MacRumors

If you own a 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display released in Mid 2012 or Early 2013, and your notebook qualifies for battery service, the repair should be free if you are willing to wait for around one month.

Apple has advised Genius Bar employees and Apple Authorized Service Providers to offer these customers a free battery repair if they are willing to wait until at least November 15 for the service to be completed.

Apple has offered this option since August 25 due to a continued shortage of the aluminum enclosure that the battery is glued into on the aforementioned MacBook Pro models, according to an internal memo obtained by MacRumors.

If a customer does not wish to delay the repair, Apple says that standard out-of-warranty prices for battery service apply: $199 in the United States, £199 in the United Kingdom, $289 in Australia, or $259 in Canada.

The policy doesn't apply to any other Mac, including the 13-inch MacBook Pro, 12-inch MacBook, MacBook Air, or models without Retina displays.

To check if your qualifying MacBook Pro needs battery service, click on the Apple logo in the menu bar. Then, click on About This Mac > System Report > Power. In the Health Information section, the condition should say "Service Battery."

Apple will confirm if the MacBook Pro qualifies for battery service by performing a diagnostic test at the Genius Bar at most Apple Stores. Repairs are allowed for failed, consumed, and swollen batteries.

Apple is no longer offering customers the option to exchange their MacBook Pro for a functionally equivalent model, as it did for repairs initiated between March 2 and July 25 due to the same part shortage.

During that time, many customers were able to exchange a 2012 MacBook Pro for a much newer model, such as a maxed-out refurbished 2016 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, for just the cost of an out-of-warranty battery repair.

Update: There's been some confusion about Apple's battery replacement options in the forums. There is no official repair program or free replacement policy for 15-inch MacBook Pro batteries.

Apple will let you pay to replace a faulty battery in any MacBook Pro, but because of part constraints for 15-inch MacBook Pro models, some users have been offered a free replacement due to the wait. It appears some users have been able to successfully get a free battery replacement while others have not, so though Genius Bar employees have been advised to offer free battery repairs in situations where parts are constrained, some Apple Stores may not provide the option.

Apple's portion of the mobile ecosystem market increased in eight major territories in the three months ending August 2017, according to new data collected and shared by Kantar Worldpanel. Over the summer of 2017, iOS saw growth in the following territories compared to the same year-ago period: Spain (4.4 percentage point increase), followed by China (4.3), the United States (3.7), Germany (2.3), France (1.7), the European Union (1.2), Australia (0.9), and Italy (0.4).

Specifically, iOS grew from 31.3 to 35 percentage points year-over-year in the U.S., and although Android still dominates the U.S. smartphone OS market at 63.2 percentage points, it has dipped slightly from its hold of 66.1 percentage points in the same year-ago period. Dominic Sunnebo, Kantar Worldpanel ComTech's Global Business Unit Director, said that "Apple maintained strong momentum in the US one month before the release of iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus," so iOS should continue to see positive growth in future data that measures the holiday months.

However, Apple's iOS decreased slightly in the United Kingdom/Great Britain in the summer months this year. The drop in iOS market share is said to be due to Samsung's "significant" promotional activity for its Galaxy S8 and J3 smartphones eating into Apple's pre-iPhone 8 sales. In total, Apple devices running iOS accounted for 33.9 percentage points during this summer period in the UK, dropping 2 percentage points from 35.9 one year prior.

Although this was "offset slightly" by strong sales of the iPhone SE, Samsung itself saw a 6.4 percentage point increase in the June-August 2017 period in the UK. Overall, Android OS grew from 58.9 in 2016 to capture 65.3 percentage points in the three month period. Of course, once Apple's sales of new iPhones are accounted for in future data by Kantar Worldpanel, iOS should see a resurgence.

A few Galaxy S8 owners mentioned both promotional materials put out by Samsung and a "good deal" on the device as key factors to their purchases. At the time of its launch, Samsung said the S8 marked its "best ever" pre-order period for a smartphone.

