Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2018/02/monday-morning-news260218/
If you predicted there would eventually be a larger version of last year’s iPhone X design, then congrats, it looks like you were right. Photos from an LG facility in Vietnam show the finished product from what’s purported to be a trial run of production equipment. While the unmistakably iPhone X-shaped design with the notch cutout is present on the glass and digitiser, the fact that it’s considerably larger than the iPhone X could mean that we’ll see a larger version released this year after all.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says Apple could be launching their own branded over-ear headphones this year. The rumour claims we’ll see a set of high-end, wireless, Apple-branded headphones with an all-new design, with Apple putting the same secret sauce they did with AirPods into this particular set of cans, meaning the same convenience and ease-of-use as AirPods, but with better sound. It’s interesting that Apple will be launching this under its own brand, instead of putting the Beats brand on it.
Reliable sources claim Apple’s AirPower wireless charging mat will be available to buy next month. We still don’t really know a lot about AirPower, but maybe there’s not a lot to know, besides the fact that it will be able to wirelessly charge iPhones, Apple Watch devices, and AirPods simultaneously. It’ll also have some kind of unique charging interface to let you know how charged your devices are. Price estimates put AirPower at US $199.
An Apple repair and refurbishing facility in Elk Grove, California, is responsible for over 1,600 false calls to emergency services, amounting to over 20 a day. Dispatchers report no one on the other end of the line when the calls are answered, which impacts emergency service response times when there are other emergencies to deal with. While iOS 11 makes it easy to reach emergency services with a long press and hold of button(s), Apple says it’s working with local authorities to investigate the cause of the calls and ensure that it doesn’t continue.
A new Apple support article says Apple will be introducing security measures that prevent Windows XP, Vista, and the first-generation Apple TV from accessing the iTunes Store. The changes will come into effect on May 25, giving you about a month to move to a new OS or device if you’re still using something that’s considered unsupported by the company that released it. Then again, if you’re still willingly using XP, Vista, or the first-gen Apple TV, you probably don’t care that much about the iTunes Store anyway.
Macworld advises against converting your Time Machine drive to APFS, for the simple reason that Time Machine will no longer work. Unfortunately, Disk Utility will let you upgrade your Time Machine drive to APFS without blinking an eye, making your backups useless in the process. Worse, the process is irreversible, with the only fix being to re-format your drive back to HFS+ and start your backups again.
Things signed by Steve Jobs are going up for auction. This time around, the items include an autographed Mac OS X manual from 2001, a signed newspaper article about the iPhone 3G (which has both Jobs’ and Tony Fadell’s signatures), and an employment application form signed by Jobs after he dropped out of Reed College.
MacStories tells us about the Xserve, Apple’s rack-mountable 1U server. While Xserve started off with G4 processors, the advent of Intel meant the move to Xeon processors and a whole new world of speed. The companion product to Xserve, Xserve RAID, was perhaps one of the rarest products of the era that I ever saw.
A cool new feature available to 1Password subscribers is the ability to check if your passwords have been leaked on the internet. It’s all powered via security researcher Troy Hunt’s Pwned Passwords service, which now has more than 500 million passwords in its database, and as usual, everything is secure enough to allow you trust it.
Four new videos from Apple called First Dance celebrate same-sex marriage couples, with the videos themselves shot on iPhone X. They’re exactly the kinds of ads I’d expect to see from Apple — culturally and socially relevant, while being an obvious plug for one of their products.