Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2018/10/friday-morning-news191018/
Apple has announced an event for October 30, with all the rumours claiming there will be updated iPad Pros, new MacBooks, with an edge chance for something completely crazy like Mac minis. New iPad Pros are expected to come with an edge-to-edge display, Face ID, and even USB-C, while on the Mac side of the fence, we’ll probably end up seeing a refreshed 12-inch MacBook lineup, or a new low-cost laptop with Retina display to replace the MacBook Air. Either way, the most fun thing about the event is the set of really cool Apple logos that you can see both on the Apple website and on the invites that were given to the press; clearly there’s some kind of creative angle to their event that they want to highlight.
As a reminder, the iPhone XR goes up for pre-order today at 5:01pm AEST, if you’re after more colourful phone with most of the features of the iPhone XS at a slightly cheaper price. Your slightly-smaller display is LCD on the XR vs the OLED on the XS, and you only get a single-lens camera system on the back, but it’s also the only phone that you can get in a bright yellow that will let you tell you friends about your new bananaphone.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has new predictions, but they’re more strategic than about any specific upcoming product. Kuo claims we’ll see Apple move to ARM chips in Macs by 2020 or 2021, which will allow Apple to move to their own release cadence, higher profit margins, less reliance on a third-party, and even potentially higher Mac marketshare, if that’s something Apple is interested in. Apple’s manufacturing partner TSMC is also said to be providing chips for the Apple Car, but that’s a little further away in 2023-2025.
Developers are now able to create app bundles for Mac apps and free apps that offer auto-renewable subscriptions. Up to 10 apps can be bundled together for a discount, and this also marks the first time app bundles are available on the Mac, which makes sense given that macOS Mojave was the first major update to the Mac App Store in a long time.
Apple’s third store opening in Japan this year is being promoted on its Japanese website, with Apple Shibuya’s reopening on October 26th coming with its own 3D promo video and special wallpapers for every kind of Apple device. With the new store being one of the updated designs, Today At Apple will feature prominently, and teaser images say that we’ll also see one more opening, probably next year.
A couple of years back, Apple introduced an online gallery to let you customise an Apple Watch with the model, band, and face that you wanted to see. I was looking for it the other day and couldn’t find it at the original URL, but the new Apple Watch interactive gallery still lets you customise models and bands, and it’s been updated with Series 4 models.
Macworld speculates about what’s next for the Apple Watch, saying that now Apple has figured out what the Apple Watch is supposed to be used for, it needs to double down on those features to make it even more useful. There’s plenty of low-hanging fruit, including an always-on watch face and custom watch faces, but I’m sure those will happen when it makes sense.
OS X Daily has instructions on using the light theme for UI elements with a dark menu bar and dock in macOS Mojave, something that worked fine in earlier versions but was changed with the new dark mode in Mojave. You’ll need to pop in a few defaults write commands.
Pixelmator Pro’s 1.2 update comes with a bunch of changes focused on some of the things introduced with macOS Mojave, including a new light mode to go with its existing dark mode. There’s an auto-enhance for photos, and some mysterious machine learning auto enhancements and automator actions. Meanwhile, Tweetbot for iOS has been updated with a new icon, mild design changes across the board, darker dark-mode optimised for OLED displays, and built-in Giphy support. You know, if you’re still using Twitter.
The Game of Thrones version of Reigns is out now, and MacStories has a review of the video game adaptation of the popular TV series. While the Reigns version definitely carries some of its own character from the original games, the actual characters should be well known to you if you’ve watched the show, while at the same time not being too tightly tied to the events of the show.