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Apple TV+ today announced its first French original production, a contemporary thriller drama named Liaison. The series will star actress Eva Green and actor Vincent Cassel, as reported by Le Figaro. Liaison will explore the “devastating impacts of past mistakes on the future” in a thriller with political and espionage plot-lines. The series is currently being filmed in London, and will feature a mixture of French and English dialogue. Apple TV+ faces pressure to increase the amount of European productions as EU governments are trying to introduce new laws that would require streaming services to make a certain proportion of their overall content output domestically....

Update: Sony told us it was a mistake and they have no further news about the app launch for everyone, but it’s clearly coming in the near future since some people already got it. Apple announced back in March that it would take the Apple TV app to other platforms, including Smart TVs from LG, Samsung, Sony, and Vizio. Although only Samsung TVs have received the app so far, some users have noticed today that the Apple TV app is now available on some Sony TV models....

Update: We’ve just got word from our source at Chiat/Day Media Arts Lab that they make fake optimized web pages for all of Apple’s commercials — which load faster. In this case they made optimized images to take the place of Flash and are redoing them as we speak. So probably no Flash. They’ve been quick to respond with new screenshots and video for Cupertino showing the missing Flash Plug-in logos where Flash videos had appeared to have loaded before....

Apple originally released the Apple Watch Series 3 with cellular back in September, but because of the carrier requirements, cellular connectivity was only supported in a handful of countries. Apple today announced, however, that Apple Watch Series 3 with cellular is coming to two new locations next month… Apple has updated its website in Singapore and Hong Kong to announce that the Apple Watch with cellular will be available for preorder on February 2nd....

ChangeWave’s Paul Carton writes, “Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer estimated Apple’s sales would come in between $9-10 billion for the December quarter – well under the $10.7 billion that had been anticipated. He also said earnings per share would fall between $1.06 and $1.35 – also far less than the Street’s $1.67 consensus estimate. In our September PC spending survey of 4,262 consumers, we found Apple’s real problem wasn’t Mac sales over the previous 90 days – sales looked good....

Apple’s Developer site has today shared a reminder that starting January 1st, 2018 32-bit Mac apps will no longer be accepted. Earlier in the year we reported that iOS 11 would be the death blow to all 32-bit mobile apps and that the same would apply for Mac apps with macOS High Sierra in the future. Starting January 1, all new apps submitted to the Mac App Store must support 64-bit architecture, while existing apps must be updated to 64-bit by June 2018....

What does this mean? Actually it means nothing but it isn’t hard for the mind to wonder on this one. Remember Steve Jobs was one of the people who said the Segway (known as the Ginger project back then) was as big a deal as the PC. (As a side note, here is an interesting little jaunt through the first Jobs meeting with the Segway team) So who is Doug Field and why is Apple interested in him?...

Along with the release of iOS 6.0.1 to the masses and 6.1 for developers, Apple released small updates for Safari, iPhoto, and Aperture this afternoon. To start, Safari hit version 6.0.2 and looks to just be security fixes, but several readers below are saying the update isn’t working. As for iPhoto, there are new features in version 9.4.2: • Photos now can be added to shared streams or My Photo Stream by dragging them to “Photo Stream” in the source list • Multiple email addresses can now be copied and pasted in the “Shared with” field for shared streams • When more than five subscribers “Like” a photo in a shared stream, their names are now displayed correctly • Contextual menu now includes an Import command to import all the photos contained in a shared photo stream • Addresses the reliability of Shared Photo Streams when switching between iPhoto and Aperture with the same library • Fixes an issue that could prevent Microsoft Outlook from being used to email photos from within iPhoto • Updated national holidays are available for use in printed photo calendars • Includes stability improvements...

On a brighter timeline, Apple Stores around the world are stocked with the brand new LiDAR-equipped iPad Pro and updated MacBook Air. In reality, every Apple Store outside of Greater China is closed indefinitely. The 52 stores that remain open now give a rare look into a global product launch that could have been. China’s Apple Stores were refreshed with the spring product lineup on Saturday morning following displays at Apple Authorized Resellers on the 25th....

