Monday, 9 November 2020

This Week in Apps: Elections’ impact on the app store, new app privacy requirements, iOS 14.2 arrives

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.

The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.

Weekly News Round-Up

Platforms

Fortnite finds a way to skirt App Store ban. The game, banned by Apple in a battle over App Store fees, may have another way to reach the iPhone user base by way of Nvidia’s GeForce cloud gaming service that runs on the mobile web.
WhatsApp rolls out a payments service in India. The Facebook-owned messaging app began testing the service in 2018, but struggled to get government approval. The service, which is built on UPI, offers a challenge to Google and Walmart which currently dominate the mobile payments market in India.
WhatsApp adds disappearing messages. The new ephemeral messages disappear after seven days and rolled out across iOS and Android. It also made it easier for users to delete large files and manage storage.
Apple announces a new event. The expectation is that this one will be Mac-focused.
Apple warns investors that reduced App Store revenues would hurt its financial results. The warning comes amidst increasing regulatory pressure on the App Store, which today requires developers to distribute through its platform to reach iOS users, and requires IAPs through Apple Pay.

Services

Google Stadia, the cloud gaming service, rolls out Stadia Family Sharing. The feature lets families of up to six share games.
All the U.K. contact tracing apps are now compatible and work across borders. The separate apps address England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland markets, and use the Apple/Google API.

Politics

PUBG Mobile plots a way to return to the Indian market, after a ban over cybersecurity concerns due to its connections with Chinese giant Tencent. The company is looking for a local publisher.
Facebook and Instagram added notifications during the tight U.S. election this week to alert users that votes were still being counted. The move follows Trump’s spread of conspiracies that elections were rigged and his lies saying he had won before all votes had been counted.

Security & Privacy

Google Screenwise is dead. The tracking app, which records users’ web usage, had been in the news last year for improperly using an iOS enterprise certificate for distribution.

Apps in the News

Spotify adds standalone streaming support to its Apple Watch app. That means users can leave their iPhone behind and stream directly from their Watch over Wi-Fi or cellular.
Facebook tests “dark mode” on Android. The new dark mode option had been tested earlier on desktop.
Triller names Daniel Gillick its Global Head of Partnerships. The exec was previously senior manager of music content and industry relations at Triller rival TikTok.
TikTok signed a new, longer-term agreement with Sony Music. The deal allows the app to continue to offer music from Sony artists in its app.
TikTok tests iOS 14 “App Clips.” The test was spotted in beta, and would allow users a full-screen preview with a download prompt.
NBC News launched an iOS 14 widget for putting election news and results on your home screen.
Pokémon GO reaches $1 billion in 2020; lifetime revenue tops $4 billion, says Sensor Tower.
Tencent claims record 100 million daily users on mobile game, Honor of Kings. The game consistently ranks among the world’s top-grossing games, as well.
Match Group reported Tinder subscriber growth despite a pandemic where people are supposed to be social distancing. Tinder had 6.6 million subscribers in the quarter, up from 6.2 million in the prior quarter. Tinder revenue rose 15%, but ARPU slipped 1%.

Trends

App Store revenue grew 30% year-over-year during the month of October, according to Sensor Tower preliminary data.
Apple IAPs rose 54% during Q2 according to research from mCommerce agency JMango360.
56% of marketers said iOS 14 updates will negatively impact their businesses, due to how Apple’s new consumer privacy protections offer users more ways to block tracking.
TikTok still tops worldwide downloads in October 2020.

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

Funding and M&A (and IPOs)

Delivery startup goPuff, whose app lets you order convenience store items and alcohol for same-day delivery, acquires alcoholic beverage chain BevMo for $350 million.
TikTok parent company ByteDance looking to raise $2 billion before its IPO on the Hong Kong StockExchange.
Kuaishou Technology, the world’s second-largest short term video app and TikTok rival, filed for IPO in Hong Kong.
European challenger banking app Vivid Money raises $17.6 million. The bank offers a metal debit card controlled by an app, and other tech-forward features.

