MacRumors

Apple is planning to work with Stanford and telemedicine vendor American Well to determine whether the heart rate sensor in the Apple Watch can be used to detect abnormal heart rhythms and common heart conditions, reports CNBC.

An Apple Watch, if able to accurately detect arrhythmias, or abnormal heart patterns, could identify patients that are at a high risk of atrial fibrillation or similar conditions. Heart arrhythmias aren't always symptoms of a serious disease, but Apple Watch owners could find out about a problem from the Apple Watch and then get it checked out at a doctor if the device is determined to accurately predict heart problems.

"Atrial fibrillation is a common rhythm disorder and knowing someone has it is medically useful because those people might need specific treatments," said Bob Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco.

A study conducted by the University of California, San Francisco and the team behind the Cardiogram app previously determined that the Apple Watch was able to detect abnormal heart rhythms with 97 percent accuracy. Apple could get even better results as it has access to raw data.

Just today, Apple CEO Tim Cook talked about Apple's health interests in an interview with Fortune. He said Apple is "extremely interested" in health, and that it represents a major business opportunity.

If you look at it, medical health activity is the largest or second-largest component of the economy, depending on which country in the world you're dealing with. And it hasn't been constructed in a way where the focus at the device level is making great products from a pure point of view. The focus has been on making products that can get reimbursed through the insurance companies, through Medicare, or through Medicaid. And so in some ways we bring a totally fresh view into this and say, 'Forget all of that. What will help people?'

Cook also said that Apple has been surprised to learn how the heart rate monitoring in the Apple Watch has already been helping people. Many people collect data with the Apple Watch, notice something amiss, and then go to the doctor to get it checked out. "A not-insignificant number have found out if they hadn't come into the doctor they would have died," said Cook.

Apple's study in partnership with American Well and Stanford is set to begin later this year, according to CNBC's sources.

When customers who are members of the iPhone Upgrade Program go to trade in their devices this fall, they will likely be able to use a Trade-in Kit that's delivered by mail rather than being forced to visit an Apple Store to purchase a new device and trade in the old one.

Mail-in Trade-in Kits, highlighted this afternoon on the MacRumors forums, have been available as part of the iPhone Upgrade Program at least since July, and perhaps even earlier, but they were not an option during the iPhone 7 launch.

Based on wording on the iPhone Upgrade Program website, once a customer's new iPhone ships, Apple will send a Trade-in Kit with a prepaid shipping label to allow customers to send their current device back to Apple.

Last year, many iPhone Upgrade Program users were forced to reserve a new iPhone from a local Apple retail store due to in-store trade-in requirements, which left them with limited stock to choose from. Many customers were unhappy, perhaps prompting Apple to offer a mail-in exchange option.

With the new trade-in by mail option, iPhone Upgrade Program users may not be restricted to in-store stock this year, preventing many of the problems that surfaced last year.

Unfortunately, T-Mobile customers who are members of the iPhone Upgrade Program will still need to visit an Apple Store and will not be able to upgrade online.

Apple is planning to introduce a new 4K-compatible Apple TV at tomorrow's event, and the revamped fifth-generation set-top box could also include a redesigned Siri Remote that features haptic feedback.

Developer Guilherme Rambo dug into leaked golden master software that was released over the weekend and found "actuator calibration" and "force calibration" references, suggesting haptic feedback for the remote.

There's been little mention of design changes to the upcoming Apple TV, so it's not clear if the new Siri Remote will feature the same look and feel as the remote for the fourth-generation Apple TV or if there will be other design changes included alongside haptic feedback.

Haptic feedback is designed to provide tactile feedback when interacting with a device, letting users know a press or tap has been registered by the user interface. Apple embraced haptic feedback as a main UI element in the iPhone with the introduction of the Taptic Engine in 2015, but haptic feedback has been used in Macs and iOS devices for years.

The Siri Remote could adopt an iPhone-style Taptic Engine to provide touch-based feedback when activating Siri, browsing through menus, accessing the Home screen, and more.

