Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/07/monday-morning-news240717/
On Friday Apple announced that Deidre O’Brien would become Apple’s Vice President of People. The press release announced that the nearly 30-year veteran would oversee all HR functions in the new role, including talent development, recruitment, and business support. The Mac Observer points out that due to O’Brien’s 30-year stint at Apple, that meant she has worked for five Apple CEOs, including John Sculley, Michael Spindler, Gil Amelia, Steve Jobs, and Tim Cook.
Intel has added their voice to Apple’s ongoing legal battles with Qualcomm. In a statement filed with the FCC, Intel alleges that Qualcomm abuses their position in the industry by not licensing its patents “at a fair rate”, and that Qualcomm’s current legal battle with Apple is a move designed to rid itself of Intel, its current only competition. Intel is also alleging Qualcomm has participated in monopolistic and anti-competitive practices.
New positions at Apple Stores include Leads and Schedule Planners. The former is supposed to give firsthand experience of what it’s like to run the floor experience, acting as Support Leader to managing zoning, employee breaks, and addressing customer concerns, with other operational duties tacked on. Schedule Planners, on the other hand, will work closely with Store Managers to plan the store’s entire week, identifying trends to better resource the store to improve the customer experience.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has tweeted a teaser poster for Apple’s latest movie, The Rock x Siri. Apparently not content with original TV, Apple has now created a film. Details are thin on the ground about how long the film is, or what it’s about, but it debuts tomorrow on Apple’s YouTube channel. There’s no way this is a feature-length film, right?
It’s tempting to think Apple has ceased all development on current macOS versions given that macOS High Sierra is now a thing, but there are still known user-facing bugs in macOS Sierra 10.12.6 that remain to be quashed. None of them are particularly critical or show stopping, and workarounds exist for some of the bugs listed, but I wonder if they persist in High Sierra.
A thread on Reddit extols the virtues of updating macOS via the command line. Not only can you use your Mac while the software update is being applied, but the necessary reboot also seems to take less time than if you were to use the App Store to update. If there’s some kind of catch, Reddit doesn’t seem to know about it.
Cnet has tips on using Apple Music. There’s a few beginner-level tips that point out some features you might have missed thanks to the flat interface of Music, but creating stations based on songs or albums you like is pretty cool, even if you can’t explicitly remove them later on.
I wasn’t aware plugins for the built-in macOS Mail app were a thing until reading The Sweet Setup post on the topic. MailButler adds lots of productivity features and a subscription to your Mail experience, but the rest are paid-for that add something missing in the default app.
In telling parents what Mac laptop to buy for a student, Jason Snell admits there’s no right answer, but does have recommendations depending on the person’s usage. While the MacBook and Touchbar-less MacBook Pro make the list, the MacBook Air is curiously absent — later explained in a sort of follow-up, the case for and against the MacBook Air.
There’s a whole diseconomies of scale debate raging about the next iPhone, and while Apple producing a significantly better iPhone for a higher price at a much lower yield than regular iPhones is something they’ve never done before with their flagship product, it’s crazy enough that it just might work. Apple might not be able to source 200 million OLED panels for every iPhone sold this year, but 50 million? That might be possible.