Downloads

The Roku Channel app

The recently released app lets anyone, including non-Roku users, stream from Roku’s catalog of free, live and premium movie and TV content on their iOS or Android device. The app also offers more than 115 live channels including live news, weather, sports, food & home, reality TV, science fiction, true crime, kids’ entertainment and Spanish language content.

The Collage Atlas

Looking to wind-down from a week of stress and anxiety? The Apple Arcade game, The Collage Atlas, may help. This unique hand-drawn game created by developer John William Evelyn is a work of art where players are invited to journey through a pen-and-ink dream world, accompanied by a soundtrack shaped by your gameplay. The title, which was in development for more than four years, is more of something to experience than something to more actively “play” — and that may be just what’s needed right now.

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Daily Crunch: Reviewing the biggest and smallest new iPhones

We review the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the iPhone 12 mini, Zoom settles with the FTC and Pfizer announces promising results for its COVID-19 vaccine trial. This is your Daily Crunch for November 9, 2020.

The big story: Reviewing the biggest and smallest new iPhones

TechCrunch Editor in Chief Matthew Panzarino tackled both extremes of the new iPhone 12 lineup today, publishing reviews of the Pro Max and the mini.

It sounds like he’s impressed with both of them. The iPhone 12 Pro Max, he writes, has “a really, really great camera” — the question is whether you’re willing to make the ergonomic trade-off, since you’ll probably need to use two hands with the larger phone. At the same time, he suggests that the iPhone 12 mini might be “the most attractive phone in the lineup.”

As if that wasn’t enough, Matthew also checked out the MagSafe Duo charger, a dual magnetic charger that he found underwhelming.

The tech giants

Zoom settles with FTC after making ‘deceptive’ security claims — The FTC previously accused Zoom of engaging in “a series of deceptive and unfair practices,” in part by claiming its encryption was stronger than it actually was.

Adobe acquires marketing workflow startup Workfront for $1.5B — This deal gives Adobe more online marketing tooling to fit into its Experience Cloud.

Beyond Meat shares rise on news that it collaborated with McDonald’s on the McPlant options — While McDonald’s initial announcement made it sound like the McPlant was developed entirely in-house, the new vegetarian option is actually a collaboration with Beyond Meat.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Autonomous delivery startup Nuro hits $5 billion valuation on fresh funding of $500 million — Nuro was founded in June 2016 by former Google engineers Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu.

MSCHF’s Push Party raises an unconventional seed round at a $200 million valuation — MSCHF is poking a little fun at the venture industry and perhaps publications like TechCrunch, too.

Bumble’s new feature prevents bad actors from using ‘unmatch’ to hide from their victims — This will make it harder for harassers to avoid having their conversation reported to Bumble’s safety team.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Five UX design research mistakes you can stop making today — Jason Buhle writes that while working with startups and tech companies, he’s seen that even people who understand the importance of user research don’t necessarily know how to conduct it in optimal ways.

What happens to high-flying startups if the pandemic trade flips? — An effective vaccine trial is shaking up public companies, unicorns and startups.

What we’ve learned about working from home seven months into the pandemic — We interview Karen Mangia, vice president of customer and market insights at Salesforce and author of “Working from Home, Making the New Normal Work for You.”

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine proves 90% effective in first results from Phase 3 clinical trial — This reflects only early results from the trial, rather than the final verified result, but it’s still extremely promising.

NASA partners with SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Blue Origin and others for test flights and research — While no money will change hands, NASA will dedicate millions in personnel and other support to these test launches and developing technologies.

Original Content podcast: ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ is the historical chess drama we need right now — Somehow, the show makes competitive chess seem thrilling.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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iPhone 12 mini Review: Tiny package, big bang

Reviewing the iPhone 12 mini and the iPhone 12 Pro Max at the same time has been an exercise in extremes. I noted in my earlier reviews of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro that it was difficult to evaluate the middle of the lineup without having the extreme ends of the scale available to contrast them.

