MacRumors

Apple has begun offering users the chance to add 10 percent extra credit to their App Store and iTunes accounts this week, similar to past offers from the company. For this deal, you'll have to add money to your Apple ID account from a credit or debit card connected to your account.

To add the funds on your iPhone, visit the ‌App Store‌, tap your profile picture, and then tap "Add Funds to ‌Apple ID‌." Here you can choose from $1.00 to $200.00 to add to your account in order to get the 10 percent bonus credit. This means that the most you can get out of the offer is $20 in free iTunes credit when adding $200 to your account.

The promotion will last through Friday, May 10 and is available in the United States as well as other regions, including Japan. With the credit in your iTunes account, you can rent or purchase iTunes movies and TV shows, buy books in Apple Books, pay for your Apple Music or iCloud subscriptions, and much more.

Apple today uploaded a new video to its YouTube channel promoting its iPhone trade-in program, which allows people to trade in their older devices when purchasing a new one to get an Apple gift card or to simply recycle broken electronics.

Apple either refurbishes iPhones that are traded in and resells them, or recycles older unusable devices for the components.

You've done great things with your iPhone, but at some point, you'll be ready for something new. You can easily trade it in with Apple so it can be refurbished and put back into the world so someone new can do their own great things with it.

But if your device is at the very end of its life, materials inside will be recovered and recycled. Either way, you can continue to do what you love while respecting the planet.

At the end of the video Apple uses the tagline "Do one last great thing with it." The new ad is featured on Apple's environmental website, which provides more detail on how the trade-in program works.

Apple has been heavily promoting its trade-in program in recent months as a way to cut down on the cost of new devices and to further its environmental protection efforts.

Apple today seeded the fifth beta of an upcoming iOS 12.3 update to developers, one week after releasing the fourth beta and over a month after the launch of iOS 12.2, an update that introduced Apple News+, new Animoji, and more.

Registered developers will be able to download the new iOS 12.3 beta from Apple's Developer Center or over-the-air once the proper configuration profile has been installed from the Developer Center.

iOS 12.3 and tvOS 12.3 introduce a new version of Apple's TV app, which has been updated with a new look and fresh functionality.

In the new TV app, "Watch Now" and "Up Next" are still front and center for keeping track of what you're watching, but there's a new machine learning-based recommendation engine that will suggest content based on your viewing preferences and history.

The app's interface has been streamlined with sections for movies, TV shows, sports, and kids content, and on iOS, there's a separate bottom bar for the library, search, and Watch Now options.

There's a new "Channels" feature in the TV app, which is one of the major new components of Apple's services push. Channels are subscription services that you can sign up for and watch within the TV app without having to open up another app.

So, for example, if you come across a show you want to watch on your iPhone or Apple TV that's on Showtime or Starz, you can tap to subscribe right in the TV app, and then you can watch that show without having to open another app.

Some of the new Channels that will be supported include CBS All Access, Starz, Showtime, HBO, Nickelodeon, Mubi, The History Channel Vault, and Comedy Central Now. During the beta, though, users can subscribe to Showtime, Starz, Smithsonian, EPIX, and Tastemade.

You'll still get recommendations for content from services that aren't a part of the Channels feature, but non-channel content will need to be watched in a third-party app. The TV app also houses iTunes TV shows and movies.

When Apple debuts its ‌Apple TV‌+ service this fall, all of the company's original TV shows and movies will also be accessible in the TV app.

Apple potentially has a legal battle on its hands over iPhone 7 audio chip issues informally known as "Loop Disease."

Two class action lawsuits filed against Apple in California and Illinois over the last week accuse the company of knowingly selling the iPhone 7 and ‌iPhone‌ 7 Plus with an audio chip defect that causes issues ranging from a grayed-out speaker button to customers not being heard during phone calls and FaceTime video chats.

The nearly identical complaints, viewed by MacRumors, allege that "the materials used in the ‌iPhone‌'s external casing are insufficient and inadequate to protect the internal parts," eventually resulting in the audio chip losing electrical contact with the logic board due to "flexion" of the device during regular use.

Apple is accused of actively concealing the defect and failing to provide free repairs to affected customers outside of a brief period last year, thereby breaching its warranties and violating multiple California and Illinois consumer protection laws.