According to earlier leaks, Apple is planning to call its fifth-generation Apple TV the "Apple TV 4K." The device features a three-core A10X Fusion chip and 3GB RAM. It will render natively at 2160p, support a variety of color formats including HDR10 and Dolby Vision, and it will require a 15Mb/s internet connection for 4K streaming.

Ahead of the launch of iOS 11, Apple VP of marketing Greg Joswiak sat down with several publications to talk about Siri, the personal assistant built into all major Apple devices. His interview with Wired was published last week, and today, Fast Company published its interview, in which Joswiak talks Siri and privacy, among other topics.

It's been long believed that Apple's Siri development has been hindered by the company's deep commitment to privacy, but according to Joswiak, privacy, respect for user data, and an intelligent AI can co-exist.

"I think it's a false narrative," he told Fast Company. "We're able to deliver a very personalized experience... without treating you as a product that keeps your information and sells it to the highest bidder. That's just not the way we operate."

Much of Apple's Siri functionality is done on-device, rather than in the cloud like other services. In Apple's 2017 software updates, that's shifting slightly with the company planning to allow Siri to communicate across devices to learn more about users. Still, many things, like Siri's ability to find photos with a specific photo or date are powered on-device.

"Your device is incredibly powerful, and it's even more powerful with each generation," Joswiak said. "And with our focus on privacy, we're able to really take advantage of exploiting that power with things like machine learning on your device to create an incredible experience without having to compromise your data."

Apple does use the cloud to answer requests and to train Siri, but it strips all user identifiable data. All Siri requests are stripped of user ID and supplied with a random request ID, with the request then encrypted and sent to the cloud. Apple stores six months of voice recordings to allow its voice recognition engine to get a better understanding of users. A second copy of recordings can be stored for up to two years, also with the aim of improving Siri.

"We leave out identifiers to avoid tying utterances to specific users so we can do a lot of machine learning and a lot of things in the cloud without having to know that it came from [the user]," said Joswiak.

Alongside Joswiak, Apple's Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software weighed in on Siri's future in an email to Fast Company. "Siri is no longer just a voice assistant," he said. "Siri on-device intelligence is streamlining everyday interactions with our devices."

He went on to say that with iOS 11, macOS High Sierra, tvOS 11, and watchOS 4, users will "experience even more Siri functionality." He went on to say that in the "years to come," Siri functionality will be "ever more integral" to the core user experience on all of the company's platforms, from Mac to iPhone to Apple TV.

Federighi and Joswiak's full Siri interview, which provides more insight into the inner workings of Siri and Apple's commitment to privacy, can be read over at Fast Company.

Following several months of construction, Apple tomorrow will host its first-ever event at Steve Jobs Theater at its new Apple Park headquarters. Apple invited members of the press to the event on August 31.

Records uncovered by VentureBeat, however, show Apple didn't receive approval to host the event until the next day.

Cupertino, California city officials granted Apple a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy for Steve Jobs Theater on September 1, indicating that the theater has passed various fire and safety checks. The final signature was September 4.

Despite needing additional work of some kind, per the records, Steve Jobs Theater is now deemed to be a safe venue for the hundreds of journalists and other invitees that will sit down for tomorrow's iPhone X reveal.

Apple filed for the certificate on August 8, so it's likely that Tim Cook or another senior executive told Cupertino to hold off on signing the paperwork, which would have hinted at the location of Apple's September event.

Apple is among few companies that would go to such lengths to obscure or delay such information, but unfortunately for it, a leak of the iOS 11 golden master version has revealed many details expected to be announced tomorrow.

In addition to the iPhone X, Apple is widely rumored to unveil the less expensive iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, a new Apple TV with 4K video playback, and Apple Watch Series 3 models, including some with LTE connectivity.

MacRumors.com will provide full coverage of the keynote, which begins tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time.