Now that I have had a chance to examine those extremes, I have come away incredibly impressed with the job that Apple has done on the whole lineup this year. These phones are extremely well sized, highly crisp from a design perspective and generously appointed with features. Aside from a handful of small items, there are no glaring examples here of artificial cliffs on the feature side or price side that attempt to push people upwards in the lineup. Something that has been the case in some years.

The most impressive of all of the iPhones 12 this year should be, by all rights, the iPhone 12 Pro Max. It’s big screen and beautiful casing make it very attractive and it has the best camera I’ve ever seen in a phone.

But in my opinion, the iPhone 12 mini is the most attractive phone in the lineup. The dark horse that makes a strong case for itself outside of the ‘I just want a small phone’ crowd.

The size

The iPhone mini is 20% smaller and 18% lighter than the iPhone 12 and about half the size of the iPhone 11. It really hits a nicely sweet note for fit, and the lack of a home button means that the screen can accommodate quite a bit more content on display at once.

Though my larger hands do feel a bit more comfortable on the iPhone 12, I am happy to report that the typing experience on the iPhone 12 mini is far superior to the 4.0” first generation SE. It even gets a leg up on the 4.7” iPhone SE introduced earlier this year because the screen is the same width but taller — letting it pull of the Tardis trick of being smaller with a bigger screen. This allows the Emoji keyboard toggle and the voice dictation button to drop out of the bottom row of keys, relaxing spacing on the return, space and number pad buttons. This additional size, especially for the spacebar, improves the typing experience measurably. The key spacing is a bit less generous than the iPhone 12, but this is a workable situation for typing.

If you look at this and an iPhone 11, because of the way that the screen is rendered, you’re going to see pretty much the same amount of content.

On top of an iPhone 12 Pro Max

Speaking of rendering, the iPhone 12 mini is scaled, which means that it is displaying at roughly .96 of its ‘native’ screen resolution of 2340×1080. In my testing, this scaling was not apparent in any way. Given that the mini has a resolution of 476ppi in a smaller screen than the iPhone 12 which clocks in at 460ppi that’s not too surprising. iPhones have been doing integral scaling for years with their magnification features so Apple has plenty of practice at this. I didn’t notice any artifacting or scrolling, and most apps looked just fine proportionally, though some developers that do not take advantage of Apple’s native frameworks that support various screen sizes may have to do a bit of tweaking here and there.

The iPhone mini has a nice lightweight compactness to it. In order to get a read on its vibe I compared it to the iPhone 4S, which felt far denser, the iPhone 5 which felt a bit more airy and the iPhone 5C which still feels fun but cheap. It shares pedigree with all of these devices but feels far more assured and integral. The iPhone 12 design language doesn’t feel like multiple materials sandwiched together in the way that these earlier devices do. It feels grown, rather than made.

That integral quality does wonders when it’s such a small device because every millimeter counts. Apple didn’t cheap out on the casing or design and gave it an exterior to match its very performant interior.

The speaker and microphone grills, I’m sad to say, are asymmetric on the iPhone 12 mini. Ding.

And don’t think you miss out on anything performance related when you go to the mini. While it appears that either heat management, scaling or power management in general has made Apple tweak the processor ever so slightly, the benchmarks are close enough to make it a wash. There is zero chance you ever see any real-world difference between the iPhone 12 mini and any other iPhone 12.

For what it’s worth, the iPhone 12 mini has 4GB of RAM, same as the iPhone 12. The iPhone Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max have 6GB. The biggest real world effect of RAM that I have found on iPhone is less dumping of Safari tabs in the background so if you’re a pro browser take that into account.

The iPhone 12 mini is basically identical in the photography department to the iPhone 12. You lose nothing, it’s a great camera. Nothing much to see there though so I’m not spending any time on it. You will have a world class phone camera, just no telephoto.

If you’re a camera-oriented iPhone user, your usage of the telephoto lens is probably the most crisp deciding factor between the iPhone 12 Pro and the iPhone 12. The LiDAR benefits are there, and they absolutely make a big difference. But not having a telephoto at all could be an easy make-or-break for some people.

