MacRumors

Following last week's iPhone and Apple Watch media event, Apple officially invited developers to begin submitting their iOS 8 apps for App Store review ahead of tomorrow's public release of the new operating system. While a number of developers have been tweaking their apps to work better with iOS 8 over the past few months, the major step forward comes as apps begin to support the new functionalities supported in iOS 8.

Apple has already begun approving some of these iOS 8-optimized apps, but a few high-profile developers are finding that some of their highly anticipated extensions are not working properly in the updated apps being distributed through the App Store. While only a small subset of iOS users are affected due to limited distribution of the iOS 8 golden master released to developers last week, the issue has been a concerning one for developers trying to diagnose it.

One example is OmniFocus 2 for iPhone [Direct Link], which will include an extension to add an OmniFocus list of tasks to the "Today" view in Notification Center. In the iOS 8-optimized version of OmniFocus 2 released over the weekend and a bug fix released yesterday, the Today view is currently not being properly populated with data from OmniFocus itself.

A similar issue is occurring with popular calculator app PCalc [Direct Link], and both issues appear to be related to code signing on Apple's end. PCalc developer James Thomson has been in touch with Apple and received word that the company is indeed working on the problem.

All indications are that this is a problem Apple will thankfully be able to fix without requiring developers to submit new versions of their apps, and presumably the company will have it fixed in time for the public release of iOS 8 tomorrow.

Update: Apple has fixed the issue, and is prompting users to re-download properly signed versions of the affected apps.

The NFC antenna found on Apple's iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will only be used with the company's "Apple Pay" mobile payment solution and will not be available to developers for use in third-party apps, reports Cult of Mac. The confirmation comes by way of an Apple spokeswoman, who also declined to comment on future plans for the technology's use in other instances.

The move is similar to the Touch ID sensor's debut on the iPhone 5s last year, as Apple restricted its use to iTunes purchases and device unlocking. However, Apple announced at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference that developers would be able to integrate Touch ID into their iOS 8 apps. It is possible that Apple will allow NFC to be used with third-party apps at some point in the future, however it appears that the company is focused on polishing the technology for use with its own services.

Apple Pay will first launch in the United States next month as an update to iOS 8, and will be featured in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus as well as the Apple Watch when it launches next year. The service will be compatible with American Express, Mastercard and Visa credit/debit cards, with 220,000 U.S. retail stores listed as partners. Apple will also be launching an Apple Pay API for developers to integrate the service into their apps.

Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke with Charlie Rose in a two part-interview, and the second segment of the show is airing tonight. In the second half of the interview, Cook focuses on the driving force behind Apple, his own personal values, and the company's thoughts on privacy.

Cook's first comments are on Apple's privacy views, and he says that the company tries to collect as little data about its users as possible. He believes that people "have a right to privacy."

Our view is that when we design a new service we try not to collect data. So we're not reading your email. We're not reading your iMessage. If the government laid a subpoena on us to get your iMessages, we can't provide it. It's encrypted and we don't have a key.

Our business is based on selling [products]. Our business is not based on having information about you. You are not our product.

As he has stated previously, Cook says that no one has backdoor access to Apple's servers. "We would never allow that to happen," he says, repeating his prior statement on the issue. "They would have to cart us out in a box before we would do that."

On his values, Tim Cook says that he believes in treating all people with dignity, regardless of color, religion sexual orientation, and gender. "Everyone deserves respect." Cook goes on to comment on the driving force behind Apple, which he says is a goal to enrich people's lives and change the world, not to be the largest company.

You know, I was at -- I was at Compaq at a time where the objective was to become a $40 billion company. Well, employees don't get excited about that. This isn't something you wake up and you go, "I'm going to take the hill today to do 40" -- I mean, you know? It's just not that. But changing the world? These are the things that people work for. And this pushes people. And so, this is who we are as people. And it's the values of our company. It's been the values of our company forever. And it's to Steve's credit. He put these values in the company... I know I probably said it too many times, but it's a privilege of a lifetime to be there, because I think there's no place like it on Earth."