“Samsung took full advantage of the weeks just before the iPhone 8 and iPhone X were released in Great Britain, with significant promotional activity that helped drive its overall share to a three-year high of 38.4% for the three months ending August 2017,” explained Dominic Sunnebo, Global Business Unit Director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. “More than one in four Galaxy S8 buyers cited a specific promotion as a key purchase influencer, and almost half said that a good deal on the price of the phone was key to their purchase. Both of these metrics experienced a large increase over the last two months of the period.”

Otherwise, the only other regression centered in Japan and accounted for just 0.1 percentage points lost by iOS between 2016 and 2017.

iOS market share is expected to see another boost thanks to the launch of the iPhone X, which has caused many people to put off ordering the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus in anticipation of Apple's greatly redesigned smartphone. Pre-orders for the device go up two weeks from today on October 27, while the official launch date will come three weeks from today on November 3.

For more data on the global market shares of smartphone operating systems, check out Kantar Worldpanel's research right here.

Apple is reportedly "mulling" the idea of launching a stylus compatible with iPhone, believed to be a new iteration of the Apple Pencil, which is currently only supported by the iPad Pro. The rumor comes from industry sources speaking to The Korea Herald (via The Investor), which claimed that Apple engineers "have recently been working" on a new iPhone device that "comes with a digital pen," aiming for a potential launch in 2019.

The sources said that the iPhone stylus is likely to adopt a "supercapacitor stylus type" for price benefits, contrasting with Samsung's Galaxy Note pen which is based on electromagnetic resonance technology that needs additional panel components to be installed underneath the smartphone display. "A supercapacitor type is cheaper to make compared to the EMR stylus. It also offers a more pen-like feel," according to the industry sources.

Notably, Apple's current A-series chip would see a "drastic upgrade" as well in order to fuel a better handwriting experience for the stylus on iPhone.

Apple is mulling something that its late founder Steve Jobs had outright rejected -- adding a stylus to its iPhone, according to industry sources on Oct. 13.

“Apple is preparing to launch the phone as early as 2019,” an industry source told The Investor on condition of anonymity. “It is also in talks with a couple of stylus makers for a partnership.”

The Apple Pencil launched nearly two years ago in November 2015 alongside the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Apple's first stylus was designed specifically to work with the iPad Pro, and gives users the feel of using a real pen or pencil with sensors that determine the orientation and angle of the Apple Pencil, and pressure sensitivity allowing for darker or lighter pen strokes.

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was famously against launching a stylus for iPhones, during the original iPhone event stating: "Who wants a stylus? You have to get them, and put them away, and you lose them, yuck. Nobody wants a stylus."

Apple executives and current CEO Tim Cook have repeatedly avoided referring to Apple Pencil as a "stylus" over the years, with Cook commenting in an interview last year that "we launched a pencil not a stylus." The Apple CEO further stated, "I think that Steve would have loved" the Apple Pencil, and even gave early mention of a pencil device potentially supporting iPhones in the future: "if you’ve ever seen what can be created on an iPhone or an iPad with that pencil is really unbelievable."

All of the iPhones Apple plans to produce in 2018 are likely to abandon the Touch ID fingerprint sensor in favor of facial recognition, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo told investors in a note sent out this evening.

According to Kuo, Apple will embrace Face ID as its authentication method for a competitive advantage over Android smartphones. Kuo has previously said that it could take years for Android smartphone manufacturers to produce technology that can match the TrueDepth camera and the Face ID feature coming in the iPhone X.

We predict all new 2H18F iPhone models will likely abandon fingerprint recognition. We believe this change will allow all new models to realize a competitive advantage via differentiation, on the back of an integrated user experience of full-screen design and TrueDepth Camera/ Facial recognition/ Face ID/ AR applications.

Face ID, says Kuo, will continue to be a major selling point of the new iPhone models in 2018, with Apple planning to capitalize on its lead in 3D sensing design and production.

