Apple has named former SVP of Operations Jeff Williams as its Chief Operating Officer, elevating Williams to a C-level position within the company and using a title that has been unused since Tim Cook was named CEO in one fell swoop. Apple’s press release announcing the leadership changes also names Johny Srouji as SVP of Hardware Technologies, a position that will report to Apple CEO Tim Cook.
But who is this Johny Srouji? AppleInsider’s brief on the newest Apple exec claims he was the pioneer of Apple’s A-series chips, and formerly a silicon designer at Intel and IBM. Srouji, who may have a last name that’s even harder to spell than Angela Ahrendts, was also involved in creating the Touch ID sensor for Apple.
The Blackberry chairman and CEO has blasted Apple for having a privacy stance that protects criminals. John Chen has come out swinging, saying Apple granting authorities access to devices of suspected criminals would somehow tarnish the company’s image. As for its part, while Blackberry places a high importance on privacy and security, that privacy does not extend to criminals.
Apple has redesigned its Mac in Business webpage, but apparently only for the US website. The Australian Mac in Business page has a slightly different design, and doesn’t sport the “A brand new day for business” tagline.
One day after releasing iOS 9.2.1 to developers, Apple has released the same beta version of iOS to members of its public beta testing program. It’s weird Apple hasn’t combined the two beta-testing groups, but perhaps Apple has a one-day lag on purpose to ensure there aren’t any truly show-stopping bugs.
Estimates say that Apple Music has around 8 million paying subscribers and is on track to have around 20 million by the end of next year, putting in second place behind Spotify, as far as music streaming services go.
MacRumors says Apple is encouraging developers to adopt 3D Touch, but why wouldn’t they want to push one of their biggest hardware features since the introduction of multitouch gestures?
In case you are into the whole “adult colouring book” thing (don’t ask me, I am neither old enough to be the target market or clued-in enough to know why this is even a thing in the first place), Pigment is a new app which brings support for the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil, as covered by MacStories.
Evernote has announced it will be shutting the doors on versions of Skitch other than the Mac version, along with Evernote Clearly and Evernote for Pebble.
Seeing as the this is the last daily news post until the new year, I’ll leave you with Touch Arcade’s monster list of recent iOS games. You’re bound to find something to fill in time over the Christmas and New Year period, or maybe while you’re waiting for the news to resume in 2016. Thanks for reading!
The news returns on January 4th, 2016, but perhaps we’ll see an article or two in between now and that time.
Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2015/12/friday-morning-news181215/
