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Earlier this week, Swift creator and LLVM co-author Chris Lattner announced he will be leaving Apple later this month—he is headed to Tesla to lead its autopilot engineering team as Vice President of Autopilot Software. Lattner, who oversaw Xcode among other tasks as director of Apple’s Development Tools department, did not provide an explanation for his decision to leave the company, but “someone in Lattner’s circle of developer friends” told Business Insider…

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Snapchat was today updated with an improved universal search feature that makes it easier for users to find friends, groups, stories, and other content on the social network, reports TechCrunch. The new universal search bar is located at the top of the Snapchat app, making it accessible when browsing, sharing a photo, and more, an improvement over the previous search features that were split up across the app. According to Snapchat, the…

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Apple today announced that the size limit of a tvOS app bundle has increased from 200MB to 4GB, allowing developers to include more media in their app submissions for a “complete, rich user experience upon installation.” Previously, tvOS apps were limited in size to 200MB, but were allowed to download additional resources after being installed. This led to short initial installation times, but caused customers to have to wait for content to…

Consumer Reports is out with an updated report on the 2016 MacBook Pro, and following retesting, the magazine is now recommending Apple’s latest notebooks. In the new test, conducted running a beta version of macOS that fixes the Safari-related bug that caused erratic battery life in the original test, all three MacBook Pro models “performed well.” The 13-inch model without a Touch Bar had an average battery life of 18.75 hours, the…

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A U.S. Appeals Court today ruled that App Store customers can move forward with a lawsuit claiming Apple created an illegal app monopoly because it did not allow users to purchase iPhone apps outside of the App Store, reports Reuters. The decision reverses a 2013 ruling that dismissed the lawsuit, originally filed in 2012. The case, Pepper et al v. Apple Inc., alleges that by not letting users purchase apps from third-party…

Earlier this month, Sonny Dickson shared a collection of images and videos featuring an of the iPhone with an early iPod-style operating system called “Acorn OS,” based on a clickwheel interface. The iPod-like software was developed by “iPod Father” Tony Fadell, who shared some new details on its creation with The Verge in an attempt to clarify the backstory behind the software. Click Wheel-based OS vs. the Icon-based OS that went on…

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Amid an ongoing decline in worldwide PC shipments, Apple’s Mac sales are holding steady, according to new PC shipping estimates shared today by Gartner. During the fourth quarter of 2016, Apple shipped an estimated 5.4 million Macs worldwide, up from 5.3 million in the year-ago quarter for an estimated growth of 2.4 percent. During the quarter, Apple held 7.5 percent of the market, up from 7 percent during the fourth quarter of…

Reliable aerial coverage of Apple Campus 2 from Matthew Roberts has continued today, with the first drone footage of the campus in 2017 posted on Roberts’ YouTube channel. As construction continues into the new year — originally expected to be completed by the end of 2016 — the new footage shows a nearly-complete main building, as well as free-standing structures such as the nearby parking garage and its rooftop solar panels. Still…

Popular roguelike shooter The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is finally available on iOS devices. The highly-anticipated game was originally supposed to come out in early 2016, but its dark themes caused it to be rejected by Apple. Based on a Flash game first released in 2012, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth has been available on Macs, PCs, and consoles since 2014. The game was inspired by a biblical tale, and the main…

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A couple days ago Sonny Dickson shared a look at one of two early prototypes for the original iPhone, the iPod Click Wheel-based OS that iPod “Godfather” Tony Fadell was working on. Tonight, Dickson has shared a video pitting Fadell’s version against Scott Forstall’s icon-based iPhone prototype, which went on to become the basis for iOS. Fadell’s prototype was referred to as P1 while Forstall’s prototype was referred to as P2. The…