Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/11/friday-morning-news181116/
In order to sell more entertainment services via the App Store, Apple is prepared to take a smaller cut. According to Bloomberg, Apple’s usual 30% cut of App Store prices will dive to 15%, in a bid to entice more movie and TV show sales on the App Store platform.
An Apple patent revealed by AppleInsider tells us about integrating Siri into iMessage to allow peer-to-peer payments. The patent also describes methods where Siri can be used to complete tasks such as scheduling a meeting, providing navigation directions, or doing usual Siri-things based on user input.
The range of AirPods release dates now includes late November and early December. It’s impossible to know why Apple thought the AirPods needed a little more time, or exactly how much time that means to fix whatever issues AirPods had, but it’s still too early to know whether you’ll be able to buy someone AirPods for Christmas this year.
Apple has announced free Hour of Code workshops at all of Apple’s 487 retail stores worldwide. December 5 through to 11 will see Hour of Code workshops at Apple Stores in celebration of Computer Science Education Week. The workshops will be based on Swift Playgrounds and for those playing along at home, there will be an update to Swift Playgrounds so people can continue their coding at home.
Sal Soghoian has left Apple as of November 2016, where he previously served as product manager for automation technologies. Much of the progress made in macOS with regards to AppleScript and Automator has been attributed to Soghoian, along with scripting support of many of Apple’s core apps.
It has been revealed that Apple backs up call history information to iCloud as if it were some kind of revelation, but Apple’s comment to iMore on the issue says it’s more of a convenience for customers rather than anything insidious. How else does that information get transferred when you restore your iPhone from a backup?
Not content with just creating new apps and then only releasing them in certain countries (and/or then killing them off), Facebook has launched a new app to help you make new apps. Origami Studio was first written about earlier this year, and it’s a quick way of hashing out designs on a device. It’s a prototyping tool, that was used in the creation of a few of Facebook’s own apps.
The Verge says the Designed by Apple in California book is something you’ll want if you’re particularly nostalgic about the past 20 years of Apple design. It’s a very nice product, even if it doesn’t run macOS or iOS, and has some great battery life for its size, even if it is a little on the expensive side.
The good news is, the peach butt emoji is back. The third beta of iOS 10.2 restores the heart-shaped crack that looks like a butt, if you’re into that sort of thing. What a time to be alive.