Cribbing from my iPhone 12 Pro review here, one easy way to judge is to make a smart album in Photos on a Mac (or sort your photos using another tool that can read metadata) specifying images shot with a telephoto lens. If that’s a sizeable portion of your pics over the last year, then you’ve got a decision to make about whether you’re comfortable losing that option.

When I did this, just about 19% of my iPhone 11 Pro shots were taken with the telephoto lens. Around 30% of those were portrait shots. So for me, 1 in every 5 images was shot with that tighter framing. It’s just something I find attractive. I like a little bit more precise of a crop and the nice amount of compression (for closer subjects) that comes with the longer focal length.

You don’t get 4k/60fps video but you still can shoot 4K/30fps Dolby Vision video in this super tiny device, which is wild. It’s more than I think any normal iPhone 12 mini user will ever need.

Apple says that the iPhone 12 mini’s battery life is better than the 4.7” iPhone SE and that bore out in my testing. I got through a day easily, with maybe a few percentage points difference between the iPhone 12 mini and the iPhone 12. I didn’t have enough time to run a comparison against the battery king, the iPhone 11, but I doubt it would come anywhere near unseating it just from a physics perspective. This thing is small so the battery pack is small and the processor is not being majorly throttled in any way. The iPhone 12 mini charges at 12W on a MagSafe charger on a 20W brick, rather than the full 15W because the smaller battery allows it to still hit the same percentage charging speed as the larger iPhones 12 while mitigating heat buildup — always a problem in a smaller chassis.

I did have a chance to try the iPhone 12 mini slip case and I thought it was well made and clever, though absolutely positively not for me. I use my iPhone too much to be sliding it into a sleeve and back out again, it would be an exercise in futility. But if you are in the market for this kind of case, I hold that the Apple version shows off the company’s earned expertise in leather. It’s well trimmed, it has nice edge finishing and a clever clasp.

It integrates Apple’s MagSafe magnet array to display a live clock on the OLED screen with a space for the ambient light sensor. The clock display is pretty clever. It has a lightly colored background that matches the leather color of the case using the same NFC trick as the silicon cases which display a color matched ring when you put them on. The clock fades in two stages over a few seconds but will turn on when the ambient light sensor knows it’s not in your pocket and the motion coprocessor in the A14 senses movement.

So a quick lift will flip the time on and let you check it. It also still allows tap-to-wake in the clock window, showing you the color matched time.

There’s also a hidden card slot for maybe 1 credit card or ID card inside the mouth of the case. Like I said, it’s not for me, but I can appreciate that a lot more is going on in this little case than meets the eye, and it shows off some of the sophistication that could be coming to other MagSafe accessories in the future.

The conclusion

In my iPhone 12/12 Pro review I noted my rubric for selecting a personal device:

The most compact and unobtrusive shape.
The best camera that I can afford.

And this is the conclusion I came to at the time:

The iPhone 12 Pro is bested (theoretically) in the camera department by the iPhone 12 Pro Max, which has the biggest and best sensor Apple has yet created. (But its dimensions are similarly biggest.) The iPhone 12 has been precisely cloned in a smaller version with the iPhone 12 mini. By my simple decision-making matrix, either one of those are a better choice for me than either of the models I’ve tested. If the object becomes to find the best compromise between the two, the iPhone 12 Pro is the pick.

Now that I have had both of those devices in my hand, I can say that my opinion hasn’t changed, but my definitions of the lineup have a bit.

Because the iPhone 12 mini has no appreciable compromises in feature set from the iPhone 12, I consider these one device with two screen sizes. Yes, this may feel like a ‘duh’ moment but I didn’t want to jump to this place without actually using the mini for an extended period. Most critically, I needed to get a feel for that typing experience.

The iPhone mini is by far the best value per dollar in Apple’s 2020 lineup. With this you get all of the power and advances of the iPhone 12, everything but the telephoto camera (and 60fps/4k video) of the iPhone 12 Pro and everything but the new sensor in the iPhone 12 Pro Max. Those additions will cost you anywhere from $300-$400 more over the life of your device if you choose to step up.

