MacRumors

It's just after 9:30a.m. in New Zealand, which means the first customers who ordered an iPhone SE or a 9.7-inch iPad Pro on March 24 are starting to receive their shipments. Soon, customers in Australia will begin receiving their devices, and the first Apple retail stores in the country will open for in-store sales.

New Zealanders have already started photos and news of their devices on social networks like Instagram, reddit, and Twitter, and a few lucky customers who ordered the 9.7-inch iPad Pro in the United States have also been receiving early shipments, as noted on Instagram, Twitter, and the MacRumors forums.

As March 31 hits around the world, the iPhone SE and the 9.7-inch iPad Pro will be available in first wave launch countries that include Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Singapore, the UK, US Virgin Islands, and the US. Retail stores in these countries will be opening at approximately 9:00 a.m. local time, letting customers make walk-in purchases.

Customers in these countries who already placed an order for a new device will begin receiving those devices as soon as shipping outlets begin work in the morning, likely around 8:00 a.m. local time. Following deliveries in Australia and New Zealand, customers in Japan, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore will receive their devices, followed by deliveries in France, Germany, and the UK, and then orders will arrive in Canada, the US, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands.

In the United States, pre-order customers living on the east coast should begin receiving their shipments starting at 8:00 a.m. local time from couriers like FedEx and UPS in approximately 18 hours. Orders set to arrive on March 31 have already shipped from Apple using Next Day shipping.

Big box retailers like Walmart, Target, and Best Buy will begin in-store sales of the iPhone SE and 9.7-inch iPad Pro starting on the morning of March 31, as well carriers like AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

In the United States, the iPhone SE is priced at $399 for 16GB and $499 for 64GB. Orders placed today from Apple's online store will be delivered starting on April 13.

Pricing on the 9.7-inch iPad Pro starts at $599 for a 32GB Wi-Fi only model and goes up to $1,029 for a 256GB Wi-Fi + Cellular model. Orders placed today from the online store will be delivered starting next week.

Apple today released its 2016 Supplier Responsibility Progress Report [PDF] and updated its accompanying Supplier Responsibility website to offer a look at its 2015 efforts to improve the lives of the workers that produce and assemble its products.

Apple's focus in 2015 was on cutting down on excessive work hours and addressing bonded and underage labor practices. Work-hour compliance on Apple's 60-hour maximum workweek mandate reached 97 percent, up from 92 percent in 2014.

For its 10th annual progress report, Apple conducted 640 total audits and 21 unannounced audits, plus it closed 250 requests for environment, safety, and labor cases and conducted 25,000 follow-up interviews to ensure employers did not retaliate against workers for participating in Apple audits.

Apple's auditing process, in addition to assessing work conditions and interviewing workers, seeks out core violations like underage workers, involuntary labor, document falsification, retaliation against workers, unsafe working conditions, and significant environmental issues. Noncompliant suppliers are placed on probation and if issues are not addressed immediately, Apple terminates contracts.

In 2015, Apple suppliers paid out $4.7 million to reimburse workers that were contracted through unfair and excessive recruitment fees. Since 2008, Apple has forced its suppliers to pay out more than $25.6 million to workers to put an end to bonded labor.

Apple discovered three instances of child labor in 2015 at a single supplier. When suppliers are found hiring underage employees, they are required to return children to their homes, fund their education, and pay for basic living expenses.

In 2015 we found one facility, which was audited for the first time, in violation of employing underage labor. The number of audited facilities with underage labor dropped to 1 in 2015 from 6 in 2014 despite nearly 20 percent of facilities audited being new to the process.

There were 3 active cases of underage labor at this single facility. All three underage workers were 15 years old and the minimum age requirement is 16 years of age.

A full chart outlining labor and human rights violations at Apple supplier facilities gives an overall overview of how suppliers are living up to Apple's requirements. Apple has made progress on the prevention of underage labor and the prevention of involuntary labor, but wages and benefits continue to be an area where suppliers are underperforming.

Apple's reports include an environmental component, and in 2015, Apple succeeded in getting 100 percent of identified smelters and refiners in its supply chain to participate in a third-party conflict minerals audit program to ensure suppliers are not financing armed conflict. In an interview with BuzzFeed, Apple operations chief Jeff Williams said achieving that goal required kicking out 35 suppliers that "we were unable to convince to do things in the way we think are appropriate."

Apple also improved conditions in tin mines in Indonesia, which were previously environmentally unsound and unsafe for workers.

