Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/07/monday-morning-news030717/
The first Apple Store in Taiwan has officially opened. Located on the ground and basement floors of the Taipei 101 skyscraper, Apple’s first store in Taiwan features a similar layout and activity program as recent Apple Store openings, including “Today at Apple”. The store also features 130 employees, according to Apple’s press release.
The Weekend Australian published an interview with Apple VP of Product Marketing Greg Joswiak. Joswiak pointed out Apple’s strong entry into the AR game, with many developers already publishing interesting creations made with ARKit, some of which are portals to another world, wooden ballerinas dancing on floors, or just your standard AR tape measure.
A couple of weeks with the iOS 11 beta on the 10.5-inch iPad reveals that there’s serious improvements to iPad multitasking. Drag and drop, along with the new Files app, has the potential to redefine what it means to be productive on an iPad. On-device screen recording and screenshot markup (also available on iPhone) are welcome improvements, and there’s plenty of other minor UI changes that I haven’t seen publicised anywhere.
9to5Mac takes a look at the iOS 11 beta from the perspective of a new iPhone. The increase of darker UI elements compared to the bright white look of previous iOS releases suggests OLED technology is coming to the iPhone, and interface tweaks, particularly with the upsized headers in Mail, Messages, and more, could make enough room for Apple to consider going bezel-less.
MacRumors tells us how the Do Not Disturb While Driving feature works in iOS 11. You can set Do Not Disturb While Driving to activate automatically — either when the iPhone detects car acceleration, or when connected to a car Bluetooth system, and there’s also a toggle for it in the now-customisable Control Center, if you prefer to activate it manually.
People have been wondering about the removal of the 3D Touch gesture to activate multitasking in the iOS 11 beta, and a bug filed by one developer has now confirmed this was an intentional feature removal on Apple’s part, not merely an oversight for the first two iOS 11 betas. Why it was removed remains a mystery, although speculation says there’s something about edge-based gestures that aren’t going to work as well as they once did.
A technical look at the A10X in the new iPad Pros tells us that it’s the first Apple-designed SoC fabricated using TSMC’s 10nm process, the first of any consumer device. While the die size of A10X is smaller than previous A10 or A9-series chips, while the architecture of the chip has also changed compared to previous models.
TidBits tells us about why HEVC and HEIF will be better for photos and video, and it’s (mostly) an efficiency thing. HEVC is already being used to great effect to store smaller video files at the same quality as they are today, while HEIF, by virtue of being an image container rather than a straight image format, will be able to do a lot more than just be a single frame photo.
Now that the macOS High Sierra beta is out, Six Colors goes hands-on with the upgraded Photos app. Photos (and its predecessor iPhoto) have been consistently ugpraded with every new macOS release, and this time around is no exception.
Over at Macworld, Dan Moren asks what’s next for the iPhone. There’s still a few low-hanging fruit from the introduction of new tech in the iPad Pro (ProMotion + TrueTone displays come to mind), but what about stuff that isn’t already in the pipeline? What will the iPhone 10 years from now look like?