Apple has released a handful of silicone and leather cases for the new iPhone SE. There are three silicone cases for the device, priced at $35, and three leather cases, priced at $45. iPhone SE leather cases are available in three colors: midnight blue, black, and PRODUCT(RED). You can order the leather cases now, with deliveries starting on April 17. iPhone SE silicone cases area also available in three colors: pink sand, white, and black....

Apple has released the second tvOS 11.3 public beta for Apple TV (fourth gen) and Apple TV 4K. tvOS 11.3 beta follows the release of tvOS 11.2.5 for all customers. When used with iOS 11.2.5 on iPhone and iPad, content playing on tvOS 11.2.5 appears as a Now Playing option in Control Center. Here’s what’s new in tvOS 11.3 beta so far: Apple TV shows up in Home app with tvOS 11....

Apple announced plans for two new European data centers back in 2015, one in Ireland, the second in Denmark. The Irish one hasn’t had the smoothest of rides when it comes to planning permission, so it’ll be hoping for better luck with the Danish project, now confirmed to be situated in Foulum, a small village in Central Jutland. The Danish foreign minister Kristian Jensen told CPH Post that the DKK6.3B ($950M) project would represent the largest foreign capital investment in the country’s history....

Apple’s Employee Giving Program saw its best year ever, says the company. The iPhone maker said that 2020 was “a landmark year of giving” by its employees. Apple supports charitable donations and volunteering by its employees by matching every dollar donated and giving an additional sum for every hour of voluntary service by its staff … Apple didn’t break down 2020 specifically, but did highlight the totals achieved since the program was launched back in 2011....

In an open letter being sent to artists today (below), Apple for the first time broke down how it pays artists for streams on the service. It said the average play rate is $0.01 per stream, but it didn’t break down specific streaming rates that vary based on geography and discounted Apple Music plans. Some of the highlights: Apple said it paid an average of $0.01 per stream for individual paid plans last year It paid the same 52% headline rate to all labels Royalties were paid out for more than 5 million recording artists worldwide in 2020 The number of artists that generated recording and publishing royalties over $1 million per year increased over 120% since 2017 The number of recording artists that generated over $50,000 per year has more than doubled....

Starting this week the trade-in value for iPhones will no longer be impacted by the phone’s liquid damage indicator, according to Apple retail employees. Previously, if a device’s “liquid contact indicator” was tripped, the phone would be completely worthless as a trade-in under the company’s “Reuse and Recycle” program. This week’s changes to the program, however, will allow more customers to trade in their devices. However, the company isn’t going to start allowing seriously water-damaged phones for trade-in anytime soon....

Apple has started selling Anker’s eufyCam 2 Pro security camera system at its retail stores and online. The bundle includes 2 cameras alongside the Eufy base station for $350. The eufyCam 2 Pro also features support for HomeKit integration as well as HomeKit Secure Video. This marks the first smart home camera made by Anker to be sold at Apple. The eufyCam 2 Pro features a 2K resolution, although that drops down to 1080p when you use it with HomeKit....

Apple officially completed its acquisition of music tagging service Shazam a few months ago. Now, it’s putting the app to use to promote an “Apple Music special offer” during The Grammys tonight… In a story on the App Store today, Apple touts that if you use Shazam during any point of The Grammys this evening, you’ll unlock a special Apple Music-based experience. First, if you Shazam during The Grammys, you’ll be able to see a full rundown of the event....

Apple has expanded its California self-driving test fleet to 69 cars and 92 drivers, according to a report from macReports. In May, it was reported that Apple had 68 self-driving test cars, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Now, it appears the company has added another one. As for the drivers, Apple added back a few, after cutting by half the number of drivers last year. Now, it has 92 drivers for its self-driving test fleet....

While Apple’s AirPower wireless charging mat is still nowhere to be found, a recently published patent application from the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office offers some details on a security feature of the accessory. The patent describes how a unique ID can be used to protect data transmitted between AirPower and the devices it is charging, and more. One of the figures in the patent application shows how AirPower is able to recognize the device with the largest display and show charging statuses there....

