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The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) announced today that it’s forming a new Automation Committee to oversee self-driving transportation policy and one of its 25 members happens to be Apple’s Vice President of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, Lisa Jackson. According to the department’s press release, the newly formed committee will have its first meeting later this month on January 16 and the focus of the group will be to address “the development and deployment of automated vehicles, and determining the needs of the Department as it continues with its relevant research, policy, and regulations....

The rumors were true: Apple will hold its next special event on March 25th, 10 a.m. local, at Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California. The special event will mark the first time Apple has used its Apple Park venue for an event that doesn’t include a flagship iPhone announcement. Apple officially announced the event with the tagline: It’s show time. The event theme leaves little to the imagination with a film-inspired countdown and a spotlight on the Apple logo....

Apple Music has launched a new featured playlist that leverages data from its Shazam music recognition service. “Shazam Discovery” highlights 50 “up-and-coming songs from breaking artists” and will be updated weekly. The new playlist is live in the Browse tab of Apple Music with some of the top featured tracks coming from Ohana Bam, A$ton Wyld, Tones and I, and Regard. Here’s how Apple describes Shazam Discovery: Speaking to Variety, Apple didn’t share exactly how its music recognition data is calculating the new playlist, but that it uses “Shazam’s proprietary algorithms [to offer] a unique predictive view on rising artists and reacting tracks to Apple Music subscribers....

Tonight marks the 2018 Met Gala in New York City. As usual, the show is one of the premiere fashion events of the year, with top figures from the entertainment industry making appearances. While Apple has served as a sponsor of the event in the past, this year it is streaming the show live via Apple News… Apple has partnered with E! News to offer a live stream of the Met Gala....

It seems a given that Apple will bring Face ID to Macs sooner rather than later, now that the tech has been extended from iPhones to iPads too. We’ve today seen the latest in a series of Apple patent applications to do just that. But the patent also suggests the Touch Bar could be coming to Magic Keyboards … While Apple launched Face ID on the iPhone first, the first Apple patent we ever saw for the technology, back in 2017, actually related not to the phone but to the Mac....

Apple is active at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which officially kicked-off last Thursday. Variety reports this evening that Apple’s first purchase at Sundance is a film called “Hala,” which is described as a coming-of-age drama. The film is written and directed by Minhal Baig, with Jada Pinkett Smith serving as executive producer. It’s unclear how much Apple paid for the film. The film stars Geraldine Viswanathan in the title role, as well as Purbi Josh, Azad Khan, Gabriel Luna, and Anna Chlumsky....

Apple announced a new scheme that will allow independent repair shops to offer official servicing of iPhones that are out of warranty. The new Independent Repair Provider Program gives small repair businesses access to the same Apple-genuine parts, training, and resources as Apple authorized service providers. The company said it trialed the initiative at 20 stores across North America, Europe, and Asia. It is today launching the program for the United States and will announce further regions in the future....

iTunes may be struggling a little when it comes to video content, but Apple Music has helped U.S. audio streaming hit a record high of 7.5B weekly streams. The stat was achieved in March, according to Nielsen’s mid-year report on the music industry … Nielsen reports that on-demand audio streaming climbed 62.4% year-on-year. Notable artists cited in the report are Lady Gaga, who saw a dramatic spike in sales after headlining the Super Bowl, Future – who hit the number one slot with with two different albums in successive weeks – and Drake....

. Apple hired Sally Cole as the Director of Employee Communications last month. Cole comes from cross-town rival Google, where she served as the Director of Internal Communications for almost six years. The Scarsdale native has a B.A. in history from Yale and a J.D./M.B.A. from nearby Stanford University, from which both companies hire liberally. As someone intimately familiar with Internal Communications at Google, Cole’s experience could prove very valuable at Apple....

App Store developer FutureTap just revealed that they have received their first crash report from an iOS 5 device. This means that Apple is currently field-testing their next-generation mobile operating system that runs on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with applications from the iOS App Store. The application apparently crashed in iOS 5 due to the MKUserLocationBreadCrumb. Developer Will Strafach (Chronic) let us know that this API relates to the iOS maps and location functionality....