Kuo's prediction suggests that all upcoming 2018 iPhones will feature a full-screen design with minimal bezels like the iPhone X, meaning no additional models with the iPhone 8/iPhone 8 Plus design would be produced.

That would spell the end of the line for Touch ID in the iPhone, which has been available as a biometric authentication option since 2013. It's not clear what that means for the Mac and the iPad, but Kuo has said he expects next year's iPad Pro models to transition to Face ID.

Should Apple decide to abandon Touch ID, it also means development would potentially end on a rumored under-display Touch ID solution.

Back in September, Kuo predicted 2018 iPhones would fully adopt the TrueDepth camera and facial recognition if Face ID was "well received" by customers, but further research conducted by KGI Securities has led him to believe it will indeed be successful, leading to today's more definitive prediction.

Kuo believes that Apple's transition away from Touch ID will also turn Android smartphone manufacturers away from fingerprint recognition. As he said in an earlier note, he expects high-end Android smartphones to "ditch" under-display optical fingerprint recognition in favor of 3D sensing techniques.

Despite Kuo's prediction, Apple software engineering chief Craig Federighi recently hinted that Apple may not be ready to abandon Touch ID across all its products just yet. While he said Face ID is the future of biometric authentication, he also noted that there are settings where different biometric techniques or combinations of biometrics could make sense.

A little over three weeks after being released to the public, iOS 11 adoption has reached its 47 percent, successfully overtaking iOS 10, according to data collected by analytics company Mixpanel.

With iOS 11 installed on 47 percent of devices, iOS 10 is now installed on 46 percent of devices. 6.7 percent of devices also continue to run iOS 9 or earlier.

iOS 11 adoption has been much slower than iOS 10 adoption during the same timeframe last year. It took just two weeks for iOS 10 to overtake iOS 9, while iOS 11 was only installed on 38.5 percent of devices at the two week mark.

Adoption rates have been steadily increasing, though. At 24 hours, iOS 11 was installed on 10 percent of devices, and at one week, it was installed on 25 percent.

Apple has released three minor updates to iOS 11 so far to fix bugs and issues discovered since its launch. The most recent update, iOS 11.0.3, came out just yesterday.

The first major update to iOS 11, iOS 11.1, is in the works and that update may spur people running iOS 10 to upgrade to iOS 11. iOS 11.1 introduces new emoji characters, often popular with users, and it reintroduces a 3D Touch gesture that lets the App Switcher be accessed with one hand.

Apps that use the ARKit framework Apple introduced in iOS 11 have been installed 3 million times around the world since September 19, according to new data shared today by analytics firm Sensor Tower (via TechCrunch).

Many of the ARKit-only apps that are available are games, accounting for 35 percent of ARKit apps worldwide. ARKit-only apps include those that are built entirely around the new ARKit technology, rather than apps that have added some ARKit features.

Utilities are the second most popular ARKit category, accounting for 19 percent of apps, while 11 percent of ARKit apps are in the Entertainment category and 7 percent are in the Education category.

Many of the top ARKit-only apps are games, with four games among the top five highest-grossing ARKit apps. Titles like AR Dragon, Zombie Gunship Revenant, The Machines, and Monster Park -- Dino World have proven to be the most popular AR games with consumers.

Games have accounted for a total of 53 percent of all ARKit-only app downloads and 62 percent of ARKit app revenue since the launch of ARKit.

With games taken out of the top app listings, apps that allow users to measure 3D spaces or demo furniture are some of the top performers. Among free apps, IKEA Place, the furniture app from IKEA that lets consumers see products in their homes before purchasing, is one of the more popular apps.

Sensor Tower's data covers only apps that are primarily focused on the augmented reality experience and it did not take into account apps that offer limited ARKit content like photo modes or mini games.

When iOS 11 launched on September 19, ARKit became the largest augmented reality platform in the world thanks to the huge number of iPhones and iPads out in the wild.

Apple CEO Tim Cook just this week said augmented reality may not be huge right now, but that it will experience a "dramatic" climb to take over the world much like the App Store did when it was first launched.