The plaintiffs, including California residents Joseph Casillas and De'Jhontai Banks and Illinois residents Brianna Castelli, Karen Lyvers, and Matthew White, are seeking damages "likely in the millions of dollars" on behalf of all other affected ‌iPhone‌ 7 and ‌iPhone‌ 7 Plus customers in the United States.

The plaintiffs are also seeking an order that requires Apple to repair, recall, and/or replace the affected iPhones and to extend the warranties of the devices for a reasonable period of time. A jury trial has been demanded.

In an internal document obtained by MacRumors in May 2018, Apple acknowledged a related microphone issue affecting some iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus models. The document, provided to Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers, described the same audio issues mentioned in the class action lawsuits.

Apple's document said service providers could request a "warranty exception" for affected iPhones, which resulted in free repairs for at least some customers, but that abruptly ended in July 2018 after Apple deleted the document.

Since then, many Apple employees have failed to acknowledge the internal guidelines ever existed, resulting in many customers having to pay an out-of-warranty fee of over $300 in the United States for a fix. Of course, some customers have managed to argue their way to a free repair, but this is not common.

‌iPhone‌ 7 and ‌iPhone‌ 7 Plus devices still within Apple's limited one-year warranty period or covered by AppleCare+ remain eligible for a free repair, but the audio chip issues usually take time to manifest, and warranty coverage has lapsed on many of the devices since they were released in September 2016.

MacRumors has repeatedly contacted Apple for comment regarding the audio chip issues, but we have never received a response.

The complaints are embedded below.

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A new article by Bloomberg has highlighted some customer and employee frustrations with the state of Apple's retail business, particularly in the wake of changes introduced by former retail chief Angela Ahrendts. According to some current and former Apple employees, the retail stores have become more focused on branding than satisfying shoppers, leading to more complaints lodged against some stores.

Ahrendts left Apple last month after first joining the company in 2014, and Apple executive Deirdre O'Brien has succeeded Ahrendts in the retail position. The shake-up happened as Apple's retail business faces more and more issues alongside slowing iPhone sales.

O'Brien is now tasked with revitalizing Apple's retail business, even if that means moving away from the idea of Apple retail stores as social gathering places, which was the initiative spearheaded by Ahrendts. The former retail chief built stores with less clearly defined locations for checking out and speaking to Apple's Geniuses, in an effort to promote the company as a luxury shopping brand amid the launch of the first Apple Watch and its $17,000 Apple Watch Edition models.

According to Bloomberg's sources, this led to customer confusion and was accompanied by other issues, like less skilled employees and the removal of the traditional Genius Bar at some stores.

The overhaul of the Genius Bar has been especially controversial. Customers looking for technical advice or repairs must now check in with an employee, who types their request into an iPad. Then when a Genius is free, he or she must find the customer wherever they happen to be in the store. Ahrendts was determined to get rid of lineups, but now the stores are often crowded with people waiting for their iPhones to be fixed or batteries swapped out.

Apple was “trying to streamline things,” says one employee, “but in the process made things more difficult for some customers.”

One former Apple executive said that O'Brien is looking to borrow from the past and break up Apple stores into more clearly defined sections. These include areas that promote Apple's growing services business, like Apple Music and Apple TV+. A few employees speculated that she will also bring back the original Genius Bar.

To help boost sales in the interim, Apple has begun offering discounts on iPhones, cheap financing, trade-in offers, and more. These offers were seen around the world, including specific promotions in Australia and China, with Apple typically e-mailing customers about the limited-time discounts. In the United States, Apple even updated its website to promote a monthly payment option for iPhone XR and XS trade-ups.

The first Apple retail store that will open under O'Brien will be the Carnegie Library location in Washington, D.C. on May 11. As of now, Apple still sees its stores as communal gathering places. According to CEO Tim Cook, "We should probably come up with a name other than 'store,' because it's more of a place for the community to use in a much broader way."

Visit Bloomberg to read the full article: "How the Apple Store Lost Its Luster".

Samsung on Tuesday acknowledged that it is unable to provide a firm release date for its Galaxy Fold smartphone and has contacted pre-order customers in the United States to apologize for the delay (via Reuters).

