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Apple is celebrating Black History Month in Apple Stores across the world with displays highlighting the Apple Watch Series 6 Black Unity Collection. The collection of limited-edition watches and bands became available in stores on February 1. A bright backdrop referencing the colors of the Pan-African flag fills the Apple Watch Display Table in stores. To debut the new collection and Unity watch face, Apple has dedicated the entire glass-topped table to Black Unity....

Polar is expanding its packed lineup of sport watches with a new mid-priced entry called Ignite. The new $229.95 GPS fitness watch introduces new sleep analytics and fitness guidance features not yet built-in to the Apple Watch and new to Polar. While Apple Watch isn’t rumored to gain built-in sleep tracking without third party apps until next fall, Polar says Ignite is tackling sleep tracking in two ways using in-house experts....

As Apple continues to grow and evolve its Services, one product that has been talked about is a “super-bundle” that could offer customers music, video, gaming, and even news. Apple has reportedly been chatting with major music companies about the plans but there appears to be concerns and resistance from some record labels. Reported by the Financial Times, anonymous sources close to the matter say that Apple has been talking with the major music companies about a super-bundle....

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has been investigating antitrust concerns surrounding Apple since 2019. Most recently, it was reported that the DOJ had “accelerated” its investigation amid a growing number of complaints. Now, the Information reports that one of the focuses of the DOJ antitrust probe into Apple is on the company’s treatment of Roblox. Roblox is a popular online game platform and game creation system that has skyrocketed in popularity over the last years, particularly among children....

Apple CEO Tim Cook opened the Computers, Privacy & Data Protection conference last week with a speech about privacy due to Data Privacy Day. After being broadcast live, the speech was uploaded today on Apple’s official YouTube channel. During the 12-minute speech, Cook once again expressed his concerns about privacy and data security. He argued that the digital advertising market has been invading personal privacy for decades and that Apple wants to stop this by giving users the right to choose whether or not they want to be tracked....

The Pride Edition Woven Nylon band first became popular last year when Apple gifted the band to employees participating in the San Francisco Pride parade. It wasn’t until June of this year that Apple released the band to the general public for $49. The bands carried a charitable component, with Apple donating a portion of proceeds from Pride Edition band sales to LGBTQ advocacy groups. Apple has recently stopped sales of the Pride Edition Apple Watch band, likely due to it switching its focus to its new Fall Collection of Apple Watch bands, first shown during the iPhone X event earlier this week....

Following the release of iOS 14.5 and today’s iOS 14.5.1, Apple has stopped signing iOS 14.4.2, blocking downgrades from the latest major update. Apple first released iOS 14.4.2 to the public back in March with critical security and bug fixes. That was followed by iOS 14.5 a month later – a major release with Apple Watch Unlock for iPhone, App Tracking Transparency, new emoji and Siri voices, Podcast app updates, and more....

Apple updated its mobile shopping apps for both iPhone and iPad today, with each platform getting a different set of new features or fixes. On the iPhone, improvements were made to the way in-store notifications are handled. These notifications can be triggered by a variety of events, such as a Genius Bar appointment or a nearby iBeacon. On the iPad app (which is still a separate download for some reason), shoppers can now purchase Apple gift cards from directly within the app....

A Taiwanese man in a Zhenjiang court filed a lawsuit against Cupertino-based Apple, claiming the company is infringing on his patent with its FaceTime technology that is present in many iOS and OS X products. According to the man’s lawyer, his client earned the patent in 2003 while working under an employer. Once he left, the patent transferred to his name. The patent, which covers a “voice network personal digital assistant” (sounds more like Siri?...

Apple is testing a new type of search result format for some questions. As spotted on Reddit, Spotlight Search can now answer some typed-in questions with direct answers, rather than a generic list of web results. The listing highlights the extract, which should hopefully answer the question, along with the source website and a button to report a concern if the result is inappropriate. An all too familiar experience of using Siri is getting an answer like ‘I found this on the web for [x]’....

Apple has updated its website to announce that it will be live streaming next week’s WWDC Keynote address for all to watch. As per usual, the event will be available on Macs running Safari 4 or later, iOS Devices running iOS 4.2 or later, Windows machines running Quicktime 7, and via an application on the Apple TV. The event kicks off at 10AM Pacific/1PM Eastern time on Monday, June 2nd. Apple says that it has “exciting announcements” in store for the event (as it says for all of its events), which is likely to include talk of iOS 8 with Healthbook, a redesigned OS X 10....

Apple introduced a new version of its Transporter developer application on the Mac App Store for the first time last year. Today, the company is once again updating the Transporter app with new features, including metadata upload and support for 29 more languages. With Transporter, developers can easily upload apps to the Store Connect App platform. More than that, the app also lets creators upload content such as music, movies, TV shows, and books to the iTunes Store and Apple Books....

What’s an iCar? See, as long ago as last year there were rumours of meetings between Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn and Apple’s Steve Jobs. The two men were alleged to be discussing proposals to jointly develop a compact car that integrated Apple solutions. These talks reportedly fell apart last December, but the iCar legend lives on. Perhaps Apple simply allowed Jonathan Ive and his design team to offer Volkswagen some advice on the creation of simplified user interfaces?...

Apple is celebrating Pride Month for another year by releasing new Apple Watch bands and watch faces. While sales of the new bands start on May 26, Apple Watch users can already experience these new watch faces. Here’s how to add them. The new Pride Threads and Nike Pride watch faces are available to Apple Watch Series 4 users or later. When you access the Watch app on the iPhone, they will appear on the “Face Gallery” below the “New Watch Faces” section....

All of today’s best deals are headlined by various Apple Watch Series 6 styles at $100 off and a previous-generation iPhone sale at Woot from $125. Plus, Apple Pencil 2 just dropped to its lowest price of the year at $104. Hit the jump for all that and more in the latest 9to5Toys Lunch Break. Apple Watch Series 6 now up to $100 off with rare savings on Nike+, Cellular, more B&H is currently discounting a wide range of Apple Watch Series 6 styles, taking as much as $100 off everything from entry-level models with sport bands to GPS + Cellular units, Nike+ offerings, and more premium styles....

iFixit’s teardown of the Apple Watch has revealed that the sophisticated heart-rate monitor used is actually capable of acting as a pulse oximeter, allowing it to calculate the oxygen content of your blood by measuring how much infrared light is absorbed. This data would be useful for health and fitness monitoring, but the functionality is not currently enabled in the watch. As iFixit notes, there are a couple of possible reasons Apple is not currently allowing to watch to display this data … First, it may simply be that the company hasn’t yet achieved the necessary accuracy and reliability from the sensor....

Following Apple’s media event in San Francisco this afternoon to reveal the new iPhone 5 and a slew of other products, the company began detailing devices further on its website. According to Apple’s official specs page for the iPhone 5, the device will ship in two separate CDMA and GSM versions in the United States (the iPhone 4S only shipped as a combined CDMA and GSM unit). Apple will ship the iPhone worldwide in a separate GSM model, as explained below....

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According to star Jason Momoa, Aquaman 2 is going to be even bigger than the first DC film. That’s saying a lot too, because the first Aquaman ended up being one of the biggest box office hits the world has ever seen. It topped out at over $1 billion dollars worldwide, as crowds flocked to the theater to see Momoa take on the title character, who fans had only previously seen in the films Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League....