According to a new report from BuzzFeed News, Apple is currently planning to unveil its refreshed Apple TV in September. The company had originally planned to unveil the device at WWDC this summer, but scrapped it from the event at the last minute. A September unveil has seemingly been expected since the announcement was pulled from WWDC.

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You might notice that 9to5Mac has changed. Indeed so has the whole network. Long before the page size/speed and advertising controversies, we knew that we needed to rethink how we presented ourselves.

While we were one of the lightest and fastest sites in our field, our feature creep and advertisers were adding complexity and page load times, which is especially crucial on mobile – an ever expanding percentage of our growing audience.

We decided to start over…
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Apple has released an updated build of iOS 8.4.1 for registered developers to test on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. iOS 8.4.1 beta 2 features build number 12H318 and comes just over two weeks after the initial beta version.

While the initial beta of iOS 8.4.1 didn’t feature any noticeable changes, the X.X.1 label suggests it is primarily an under-the-hood update to iOS 8.4 without feature or visual changes. iOS 8.4 launched in late June and introduced Apple Music with Beats 1 to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
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Less than two years after they each went into service, only one of the three Lightning cables pictured above is actually working properly. It’s not the big Belkin cable on the left, which is visibly pretty wrecked, or the thick, no-name 6-foot cable on the right, which looks fine on the surface but can’t properly supply power to a connected device. The one that works without problems is, amazingly, Apple’s official Lightning cable — the one that has been pilloried by numerous dissatisfied users, notably including our own Zac Hall, for coming apart after months or years of use.

These complaints aren’t without merit: even Apple-authorized Lightning cables do break, which is particularly infuriating given how expensive they tend to be. But there’s a lot of bad information about Lightning cables floating around right now, and having spent a lot of time using them and reading user complaints, I wanted to help people avoid some of their preventable failures. Taking a few precautions can save you a $10 to $20 replacement cost, as well as wasted time and stress…

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Photo Credit: Todd Johnson/San Francisco Business Times

Apple may hold its annual developers conference and many press events in San Francisco, but the company’s campus is located about an hour southeast of the city in Cupertino. Despite naming its new custom font used on MacBook keyboards, watchOS, iOS 9, and OS X El Capitan after San Francisco, Apple is remaining in Cupertino for its larger Campus 2 currently being developed. But Apple has reportedly picked up some sizable office space in the city’s South Market neighborhood…
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Tim Cook tweeted his thanks today to the “thousands of Hong Kong customers” who attended the opening of the company’s fourth Apple Store in Hong Kong.

Plans for the store were first announced in 2013, with construction photos first seen in February. Apple announced the opening date on its website a couple of weeks ago. The additional store is part of Apple’s ambitious expansion program in China, having so far opened six of the 25 new stores it plans to open within two years.

Photos of the new store can be seen below … 
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I love music, so most of the time when I’m out and about I have headphones round my neck or in my bag. But there are times when I’m music’d out, and leave them at home – and I can then pretty much guarantee I’ll end up wishing I’d taken them with me.

Whether it’s to have a lengthy phone conversation while walking down the street, or watching the funny video a friend just posted on Facebook on the train (without subjecting everyone else to the audio), headphones aren’t just about music. For that reason, I’ve taken to chucking a few pairs of cheap-ish in-ear headphones in various bags and jacket pockets so that I always have some with me. In-ear ones can be squished into a small space so they take up almost no room.

The problem with that squishing, of course, is that whenever I do dig them out, I spend several minutes untangling them. This is the problem Zipbuds Slide sets out to solve … 
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We know the developer behind the popular RSS client Reeder has been working on a version 3.0 update for OS X 10.10 Yosemite as we last saw a teaser in April. Today users get the first chance to try out the redesigned RSS service reader as the first public beta for Reeder 3 has gone live. The updated version sports a user interface designed for Yosemite and beyond, more themes for making reading comfortable, and even a few OS X El Capitan features. Reeder says the new version will be available as a free update to current Reeder 2 customers when it’s completed.
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The first round of Apple Watch stands were just that, accessories designed to keep your Apple Watch from rubbing against your nightstand or desk. This month, we officially moved into the second wave — powered Apple Watch docks — with the release of Boostcase’s Bloc and Nomad’s Pod ($60). Boxy, flat, and long, Bloc was a clean design with questionable practicality, but Pod makes a lot more sense: like the Apple Watch Magnetic Charging Cable it holds inside, it’s a partially metal and partially plastic puck you can easily take anywhere and use to charge any Apple Watch. Having previously designed the beautiful Stand for Apple Watch, Nomad promises that the rechargeable 1800mAh battery inside Pod “keeps your watch powered all weekend.”

From my perspective, the Apple Watch’s single biggest issue is its one-day battery life, which has meant risking a dead watch while traveling or otherwise away from a power outlet. Although you could just carry around a device-agnostic USB battery, Pod solves the power problem at a more aggressive price point than Bloc, and in a convenient form factor that will appeal to a lot of people. You can choose from a silver and black version, as shown in the photos here, or a space gray and black version made to match darker Apple Watches. Read on for the details…

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Strategy Analytics has issued its latest estimates of global mobile phone shipments, and reports that Apple’s market share climbed from 8.2% in Q2 2014 to 10.9% in the same quarter this year. Apple revealed in its latest quarterly earnings that it saw iPhone sales climb 35% year-on-year to 47M units.

The research firm said that Apple’s dramatic growth in iPhone shipments contrasted strongly with an overall industry growth rate of just 2% … 
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2015 Volkswagon eGolf electric car

Volkswagen has announced that almost every 2016 VW model “in virtually every trim” will get support for CarPlay, with the first models arriving in showrooms this week.

As the people’s car brand, we knew that it was important to democratize these technologies across the Volkswagen line-up, with features like App-Connect ensuring that more consumers can integrate their smart devices in a wide range of trims on virtually every model the company sells […] 

App-Connect provides seamless smartphone integration through three interfaces: Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and MirrorLink.

“Democratization” only goes so far – the company will offer four different head units of varying sophistication, depending on price level … 
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