"If we do not hear from you and we have not shipped by May 31st, your order will be canceled automatically," the South Korean tech giant's U.S. subsidiary told Galaxy Fold pre-order customers in an email late on Monday, which was confirmed by a Samsung spokeswoman.

In a statement given to Reuters, Samsung said that U.S. regulations required the company to notify customers that pre-orders would be canceled if the product did not ship by May 31.

The South Korean company originally planned to roll out its $1,980 foldable phone on April 26, but was forced to delay the launch after several units sent out to reviewers broke during testing.

After recalling the review units, Samsung contacted pre-order customers on April 22, saying it would announce a new release date "in the coming weeks" and would take measures to strengthen the display protection. The device's screen was shown to be vulnerable to debris ingress, thanks to an iFixit teardown that was later removed at Samsung's request.

The development is the latest in a series of embarrassing events for Samsung, whose hybrid tablet/smartphone was supposed to demonstrate the company leading innovation in the mobile space. Still, at least the device in its current state won't get into the hands of thousands of customers around the world, which would likely have turned into a larger problem.

Samsung has said it plans to make at least 1 million Galaxy Fold handsets in the first year of production, compared to the total 300 million phones it produces annually on average. It originally closed pre-orders for the device early because of "high demand."

At the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder conference this weekend, Apple CEO Tim Cook sat down for an interview with CNBC's Becky Quick, and that interview aired this morning on Squawk Box.

During the discussion, Cook covered topics like Warren Buffett's Apple investments, Apple's company mission, how Apple runs, internal debate topics, privacy, acquisitions, and more.

Cook said that when he heard that Warren Buffett invested in Apple stock, he said he thought to himself "Wow, this is really cool." An investment from "the ultimate long-term investor" is an "honor and a privilege," Cook said. "I mean, wow, it's Warren Buffett is investing the company. And yeah, so, it felt great."

Buffett's decision to invest in Apple meant that he viewed it as a consumer company, not a technology company because Buffett doesn't invest in tech companies he doesn't understand. Cook says that while Apple is in the tech industry, the consumer is the company's focus. "We think technology should be in the background, not the foreground," said Cook. Cook went on to reiterate something that he's said many times before - Apple's goal is to enrich people's lives.

Our mission is to make the best products in the world in those areas which we choose to participate that enrich people's lives. And so, if we can't make the best product, we don't go in. If we can make a great product but it doesn't help anybody, it doesn't enrich their life, then we're not going to go into that either. And so that's a pretty narrow funnel then because you're working on a few things. And we know in order to do them at the quality level we want to do them, we can only do a few.

Apple is a large company, but Cook says that in "some ways," it's "like a big startup." Apple is organized, but teams work together on projects and are "empowered to come up with new things." Apple has a "heavy debate culture" where the best ideas are debated. "And then we choose the best of the best to decide what to spend our time on," said Cook.

Apple employees debate on trends, new technologies, features, and categories to enter or not enter. One "healthy debate" was when Apple entered into the smart watch business.

A very healthy debate. And about what it could eventually do for people. And how much emphasis to place on the health and fitness side of that. You know, where to put the the relative balance. You could imagine, there's an incredible set of features in the watch just to do things like curate when you're interrupted, and people are now taking calls on them. And sort of the- the things that you would think is part and parcel to the iPhone, but in a curated manner. And- or you could, to put the emphasis on fitness and health, and so forth. And we've elected to do some of this, in a great way.

Cook said that he himself has always believed that to enrich someone's life, wellbeing is in the "top two or three," and he went on to speak about the importance of democratizing access to health features like the ECG in the Apple Watch Series 4. "Things like this, these are profound things," said Cook.

Privacy comes up in almost all interviews with Cook, and the CNBC interview was no exception. Cook said that privacy is "foundational" to the way that Apple runs, because Apple "works for the consumer." Cook said that Apple feels a "level of responsibility" to protect everything on your phone because of the depth of information that it contains.

But we don't want to use you as our product. And we just have a fundamental issue with doing that. And we've always thought that the building of a detailed profile about your life could result in tragic things. Whether it's a breach of your own privacy or something where the data itself could be used in a nefarious way. And so, we've never thought it was right to do it, and we've always thought that you owned it.

