A few weeks ago, reports indicated that Apple was testing its upcoming Apple Pay Cash service internally using iOS 11.1. Now, Apple appears to be expanding testing of its peer-to-peer payment service with a new batch of employees. According to MacRumors, Apple has extended Apple Pay Cash testing to retail employees, which opens the platform up to a much larger crowd of users. Retail employees allegedly gained access to the platform yesterday, using an internal iOS profile to enable it on their iOS 11....

Staples has revealed that Apple Pay is now the most popular form of payment in its iOS app, used for 30% of purchases made using the app. Apple Pay also appears to have driven new sales, with almost two-thirds of those transactions being from first-time Stapes customers, reveals FierceMobileIT. Vemana also revealed that while Staples has both iOS and Android apps, with usage split pretty evenly between the two, Apple owners are more profitable, generating 70% of mobile purchases … “Apple Pay has been one of the most successful implementations when it comes to payments....

A $17.5 million project led and partly funded by Apple to increase the use of recycled water in Sunnyvale and Cupertino has been approved by city officials. Mercury News reports that the Santa Clara Valley Water District has given the project the go ahead this week which will see the city of Sunnyvale, Apple and the California Water Service Company work together to lay 13,300 feet of pipeline to bring recycled water into Sunnyvale and Apple’s new campus in Cupertino:...

What’s New in the iOS 11.3 Update and Should You Upgrade? While version 11.2.6 fixed minor bugs related to crashes that could be triggered when viewing text in Indian characters, 11.3 introduces a laundry list of fixes, features, and improvements. A critical addition is a battery health feature, which lets users get a better understanding of how well their iOS device is performing. This was partly attributed to the backlash Apple received when it was discovered the company was slowing down older devices to compensate for battery life when new versions of iOS were released....

24 hours after releasing it to developers, Apple is today releasing the latest iOS 15 beta for public beta testers. Apple refers to this as iOS 15 public beta 6, and the audit includes continued changes to the controversial Safari design and more. Update: Apple is also rolling out a new public beta of watchOS 8. If you’re interested in signing up for Apple’s public beta testing program, you can do so via Apple’s website right here....

As we reported this morning, Apple has today launched a new version of the iPod touch, featuring a 64-bit A8 CPU. This breaks a long run of neglect for Apple’s cheapest iOS device, which last received an update way back in 2012. It will be a huge leap in performance over the previous iPod touch which featured an A5 SoC. Both the front and back cameras have been improved, with the back shooter now featuring 8 megapixels of resolution....

Update: Public betas for iOS and tvOS also now available. Apple has released the third iOS 11.1 beta for iPhone and iPad. iOS 11.1 beta includes the return of 3D Touch gestures for multitasking as well as hundreds of new emoji characters including “Woman with Headscarf, Bearded Person, Breastfeeding, Zombie” and plenty more. Apple has also released the third beta versions of watchOS 4.1 beta with Apple Music and Radio streaming as well as tvOS 11....

Apple has begun rolling out a redesigned version of its iTunes Store “Report a Problem” tool to a select batch of customers. Up until earlier this month, the tool has been exclusive to inside of the iTunes application on OS X and Windows. However, the new version of the tool is accessible via web browsers on computers and mobile devices. The ability to access Report a Problem on your mobile device feeds into Apple’s recent post-PC device initiative....

Apple’s iTunes U service, a resource for teachers to create and manage educational content for students on iPad, is today receiving a big update that brings a long list of highly requested features. Starting today, teachers and students using the platform will get access to new additions including 1-to-1 discussions, homework hand-in & grade book features, PDF annotations, and more. One of the most notable features rolling out today is an improved way for teachers and students to communicate via new one-to-one discussion functionality....

Apple’s new Classroom app for iPad is now available in the App Store. The educational app enables shared iPad experiences, task/group assignment, and much more on iOS 9.3 and beyond. Here’s the full description: Classroom for iOS requires iOS 9.3 or later running on the iPad 3 or later, iPad Air or later, iPad mini or later, or iPad Pro. Assign Shared iPads to students – Once configured, Classroom connects to nearby student devices – Classroom intelligently assigns students to the Shared iPad they most recently used – Log students out of Shared iPad at the end of a session to prepare for the next class...