I’ve been thinking hard about what a clear break point would be between deciding on the iPhone 12 and the iPhone 12 mini. If you are someone who really likes or ergonomically needs a smaller screen, you’re being treated to a device with no compromises in core functionality. But if you’re not a “small boi” fan then what is the deciding factor?

For me, it comes to this decision flow.

Is the iPhone your only camera and do you use it constantly for images? Then choose the iPhone 12 Pro.
Are you an iPhone photographer that regularly prints images or edits them heavily? Choose the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
Are neither of those true, but it is true that the iPhone is your only mobile computing device? Go with the iPhone 12.
If that’s not true and you regularly carry an iPhone alongside a laptop or iPad, then go with the mini.

Here, I even made you a handy flowchart if that kind of thing is your bag:

This is one of the best years ever for the iPhone lineup. The choices presented allow for a really comfortable picking routine based on camera and screen size with no majorly painful compromises in raw power or capability. These are full featured devices that are really well made from end to end.

I hope that this template in sizing sticks around for a while as the powerful camera tech creeps its way down the lineup over time, invalidating at least the photography side of my flowchart above. Until then, this is still one of the better “small” iPhones Apple has ever produced, and certainly one with the least overall compromise.

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This Week in Apps: Elections’ impact on the app store, new app privacy requirements, iOS 14.2 arrives

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.

Weekly News Round-Up

Platforms

Fortnite finds a way to skirt App Store ban. The game, banned by Apple in a battle over App Store fees, may have another way to reach the iPhone user base by way of Nvidia’s GeForce cloud gaming service that runs on the mobile web.
WhatsApp rolls out a payments service in India. The Facebook-owned messaging app began testing the service in 2018, but struggled to get government approval. The service, which is built on UPI, offers a challenge to Google and Walmart which currently dominate the mobile payments market in India.
WhatsApp adds disappearing messages. The new ephemeral messages disappear after seven days and rolled out across iOS and Android. It also made it easier for users to delete large files and manage storage.
Apple announces a new event. The expectation is that this one will be Mac-focused.
Apple warns investors that reduced App Store revenues would hurt its financial results. The warning comes amidst increasing regulatory pressure on the App Store, which today requires developers to distribute through its platform to reach iOS users, and requires IAPs through Apple Pay.

Services

Google Stadia, the cloud gaming service, rolls out Stadia Family Sharing. The feature lets families of up to six share games.
All the U.K. contact tracing apps are now compatible and work across borders. The separate apps address England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland markets, and use the Apple/Google API.

Politics

PUBG Mobile plots a way to return to the Indian market, after a ban over cybersecurity concerns due to its connections with Chinese giant Tencent. The company is looking for a local publisher.
Facebook and Instagram added notifications during the tight U.S. election this week to alert users that votes were still being counted. The move follows Trump’s spread of conspiracies that elections were rigged and his lies saying he had won before all votes had been counted.

Security & Privacy

Google Screenwise is dead. The tracking app, which records users’ web usage, had been in the news last year for improperly using an iOS enterprise certificate for distribution.

Apps in the News

Spotify adds standalone streaming support to its Apple Watch app. That means users can leave their iPhone behind and stream directly from their Watch over Wi-Fi or cellular.
Facebook tests “dark mode” on Android. The new dark mode option had been tested earlier on desktop.
Triller names Daniel Gillick its Global Head of Partnerships. The exec was previously senior manager of music content and industry relations at Triller rival TikTok.
TikTok signed a new, longer-term agreement with Sony Music. The deal allows the app to continue to offer music from Sony artists in its app.
TikTok tests iOS 14 “App Clips.” The test was spotted in beta, and would allow users a full-screen preview with a download prompt.
NBC News launched an iOS 14 widget for putting election news and results on your home screen.
Pokémon GO reaches $1 billion in 2020; lifetime revenue tops $4 billion, says Sensor Tower.
Tencent claims record 100 million daily users on mobile game, Honor of Kings. The game consistently ranks among the world’s top-grossing games, as well.
Match Group reported Tinder subscriber growth despite a pandemic where people are supposed to be social distancing. Tinder had 6.6 million subscribers in the quarter, up from 6.2 million in the prior quarter. Tinder revenue rose 15%, but ARPU slipped 1%.

