Many AT&T iPhone Users Unable to Download Apps and Stream Music Over LTE

A growing number of AT&T subscribers on the MacRumors forums appear to be having issues downloading apps and streaming music over LTE, with some claiming AT&T is throttling App Store downloads and Apple Music content.

When connected to Wi-Fi, users report that apps download normally, but over LTE, app downloads do not progress. Other users are reporting issues streaming content from the Apple Music app, with songs that start and then hang. As described by MacRumors reader Blizaine:

I have three different iOS devices. Two are running iOS 9.0.1 and one is running iOS 8.4.1. When they are connected to wifi, apps download fine. When on LTE, the app just sits there and the progress bar does not move, even after a very long period of time. When I run a speed test over LTE, I’m getting a solid 10-15Mbps down (3-4 bars).

Also, i have a VPN configured on one of the iOS 9.0.1 devices and when I enable the VPN over LTE, apps download fine. One of the devices also uses a different iTunes account. I supposed it could be a regional problem. I’m in Indianapolis Indiana, USA. I’ve tried toggling the Download over Cellular option off and on and I’ve reset the network settings on one device and even did a factory reset on another, with no success.

Verizon and T-Mobile users do not appear to be experiencing any issues downloading content over LTE, suggesting the problem is limited to AT&T subscribers. Affected customers are using a range of iPhone and iPads, including the iPhone 4s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, and iPad Air 2.

One MacRumors reader contacted AT&T’s Advanced Tech Support line and was told that this is an issue AT&T has been receiving multiple calls over. AT&T support claimed it was a problem related to iOS 9/iOS 9.0.1 that would be fixed with iOS 9.0.2, but yesterday’s iOS 9.0.2 release does not seem to have fixed the problem for most users.

It is likely the trouble people are running into downloading apps and songs over LTE is a bug and not intentional throttling. Some users who are having trouble with downloads are also reporting slow speeds, pointing towards a possible network issue, but others say their LTE speeds are normal. The issue may also be limited to specific geographical areas, as there are some in California and Colorado that are not experiencing problems.

The problem seems to have begun over the past few days, and it does appear that AT&T is making an effort to fix it, with some users reporting intermittent success getting app downloads and Apple Music to work today.

Apple Likely Trying to File for ‘AirPods’ Trademark

Apple may be taking steps to protect the name “AirPods,” based on recent trademark filings in a number of countries. While Apple itself is not directly linked to these applications, the pattern of filings is consistent with Apple’s usual strategy and MacRumors believes Apple is indeed responsible for them.

A trademark application for “AirPods” was made in the United States on September 22 by a company called Entertainment in Flight, LLC, a Delaware firm housed at the Corporation Trust Center, a strategy Apple has used a number of times in the past to hide its trademark work. The company was created in early September and appears to have no visible operations other than last week’s trademark filing.

We have been unable to find a concrete link between Apple and the AirPods trademark, but the evidence we’ve gathered is highly suggestive that Apple is indeed behind the filing. Assuming this is indeed the case, speculation then turns to the reasons why Apple is interested in the name.

The trademark filing in International Class 9 includes mention of audio accessories, earphones, microphones, wireless communication devices, and similar types of products, and with Apple already calling its existing line of earphones “EarPods” it seems reasonable to speculate the “AirPods” name could be intended for a wireless version of the company’s earphones.

Audio components and accessories; sound recording and reproducing apparatus; digital video recorders and players; remote control apparatus; audio speakers; earphones, headphones; microphones; voice recording and recognition apparatus; radios, radio transmitters, and receivers; handheld digital electronic devices and software related thereto; wireless communication devices for voice, data or image transmission; electrical and electronic connectors, couplers, wires, cables, chargers, docks, docking stations, interfaces, and adapters for use with all of the aforesaid goods

Apple of course already offers several models of wireless earphones and headphones through its Beats brand, but Apple has so far kept the Beats hardware brand separate from its own and may prefer to offer a wireless earphone option under its own brand and styling.

Other circumstantial evidence pointing toward Apple being behind the filing includes:

– Citing a March trademark application in Jamaica as a priority date for the registration. Apple commonly files first in Jamaica to establish its claim on a trademark, as the country does not maintain an online trademark database, making it easier for Apple and other companies to hide such filings.

– Use of a Gmail account on contact information. Apple’s shell companies almost always use Gmail addresses based on the companies’ names for their filings, and this is the case with Entertainment in Flight.

– International trademark filings made by known Apple-associated law firms. Alongside the U.S. filing, Entertainment in Flight made similar filings in a number of other countries around the world, and in each case used the services of law firms previously used by Apple and other known Apple shell companies to handle the filings: Locke Lord in the European Union, Bryn Aaflot in Norway, Baker & McKenzie in Australia and Canada, and attorney Pinar Arikan in Turkey.

The European filing covers two additional classes of trademarks: Class 38 for “transmission of digital audio, video and multimedia content” and Class 41 for “entertainment services” such as non-downloadable media and reviews and recommendations of entertainment content.

