After a two-day lapse in the podcast, we’re back today with more news from the world of Apple:
- The iPhone X sold out on Friday morning in 20 major US cities, and Steve lets you know how his pickup experience went
- AAPL closed up 56¢ a share today, closing at $174.81 and edging the company’s market cap tantalizingly close to $900 billion
- Apple Pay Cash arrives in the public beta of iOS 11.1
- Austin, Texas is getting a new Apple retail outlet this Saturday
- Apple is selling $7 billion worth of bonds to fund the stock buyback program and green energy initiatives
The text version of the podcast can be read below. To listen to the podcast here, click the play button on the player below. Apple News readers need to visit Apple World Today in order to listen to the podcast.
Text Version
This is Steve Sande for Apple World Today, and you’re listening to the AWT News Update podcast for Tuesday, November 7th, 2017. I was unable to record the podcast for a few days due to time constraints, but we should be on track for the rest of the month.
Surprising no-one, the iPhone X went on sale Friday morning and sold out in 20 major US cities. The minimum $999 price tag for a 64GB iPhone X didn’t seem to stop many people from snapping one up, with Daniel Ives of GBH Tech Research reporting that “Lines were stronger than we have seen in years across Apple stores and rivaled iPhone 6 first day build up”. My personal experience was quite smooth – I had pre-ordered the phone online and scheduled a pickup at my local Apple store at 10:30 AM. By the time I arrived, there were only a handful of people on hand for pickups and the line moved very quickly. In addition, there was no line for those who just wanted to walk into the store and pick up an iPhone X. As I had gone through pre-approval for the iPhone Upgrade Program, I was able to get into and out of the store in about 20 minutes. There were some issues getting the iPhone X activated on AT&T’s network; it appears that was due to an overworked Apple server. About four hours after purchasing the phone, it was online and working well.
Shares in Apple closed up 56 cents per share today, closing at $174.81 and giving the company a market capitalization of $897.53 billion. After a six-point jump in share price on Friday, the stock price has been slowly creeping up.
We’ve been talking about Apple Pay Cash on and off since the feature that will allow users to transfer money with others through Messages was first announced at WWDC 2017. Today, public beta testers got their first peek at the new service in the iOS 11.2 public beta. You’ll need to assign either a debit or credit card to Apple Pay Cash to supply the cash to send to others. If you use a credit card, you’ll be charged a slight fee for the transaction while debit card transactions will be free. Receiving money from Apple Pay Cash, the funds will reside in an Apple Pay Cash card in Wallet that can be used either to pay for purchases or transferred to a bank account. Apple Pay Cash will work on the Apple Watch as well as the iPhone.
Another Apple retail store is opening this Saturday in Austin, Texas. The Apple Domain Northside store will open on November 11 at 10 AM central time, with the original store that opened in 2007 likely closing at the same shopping center. The new location is designed to follow the most recent Apple Store design theme, with a wide-open sales floor, wooden product display furniture, and a wall-sized display. The new store was budgeted at $7,500,000, and will feature more than 10,000 square feet of retail space.
Apple has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission today to make another bond sale to fund its stock buyback program and green energy initiatives. The bond sale is designed to raise $7 billion, and is made up of six note offerings that will mature in 2019, 2020, 2023, 2025, 2027 and 2047. Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley will be managing the sales, and the company is taking advantage of low interest rates to fund the buyback effort.
That’s all for today; I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with another edition of the AWT News Update.
