Apple

Apple partners with Goldman Sachs to introduce high-yield savings accounts for Apple Card holders • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 13, 2022Posted in Apple, Apple Card, Fintech, Goldman SachsNo Comments

Apple is taking a big step towards offering more banking services to its customers. The company announced today it’s partnering with Goldman Sachs to soon launch a new Savings account feature for its Apple Card credit cardholders which will allow them to save and grow their “Daily Cash” — the cashback rewards that are earned from their Apple Card purchases. In the months ahead, Apple says cardholders will be able to automatically save this cash in a new, high-yield Savings account from partner Goldman Sachs which is accessible with Apple Wallet. Customers will be able to transfer their own money into this account, as well. The account will have no fees, minimum deposits or minimum balance requirements, Apple notes, which would make the account somewhat competitive with a variety of neobanks which are often used as a way for customers to park their digital cash and earn money through interest payments. Apple, in its press release this morning, did not yet say what interest rate would be paid out on these high-yield accounts, however. Currently, competitors are offering APY’s in the range of 2.20%-3.05%, per data from Bankrate. Some are going even higher, Investopedia data indicates, citing APYs topping 3.1% at present. (Apple noted it’s not prepared to announce the APY due to the particularly dynamic interest rate environment at present.) Image Credits: Apple When the new offering launches, Apple Card users will be able to set up and manage their Savings account directly in the existing Apple Wallet mobile app. From that point forward, all the Daily Cash they earn through Apple Card purchases will be automatically deposited into this account, unless customers change this to instead have the cash added to their Apple Cash card in Wallet, as they do today. This option can be switched at any time, Apple says. An in-app Savings dashboard will display the account balance and interest accrued over time. Currently, Apple pays 3% cashback on Apple Card purchases made using Apple Pay at select merchants, including Apple itself, as well as Uber/Uber Eats, Walgreens, Nike, Panera Bread, T-Mobile, ExxonMobil, and Ace Hardware. Apple Card purchases will receive 2% cashback when Apple Pay is used and 1% back when the titanium card is used or when a virtual card number is used to shop online. Cardholders won’t have to rely only on their Apple Card purchases to fund their new Savings accounts, however. Apple says that customers will be able to deposit additional funds through a linked bank account or their Apple Cash balance. They can also withdraw this cash at any time, by transferring it back to that same linked bank account or Apple Cash card, without having to pay fees. With the launch of the Apple Card, Apple has been moving steadily into the payments market, allowing it to establish a more direct connection with its customers as it ramps up its “services” business, which sees it selling subscriptions to a variety of offerings, including Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, iCloud+, Apple News+, Apple Fitness+ and more. It’s also looking to make Apple Pay a more viable option for shopping online, with news that it will introduce an Affirm competitor, Apple Pay Later, for splitting up purchases into four interest-free payments. This offering is delayed until 2023, however, Bloomberg reported. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs has been moving towards becoming a more conventional bank, with its Marcus by Goldman Sachs product, which announced last year it had reached a milestone of over $100 billion in customer deposits after five years of operation. The partnership with Apple will give it another angle into the consumer deposits market. Apple didn’t offer an exact launch date for its high-yield Savings account, either, saying only it would arrive in the “coming months.” The company said the Savings account feature will ship with an upcoming iOS release, but could not detail which version number will include the option. “Savings enables Apple Card users to grow their Daily Cash rewards over time, while also saving for the future,” said Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet, in a statement. “Savings delivers even more value to users’ favorite Apple Card benefit — Daily Cash — while offering another easy-to-use tool designed to help users lead healthier financial lives.”

