MacRumors

As promised earlier this year, Discover has rolled out support for Apple Pay as of today for users running iOS 9 betas or the golden master. Other users will be able to add Discover cards once iOS 9 launches to the public in a few hours. With the addition, Discover cardholders will be able to take advantage of Apple Pay to make secure, contactless payments using Apple's payment service.

To encourage users to give Apple Pay a try, Discover is offering a deal for all of its U.S. cardmembers. Any customer who uses their Discover cards through Apple Pay will get a 10 percent Cashback Bonus through the end of 2015. Cashback Bonuses are available on up to $10,000 of in-store purchases, and Discover it Miles, Miles, and Escape cardmembers will earn an extra 10 miles per dollar on up to $10,000 of in-store purchases.

"We are excited for Discover cardmembers to have the ability to use Apple Pay. Rewards have always been important to our cardmembers, and we want to make sure they receive a generous offer for shopping with Discover and Apple Pay," said Heather Roche, vice president of rewards at Discover. "We want to encourage new and existing Discover cardmembers to add their Discover card to Apple Pay with a few simple clicks using our mobile app, take advantage of this 10% Cashback Bonus, and experience the ease and convenience of using Apple Pay."

According to Discover's Apple Pay press release, Discover members who want to use their cards with the service will need to update to Apple's latest operating system, iOS 9, and then add their cards to the newly renamed Wallet app (formerly Passbook). From there, adding a card to Apple Pay is as simple as scanning it in and verifying it, as seen in our how to on using Apple Pay.

With Discover now supporting Apple Pay, all of the four major credit card networks in the United States work with the payments service. MasterCard, American Express, and Visa have worked with Apple Pay since the service launched in October of 2014.

Since Apple Pay first became available, Apple has worked with hundreds of banks and credit unions to expand Apple Pay support. A full list of supported banks in both the United States and the United Kingdom is available on Apple's website.

Apple Pay is compatible with the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, and iPhone 6s Plus. Apple Pay is also available on an Apple Watch paired with one of the aforementioned devices or an iPhone 5, 5c, or 5s.

(Thanks, tmiw!)

The first batch of customers that pre-ordered the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus are beginning to see their order statuses change from "Processing Items" to "Preparing for Shipment" on Apple's website, less than nine days before the new smartphones launch on September 25.

The customers that have seen early movement on their iPhone 6s pre-orders all appear to live outside of the United States, with order status changes occurring in Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Apple has also begun charging credit cards for some of these customers, which is common at this point in the pre-order process but earlier than usual this year.

While some orders are now moving to the "Preparing for Shipment" stage, new iPhones will be held at FedEx, UPS and other couriers for delivery until September 25. In rare cases, however, some customers might receive their iPhone slightly earlier.

iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus shipping estimates range between September 25 and October 2 for several customers, but some iPhone 6s Plus and Rose Gold models may ship later due to stronger demand.

Apple began accepting pre-orders on September 12 at 12:01 AM Pacific in the U.S. and eleven other countries, with shipping estimates quickly slipping to 2-3 weeks or later for the most popular models.

iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s launch on September 25 at Apple Stores and authorized resellers in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

Apple CEO Tim Cook appeared on the "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" tonight, with the interview covering a number of topics including the iPhone 6s, the possibility of an Apple Car, and Cook's and Apple's efforts in social responsibility.

During the portion of his monologue highlighting the show's guests, Colbert poked fun at Apple with a couple of jokes, initially announcing Cook as "Cello Apple Time Cook" thanks to autocorrect and joking that the interview would be great but that Cook would release a cooler updated version of it in three months.

The interview kicked off with Colbert showing off a rose gold iPhone 6s before proceeding to ask Cook about the device, leading with making sure the charger hasn't changed. Colbert and Cook then discussed and showed off 3D Touch and Live Photos, with Colbert quipping regarding 3D Touch "If I hang up on someone hard enough, will it actually hit them on the other side?"

Addressing comments from Uber CEO Travis Kalanick during an interview on The Late Show last week about Apple working on a car, Cook brushed off the question with a variation of his standard comment: "We look at a number of things along the way, and we decide to really put our energies on a few of those," with Colbert making sure to record the response on his iPhone 6s.

➜ Click here to read rest of article...

