Apple CEO Tim Cook was spotted in Washington DC today where he met with lawmakers to push back against proposed App Store age policy.

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Apple has teamed up with Mattel for a 30 percent discount on Mattel toys when using Apple Pay to check out on the Mattel website. The discount is available for Barbie, Hot Wheels, Masters of the Universe, and other Mattel branded toys.


The ‌Apple Pay‌ deal is available from December 8 to December 14 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time. To get the discount, users will need to use ‌Apple Pay‌ for their purchase on the Mattel website, and enter the promo code APPLEPAY at checkout.

The deal excludes shipping and handling, gift cards, taxes, and Mattel Creations Memberships. There are no minimum or maximum purchase limits listed, so the deal should apply to all purchases made on the website through December 14.
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Apple TV has easily had its best year ever, and as the latest evidence: a prestigious institution’s list of the year’s top 10 TV shows features more Apple releases than ever before.

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Today’s 9to5toys Lunch Break is now ready to roll. We have $100 pice drops on Apple Watch Series 11 joining a $200 price drop on the 46mm Jet Black Apple Watch Series 10 and some new lows on official Apple Watch bands – black Alpine Loop, Neon Green Ocean Band, and the Sport Loop. Those offers join the ongoing AirPods Pro 3 deal at $220 as well as another chance to save at least $119 off AirPods Max (USB-C) and a particularly rare deal on Apple’s most affordable Studio Display at $230 off. Head below for much more and a closer look at today’s headliners. 

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Apple today unveiled its fifth retail store in India, at the DLF Mall in Noida. The store opens to customers this Thursday, December 11, at 1 p.m. local time.


The store features familiar amenities, including an Apple Pickup station for in-store pickup of online orders, and a Genius Bar for tech support and repairs.


Apple operates four other stores in India:

• Apple Saket in New Delhi


• Apple BKC in Mumbai


• Apple Koregaon Park in Pune


• Apple Hebbal in Bengaluru

In addition, the Apple Store app launched in India earlier this year.

Earlier this month, Apple opened a new store in China, at the Livat Centre in Beijing. This store also has an Apple Pickup station and a Genius Bar, plus a dedicated seating area where customers can demo the Apple Vision Pro.


Apple remains committed to expanding its retail presence in international markets, such as China, India, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
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Amazon this week has the Apple Watch SE 3 on sale at all-time low prices, starting at $199.00 for the 40mm GPS model. These prices are matching the Black Friday discounts we tracked last month, and they are some of the few sales that have consistently stuck around since that event ended.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Amazon. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

You can also get the 44mm GPS Apple Watch SE 3 on sale for $229.00, down from $279.00. Both models are available in Midnight and Starlight Aluminum options, with multiple sizes on sale as well. As of writing, all models can be delivered in time for the Christmas holiday.




In addition to the Apple Watch SE 3 discounts, Amazon has $100 off the Apple Watch Series 11 right now, which are new record low prices on the wearables. If you're on the hunt for more discounts, be sure to visit our Apple Deals roundup where we recap the best Apple-related bargains of the past week.

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It’s been three months since Apple unveiled AirPods Pro 3, and despite a complicated first few weeks with the product, I’m happy to report that with more use it’s become an excellent upgrade.

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Apple today updated its Apple Cash feature to introduce a set of stickers that can be used in the Messages app. The stickers are Apple Cash themed, featuring emoji that you might want to use when sending or receiving a payment.


Each sticker is animated, and has an iridescent texture that gives a glinting effect as the sticker moves.

The Apple Cash stickers are rolling out to users starting today. You can find them by opening up the Messages app and selecting a conversation, then tapping on the "+" button next to the text bar. From there, tap on the "Stickers" option and swipe over to Apple Cash.






Apple Cash stickers will show up in the Messages Sticker list automatically, and there is no option to download them from the Sticker App Store. The stickers also aren't able to be removed, because Apple Cash is not an app that can be uninstalled.
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If you’ve just purchased a new Mac, like the recently-released, you might also be looking into some of the best display options.

Here are my recommendations, covering multiple product categories, price points, and more.

