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Apple will not be launching a Netflix competitor on Monday. That is according to Re/Code’s Peter Kafka. He reported that instead, the company will be looking to increase service revenue by helping others sell their streaming subscriptions. He also noted that Apple doesn’t have the back catalogue of content that the likes of Hulu, Netflix, Disney can offer.

One thing Apple won’t do is unveil a serious competitor to Netflix, Hulu, Disney, or any other entertainment giant trying to sell streaming video subscriptions to consumers. Instead, Apple’s main focus — at least for now — will be helping other people sell streaming video subscriptions and taking a cut of the transaction. Apple may also sell its own shows, at least as part of a bundle of other services. But for now, Apple’s original shows and movies should be considered very expensive giveaways, not the core product.

LONDON – Apple has reportedly acquired Italian start-up Stamplay. AppleInsider reported that the deal is worth $5.6 million.  The company provides developers with a backend from which they can run their app in the cloud. It likely attracted Apple’s interest as a way of helping  iOS app developers.

Using a web-based editor, the service can combine together multiple APIs for payments, notifications, messaging, and other elements, with Stamplay handling the majority of the coding. Newspaper Il Sore 24 Ore reports the acquisition is valued at 5 million euro, with the purchase requiring the founders to become Apple employees, though it is unclear if it is an acquihire or a complete acquisition of the business. Founders Nicola Mattina and Guiliano Iacobelli grew the company to have three offices in Rome, London, and San Francisco, and has received about 800 thousand euro in funding. The company also won Visa’s “Everywhere Initiative” project in 2016, gaining it work from the card company.

An official AirPower image was hidden in the source code of the updated AirPods page, it has emerged. 9to5Mac found the image, which showed an iPhone XS and new AirPods being charged on the as-yet unreleased charging mat.  AirPower was not one of the products Apple released during the first half of this week. Indeed, a release date is still unknown.

Many were expecting an AirPower announcement today, following the iMac, iPad Air and iPad mini, and second-generation AirPods, but that didn’t happen this morning at the same time as the prior announcements. We aren’t sure when Apple is planning to announce the mat’s actual release, but clearly the AirPods page was specially designed to be able to incorporate the AirPower mat when it is official. And the change of image asset certainly indicates continued development on the product.

The iPad mini reviews are starting to flood in. In his, Lance Ulanoff noted, somewhat disappointedly, that many features from the old version of the device remain. There is even still a mechanical home button. However, he liked the significantly increased power of the upgraded device. He also though the iPad mini is an excellent tool for augmented reality.

Put simply, there are zero design surprises in the new iPad Mini. It’s still just 0.24 inches thick and 0.66 pounds. (The chassis measures 8×5.3 inches.) My hand is large enough that I can easily wrap my fingers around it, but the Mini is also light and thin enough that it’s quite easy to hold with just two fingers squeezing a single corner. That exquisitely svelte design (thinner even than the 0.3-inch-thick iPhone XS) belies some astonishing power. Because even though Apple didn’t mess with the iPad Mini’s body, it replaced most of the components.

Employers are finding an ever increasing number of ways to keep tabs on what their staff are up to. You might think this would trigger an employee revolt. Yet, aside from some high profile examples, that is not the case. Fast Company explored why workers do not seem to mind being monitored.

While the specter of employers widely abusing workers’ privacy looms large, it doesn’t seem to be much of a real issue in most offices, factories, and shops across the country. “Concern is very broad but not very deep,” says Lewis Maltby, the president of the National Workrights Institute and a longtime advocate for protecting the civil liberties of employees. When he hears from workers, he notes, it’s typically not because management is poking around into private matters; it’s because their personal information was erased without any warning when they left their job and their employer reclaimed a company-owned cellphone.

The Flexgate issue – whereby the ribbon cable that connects the body of some MacBook Pros to their display wears down too quickly, was revealed in January 2019 by iFixit. It seems to be a design flaw. These things happen. However, there has been frustration among users at Apple’s reaction. On The Verge, Vlad Savov said it is time for the company to acknowledge and deal with the issue.

A petition, now numbering more than 15,000, would beg to differ. It calls for Apple to publicly recognize Flexgate as a design flaw, and to commit to repair all MacBook Pro laptops affected by it. I think that’s exactly what Apple should do, and it’s no less than we should expect from a company that touts its reliability and user satisfaction numbers any chance it gets. No one should have to pay upwards of $500 to replace an entire display just because Apple (a) decided to affix a fragile cable to one of the most expensive components in its MacBook Pro, and (b) miscalculated the necessary length of that cable in its first design.

LONDON- Apple’s March 25th “It’s Showtime” event looks like it is going to be a bit different from normal tech-company shows. The Times of London reported that Hollywood A-Listers like Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Oprah Winfrey, who is producing a show for Apple, could attend. It is just another element of the firm’s battle for streaming supremacy with the likes of Netflix.

The iPhone maker is ramping up the star power to support its long-awaited push into the entertainment business. For nearly two years Apple executives have been signing up the cream of Tinseltown on lucrative contracts for its on-demand TV and movie service. Next Monday, Apple will explain how it plans to dethrone Netflix and Amazon, the largest players in paid-for video streaming. It may also unveil a subscription news and magazine service, sources said.

In June 2018, Steve Hardigree awoke to find that his marketing firm, Exactis, was at the centre of a massive data leak. In fact, his company had accidentally exposed the personal records of almost everyone in the U.S. Mr. Hardigree spoke to Wired, who broke the news originally, about what is was like to be at the center of data scandal.

The ordeal has been a grueling lesson for Hardigree, who says that he’s learned the hard way how much even a tiny firm like his has to prioritize security. “Be careful with your data, and be careful with the people who manage your data,” Hardigree says. “I hired some guys that were careless. But at the end of the day it’s the CEO who’s responsible. I take responsibility.”

There have been a number of amazing stories about how an Apple Watch alerted users to a heart condition, saving their life. Results from a large Apple-funded study, presented Saturday at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology, backed-up the company’s healthcare claims. Reuters reported that the study found that 84% of irregular heart pulse notifications sent by the Apple Watch were confirmed as episodes of atrial fibrillation. Furthermore, 57% of participants who received such an alert on went and sought medical attention.

Of the 400,000 participants, 0.5 percent, or about 2,000 subjects, received notifications of an irregular pulse. Those people were sent an ECG (electrocardiography) patch to wear for subsequent detection of atrial fibrillation episodes. A third of those whose watches detected an irregular pulse were confirmed to have atrial fibrillation using the ECG technology, researchers said. Some 84 percent of the irregular pulse notifications were later confirmed to have been AF episodes, data showed.