Apple brings more of its services, including iCloud and Apple Music, to Microsoft platforms • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in Apple, apple music, apple tv, Apps, Media & Entertainment, Microsoft, windows 11, xboxNo Comments

During a Surface-focused event this morning, Microsoft announced that it’s integrating Apple’s iCloud storage service with the Photos app in Windows 11. After installing the iCloud for Windows app from the Microsoft Store and choosing to sync iCloud, iPhone users with Windows devices will be able to see their iPhone photos and videos within Photos. Windows users participating in Microsoft’s Windows Insiders program can get the latest iCloud for Windows app, which enables the integration, starting today. “For the last few years, Windows customers who have Android phones have experienced that promise with integration across messaging, calling and photos directly to their Windows PC, bringing the two most important devices in their lives closer together,” CNET quoted Microsoft as saying. “We’re making it easier than ever for customers to access their iPhone photos and the entertainment they love from Apple on their Xbox and Windows devices.” An early look at iCloud integration in Windows 11. In a related development, Apple announced that it’s bringing first-party streaming services including Apple Music and Apple TV for more Microsoft platforms. Apple Music will come to Xbox consoles starting today, and Apple Music and the Apple TV app will launch on Windows sometime next year. The new Apple service tie-ins on Windows and Xbox follow the launch of Apple TV on Xbox consoles nearly two years ago. It’s been a long time coming, but hybrid Windows-iOS households will no doubt appreciate the tighter integration.

Apple and Google to soon release 5G support software updates in India • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in 5g, Apple, Google, Hardware, indiaNo Comments

Apple and Google said Wednesday they will roll out software updates to enable 5G support on their respective handsets in India, the world’s second largest wireless market, just days after local bureaucrats began pushing the phonemakers to expedite their efforts. Reliance Jio and Airtel, India’s two largest carriers, have started to offer 5G services in select Indian cities in recent weeks, but many popular handsets in the nation currently don’t support the local airwaves. These smartphones have hardware capabilities for 5G, but manufacturers need to work with local network carriers to release software updates to enable support for local airwaves. To that end, Apple today said that it will issue a software update in December to enable 5G on iPhones used in India. Apple first introduced 5G capabilities with the iPhone 12 in 2020. “We are working with our carrier partners in India to bring the best 5G experience to iPhone users as soon as network validation and testing for quality and performance are completed. 5G will be enabled via a software update and will start rolling out to iPhone users in December,” an Apple spokesperson told ZebethMedia. Google has also promised a software update for its devices — though it hasn’t provided a specific timeframe for the rollout. “Pixel 7, 7 Pro, and Pixel 6a are 5G capable devices. We are actively working with the Indian carriers to enable functionality at the earliest,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. Google launched the Pixel 6a in India in July, and the Pixel 7 series will go on sale soon. In July, India sold the license to 5G airwaves in an auction for a record sum of $19 billion. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio has purchased most of the spectrum and has committed to spending $25 billion alone in rolling out and broadening its 5G services. The South Asian nation, which is one of the last major markets to adopt 5G, has high hopes about its potentials. “5G is a knock on the doors of a new era in the country. It is the beginning of an infinite sky of opportunities,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at an event last month. Both Apple and Google’s devices hold a small percentage in terms of market share in the Indian smartphone market. While Apple commands just 4% of the local smartphone market, Google’s numbers are not available because of comparatively lower sales. According to analyst firm Counterpoint, the total install base of 5G-ready smartphones in India was 50 million in July. Samsung, India’s second largest smartphone vendor, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. According to a support page by carrier Bharti Airtel, some headsets from Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Realme, and OnePlus already support its 5G services. Notably, Airtel has enabled its 5G services in eight cities and Reliance Jio has enabled them in four cities through an invite-only program. Both these network providers aim to expand the 5G coverage across the country in the coming few years. Airtel’s chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said that the company aims to cover all parts of its eight launch cities by March 2023 and the entire country by 2023. Reliance Jio’s goals are rather ambitious as it plans to roll out its 5G services across the country by 2023.

