MacRumors

LG's new UltraFine 5K Display is now available for purchase for $974 on Apple's website in the United States, with orders initially estimated to ship in 3-5 business days but quickly slipping to 2-4 weeks.

Apple has extended its $974 sale price for the display until March 31, 2017, when the price will return to $1,299.95. The discount was previously set to expire on December 31, but it was likely extended due to the display's lack of availability until late into the month. Apple's discount on USB-C adapters is similarly extended.

Apple teamed up with LG to create both the 4K and 5K UltraFine Displays, specifically designed to work with the new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro. Both displays connect over a single cable, but the 5K display is only compatible with the new MacBook Pro, as it requires a Thunderbolt 3 connection.

LG's smaller 21.5-inch UltraFine 4K Display began shipping in early November, while the 5K version briefly became available to purchase in late November. The displays serve as a successor to Apple's own Thunderbolt Display, which it discontinued earlier this year amid its departure from the standalone display business.

The display's Thunderbolt 3 port enables pass-through charging to the new MacBook Pro at up to a full 85W. Its wide DCI-P3 color gamut shows more vibrant colors compared to the traditional sRGB standard. The display also has a built-in camera, microphone, stereo speakers, and three downstream USB-C ports at 5 Gbps speeds.

Tech Specs
• 27-inch IPS LED display
• 5,120×2,880 pixels resolution
• 16:9 at 217 PPI
• 60Hz refresh rate
• DCI-P3 wide color gamut
• 500 cd/m2 brightness
• 1 Thunderbolt 3 and 3 USB 3.1 Type-C ports
• Thunderbolt 3 cable included
• Power delivery up to 85W to new MacBook Pro

LG's UltraFine 5K Display is also available in Canada for $1,274, in Australia for $1,416.95, in the United Kingdom for £884, in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain for €1,049, in Hong Kong for $7,488, in Singapore for $1,408, and elsewhere. Pricing and shipping dates vary.

To compare the UltraFine 5K Display with the competition, read our Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C display buyer's guide.

Update 8:42 AM: Shipping estimates have already slipped to 2-4 weeks.

Apple is preparing modest updates to its Mac lineup for next year, including new iMac models with USB-C ports and new AMD graphics chips, and "minor bumps" in processing power for 12-inch MacBook and MacBook Pro models, according to Bloomberg.

Mac fans shouldn't hold their breath for radical new designs in 2017 though. Instead, the company is preparing modest updates: USB-C ports and a new Advanced Micro Devices Inc. graphics processor for the iMac, and minor bumps in processing power for the 12-inch MacBook and MacBook Pro. Cue the outrage.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo likewise said new iMacs will launch in the first half of 2017 in a research note shared earlier this year, while current iMac models have not been updated in 434 days per our Mac Buyer's Guide, so updates to Apple's consumer desktop lineup would be unsurprising. USB-C ports on new iMacs would likely double as Thunderbolt 3 ports akin to the new MacBook Pro.

Apple designers are also said to be exploring standalone keyboards with a Touch Bar and Touch ID for desktop computers. The report claims Apple will decide whether to release the keyboards depending upon how well the touchscreen strip and fingerprint scanner are received on new MacBook Pro models released a few months ago. Apple's current Magic Keyboard was released in October 2015.

Meanwhile, some Apple engineers have reportedly raised the possibility of moving Mac Pro production back to Asia, as these people believe the supply chain workers have the "required skills" for "ambitious" products. Apple currently assembles the Mac Pro in Texas as its only "Made in USA" computer, but the professional-oriented desktop machine has not been updated in three years.

Three years on, the Mac Pro is ripe for an upgrade with its chips and connector ports lagging rival products. Because of the earlier challenges, some Apple engineers have raised the possibility of moving production back to Asia, where it's cheaper and manufacturers have the required skills for ambitious products, according to a person familiar with those internal discussions.