Apple has ranked third on Fortune's annual list of companies that "change the world" based on the social impact of their core businesses, and CEO Tim Cook sat down for a related interview with executive editor Adam Lashinsky.

Cook agreed that Apple has changed the world, primarily through its products, which simply enable people to accomplish more.

I think the No. 1 way Apple changes the world is through our products. We make products for people that are tools to enable them to do things that they couldn’t otherwise do—to enable them to create or learn or teach or play. Or do something really wonderful.

He added that Apple has also changed the world through environmentalism, education, and advocacy for human rights, privacy, and philanthropy.

When asked why Apple doesn't run a charitable foundation, Cook said having a "separate thing" with a separate board of directors "wouldn't be Apple."

My view, we do a lot more good with a 120,000 people behind it than we would putting 12 people over in a corner to make decisions. I’m not criticizing people that do that. I think maybe they found a way and maybe it’s great. But it wouldn’t be Apple.

Cook mentioned Apple's free Swift Playgrounds curriculum as an example of how its products enable people to learn and create.

… And the whole concept of Swift is you make a coding language that has the ease of use of our products. And so everybody can learn it. Yet, it's powerful enough to write the most complex apps that you'd ever want to dream up. And then we thought, well, what else can we do, and so we came out with Swift Playgrounds, a curriculum for say K4, K5, sort of in that age range. And that began to take off. And so then we took a step back and we made a bigger program for all of K–12 called “Everyone Can Code."

Those people who learn to code may eventually become developers. Cook reiterated that the App Store economy supports millions of jobs.

Cook later disagreed with Lashinsky's opinion that Apple's business strategy is to "make premium-priced, high-margin, high-end products."

Well it's not high margin. I wouldn't use that word. There's a lot of companies that have much higher margins. We price for the value of our products. And we try to make the very best products. And that means we don't make commodity kind of products. And we don't disparage people that do; it's a fine business model. But it's not the business that we're in.

But if you look across our product lines, you can buy an iPad today for under $300. You can buy an iPhone, depending upon which one you select, for in that same kind of ballpark. And so these are not for the rich. We obviously wouldn't have over a billion products that are in our active installed base if we were making them for the rich because that's a sizable number no matter who's looking at the numbers.

Cook also hinted that Apple has "much more" to accomplish in the health-related area, and hinted at future products or services to come.

There's much more in the health area. There's a lot of stuff that I can't tell you about that we’re working on, some of which it's clear there's a commercial business there. And some of it it's clear there’s not. And some of it it's not clear. I do think it's a big area for Apple's future.

Full Interview: Tim Cook on How Apple Champions the Environment, Education, and Health Care via Fortune

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo issued a research note to investors today in which he said Apple's current iPhone X production totals less than just 10,000 units per day. For this reason, Kuo anticipates the iPhone X will remain in "severe short supply for a while" following its expected launch later this month.

Kuo also anticipates that the so-called "Blush Gold" colored iPhone X will encounter some production problems and will initially be available only in "extremely low volume." He said there is even a chance that the gold version will go on sale at a later date than the other colorways, which are rumored to be silver and black.

Here's the excerpt from Kuo's research note obtained by MacRumors:

Due to component supply constraints, we estimate current production of the OLED iPhone at less than 10k units per day, which means the model will remain in severe short supply for a while. Furthermore, we estimate that the gold version of the OLED iPhone will encounter some production problems and will initially be available only in extremely low volume. There is even a chance that the gold version will go on sale at a later date than the other versions. However, we believe these shipment delays will have a limited impact on the shares of Apple and its supply chain members.

Apple is expected to unveil the iPhone X, a new Apple TV with 4K video, and Apple Watch Series 3 models with LTE at its first-ever event at Steve Jobs Theater tomorrow. Join us at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time for complete coverage.

Chinese company Xiaomi today held an event in Beijing, where it unveiled new products that will rival the MacBook Pro and iPhone X.

