled to roll out weekly, every Friday.

The streaming service will be available on the ‌Apple TV‌ app on iPhone, iPad, ‌Apple TV‌, iPod touch, Mac and other platforms, including online via www.tv.apple.com. Customers who purchase any new ‌iPhone‌, ‌iPad‌, ‌Apple TV‌, Mac or iPod touch starting September 10, 2019, are eligible for one year of ‌Apple TV‌+ for free.

Following a recent Bloomberg report that Adobe continues to be committed to releasing the promised Photoshop CC for iPad app by the end of 2019, Daring Fireball's John Gruber has offered up some additional info on Adobe's plans.

Gruber says that Adobe is "all in" on photoshop for ‌iPad‌, and that it's viewed as a "serious top-shelf project for creative professionals."

The team of engineers working on it has grown significantly from a year ago, and they have plans to add features iteratively on an aggressive schedule. It's reasonable to be disappointed that it isn't further along feature-count-wise, but anyone who cares about Photoshop for iPad as a long-term product should be very excited about its foundation, direction, and the attention Adobe is paying to the fine details of a touch-first Photoshop UI.

In response to reports that Photoshop for ‌iPad‌ beta testers are unhappy with limited and missing core Photoshop features, Gruber explains that Adobe is positioning the software as "real" Photoshop as it's built using the same code base that's used for the desktop version. That's been interpreted as a "full" version of Photoshop, which isn't quite correct.

Photoshop for iPad is real because it is using the same code base that's been running on the desktop for decades. That's an amazing technical accomplishment. Photoshop for iPad is not full -- and the initial release was never planned to be -- because it only exposes a subset of features from the desktop version.

Adobe first announced its plans to introduce an ‌iPad‌ version of Photoshop CC in October of 2018, promising it for release in 2019. Adobe has been testing the app with beta testers since May, but there's still no specific word on when it will launch.

In a separate report released this afternoon, Bloomberg says that Adobe is also working on a version of Illustrator that will work on the ‌iPad‌. Adobe is said to be planning to preview Illustrator for ‌iPad‌ at its Adobe MAX conference in November before releasing the app in 2020.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is now the chairman of the advisory board of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management (SEM) in Beijing, and he recently hosted the 20th annual meeting of the committee.

The news of his appointment was shared in a recap of the 2019 meeting of the board, which is the 20th annual meeting since the committee was established.

Cook has been a member of the Beijing-based university's advisory board since October of 2013. Tsinghua SEM is considered one of the top schools in China, and other advisory board members include General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Dell CEO Michael Dell, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, Pepsi CEO Ramon Laguarta, Alibaba executive chairman Jack Ma, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and more.

Cook took over as chairman from Breyer Capital founder and CEO Jim Breyer, who led the board for the last three years.

In a speech at the meeting, Cook said that he plans to work with board members to "promote the development of the college" over the course of the next three years that he will hold the position.

Cook's promotion to chairman of the board at Tsinghua SEM comes as Apple struggles to navigate tensions between China and Hong Kong. Earlier this month, Apple pulled the HKMap Live app that protestors were using to communicate police movements after China suggested the app was being used to target specific police officers.

Last Friday, U.S. lawmakers condemned Apple's decision and called on the company to reinstate the app, but Apple has not yet responded.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

The so-called iPhone SE 2 will be equipped with an LCP aka liquid crystal polymer antenna design for improved wireless transmission, according to noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

In a research note with TF International Securities today, viewed by MacRumors, Kuo said Career Technologies and Murata Manufacturing will begin supplying Apple with antenna components for the ‌iPhone‌ SE 2 in early 2020, in time for the device to launch by the end of the first quarter.

In previous research notes, Kuo said the ‌iPhone‌ SE 2 will have a similar design as the ‌iPhone‌ 8, including a 4.7-inch display and a Touch ID home button, but with a faster A13 Bionic chip and 3GB of RAM. He also expects the device to have 64GB and 128GB storage options and come in Space Gray, Silver, and Red.

Like the ‌iPhone‌ 11 lineup, the ‌iPhone‌ SE 2 is expected to ship without 3D Touch, which Apple has replaced with a software-based Haptic Touch solution. Kuo predicts the device will start at $399 in the United States.

It is worth noting that ‌iPhone‌ SE 2 might not be the final name of the device, with ‌iPhone‌ 8s and ‌iPhone‌ 9 speculated as other possibilities. With a larger 4.7-inch display, the device would certainly not be as portable as the original ‌iPhone‌ SE, which has disappointed some fans of the original device.

Many of these details have been corroborated by Bloomberg, Nikkei, and other sources.