Apple's iOS 8 is installed on 87% of iOS devices a year after its release, according to new numbers shared by Apple on its App Store developer page. The new numbers come on the eve of the launch of Apple's newest mobile operating system, iOS 9.

iOS 8 adoption has been somewhat slower than iOS 7, with iOS 8 hitting 72% adoption in January 2015. iOS 7 was at 80% adoption at the same point. Additionally, iOS 8 reached 81% adoption in late April, only growing 6 percentage points in a little over four months.

Comparatively, the latest version of Android (5.1, aka Lollipop) sits at a 5.1% adoption rate. However, Android updates often take a long time to propagate to customers, partly because cell phone manufacturers and cellular carriers must bake in their apps and interfaces into the operating system.

According to mobile analytics firm Mixpanel, iOS 9 currently holds a ~1.04% adoption rate, which includes public beta testers and developers. That number will likely increase dramatically as the operating system will push to iOS users tomorrow, September 16.

When creating games and apps for the new Apple TV, developers are required to build in support for the touch-based remote, making all content accessible to all users without the need for additional accessories like an MFi controller.

As noted by developer Dustin Westphal and shared by our sister site Touch Arcade, Apple's App Programming Guide for the tvOS says the following: "Your game must support the Apple TV remote. Your game may not require the use of a controller."

The new Apple TV works with third-party Bluetooth controllers, but because they are an optional accessory, they are not allowed to be the primary input method for a game. This requirement will force developers who want to build games around controller use to also include a touch or motion-based control scheme for use with the Apple TV remote.

As Touch Arcade points out, the requirement is bound to be a hassle for developers, especially those with games that have complicated control schemes.

There will be games that will have control schemes that are too complicated for the remote, for sure. What if Apple rejects apps that feature terrible controls for the remote, designed only to achieve the bare minimum functionality? Or developers with complicated controls decide to skip making their app compatible with the Apple TV because it won't be worth it? Ideally, we don't want to get to a point where games aren't coming to the Apple TV, or being actively rejected, because they won't fit the remote.

Apple appears to have originally planned to allow developers to require a game controller to play Apple TV games, but the company later nixed that policy and is now requiring all games to support the Apple TV remote in addition to a controller.

Apple's choice to require support for the Apple TV is not surprising, as it also has the same requirements for iOS devices. Developers can build controller support into their iPhone and iPad apps, but apps must also include touch-based control schemes for users who do not have a controller.

Following last week's announcement of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, Tim Cook has been paying unannounced visits to a few Apple Stores to talk with the store's employees and take pictures with customers. During a ride to the company's flagship 5th Avenue location in Manhattan, BuzzFeed got a few minutes with the Apple CEO, where he discussed everything from the privacy concerns of the new "Hey Siri" feature to whether or not iPhone users will ever be able to delete those Apple-created stock apps from their smartphones.

Directly addressing the privacy and safety concerns of "Hey Siri", Cook mentioned that anyone who is fearful of such things can always turn the feature off. Still, he described "the real answer" to be the fact that any information collected by the feature remains on the iPhone, and isn't sent to Apple or anyone else. On the lighter side, when asked about the newest features coming to the next generation iPhones, Cook's favorite appears to be 3D Touch.

Cook is hot on all of this stuff; he describes Live Photos with near Jobsian hyperbole — “I think Live Photos is a medium that hasn’t existed before. It’s like discovering a new form.” But he’s most excited by 3D Touch. “I personally think 3D Touch is a game changer,” he says. “I find that my efficiency is way up with 3D touch, because I can go through so many emails so quickly. It really does cut out a number of navigational steps to get where you’re going.”

When asked whether the company ever holds back a massive innovation ready for an "S" year, for the next generation (next year's assumed "iPhone 7"), Cook was adamant in stating “As soon as products are ready we’re going to release them. There’s no holding back." Another such innovation, the new iPhone Upgrade Program, is promised by the CEO to be aimed at improving customer experience with an "easier" and "simpler" way for those who want the new iPhone each year.

Thanks in part to the announcement of products like the iPad Pro, Cook also mentions that because "we’re at the point where the iPad does what some people want to do with their PCs," he posits that some people may "never" buy a proper desktop or laptop computer. Still, he believes the Mac is a "key part" of the company's strategy and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

One aspect that may be changing in the future, however, is a much-requested way to delete apps like "Stocks" and "Tips" from the iPhone. Cook and the company are aware of the fans' cry for the feature and want to work something out, but it may be more complicated than it seems.