First up was the new Mi Notebook Pro, with a fully metal enclosure that looks virtually identical to Apple's latest MacBook Pro in Space Gray.

Mi Notebook Pro is equipped with a 15.6-inch display with narrow bezels, a full-sized backlit keyboard, custom Harman Infinity speakers with Dolby Atmos sound, and seven ports: USB-C, data-only USB-C, dual USB 3.0, full-sized HDMI, a 3-in-1 SD card slot, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The notebook is equipped with up to Intel's new eighth-generation Core i7 quad-core processor, up to 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics card, and 256GB of SSD storage. It will run Windows 10 Home Edition out of the box, with support for Windows Hello fingerprint authentication.

Mi Notebook Pro pricing ranges from about $850 to $1,075 based on current exchange rates, which is under half the price of the latest 15-inch MacBook Pro, but The Verge found it only has a 1080p display.

Next up was the Mi Mix 2 smartphone, which has a nearly edge to edge 5.99-inch display on the front of the device, beyond a small bottom bezel or "chin" that is 12 percent slimmer than the original Mi Mix.

Mi Mix 2 is equipped with a 64-bit Snapdragon 835 processor, 6GB of RAM, up to 256GB of storage, a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera with four-axis optical image stabilization, and a rear fingerprint scanner. An earpiece speaker is hidden along the top edge, while the front-facing camera is housed in the bottom bezel.

Mi Mix 2 will likely ship with Xiaomi's MIUI operating system, based on Android. Pricing starts at about $500 at current exchange rates.

Like other Xiaomi products, the Mi Notebook Pro and Mi Mix 2 will be available soon in China, followed by other global markets. The devices will likely be available through resellers only in the United States.

Other announcements included a special ceramic edition of the Mi Mix 2 and a new Mi Note 3 phablet with dual cameras.

Xiaomi's event took place just one day before Apple's first-ever event at the brand new Steve Jobs Theater at its new Apple Park headquarters.

Apple's upcoming fifth-generation 4K Apple TV will be powered by an A10X Fusion chip and 3GB of RAM, according to details unearthed in the device's firmware.

Developer Steve Troughton-Smith made the claim this morning in a tweet, after going through code in the final software builds that were at the center of a major Apple leak over the weekend.

Apple's current fourth-generation Apple TV, originally released in 2015, runs on an A8 chip coupled with 2GB of RAM. But the boost in performance provided by the A10 series – which also powers the latest iPad Pro models – suggests Apple could see a bigger role for its next set-top box, possibly expanding beyond 4K content.

On the other hand, Troughton-Smith believes Apple may have chosen the A10X Fusion processor to play 4K content at 60 frames per second, which would make sense given that the iPhone X is expected to record 4K video at 60fps.

Even if that is the primary reason for including such a powerful chip in the next Apple TV, users can expect significant performance gains across the board, while tvOS game developers will be rubbing their hands together at the prospect of leveraging the processor's power to create immersive 3D experiences to rival modern console titles.

The 3GB of RAM would bring the extra working memory needed to stream 4K HDR content, which is expected to become available both in the iTunes Store and from third-party content providers, but the additional RAM may also factor into any role the Apple TV has in Apple's augmented reality future plans.

The ARKit developer framework is already turning out to be a major feature of Apple's upcoming iPhone 8 and iPhone X devices, which are set to be announced on Tuesday alongside a new Apple TV and Apple Watch, during a media event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Apple Park, Cupertino. Several details about Apple's iPhone X have already been found in the iOS 11 GM, including information on Face ID setup, Animoji, the split status bar, the A11 processor, and the device's design.

Details about the unreleased iPhones Apple will announce on Tuesday continue to trickle out from the iOS 11 golden master that was leaked on Friday, and the latest information, sourced from developer Steve Troughton-Smith, confirms the RAM we can expect to see in the three devices.

The upcoming 5.8-inch OLED iPhone X and the 5.5-inch iPhone 8 Plus will both offer 3GB RAM while the 4.7-inch iPhone 8 will include 2GB RAM.