Cook went on to say that he's frustrated tech is seen as monolithic, lumping Apple in with other companies like Facebook. "We don't traffic in your data," said Cook. "We very much are on your side. We also curate our platform."

Pivoting to acquisitions, Cook said that Apple has purchased 20 to 25 companies over the course of the last six months or so, purchasing a company "every two to three weeks." Some of those acquisitions are known, but many of them go under the radar for months and even years.

Cook's interview, with more detail on privacy and other topics, can be watched in its entirety over at CNBC.

Former Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts left the company last month, and ahead of her departure, she sat down to share her thoughts on her experiences at Apple on LinkedIn's Hello Monday podcast.

Apple hired Ahrendts in in 2014, after Apple CEO Tim Cook listened to her April 2013 TED talk on "the positive and transformative power of human energy." Cook told her after that moment that he knew she was "supposed to be [at Apple]," which was the "pivotal moment" in her decision to leave her role as Burberry CEO and join Apple's executive team. "He was so calm, and so deep and just the way that he said it..." she said. "I'd never had that in interaction with another person."

Switching careers and leaving fashion for a tech company made her "incredibly insecure," and she says she spent first six months at Apple "fairly silent" because she wanted to listen to get her bearings and gain confidence in her role.

Get in your lane, bring your gifts to the table, right? They don't expect you to learn - you're used to being the CEO in an industry that you grew up in for 30 some odd years. You're used to knowing everything. And now you go in at a senior level and you know nothing but no, wait a minute: You know what you do.

[Apple] was a titanic retail business at that point, with 55,000 employees all over the world. And so, okay, maybe I'm here because I'm a leader and maybe I'm here because I'm a brand builder. I wouldn't go as far as say visionary, but I thrive on looking out two or three years and feeling what's coming and warning everybody and uniting everybody around a strategy to be prepared for that.

According to Ahrendts, she learned three things during her time at Apple: never forget where you came from, move faster than you could ever fathom, and never forget that you have a greater responsibility.

Ahrendts said when she joined Apple and went out to visit retail stores, she'd hear phrases like "Steve said our job was to enrich lives," and "Steve said this and wrote that." While she could have disregarded that, she didn't.

I could have thrown all that out, but [I thought] no let's codify that. Let's protect that. So, my first lesson, what I've learned from them after I hit 140 stores (what that taught me) is never forget where you came from, and use that as your foundation.

On the second lesson, that things move quickly, Ahrendts said that customers expect leadership to change and adapt with the times and the current technology. Apple wanted retail leaders to "move fast, fast." "So we got rid of all the manuals, got rid of everything, started doing three minute YouTube," said Ahrendts. "That's how we united and aligned 70,000 [retail employees] around the world."

Ahrendts' last lesson, on a greater responsibility to humanity, sounds like something that Apple CEO ‌Tim Cook‌ and other Apple executives have said many times before.

The third thing was, never forget that you have a greater responsibility. That it is not just about operating stores, it is not just about selling phones, it is not. You have a much greater responsibility. And maybe that's what Steve meant when he talked about enriching lives and, and when he talked about liberal arts and technology and the impact it could have on humanity.

I didn't dare use the word humanity, but I would talk to the teams about the impact they could make in their community. And that's what the Today at Apple experience, which is free of charge, teaches. It's not a coincidence that it's only teaching liberal arts: how to make you a better videographer or photographer or app developer or musician. Because I do believe that that's what you're going to need in the future. But I also believed that maybe liberal arts was a little bit of what was missing in the [Apple] stores.

So, you gotta look back. You have to never forget where you came from. You're just coming in as a steward in a very short period of time. You're going to turn the baton over. I always say I never ask for a title, I never ask for a raise, I've never asked for anything. All I've done is always try to do what's best for the company at that point in time and everything else just falls into place.

So I think my counsel to the next generation would be "be selfless" and you will make an incredible impact.

Ahrendts has now moved on from Apple, but she had a major impact on the way Apple Stores run and many stores around the world have been updated with new store designs that have a community focus.