Amazon to Cease Selling Apple TV, Google Chromecast Over ‘Prime Video’ Incompatibility

Amazon plans to stop selling some streaming video devices that compete with its Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, reports Bloomberg. It will no longer offer Google’s Chromecast or Apple’s Apple TV for sale in its online store.

Amazon today sent an email to marketplace sellers notifying them of the upcoming change. The site plans to disallow new listings for the product and remove existing inventory on October 29. As a reason for the removal, Amazon is citing compatibility with its Prime Video streaming service, which is not available on devices from Google and Apple.

“Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime,” Amazon said in the e-mail. “It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion.”

Other set-top boxes and consoles, including those from Roku, Microsoft, and Playstation, do have apps that allow customers to stream Amazon Prime Video and thus won’t be affected by the new ban.

For Apple customers, this means the new fourth-generation Apple TV will not be available for purchase via Amazon.com. It also suggests the device will not be gaining an Amazon video app and will continue to be incompatible with the Amazon Prime Video service.

Apple Releases Second OS X 10.11.1 El Capitan Public Beta

Apple today seeded the second beta of OS X 10.11.1 El Capitan to public beta testers, just days after releasing the second beta to developers and a week and a half after seeding the first public beta. Today’s second beta comes just after the public launch of OS X El Capitan.

The beta is available to those who are participating in Apple’s Beta Testing program and can be downloaded through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store.

The first beta of OS X 10.11.1 introduced support for Unicode 8 and new emoji like taco, burrito, cheese wedge, hot dog, middle finger, and unicorn head. The emoji are also included in iOS 9.1, which is also in testing.

Beyond new emoji, there have been no other outward-facing changes discovered, suggesting OS X 10.11.1 is a minor update that will bring bug fixes and performance enhancements. According to Apple’s release notes, OS X 10.11.1 offers stability, compatibility, and security improvements.

Aaron Sorkin on ‘Steve Jobs’: ‘I Think We Made a Good Movie’

In a new interview with Wired, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin spoke freely on his job of being hired to pen the new Steve Jobs movie and all of the issues he had to face in writing about a person he didn’t know much about. Sorkin’s initial fear of tackling the film — hesitant to use the term “biopic” — was in adapting Walter Isaacson’s comprehensive biography of Jobs into a traditional, three act structure, which he wasn’t entirely comfortable with.

When you’re doing a biopic, it’s very hard to shake the cradle-to-grave structure that audiences are so familiar with. People are going to come into the theater knowing that first we’re going to see a little boy with his father, and he’s looking into the window of the electronics store, and then we’re going to hit these famous signposts along the way in Steve Jobs’ life. Also, I’m not really a screenwriter; I’m a playwright who pretends to be a screenwriter. I’m most comfortable writing in claustrophobic pieces of geography and periods of time.

It was then that Sorkin emailed producer Scott Rudin, and pitched him the idea of taking some factual liberties with three of Jobs’ biggest product launches, and identifying “five or six conflicts in Steve’s life and have those conflicts play themselves out in these scenes backstage—in places where they didn’t take place.” Sorkin also hopes that the fans who are pre-judging the movie give it a chance and see that it won’t be “one big champagne toast to Steve Jobs.”

The screenwriter decided to use Jobs’ daughter Lisa as one of the doors into the former Apple CEO’s life, finding his initial refusal to accept paternity of his daughter hard to get past, but noting its integral quality to the backbone of the movie. Wired also asked Sorkin about his apparent growing reputation in Hollywood as the “go-to guy for the binary system,” thanks to his work on another technology-inspired true-life story The Social Network.

This isn’t an origin story or an invention story. It’s not about how the Mac was invented. And The Social Network wasn’t about the technology that went into creating Facebook. Nonetheless, I knew that there was going to be no way I could write this movie without a lot of tutors. There are lines that I wrote in the movie that I don’t understand.

Ultimately, as the movie grows closer to release, Sorkin knows that Steve Jobs may be a divisive experience for a lot of fans of Apple.

There are going to be people who say we were rough on him, and there are going to be people who say we weren’t rough enough on him. But I think we made a good movie, and I think that if you asked 10 writers to write 10 movies about Steve Jobs, you’d get 10 different movies that wouldn’t resemble one another.

There have been a handful of stories in the news about the soon-to-be-released film, including some new behind-the-scenes footage and cast interviews, a public dispute between Sorkin and Apple CEO Tim Cook, and even the first reactions to the film as it made its debut at film festivals across the country.

The full Wired interview goes more in-depth with Sorkin, touching on topics like the film’s casting drama behind the scenes and even last year’s Sony hack and the repercussions it had for Steve Jobs and its cast and crew.

‘Tweetbot 4’ Debuts With Universal iPad Support, Split-Screen Multitasking and New Activity View

Tapbots today launched its long-awaited Tweetbot 4 update, which brings a slew of important changes to the popular Twitter client. Most notably, today’s update expands support to the iPad, making Tweetbot 4 a universal app for the first time and bringing an updated look to the tablet version of the app.