Trends

App Store revenue grew 30% year-over-year during the month of October, according to Sensor Tower preliminary data.
Apple IAPs rose 54% during Q2 according to research from mCommerce agency JMango360.
56% of marketers said iOS 14 updates will negatively impact their businesses, due to how Apple’s new consumer privacy protections offer users more ways to block tracking.
TikTok still tops worldwide downloads in October 2020.

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

Funding and M&A (and IPOs)

Delivery startup goPuff, whose app lets you order convenience store items and alcohol for same-day delivery, acquires alcoholic beverage chain BevMo for $350 million.
TikTok parent company ByteDance looking to raise $2 billion before its IPO on the Hong Kong StockExchange.
Kuaishou Technology, the world’s second-largest short term video app and TikTok rival, filed for IPO in Hong Kong.
European challenger banking app Vivid Money raises $17.6 million. The bank offers a metal debit card controlled by an app, and other tech-forward features.

Downloads

The Roku Channel app

The Collage Atlas

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YouTube copies Spotify’s ‘Daily Mixes’ with its new ‘My Mix’ feature

YouTube Music is taking another cue from Spotify with today’s launch of a set of personalized playlists that are essentially YouTube Music’s own take on Spotify’s “Daily Mixes.” Each of these new “My Mix” playlists will feature a different aspect of a user’s tastes and interests, allowing users to dive in to a particular vibe or music genre.

Up to seven of these new “My Mix” playlists will be featured on the Home tab, the company says, and will include a combination of favorite tunes as well as potential new favorites for discovery purposes.

With the launch, YouTube is also rebranding its personalized playlist previously called “Your Mix.” To better clarify its purpose and eliminate possible confusion with the new “My Mix” playlists, this playlist will now be called “My Supermix,” and will combine all of a user’s music tastes into one playlist, like Spotify’s “Discover Weekly.”

YouTube is making other changes to its Home tab and personalized selections, too, it says.

Image Credits: YouTube

Now, the Home tab will feature an activity bar offering easy access to four activity types, including Workout, Focus, Relax and Commute. These will take the user to a dedicated personalized homepage with a variety of playlists suited to the activity in question. The Workout tab, in particular, has been updated to include up to four new personalized mixes that feature music you already like as well as new recommendations. These tabs will also include a “Supermix” of the different playlists.

Personalization has become a key battleground for music streaming services, which aim to use technology to better cater to users by creating unique mixes and delivering more targeted recommendations. YouTube and Apple have both mimicked Spotify’s features on this front, offering their own variations on personalized playlists like Spotify’s flagship playlist, “Discover Weekly,” and others.

YouTube Music, though, has not had as much success in gaining a following, perhaps due to Google’s confusing and overlapping music strategy over the past several years, where it offered two different music apps.

Google has finally begun to correct his, and has started the transition that will shift users off its older service, Google Play Music, and over to YouTube Music. The latter, to date, has struggled with gaining a sizable share in the competitive music market, where Spotify and Apple dominate.

Google Play Music to shut down starting in September, will disappear by December

According to a MIDiA report in June, Google is in fifth place with a 6% share, behind Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and Tencent. However, the report suggested that YouTube Music’s appeal to a younger demographic could help Google turn things around, as its share had grown from just 3% in Q1 2018 to Q1 2019.

YouTube says the new changes to its playlists will arrive today.

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What we expect from Apple’s ‘One More Thing’ Mac event

Macs.

Okay, great. We’re done here.

Okay, fine. Yes, Apple has all but loudly declared that, five months after making a big silicon Mac reveal back at WWDC, the first models will finally be arriving at this week’s big event. Which models and precisely what kind of upgrades are coming is still up in the air, after months of rumors.