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Twelve South today is kicking off a 20 percent sitewide discount that's exclusive to MacRumors readers, allowing you a chance to save on the company's most popular accessories just in time for the holidays. To get this deal, enter the code MacRumors2025 at checkout to take 20 percent off your cart.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Twelve South. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

Our code works sitewide on Twelve South, and takes 20 percent off your entire cart, so you can purchase multiple accessories at once for more savings. Once you enter the code MacRumors2025 at checkout, you should start seeing it automatically applied as you browse Twelve South's website.




This deal will run through Friday, December 19, so you have a little over a week to take advantage of the sale. As of today, Twelve South is still guaranteeing holiday delivery with its economy shipping option, and the cutoff for choosing the ground economy option is December 15.

Twelve South offers a large variety of accessories built for Apple products. Some of its newest accessories include the MagSafe Wallet Stand for iPhone 17, Curve Nano for iPhone, ButterFly SE 2-in-1 Qi2 Charger, and PowerBug Wall Charger. You can get 20 percent off these accessories and many more with our exclusive code.

If you're on the hunt for more discounts, be sure to visit our Apple Deals roundup where we recap the best Apple-related bargains of the past week.

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Starting today, many Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat, and Adobe Express features are available to use directly in ChatGPT, allowing you to edit photos, transform PDF documents, design event invitations, and more with conversational prompts.


After connecting the apps, you can use prompts such as "add creative effects to the background" or "create an invitation for my dance party."

Here is what you can do, according to Adobe:

• Easily edit and uplevel images with Adobe Photoshop: Adjust a specific part of an image, fine-tune image settings like brightness, contrast and exposure, and apply creative effects like Glitch and Glow — all while preserving the quality of the image.
• Create and personalize designs with Adobe Express: Browse Adobe Express' extensive library of professional designs to find the best one for any moment, fill in the text, replace images, animate designs and iterate on edits — all directly inside the chat and without needing to switch to another app — to create standout content for any occasion.
• Transform and organize documents with Adobe Acrobat: Edit PDFs directly in the chat, extract text or tables, organize and merge multiple files, compress files and convert them to PDF while keeping formatting and quality intact. Acrobat for ChatGPT also enables people to easily redact sensitive details.

After connecting the apps to ChatGPT in Settings → Apps & Connectors, you can find them by clicking on the plus sign next to the chat field and selecting "More." ChatGPT can also automatically surface the apps if you use a prompt such as "Adobe Photoshop, help me blur the background of this image" or "Adobe Acrobat, help me edit this PDF."



Adobe's app integrations are available to all ChatGPT users worldwide, for free, across ChatGPT.com and the ChatGPT app for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Adobe Express for ChatGPT is also available on Android, with support for Photoshop and Acrobat for ChatGPT on Android coming soon, according to the announcement.

If you want to use more advanced features, you an seamlessly move from ChatGPT to Adobe's standalone apps and pick up right where you left off.
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Apple’s Messages app scored a bunch of new features in iOS 26, including a new ‘Screen Unknown Senders’ option meant to eliminate spam texts. My initial experience with the feature wasn’t great, but tweaking one key setting has changed that.

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Today, Homey has announced the new Homey Pro 2026, and the big update is straightforward: more RAM at the same price point. If you are not already familiar with Homey Pro, it is one of the most interesting home hubs on the market. It supports Matter, Thread, Zigbee, Z Wave, Wi-Fi, and even IR devices together so you can manage your entire home from one place. For people who want a hub that talks to everything and does almost all of its processing locally, Homey Pro has become a really cool option.

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The Pro Display XDR is six years old today, making it one of the oldest Apple products still on sale.


Released on December 10, 2019 alongside the redesigned Mac Pro, the Pro Display XDR was Apple's re-entry into the high-end external monitor market, following a three-year hiatus after discontinuing the Thunderbolt Display in 2016. The announcement came at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2019, where the company presented the display as a rival to traditional reference monitors. The XDR in its name stands for "Extreme Dynamic Range," a feature that Apple emphasized as a key differentiator from other high-resolution monitors available at the time.