President-elect Donald Trump recently said he will offer Apple incentives to bring manufacturing back to the United States, including a "very large tax cut" and reduced regulations. Apple CEO Tim Cook himself has said the majority of its products are made in China because the U.S. workforce has a smaller number of individuals with the "vocational kind of skills" needed.

Overall, the article suggests the Mac is "getting far less attention than it once did," partly due to "a lack of clear direction from senior management, departures of key people working on Mac hardware, and technical challenges."

Apple, for its part, told employees it has "great desktops" in its roadmap. Cook said the desktop is "very strategic" to Apple because the performance desktops can provide is "really important" to a lot of people and "critical" for others. He says the current iMac is the best desktop Apple's ever made and its 5K display is the best desktop display in the world. The fate of the Mac Pro and Mac mini is less clear.

In a comprehensive new Bloomberg article diving into the slow refresh cycle of Apple's line of Mac computers, and how the company slowly "alienated Mac loyalists," a few interesting tidbits surfaced providing insight into what could have been for the Touch Bar MacBook Pro, as well as the 12-inch Retina MacBook.

In the MacBook Pro line launched this past October, Apple planned to introduce "higher capacity battery packs" that would have been terraced and shaped to the inside compartment of the computer, boosting battery life in the process. According to a person familiar with the creation of the MacBook, the battery failed a "key test," so instead of delaying the laptop and missing the holiday shopping season, "Apple decided to revert to an older design." This created a domino effect that went on to hit other Mac design teams whose engineers were taken to finish the MacBook Pro.

In the run-up to the MacBook Pro's planned debut this year, the new battery failed a key test, according to a person familiar with the situation. Rather than delay the launch and risk missing the crucial holiday shopping season, Apple decided to revert to an older design.

The change required roping in engineers from other teams to finish the job, meaning work on other Macs languished, the person said. The new laptop didn't represent a game-changing leap in battery performance, and a software bug misrepresented hours of power remaining. Apple has since removed the meter from the top right-hand corner of the screen.

Battery life has been a big complaint among many MacBook Pro users, with some claiming in early December to get as little as 3 to 6 hours of battery life on a single charge. Some users claimed to see better battery life after updating to macOS 10.12.2 last week, but Apple "repeatedly and emphatically" told Ars Technica there are no specific battery life improvements included in the update. The laptop's battery "appeared to be performing as intended," according to the company.

The MacBook Pro is rated for up to 10 hours of battery life for the 13-inch and 15-inch laptop, but the Bloomberg article didn't specify how much that may have been increased by if the larger battery would have made it into the MacBook Pro.

The article continued by saying that a few early prototypes of last year's 12-inch Retina MacBook were built with ports for the iPhone's Lightning cable, but the MacBook eventually launched with USB-C instead. A gold colorway for this year's MacBook Pro was even planned, but Apple designers eventually decided the color didn't work "on such a large product."

These test runs for iPhone-like features on the MacBook are "part of a broader shift toward making Macs more like iPhones." The critique rests on Apple's inability to see what its more creative and loyal users need desktop and laptop computers for, instead opting to bring features from its best-selling product -- the iPhone -- into the Mac line.

That's part of a broader shift toward making Macs more like iPhones. Apple prioritizes features, like thinness and minimal ports, that sell its iPhones and iPads, which generated about 75 percent of revenue this year. Those are contrary to professional needs, like maximum computing power. Early prototypes of the 12-inch MacBook used the iPhone's Lightning connector, although this was ditched for a more standard USB-C port. There was even a gold MacBook Pro planned, but this was shelved because the color didn’t look good on such a large product.