“This is a more complex issue than it first appears,” he says. “There are some apps that are linked to something else on the iPhone. If they were to be removed they might cause issues elsewhere on the phone. There are other apps that aren’t like that. So over time, I think with the ones that aren’t like that, we’ll figure out a way [for you to remove them]. … It’s not that we want to suck up your real estate, we’re not motivated to do that. We want you to be happy. So I recognize that some people want to do this, and it’s something we’re looking at.”

Apple announced the iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and iPad Pro last week along with other products like the new Apple TV, and some new information on upcoming updates like iOS 9 and watchOS 2. The new iPhones went up for pre-order over the weekend and are scheduled to launch next week on Friday, September 25. Cook's interview with BuzzFeed in New York today precedes his upcoming appearance on the new Late Show with Stephen Colbert, airing tonight at 11:30 p.m. on CBS.

The full interview between Cook and BuzzFeed is worth a read.

Apple last week introduced the iPad mini 4, advertising the device as essentially a scaled down version of the iPad Air 2, although the device uses a A8 chip rather than the A8X found in the iPad Air 2. Ars Technica has now taken an early look at the iPad mini 4, finding that the A8 runs at 1.5 GHz, slightly faster than the 1.4 GHz A8 used in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Like the iPad Air 2, the iPad mini 4 also carries 2 GB of RAM.

Having a whole extra CPU core makes the 1.5GHz A8X in the iPad Air 2 about 50% faster than the Mini 4, but we're still looking at a 20-or-so percent improvement over the old Mini 2 and Mini 3. That extra RAM will be good for more than just Split View multitasking, too—2GB iDevices need to eject things from memory less often, cutting down on the amount of tab reloading that Safari does and generally reducing wait times when switching between different tabs and apps.

With the iPad mini 4 using a slower chip than the iPad Air 2 while still driving the same display resolution and similar other internals, performance won't be quite as good on the smaller tablet, as the smaller body likely has some heat-related impacts that drove Apple to include the less-powerful chip. Still, users should see substantial performance upgrades over earlier iPad mini models, as well as support for all of the latest iOS 9 features like Split View multitasking.

Apple is moving forward with plans to build a unified platform for cloud-based web services such as iCloud, iTunes and Siri over the next few years, according to The Information.

The new platform is based on Siri, which itself is powered by open source infrastructure software called Mesos on the backend, according to the report.

The system will be what’s called an “orchestrated infrastructure” that has the ability, among other things, to run Internet applications inside “containers,” which make it easier to scale the apps and make changes to them on the fly, one of these people says.

Apple is reportedly placing more emphasis on open source software in an attempt to attract open source engineers that can help improve its web services, but it remains to be seen how far the company shifts away from its deep culture of secrecy.

Apple sometimes requires engineers submitting code to open-source products to do so through a third party rather than let Apple be affiliated with the code. One person who’s been through the process says they felt that submitting code to an open-source project like Mesos or Hadoop is generally “frowned upon” by managers at Apple. But the process has gotten easier over time, people who have participated in the process say.

The paywalled report explains how Apple is slowly embracing the open source community and becoming more transparent about its open source projects. It also lists some of the open source technologies that Apple uses, including Hadoop, HBase, Elasticsearch, Reak, Kafka, Azkaban and Voldemort.

Bloomberg reported in June that Apple is building a high-speed content delivery network and planning upgrades to its data centers with more in-house equipment to better compete with Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other cloud service providers. The improved infrastructure will allow for faster web services and more efficient delivery of cloud-based content such as streaming music.

While the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus are designed with Series 7000 aluminum, which has a stronger and marginally thicker composition compared to Series 6000 aluminum used on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, the new smartphones weigh more primarily due to their 3D Touch displays.

Apple published Environmental Reports for the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus that reveal the devices are about 11% heavier than their predecessors, as first noted by The Verge. But the additional weight comes almost entirely from the 3D Touch display, which weighs nearly twice as much as a regular ion-strengthened display.

The material breakdowns for the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus list the display weighing 29 grams and 40 grams respectively, while the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus displays weigh 12 grams and 19 grams respectively.

Meanwhile, the individual weights of the aluminum, battery, stainless steel, glass, circuit boards, plastic and other materials on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus are very similar to the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus weigh 143 grams (5.04 ounces) and 192 grams (6.77 ounces) respectively, while the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus weigh 129 grams (4.55 ounces) and 172 grams (6.07 ounces) respectively.