MacRumors

Shawn Carter, known professionally as rapper Jay Z, appears to have removed his entire solo album collection from Apple Music overnight. Now, when searching for "Jay Z" on Apple Music, only songs in which he collaborated with other artists are available to stream on the service in the United States and elsewhere.

Jay Z has removed select albums from Apple Music in the past, including Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint series, but this is the first time he has pulled his entire catalog of albums from the service. Only some of his collaborations with Kanye West, Linkin Park, R. Kelly, and Rihanna remain streamable.

Jay Z co-owns Tidal, a rival streaming music service, so his decision to remove his discography from Apple Music could be for competitive reasons. Kanye West, another stakeholder in Tidal, also implied that there might be some animosity between Apple and Jay Z in a series of tweets last year.

Jay Z's albums appear to have been removed from Spotify recently as well, so his decision might be unrelated to any potential feud with Apple. Spotify on Twitter today said it can "confirm that some of Jay Z's catalogue has been removed at the request of the artist," but it did not provide a specific reason.

Jay Z's albums are still available for purchase on iTunes, and to stream on smaller services such as Google Play Music, at least for the time being. By contrast, Jay Z's wife Beyoncé still offers a large number of her songs and albums on Apple Music, including her recently added single "Die With You."

Tidal's other stakeholders, including Kanye West, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Daft Punk, Jack White, Madonna, Arcade Fire, Alicia Keys, Usher, and Calvin Harris, also continue to offer many of their songs and albums on Apple Music.

Tidal costs $9.99 per month, the same price as Apple Music, while a premium tier with high-fidelity sound is available for $19.99 per month. Tidal said it had over 3 million subscribers in March 2016, but recent reports have claimed it may have been falsely inflating the number of paying customers it had.

Apple Music had over 20 million subscribers as of last December, while Spotify recently announced it surpassed 50 million paying customers.

Sprint acquired a 33 percent stake in Tidal in January, and at the time it said it would give its customers "unlimited access to exclusive artist content not available anywhere else." Under the deal, artists partnering with Tidal will create music that will only be available to the carrier's customers.

It's unclear at this point if Sprint's stake in Tidal has anything to do with Jay Z's music being removed from Apple Music or Spotify.

Apple and Jay Z's label Roc Nation did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Universal Music Group deferred comment to Roc Nation.

Update: Jay Z's albums have reappeared on Apple Music over the weekend, although the previously absent albums Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint series remain unavailable. However, many of his tracks are still missing from Spotify.

Apple has inked a deal with NBC that will see Saturday Night Live creating humorous commercial content that will air during commercial breaks on the show, reports Variety.

The Saturday Night Live spot will promote Apple products, but it's not yet clear what kind of content the show will create for Apple. Saturday Night Live is also working with Verizon and plans to create a spot for the carrier, which will be written by "Weekend Update" anchor Colin Jost and will star Kenan Thompson. Apple's ad "will look different" than the Verizon ad, according to Variety.

Apple has struck a deal with NBC to have "Saturday Night Live" create commercial content slated to appear in a few weeks' time. The show's work for the large consumer-electronics company will look different than its Verizon efforts, according to two people familiar with the situation. Apple did not respond to queries seeking comment.

Saturday Night Live is teaming up with brands like Verizon and Apple to create custom content in the hopes of making the show both more appealing to advertisers and more compelling to watch live. The show has been seeing a surge of popularity in the months following the U.S. presidential election, thanks in large part to Alec Baldwin's role as Donald Trump.

Teaming up with Saturday Night Live will be new territory for Apple. Most of the company's ads are made in house or through longtime ad agency partners.

The Verizon Saturday Night Live spot will air on April 8th and April 15th, while Apple's ad spot will come somewhat later in the month or in early May.

Apple's widely rumored trio of new iPhones, including traditional 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch models and an all-new 5.8-inch model with an OLED display, will likely be available to pre-order in September, but deliveries of the 5.8-inch model will not begin until "several weeks later," says longtime Apple analyst Brian White.

An excerpt from White's research note with investment banking firm Drexel Hamilton, obtained by MacRumors:

Our contact strongly believes the 5.8-inch iPhone 8 will be delayed by several weeks due to challenges around the 3D sensing technology, but still in time for the December holidays. This is not the first time that we've heard about a potential delay with a new iPhone; however, our contact was so emphatic about the delay that we are taking this data point more seriously. Since it is only April, this situation could improve. Essentially, our contact believes customers will be able to pre-order the new 5.8-inch iPhone 8 along with the new 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhones in September; however, the 5.8-inch iPhone 8 will not be available for delivery until several weeks later.