Apple’s commitment to environmental sustainability is well established, but the company is going one step further in its new Danish data center. In addition to powering the center entirely from renewable energy, the company is capturing the waste heat generated and feeding it into a district heating system, to warm local homes … As MacWorld spotted, that’s not the only example of Apple’s desire to combine environmentalism with being a good neighbour....

Apple Music offers some “Mix” playlists that are updated weekly with new songs, including Friends Mix, Favorites Mix, and Chill Mix. And today Apple is introducing another one of these playlists for Apple Music subscribers, named “Get Up! Mix”. The company told Engadget that users will find “happy-making, smile-finding, sing-alonging” songs on this playlists. The new “Get Up! Mix” playlist will offer different songs every Monday, which are selected by artificial intelligence algorithms with some help of human curation....

While Apple Pay works with nearly all of the major banks across the United States, there are still plenty of regional banks and credit unions with customers waiting for Apple Pay to work with their institution. The latest expansion includes several additional banks across the US. ACIPCO Federal Credit Union Arthur State Bank Bank of Eastern Oregon Blue Federal Credit Union Capital Credit Union Choice One Community Credit Union City Bank Community Powered Federal Credit Union Dedham Savings Delta Bank Education Credit Union First Colorado National Bank First State Bank & Trust Company (MO + NE now) Freedom Bank Glacier Hills Credit Union Helena Community Credit Union LifeStore Bank Lincoln National Bank Oregon Community Bank Ridgewood Savings Bank Southern Pine Credit Union State Bank of Table Rock Sun Community Federal Credit Union Taconnet Federal Credit Union Territorial Savings Bank Utah Federal Credit Union Apple Pay will soon arrive in Brazil which will mark the first new country added in 2018....

With the new T2 chip in the 2018 MacBook Pro and the iMac Pro, Apple is preventing third-party Mac repairs. As detailed by MacRumors and Motherboard, new software locks have been put in place that make the machines “inoperable” unless Apple’s proprietary System Configuration software is run after a repair. Motherboard says that Apple recently distributed an updated document to Authorized Service Providers, explaining that any Mac with the T2 security chip is affected by this....

Earlier this month Apple was granted permission to publicly test a self-driving vehicle on public roads in California, and now the company has reportedly issued a letter requesting changes to autonomous car test policies. Reuters first reported that Apple has formally proposed self-driving car testing policies through a company letter. In the company letter, Apple writes that it is ‘investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation....

After virtually discontinuing macOS Server eons ago, Apple has officially pulled the plug on the $20 suite of server features for Mac users. The company broke the bad news for macOS Server fans in a support document today: For many, the bigger surprise is not that macOS Server is going away, but that the standalone app was still being sold. As Apple notes in the support document, several server-inspired features have found their way into recent versions of macOS:...

Just a few days after CEO Tim Cook joined the Council for Sustainable Urbanization to fight climate change in China, Apple this evening has revealed a handful of new programs in China that promote the use of clean energy. Apple says that the programs will help avoid 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution in China between now and 2020, which is the equivalent of removing 4 million vehicles from the road for one year....

Bloomberg reports that Apple has absorbed a 14% hit in the value of the rupee in order to keep iPhone prices steady in India, speculating that it is willing to reduce margin in order to grow market share in what is expected to become the world’s second-largest smartphone market by 2017. Apple is currently in 6th place in smartphone market share in India, behind Samsung, Micromax, Karbonn, Nokia Oyj and Sony....

Apple often acquires small startup companies very quietly and without any formal announcement to bolster its own services, and a new report from TechCrunch claims that the company acquired Ottocat in late-2013. Ottocat was a startup that focused on developing a system to organize and discover apps based on increasingly specific subcategories. Apple currently uses this technology to power the “Explore” tab in the App Store, as seen above. Ottocat’s life as an independent company was brief....

Apple is reportedly planning to change how it handles subscriptions for video streaming services via the App Store. According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple will cut the percentage of revenue it takes from streaming video apps in an effort to improve its relationship with those in that industry… The report, which cites “people familiar with the plans,” claims that Apple is looking to cut its portion of subscription revenue from 30 percent to 15 perfect for video streaming apps....