Apple Negotiating With More Publishers for New Tablet PC

By Dena Cassella Published January 27, 2010

We have a watchful eye on you Apple, so don’t think you can sneak around making deals with publishers and not have us know about it—or not have the Wall Street Journal know about it. The WSJ reported today that HarperCollins Publisher is negotiating with Apple Inc. to make electronic books available for its new tablet device. WSJ says they aren’t sure whether Apple will sell the HarperCollins titles via a new e-book store or through its existing iTunes Store.

HarperCollins is supposedly selling e-books with advanced features such as video formats, author interviews and social-networking applications—the publisher noted that these e-books would be sold for higher prices than the standard $9.99 new release set by Amazon. Brian Murray, the chief executive of HarperCollins, said in December that these enhanced e-books would sell for $14.99 to $19.99. Speaking of Amazon—Kindle’s in for bumpy ride this year isn’t it? With the countless new options for e-readers that were released at CES and new multifunctional devices like Apple’s tablet that are being readily introduced.

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WSJ says the details are not ironed out yet, but there may be some announcements at the January 27^th press conference regarding the partnerships and who is providing what content on the new Apple device.

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Apple Intelligence: Here’s everything we know so far

Apple Intelligence features.

Apple Intelligence is Apple's take on AI, and it looks to fundamentally change the way we interact with technology, blending advanced machine learning and AI capabilities into everyday devices.
Promising more conversational prose from Siri, automated proofreading and text summarization across apps, and lightning-fast image generation, Apple's AI ecosystem is designed to enhance user experiences and streamline operations across its product lineup. Here's everything you need to know about Apple's transformational new AI.

Apple Intelligence release date and compatibility
Apple Intelligence was originally slated for formal release in September, coinciding with the roll out of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. However, as Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported, Apple subsequently decided to slightly delay the release of Intelligence. It is currently available to developers as part of the iOS 18.1 beta release on September 19, though it's looking unlikely that Apple Intelligence will be released publicly before the official 18.1 roll out scheduled for October, per Gurman.
https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1817632719175901531
The company has specified that, at least initially, the AI features will be available on the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, as well as iPads and Macs with M1 or newer chips (and presumably the iPhone 16 handsets as well, since they'll all be running iOS 18). What's more, the features are only available at launch when the user language is set to English.
Why the cutoff? Well, Apple has insisted that the processes are too intensive for older hardware, as they utilize the more advanced neural engines, GPUs, and CPUs of these newer chips.
Users who run an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max part of Apple's Developer program gained access to an early version of Intelligence in July with the release of iOS 18.1 beta.

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Apple may have stealthily confirmed the new Mac mini

The Mac mini on a wooden table.

With the Apple iPhone event now behind us, we are still waiting for official news about new Macs. We recently reported on the slew of Macs that are most likely on the way, but Apple's been silent on the matter -- until now. A stealthy line of code in the new macOS Sequoia update reveals that a new Mac mini might be in the works, and the confirmation fits right in with previous reports.

Let's start with some context. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is readying a new Mac mini with the M4 and the M4 Pro chip. Aside from the chip upgrade, the 2024 Mac mini is said to be redesigned to be smaller than ever before, marking the first major change in the design of the mini PC in many years. It's said to be around the same size as an Apple TV set-top box. To that end, we've heard that Apple might remove all of the USB-A ports on the Mac mini in an effort to make the PC even thinner.

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Apple just proved it learned from the Touch Bar’s failure

The Ultramarine iPhone 16.

Apple revealed a lot of new products and features at the ‘It’s Glowtime’ event earlier this week, but the best moment of all? For me, it was when Apple showed off the Camera Control, a new touch-sensitive button on the iPhone 16 range that lets you snap photos, change the camera’s focus point, switch between controls for depth of field and zoom, and more. You can press it to take a picture, or lightly press and swipe to scroll through various camera controls. For something so small, it packs in an awful lot.

It perfectly encapsulates that elusive Apple magic inside a button that can do so much in some very clever and intuitive ways. It’s the sort of thing that, like so many Apple features, will spawn a legion of imitators, but none will come close to the original.