Living with Apple’s iPhone 14 Plus • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 10, 2022Posted in Apple, Gadgets, Hardware, iPhone, iphone 14, iPhone 14 PlusNo Comments

What constitutes a big phone in 2022? It’s been a moving target for a number of years now — albeit a target that has been steadily moving in a single direction. It’s tough to determine the exact average display size, but most flagship smartphone screens generally fall somewhere between six and seven inches. In 2010, Steve Jobs famously touted four inches as the ideal screen size. “You can’t get your hand around it,” he noted as Android phones were slowly creeping up in size. “No one’s going to buy that.” The following year, Samsung released the first Galaxy Note. The 5.3-inch display elicited downright disgust from some. The first phablet of note was simply too big for pockets and hands. The intervening decade has rendered those comments quaint. Technology has a way of doing that. Fast-forward to 2022, and the four new versions of the iPhone 14 come in two sizes: 6.1- and 6.7 inches. Plenty of things have transpired to get us here, not the least of which is a dramatic gain in the screen-to-body ratio. As displays have gotten larger, the overall footprint required to support them has shrunk. I’ve been using the regular iPhone 14 as my primary device for the last few weeks. I can’t quite wrap my hand completely around it, but close enough. More important is the fact that it’s easy to use with one hand. We’ve come a long way since the days of a 5.3-inch phone seeming almost impossibly large. Image Credits: Brian Heater For my own daily use, I’ve come to really appreciate 6.1 inches as a sweet spot. It’s a good size screen in a hardware footprint that isn’t overwhelming. As ever, your mileage may vary. Some folks were understandably disappointed when the iPhone 14 lineup effectively marked the death of the Mini. Wanting a smaller phone is perfectly reasonable, and for now the SE will have to fill that role. As you’ve no doubt surmised from reading this, I’ve since switched to the 14 Plus for daily use. Right off the bat I will say that I cannot, in fact, wrap my hand around it. Using it in one hand is a bit more of a mixed bag. With face unlock enabled, there are certain actions that are perfectly possible to execute in this manner: checking emails, doomscrolling through social media — basically the things many of us spend most of our time doing on our phones. If you want to, say, respond to an email, on the other hand, things get more complicated. I can generally contort to select the specific message, but hitting Replay in Gmail and typing are going to require both hands. If you’re deep into the world of voice computing, perhaps you’ve got a workaround that works for you. As with all things in life, there’s a trade-off here. I do quite like the 6.7-inch size for things like video. It’s also nice having all that screen as a viewfinder while taking pictures. I ended up moderating a panel at a Brooklyn bookstore earlier this week, and it’s a great size to serve as a kind of makeshift teleprompter. Granted, that’s a fairly niche need, but moving from 6.1 to 6.7 inches, those sorts of advantages start to make themselves known fairly quickly. Beyond screen size, the biggest advantage to opting for the Plus over the standard 14 is battery. The Plus is rated at 26 hours of video playback versus the 14’s 20 hours. In practical terms for me, that meant I went to bed at around 50% battery and woke up around 37%. You should be able to make it through a full 24 hours without an issue. There’s a nice peace of mind in not having to worry about finding a charger during the day. We’re not talking an Apple Watch Series 8 to Ultra-sized jump here, but there’s a lot to be said for not having to worry about having a phone die on you when you’re out in the world. The 14 Plus sits in an interesting kind of liminal space in the iPhone line. It’s the entry-level model, and it’s not the most premium. It’s closer to the former, and similar in practically every respect aside from size. Interestingly, it’s actually lighter than the smaller 14 Pro. That’s something I noticed almost immediately, having been using the Pro a bit, as well. That’s certainly of note for a large phone like this. At $899, it’s also $100 cheaper than the Pro and $200 less than the Pro Max. Image Credits: Brian Heater The 14 is the device you get when you want a new iPhone, but don’t need all the latest bells and whistles. The 14 Pro sits on the bleeding edge of iPhone technology. The 14 Pro Max is a kitchen sink device. The Plus is for the person who prefers the larger screen, but doesn’t require all of the aforementioned frills. The surefire way to figure out which is right for you is to try them on for size at a local brick and mortar. I’d say the regular 14 makes the most sense for the most users. Upgrade to the Pro if you want better photos and a faster chip (and/or are generally dazzled by everything the Dynamic Island has to offer). If screen size is your chief concern, however, that 0.6 inches makes a lot of difference.

