MacRumors

Catcher Technology, a Taiwanese company that manufacturers metal casings for Apple products like iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks, will make parts for an augmented reality product, according to Nikkei Asian Review.

"Based on what we have learned, [new AR products] need to look good and be light enough to wear ... that makes the casings for such device very complicated to manufacture and there are still a lot of challenges to overcome currently," Catcher Chairman Allen Horng told analysts and reporters in an earnings conference on Tuesday.

Horng would not disclose which company was behind the augmented reality product, but given the comments and Catcher's relationship with Apple, the report has reignited speculation about so-called Apple Glasses.

Apple is reportedly exploring digital glasses that would connect wirelessly to iPhones and "show images and other information in the wearer's field of vision." The company supposedly has prototyped "several different kinds" of wearable augmented reality products, but a launch is still far away.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, who has repeatedly expressed a "profound interest" in augmented reality, recently said "the technology itself doesn't exist" to make the glasses "in a quality way." He said there are "huge challenges" with "the display technology required, as well as putting enough stuff around your face."

Jeff Pu, an analyst at Taipei-based Yuanta Investment Consulting, believes Apple's glasses will go on sale as soon as the end of 2019. Earlier reports mentioned 2018 as a possible timeframe, but that sounds increasingly unlikely.

Today's report marks the second time Catcher Technology has surfaced in the Apple rumor mill this week. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on Monday said the company will supply Apple with "more complex" metal frames for iPhones launching in 2018 for the purpose of improving cellular signal and data transmission.

AT&T chief John Donovan has confirmed that demand for the iPhone X has been "strong" following the device's "highly-anticipated" launch in the United States and over 50 other countries just four days ago.

"All the signs are that customers love it. It's probably the most highly-anticipated version… and demand has been strong. So we're pleased," Donovan said at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Portugal, per CNBC.

Apple no longer provides first weekend sales numbers for iPhone launches, and it doesn't reveal iPhone sales on a model-by-model basis in its quarterly earnings results, but it did say pre-order demand was "off the charts."

We are thrilled to be taking orders for iPhone X, the future of the smartphone. We can see from the initial response, customer demand is off the charts. We're working hard to get this revolutionary new product into the hands of every customer who wants one, as quickly as possible.

Apple's guidance for the current quarter is between $84 billion and $87 billion, which would easily be an all-time record even at the lower end of that range, suggesting that iPhone X sales are and will remain very strong.

Localytics, a mobile engagement platform used by more than 37,000 apps, said iPhone X adoption outpaced iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus adoption over the first three days of availability following each device's respective launches.

iPhone X online orders placed today are estimated to ship in 3-4 weeks around the world. The device is also available to purchase in stores, but inventory is extremely limited right now, especially outside of the United States.

Walmart announced "Walmart Pay" in December of 2015, bundling its mobile payment solution directly into the Walmart app for iOS and Android devices and entering the market one year after Apple's own Apple Pay launched in 2014. Now available nationwide in 4,774 Walmart stores, Walmart Pay is "close to surpassing" Apple Pay in terms of mobile payments usage in the United States (via Bloomberg).

According to Daniel Eckert, senior vice president of Walmart services and digital acceleration, Walmart Pay is enrolling "tens of thousands of new users a day," and has seen a steady growth over the past few months. Two-thirds of those who try it use it again within twenty-one days. These statistics give Eckert confidence that Walmart Pay will soon beat Apple Pay in the U.S., "in terms of use by shoppers in stores where they're accepted."

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s app is close to surpassing Apple Pay in usage for mobile payments in the U.S., giving the world’s largest retailer even more clout as a growing number of people shop with their smartphones.

“If daily enrollments don’t slow down, I think that’s pretty well in the cards shortly,” said Eckert, senior vice president for services and digital acceleration. “I would have to imagine we are getting pretty close.”

Market researcher Richard Crone predicted that Walmart Pay will grow bigger than Apple Pay in active U.S. users (who use the mobile wallets for at least two transactions per month) by the end of 2018. Walmart and Apple reportedly held discussions in early 2016 that centered upon incorporating Apple Pay into the Walmart iOS app, but fell through because of the "difficulty of blending the technology underpinning each company's approach."

