One of the biggest stories from the weekend was Apple’s registration of three different domain names, including apple.car, apple.cars, and apple.auto. MacRumors points out that this is all just more fuel for the Apple Car fire, and with mounting evidence that Apple may get into the motor vehicle game, for now we play the waiting game until Apple decide to reveal something.
A source speaking to Fast Company says Apple will drop the 3.5mm headphone jack in order to make the next iPhone thinner. Besides removing the venerable headphone jack that’s been around for decades, the move will also have a number of other advantages including making the device waterproof and supporting headphones either wirelessly or via the Lightning port. Gruber’s take on the rumour is that while Apple dropping the headphone jack is believable enough, some of the other reported aspects are a little far-fetched.
Over 200,000 people have signed a petition to stop Apple removing the headphone jack in the next iPhone, but I’m not sure how much of an impact that will have on Apple’s decision. The petition claims Apple will be looking to rip off its users, creating “mountains of electronic waste” at the same time.
9to5Mac claims Apple is developing a set of cord-free Beats headphones, which won’t even have a cable connecting the right and left ear pieces. These new “AirPods”, as they’ve been called, will work with Siri and even allow you to take calls like a traditional headset, and they’ll most likely be a premium (read: higher priced) version of the existing EarPods.
The Six Colors Apple report card surveyed a number of writers, editors, podcasters, and developers, asking them what they thought of Apple’s efforts in 2015. Grouped into different categories, the average scores only tell half the story: what people thought of Apple’s approach to products and services is much more interesting.
Stephen Hackett’s take on a possible iPhone 6C takes into account the compromises that Apple would have to make in order to fit the iPhone 6/6S internals into a smaller size. A smaller screen means a smaller battery, but it’s possible that Apple could down-clock the current A9 SoC to make it work.
A lawsuit that was filed against Apple with the purpose of calling out AppleCare as a fraudulent and unlawful scheme has been dismissed from court, with the judge calling the lawyer who filed the suit “manifestly incompetent”.
MacStories has a review of Hyphen, an eBook reader for EPUB files that, in their own words, “attempts to bridge the gap between the power user and consumer”.
The most popular iMore stories of 2015 covers the most popular editorials, reviews, and how-tos from the site.
There’s now so many iOS games that it’s impossible to find something worth playing that isn’t a Clash of Clans ripoff or some kind of endless runner, procedurally-generated puzzler, or whatever mashup of fun-sounding words. But even with the App Store’s problem of too many clones, there’s always iOS games worth playing.
Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/01/monday-morning-news110116/