The US Government seems determined to have Apple continue to provide assistance on iPhone unlocking cases, despite the FBI withdrawing their request for Apple’s support under the All Writs Act as part of the San Bernardino investigation. A different case in New York involving an iPhone running iOS 7 that doesn’t require Apple’s assistance to access is still being fought over in the courts, as reported by The Verge.
Apple has spoken out against a Mississippi “religious freedom” bill that it says empowers discrimination. The Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination, as it is officially known, protects those who deny goods and services to LGBT individuals on the basis of religious convictions, and Apple has said that its stores and company are open to everyone.
New analyst predictions say that only the larger-sized iPhone will come with a dual-camera system. It’s also been rumoured that an Apple Watch successor may be revealed at WWDC to be 20 to 40% thinner than the first-generation Watch, giving the Apple Watch a lifecycle of more than a year, possibly to give the current model a little extra longevity.
9to5Mac wonders if the new iPhone should come in even more colour variants, perhaps along the same lines as the iPod touch lineup. New colour options are always nice and all, but I have to wonder if we need more colour options when all people want is a black bezel with a silver back.
The Dehli High Court in India has ordered Apple to stop using the “Split View” name in the country, due to a Microsoft vendor claiming the trademark for SplitView. Apple is planning to appeal the decision.
The Microsoft Translator app is pretty crazy — it’s already a great audio-capable language translator, and the new update gives it the ability to download languages for offline translation. Oh, and it’s completely free.
In terms of security, encryption is generally the best idea around when you want your data to stay private. But when the app you’re using to communicate with has the potential to be broken by a few lines of Javascript, that’s when encryption becomes mostly worthless. Such is the story of CVE-2016-1764, which was fixed by Apple in March 2016.
Over at Macworld, Jason Snell tells us about the trouble with 3D Touch, saying that Apple should do away with the current peek and pop behaviour, changing 3D Touch to be a faster, more efficient way of performing different actions on iOS devices.
A slightly different take on 3D Touch from iMore says that it’s a niche feature that’s surprisingly useful. Using the keyboard to move the cursor for text input is an incredible feature that isn’t leveraged enough.
Apple has a behind-the-scenes of its recent Cookie Monster/Siri ad, and there’s also a new Apple TV ad featuring Kobe Bryant and actor Michael Jordan.
Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/04/monday-morning-news110416/