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Apple Pay is now available to more customers in Germany. Banks within the Volksbank Raiffeisenbank collective are offering the service, AppleInsider reported.

The banking cooperative, which includes DZ Bank, Fiducia & GAD, VR Payment and DG Verlag, was initially scheduled to roll out support in 2019. It is unclear why BVR delayed rollout into 2020. With Volks- and Raffeisenbank on board, nearly all major German banks are in the Apple Pay fold, though Postbank, Targobank and Santander remain notable holdouts. Apple’s mobile payments service debuted in Germany in late 2018 with support from Comdirect, Deutsche Bank, Fidor Bank, Hanseatic Bank, HypoVereinsbank and prepaid service Edenred. Mobile banking services Boon, Bunq, N26, o2, Square and VIMpay were also added at that time, while credit card companies American Express, MasterCard and Visa offered limited integration.

Some top Apple Music execs are auctioning 30-minute meetings in support of childhood cancer charity Pablove, 9to5Mac reported. Those involved are Global Creative Director Larry Jackson, Global Head of Video Production, Content Denise Watts, and Creative Producer, Artist Relations + Partnerships Alexa Dedlow. The auctions are being conducted by Charitybuzz and are open until May 7.

Tim Cook raised a record-breaking $688,999 for his charity auction back in 2017. While these latest Apple employee auctions won’t see near the same numbers, it’s wonderful to see Apple Music leaders donating their time to such a great cause. Pablove, a childhood cancer charity will see a meaningful donation from the three separate Charitybuzz auctions from these Apple Music leaders: Global Creative Director Larry Jackson, Global Head of Video Production, Content Denise Watts, and Creative Producer, Artist Relations + Partnerships Alexa Dedlow. Each auction is for a 30-minute lunch meeting with the respective Apple Music leader in the L.A. area. Bidding is open until May 7th.

Developers may soon be able to code on their iPhone or iPad with Xcode on iOS/iPadOS 14. I don’t imagine many people are going to settle down to a big coding session on their iPhone, but I can imagine them doing it on an iPad. If Xcode does come to iPadOS it would cement a move we already saw with the latest iPad Pro – Apple is blurring the lines between a laptop and a tablet. Cult of Mac took a look at the latest rumors.

This report comes from Jon Prosser, founder of YouTube channel Front Page Tech, who recently correctly predicted the launch date of the 2020 iPhone SE. On Monday, Prosser said via Twitter “XCode is present on iOS / iPad OS 14. The implications there are HUGE”… Whenever anyone suggests that iPads have become as powerful as MacBooks, someone always asks, “Does it do Xcode?” The implication is that iPads are just toys — only Macs are real computers. But if Prosser is correct, then devs will be able to use iPad or Mac, whichever they prefer.

There has been a deluge of attempted phishing attacks during the coronavirus outbreak. BBC News reported that Google is now blocking 18m coronavirus-related scam emails on a daily basis.

The company said it was blocking more than 100 million phishing emails a day. Over the past week, almost a fifth were scam emails related to coronavirus. The virus may now be the biggest phishing topic ever, tech firms say. Google’s Gmail is used by 1.5 billion people. One of the scam emails impersonates the World Health Organization Individuals are being sent a huge variety of emails which impersonate authorities, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), in an effort to persuade victims to download software or donate to bogus causes.

Apple and Google appear to be in a standoff with the UK’s National Health Service over the development of a COVID-19 contact tracing app. The Guardian reported that the firms’ desire to protect user privacy is as odds with proposals for the NHS’s app which aims to help slow the spread of COVID-19.

Apple and Google are encouraging health services worldwide to build contact-tracing apps that operate in a decentralised way, allowing individuals to know when they’ve been in contact with an infected person but preventing governments from using that data to build a picture of population movements in aggregate. Their policies, unveiled last week, mean that if the NHS goes ahead with its original plans, its app would face severe limitations on how it operates. The app would not work if the phone’s screen is turned off or if an app other than the contact-tracing app is being used at the same time. It would require the screen to be active all the time, rapidly running down battery life, and would leave users’ personal data at risk if their phone was lost or stolen while the app was in use.

Users already monitor their time in bed using Apple products, but the options available could be expanding. AppleInsider reported on a patent that involves the company creating a blanket and mattress with the ability to track sleep and health.

“Traditionally, monitoring a person’s sleep or vital signs has required expensive and bulky equipment,” begins “Vital Signs Monitoring System,” US Patent No 20200107785. It then points out that wearing such equipment makes the person uncomfortable, and so affects the very sleep patterns that it’s trying to monitor. This is specifically a criticism about the kind of sleep tracking that requires a stay in a medical facility, but it also makes points that could equally apply to an Apple Watch. Specifically, it says that currently any kind of worn device tends to be “configured to determine the vital signs based on one type of measurement or mode of operation.”