Walmart is said to have begun gaining ground on Apple earlier in 2017, when 5.1 percent of Walmart shoppers said they used Walmart Pay this past June, just below the 5.5 percent of iPhone users who said the same at locations that accept Apple Pay. In terms of other competitors, Walmart Pay's adoption rate is "higher than Samsung Pay and Android Pay combined." One analyst pointed out this is likely because Walmart owns and controls the mobile wallet software and "can make quick changes."

“Apple Pay’s road is much more difficult than Wal-Mart’s is,” Brendan Miller, an analyst at Forrester Research, said in a phone interview. “It means that Wal-Mart can make quicker changes, they can move faster in many respects than Apple Pay.” Forrester’s survey of 58,000 online consumers in the first half of 2017 found that 7 percent of them used Apple Pay in the past three months, while 6 percent used Walmart Pay.

Although the services are similar in their payment goals, there are a few differences between Walmart Pay and Apple Pay. Walmart's mobile wallet presents users with a barcode that has to be scanned to complete a transaction, unlike Apple Pay's NFC tap-based system. Walmart Pay also incorporates all of a user's in-store offers, promotions, rewards, and gift card balances in one place, which Apple Pay is still inconsistent in supporting for many stores.

Despite their close rivalry in the mobile wallet space, Walmart is reportedly "more interested" in directly competing with Amazon than Apple. Over the past year, Amazon has been expanding quickly in the grocery space with its various test projects like Amazon Go and its acquisition of Whole Foods. Walmart said it will continue focusing on expanding the features of Walmart Pay as more competition emerges, and according to Crone the debut of the software has provided a solid launchpad for the company's future: "They flawlessly deployed the system, and it works."

The iPhone X is the first new iPhone design Apple has introduced since 2014, and the most radical redesign since the iPhone first debuted in 2007.

With a revamped user interface and a slew of new features, there's a lot to get used to, and there are a bunch of hidden functions that aren't immediately obvious. We've rounded up some of the most important things you need to know about the iPhone X in the video below.

- Turning on reachability
- Quickly zooming in on YouTube videos
- Best methods for closing apps
- Disabling Attention awareness to make Face ID less sensitive
- Using the Lock screen icons
- Using Animoji
- Turning off iPhone X
- Taking a screenshot
- Using Apple Pay
- Adding an on-screen Home button

Make sure to check out the video for a full rundown on how to use all of these tips for a better iPhone X experience, and if you haven't already, subscribe to our YouTube channel because we have plenty more iPhone X videos in the works that we'll be sharing later this week.

Apple's new iPhone X costs $357.50 to make, according to estimates sourced from TechInsights and shared today by Reuters. At an estimated $357.50 to produce with a price tag of $999, the iPhone X has a gross margin of 64 percent, higher than the iPhone 8's gross margin of 59 percent.

Several of the components in the iPhone X are more expensive than their iPhone 8 counterparts, according to TechInsights. The 5.8-inch edge-to-edge display, for example, costs an estimated $65.50, compared to $36 for the 4.7-inch display of the iPhone 8.

Following the launch of the iPhone 8, estimates suggested its raw component cost came in at $247.51, with the cost for the iPhone 8 Plus estimated at $288.08. Those estimates were sourced from IHS iMarkit, a research firm, while today's come from TechInsights, a company that does device teardowns and analysis.

Component cost estimates from companies like TechInsights and IHS look only at the price of raw components and do not take into account other iPhone manufacturing expenses like research and development, software creation, advertising, and distribution. While interesting, these estimates are not an accurate measurement of Apple's profit margin for the iPhone X, nor are they an accurate picture of the overall cost of creating the device.

According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, cost breakdowns are generally "much different than the reality." "I've never seen one that is anywhere close to being accurate," he said in 2015.

Travel photographer Austin Mann often goes hands-on with new iPhone models to test their camera performance in real world situations, and with the iPhone X, he went to Guatemala to evaluate its new features and its capabilities compared to previous iPhone cameras.

Mann loved the size of the iPhone X as a photography device. Previous Plus models, he says, have been "a bit unwieldy" and tough to operate with one hand, a problem solved with the iPhone X.

As for image quality, Mann was impressed by the improved telephoto lens, which features optical image stabilization for the first time and an improved aperture for better performance in low light situations. Mann says he noticed less noise, faster auto focusing, and better shutter speeds for reduced motion blur.

The lens specs for the iPhone X are 28mm @ f/1.8 and 52mm @ f/2.4 (previously, the Plus was 56mm at f/2.8.) This little tweak means the lens is half a stop faster and can let light in more quickly in low light scenarios, reducing motion blur and minimizing noise.

