Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2018/10/friday-morning-news261018/
It’s new iPhone XR day, but Apple’s latest newsroom post is showing off photos shot by iPhone XS owners using the new Portrait mode, now with depth control. Adjustable depth of field lets iPhone XS owners choose how much background blur they want to have, with Apple saying that a future update will allow variable background blur to be previewed in real-time.
The Financial Times has a profile of Jony Ive. Nicholas Foulkes talks to Apple’s Chief Design Officer about Apple’s design team being the last to move into Apple Park, putting them all in the same studio for the first time, allowing for increased collaboration between all of Apple’s designers. Ive also says the Apple Watch is as much a phone as the iPhone is a phone, and that the culture at Apple believes that their responsibilities don’t end when they ship a product.
Forbes reports that Apple has rendered GrayKey iPhone passcode hacking tool inoperable with iOS 12. Evidently, whatever additional security protections Apple introduced with the iOS 12 update have made GrayKey devices mostly useless for obtaining iPhone passcodes, with owners of the GrayKey reportedly only able to obtain limited metadata, unencrypted files, and file sizes and folder structures.
Italian anti-trust organisation Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM) has issued a statement finding both Apple and Samsung guilty for violating consumer codes when they decided to slow down devices. Apple has been hit with a US $5.7 million fine for slowing down older iPhones when it released the iOS 10.2.1 update, which prevented random shutdowns by lowering the power ceiling (and thus, performance) of affected devices. A second fine of $5.7 million was also given to Apple for not giving customers information regarding battery health, average lifespans, and maintenance and replacement information.
While Apple CEO Tim Cook is telling us about how Apple continues to believe that privacy is a fundamental human right, there are others poking holes in Apple’s ongoing commitment to privacy. Ironically, Alex Stamos, ex-chief security officer at Facebook points out that Apple’s arrangement in China currently requires them to store iCloud user data on servers owned by a state-run telco, with Stamos calling on Apple to publicly document how they’re protecting user data stored by state-owned cloud storage providers.
Apple’s first Bangkok store will open on November 10, overlooking the Chao Phraya River as part of the brand new Iconsiam mall. There’s a bunch of wallpapers featuring a slight twist on the Apple logo, which Reddit says is a combination of the regular Apple logo and a letter of the Thai alphabet that possibly carries similar significance to a vowel in English.
Speaking of Apple Stores, Apple’s redeveloped Shibuya location features a new spiral staircase to connect the three story layout, complete with curved glass panels on the inside and a handrail on the outside that’s been carved into the wall, with a different kind of stone used compared to other Apple stores with staircases. Like some other Apple store redesigns, Apple Shibuya occupies the same space as it did previously, making today’s opening one to remember.
No amount of niceties from Tweetbot will revert Twitter’s API changes, but it’s still a great Twitter client. Tips from Tapbots give you some quick hints about shortcuts and gestures you might not have known about.
MacStories tells us why Shortcuts matter for accessibility, which is an interesting take on the utility of shortcuts both for remembering how to do certain things and then going ahead and doing them. It’s probably not something you think about, but is one of the reasons why Apple devices are so popular with those less able.
An anonymous MacRumors reader collected hi-res versions of all 371 variations of the Apple logo, which you can now download as one ZIP file to use however you want, or just to take a look at all of them in better quality. And if you’re OK with signing your own apps, Australian developer Aaron has put together an iOS app that lets you use all of the Apple logos as iMessage stickers.