Apple partner Sharp’s planned US manufacturing rumored for first half of year as Japan PM meets Trump

Via Reuters, Sharp may begin a $7 billion project to build a factory in the United States before June of this year. Apple supplier Foxconn announced plans to explore manufacturing components in the US earlier this year, and this latest report largely reaffirms those rumors with a more concrete time frame. A spring/summer start for the US plant would be sooner than many predicted.

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Touch Bar integration coming soon to Word, PowerPoint and Excel for Mac — try it out today with the Office Insider beta program

At the original October event for the new MacBook Pro, Apple announced that Microsoft Office would offer Touch Bar integration in the coming months. Although the support is not yet ready for the general public, the Office Insider beta program has now released an update including Touch Bar features (via The Verge).

Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook include Touch Bar features enabling quick access to text formatting, object ordering and other tools. We’ve got an overview of what’s included after the jump, or you can join the Mac Office Insider program here and test out the new versions today for yourself …

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New EU rules will remove ‘geoblocking’ so customers can use online subscription services, like Netflix, abroad

The European Union is laying out plans to enforce new laws that breakdown geographical barriers for online subscription services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple Music. When the new regulations come into effect in early 2018, online services must provide a service to its customers regardless of their current location, as long as they stay within the EU.

For example, This means that a person from the UK could buy a Netflix subscription in their resident country, and then go abroad to Spain for holiday. Netflix would then have to allow the customer to use their same subscription in Spain with access to the same content that they get in the UK …

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Apple proposes new ‘GPU on the Web’ Community Group to work towards more powerful graphics on the web

Apple’s WebKit team today proposed a new Community Group to discuss the future of 3D graphics on the web. In a blog post on the WebKit blog, Apple’s Dean Jackson wrote about the company’s proposal to develop a standard API that exposes modern GPU features.

Apple’s WebKit team today proposed a new Community Group at the W3C to discuss the future of 3D graphics on the Web, and to develop a standard API that exposes modern GPU features including low-level graphics and general purpose computation.

W3C Community Groups allow all to freely participate, and we invite browser engineers, GPU hardware vendors, software developers and the Web community to join us.

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With the release date set for this Friday, do you plan on purchasing BeatsX? [Poll]

Earlier today, it was officially confirmed that the delayed BeatsX would become available this Friday, February 10th. Announced back in September alongside the iPhone 7, the BeatsX were originally slated to be released sometime during the fall, but were then pushed back.

Now that we have a solid release date, and that AirPods are on the market as well, do you plan on purchasing the BeatsX? Or has the delay caused you to look at other options such as Apple’s own AirPods?

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Apple v. Samsung patent case sent back to lower courts to determine if damages retrial is necessary

In what has become a never-ending patent battle, a federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered that the Apple v. Samsung case be sent back to a lower court. As noted by CNET, the district court will decide whether or not to hold another damage retrial or settle the case in another fashion.

The Samsung v. Apple case will be sent back to where it originally started back in 2012, the Northern District Court of California.

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Dodge shows off new 2018 Durango SRT as latest with Apple’s CarPlay, BeatsAudio

Dodge today announced its 2018 Dodge Durango SRT at the Chicago Auto Show as its latest vehicle to come with Apple’s CarPlay platform stock.

The three-row, 475-horsepower SUV sports a 8.4-inch touchscreen that utilizes Unconnect software to interface with CarPlay (and Android Auto) and a nine speaker BeatsAudio sound system. It also comes with a 5-year trial of SiriusXM Travel Link and Traffic.

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Filed under: Apple