In a test of slow shutter effects, the iPhone X was able to significantly outperform the iPhone 7 Plus, which was two seconds slower when focusing and and capturing a moving object in low light.

Display improvements made it much easier to shoot on the iPhone in direct sunlight compared to the iPhone 8 Plus, and Mann said "colors pop, blacks are truly black, and the contrast feels just right." Mann also saw microphone improvements, and Apple told him that while it's the same microphone hardware, it's been tuned to better capture dynamics.

All in all, Mann said the upgrade to the iPhone X was the "most exciting" since he switched from the Blackberry 7230 to the original iPhone back in 2007. Mann's full review can be read over at his website.

Separately, DxO also published its iPhone X test results this morning, giving the iPhone X's camera a score of 97. That beats out the iPhone 8 Plus at 94, but comes in just under the Pixel 2's score of 98.

The iPhone X received what DxO says are the best results so far for still images, with better exposure, color, texture, noise, and artifacts than competing cameras. Broken down, the iPhone X received a photo score of 101, but a video score of 89 because it struggles with under exposure, visible luminance noise, and irregularities in autofocus in poor lighting conditions.

DxO has been criticized for the subjectivity of its overall scores, but some of its category comparisons can offer up useful information when it comes to determining the best smartphone camera.

Longtime rivals Intel and AMD are joining forces to produce new 8th-Generation H-Series Intel mobile processors paired with stacked second-generation High Bandwidth Memory and custom-built discrete graphics from AMD, Intel announced today.

For the new H-Series chips, which feature all of the above listed components in a single processor package, Intel says is using its Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB), a power-sharing framework that reduces the standard silicon footprint to less than half that of standard discrete components on a motherboard.

At the heart of this new design is EMIB, a small intelligent bridge that allows heterogeneous silicon to quickly pass information in extremely close proximity. EMIB eliminates height impact as well as manufacturing and design complexities, enabling faster, more powerful and more efficient products in smaller sizes. This is the first consumer product that takes advantage of EMIB.

Intel has also developed unique software drivers and interfaces for the discrete GPU to coordinate information among all package elements, managing temperature and power delivery along with allowing system designers to optimize the power sharing between processor and graphics for specific tasks like performance gaming.

The partnership will allow AMD and Intel to better compete with Nvidia in the high-end laptop/compact desktop market.

There are, however, still a lot of unknowns about the chip, and Intel says more information will be available in the future. The first machines that use the new technology will be released in the first quarter of 2018.

Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its controversial Irish tax structure by moving the majority of its offshore cash holdings to the small island of Jersey, a self-governed territory with loose ties to the United Kingdom, according to leaked financial documents obtained by The New York Times and BBC.

Apple said it made regulators in the United States and Ireland, and the European Commission, aware about the reorganization of its Irish subsidiaries, and added that the changes haven't reduced its tax bill.

"The changes we made did not reduce our tax payments in any country," an Apple spokesperson told The New York Times. "At Apple we follow the laws, and if the system changes we will comply. We strongly support efforts from the global community toward comprehensive international tax reform and a far simpler system."

Apple turned to Jersey after European officials began to crack down on the so-called "Double Irish" tax structure Apple had exploited.

The "Double Irish" tax loophole allows for multinational corporations to funnel revenue through an Irish subsidiary, which in turn sends that money to another Irish subsidiary that has residency in a tax haven. In a nutshell, the practice has enabled Apple to save billions of dollars in taxes around the world.

The European Commission found Apple paid between 0.005 percent and 1 percent in taxes in Ireland from 2003 through 2014, compared to the country's headline 12.5 percent corporate tax rate. Apple CEO Tim Cook said the Commission's ruling against Apple was "total political crap" and that the tax rates were a "false number."

When questioned by the United States Senate investigative subcommittee in 2013, Cook said "we pay all the taxes we owe." He added that Apple doesn't "stash money on some Caribbean island."

While that was true at the time, it's clear Apple was exploring similar options as part of its tax minimization efforts.

"This is how it usually works: You close one tax shelter, and something else opens up," said Reuven Avi-Yonah, director of the international tax program at the University of Michigan Law School. "It just goes on endlessly."

Cook has made it clear that Apple is willing to repatriate some of its offshore cash holdings into the United States, but he recently said tax reform is "sorely needed" first. U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed lowering the headline corporate tax rate to 20 percent, down from 35 percent currently.