Today’s special iPhone 12 event can already be replayed on Apple’s website and on the company’s official YouTube channel, as well as videos of new products. Apple announced four new iPhone models during its October 2020 event, including iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone Pro Max. The company also introduced HomePod mini, in addition to some other new accessories. This was Apple’s third online event following WWDC 2020 in June and Apple’s September event, as the press was unable to attend the event in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic....

As is tradition, the Apple Online Store has gone offline ahead of iPhone Xs, iPhone Xs Max, and Apple Watch Series 4 pre-orders. Pre-orders are slated to begin at 12:01AM PT/3:01AM ET, so expect the store to come back online sometime around then… Apple has been preparing shoppers for the iPhone Xs and Apple Watch Series 4 pre-order experience since its event at Steve Jobs Theater wrapped up. Since yesterday, customers have been able to get pre-approved for the iPhone Upgrade Program, add their desired order to their ‘Favorites’ and more....

Since its launch last summer, people have been calling for Apple’s streaming music service Beats 1 to offer up more unique content like live streams of concerts and listening parties. At long last, it appears as if that request is coming to fruition. The Apple Music Snapchat account has recently been promoting a Beats 1-sponsored concert by popular band ‘The 1975,’ whose new album comes out this Friday. The concert was confirmed on Twitter by the band and will be streamed live on Apple Music this Thursday, February 25th at 9AM PT/12PM ET....

Apple Music’s Zane Lowe has debuted a new podcast that will be home to his interviews with popular artists. The latest episode is with Lady Gaga as she’s about to launch her new album Chromatica. Even though the podcast just launched, it also features interviews from previous guests he’s had on Beats 1. Zane Lowe shared on Twitter today the news that his new podcast, The Zane Lowe Interview Series is now available....

As perhaps further evidence of Apple exploring ways to make its entry-level products more affordable, a patent published today describes using an iPhone as the brains of a MacBook-style dumb terminal. As usual with patents, the language is dense, but the illustrations make clear the concept. The idea itself is not a new one, and is similar in essence to a currently-available HP product … An electronic accessory device, comprising: an operational component that provides an output to a user; a housing carrying the operational component, the housing having a recess; and a control interface coupled to the operational component and configured to receive a control signal from an electronic host device when the electronic host device is positioned within the recess and coupled to the control interface, wherein the electronic accessory device is inoperable without the electronic host device being coupled to the control interface....

Along with the launch of the new iPad Air and iPad mini today, Apple has updated a few of its accessories including the Smart Cover and iPad Pro Smart Folio. The Smart Cover for the 10.5-inch iPad Air (3rd-generation) is available in four colors including charcoal gray, white, pink sand, and a new option: papaya. It runs $49. The Leather Smart Cover for iPad Air is back at $69 in four colors: midnight blue, saddle brown, black, and red....

Update: The Apple News service appears to be fully operational once again. Original story below unchanged. Many users are unable to use the Apple News app this morning. Rather than seeing a feed of today’s stories, upon opening the app, users are presented with an error message stating that the feed is unavailable. If you dismiss the dialog, other areas of the News app appear still to be up. So you can browse the News+ catalog or find individual channels, but the main Today news feed is not loading....

Apple announced on Mac OS Forge today that they have open sourced their Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC). ALAC was introduced in 2004 as OS X’s core audio codec to compress audio files 40-60 percent without losing any quality. The codec is currently supported by Macs and the latest iOS devices. ALAC was reversed engineered in 2005, but more and more applications could begin to adapt the codec now that it’s open sourced....

Just as one judge dismissed a class action case again Apple yesterday, today Siliconbeat reports that Apple will face a new class action case claiming iOS 8 takes up too much of the iPhone’s overall storage capacity. The case was filed in a Bay Area federal court this week and claims that iOS 8 can take up as much as 23.1 percent of an iOS device’s storage depending on the model:...

Apple has announced a special December 2nd event in NYC to highlight its favorite apps and games of 2019. Interesting enough, this is a live event and it’s unclear if Apple has anything to announce besides app and game awards for developers. Invites went out this afternoon for the surprise event that will be held in just two weeks in NYC. Curiously, it appears the event will just be to highlight Apple’s top app and game picks from 2019....