We reported overnight that Apple Pay is now live in Saudi Arabia and the Czech Republic, and now there are a handful of new banks in the United States as well. These are all the new banks that now work with Apple Pay, including over 20 more banks in the US and new France entries: United States Arrha Credit Union Ascend Federal Credit Union BlackRidgeBANK Clackamas Federal Credit Union Community Bank of Louisiana Equishare Credit Union Federation Bank FNB Bank, Inc Hawaiian Tel Federal Credit Union Ireland Bank Jefferson Parish Employees Federal Credit Union Legacy Bank (KS) Maspeth Federal Savings Bank Memphis City Employees Credit Union Mid American Credit Union Midland States Bank Monroe Telco Federal Credit Union Montana Health Federal Credit Union Progressive Bank SoFi Money Southwest National Bank St....

After an initial Amex-only launch last month, Apple Pay is seeing a full roll-out today in Singapore, with Visa, MasterCard and five major banks on board. This makes Singapore the sixth country to get Apple Pay, after the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and China. Singapore was a good target for Apple, as contactless payment is already extremely well-established in the country … Citibank, HSBC, ANZ and Maybank still do not work with Apple Pay [but] Ms Bailey said Apple is working to bring more banks on board....

Apple’s official list of participating banks and credit unions supporting Apple Pay has grown by more than a dozen today. This means that even more people can start using Apple Pay to pay for purchases using the iPhone 6 or Apple Watch at hundreds of thousands of participating merchants. Apple Pay also allows in-app purchases on iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 in addition to iPhone 6. These are the latest banks to join the Apple Pay party: AltaOne Federal Credit Union American Bank of Commerce Capital Bank, N....

A study shows that Apple can pay up to 5x more than Samsung per exposed vulnerability on its bug bounty program. That said, the Cupertino company still faces complaints from researchers, with some saying Apple didn’t give them credit for the zero-day flaw reported. The study conducted by Atlas VPN shows that Apple pays from $100K to $1 million to researchers who find exploits in their service, while Samsung’s bug bounty program rewards researchers between $200 and $200K for qualified exploits....

Apple on Thursday announced its Q4 2022 results. Although the company reported record earnings in every category except for the iPad, Apple expects Mac revenue will drop “substantially” next quarter compared to Q1 2022 results. At the same time, the company also predicts that revenue growth will slow down in the next quarter. Mac revenue expected to decline in Q1 2023 According to Apple CFO Luca Maestri, the company has a challenge when it comes to the Mac....

Apple has released its twice-yearly transparency report, this time covering the second half of 2020. The new report details data requests from governments and other agencies around the world. Apple says that it received requests during the second half of 2020 covering 83,307 devices, which is just under half as many during the same time period in 2019. As first spotted by CNET, the document shows that Apple provided data in 77% of those requests, which is down from 80% during the same time period in 2019....

Apple is continuing to build up its library of original content. Deadline today reports that Apple has ordered a series called “See” from Steven Knight. The science fiction drama comes from a joint venture between Chernin Entertainment and Endeavor Content… Apple’s order is straight-to-series, which means there won’t a “pilot episode,” but rather the series will immediately commence full production. “See” was written by Knight, who is best known for his work on British television show “Peaky Blinders....

The Release Candidate version of iOS 14.6 is now available to developers. Apple has also published the full release notes for the update, including new details on what’s new iPhone and iPad users. Find the full release notes below. Update: Now rolling out to public beta users. As a reminder, Apple has moved away from the previously-used golden master naming for near-final beta releases. Instead, going forward, the company will use the term “Release Candidate,” or RC, to reference a near-final beta release....

. Along with today’s Education updates, Apple released a new version of iTunes today to allow the syncing of interactive iBooks textbooks to your iPad and to presumably add new features for the “iBooks 2.0” app and the updated iTunes U program. On my install, the 107MB download took an additional 257MB of storage space. Get downloading folks. What’s new in iTunes 10.5.3 iTunes 10.5.3 allows you to sync interactive iBooks textbooks to your iPad....

Apple’s long-time head of Apple Mail Terry Blanchard is leaving the company, but he will continue working on mail apps for iOS and Mac as he joins software company Readdle as the VP of Engineering for its Spark email app. The move comes after six years as the lead of Apple’s Mail app development. Blanchard joined Apple in 2011 and led the development and QA teams for Apple Mail until joining Readdle this month....