In response to rising component prices, Apple has extended how long it holds OLED display panels in reserve, according to a report from ETNews, citing industry sources in South Korea.


Apple apparently moved from a four-week display supply buffer to six weeks starting in the second quarter of 2026. The move is unusual since Apple has long treated inventory as a cost to be minimized rather than built up, operating one of the leanest supply chains in the industry.

Deliberately stockpiling more panels for longer marks a noticeable shift in that approach, reportedly driven by a sharp rise in memory chip prices that's rippling out to other components. Buying more panels upfront, especially during quieter periods of sales cycle, will help the company stabilize prices.

Apple already raised prices on 14 products, including all Macs and iPads, in June. The iPhone 18 Pro is widely expected to see a price hike when it launches next month.

Samsung Display and LG Display remain Apple's primary iPhone ‌OLED‌ suppliers, with BOE supplying a much smaller share out of China. A display industry official told ETNews the longer holding period is likely to stick, and expects it to stretch further once the ‌iPhone 18 Pro‌ and ‌iPhone 18 Pro‌ Max launch.
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Apple today announced that "Block Blast!+" and "Art of Fauna: Cozy Puzzles+" are coming to Apple Arcade on September 3, adding two more puzzle games to the service's catalog.



Block Blast!+ is the Arcade edition of "Block Blast," a chart topping block clearing puzzle game. Players fill a grid with block shapes to clear full rows and columns, chasing bigger combos as they go, and the Arcade version drops the ads found in the free to play original.

Art of Fauna: Cozy Puzzles+ is based on "Art of Fauna: Cozy Puzzles," winner of the 2025 App Store Award for Cultural Impact. Players reconstruct vintage style nature illustrations piece by piece while learning facts about the animals depicted, and the game offers a text based alternative to the visual puzzles for players with visual or cognitive impairments.

The two new titles join an existing roster of Arcade puzzlers, including the dungeon crawling combat puzzler "Grindstone," the pipe connecting puzzle game "Flow Free+," and the word search title "Crossword Jam+." "Everyday Puzzles: Mini Games+" and "Water Sort Puzzle: Get Color+" are more recent additions to that same catalog.

A handful of existing Arcade games are also gaining new content this month. On August 12, "puffies." adds 28 new packs, including two collections themed around Oden Tomodachi and The Knights. Starting August 20, "Simon's Cat - Blast Time" is rolling out 200 new levels, with 50 arriving each week over the course of a month. And on August 26, "stitch." hits a milestone of 800 unique hoops, marked with a commemorative hoop and a new achievement.

September 3 brings a wider wave of additions to Arcade beyond the two new puzzlers. "NFL Retro Bowl '27" also gains its new Gauntlet Mode that day, tasking players with stringing together as many consecutive wins as possible using limited starting resources, with real NFL players and more perks the further they progress. "Coloring Games for Families+" launches with more than 3,000 activities aimed at players of all ages, while "Let's Play! Oink Games+" brings nine of the developer's board games to Arcade, supporting solo play, offline multiplayer, and online matches.

‌Apple Arcade‌ is a subscription service that provides access to hundreds of games across the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro. All of the games are free of ads and in-app purchases. In the U.S., ‌Apple Arcade‌ costs $6.99 per month, and it is also bundled with other Apple services in all Apple One plans. ‌Apple Arcade‌ can be accessed through the ‌App Store‌ and the Apple Games app.
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Apple is facing a proposed class action lawsuit accusing it of fraud and false advertising over a security flaw in iCloud Private Relay, according to 9to5Mac.



The suit was filed by the Clarkson Law Firm, which accuses Apple of deceiving ‌iCloud‌+ subscribers with its marketing of Private Relay, the feature meant to shield a user's IP address and DNS records while browsing in Safari. The firm alleges Apple knew, or should have known, that its privacy claims about the feature were false and misleading at the time it sold the subscriptions.

Clarkson previously took Apple to court over the delayed rollout of personalized Siri features, a case that ended in a $250 million settlement. That deal was reached in December 2025, though the payout terms were not made public until May.

Clarkson partner Tim Giordano said Apple had built its reputation on privacy promises, and argued that ‌iCloud‌+ subscribers paid a premium for protection that failed to hold up, calling it "an outrageous violation and betrayal of consumer trust and law."

The lawsuit points to a set of WebKit issues that security researchers detailed earlier this month. The most serious ties to passkey sign-ins: a site can trigger a passkey check that gets handled by the device's operating system rather than Safari, bypassing Private Relay's proxy servers entirely, sometimes without showing any passkey prompt at all, even on a site that only claims to support them.

Two further issues, tied to DNS prefetching and the WebTransport protocol added in iOS 26, can also expose a user's real IP address or DNS servers under certain conditions. Since WebKit powers every browser on iOS, the exposure is not limited to Safari.
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BOE wants a share of the OLED supply chain for Apple's next iPad Air, aiming to land a secondary sourcing role behind primary supplier Samsung Display, according to a report from South Korea's The Elec.


Sources cited by The Elec say the Chinese panel maker is building out its iPad Air ‌OLED‌ effort at its B12 fab in Chongqing, home to BOE's sixth-generation ‌OLED‌ production line, ahead of the launch of a redesigned ‌iPad Air‌ that isn't expected to launch until the first half of 2027. Samsung Display already holds the lead supply role for that panel and is on track to begin ramping production toward the end of this year or the start of next, as previously reported.

BOE still has to clear Apple's qualification process. Samples reportedly still need to be submitted for evaluation, and a verdict on whether the company wins any commercial orders is not expected until closer to the end of the year. Even a favorable outcome may only translate into modest volume at first, with output confined to ‌iPad Air‌ units destined for the Chinese market or to refurbished devices, rather than the entire global launch.

The sources put BOE's qualification decision at some point in November or December, noting Apple typically finalizes production approval just one to two months ahead of mass production actually starting. Should BOE fall short of that bar, Samsung Display will end up carrying the entire initial production run by itself.

Becoming a supplier for the ‌OLED‌ ‌iPad Air‌ would be a meaningful expansion for BOE, which has experience providing ‌OLED‌ panels for the iPhone, but has struggled to break into larger ‌OLED‌ products. Samsung Display and LG Display have held onto that ground in tablets specifically, and BOE has lost, rather than gained, footing elsewhere in Apple's ‌OLED‌ lineup recently; its utilization on Apple-dedicated lines reportedly slid from roughly 82% in 2024 to about 48% earlier this year as Apple is set to lean on Samsung instead for the upcoming ‌OLED‌ iPad mini.

The redesigned ‌iPad Air‌ is expected in 11 inch and 13 inch sizes, with a hybrid ‌OLED‌ panel pairing a glass substrate with thin film encapsulation, a single stack RGB emissive layer, and an LTPS backplane, with a refresh rate of 60Hz. That keeps it below the iPad Pro's tandem stack ‌OLED‌ panel on cost, while still moving the ‌iPad Air‌ away from an LCD.

BOE is also reportedly pursuing a secondary supplier role for Apple's ‌OLED‌ MacBook Pro from its 8.6 generation B16 fab in Chengdu, but persistent yield problems there make commercial shipments to Apple unlikely soon. Industry sources do not expect BOE to enter that supply chain until sometime after 2028.
This article, "iPad Air OLED Panel Orders Could Be Split With BOE in 2027" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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