It features a 32-inch Retina display with a 6K resolution of 6,016 by 3,384 pixels, powered by Apple's proprietary LED backlighting system. Apple utilized blue-colored LEDs with custom lenses and reflectors to achieve a maximum brightness of up to 1,600 nits in HDR mode, while sustaining 1,000 nits across the entire screen indefinitely. This allows for what Apple describes as "stunningly accurate colors and contrast," supporting the P3 wide color gamut and delivering a claimed 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.

The rear of the display features the same lattice pattern used on the 2019 ‌Mac Pro‌, which functions as a heatsink to aid thermal management. The display is also available with matte nano-texture glass to cut down on glare—the first Apple product it's featured on.

Upon its release, the Pro Display XDR garnered significant attention for its high price. In the United States, the display starts at $4,999, and users who opt for the adjustable Pro Stand must pay an additional $999. The Pro Stand, which is sold separately, was met with mixed reactions upon its unveiling. Apple justified the cost by highlighting the engineering involved, with the Pro Stand offering height, tilt, and rotation adjustments, as well as support for both landscape and portrait modes. A VESA mount adapter is also available for those who prefer third-party mounting solutions.

As of its sixth anniversary, the Pro Display XDR remains one of only two external monitors sold by Apple, alongside the Studio Display, which was released in March 2022. Unlike the Pro Display XDR, the Studio Display comes with an integrated A13 Bionic chip, enabling features such as Center Stage for its built-in webcam, spatial audio, and support for Siri voice commands. The Pro Display XDR, however, has no webcam or any internal Apple silicon chip.

Speculation about a second-generation Pro Display XDR has been circulating for some time. In December 2022, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported that Apple was working on an updated version of the display, this time with an Apple silicon chip to enhance its capabilities. In July 2023, Gurman reiterated that Apple was still developing multiple new displays. Display supply chain analyst Ross Young added that the next-generation Pro Display XDR will feature quantum dot technology, just like the MacBook Pro.

Evidence of Apple's work on new external monitors has been spotted multiple times. The third beta of macOS 26.1 suggests that the Pro Display XDR 2 will feature a built-in Center Stage camera. The A19 Pro chip is also a possibility, along with a higher refresh rate.
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On the heels of unveiling the App Store Awards winners last week, Apple today unveiled the most downloaded apps and games of the year in the United Staes. This year, the most downloaded free iPhone app was ChatGPT, while the top paid iPhone app was HotSchedules.

Meanwhile, the top free iPhone game was Block Blast!, while the top paid iPhone game was Minecraft: Dream it, Build it.

Head below for the full list of the top iPhone and iPad apps games of 2025.

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A commonly expressed frustration with algorithmically-driven apps like Instagram is that users have no control over their feeds. They are instead shown what the app thinks they want to see, which is often wildly inaccurate.

Meta is promising to provide at least a partial solution to the problem with a new feature called Your Algorithm …

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I love smart plugs for smart home automations. Smart plugs are one of the easiest ways to start building out a smart home without overwhelming someone. They are easy to install, use, and are usually low-cost. Today, Shelly has released the new Shelly Plug Gen4. Big point up front: it works with Matter, and it’s under $20. For HomeKit users, it is an easy way to add automations, track power usage, and control lamps or small appliances directly from the Home app.

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Apple's App Store has been unlawfully hosting dozens of apps tied to U.S.-sanctioned companies, according to a new watchdog report (via The Washington Post).


The Tech Transparency Project, a non-profit advocacy group, flagged 52 apps in the App Store that had links to entities found on the Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs), a designation that prohibits U.S. companies from doing business with them.

Linked organisations included Russian financial institutions such as Gazprombank and National Standard Bank propping up Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, and China's Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), which has been sanctioned for involvement in repression of Uyghur minorities. Another app was run by a company owned by an accused Lithuanian drug trafficker.

The linked entities reportedly used name variants, shell developers, or partial references to obscure their sanctions status.

Google's Play Store was also found to be hosting 18 apps for similarly sanctioned organizations. Google took down all but one of the apps after being contacted by The Post. Apple removed 35 out of 52 during or after the investigation. Apple disputed that all the flagged apps violate sanctions, but said it was enhancing its review process.

Apple previously committed to improving sanctions detection after a 2019 Treasury settlement involving a naming-variation failure.

