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Midweek news bites – the latest on all things Apple

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Plenty of Apple, iPhone, and iPad news gets released each week – but we know you’re busy, so we’ve got your back. Here, we’ve picked out some of the most notable things you should know from the past few days and summarized them for easy digestion. You’re welcome.

Let’s take a quickfire look at some of the most interesting recent headlines. As ever, click through to read the full stories if you want to know more!

Rumor: Apple working on ‘AirPods Pro Lite’

This is an interesting rumor from DigiTimes, but one that honestly doesn’t make a lot of sense to us. Apple’s existing AirPods and AirPods Pro already offer enough choice between core features – is there really room for a confusing third model in between? That said, a more general AirPods Lite product with a lower price could be a hit with the budget crowd and help compete against the army of AirPods clones currently out there.

Apple Pay could account for 25% of transactions by 2025

Research team Bernstein believes there’s a strong chance of Apple Pay accounting for a full quarter of global card transactions by 25% and even threatening industry giant PayPal. Currently, Apple Pay accounts for around 5% of global card transactions – but that number is certainly growing fast.

Apple launches Swift Playgrounds for Mac

Swift Playgrounds is an educational app designed to introduce people to the world of coding through a series of increasingly complex minigames. It’s cutesy enough for kids, but certainly has enough depth to draw adults into the world of Apple’s coding language Swift. Until now, the app was only available for iPad, but it’s now launched on Mac too. Coding is an increasingly important skill to learn, and this is a great way to get started for free with Apple.

BlueMail back in the App Store after calling out Apple

Mac email client BlueMail has been restored to the App Store eight months after being unceremoniously dumped by Apple’s review team. BlueMail alleges Apple stole its ideas to create the ‘Sign in with Apple’ feature of iOS 13 and then removed its app from the store just days later. After starting a lawsuit and penning an open letter to Tim Cook, it seems Apple has finally allowed BlueMail back on the Mac.