Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/06/monday-morning-news200616/
A ruling by the Beijing Intellectual Property Office has deemed that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus look too similar to a device designed and manufactured in China, the Shenzhen Baili 100C. While you can hardly patent the rounded rectangle design of most smartphones, that’s exactly what appears to have happened — and even more curiously, only the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are affected by the cease-sale in Beijing, while the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, and even iPhone SE are unaffected. Apple is currently appealing the decision, and all iPhones will be available for sale until a decision is reached.
The real explanation of why iMessage hasn’t made the jump to Android is because Apple sees more value in the platform being a first-party exclusive rather than something that can be found on other devices. One billion active devices is a lot of devices for iMessage to work on, and only being available on iPhones and iPads means better sales of those devices — or so Apple’s reasoning goes.
Apple’s “Apps for Earth” App Store campaign raised over $8 million for the World Wildlife Fund. 100% of the proceeds from in-app purchases from April 14 to 24 went directly to the World Wildlife Fund as part of the campaign.
MacRumors has another video of hidden iOS 10 features. This time around, they’re covering features such as the one-tap unsubscribe link in marketing emails, the ability to collaborate on Notes, and copy-and-paste that works across devices as well as to and from your Mac.
AppleInsider’s contribution to the iOS 10 feature reveal is the new 3D Touch enhancements to Control Center. Many of the shortcuts and app launchers have 3D Touch capabilities now, such as being able to select what kind of photo you’d like to take from the Camera shortcut. Makes me really excited to get my hands on a device with 3D Touch, you know?
Also from AppleInsider is a look at Apple’s new Breathe app for the Apple Watch. The app aims to help users establish a regular routine for breathing, with customisable settings to allow for shorter or longer sessions.
Apple’s continued focus on encryption as a form of customer privacy has led to the requirement of HTTPS connections for iOS apps by the end of the year. App Transport Security, which forces apps to connect to web services using HTTPS, will be a requirement of all apps by the end of the year, and with more and more websites moving to HTTPS, this can only be a good thing.
Fraser Speirs’ thoughts on Swift Playgrounds gives us a few more details about the app (for those of us that haven’t tried it out yet). While Playgrounds is a decent enough foundation for learning programming, Swift itself is a good enough programming language for programming newcomers, there are a few places where the app falls short of becoming a complete education solution for teaching programming.
The Verge’s latest piece on the iPhone SE confirms my suspicions that modern smartphone reviewers change phones about as often as they come out. The Verge says that the iPhone SE is a good smartphone because it emphasis the mobile part of the whole smartphone revolution.
The full video of The Talk Show, live from WWDC 2016, is now available on Vimeo, featuring special guests Craig Federighi and Phil Schiller. There’s also a massive transcript of the entire thing, over at iMore.
