Apple’s answers to questions about Apple and the environment reveal what the company thinks is the average product lifecycle for first-time Mac and iOS device owners. In conducting the Product Greenhouse Gas Life Cycle Assessment, Apple assumes OS X and tvOS devices will be used for four years, while iOS and watchOS devices will be used for three years, which probably isn’t too far off the mark.
The same answers page was originally host to a snippet which claimed “MacOS” devices were used for four years on average, adding fuel to the fire which says OS X will eventually be renamed to something along the lines of watchOS, tvOS, and iOS. The reference to MacOS has since been removed, but evidence Apple may be changing the OS X branding is mounting. As for the debate between “MacOS” and “macOS”, there’s a good argument for MacOS where I haven’t seen anything similar for macOS, besides being in-line with the others.
Business Insider points out Apple’s commitment to the environment and recycling has netted the company an estimated $40 million worth of gold from used phones and computers last year. No wonder Apple’s been promoting destructive robots on-stage.
Even though Apple has complied with US Government requests to retrieve data from locked iPhones previously, and even though Apple has the ability to retrieve data from the locked iPhone belonging to a New York drug dealer, Apple’s response is that it won’t be helping the government because it says the government has not exhausted other potential repositories for the data.
Apple held a press briefing on Friday to say it has the most effective security organisation in the world. Because Apple controls the entire end-to-end experience of the iPhone, the company says it can build security into every possible layer, making the chances of a potential bug to be very low.
A new rumour from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says the 2017 iPhone will have an all-glass enclosure, as a throwback to the iPhone 4-esque design of a glass sandwich. The rumour also claims the 2017 iPhone will feature an AMOLED display and also be the major redesign, which hints at Apple not changing the design of this year’s iPhone, breaking their usual two-year product design lifecycle.
A separate rumour says the MacBook lineup will see an update later this year, with a redesigned hinge to make the laptops even thinner. The new hinge design will be made from metal injection moulding, and the general timing of the rumour makes sense given the MacBook was released one year ago.
The Apple TV’s latest feature is Live Tune-In, which lets users ask Siri to jump directly to a live-stream within an app.
A questionable report from Bloomberg says it’s possible Apple could be investigating paid search in the App Store, which could ignite the App Store economy powder keg.
Apple will soon be deprecating support for QuickTime on Windows, and thanks to two remote code execution vulnerabilities, the only advice given by security firms is to uninstall QuickTime on Windows completely.
Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/04/monday-morning-news180416/