Due to local increases in coronavirus infections, nearly a dozen Apple retail stores in California, Maryland, Ohio and Tennessee are re-closing until the situation improves.

For a limited time, you can get a full fifty percent off Snapfish photo products when checking out with Apple Pay in the app.

Looking for a safe spot to keep notes like PIN numbers, bank information, or similar items? Check out the Secure Notes feature in Keychain Access on Mac.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The PC industry bounced back in the second quarter of 2020 after its weakest quarter in years mostly due to shelter-in-place orders prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. According to both Gartner and IDC, PC shipments grew year-over-year in the second quarter -- the former says shipments totaled 64.8 million units (a 2.8 percent increase from Q2 2019), while IDC says global shipments reached 72.3 million units, which is 11.2 percent higher compared to the same period last year. Both organizations attribute the growth to PC production ramping up after supply chains were disrupted in the first quarter and to strong demand, now that more people need computers to work or study from home. "After the PC supply chain was severely disrupted in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the growth this quarter was due to distributors and retail channels restocking their supplies back to near-normal levels," Gartner research director Mikako Kitagawa said. The mobile PC or laptop segment did very well, in particular, due to people's remote learning and working needs. However, both organizations are skeptical that the demand would continue beyond 2020. Gartner and IDC also noted that traditional PC shipments exceeded expectations in the U.S. and in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. "HP and Lenovo topped the list of PC vendors worldwide, with Dell coming in third for both IDC and Gartner," adds Engadget.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We noted earlier that we’re again seeing a number of iOS apps crashing as soon as they open, thanks to a bug in the Facebook SDK. Even if you don’t have the Facebook app installed, apps which use this SDK access it when they open, and then promptly crash.

Fortunately, there is an easy fix for now …

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Be sure to watch this video to familiarize yourself with ten great new hidden features that Apple didn't discuss at the WWDC 2020 last month.

Apple is rolling into the weekend with a new movie sale focused on historical titles, war films, and more. All of our top picks from this weekend’s promotion are on sale at $5, but you’ll also find additional notable deals under $10. That’s on top of Tuesday’s sale, which is still on-going with the usual selection of $1 rentals and more. Hit the jump for all of our favorite price drops from this weekend’s sale.

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A newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed Valentine brings the iOS 14-style Calendar app icon to pwned iOS 13 devices.

If you’re collaborating on a document, we’ll show you how to track changes in Pages on Mac so that you can more easily work together.

Update: The issue now appears to have been resolved and normal app function is being restored.

In almost the exact same circumstances as we saw in May, a bug in the Facebook SDK is once again causing major third-party iOS apps like TikTok and Spotify to crash on launch. Third-party apps integrate with the Facebook SDK to enable things like account login, analytics, and ads platform integration.

Any issue that crops up in the logic of the underlying Facebook SDK will reflect in any apps that use it. Just like the May situation, improper handling of unexpected invalid data on Facebook part is resulting in the crashes.

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With a new jailbreak tweak called Viper, you can seriously transform the user experience of your iPhone’s Home and Lock Screens with interactive widgets, weather displays, and an App Drawer, among other things.

Apple has announced its latest Apple Pay promo, and it’s a good one: you can get a full 50% off Snapfish photo books, cards and more when you use Apple’s payment method …

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The iPhone's App Switcher just works, but it can be a somewhat cumbersome experience. Spear is a new jailbreak tweak that re-imagines all of it.

Special cells in giant clams shift the wavelength of light to protect them from UV radiation and increase the photosynthetic activity of their symbionts, shows research from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology -- originally intended as a photonics investigation. Phys.Org reports: Like corals, giant clams are important players in reef ecosystems and live in symbiosis with photosynthetic Symbiodiniaceae algae. The clams also have special cells, known as iridocytes, that can manipulate light via layers of nanoreflectors within each cell. Earlier work has shown that these iridocytes scatter and reflect light to increase the photosynthetic efficiency of the Symbiodiniaceae algae. Now, a team of researchers at the Red Sea Research Center and the Photonics Laboratory have discovered another way that iridocytes help the symbiont to photosynthesize. The researchers studied the morphology and optical characteristics of iridocytes in the giant clam Tridacna maxima and found that they absorb UV radiation and re-emit it as longer wavelength, photosynthetically useful light. Ram Chandra Subedi, one of the study's authors, explains that the iridocytes contain alternating layers of high-refractive index guanine crystal and lower refractive index cytoplasm. Compressing and relaxing these layers enables the cell to tune its effect on light. As a result, "the guanine palettes not only reflect harmful UV radiation but also absorb it, and emit light at higher wavelengths which are safe and useful for photosynthesis," he explains. This increases the amount of photosynthetically active radiation available to the algal symbiont and also helps protect both the clams and algae from UV radiation. This photoprotective effect enables giant calms to live in very shallow tropical waters where there is enough light for photosynthesis, but also potentially harmful UV radiation levels. The report adds that this research may help explain the mantle colors of giant clams. "The idea is that the vibrant colors of giant clams are not due to optical differences in the tissue, but rather differences in the distribution or abundance of symbionts relative to iridocytes in each individual," reports Phys.Org. The research has been published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ming-Chi Kuo previously said that the first ARM Mac would be a 13.3-inch MacBook Pro and ship before the end of the year, notably before Apple announced the two year transition timeline on the WWDC stage. Today, he follows up with a deeper outlook for the MacBook line as Apple moves from Intel CPUs to custom chips of its own design.

