News

What began as a dubious rumor a few weeks ago is now all but official: Apple is working on an electric car and the company hopes to roll it out by 2020. At least that's what people in the know are saying, according to Bloomberg.

The hoopla all started several weeks ago when reports were surfacing around the country of mysterious Apple minivans driving around, equipped with all kinds of cameras and sensors. The rumor mill sprang to life and people speculated that Apple is working on an autonomous vehicle. In all likelihood, these vans have something to do with 3-D mapping for Apple's flyovers, or something along those lines. Whatever the case, they got people talking. Then

A new Kingdom Rush Origins campaign called "Hulking Rage" will be available on Feb. 25th. The campaign will feature the Ogre forces of Gram the Beheader and two new heroes. Here's the announcement Ironhide Game Studio posted to its Facebook page:

Are you ready to face the magical Ogre forces of Gram the Beheader?

We hope so! Hulking Rage is the new Kingdom Rush Origins campaign that will pit you against all sort of nasty, big, fearsome enemies. Also, two new Heroes (a free one and a premium one).

For the Kingdom!

Kingdom Rush fans recently voted on what the new hero in the series would be. The four step process allowed players to decide on different aspects of the hero like race and sex. The final vote resulted in a Fallen Angel, who should be one of the two new heroes to appear in the next update. It is unknown if the fan voted hero will be the free or paid option.

UPDATE: The fan voted hero will not appear in the game until June.

Apple fans hoping to nab the 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition for under $5,000 may want to start looking at the other collections. Twitter user Greg Koenig [via Forbes] estimated that the high-end Apple Watch Edition contains around 29.16g of gold in its casing. That's around $1,200 worth of gold at current prices. Once you factor in additional manufacturing and Apple’s markup, Koneig says that the watch will retail for no less than $5,000. Ian Morris of Forbes thinks Apple will want to go a little higher at $8,000.

The Wall Street Journal said on Monday that the "Apple Watch Edition is expected to be among the most expensive product the company has ever sold, likely surpassing the $4,000 Mac Pro computer". In the same report, the WSJ claimed Apple had ordered five to six million units of the Apple Watch from its suppliers, with the high-end model making up the least amount of the order. Apple is expected to increase production of the Apple Watch Edition to one million units per month after the initial launch in April.

Apple has released a Windows-only iTunes update, bringing the software to version 12.1.1. The update primarily fixes a list of bugs, including audio playback issues and Outlook syncing problems. Improved compatibility with screen readers is another change touted in the release notes.

Windows and Mac users received the 12.1 update three weeks ago, which added a Notification Center widget for OS X Yosemite. Apple has not updated iTunes for OS X since then. When it comes to iTunes 12, the jump from 11 brought significant changes to Apple's flagship entertainment package.

The ranks of Apple Pay partners swelled again today as Apple announced that it has added support for cards from 20 more financial institutions.

Most notable among the new institutions are Morgan Stanley and Northern Trust. Banks that joined include Central Bank, Farmers & Merchants Bank of Long Beach, First National Bank of Omaha, First Sentry Bank, FirstBank and The Independent BankersBank. Quite a few credit unions joined as well, including Affinity Federal Credit Union, Credit Union of Southern California, Grow Financial Federal Credit Union, Ideal Credit Union, Redwood Credit Union, State Department Federal Credit Union, Teachers Credit Union, Technology Credit