Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2018/03/monday-morning-news050318/
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo’s latest report claims Apple will release a cheaper MacBook Air later this year. Expected to release sometime in the second quarter, Apple’s more affordable MacBook Air is the first time in a long time that we’ve heard of any kind of refresh to the MacBook Air lineup, which many say is continually Apple’s best-selling laptop, despite the last update being a minor speedbump in June last year.
Apple’s explanation of the iPhone battery issue to the Canadian parliament says that it was not planned obsolescence or a way to push customers to new devices, but a feature designed to benefit customers. Apple addressed the issue of unexpected shutdowns by dynamically managing power usage in cases were devices were at risk of unexpected shutdowns, in order to help customers continue to use older devices.
Ars Technica’s take on the iPhone throttling/battery ageing issue says the company did the right thing in the wrong way. Apple’s decision to perform power management on older devices was the right one, but all of this could have been avoided if Apple decided to communicate to customers, instead of just going ahead and doing things their way. Unfortunately, this turned out to be one of those times that Apple’s culture of secrecy worked against them.
Six Colors has a review of the HomePod after a few weeks of varied usage. They say it’s a good speaker, and being able to use Siri to ask for songs is nice, but it’s not as great a product as some of Apple’s recent releases. It’s a good speaker, and if it was released a few years earlier, it might have been a great product, but as it stands, Apple has some catching up to do.
Apple Park’s glass walls have been made slightly more visible by the architects placing black rectangular stickers with rounded corners on the glass walls, to prevent Apple employees and contractors from walking into glass and in some cases requiring medical attention.
I’ve heard a lot of Apple stories in my time, but the story about WiseWear filing chapter 11 bankruptcy being blamed on Apple’s decision to disable the diagnostic port on the Apple Watch is a new one. The company says Apple’s decision to disable the port led to WiseWear’s patents to drop in value, which in turn caused it to fail to raise $2 million in funding.
Concept art for iOS 12 figures they can update the look and feel of iOS by introducing rounded corners across most UI elements. While removing app names from the iOS home screen looks nice enough, I can’t see Apple doing it without adding some kind of option to turn them back on, and their decision to use rounded squares for contact photos is strange given Apple already uses circles. It’s a little inconsistent.
Beautiful Pixels has a review of Calzy 3, which they call a modern, beautiful, and smart calculator for iOS. The original app was released back in 2013, but Calzy 3 might as well be a whole new app. There’s enough customisation options to keep you happy, and enough smart calculator features to make you want to replace the default calculator.
A new update to iStat Menus pushes the version number to 6.1, with the major change being able to select Australia’s own Bureau of Meteorology for weather information. There’s also better iMac Pro support, and a bunch of other features, fixes, and improvements. A little while ago iStat Menus also made it onto the Mac App Store, although there’s a few differences you may want to know about, if you’re considering purchasing from the Mac App Store instead of directly from Bjango.
Call it bad design all you want, but for whatever reason, plenty of devices are now sporting the same notch design as Apple’s iPhone X. Asus’ new Zenfone is the latest in the long line of lesser-known brands to incorporate the rounded corners and top-notch cutout on their screens, and going off rumours from more well-known brands, it doesn’t look like it’ll be the last, either.