The rest of the Bloomberg article is an interesting read, pointing towards the lack of a "singular vision" in Apple's design and engineering departments that leads to product delays and underwhelming reveals. In the end, dozens of Mac hardware managers and engineers are said to have left for different teams, or left Apple entirely, in the past 18 months. "Some were looking for a less all-consuming work environment, while others felt the future of Mac hardware was unclear in a world of iPhones and iPads."

iFixit today published a teardown of Apple's AirPods, uncovering the internal components of both the AirPods themselves, and the charging case that comes with the headphones. Throughout the teardown, iFixit discovered a "hot mess" of close knit components within each AirPod, along with a few "quality issues" within the charging case that may be the reason for the months-long delay of the wireless headphones.

Starting with the AirPods, iFixit separated the speaker portion of the pod from the rest of the device, comparing the tightly-packed internals to the Apple Watch teardown. Further investigating uncovered a miniature coaxial cable and two IR proximity sensors, which allow the AirPods to detect whenever they're inside an ear, and play/pause music accordingly.

Blocked by more glue and cables in the speaker portion of the AirPods, iFixit turned to the "stem" only to find "a waterfall of glue" inside the base section of the device. Just behind the metallic bottom area of each AirPod -- which provides the contact point for charging in the case -- the site uncovered the end of the battery cable underneath the wall of adhesive.

That shiny metal cap provides contact points for charging the AirPod, and surrounds the primary microphone. Hidden behind and within the torrent of glue, we spy the end of the battery cable.

If jamming complex components into a small form factor and sealing it with a copious amount of glue were a game, Apple would be winning.

Cutting open the AirPods completely, iFixit eventually separated the antenna from the battery, theorizing that the "hanging boom is for more than just balance—it's also to improve reception." The earpiece of each AirPod is a 93 milliwatt hour battery, "equivalent to a little over 1% of the charge capacity in an iPhone 7."

Although the site could extract some basic components of the charging case without total destruction -- including the status LED -- it eventually had to resort to using a rotary saw in order to get behind the "impenetrable" shell. Discovered underneath was the case's battery, a 1.52 watt hour lithium-polymer cell that's around 16 times the power capacity of a single AirPod. iFixit equates this to around eight full recharges of the AirPods within the charging case.

iFixit took a few x-ray shots of the charging case's internals, and found "quality issues" within the chip's solder joints. A few empty spaces can be seen, referred to as "voiding," which iFixit said "could be evidence of low quality standards, or a rushed product release." This suggests that the source of the AirPods' delay was with the charging case and not with the AirPods.

The repairability score of the AirPods was ultimately rated at a lowest-possible 0/10, thanks to the copious use of glue as a fastener within most of the components of the AirPods, and the case's resistant outer shell.

Check out the rest of iFixit's teardown to see more internal exploration of the charging case's sync button, lightning connector, and a few more x-ray images of both the case and the AirPods.

Apple has activated its in-store pickup tool for AirPods on its website, enabling customers to enter a zip or postal code and check for availability of the all-new wireless earphones at Apple Stores in their local areas.

Personal Pickup for AirPods is currently live in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, showing availability of February 6-8 in most countries, which is likely a conservative estimate due to limited stock.

The tool is not yet available in Belgium, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Turkey, or the United Arab Emirates, countries where Apple also operates retail stores, but it will presumably be expanded soon.

AirPods became available for purchase at Apple Stores yesterday, and some lucky customers were able to secure one of the limited number of pairs available. Apple said stores will continue to receive "regular shipments" of AirPods, so customers may have success finding a pair before the early February dates quoted.

AirPods became available for purchase on Apple's website last week, but orders placed today are estimated to ship in 6 weeks, or around late January. The first wave of customers who ordered AirPods online began receiving their shipments yesterday in the United States and around the world.

Apple Authorized Resellers and carriers also began receiving a limited number of AirPods this week, as seen over the past few days when Best Buy and Verizon have periodically offered AirPods for estimated delivery as early as this week.

In a post to an employee message board obtained by TechCrunch, Apple CEO Tim Cook assured employees that the company is still committed to the Mac and that "great desktops" are coming. Apple's desktop computers haven't seen an upgrade in at least 433 days.

Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we’re committed to desktops,” Cook wrote. “If there’s any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that.”

Cook says that the desktop is "very strategic" to Apple because the performance desktops can provide is "really important" to a lot of people and "critical" for some people. He says the current iMac is the best desktop Apple's ever made and its 5K display is the best desktop display in the world.

In regards to its future roadmap and how Apple employees can help push the company forward, Cook says that "you can rarely see precisely where you want to go from the beginning." Instead, Cook argues that "pulling strings" to see what's coming next is one of Apple's strengths, noting that the creation of Apple Watch led to the creation of ResearchKit, which lead to the creation of CareKit. Cook concludes the post by saying the company doesn't do things for a return on investment, it explores new things because it's exciting and might lead somewhere.

The lack of refreshed Mac hardware can be attributed to a combination of Apple waiting on chipmakers and suppliers to ship their new products and the Cupertino Company's renewed focus on iPad.

Apple's desktop Macs haven't seen upgrades in over a year. The iMac's last update was 433 days ago, the Mac Mini's last update was 795 days ago and the Mac Pro's last update was 1,097 days ago.

Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook attended President-elect Donald Trump's tech summit at Trump Tower in Manhattan alongside other tech leaders, including Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Oracle CEO Safra Catz, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Since the roundtable meeting, which reportedly focused on topics such as job creation and economic growth, Apple employees have wondered if it was important for Cook to meet with Trump, whose stances on issues such as encryption and immigration reform have been viewed controversially among the tech industry.

To address those questions, Cook issued an internal comment to employees, in which he said he has "never found being on the sideline a successful place to be." He said "governments can affect our ability to do what we do," and noted the way to make progress on key issues is to "engage."

A copy of the question and answer, posted internally, was shared by TechCrunch:

Last week you joined other tech leaders to meet President-elect Donald Trump. How important is it for Apple to engage with governments?

It’s very important. Governments can affect our ability to do what we do. They can affect it in positive ways and they can affect in not so positive ways. What we do is focus on the policies. Some of our key areas of focus are on privacy and security, education. They’re on advocating for human rights for everyone, and expanding the definition of human rights. They’re on the environment and really combating climate change, something we do by running our business on 100 percent renewable energy.

And of course, creating jobs is a key part of what we do by giving people opportunity not only with people that work directly for Apple, but the large number of people that are in our ecosystem. We’re really proud that we’ve created 2 million jobs, just in this country. A great percentage of those are app developers. This gives everyone the power to sell their work to the world, which is an unbelievable invention in and of itself.

We have other things that are more business-centric — like tax reform — and something we’ve long advocated for: a simple system. And we’d like intellectual property reform to try to stop the people suing when they don’t do anything as a company.

There’s a large number of those issues, and the way that you advance them is to engage. Personally, I’ve never found being on the sideline a successful place to be. The way that you influence these issues is to be in the arena. So whether it’s in this country, or the European Union, or in China or South America, we engage. And we engage when we agree and we engage when we disagree. I think it’s very important to do that because you don’t change things by just yelling. You change things by showing everyone why your way is the best. In many ways, it’s a debate of ideas.

We very much stand up for what we believe in. We think that’s a key part of what Apple is about. And we’ll continue to do so.

Despite any personal misgivings he may have had in the past, Cook reportedly stayed at Trump Tower after the summit was over to meet privately with the President-elect for further discussions.

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.

Following a wait that was close to two months, Apple's AirPods have finally made their way into the hands of customers. The first AirPods orders started arriving to customers who pre-ordered last week, and Apple retail stores also began brick and mortar sales.

After waiting in line at 6:00 a.m. in the freezing cold in Palo Alto, MacRumors videographer Matt Gonzalez managed to snag a set of AirPods and has spent the day testing them out for a hands-on video. To get a closer look at the AirPods and see what Matt thought, watch below.

