According to a new support page on its website, AT&T plans to increase the price of grandfathered unlimited data plans from $30 to $35 starting in February 2016. The company says this would mark the first price hike for unlimited plans, which are no longer offered to new customers, in 7 years. From AT&T: Customers who have a grandfathered unlimited smartphone data plan will receive notifications of a $5/mo. rate increase for the data plan. The rate increase will take effect starting with the customer’s February, 2016 service. The company says that the plan itself isn’t changing in any way, and customers will still be able to consume up to 22GB of data before their connection is throttled — a soft cap that was increased in September. If the rate increase causes you to want to jump ship, AT&T says that it will waive early termination fees for affected lines if you cancel within 60 days of being notified of the pricing change. Source: AT&T; Via: MacRumors …

November is just about in the books for another year, and the holiday season is upon us. This past month saw the iPad Pro pre-orders go live so of course we had to give one away, because that’s how we do things. We also hosted an awesome giveaway with our friends from Pad & Quill, who generously offered our readers some fantastic accessories for the Apple Watch and iPhone. Let’s see who the winners are! November contest winners The winners of accessories from Pad & Quill are: Apple Watch stand winners hot_guitar andrwstw TrippHS iPhone case winners MacBipes Rafagon Artorture Our iPad Pro winner is: isuquinndog Congratulations to all of the winners! I will be in touch next week to get your prizes sorted. Please be patient, and watch your email for that message. As always, we have some exciting giveaways coming up this month, so make sure you check back for those announcements! …

Apple CEO Tim Cook is set to be honored by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights with the Ripple of Hope award. The award is presented to leaders who promote social change. Cook will receive the award alongside leaders such as Congressman John Lewis and UNESCO Ambassador Marianna Vardinoyannis. From Re/code: The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights will present Cook with its Ripple of Hope Award on Dec. 8 in acknowledgment of his work on behalf of social change. He will be recognized in New York City, alongside U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and Freedom Rider during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s; Evercore co-founder and former assistant treasury secretary Roger Altman; and UNESCO Ambassador Marianna Vardinoyannis. The Ripple of Hope award will be presented next week during the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Gala on December 8. Source: Re/code …

Apple’s new 12.9-inch iPad Pro has a 12-core GPU inside its A9X processor, compared to only six GPU cores in the A9 chip used in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus smartphones. This information was revealed in a new teardown of the A9X processor. According to Anandtech: We don’t know the clockspeed of the GPU – this being somewhat problematic to determine within the iOS sandbox – but based on our earlier performance results it’s likely that A9X’s GPU is only clocked slightly higher than A9’s. I say slightly higher because no GPU gets 100% performance scaling with additional cores, and with our GFXBench Manhattan scores being almost perfectly double that of A9’s, it stands to reason that Apple had to add a bit more to the GPU clockspeed to get there. One other interesting discovery in the teardown is that the A9X has no L3 cache: The only cache to be found on A9X are the L1 and L2 caches for the CPU and GPU respectively, along with some even smaller amounts for cache for vario…

Apple Pay support in the retail sector continues to grow, and the latest example is JCPenney. The fashion retailer has begun testing support for Apple Pay with its own store credit card at one of its locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. According to MacRumors: Customers in the Dallas–Fort Worth area visiting the JCPenney store at The Village at Fairview are able to participate in the Apple Pay pilot program, which is set to roll out to stores nationwide in the spring of 2016. Customers with a JCPenney charge card receive a notice about the Texas pilot program when attempting to add a JCPenney card to Apple Pay using the Wallet app. The notification also includes details about the full launch of the JCPenney Apple Pay service. Another retailer, Kohl’s, has already added support for Apple Pay for its own store card. JCPenney plans to add support for its store credit card to Apple Pay in the spring of 2016 nationwide. Source: MacRumors …

Sonos has announced that Apple Music will arrive for the speaker system on December 15, 2015, which is just over two weeks from now. However, Apple Music will still be in beta on Sonos at that time, so there will still be fine-tuning taking place once the service rolls out. On Sonos, users will be able to listen to music from all of Apple Music’s sections, including For You, New, Radio, and My Music. As it will still be in beta, you’ll need to join the Sonos beta program. You’ll do this by going to your Sonos app, then Settings > Advanced Settings > Beta Program > Join Beta Program. You’ll then be able to add Apple Music as a service when it appears on December 15. You can learn more about Apple Music on Sonos and the Sonos beta program at the link below. Source: Sonos …

Apple has seeded the fifth beta version of OS X 10.11.2 to developers. It can be found now at the Mac Developer Resource Center, as well as through the Mac App Store on a Mac running the previous beta. A new update for the OS X 10.11.2 Public Beta is also available. Members of Apple’s Beta Software Program can download this new version from the Mac App Store now. What changes will come with the public release of OS X 10.11.2 are not yet clear, though it will likely contain a number of bug fixes and performance improvements to the overall OS X experience. …

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