Deirdre O'Brien, formerly Apple's vice president of people, has taken over Ahrendts' role and will be overseeing Apple's retail initiatives going forward.

The full interview with Ahrendts, which includes details on her early life and her time at Burberry, can be listened to on the Podcasts app, on the web, through iTunes, or wherever else podcasts are available.

Until further notice, repairs of 38mm aluminum Apple Watch Series 2 models will be fulfilled with equivalent Series 3 models due to a temporary shortage of unspecified parts, according to an internal document shared with Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers today.

The internal document, obtained by MacRumors, reminds technicians that Series 3 models require an iPhone compatible with watchOS 4 or later. Apple instructs technicians to notify ‌iPhone‌ 5 and ‌iPhone‌ 5c customers of their option to upgrade their ‌iPhone‌ to resolve this incompatibility.

If a customer is unable to accept the substitute Series 3 model, Apple says they can contact Apple support to request a refund.

Apple has offered similar Apple Watch repair substitutions in the past due to parts shortages, providing some lucky customers with an upgrade to a newer generation of the device at a fraction of the brand new price, but we obviously do not recommend abusing this temporary good-will policy.

To initiate a repair, head to the Get Support page on Apple's website and book an appointment with an Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider. We cannot guarantee that all locations will acknowledge existence of this internal policy, especially given it has no firm end date, so your mileage may vary.

Microsoft has kicked off its annual Build developer conference in Seattle with a preview of its upcoming Edge web browser for Mac.

In a blog post detailing new features coming to Edge, which is being rebuilt with the same open source Chromium rendering engine as used by Google Chrome, Microsoft provided a sneak peek at how the browser will look on macOS. While only a brief glimpse, the browser looks somewhat similar to Chrome.

Microsoft shipped its first preview builds of its revamped Edge browser for Windows last month, but the browser remains listed as "coming soon" for macOS. The Verge believes the Mac version will be available "very soon," likely including both the Canary and Dev channel builds as on Windows.

Edge will be Microsoft's first web browser on the Mac since Internet Explorer received its last feature update nearly 16 years ago. Internet Explorer was the default web browser on the Mac between 1998 and 2003, when Apple released Safari on Mac OS X Panther, which has been the default ever since.

Edge succeeded Internet Explorer as the default web browser on Windows in 2015 and is also available for iOS and Android.

Update: According to a post shared on reddit, a canary version of Microsoft's Edge browser is now available for download. [Direct Download Link]

Apple CEO Tim Cook made a surprise appearance at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska over the weekend, where he said he is "thrilled" that billionaire Warren Buffett is an investor in the iPhone maker.

At the start of the shareholder meeting, Cook made a cameo appearance in a humorous short film in which Buffett visits a top-secret lab at Apple to try to come up with ideas for an app and other inventions, including a time machine where Buffett tells his childhood self to buy Apple stock, according to CNN.

Cook ultimately suggests a newspaper-tossing ‌iPhone‌ game. Buffett was a childhood newspaper carrier who for years held newspaper-tossing contests during the annual meeting, according to the Omaha World-Herald.

As it turns out, the game is actually real.

Warren Buffett's Paper Wizard, a free download on the App Store, tasks players with flinging newspapers to collect Warren Bucks. The game gradually increases in difficulty as players make their way from Omaha to Apple's hometown of Cupertino, California, including a visit to Apple Park.

Think you can toss a newspaper like the legendary Warren Buffett? Test your paper-flinging skills as you make your way from the streets of Omaha, Nebraska, all the way to Cupertino, California. Avoid vehicles and birds as you deliver papers to buildings near and far. Will anyone collect enough Warren Bucks to dethrone the Paper Wizard? Probably not.

While the game's developer is listed as Wildlife Designs, Inc on the ‌App Store‌, the app is copyrighted, maintained, and operated by Apple according to its terms and conditions, making this the first game Apple has developed for the ‌iPhone‌ since Texas Hold'em back when the ‌App Store‌ launched in 2008.

In an interview with CNBC, Cook said Buffett has made it clear he does not invest in technology companies, meaning he "obviously views Apple as a consumer company." Cook also said Apple acquires a company every two to three weeks on average, including 20 to 25 companies in the last six months.