The first part of the Charlie Rose interview aired on Friday, with Tim Cook speaking about Steve Jobs' continued influence on Apple Products, the company's thoughts on the Apple TV, and the decision to buy Beats Electronics.

During the first half of the interview, Tim Cook also said that Apple is working on products that "no one knows about" and that "haven't been rumored about yet," noting that some of the products may go on to be released while others will be shelved.

Tim Cook's full commentary on Apple and privacy issues will be available when the complete second part of the interview airs later tonight on PBS.

Though it won't be released until early 2015, Apple's new wearable device is already facing public scrutiny over privacy issues. Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen has sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook asking several questions about how the Apple Watch will operate and requesting a meeting with Apple representatives.

In the letter, Jepsen addresses several issues he has with the Apple Watch, and requests that Apple explains what data the device will collect and how the information will be stored, along with its policies on apps that access health information.

In his letter, the Attorney General noted several areas of concern, including:

-Whether Apple will allow consumers to store personal and health information on Apple Watch itself and/or on its servers, and if so, how information will be safeguarded;

-If and how Apple will review application privacy policies to ensure that users' health information is safeguarded;

-If and how Apple intends to enforce policies that require the rejection of applications that provide diagnoses, treatment advice, or control hardware designed to diagnose or treat medical conditions that do not provide written regulatory approval;

-What information Apple Watch and its applications will collect from users, and how Apple and application developers will obtain consent to collect and share such information from these individuals; and

-How Apple intends to monitor and enforce applications' compliance with its guidelines concerning users' health information.

Many of these questions actually seem to pertain more to Apple's HealthKit APIs, and several of the answers to Jepson's questions are detailed in Apple's Review Guidelines for developers that was updated in June.

In the document, Apple says that HealthKit information will not be stored in iCloud and that apps attempting to store health data in iCloud will be rejected. It also states that apps will not be able to share data with third parties without express user consent and that all apps that provide diagnoses or treatment advice will be rejected.

Introduced on September 9, the Apple Watch is designed to be both fashionable and functional, aiming to encourage its users to be more active. It includes an accelerometer and four lenses designed to monitor heart rate, with the information collected displayed in several accompanying fitness apps. The heart rate and fitness data will also likely integrate with the Health app in iOS 8, which is designed to aggregate health and fitness data from a wide range of devices that have taken advantage of the HealthKit API.

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.

Though the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are not expected to be delivered to customers and released to stores until Friday, September 19, some devices have already begun showing up in Vietnam and China.

According to Dan Tri [Google Translate] an iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were spotted in a Red River restaurant in Vietnam by an AP reporter, who confirmed the legitimacy of the devices.

The reporter is said to have tested features like Messages and Siri to confirm that the devices seen in Vietnam were real, and Dan Tri snapped several photos of the two phones. The images show off the size difference between the two models and how the devices fit into a pocket.

Dan Tri also shares some details on the two new devices, suggesting that despite the size increase, the iPhone 6 Plus is comfortable to hold and feels like "a miniature mini iPad." The cameras, though protruding, are not much of a hinderance, and two phones are "fast" and quick to open apps.

iPhone 6 models have also appeared in China, with users on the MacX.cn forums sharing several photos of the devices.

Apple was unable to keep a tight rein on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus this year, with several parts leaking out ahead of the iPhone announcement. Enough parts leaked, in fact, that Feld & Volk was able to assemble a functional iPhone well ahead of release, and the weekend before Apple unveiled the two devices, a fully functional version of the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 was shared by a Chinese user.

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will be in retail stores beginning on Friday, September 19. Early pre-orders placed on September 12 will also begin arriving on that date, though a few lucky customers often get their devices delivered early due to shipping errors and the logistics of delivering hundreds of thousands of devices simultaneously.