Update: Apple this afternoon shared a press release entitled "The facts about Apple's tax payments," which has been written in response to today's reports. Apple says there are several inaccuracies being circulated and it is aiming to correct them.

"The debate over Apple's taxes is not about how much we owe but where we owe it. As the largest taxpayer in the world we've paid over $35 billion in corporate income taxes over the past three years, plus billions of dollars more in property tax, payroll tax, sales tax and VAT. We believe every company has a responsibility to pay the taxes they owe and we're proud of the economic contributions we make to the countries and communities where we do business.

Under the current international tax system, profits are taxed based on where the value is created. The taxes Apple pays to countries around the world are based on that principle. The vast majority of the value in our products is indisputably created in the United States -- where we do our design, development, engineering work and much more -- so the majority of our taxes are owed to the US.

When Ireland changed its tax laws in 2015, we complied by changing the residency of our Irish subsidiaries and we informed Ireland, the European Commission and the United States. The changes we made did not reduce our tax payments in any country. In fact, our payments to Ireland increased significantly and over the last three years we've paid $1.5 billion in tax there -- 7 percent of all corporate income taxes paid in that country. Our changes also ensured that our tax obligation to the United States was not reduced.

We understand that some would like to change the tax system so multinationals' taxes are spread differently across the countries where they operate, and we know that reasonable people can have different views about how this should work in the future. At Apple we follow the laws, and if the system changes we will comply. We strongly support efforts from the global community toward comprehensive international tax reform and a far simpler system, and we will continue to advocate for that."

The release also provides details Apple has reiterated multiple times in the past, such as its position as the largest taxpayer in the world and the fact that it holds overseas cash because that's where the majority of its products are sold. Apple also again says that comprehensive international tax reform "is essential" and that it continues to advocate for a simplification of the tax code.

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.

A new study suggests the iPhone X recorded a higher adoption rate than the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus over each device's first three days of availability.

After the first weekend of sales, the device is estimated to have captured nearly one percent market share among all iPhone models, the highest over that time since the iPhone 5s, according to mobile engagement platform Localytics.

By comparison, Localytics measured iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus adoption of 0.3 percent and 0.4 percent respectively among all iPhone models after the first weekend of sales for those devices back in September.

The data suggests that many customers may have been waiting for the iPhone X instead of purchasing an iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus.

It's important to note that the data does not represent actual sales of the iPhone X, but rather measures users who have received the devices and started using one of the 37,000 apps integrated with the Localytics SDK.

It's also important to consider that there are significantly more iPhones in the market today than in previous years, so each new iPhone has a tougher challenge of gaining market share among all of the models before it.

Even if the adoption data from Localytics doesn't precisely line up with Apple's internal sales figures, the company's revenue guidance of between $84 billion and $87 billion in the current quarter does imply significant iPhone X sales, so there's a good chance the device is outpacing the iPhone 8 series.

Apple stopped releasing first weekend iPhone sales figures starting with the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, as demand typically outweighs supply, so the company feels it is no longer a representative metric for investors or customers.

In years past, we've announced how many new iPhones had been sold as of the first weekend following launch. But as we have expanded our distribution through carriers and resellers to hundreds of thousands of locations around the world, we are now at a point where we know before taking the first customer pre-order that we will sell out of iPhone 7.

These initial sales will be governed by supply, not demand, and we have decided that it is no longer a representative metric for our investors and customers. Therefore we won’t be releasing a first-weekend number any longer.

Apple has also never released iPhone sales figures on a model-by-model basis, but chief executive Tim Cook did reveal the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus were its best-selling models between their September release and iPhone X launch day.

iPhone X orders placed today ship in an estimated 3-4 weeks around the world, and the device also has limited in-store availability.

Apple today seeded the second beta of an upcoming macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 update to developers, one week after seeding the first beta and also a week after releasing macOS High Sierra 10.13.1.

The macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 beta can be downloaded from the Apple Developer Center or through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store with the proper profile installed.

It's not yet clear what improvements the second update to macOS High Sierra will bring, but it's likely to include bug fixes and performance improvements for issues that weren't addressed in macOS High Sierra 10.13.1.

The previous update, 10.13.1, introduced fixes for some serious security flaws and brought new emoji to the macOS operating system. No new features were found in the first beta of macOS High Sierra 10.13.2, but we'll update this post should new features be found in the second beta.