Twitter gets an Edit button, Instagram increases ads, Google gets serious about wearables • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 9, 2022Posted in Apple, Apps, Google, Mobile, Social, This Week In Apps, TwitterNo Comments

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly ZebethMedia series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more. Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters. Elon Musk is buying Twitter…again…maybe Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / ZebethMedia Elon Musk delivered another week of Twitter deal drama. After initially trying to worm out of the now-overpriced deal, the Tesla and SpaceX exec this week decided he would go through with the purchase after all. It was speculated that Musk may have seen the writing on the wall, and realized this legal battle was one he couldn’t win. (After all, he can’t simultaneously claim he wants to fix the Twitter bot problem by buying the network and then claim that there are just too darned many bots here — and that Twitter is lying about them, when in fact, its SEC filings indicate otherwise. Right?!) But it had also come to light that Twitter had been given the go-ahead by the judge to proceed with a probe that would allow it to seek out information as to whether the Twitter whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko had contacted Musk’s lawyers before he tried to exit the deal. It seems that Twitter’s discovery had uncovered an anonymous email claiming to be a former Twitter exec involved with Twitter’s Trust & Safety team that had been sent to Musk’s attorney on May 6. And Twitter wanted to find out if the legal team or Musk followed up to determine the sender’s identity. A judge agreed Twitter could dig in — and this was just before Musk changed his mind to move forward with the purchase. So perhaps it was this deep dive into more files and communications that Musk wanted to avoid? Maybe he didn’t want to be asked about this under oath? In any event, Musk said the deal was on and Twitter’s stock jumped over 22% on the news. But the matter wasn’t immediately resolved. As it turned out, Musk and Twitter hadn’t reached an agreement to end their litigation, and neither party had filed anything to stop the court case from proceeding. So the judge alerted them that the trial was still on and would start on October 17, 2022, as planned. But!… Twitter wasn’t ready to take Musk at his word about this sudden change of heart. The judge, however, agreed to give Musk’s team until October 28, 2022 — the date Musk’s team said they could close by — to see if the transaction goes through. If not, the parties will be given November 2022 trial dates, the judge said. Now the deal is hinging on the “receipt of the proceeds of the debt financing,” Bloomberg reported. Morgan Stanley and half a dozen banks underwrote the debt financing for the deal, and given the market conditions, they may find it more difficult to find buyers for the bonds and loans — possibly taking a loss on portions of the package, the report said. But they’re not likely to back out or find a legal means of doing so. Which means…Elon is buying Twitter again. We think! Go ahead, edit Your tweets Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/ZebethMedia And if that wasn’t enough Twitter news for the week, then there’s this other small tidbit: Twitter’s Edit button has arrived. The long-requested feature has now rolled out to Twitter Blue’s U.S. subscribers, in addition to subscribers in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The feature allows users to edit their tweets for up to 30 minutes after posting — something that could help users clarify or correct a mistake in their tweet, fix a small typo or add hashtags, among other things. The edits are logged and visible to the public to prevent abuse. Additionally, Twitter said users can only edit their tweets five times within the 30-minute period, which is also meant to cut down the feature’s abuse. But many are still concerned that bad actors will find a way to take advantage of the addition to edit tweeting in misleading ways. Plus, it comes at a time when user demand for an edit button may have been quelled, given that Twitter last year introduced an “Undo Tweet” feature for its subscribers. This lets users quickly fix a typo after they post — likely cutting down on one of the major use cases for an Edit button. With “Undo Tweet,” users can delay their tweets for up to a minute, giving them time to re-read posts and fix errors, if needed. The edit feature was also one of Musk’s big ideas for fixing Twitter, we should point out. Shortly after taking a board seat at Twitter (remember when that was the big Twitter news?!), he polled his 80.5 million followers to ask if they wanted an edit button — either a tease of the planned announcement or a desire to look like he was already taking action at Twitter. A day later, Twitter announced an edit button was actually in the works after years of saying the opposite. But Twitter denied it was Musk’s idea. While the edit option is now live, its impact may be limited. The majority of Twitter’s users are not