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Apple ramps up its fight against the coronavirus by getting masks to healthcare workers.
In a press briefing at the White House today, Vice President Mike Pence announced that Apple would be donating two million N95 masks to help healthcare workers stay safe while treating patients who may be infected with the coronavirus.
"This is another story about great American industry. The President and I literally heard directly from Apple that they're donating two million industrial masks to this effort around the country and working with our administration to distribute those."
VP PENCE: Apple is donating 2 Million N95 masks pic.twitter.com/w6ZBFurqmz
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) March 21, 2020
Later in the day, Apple's CEO Tim Cook confirmed the donation on Twitter, saying that the company is donating millions of masks to healthcare workers in the United States and Europe. He said that the company is working to help source additional medical supplies as well.
Our teams at Apple have been working to help source supplies for healthcare providers fighting COVID-19. We're donating millions of masks for health professionals in the US and Europe. To every one of the heroes on the front lines, we thank you.
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) March 21, 2020
This is the latest humanitarian effort from Apple in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. The company has also made a donation of medical supplies to Protezione Civile in Italy as well as committing at least $15 million to help lessen the economic impact of the epidemic.
If you're having a problem with your Personal Hotspot, you're not alone.
As the coronavirus continues to disrupt businesses across the world, many of us are relying on working from home right now. For some, the Personal Hotspot on their iPhone or iPad can be a useful or even critical feature to have at the ready if you need to connect your Mac to the internet and don't have a WiFi connection handy.
Unfortunately, it sounds like some users are experiencing issues with the feature. Reported by MacRumors, Apple reached out to its Authorized Service Providers to notify them that they may see customers experiencing a problem when trying to use Personal Hotspot on iOS 13 or iPadOS 13.
According to the internal document, Apple informed its partners that users may find they are unable to connect a device to their iPhone or iPad's hotspot or experience frequent disconnection while trying to use the feature. Customers may also have issues with overall data performance when using their device as a hotspot.
Unfortunately, it does not sound like there is a quick fix for those who are having the issue. Apple is instructing service providers to use the age-old IT trick and turn Personal Hotspot off and back on.
The problem appears to be a software issue with the current version of iOS 13 for iPhone and iPad, and will hopefully be cleared up when Apple updates users to iOS 13.4.
Paramount is following Disney and Universal and going digital early.
A number of movies have been coming out on digital release early due to theaters being closed worldwide as the coronavirus pandemic continues. This weekend, Disney released 'Onward' to iTunes and Disney+ after only being in theaters for just over two weeks. Universal also released a handful of films including The Invisible Man, The Hunt, and others for rent on iTunes.
On Friday, Variety reported that Paramount would be following suit and is now releasing 'Sonic the Hedgehog' to iTunes and other streaming platforms on March 31st. The film would have only been in its 46th day of theatrical release at that time.
Films normally have a ninety-day window in which they are in theaters before moving on to a digital release, but circumstances have obviously made that impossible for most, if not all, films currently in theaters.
The movie will be available for purchase through iTunes for $19.99 and its already available to preorder on iTunes. This is a nice move by Paramount, as some of the other movies made available for digital release early are priced at the same amount to only rent. The physical Bluray disc will still be released to stores on May 19th.
'Sonic the Hedgehog' has grossed $146 million in the United States and $306 million globally, becoming the highest-grossing video game film in U.S. box office history. If you buy the movie through iTunes, it will be available to stream through Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, Mac, and more.
GameStop is temporarily closing all its US-based retail locations and moving to “delivery only” starting on March 22nd, the company announced today. It’s an abrupt reversal for the company, which just a few days ago was defending its decision to keep its stores open, as an “essential” business, and was instructing staff to ignore coronavirus-related lockdowns.
GameStop CEO George Sherman said in a letter to customers that it will “will temporarily stop customer access to storefronts” and would be processing orders on a “digital-only” basis. Customers can use the GameStop app or QR codes at its stores, though future purchases will be given to customers via curbside pickup at its retail stores or through e-commerce deliveries.
In a letter...