Apple today released the third Yosemite public beta for beta testers, following the release of the second Yosemite public beta on August 21. Developer Preview 8 has also been released for developers, two weeks after the seventh Developer Preview was released.

The software update can be downloaded through the software update function of the Mac App Store, and developers can also download DP 8 from the Mac Developer Center.

It is possible given the release timing that both versions of Yosemite, DP 8 and the new public beta, are the same. The public beta will also include updates from Developer Preview 7, which included a new look for Dark Mode, several tweaked icons, and the removal of the "Software Update" option from the main Apple menu.

Apple is expected to release OS X Yosemite to the general public later this year, possibly following an October event that may introduce new iPads.

During Apple's keynote announcement, the company announced plans to provide U2's new album, "Songs of Innocence," to all iTunes customers for free. Rather than letting customers choose to download the album on their own, however, Apple pushed it to iTunes accounts, causing some devices to automatically download the album without explicit user permission.

The move upset users who did not want to have U2's album listed on their devices, which has now prompted Apple to create a process for removing the album from user's devices. According to Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr, who gave a statement to Re/code, customers were asking Apple how to delete the album after it was distributed, which has led Apple to create both a tool and a support document that outlines the process for removing the album from iCloud.

Here's Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr's explanation: "Some customers asked for the ability to delete 'Songs of Innocence' from their library, so we set up http://www.itunes.com/soi-remove to let them easily do so. Any customer that needs additional help should contact AppleCare."

To remove the U2 album, users are directed to Apple's new removal tool that will automatically remove the U2 album from an account after signing in with an Apple ID and password.

Apple warns that once the album has been removed from an iTunes account that it will no longer be available as a previously purchased album. Users have until October 13, 2014 to manually reinstall the album for free.

With Dell having announced its upcoming 5120 x 2880 "5K" display that would be the equivalent of a Retina 27-inch iMac or Apple Thunderbolt Display and Apple rumored to be launching its own such display later this year, connectivity options for such displays have now taken a significant step forward with today's official release of the DisplayPort 1.3 specification by the Video Electronics Standards Association (via 9to5Mac).

The new standard offers a 50 percent increase in bandwidth to 32.4 Gbps, or 25.92 Gbps of uncompressed video data once overhead is accounted for.

The increased bandwidth enables higher resolution monitors, including recently announced 5K monitors (with pixel resolutions of 5120 x 2880) using a single DisplayPort cable, without the use of compression. It will also enable higher resolutions when driving multiple monitors through a single connection using DisplayPort’s Multi-Stream feature, such as the use of two 4K UHD monitors, each with a pixel resolution of 3840 x 2160, when using VESA Coordinated Video Timing.

Apple has been rumored for some time to be working on Retina iMacs and displays, but connectivity bottlenecks have been one of the factors slowing progress in that area.

The previous DisplayPort 1.2a standard offered enough bandwidth to support 4K displays without compression, but pushing resolutions to 5K has presented difficulties for connectivity. With the new DisplayPort 1.3 standard, which will presumably be built into future Thunderbolt implementations, computer manufacturers such as Apple will be able to fully support the new high-resolution displays set to hit the market in the coming months.

As retailers prepare to begin sending out iPhone 6 and 6 Plus pre-orders to customers, shipping company employees behind the scenes are working hard to transport the phones from China to the United States. One MacRumors reader who works in shipping has posted photos of 195,000 iPhone 6 and 6 Plus pre-orders that he flew from China to Alaska in a 747, which will then be sent on to Chicago.

Yep, that's what I do. I fly stuff. Privileged to be a small part of the Apple supply chain. Just landed a 747 full of iPhone 6's in Anchorage. Another crew will take the airplane on to Chicago. It'll be on the ground at O'hare about 9am Sept. 15. I gave it a little extra gas coming over the Pacific, just to get them here a little quicker. You're welcome

According to the poster, goforblacksky, the massive load of phones weighed approximately 256,000 pounds. Though the photo shows the cargo under tarps and concealed, a second shipping photo from China Daily depicts a similar plane loaded with iPhones departing from the Henan province in China bound for Chicago last week.