Customer reactions to AirPods have been largely positive, and users have been impressed with the fit, the sound quality, the syncing process, and the battery life.

Sound quality and long-range Bluetooth seem to be one of the biggest surprises, and many customers have said the sound is better than the standard EarPods, even likening the sound to more expensive headphones. With the W1 chip, the AirPods connect to the iPhone and other devices within seconds, and charging speeds are impressive -- Apple's promised 3 hours of playback for 15 minutes of charging, which has turned out to be accurate.

Most Apple Stores sold out of AirPods stock within an hour or two as people lined up ahead of when stores opened, but some stores are already receiving new shipments and Apple has promised regular stock. In-store pickup to check stock is not yet available, but should be coming in the near future.

Best Buy also had a limited amount of stock today for online orders, but supplies were exhausted quickly. There's no word yet on whether Best Buy will be getting more stock, but the site is now listing the seventh of February as a delivery date.

AirPods ordered today from the online Apple Store will not ship out for six weeks, so customers hoping to get AirPods before January will need to keep an eye on stock at their local retail store.

Apple today updated its online website to announce free next-day shipping for all orders placed by 2:00 p.m. by Friday, December 23, giving last minute shoppers a chance to place orders before Christmas.

Orders placed before the December 23 cut off date will arrive in time for Christmas in most cases, but customers will need to confirm delivery times at checkout.

Apple normally limits free next-day delivery to iPhones, with free two-day shipping on most other products, but during the holidays, Apple often offers upgraded shipping. Apple also has an online gift guide for customers who need gift ideas, recommending iPhones, iPads, Macs, and related accessories.

Customers who live near an Apple Store who are looking for last minute gifts can also get items using in-store pickup. Today's new shipping policy comes just as AirPods have begun shipping out to customers, but in-store sales are the only way to get Apple's newest accessory as online sales are sold out through January.

AirPods have officially launched in the United States and Canada, as Apple Stores begin to open with limited stock available on a first come, first served basis.

As seen in Europe earlier today, customers lined up at a number of Apple retail locations from coast to coast for a chance to purchase AirPods in time for the holidays. The all-new wire-free earphones launched online last week, but supplies depleted quickly and orders now face a 6-week shipping estimate.

MacRumors reader sktgater claimed Apple's iconic Grand Central store had plenty of AirPods stock this morning, while other users reported successful purchases in Chicago; Washington D.C.; Brooklyn; Menlo Park, NJ; Pittsburgh, PA; Tysons Corner, VA; Charlotte, NC; Greenville, SC; Metairie, LA; and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, customers are lined up at Apple Palo Alto and other west coast stores as limited stock appears to be readied for those queued.

In-store stock is unsurprisingly depleting quickly due to a combination of limited stock—under 100 units in most stores—and strong demand. MacRumors reader Chris told us the Apple Store in Knoxville, Tennessee only received one pair of AirPods today, while many other locations have already sold out for the day.

"About a dozen people in line at Sherway Gardens," said one Reddit user, referring to a shopping mall in Toronto. "Staff said they got 40 or so pair." Another user said he was third in line at the Apple Store in Square One, a shopping mall in nearby Mississauga. "Only a small crowd of 10. Employee claims 50-60 units in stock."

Apple's in-store Personal Pickup tool has yet to be added to the AirPods product page, so customers would be wise to call their local store ahead of time to confirm availability before making the trip. Apple appears to have set a typical limit of 2 AirPods purchases per customer in stores.

Lucky customers who ordered online within the first hour or so last week are beginning to receive their AirPods today too. The most common delivery estimates are Tuesday, December 20 and Wednesday, December 21, but some customers in the United States in particular have received their orders today.

Apple Stores will continue to receive "regular shipments" of AirPods. Apple authorized resellers and major carriers will begin receiving limited AirPods stock this week as well, so customers still on the lookout may wish to call or check with their local Best Buy, for example, in the United States and Canada.