In 2015, Apple and the Tin Working Group conducted investigative research on the ground, and worked with civil society organizations and mining companies to define a five-year regulatory reform strategy of tin mining best practices. Together we are also drafting standards and guidelines to help buyers of tin identify responsible sources in the global marketplace.

The Indonesian government is now evolving its own policies for tin production and the environmental impacts of mining.

Over the course of 2015, Apple reduced carbon emissions by 13.8k metric tons and diverted 73.7k metric tons of waste from landfills through a new waste diversion program. Since 2013, 3.8 billion gallons of freshwater have been saved through a Clean Water Program, and 100 percent of chemicals at Apple's final assembly facilities are free of Apple-prohibited substances.

Apple's Supplier Responsibility report is a surprisingly interesting read, with the full document accessible through Apple's dedicated Supplier Responsibility website.

Apple today launched Safari Technology Preview, a new version of its web browser aimed specifically at developers. Safari Technology Preview is aimed at giving developers a way to access new web technologies Apple is planning to implement in iOS and OS X, offering an early look at new developer tools, layout technologies, visual effects, and more.

According to TechCrunch, Apple's goal with Safari Technology Preview is to gather feedback from developers on its browser development ahead of launch through a method that's more easily accessible than WebKit.

Of course, Apple has for a long time offered Nightly builds of WebKit, the open source browser engine that today runs on hundreds of millions of devices and powers Apple's Safari. However, getting access to these builds takes a bit more effort than using the new Safari Technology Preview browser. Instead, with the new browser, its updates are distributed every two weeks by way of the Mac App Store's software update mechanism. That means it's less hassle to run a browser that features the latest advances in web technologies, including HTML, JavaScript, CSS and WebKit.

Safari Technology Preview can be run side-by-side with the existing Safari browser, and it's able to be set as the default browser on a machine. It includes local data stores for history, bookmarks, cookies, and cache, and it supports syncing of browsing history and bookmarks over iCloud. Visually, the Safari Technology Preview icon is designed to resemble the Safari icon, but it is purple in color instead of blue.

The current build of Safari Technology Preview includes several JavaScript improvements, HTML enhancements, and Web Inspector changes:

JavaScript Improvements
- ECMAScript 6 support including lexical scoping, iterators, generators, arrow functions, default parameter values and many new built-in APIs
- Better standards compliant IndexedDB support with more stability
- Included the B3 JavaScript JIT compiler with low-latency, high-throughput that boosts performance
- Added the ability to use document.execCommand('copy') and document.execCommand('cut') in response to a user gesture to copy and cut text programmatically

HTML Enhancements
- The latest implementation of the Shadow DOM specification
- Added support for Content Security Policy Level 2

Web Inspector Changes
- Added memory summary and JavaScript allocations timelines
- Added a fast JavaScript sampling profiler
- Improved JavaScript profiling timeline view

Behavior Changes
- Included many web compatibility fixes and bug fixes

Safari Technology Preview can be downloaded immediately from Apple's Developer website and it will receive regular updates through the Mac App Store. While designed for developers, Safari Technology Preview does not require a developer account to download.

iPhone SE online orders, which commenced March 24, are now shipping to select customers in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, and elsewhere, ahead of the new 4-inch smartphone's official March 31 launch tomorrow in twelve countries and territories.

Multiple users tracking their iPhone SE shipments in the MacRumors discussion forums have received delivery estimates of between March 31 and April 4. As usual, it appears that UPS is Apple's primary courier for orders placed in North America, while DPD and UKMail are handling deliveries in the United Kingdom.

iPhone SE Order Tracking

→ United States
→ United Kingdom
→ Canada
→ General Discussion

iPhone SE should also be available tomorrow at Apple retail stores, and through AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and select other carriers. Authorized resellers like Best Buy may too have limited stock, generally on a first-come, first-served basis. Some retailers may accept reservations for in-store pickup.

Apple's first wave launch countries for iPhone SE include the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. Orders started March 29 in an additional 20 countries, with more to follow in early April.

9.7-inch iPad Pro orders have also shipped for many customers. Keep track here.

Apple and Major League Baseball have agreed to a deal that will see the sports league's coaching staffs use iPad Pros in dugouts to make better use of data during games, according to The Wall Street Journal. Baseball managers and coaches have traditionally used notebooks, pieces of paper and binders to keep track of data.

Teams will be able sift through performance stats from current and past seasons, weigh potential pitcher-hitter matchups, look at “spray charts” showing where a player is likely to hit a ball, even cue up videos of plays from previous games.

