Apple

Apple’s Beats Announces Solo Pro, Its First On-Ear Noise Cancelling Headphones
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Apple's Beats Announces Solo Pro, Its First On-Ear Noise Cancelling Headphones

Bryan Chaffin ·

Apple’s Beats By Dre announced Solo Pro on Tuesday, the company’s first on-ear, noise-canceling headphones. They also include support for “Hey Siri,” Apple’s voice assistant. According to the company, Solo Pro offers an “exceptional frequency response with lower total harmonic distortion.” It also has two beam-forming microphones and and what Beats says is an “updated speech-detecting accelerometer” for voice calls. They’re $299.95, and will ship  onOctober 30th in Black, Ivory, Gray, Dark Blue, Light Blue and Red. You can preorder now.

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Alleged Apple Employee Says 'Things are so Broken Here at Apple'

Andrew Orr ·

A conversation on Hacker News from an alleged Apple employee says that things are broken at Apple and no one communicates.

Broken management structure. I have had many managers (a red flag in itself) but even worse none of the managers take suggestions from engineers. Everything is purely top down. If an engineer realizes there is a problem on a macro scale they cannot fix it. It is literally impossible to unite more than 1.5 teams to get anything done.

Obviously there is no way to tell if they are real or not (At least, my surface research for these linked teasers can’t tell). Another commenter mentions “overt sexism that I’ve been witness to in iCloud management…”

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U.S. Supreme Court Sides With Apple Over University of Wisconsin

Andrew Orr ·

For several years Apple has been in a patent fight with the University of Wisconsin. But recently the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a bid by the university to reinstate its legal victory over Apple.

The licensing body, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), filed suit in 2014, alleging infringement of a 1998 patent on a “predictor circuit” to help speed the way processors carry out computer program instructions. The patent was developed by computer science professor Gurindar Sohi and three of his students at the university, located in Madison, Wisconsin.

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Apple, Amazon, and the Quest for Device Location

Andrew Orr ·

This article is a great example of false equivalence. By including both Apple and Amazon and writing about each company’s efforts with location technology, the reader is led to believe that we have to worry about both companies. But of course, that isn’t true. Apple has much better privacy practices, while Amazon barely knows the word.

It could be that with the privacy-focused techlash of recent years, both are treading carefully in the launch stages. Just look at how Amazon’s acquisition of mesh networking company eero was received earlier this year or the widespread interest in Huawei’s level of involvement with 5G networks. Location tracking in particular is currently the focus of much more granular controls in iOS 13 and Android 10 than ever before.

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Apple Joins Academy Software Foundation as Premier Member

Andrew Orr ·

The Academy Software Foundation advocates for greater open source software development in the motion picture and media industries. Apple has joined as a Premier member.

To support the continued growth of open source software across our industry, we have the privilege of providing developers with tools that make it easier to contribute code and participate in the community…With Apple as a new member, we hope to work with them to improve support for Apple platforms, which will continue to democratize open source software development.

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Apple Prepares to Offer Bonds to Fund Share Buybacks

Andrew Orr ·

Apple is preparing a bond offering to raise money for share buybacks so it doesn’t have to dip into its cash hoard. The company hasn’t offered bonds since 2017.

We estimate the net proceeds from sales of the notes will be approximately $ , after deducting underwriting discounts and our offering expenses. We intend to use such net proceeds for general corporate purposes, including repurchases of our common stock and payment of dividends under our program to return capital to shareholders, funding for working capital, capital expenditures, acquisitions and repayment of debt.