That's in line with rumors about the three devices sourced from reliable KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who previously suggested the two larger devices would have 3GB RAM while the smaller 4.7-inch iPhone would continue to offer 2GB RAM.

Kuo also said the DRAM transfer speed in the three new models would be faster than the iPhone 7 by 10 to 15 percent to enable better AR performance, but that has not yet been confirmed.

Currently, the iPhone 7 Plus has 3GB RAM while the iPhone 7 has 2GB RAM, with the 7 Plus featuring more RAM to support the dual-lens camera. Both the iPhone 8 Plus and the iPhone X will feature dual-lens cameras, with the iPhone X offering a new vertical camera arrangement.

Apple is planning to announce three iPhones at its September 12 event, with names for the device confirmed earlier this weekend. The high-end 5.8-inch device with an OLED display will be called the "iPhone X," while the two other 4.7 and 5.5-inch devices with standard LCD displays and designs similar to the existing iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will be called the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus, respectively.

Many other details about the iPhone X surfaced this weekend in the iOS 11 GM, including information on Face ID setup, Apple Pay with Face ID, Animoji, the split status bar, the A11 processor, and the design and size of the device.

Over the weekend, the iOS 11 golden master software leaked out, revealing a wealth of details about Apple's unreleased devices just days ahead of their official unveiling.

New tidbits continue to come to light as developers dig through the software, and today we're hearing details on the new A11 processor in Apple's upcoming iPhone lineup, the Apple TV's resolution and 4K streaming requirements, and how Apple Pay will work with Face ID. There's also a confirmation that wireless charging is coming.

The iPhone X includes a new Face ID facial recognition system that replaces Touch ID. There have been some questions about how Apple Pay will work with the feature, and a new discovery from developer Jeffrey Grossman provides some clues. It seems the iPhone X will authenticate a payment using facial recognition, with payment confirmed using a double click on the side button (sleep/wake button) of the device.

There's also a reference to Face ID on both the iPhone and the iPad and iPod touch, suggesting Apple could potentially bring Face ID to future iPads and iPod touch models.

The A11 Fusion chip expected to be built into the iPhone X, the iPhone 8, and the iPhone 8 Plus is a 4+2 core device, according to developer Steve Troughton-Smith and Twitter user Longhorn. It appears two of the cores are higher-power cores and four of the cores are lower-power cores, though this is not entirely clear (earlier it was suggested there were four higher-power cores and two lower-power cores). Either way, the arrangement is similar to the A10 chip, which is a quad-core SoC with two high-performance cores and two energy efficient cores.

As discovered by developer Guilherme Rambo, there are references to wireless charging in the iPhone 11 GM, confirming a new wireless charging feature. The software doesn't include many details on how wireless charging will work, but rumors have suggested Apple will use inductive wireless charging, which is how the Apple Watch is charged.

Apple's wireless charging is said to use the Qi standard, and it will be enabled through inductive charging accessories. Apple is planning to allow third-party manufacturers to create Qi-based charging accessories, but Made for iPhone certification may be required. Rumors suggest Apple devices will support 7.5 watts of power when charging inductively, and the wireless charging feature is expected to be included in all Apple iPhones coming this year.

Finally, developer Steve Troughton-Smith yesterday discovered the upcoming 4K Apple TV will render natively at 2160p and will support several color formats, including HDR10 and Dolby Vision. 4K streaming on the device will also require a minimum of a 15Mb/s connection.

Earlier leaks have confirmed Apple's naming plans (we'll see an OLED iPhone X, an iPhone 8, and an iPhone 8 Plus), revealed the Face ID setup process, given us a look at the split status bar on the iPhone X, hinted at new animated "Animoji" that will be based on user facial expression, confirmed an LTE Apple Watch, and more.

Update: The A11 section of this post was updated with new details -- it appears the A11 is a 6-core chip with two high power cores and four low power cores.