Apple Pay to launch in the UK in July
Apple’s take on mobile payments have been available in the US for the better part of a year, but here in the UK, we’ve been left with the faint hope that it’ll one day arrive. Rumours suggested it could be announced at WWDC 2015, and it turns out they were correct: Apple Pay will come to this side of the Atlantic next month. Most of the big name banks are on board, with Lloyds, Halifax, Natwest, HSBC and Santander all supporting Apple Pay, but Barclays is a notable omission. Apple says that the service will be available in 250,000 locations, including Lidl, McDonald’s, Nando’s and the Post Office, covering more retailers at launch than were originally available in the US. For commuters and tourists, Transport for London has confirmed it will also support the NFC technology inside its barriers, allowing you to travel on the Tube and the city’s buses without the need for a wallet.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Apple
Apple Maps finally gets transit directions
Apple’s Maps app has been lacking one of the more important turn-by-turn directions features since its launch. Today at WWDC, Maps finally got transit directions. The new feature will offer directions for buses, trains, subways and ferries. The app will also surface nearby restaurants, shops and activities. Maps also now tells commuters which subway entrance to enter and exit. Helpful in large cities with huge stations. Maps will launch in the United States in San Francisco, New York, Washington DC, and Baltimore. Internationally it’ll launch in many cities in China including Beijing, Wuhan, Shanghai and others. Other international cities include Mexico City, London, Berlin and Toronto. More cities are expected in the future.
Apple News app brings ‘beautiful’ personalized content to iOS
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Today at WWDC Apple announced a Flipboard-like news curator called, wait for it, Apple News. Like Facebook’s Instant Articles push, it includes articles specifically built for the app by partners like ESPN, the New York Times, Wired and others, but can also pull in content from elsewhere on the internet. The New York Times will push 30 free articles through the app every day, while other partners like ESPN will bring videoclips and infographics. As we’ve seen throughout the event, Apple is pushing privacy as a feature, promising your preferences won’t be used in other Apple services.
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Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple
Apple Pay will make shopping easier in the UK
Apple Pay’s made life easier for iPhone 6 and Apple Watch users in the US since last fall. The contactless payment service is now going to surpass one million locations in the country. Now, as predicted in the weeks leading up to WWDC, Apple’s introducing its tap-to-pay service in the UK next month. In addition to retailers like Boots, Costa Coffee and Marks & Spencer’s, the service will also be available on the London transit system for daily commutes.
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Apple Pay to Support Retail Store Credit Cards [iOS Blog]
Apple is expected to announce that Apple Pay will support retail store credit cards at its annual WWDC keynote today in San Francisco, according to The Wall Street Journal. The private label cards, which typically offer customers special offers and rewards, so far have not been compatible with the mobile payments service since its U.S. launch last October.
Many retailers in the United States, such as Walmart, Target, The Home Depot, Macy’s, JCPenney, Sears, Bloomingdale’s, Old Navy and Staples, offer store-branded credit cards in partnership with major credit companies including Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. The credit cards typically offer loyalty programs where customers can collect points and receive instant savings on their purchases.
Apple Pay is also expected to launch later this year in Canada, China and the United Kingdom, and it is possible that the company will provide more details about the international rollout of the service today. MacRumors will be providing live coverage of the WWDC keynote, which starts at 10 AM Pacific, through our live blog and @MacRumorsLive on Twitter.
Apple Announces OS X El Capitan With Split View, New Spotlight, Updated Apps and More, Launches in Fall [Mac Blog]
Apple today announced OS X 10.11 El Capitan, the latest version of its Mac operating system. OS X El Capitan features new versions of multiple stock apps, including Safari, Mail and Notes, improved Spotlight search with natural language enhancements and contextually aware results, Metal for Mac and other features and refinements that Apple introduced during its WWDC keynote in San Francisco.
OS X 10.11 El Capitan includes a new version of Safari with pinned sites and a universal mute feature, an updated Mail app with an enhanced full-screen mode and more. OS X 10.11 El Capitan will be available in public beta in July and will publicly launch in the fall as a free software update for supported Macs.
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Apple Announces Metal for OS X El Capitan [Mac Blog]
Apple today announced a boost to performance coming to users with OS X El Capitan in the form of Metal, previously available only for iOS. The company promises the inclusion of Metal onto OS X will boost performance and battery life.
Showcasing Epic’s forthcoming game Fortnite, a few Epic developers showcased how the graphics engine will be perfect for high performance games, combining the computing power of OpenCL and graphics power of OpenGL into new API that does both.
Apple Announces iOS 9 With Proactive Siri and More [iOS Blog]
Today at WWDC, Apple announced iOS 9, the latest version of its mobile operating system. iOS 9 has four central areas of improvement: intelligence, apps, iPad and foundation. Intelligence includes updates to Siri, which has a brand new design similar to its Apple Watch interface, and a new proactive assistant called Proactive.
The new, more proactive Siri is contextually aware and can offer you more information than ever. For instance, if a user runs every morning Siri can offer music to listen to when the user plugs in their headphones. The music is context sensitive and is dependent on time and place, so if a user is in the car Siri may offer an audiobook or podcast instead of music if that’s what the user usually does. If someone calls a user with a number not in their address book, Siri can now look through email to see if it can identify the number. If it can, it’ll display it.
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Apple Pay Coming to the United Kingdom Next Month, Discover Card Support Arriving This Fall [iOS Blog]
Today Apple briefly reiterated on Apple Pay’s success in the United States, briefly mentioning upcoming support for Discover credit cards and new expansive partners coming soon. The company also announced 250,000 UK merchants will launch in the country in July, a number exceeding even the United States when the contactless payments service launched in the states last year.
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Smartphone sales up 19% in first quarter of 2015 thanks to emerging markets
Smartphone sales saw a sizable growth during the first quarter of 2015, which Gartner says is due to an increase of smartphone sales in emerging markets. This makes sense, since smartphone sales have somewhat slowed down in the bigger markets, so many companies are attacking the smaller areas where not everyone has a smartphone already.
Emerging markets saw a roughly 40% increase during Q1, helping smartphones reach sales of 336 million units. Key regions included Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Asian/Pacific market.
China also played a pivotal role in how market share was distributed, with Apple claiming the top spot as a phone vendor in the country. This helped Apple gain some market share and close the lead that Samsung has, and has made China their #1 market in terms of volume beating out North America.
Samsung’s market share continues to dwindle, thanks to Apple hitting its stride in the bigger countries like China and the smaller OEMs continuing to eat up market share at the bottom end. That’s something Samsung has struggled to compete with for a while now, and they’ve yet to really figure out how to beat.
Samsung still ended the quarter with roughly 24% market share, which beat out any other individual manufacturer. That number has dipped from 30% last year, though, so it’s clear that Samsung is losing ground fairly quickly. Apple’s market share grew 2%, and most other manufacturers saw an increase at Samsung’s expense.
Android is still faring exceptionally well, with or without Samsung’s dominant lead. Android devices accounted for 79% of global market share, with Apple’s iOS bringing in about 17%. Windows held the next best spot at a measly 2.5%. So while Android’s total share slipped about 1% from last year, it’s pretty clear that Android is going to remain the most dominant mobile OS for some time.
source: Gartner
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