Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/07/monday-morning-news170717/
It’s iPhone silly season, which means rumours and speculation about what will or what won’t be included in the next iPhone. John Gruber’s take seems to think that any speculation about hardware features this late in the iPhone’s development cycle is showing a lack of respect towards Apple’s iPhone development lifecycle. While it may be the case that iOS 11 support still isn’t there, any decisions about hardware to be included would likely have been decided months ago.
Gruber’s post on the pricing and strategy of this year’s iPhones is also a good read about the direction Apple will be taking the iPhone this year. With the rumours reporting that Apple will be releasing three different iPhones, but how they will be priced and where they’re positioned in the market will tell us a lot about Apple’s iPhone strategy moving forward. There’s still a bunch of questions that have to be answered, with the nightmare scenario for Apple being one where consumers don’t want the refreshed iPhone 7 series, but don’t want to pay upwards of US $1000 for the latest and greatest, either.
It was touched on in Gruber’s piece, but Jason Snell drives home the fact that the iPhone is now a balancing act between being on the cutting edge of technology and being able to do so at iPhone-levels of scale. Months-long delays for Apple’s flagship iPhone don’t look good for Apple, despite how many think-pieces you read about it keeping up demand and driving interest, so it’s in their best interest to take back the high-end phone market with a truly incredible product.
New laws announced by Australian Attorney General George Brandis will force companies to build the ability to decrypt messages when presented with a warrant from law enforcement agencies. While it’s not clear what this means for the end-to-end encryption used by many messaging apps including Apple’s iMessage, I can tell you that many companies will simply refuse to support their messaging apps in Australia.
PayPal is now available as a payment option on the iTunes Store, which now means anyone can pay for items using their PayPal account. I’m pretty sure iTunes Store accounts created in the US always had the option of PayPal as a payment option (provided you had a linked credit card on your PayPal account), but this is definitely a first for the Australian iTunes and App Stores.
The second public beta of iOS 11 was released last week, coinciding with the third developer beta release. New stuff in this release includes support for OS X Server and Dropbox in the Files app, and an interesting new “start a broadcast” option when using iOS 11’s screen recording feature. On the Mac side of the fence, there’s also the second build of the macOS High Sierra beta, now available to members of Apple’s open beta testing program.
Apple has extended repairs of the Apple Watch detached back cover issue, offering free repairs until up to three years after the original purchase date. Note that the extended repair policy indicates that only first-generation Apple Watch devices are covered by this issue, which is a little confusing as it refers to “series 0” devices, not the Series 1 or Series 2 which aren’t affected by the issue.
1Password seems to have come under fire for having the gall to indicate that they believe 1Password subscriptions (and the cloud-based vaults that come along with it) are the best option for new customers. An explanatory blog post says they’re still planning to support local vaults for the foreseeable future, but it calls into question their motives for the post in the first place. It it was about sustainability, why not just say that?
MacStories tells us about the new goodness in Fantastical 2.4 for the Mac, which is now about as feature-complete as it gets.
Although I didn’t know it, every default macOS wallpaper in glorious 5K resolution is exactly what I was looking for.