Tweetbot 4 on iPad, landscape mode
Tweetbot for the iPad has not been updated since June of 2014 and it was never given a refreshed look in line with the design updates introduced in iOS 7, so today’s new iPad app is a welcome change. On the iPad, Tweetbot 4 includes the same clean design that was introduced on the iPhone with Tweetbot 3. Tweetbot 4 includes support for Apple’s newest operating system, iOS 9, and it works with the split-screen multitasking feature on Apple’s newer iPads.

Tweetbot 4 split-screen multitasking
For the first time, Tweetbot 4 introduces a landscape view that’s available on the iPad and the iPhone. In landscape mode on the iPhone 6/6s Plus or iPad, the app is able to display two windows side-by-side, so users can watch their timelines and another section like mentions or lists at the same time.
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Eddy Cue Talks Apple Music Subscriptions as Initial Three-Month Free Trials End

Prior to the release of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, Eddy Cue sat down with Evening Standard to discuss a handful of topics, including the launch of the new smartphones, the impending end of the first wave of free trial users for Apple Music, and the issue of roaming charges on iPhone users traveling abroad.

Cue also addressed the topic of the Apple Music Festival, which ended its ten day run this week in London, calling the acts nabbed by Apple for the event “the best of the best” and pointing toward the “global” feel of the UK-based festival that would perhaps be lost in another city like New York or Los Angeles. When asked about his worry for the end of Apple Music’s first set of three-month free trial users — which were charged their $9.99 subscription fee on September 30 if choosing to stick around — Cue remained expectedly optimistic.

However, with the first batch of free three-month trials expiring this week, is he worried about subscribers drastically falling? “Ultimately, you never know until it happens,” he reasons. “But we’re pleased with the number of people who have tried. Everybody gets fixated on the short term but we’re in this for the long haul.”

Although not allowed to discuss the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus in full detail during the pre-launch interview, Cue still walked Evening Standard through a few of the smartphone’s new features, including the revamped version of Siri. Eventually, the Apple executive remarked on the topic of roaming data charges when traveling abroad, an issue rumored to be worked on by the company — and later denied — by launching its own mobile virtual network operator service in the United States and Europe.

He taps his phone and makes an offhand comment about “trying not to get roaming charges” while in London which, I note, proves how insanely expensive phone calls and data can be abroad. “It’s sad, it’s another problem,” says Cue. “We’re trying to fix it and we’re making a little bit of progress but you’ve got to convince a lot of people.” It sounds like an impossible task. But that, you would imagine, is where the famous flair will come in.

In the full interview, Cue also talks about new features of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus like Live Photos and 3D Touch, also commenting on the topic of customers wanting to delete stock iOS apps, which CEO Tim Cook himself touched on in September. You can check out the full Evening Standard interview with Eddy Cue here.

MacRumors Giveaway: Win a Copy of Macphun’s Apps, Now With OS X El Capitan Photos Integration

Macphun, the company that makes several popular photo editing apps for Mac and iOS, today updated some of its Mac apps with support for OS X El Capitan and the new Photos extension. In OS X El Capitan, third-party photo editing apps from the Mac App Store are able to share their tools with Photos, making it possible to edit images with these apps without ever leaving the Photos app.

Third-party editing capabilities have been available in iOS for quite some time, but are new to El Capitan, which was released to the public yesterday. Four Macphun apps are now able to be used within the Photos app on OS X El Capitan, including Noiseless, Tonality, Intensify, and Snapheal.

Noiseless ($14.99) is an app that removes noise or graininess from photos, while Tonality ($14.99) can be used to turn images black and white. Intensify ($14.99) enhances detail within images by increasing the sharpness, and Snapheal ($9.99) is designed to remove unwanted objects from images. All of the apps are available from the Mac App Store, and customers who already own them will receive the updates for free.

“So many people were left disappointed by the lack of editing tools in Photos for Mac. As photography enthusiasts ourselves, it made perfect sense to improve Photos’ weaknesses,” commented Alex Tsepko, COO of Macphun. “With Macphun’s photo editing extensions, Photos for Mac will finally offer the tools, features, speed and editing quality that its users were expecting. Many of the tools Macphun will bring to Photos are not present in Aperture, Lightroom, Affinity or Pixelmator. We’re confident this update will be an exciting element of Apple’s eagerly awaited El Capitan.”

To celebrate the launch of the El Capitan updates, Macphun has offered to give away copies of Noiseless, Tonality, Intensify, and Snapheal to three lucky MacRumors readers. Each winner will receive one Mac App Store promo code for each of the four apps.

To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winners and send the prizes.

You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page. Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter.

a Rafflecopter giveawayhttp://widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.jsThe contest will run from today (October 1) at 7:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 7:00 a.m. Pacific Time on October 5. The winners will be chosen randomly on October 5 and will be contacted by email. The winners have 48 hours to respond before new winners are chosen.