Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/08/monday-morning-news220816/
The ACCC has decided not to grant interim authorisation to the Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, and Westpac, who recently filed for approval to collectively bargain over Apple Pay. The banks say they want to bring their own mobile payment systems to the iPhone before they will allow Apple Pay, but the ACCC has said that they will not be granting authorisation at this time due to the complexity of the issues and the limited time available. A draft or final authorisation is still to be made.
A roundup of everything we know about the second Apple Watch is all we have to go off in terms of rumours this morning, given that it’s still a little too early for similar roundups of the new iPhone. 9to5Mac says that it’s likely the new Apple Watch will feature a similar design to the current Watch, with a few new hardware features and be available later this year.
Recent reports by Bloomberg about the state of the second Apple Watch have been questioned by Gruber, who says timing is everything and could mean the difference between an accurate report and one that misses the mark. The only solid additional feature that’s been consistently rumoured is GPS.
Early on Saturday morning Apple released the seventh developer beta of iOS 10, which also brought with it the sixth public beta of iOS 10. No other updates to other beta versions of watchOS 3, tvOS 10, or macOS Sierra were released, so the release is a bit of a strange one.
As part of the changes to Apple Retail, position changes for Apple retail employees have been shuffled around a bit. New positions include a Pro, Creative Pro, and Technical Expert, while existing positions have been renamed. Inventory Specialists are now “Operations Pros”, for example, and MacRumors also has the updated Apple credo.
Steve Jobs has been inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame. His induction is based on the introduction of the iPhone, which catapulted mobile photography into the forefront and to this day, remains the most popular camera on Flickr. His induction is also celebrated by Ken Burns, Annie Leibovitz, and John and Thomas Knoll, creators of Photoshop.
A new type of Mac malware spoofs the “no application setup to open the document type” dialog box, which could fool any unsuspecting Mac user. As usual, sticking to official downloads of software from the Mac App Store and keeping your Gatekeeper settings set to the highest possible level is the best defence for this kind of thing.
The FCC’s ongoing battle against robocalls now has the weight of Apple and Google behind it, as well as 30 other tech companies. The Robocall Strike Force aims to combat the scourge of pre-recorded phone calls that come from spoofed phone numbers as well as automated text messages, neither of which anyone likes.
Six Colors tells us about the demise of Vesper, the notes app from Q-Branch that launched years ago from the minds of John Gruber, Brent Simmons, and Dave Wiskus. But now that Apple’s own Notes app is pretty good (and getting better with every release), there’s no real reason for Vesper to stick around. Check out the latest app update notes for what will happen to any synced data.
Also closing down is the NYT Now app, from the New York Times. When it launched NYT Now was subscription-based, but as demand for it has waned, moving to a free model did not pick up usage. Content updates will stop in September sometime, but otherwise the app will be pulled from the store before then.
Dr Drang has high hopes for the new MacBook Pro that may or may not come with a touch-sensitive function strip. He hopes that it will come from the Apple that realised app performance on the Apple Watch was unacceptable and optimised the hell out of it, not the Apple that decided underbelly charging was the way to go on the new Magic Mouse.