Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/12/monday-morning-news121216/
As we enter the last week of news for 2016, Apple’s EarPods are nowhere to be seen after the company announced the wireless earbuds needed a little more time. A rumour reported by the Wall Street Journal over the weekend claimed it was due to ensuring audio reached both EarPods at the same time, but Gruber’s take is that it’s an unexpected manufacturing issue at scale that has prevented Apple from releasing AirPods to the general public.
While Nintendo’s Super Mario Run will be out later this week, Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed that the endless runner will require a constant internet connection to run. Nintendo seems to be citing piracy as the main concern, with Super Mario Run being a premium title with no in-app purchases, not to mention the fact that this is Nintendo’s first go at mobile.
A minor change to the Apple Music membership FAQ now states that the streaming music service now includes all the benefits of iTunes Match. Previously iTunes Match allowed subscribers to download DRM-free versions of tracks matched from your own library, where Apple Music included DRM on every track downloaded from a user’s matched library. There may have been a few reasons to subscribe to both services previously, but there’s one less now.
Speaking of Apple Music, the first original documentary from Apple Music is now available for subscribers. 808: The Movie covers the history and influence of Roland’s TR-808 drum machine, and the entire thing is narrated by Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe. If you’re not an Apple Music sub, you can also pre-order the doco from iTunes.
Now that we’ve put the Doom HUD on the Touch Bar, the next most obvious thing was to put a piano on there, too. A little Mac app now lets you play a cut-down, somewhat-squished polyphonic keyboard on your Touch Bar.
It seems obvious that a third-party developer would prefer customers to buy directly from developers rather than from the Mac App Store, but even when considering the pros and cons of each, buying direct from the developer has a number of advantages that the Mac App Store doesn’t (or can’t) offer. But the reverse is also true, so it will always be up to you to decide.
Stephen Hackett has published all of the Mac OS X installation documentation, starting with the earliest Rhapsody releases, the OS X developer previews, and all the install docs for OS X from 10.0 through to 10.6, which was the last version to come with it.
Microsoft has released a free Visio Viewer app for the iPad, which does pretty much what you’d expect it to. No word on whether they’re planning to bring a fully-fledged version of the app to iOS devices.
Six Colors tells us about their favourite iOS and Mac games for 2016, including crowd favourites such as Super Stickman Golf 3, Blackbox, Deus Ex Go, and more.
Just in time for the holidays, there’s four new Apple Watch ads. All of the new ads highlight specific Apple Watch features, such as the Breathe reminds, activity ring tracking, or the Nike integration that comes with the Apple Watch Nike+ edition.