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Top Apple headlines from January 27, 2023. Apple's AR headset will be for health and wellness, championship surfers will get Apple Watches, and Intel will hope for better financial results next time.
Apple is more than just the iPhone manufacturer. This $2 trillion company's decisions impact many facets of technology, financials, and everyday life. When the company is rumored to be getting into something new, the entire world pays attention. And since 1997, AppleInsider has been covering this fascinating electronics maker from every possible angle. From details of the next-generation iPhone and MacBook to key indicators expected to drive the company’s stock price, AppleInsider Daily has you completely covered on a daily basis.
Welcome to the AppleInsider Daily for Friday, January 27, 2023.
Apple has still not confirmed the open secret that it is working on Augmented Reality headsets with Apple AR, but today generally reliable sources revealed something of Apple's plans for what we will actually use these headsets for.
The claim is that, just as it now does with the Apple Watch, Apple intends to focus Apple AR on health and wellbeing features. Internal Apple-only demonstrations of the technology have reportedly included a Zen garden experience in AR, for instance.
More specifically, Apple executives have reportedly also been shown an AR walk-through version of Dr Seuss's book, "Oh, the Places You'll Go." Apple's version blends the book's fantastical environments
The same sources say that Apple is planning to go further than before on helping developers -- and, notably, also regular consumers -- create apps for their AR headset. Anyone can make Mac or iPhone apps with Apple's freely available tools like Xcode, but Apple wants us to be able to tell Siri what we want an app to do -- and then have Siri make it.
It sounds a lot like Shortcuts, but alongside creating our own AR apps, Apple hopes we'll then sell them on, presumably, an AR App Store.
Don't plan to make a surfing app, though.
And if you happen to be a surfer who is about to enter the World Surf League's Championship Tour and you don't already have an Apple Watch, hold off buying one. For the WSL has announced that the Apple Watch is now official surfing equipment, and athletes in the tournament will be given one.
It's not clear whether they'll have to give it back after the championship, or whether losers will have their Apple Watches stripped from them early. But for the time they have one, their WSL Apple Watches will also include a new surfer app which reports realtime data to go to and from the WSL Scoring System to the surfers.
The app will come installed on both Apple Watch Series 8 and Apple Watch Ultra, but there are no details of how it's decided which surfer gets which.
It is decided that Intel is now long gone from the Mac, except the Mac Pro, but Intel does still hope for a return some time -- and today it looks like it needs it. For today Intel had to announce its worst earnings report in over a decade. For its fourth quarter, it was down 32% year over year, and for its whole fiscal 2022, it was down a fifth on the year before.
While not discussed in its earnings report today, previously Intel has said that if it can't design Apple processors any more, at least it may be able to fabricate them.
One thing you can say about Intel's poor figures, though, is that they are true.
The same can't be said for any of a new series of leaks about iOS 17 and the iPhone 15 Pro, as they are that other definition of fabrication.
So much Apple news is really rumor, and none of it is ever certain until Tim Cook stands up on stage to announce "the best iPhone we've ever made". But today we've all had a reminder of how easily fake news is spread.
A leaker calling himself -- it's surely a man -- LeaksApplePro has been spotted making number of claims of inside information that are demonstrably false.
So many claims, and they have been picked up by so many sources, that you are likely to have seen them. We can't stop people pretending to have inside information, but we can -- and AppleInsider does -- apply a critical and informed eye so that you'll always know how solid or sketch an Apple rumor is.
So it's entirely true, then, that Intel had a bad year and that surfers are about to have a good season, and it seems to check out that you could make a killing in the AR App Store if you come up with just the right wellness app.
You can hear more news from AppleInsider on the weekly AppleInsider podcast every Friday -- including today -- and there's also our HomeKit Insider Podcast for smart home users, that's out every Monday. Links for both shows are in the notes for this one.
Thanks for listening, I'm William Gallagher and this has been the AppleInsider Daily for January 27, 2023.