Each team will receive 12.9-inch iPad Pros with rugged cases sporting the team's logo. MLB's Advanced Media division, with assistance from Apple, have built an app called MLB Dugout, which will serve as the central destination where managers and coaches can look at their data. "We're not just replacing binders with tablets, we're actually helping them do things that weren't possible before," Phil Schiller, Apple SVP of marketing, told the WSJ.

For instance, players will now be able to watch video of pitchers during the game rather than having to retreat to the locker room. New York Mets' third-base coach Tim Teufel noted that the app will likely come in handy when the "game changes in unexpected ways," like when a pinch hitter steps up to the plate or a relief pitcher subs in.

The Dugout app will serve up proprietary data for each franchise, which means each team will only draw upon their own data rather than league-wide data well. The app will be preloaded before each game, but the MLB eventually hopes to update the app so that data could be provided in real time. The app was tested during the postseason last year.

The deal is similar to the one Microsoft signed with the NFL, putting Microsoft Surface tablets in the hands of NFL coaches and players on the sidelines. That deal was initially marred by glitchy tablets and announcers repeatedly calling the devices "iPads" rather than Surfaces. While the NFL required that the Surface tablets be shown on the sideline during each game, the MLB is making iPad Pro use optional. However, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said he thinks most teams will use them, saying that he hopes they'll help speed up the game.

The MLB has embraced Apple's technology before, adopting iBeacon technology in 2014 and outfitting 20 ballparks in time for that season.

Apple has confirmed that it is aware of an issue causing web links to crash in multiple iOS apps like Safari, Mail, and Messages, reports TechCrunch. Following multiple complaints about the bug over the past few days, Apple says it is working on a fix that will be released "soon" via a software update.

Shortly after the release of iOS 9.3, iPhone and iPad users began complaining about a bug that causes multiple built-in and third-party apps to crash or freeze after a web link is tapped or pressed using a long press. The issue does not affect all users, but based on threads in the MacRumors forums and the Apple Support Communities, it is impacting a wide range of iOS users and a long list of iOS devices including the iPhone 5, 5s, 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, iPad Air 2, and iPad mini.

The specific cause for the issue is still unconfirmed, but there is speculation that it is related to Apple's Universal Links feature. According to mobile specialist Ben Collier, the Shared Web Credentials daemon, which allows apps and websites to share login credentials for Universal Linking purposes, may be a factor.

Apps with large deep linking files for use with Universal Linking could also be causing the problem, as many users who had installed the Booking.com app have experienced crashing and freezing issues. The Booking.com app, though now fixed, was originally using an overly large 2.3MB deep linking file.

While there is no fix for the crashing issue, some users have had success turning off JavaScript in the Settings app by going to Safari --> Advanced, but this is a suboptimal option because it will degrade the web browsing experience. Force closing affected apps and restarting the iOS device does not solve the problem.

The web links fix may be bundled into iOS 9.3.1, which Apple is already working on. Over the last few days, we've seen an increasing number of visits from devices running iOS 9.3.1, suggesting Apple has sped up testing on the update.

The web linking bug is the second major bug to affect iOS 9.3 users. The first rendered some older devices unusable due to a problem with Activation Lock, which required customers to enter the information originally used to set up their iPhone or iPad. Apple issued a new version of iOS 9.3 on Monday to fix the issue.

British bank Barclays appears to be in the process of enabling much-anticipated Apple Pay support in the United Kingdom, as multiple Twitter users have shared screenshots of a new terms and conditions page that now appears when attempting to add a Barclays-issued card to the iPhone-based mobile payments service.

The new terms and conditions landing page is a telltale sign that Barclays may be on the verge of finally becoming an Apple Pay participating issuer, nearly nine months after the service launched in the United Kingdom and within striking distance of its latest promise of a late March rollout.

Barclays has repeatedly hinted that Apple Pay support is coming, but it has yet to deliver on those plans. In July 2015, the bank said Apple Pay support was "imminent," but later confirmed an "early 2016" target, and most recently said the service would launch "within 60 to 75 days" of January 12, or by around March 28.

Barclays has been the largest Apple Pay holdout in the U.K. to date. Other participating banks include First Direct, HSBC, MBNA, Nationwide, NatWest, RBS, Santander, Ulster Bank, and more. iPhone and Apple Watch users can tap to pay at over 250,000 locations across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Update: A tipster who wishes to remain anonymous has informed us that Barclays employees have been testing Apple Pay internally with their own debit and credit cards over the past month, as shown in the screenshot below.

The source believes that Barclays will publicly support Apple Pay within a few weeks pending Apple's approval. Apple is also said to be interested in executing a marketing campaign related to the announcement.