Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/06/monday-morning-news270616/
Apple discontinued the Thunderbolt display on Friday, making the screen something of an endangered species. The Thunderbolt display, first introduced in 2011 and not updated since then, was only really the display to go for if you had a Mac with a Thunderbolt port and wanted a few extra USB ports when connected at your desk. The Thunderbolt display will be available until stocks last, at which point it will be gone — if you’ve ever wanted one, now is the time.
Some would say the death of the Thunderbolt display was inevitable, due to being a non-Retina display in a Retina world. Apple’s 4K and 5K displays on the iMac are better in terms of resolution, but require serious graphics power to drive. Rumours of an external display with integrated GPU have once again hit the web, which would remove the graphics card requirement and allow even the lowly MacBook to drive a 4K display without breaking a sweat.
More part leaks of this year’s iPhone claim changes for the camera, as previously rumoured. While the plus-sized iPhone appears to get a dual-lens camera, the regular-sized one has a larger camera hole and redesigned antenna bands. The part leaks also confirms the presence of a regular ol’ 3.5mm headphone jack, despite numerous rumours claiming Apple will remove it.
DigiTimes says Apple will be moving to Micro-LED display tech in the Apple Watch at the same time OLED displays are adopted by the 2017 iPhone. Micro-LED features better power consumption compared to OLED displays due to not requiring a backlight, as well as better colour and brightness than regular LCDs.
New accessibility features across all of Apple’s platforms include a new magnifier in iOS 10 that uses the camera, dwell controls in macOS, a taptic time feature in watchOS, and more. 9to5Mac covers a number of other accessibility improvements.
Apple’s participation in the San Francisco Pride parade has seen the company release a limited edition Pride Apple Watch band, with a rainbow-coloured nylon strap. It’s pretty cool, as far as exclusive Apple things go.
AppleInsider’s coverage of new 3D Touch shortcuts in iOS 10 tell us about how you can clear all notifications (just like Force Press does on the Apple Watch currently), rename folders on your home screen, and share a link to a third-party app.
FaceTime appears to be the target of yet another VoIP lawsuit. Straight Path Group alleges FaceTime infringes on five patents, and is a renewal of a similar lawsuit in 2014 that was dismissed without prejudice.
It seems unlikely that Apple would move to USB-C in the iPhone, particularly when we’ve really only just moved to Lightning, and the fact that a number of recently-released Apple accessories also use Lightning. But a comparison of the two shows that they’re pretty similar in size, so it might be possible.
TechCrunch argues that the world isn’t ready for wireless headphones, saying it’s possible that by Apple not including a headphone jack, they’re fixing a problem that doesn’t exist.
