The U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating whether Apple Inc. violated securities laws concerning its disclosures about a software update that slowed older iPhone models, according to people familiar with the matter.

The government has requested information from the company, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the probe is private. The inquiry is in early stages, they cautioned, and it’s too soon to conclude any enforcement will follow.

With the hubbub over this, I’m not surprised that the government is asking questions. I don’t think this will go any farther considering the reason Apple did this was to actually help phones last longer without unexpectedly quitting.

Once in a blue moon is only once every few years, but once in a super, blue, blood moon is just once every few decades. This rare alignment of three different lunar phenomena—a total lunar eclipse, a full moon at perigee, and a blue moon—will be visible in the night and early morning skies for much of the world on Wednesday, January 31.

This should be spectacular.

Featured Speakers include internationally renowned chef José Andrés; Apple’s Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue; award-winning actress, writer, and director Lena Dunham; actor and writer Ethan Hawke; Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson; entrepreneur and model Karlie Kloss; Waymo CEO John Krafcik; Oscar-winning director, writer, and producer Spike Lee; activist and technologist Chelsea Manning; executive editor of Recode Kara Swisher; Westworld cast members Evan Rachel Wood, James Marsden, and Jeffrey Wright; YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki; and many more.

It will be interesting to see what Eddy has to say.

Om Malik:

Why sit through the whole show, when you know the best bits are going to be online soon, to be viewed later. Bruno Mars and Cardi B performance from Grammys has 5.2 million views on YouTube. The performances of Logic, Keesha, Lady Gaga and Sam Smith garnered a whopping 4 million views; the numbers are staggering compared to the “linear television” viewership.

Viewership for the Grammy’s was way down this year and I think Om is right on the reason why.

Pushed into 2019 are a number of features including a refresh of the home screen and in-car user interfaces, improvements to core apps like mail and updates to the picture-taking, photo editing and sharing experiences.

This isn’t a new strategy for Apple—they have used this strategy in macOS for a number of years and it’s worked great. With all of the new features in iOS over the past several years, the time had to come when Apple took a step back and focused on reliability and performance.

This is a great overview of using playlist comping.

During a performance workshop I was running this week, I was reminded of a technique for finding dead CSS on a live site. Note that I’m purposely not using the phrase ‘unused CSS’, but ‘dead CSS’

This is great if you have a lot of code.

Gimpirea’s is one of three teams of filmmakers involved in a month-long filmmaking workshop connecting creative professionals with emerging talent. The teams worked with powerful tools from Apple, including the MacBook Pro, iMac and Final Cut Pro X, as well as the RED Raven camera for shooting, and worked alongside Apple Retail experts and industry pros. LA-based independent filmmaking collective We Make Movies provided post-production supervision to help the filmmakers realize their visions.

This is a wonderful feature story on Apple’s web site.

The latest version of Swift Playgrounds includes new features to make it easier to discover even more content. Now you can subscribe to playgrounds from your favorite third-party creators, then browse and download their content directly within Swift Playgrounds. You’ll automatically see new and updated playgrounds in your subscriptions, a content gallery that shows all playgrounds in a single view, new robots, and much more.

Swift Playgrounds is a wonderful tool to learn how to code.

Apple today introduced a significant update to the Health app with the iOS 11.3 beta, debuting a feature for customers to see their medical records right on their iPhone. The updated Health Records section within the Health app brings together hospitals, clinics and the existing Health app to make it easy for consumers to see their available medical data from multiple providers whenever they choose. Johns Hopkins Medicine, Cedars-Sinai, Penn Medicine and other participating hospitals and clinics are among the first to make this beta feature available to their patients.

Apple’s advancements in health, fitness, and medical in the past few years are incredible.

This spring, iOS 11.3 will deliver exciting new ways to experience augmented reality on iPhone and iPad, new Animoji on iPhone X and the ability to view health records in the Health app.

There are some great new features that are available in iOS 11.3. The developer beta was released today.

With the release of the latest macOS developer beta, Apple will begin to alert users that they are using older, 32-bit apps, instead of the more modern 64-bit apps, the company told me today. The macOS beta will be released to developers on Wednesday. […]

Apple on Wednesday released an update for iTunes on the Mac, allowing the software to work with its upcoming HomePod. […]

Intel Corp said on Monday that patches it released to address two high-profile security vulnerabilities in its chips are faulty, advising customers, computer makers and cloud providers to stop installing them.

Wow Intel, that is awful.

Ahead of the promised “early 2018” launch of the HomePod, Apple has received official FCC approval for the smart speaker. Now that FCC approval has been obtained, Apple is free to begin selling the device at any time.

I can’t wait to try out the HomePod.

The price of the monthly Prime membership for new members increased from $10.99 to $12.99 on January 19, 2018.

I know a lot of people that have Prime and seem to love the benefits.

This is great news for fans of Rock and Def Leppard. Turns out, some changes at the music labels led to the band’s music being available on many streaming services today.

Apple’s iOS 11 has proven to be very popular among its users, according to new data the company released on Friday. […]

Sanjay Mathur, Silicon Valley Data Science’s founder and chief executive officer, joined Apple as part of the move. He leads “strategy and analytics initiatives for a group at Apple,” according to his LinkedIn profile. About 20 data scientists from the firm joined Apple, according to their LinkedIn profiles. They’re working on analytics for ad-related initiatives, which may include optimizing App Store ads.

I’d be interested to know what data Apple is going to use to improve its products. Is it actual data that will improve the iPhone on a personal level, or is it general data from its customers to improve its services?

Discord has been around since May, 2015, and was built as a platform for gamers to chat. It features, text, audio, and video chatting, and can be tweaked to attain very high sound quality with zero extra noise. Discord is also built such that it can be used entirely inside a web browser, meaning your interview guests don’t have to download the Discord app. In fact, there’s a way to set it up so that your interview guests don’t even have to sign up for a Discord account.

This looks like an interesting solution for those that hate Skype.

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) will open a new campus as part of a 5-year, $30 billion U.S. investment plan and will make about $38 billion in one-time tax payments on its overseas cash, one of the largest corporate spending plans announced since the passage of a tax cut signed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

This is in addition to Apple giving employees $2500 bonuses today.

Mashable has reached out to both Apple and the local police to confirm whether the shuttles were being shot at, and we will update this when we hear back. At the time of publication, Apple and the local police were not able to confirm what object was shattering the windows. It could, of course, be rocks — but even rocks thrown at a moving vehicle on the highway could result in tragedy.

Be safe people.

Details of the project are being kept under tight wraps, but it would reportedly deal with a world’s battle against a monstrous, oppressive force. Should the project move forward, it would be Abrams’ first TV writing gig since “Fringe” in 2008.

J.J. Abrams is just the type of hitmaker that Apple needs if it’s going to make a big splash in the original series TV market.

A group of 21 U.S. state attorneys general filed suit to challenge the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to do away with net neutrality on Tuesday while Democrats said they needed just one more vote in the Senate to repeal the FCC ruling.

Good.

This compact 2×4 interface starts with esteemed UA conversion derived from UA’s flagship Apollo interface range, to sonically outperform anything in its class. With its Unison technology and built-in UAD-2 SOLO Core processor, you can record through classic audio tools including the 610 Tube Preamp, LA-2A and 1176 compressors, and a genuine Marshall Plexi amp plug-in — at near-zero latency, regardless of your audio software buffer setting.

This is an incredible looking interface and included plug-ins bundle.

This is a fascinating article at Forbes on how the FBI views Apple and its pro-privacy stance. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be.