Apple Pay Adds 46 More Banks and Credit Unions in U.S.

Apple has once again updated its list of participating Apple Pay issuers, adding 46 more banks and credit unions to the list of institutions whose customers can set up credit and/or debit cards with the service. The new additions increase the number of banking institutions in the U.S. supporting Apple Pay to over 425, and just last month the service expanded to the United Kingdom, where most of the country’s major banks are already on board.

• 1st United Services Credit Union
• Align Credit Union
• Atlantic Regional FCU
• Bank of Marin
• Bank of Oklahoma
• Central Pacific Bank
• Community & Southern Bank
• Countryside Bank
• Dominion Credit Union
• DuPage Credit Union
• Dutch Point Credit Union
• Electro Savings Credit Union
• First Bank of Dalton
• First Clover Bank
• First Collinsville Bank
• First County Bank
• First Midwest Bank
• First National Bank and Trust
• First National Bank of McGregor
• First State Bank Nebraska
• Greater Iowa Credit Union
• Gulf Coast Educators FCU
• HarborOne Bank
• Horizon Bank
• Illinois National Bank
• Jax Federal Credit Union
• LGE Community Credit Union
• Meadows Credit Union
• Meridian Trust Federal Credit Union
• Metro Health Services FCU
• MidFirst Bank
• Northwest Federal Credit Union
• Premier Bank
• SAC FCU
• The Bank of Commerce
• The Cooperative Bank
• The Paducah Bank & Trust
• Thomaston Savings Bank
• TTCU The Credit Union
• UniBank for Savings
• United Bank
• US Community Credit Union
• USE Credit Union
• USF Federal Credit Union
• West Alabama Bank & Trust
• Westerra Credit Union

With most of the largest financial institutions in the U.S. already supporting Apple Pay, most of the recent additions to Apple’s list are community banks and credit unions with relatively small numbers of customers. But for those who do bank with these institutions, Apple Pay support will be a welcome addition as merchant support for the contactless payments service continues to grow.

‘iPhone 6c’ Rumored for Q2 2016 Launch With 14/16nm Chips

Previous rumors that a smaller-screened “iPhone 6c” had been canceled for 2015 and perhaps now set to launch sometime in 2016 are getting a bit more heft today, with a report from Digitimes suggesting the “iPhone 5c successor” will launch in the second quarter of 2016. The site’s sources from within the seminconductor industry also point to the so-called iPhone 6c lineup arriving with new 14/16nm FinFET chips from TSMC and Samsung, which would bring better performance and lower power consumption to the new line of cheaper iPhones.

The 14/16nm FinFET chips will be manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Samsung, the sources said. The original plan was to equip the devices with chips built using TSMC’s 20nm SoC process, said the sources, but the adoption of FinFET processors would enable specs upgrade and lower power consumption.

Releasing an iPhone in the second quarter of the year wouldn’t exactly be unheard of for Apple — the original iPhone, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4 all launched in June — but it would definitely go against the early fall annual launch dates the company has been following for about four years now.

Digitimes has a spotty track record with respect to Apple rumors, although the site has on a number of occasions offered accurate information from Apple’s supply chain. At a minimum, today’s report adds to those from other source’s including KGI’s Ming-Chi Kuo stating Apple is planning a new 4-inch iPhone for 2016.

The latest rumors surrounding the iPhone 6c point to a device the size of an iPhone 5s, but in the same hardware vein of an iPhone 6. The smartphone would have an all-metal unibody construction, different from the plastic iPhone 5c that launched the cheaper iPhone trend in 2013.

Taylor Swift Shares Behind-the-Scenes Details of Her Apple Music Letter

In an interview for the September cover story of Vanity Fair, Taylor Swift reveals her thoughts and reasoning behind the letter she wrote to Apple concerning the lack of monetary support for artists during Apple Music’s three-month free trial period. The singer notes that she wrote the letter in the early morning hours after a few of her fellow artists sent pictures of their Apple Music contracts.

“I wrote the letter at around four A.M.,” Swift says. “The contracts had just gone out to my friends, and one of them sent me a screenshot of one of them. I read the term ‘zero percent compensation to rights holders.’ Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and I’ll write a song and I can’t sleep until I finish it, and it was like that with the letter.”

Swift’s main concern was that her letter would be taken as whining, particularly since she had addressed a similar issue regarding Spotify last year, but after running the letter past her mother, Swift decided to publish it.

Apple did indeed listen, and later the same day reversed course on its decision and announced plans to pay artists during the initial free trial of Apple Music. In the Vanity Fair interview, Swift notes Apple’s near-immediate response and genuine care for her and her fellow artists, further alluding to her public break from Spotify and that company’s subsequent reaction to the pulling of her music from the service.

Says Swift, “Apple treated me like I was a voice of a creative community that they actually cared about,” she says. “And I found it really ironic that the multi-billion-dollar company reacted to criticism with humility, and the start-up with no cash flow reacted to criticism like a corporate machine.”

Although it’s hit a few bumps in the road, Apple Music has been steadily providing its early adopters with exclusive tracks, celebrity-hosted Beats 1 radio shows, and personalized music discovery since its June 30 launch. Those who signed up on day one still have just under two months left to their three-month free trial, with monthly subscriptions priced at $9.99 for individuals and $14.99 for families after the trial. The company reportedly has ten million users on the free trial so far, but it remains to be seen how many of those will convert to paying users.

Sixth OS X El Capitan Beta Includes More Hints to 4K 21.5-inch Retina iMac

Apple’s sixth OS X 10.11 El Capitan beta, released on Monday, includes a few lines of code that yet again reference the possibility of a forthcoming 4K 21.5-inch Retina iMac, as discovered by Consomac [Google Translate]. A similar occurance happened back in June, when some code in the second OS X El Capitan beta referenced a 4K 21.5-inch iMac screen, but, as yet, Apple hasn’t given any word on the veracity of the rumors.

Consomac‘s research into the code of the new OS X beta found three new files, two of which include screen resolutions that hint at the possible arrival of new 5K 27-inch iMacs, and the other with a 4096×2304 resolution. Like the second El Capitan beta, this code could potentially refer to a 21.5-inch Retina iMac display with 4K resolution coming down the line. Although, as Consomac discovered, an image accompanying the three files points to a design that will largely “remain unchanged” for the new line-up.

Beginning last October, Apple launched a few updates for the 27-inch iMac with Retina Display, but the rest of the iMac line-up hasn’t seen a proper upgrade since September 2013. The major reasoning behind the stalled upgrade cycle is the company waiting for Intel’s various desktop components — including the Broadwell and Skylake processors — to be available for a more substantial update to Apple’s smaller-sized desktop computer line-up.

An update to the 21.5-inch iMac line has been hinted at for a while now, including a rumor just yesterday from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo that pointed to the iMac line gaining a significant boost this quarter. Kuo points to display improvements with greater color saturation thanks to a few new processors, but never references directly the arrival of a retina display for the 21.5-inch iMac line. Still, the timing with back-to-school shopping swinging into gear, and the lengthy update cycle of the 21.5-inch line-up, definitely suggests an impending update for the model sometime soon.