It’s also worth noting here that, in spite of the fact that Apple has had a LOT of smaller events in recent months, this is the company’s last event before the holiday season is in full force — as the name implies. That means we may finally be seeing some long-awaited products arriving in time to make their way into stockings and under trees.

Apple’s next big event is November 10

But let’s start with the obvious: new Macs. Apple confirmed back in June that the first models sporting the ARM-based chips would arrive this year, so this event is do or die on that front. There have been a number of a rumors floating around on this front, well ahead of even the official Apple silicon unveiling. While iMacs and other models have been suggested, we seem to be looking specifically at two new 13-inch laptops at this week’s event, namely a new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.

A report from Bloomberg that appeared last week details a chip based on the same A14 chip found in this year’s iPhone 12 models and the iPad Air. The company touted that the new chips would “deliver industry-leading performance and powerful new technologies.” Among the other stated benefits are increased power efficiency/battery life and other features developed for mobile devices, including security and machine learning.

An upgraded version of the company’s high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro could also be on the slate for the event, but the company appears to be kicking the can down the road on a long-rumored redesign for both this and the iMac. Keep in mind, the company has a stated two-year plan to make the full transition to the first-party silicon. That means we’re not likely to see big updates to the iMac (which received one fairly recently), Mac mini or the Mac Pro.

macOS 11.0 Big Sur preview

And, of course, what’s new hardware without the software to match? Apple’s been holding off on announcing the Big Sur release date since its June event. It seems all but a certainty that we’ll be getting a date for macOS 11.0. As one of the biggest updates to the desktop operating system in a number of years, Big Sur brings some key aesthetic redesigns and the new features to the Mac line.

Again, given that this is Apple’s last big event before the holidays, it seems likely we’ll see one or two non-Mac launches. The clearest candidates are the same ones we’ve been discussing in the lead up to every Apple event (and there have been plenty) over the last few months: namely, AirTags and AirPods Studio.

New report outlines potential roadmap for Apple’s ARM-based MacBooks

The recent iPhone event seemed like as good a time as any to launch the latter, alongside the arrival of the HomePod mini, but the over-ear headphones have reportedly run into production issues. That’s something of a surprise, given the fact the company owns Beats — the brand behind some of the best-selling over-ear headphones on the market. But better to have them late than early and malfunctioning.

AirTags, meanwhile, are the company’s long-rumored product-tracking Tile competitor. This one has been on top of the rumor list for even longer than AirPods Studio — and now would veritably be a good time to announce the potential stocking stuffer.

That’s pretty much it for the rumor list at this point. These things used to be longer, but Apple’s COVID-19-era schedule of practically monthly press events has largely meant portioning out announcements. The event kicks off tomorrow at 10 a.m. PST, 1 p.m. EST. As usual, we’ll be breaking news live as it happens.

Apple is building its own processors for future Macs

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Tech With Viral

Monday, 9 November 2020

This Week in Apps: Elections’ impact on the app store, new app privacy requirements, iOS 14.2 arrives

Top Stories

Apps and the Elections

Apple rolls out a big update to iOS 14

Get ready for Apple’s new “app privacy” labels

Weekly News Round-Up

Platforms

Services

Politics

Security & Privacy

Apps in the News

Trends

Funding and M&A (and IPOs)

Downloads

The Roku Channel app

The Collage Atlas

Daily Crunch: Reviewing the biggest and smallest new iPhones

iPhone 12 mini Review: Tiny package, big bang

This Week in Apps: Elections’ impact on the app store, new app privacy requirements, iOS 14.2 arrives

Top Stories

Apps and the Elections

Apple rolls out a big update to iOS 14

Get ready for Apple’s new “app privacy” labels

Weekly News Round-Up

Platforms

Services

Politics

Security & Privacy

Apps in the News

Trends

Funding and M&A (and IPOs)

Downloads

The Roku Channel app

The Collage Atlas

YouTube copies Spotify’s ‘Daily Mixes’ with its new ‘My Mix’ feature

What we expect from Apple’s ‘One More Thing’ Mac event