In today’s report, the reputable analyst still expects the 13.3-inch Pro to start shipping in the fourth quarter, but also expects an Apple Silicon-based MacBook Air to go into production around the same time, for a late winter or early spring launch. In 2021, Apple will launch a redesigned MacBook Pro line with 14-inch and 16-inch screen sizes.

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Jack Dorsey, the billionaire CEO of Twitter and Square, is donating $3 million to help fund Mayors for a Guaranteed Income (MGI), a new coalition of 15 mayors across the country who want to explore the idea of universal basic income -- a recurring payment to residents -- in their cities. Forbes reports: The coalition was created on June 29 by Michael Tubbs, the 29 year-old mayor of Stockton, California, who has been running a guaranteed income pilot program in his city since the winter of 2018. The majority of the gift will help the mayors create pilot programs for universal basic income (UBI) in their cities, which include Newark, Atlanta, Seattle, Los Angeles, Compton, Long Beach, Pittsburgh, Oakland and more. The rest of the money will go to a new pilot program in Stockton, which Tubbs will announce in the fall. For now, the roster of mayors in MGI are moderate to liberal-leaning, but that will soon change. Dorsey is making the donation from #startsmall, his philanthropic limited liability company, which he launched on April 7 by transferring $1 billion worth of Square shares -- then 28% of his net worth -- to the LLC. Dorsey said he would primarily focus his charitable efforts on Covid-19 relief, and also fund efforts to improve girl's health and education, as well as UBI experimentation. Tubbs hopes that with more successful experiments of guaranteed income around the country, the federal government will follow with a national guaranteed income program that will extend beyond the pandemic.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Lithium-ion batteries play a central role in the world of technology, powering everything from smartphones to smart cars, and one of the people who helped commercialize them says he has a way to cut mass production costs by 90% and significantly improve their safety. Hideaki Horie, formerly of Nissan Motor Co., founded Tokyo-based APB Corp. in 2018 to make "all-polymer batteries" -- hence the company name. The making of a cell, every battery's basic unit, is a complicated process requiring cleanroom conditions -- with airlocks to control moisture, constant air filtering and exacting precision to prevent contamination of highly reactive materials. The setup can be so expensive that a handful of top players like South Korea's LG Chem Ltd., China's CATL and Japan's Panasonic Corp. spend billions of dollars to build a suitable factory. Horie's innovation is to replace the battery's basic components -- metal-lined electrodes and liquid electrolytes -- with a resin construction. He says this approach dramatically simplifies and speeds up manufacturing, making it as easy as "buttering toast." It allows for 10-meter-long battery sheets that can be stacked on top of each other "like seat cushions" to increase capacity, he said. Importantly, the resin-based batteries are also resistant to catching fire when punctured. In March, APB raised $74 million, which is tiny by the wider industry's standards but will be enough to fully equip one factory for mass production slated to start next year. Horie estimates the funds will get his plant in central Japan to 1 gigawatt-hour capacity by 2023.

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In a statement (PDF) issued this week, the U.S. Treasury Department notes that Amazon has agreed to pay $134,523 to settle potential liability over alleged sanctions violations. TechCrunch reports: The charges specifically pertain to goods and services sent to people located in Crimea, Iran and Syria, which are covered by Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions, between November 2011 and October 2018. The Treasury Department also states that the retail giant failed to report "several hundred" transactions in a timely manner. The department adds: "Amazon also accepted and processed orders on its websites for persons located in or employed by the foreign missions of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Additionally, Amazon accepted and processed orders from persons listed on OFAC's List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (the "SDN List") who were blocked pursuant to the Narcotics Trafficking Sanctions Regulations, the Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferators Sanctions Regulations, the Transnational Criminal Organizations Sanctions Regulations, the Democratic Republic of the Congo Sanctions Regulations, the Venezuela Sanctions Regulations, the Zimbabwe Sanctions Regulations, the Global Terrorism Sanctions Regulations, and the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Sanctions Regulations." The department doesn't believe there was anything malicious going on, rather an issue with Amazon's system, which failed to flag shipments to sanctioned areas.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is reclosing 11 more US stores in California, Maryland, Ohio, and Tennessee due to deteriorating COVID-19 conditions. The latest round of reclosings adds to 2 stores temporarily shuttered earlier this week for a total of 91 US locations reclosed due to COVID-19.

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