We don’t have time to write about every single piece of Apple news that comes our way, and you probably don’t have time to read it either. So each week we take the smaller stories from around the web – things that are interesting, but don’t warrant full articles – and bundle them into a bite-sized package for easy digestion.
Please dig into this week’s Apple bites, and as ever click through to read the full stories if you want to know more.
Ellen’s iPhone giveaway
In the biggest promotional stunt we can remember, every single member of The Ellen Show audience was given a free iPhone XR from Apple as part of the show’s “12 Days” giveaway season. This coincided with host Ellen DeGeneres and guest Julia Roberts talking about the benefits of the new device, including its Portrait selfie capabilities and long battery life. Seems like a pretty good bit of PR for Apple!
Trade-in credit
Apple is now offering up to $100 on top of the normal value when trading in old devices to help fund the purchase of an iPhone XS or XR. Its GiveBack program gives instant credit towards a purchase and will offer various bonuses depending on the exact model you have to trade in. This offer doubles the worth of some older iPhones and is a nice extra on the more recent models!
Elder Scrolls delayed
Game studio Bethesda has further delayed the upcoming Elder Scrolls: Blades game for iOS. It was slated for release on December 1 but has now been pushed to the end of March 2019 for undisclosed reasons. Blades, from the same universe as the insanely popular console game Skyrim, looks very promising – so much so that Apple showed off the game at the iPhone XS launch earlier this year. Sadly it looks like we’ll be waiting a little longer to try it out for ourselves.
Apple vs Qualcomm
It’s not long since Apple’s seven-year legal battle with Samsung came to a close, but it looks as though another war could be on the cards. Apple is upset at modem manufacturer Qualcomm’s poor business practices – to the point that it switched suppliers to exclusively use Intel modems last year – while Qualcomm claims Apple owes it billions in royalties. One of Apple’s lawyers has gone on record saying the debate won’t be settled out of court, meaning the drama may well continue for a long time.