White, who is currently in Taiwan to garner information from Apple's supply chain, cited a "smartphone contact" who is "diligently following the supply chain data points" around the tentatively named "iPhone 8" as the source of his information, so it's not a completely baseless prediction.

In fact, White's prediction lines up exactly with recent supply chain information gathered by the research arm of Barclays. The bank similarly expects Apple's first iPhone with an OLED display to launch in September, but it believes the majority of stock may not be available until later in the fourth quarter.

Together, the predictions suggest that shipping estimates for Apple's tenth-anniversary iPhone, which has been variously dubbed the iPhone 8, iPhone X, iPhone Pro, or iPhone Edition, could slip to several weeks out just minutes after pre-orders begin, much like the iPhone 7 Plus in Jet Black last year.

As usual, it might be hard to get your hands on the highest-end iPhone prior to the holidays, but it likely won't be impossible.

Chinese-language Economic Daily News recently said the "iPhone 8" might not launch whatsoever until October or November, as suppliers are supposedly encountering "technical issues" related to the display lamination process, while challenges exist in integrating the 3D sensing front camera system.

However, of the two scenarios, it seems more likely that at least some quantities of the "iPhone 8" will be available to pre-order in September alongside the tentatively named iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus.

Apple today released "Clips," a new app that's designed to make it easy to create short videos that can be easily shared via Messages and social networking apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Clips, as the name suggests, lets you combine several video clips, images, and photos with voice-based titles, music, filters, and graphics to create enhanced videos that are up to an hour in length.

Clips isn't hard to use, but the interface does take a bit of time to get used to, so we went hands-on with the app to show MacRumors readers just how it works.

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Apple executives this week made an unusual and surprising announcement, detailing the company's work on an entirely revamped high-end modular Mac Pro that's set to be released sometime after 2017.

No specific information on a potential release date was shared, but OSnews' Thom Holwerda has shared some tidbits heard from "people and sources who know their stuff," giving a little insight into just when we might see the revamped Mac Pro and why Apple decided to renew its focus on professional users.

Ahead of Apple's announcement, Holwerda says the Mac Pro was in limbo, and Apple wasn't sure what was going to happen to the machine.

Apparently, the negative response to the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, which many complained was not oriented towards pro users, was a major factor. Apple saw a surge of orders for older MacBook Pros instead of the new model, and that, combined with the reaction to the LG 5K display and the "constant negativity" from professional users, led Apple to "double down on professional users."

The decision to move ahead with a modular Mac Pro replacement was made "in recent months" with development starting "only a few weeks ago," suggesting it's going to be a long wait.

Given a rough estimate of the length of time it normally takes to develop a project, it could be late 2018 or even 2019 before we see the machine.

The decision to go ahead and develop a modular Mac Pro replacement seems to have been made only in recent months, with development starting only a few weeks ago, which makes it clear why Apple said it won't ship this year. I have no idea how long it takes to develop a new computer like a Mac Pro, but I think we can expect the new Mac Pro late 2018 at the earliest, but most likely it won't be until early 2019 before it ships.

Aside from the Mac Pro, Holwerda also believes Apple is working on additional MacBook Pro models sans Touch Bar, and developing other features aimed at professionals, such as pairing the iPad Pro with a Mac so that it can be used as a Cintiq-style drawing tablet.

Apple hasn't shared a lot of detail on the new Mac Pro, but the promised modular design will allow professional users to keep it up to date with new hardware on a regular basis. Apple executives have said the machine will also be able to handle virtual reality software and high-end cinema editing, pointing towards support for higher-end single GPUs, and Apple also plans to ship the machine with an Apple-branded professional display.

Apple recently said it is working on a "completely rethought" Mac Pro with a modular design that will be accompanied by an Apple-branded pro display.

Apple did not share any specific details about the external display, but if the blog Pike's Universum is to be believed, it could feature an impressive 8K resolution. The report did not offer any additional details about the display, including a potential release date, but Apple said it won't be ready this year.

8K displays are just starting to reach the market now, led by Dell's new 32-inch UltraSharp 8K display, which retails for $5,000 in the United States. Apple has yet to launch a display with greater than 5K resolution, as found on the iMac with Retina 5K Display and the UltraFine 5K Display it partnered with LG on.

