Apple Daily: IBM May Buy 200K Macs; Force Touch for iPhone 6s; Apple and BMW End Talks

In today's Apple Daily, IBM hints in an employee video that the majority of its worksforce could end up using Macs. In other news, the Force Touch components for the next iPhones are apparently already in mass production, and BMW reportedly ends its talks with Apple.

IBM May Buy Up to 200,000 Macs from Apple Per Year

The times, they really are a changin'. Today, IBM chief information officer Jeff Smith said in a video to employees that he believes IBM might end up buying as many as 150,000 to 200,000 Macs from Apple per year (via MacRumors). That marks a far cry from the days when IBM and Apple were rivals with one another, and it's yet another sign that Apple and IBM's surprise partnership for enterprise customers continues to pay off.

The move could change the image of IBM as we know it. Later in the video, Smith recalls a discussion between Apple CEO Tim Cook and IBM vice president Fletcher Previn in which Previn suggests that the deal could lead to as much as 50 to 75 percent of IBM's workforce switching to Macs instead of the Lenovo Thinkpads the company normally uses.

The video suggests that it was only Smith's claim of buying around 150,000 to 200,000 Macs per year that attracted Apple's chief information officer Niall O'Connor to the offer, as he previously was evasive when Smith asked about a way to make "the overall cost [of MacBooks] the same or lower than PCs" under the deal. But O'Connor was instantly more receptive when Smith uttered the new number, as O'Connor reportedly mentioned that the Cupertino company's largest corporate customer only orders around 25,000 Macs per year.

The news comes a few months after the revelation that IBM was planning on buying around 50,000 MacBooks from Apple throughout 2015, and that Apple and IBM had worked together on a series of enterprise-focused apps for iOS devices.

Force Touch Modules for iPhone 6s Said to Enter Mass Production

Newly discovered hints along the Chinese supply lines seem to prove that the next iPhone will support Apple's new Force Touch technology. According to a new report from the sometimes reliable DigiTimes, manufacturer TPK is starting mass production of pressure-sensitive display modules just a month after it sent off a small selection of samples. The report is hazy on the details, but it seems likely that the modules are being created by our favorite Cupertino company.

Other hints seem to confirm this. For one, TPK estimates that its third fiscal quarter will see a revenue boost of around 50 percent, which rougly corresponds to the period when Apple's next-generation handsets should start heading out into the wild. Apple typically announces new iPhones in September or October, so the timing matches up with the expected anouncements of the so-called "iPhone 6s" and "iPhone 6s Plus" around the same time.

Talks with BMW About Electric Car Reportedly End

Last week we reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook and other executives had met with the top brass at BMW to discuss partnering up to make an electric Apple car, but according to Reuters, those talks have fallen through. Or, at least, they've been put on the backburner, as the report claims that talks "may be revived at a later stage."

Above: BMW's I3 Semi-Electric Car

The talks seem to have ended for two reasons. For one, Apple is apparently interested in designing an electric car entirely on its own, although the Cupertino company's executives were reportedly impressed with the approach BMW took in creating its i3 electric car. For another, BMW is afraid of becoming a mere "supplier to a software or internet giant."

The original report from Germany's Manager Magazine stated that Apple is most interested in the body for the i3, a car that gets approximately 80 miles on a full charge, but which can switch over to traditional fuel if the driver needs to go a few more miles in an emergency.

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