According to The Post, the Treasury could have fined Apple more than $70 million at the time, but said it accepted a settlement of less than $1 million because Apple had self-reported, had not had a violation in the preceding five years, and promised to revamp its sanction search tools "to fully capture spelling and capitalization variations and to account for country-specific business suffixes."

Legal experts say that prior agreement increases Apple's exposure now, since the latest similar lapses suggest its promised improvements were insufficient. The findings also call into question Apple's long-standing claim that its App Store provides a "safe and trusted" environment for users.
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Apple has been accused of breaking the law by failing to comply with US sanctions after the App Store was found to have contain dozens of apps from sanctioned companies. The same was true of Google, though at a smaller scale.

The banned apps were identified by the Tech Transparency Project, which says it demonstrates that Apple failed to live up to its promises that the App Store represents a safe and trusted source …

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Starting today, features from three of Adobe’s flagship products will be natively integrated into ChatGPT, for free. Here’s how it works.

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Around 210,000 budget portable power banks sold exclusively by Amazon USA are being recalled after they were found to have caused 11 fires resulting in both injuries and property damage …

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Authoritarian governments don’t like their citizens being able to have private conversations using end-to-end encrypted messaging apps. This is the reason Russia has just banned FaceTime, but it was surprising iMessage had escaped a ban.

A potential reason for this has now been discovered: Apple may have accidentally made it almost impossible for a government to ban its end-to-end encrypted text messaging app …

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Spotify has announced music videos are rolling out now to Premium users in the U.S. and Canada, though the feature remains in beta.


The catalog currently includes music videos from artists like Ariana Grande, Olivia Dean, BABYMONSTER, Addison Rae, Tyler Childers, Natanael Cano, and Carín León.

Spotify says the initial video catalog is "limited" for now while the feature is in beta, but asks users to "stay tuned" as availability is set to grow "over the coming months."

If you're a Premium subscriber and want to check out music videos, open Spotify on you TV, desktop, iOS, or Android device, and a "Switch to Video" icon will appear above the song title in supported music tracks. Tapping starts the song from the beginning with accompanying video within the Now Playing view, which can also be rotated to landscape orientation on iPhone and Android.

To find additional music videos – including live and cover videos – scroll down to explore Related Music Videos, or go to an artist's profile and look under the Music tab. You can also watch by genre and era via playlists like 90s Video Hits, Hip-Hop Throwbacks, and Latin Party Hits.

Spotify first announced beta support for music videos back in March 2024, but the feature was limited to 11 markets including the UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Brazil, Colombia, Philippines, Indonesia, and Kenya.

In October, Spotify released a redesigned app for Apple TV that supports music videos, which had by then expanded to 97 countries around the world. Spotify says music videos will be available to all Premium users in the U.S. and Canada by the end of the month.

Previously, video content on Spotify has been limited to video podcasts and short repeating music video clips when a song plays. Apple Music has included its own music video catalog for almost seven years now. The feature was introduced with the release of iOS 11.3 in March 2018.


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Google Maps on iOS quietly gained a new feature recently that automatically recognizes where you've parked your vehicle and saves the location for you.


Announced on LinkedIn by Rio Akasaka, Google Maps' senior product manager, the new feature auto-detects your parked location even if you don't use the parking pin function, saves it for up to 48 hours, and then automatically removes it once you start driving again.

Saving your parking spot in Maps isn't a new ability in itself. You could already do that manually by tapping your location on the map and then choosing Saved Parking. The difference here is that the whole process is automated for you.

Akasaka explains what you need to do to get the feature to work:

Get in a car with Google Maps and connect to your car with USB, Bluetooth or CarPlay, and once you're done driving, there's a little pin waiting for you when you open Google Maps next – a personal parking Maps valet, just for you. When you drive again, the pin goes away, just like that.

Automatic parking location saving started rolling out on iPhone about a month ago, but since then another feature has gone live that will now use any custom car icons you've set up as a parking icon, instead of the default "P" icon. Google added custom car icons to Maps in 2020, and eight new car shapes and colors were added earlier this year.

As things stand, the new auto-save parking place feature only works on iOS. While a similar parking reminder can be found on Android, the icon will only go away if the user manually removes it.

(Via 9to5Google.)
This article, "Google Maps Quietly Added This Long-Overdue Feature for Drivers" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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