Apple is teasing the launch of a new Apple Business Manager device management solution for ‘late spring’ of this year. In a document outlining new enterprise features, Apple explains that Apple Business Manger is a web-based portal for IT managers to manage people and devices… Apple seemingly started beta testing its new Business Manager platform last month, as evident by this extensive document outlining the features of the platform. The beta testing period, however, began with little coverage from Apple itself or the press....

Apple TV Channels launched in beta last month with support from a limited number of providers. Ahead of the feature’s public launch later this month, Apple TV Channels has today picked up HBO – with a nice added bonus. HBO currently exists in two forms: HBO Now and HBO Go. The former is a standalone package that HBO sells for $15 per month, while the latter allows you to sign in with your cable provider login and access HBO content on the go....

On stage during its “It’s Show Time” event, Apple announced a partnership with Goldman Sachs to introduce its own credit card, integrated with the Wallet app. We first heard about this project on a report from WSJ in late February, we also found evidence in code from an iOS 12.2 beta. Apple’s start in the payments business began with the launch of Apple Pay in 2014, more recently, the company rolled out Apple Pay Cash in the US, which allows users to send payments to each other and also to pay businesses directly from the Messages app....

Earlier this month, Apple announced that it would make the premium Hermès bands for Apple Watch available as a standalone purchase and today it has done just that. Now, Apple Watch customers can purchase a Hermès band for their Apple Watch separately via Apple’s online store. Previously, the only way to obtain a Hermès band was to buy it paired with the Apple Watch itself. The Single Tour, Double Tour, and Cuff Hermès bands paired with an Apple Watch go for upwards of $1,100....

Apple today confirmed that its next conference call to announce the fiscal Q1 2021 results will be held on January 27. This comes after the company announced its annual meeting with shareholders on February 23, 2021. As usual, the company will hold a call with investors and analysts at 2 p.m. PT/5 p.m. ET, right after the release of the earnings. Once again, Apple has not provided an official guidance for the first fiscal quarter of 2021 due to the economic uncertainties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic....

When Apple TV+ launched, it was praised for its exceptionally high bit-rate streaming quality. However, that is set to change for the time being for customers across Europe (and possibly other markets soon). European officials have instructed streaming services to reduce the amount of bandwidth their services use, in order to reduce strain on internet networks. Usage of streaming services has picked up substantially in recent weeks in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic....

Today Apple launched a brand new high-end reference-grade LCD HDR display alongside the newly redesigned Mac Pro. The new monitor, which Apple is calling the Pro Display XDR is a 32-inch LCD display with a 6016 x 3384 6K native resolution and over 20 million pixels. The Pro Display XDR is over 40% larger than the iMac 5K display, and supports P3 wide color, true 10-bit, and comes bundled with reference modes that are calibrated at the factory....

Apple doesn’t normally improve the capabilities of Siri outside of a major operating system update, but it has made an exception this time around for baseball. Apple has dramatically improved the knowledge base Siri can draw from for Siri, allowing the voice-activated personal assistant to answer a wider range of questions about the sport. Via The Verge, Siri now covers 28 leagues, not just Major League Baseball, too. Siri first started answering sports questions with iOS 6....

I said last summer in my Apple Watch Diary series that Apple Pay arriving in the UK was the tipping point for me in transforming the Watch from a useful device into something I was reluctant to be without. That was confirmed last week when a fraud attempt left me without Apple Pay for a couple of days. I received a text from my bank asking me to call them as they suspected my card had been compromised....

The Apple Watch has become an incredibly popular product since its introduction in 2015. It’s gone from a niche watch for Apple fans to a mainstream fitness tracker, and the latest Apple Watch Series 4 takes things a step farther with a new design. The Apple Watch and its various bands, chargers, docks, and more are bound to be some of the most popular gifts this holiday season. These are some of our favorite ideas for Apple Watch gifts....

Apple yesterday released iOS 9.1 to the public with a handful of improvements, but the one that the general public was most excited about was new emoji. While most of the emoji additions were self-explantory, one piqued the interest of many users: an eye inside of a speech bubble. Wired and Jeremy Burge both now note, however, that this emoji is Apple’s way to show its support for a new anti-bullying campaign launched today by the Ad Council....