Customers who pre-ordered early from carriers like Verizon have already begun receiving shipping notifications, and customers who placed orders from Apple and were lucky enough to receive a 9/19 shipping date are seeing their phone statuses listed as "Preparing for shipment." Apple orders may begin shipping out later today.

iPhone 6 and 6 Plus orders will begin arriving to customers on Friday, 9/19, which is the date that the iPhone will also begin appearing in stores. Apple will have additional iPhone 6 and 6 Plus units available for customers willing to wait in line and purchase in store on that date.

Currently, all pre-orders for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have sold out. iPhone 6 orders placed on Apple's online store now have shipping estimates of 7 to 10 days, while iPhone 6 Plus orders have shipping estimates of three to four weeks.

Duke University, Stanford University Hospital, and medical device manufacturers are working with Apple on patient trials involving Apple's new HealthKit API, reports Reuters. Apple mentioned the trials in its recent September press event, but did not provide any details on the health parameters or patient groups being studied.

Speaking to Reuters, Duke University's Ricky Bloomfield, internal medicine pediatrician and director of mobile strategy, confirmed the research institution will use HealthKit to track vital health parameters such as blood pressure and weight for patients with cancer or heart disease. iOS 8's HealthKit API will gather this health-related information from a variety of sources and compile it so patients and doctors can easily view this information in one place.

"This could eliminate the hassle of getting data from patients, who want to give it to us," said Bloomfield, "HealthKit removes some of the error from patients' manually entering their data."

Stanford Children's Chief Medical Information Officer Christopher Longhurst confirmed that the research hospital will be monitoring Type 1 diabetes patients, who will be sent home with an iPod touch and instructed to enter blood sugar levels in between doctor visits. Two patients already are enrolled in the trial.

Besides doctors, medical device makers are interested in HealthKit, taking advantage of HealthKit's ability to gather medical information from a device and share it with an iOS app. Apple already announced it has electronic health record software vendor Epic Systems as a HealthKit partner. Many other manufacturers, such as glucose monitor company Dexcom, are interested in HealthKit and are in talks with Apple and the FDA about adopting the technology.

Apple has made clear it views HealthKit as an important aspect of iOS 8 and upcoming devices such as the Apple Watch, in line with the company's emphasis on enriching the lives of users through innovation in technology. That vision, however, will take some time to develop as Apple continue its own work and relies on partners to help support the effort going forward.

Several months ago, T-Mobile US launched an iPhone "test drive" program allowing users to test an iPhone 5s on the carrier's network for seven days free of charge. The program helps users decide if T-Mobile's coverage is satisfactory in the areas they frequent, and also gives users unfamiliar with the iPhone a free introduction to the platform.

With Apple ready to release new iPhone hardware and software, T-Mobile has informed Re/code that it will continue offering the program and plans to upgrade the test drive units to iOS 8 within days of its public launch this Wednesday. T-Mobile also has plans to begin offering iPhone 6 units through the testing program, but it will take some time for those to become available as supplies will be tight in the early weeks after release and they will unsurprisingly be prioritized for customer purchases.

“We don’t have a definitive timeline, but we do intend to switch over in future,” a T-Mobile spokesperson said. “There are a variety of factors that affect that timeline, (including) product availability.”

T-Mobile's test drive program is one component of its ongoing "Un-carrier" initiative in which has sought to differentiate itself from the other major U.S. carriers. The latest piece of the program, unveiled last week, includes support for Wi-Fi calling and a partnership with inflight Internet service provider Gogo to allow T-Mobile customers to use text, picture message, and visual voicemail services on Gogo-enabled airplanes free of charge.