Apple confirmed that it had exited the standalone display market after discontinuing the Thunderbolt Display in June 2016, but it has evidently reversed course. It's a smart move, given concerns that Apple was no longer focused on pros, and considering that LG's UltraFine 5K Display had a hardware flaw.

On the Mac mini front, the blog said that the next high-end model "won't be so mini anymore," suggesting the most expensive configuration might have a larger or taller design to accommodate for upgraded tech specs. Apple last updated the Mac mini in October 2014, a span of 903 days, per the MacRumors Buyer's Guide.

Apple recently said the Mac mini is "important" within its product lineup, but it remained tight-lipped about the prospects of future updates.

The current Mac mini models, which are designed to be connected to a display, keyboard, and mouse purchased separately, range in price from $499 to $999. The base model is equipped with a 1.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and integrated Intel HD Graphics 5000.

Intel has released faster Kaby Lake processors appropriate for the Mac mini, but no other rumors have surfaced about the entry-level computer as of yet. At least one other plausible addition is Thunderbolt 3, which is already included on the MacBook Pro and rumored to be added to the next iMac models as well.

Pike's Universum is best known for spotting references to unreleased Macs or upcoming software versions hidden within Apple's operating systems. The blog does not have an established track record of reporting on Apple's plans based on its own inside sources, so this rumor should be treated with caution for now.

Earlier this week, Apple made the rare move of pre-announcing that it is working on new pro-focused iMac models that will launch later this year.

Apple did not share any specific details about what the upgrades will entail, but if the blog Pike's Universum is to be believed, the next-generation iMac lineup could feature several improvements that make Apple's desktop computer a more powerful workstation for professionals and average consumers alike.

The blog, citing a "little bird" that is "usually pretty accurate," claims the incoming iMac lineup will be available with up to the following tech specs:

• Intel Xeon E3 processors: The new iMac will supposedly have up to a pro-grade Intel Xeon E3-1285 v6 processor. Intel has not released that particular chip yet, but based on previous generations of the E3-1285, the processor could essentially be the E3-1280 v6 coupled with integrated Intel HD Graphics P630. Notably, Xeon processors support ECC RAM.

• 16GB to 64GB of ECC RAM: 16GB of ECC RAM, configurable to 32GB or 64GB, in line with the current Mac Pro. iMacs currently have 8GB of non-ECC RAM, configurable to 16GB or 32GB. ECC RAM can detect and repair errors that cause data corruption and system crashes. No word if it will be DDR3L or DDR4.

• Faster NVMe SSDs: The rumor claims the next iMacs will have faster NVM Express PCIe-based flash storage with capacities up to 2TB. The current 4K and 5K iMac models are also configurable with NVMe PCIe-based SSDs or Fusion Drives up to 2TB.

• AMD graphics: The new iMacs will supposedly have AMD graphics options to support virtual reality and professional apps. The inclusion of AMD graphics in the next iMac has been rumored previously by Bloomberg. The current 27-inch iMac uses AMD Radeon R9 GPUs.

• Thunderbolt 3: Thunderbolt 3 ports would be an unsurprising inclusion in the next iMacs given they already exist on the latest MacBook Pro. Thunderbolt 3 carries power, USB, DisplayPort, HDMI, and VGA over a single cable, creating one standard for connecting most accessories and peripherals.

The report claims the next iMac models will be unveiled in late October and be accompanied by a brand new keyboard. A previous report said Apple was exploring a standalone keyboard with a Touch Bar and Touch ID, but its release allegedly depends upon how well those features have been received on the latest MacBook Pro.

The blog also claims Apple is working on an 8K external display for Apple's "completely rethought" Mac Pro. This isn't a rumor we've heard before, but Apple did confirm it is working on a new Apple-branded pro display of an unspecified resolution. Dell recently launched a 32-inch 8K display for $5,000.

Another tidbit mentioned in the report is that macOS 10.13 supposedly will not use a mountain or park name anymore, with two alternative names in the running, including one that starts with the letter M. Apple's trademarked names that could fit that description include Monterey and Mojave.

Last, the report said the next high-end Mac mini "won't be so mini anymore," suggesting that the most expensive model might have a larger or taller design. Apple recently said the Mac mini is "important" within its product lineup, but it remained tight-lipped about the prospects of future updates.

Pike's Universum is best known for spotting references to unreleased Macs or upcoming software versions hidden within Apple's operating systems. The blog does not have an established track record of reporting on Apple's plans based on its own inside sources, so this rumor should be treated with caution for now.

Apple last updated the iMac in October 2015, a span of 541 days, per the MacRumors Buyer's Guide.