Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2018/03/monday-morning-news190318/
Apple has invited some folks to a education event next week, in a high school in Chicago. Creative new ideas for teachers and students will be the focus of the event, with speculation saying we may see some kind of iPad and/or Apple Pencil refresh, or at least some kind of announcement. It remains to be seen whether this event will be live-streamed or whether we’ll just be reading about it on the internet, but hopefully we’ll know more closer to the event on March 27th.
The sixth beta of iOS 11.3 was released to developers over the weekend, with members of Apple’s public beta program also getting access to the update. It comes just four days after the previous beta release, signalling the imminent release of this particular update which brings battery health, toggle-able performance management, and new Animoji for iPhone X owners, as well as Messages in iCloud and ARKit 1.5.
Speaking of battery health, a ZDNet report says wireless charging will wear out your battery faster than wired charging. While there’s no denying the convenience of wireless charging, battery 101 says all batteries have limited charge cycles, and iPhones are no exception. The problem with wireless charging is that the battery is still being used, with the charger being used to top off the battery, leading to additional charge cycles faster than if you charge with a cable.
It’s pretty misleading for iMore to title an article with “everything you need to know” about a completely theoretical product, as if it’s some kind of definitive guide for something that doesn’t even exist yet. Their post on the Apple Pencil 2 has mere suggestions about what Apple could do to improve the Apple Pencil, should they decide to release new Pencil hardware.
New patents from Apple include one for a crumb-resistant keyboard, and making a screen-based keyboard feel closer to the real thing. The crumb-resistant keyboard works by either sealing off gaps where crumbs would like to hide, or by some mechanism that blows out air when keys are pressed. On the other hand, making a flexible screen deform when pressing a virtual key, in combination with haptic feedback and an electrostatic charge could get us to feeling real keys on a screen-based keyboard.
9to5Mac tells us about the case of disappearing apps, which turns out is app offloading, a new feature introduced as part of iOS 11. The Offload Unused Apps setting isn’t supposed to enable itself without you explicitly turning it on, but there have been cases where it may be enabled when your device is running low on storage space.
Colorware’s original iPhone skin for iPhone 7, 8, and X gives the two-tone aluminium and black plastic look that was popularised by the original iPhone. I’ll admit it looks pretty good on the single-camera lens iPhone 7 and iPhone 8, given that they look closer to the original iPhone, but I think I’ll be sticking to the modern look of my glass-sandwiched iPhone X for now.
You can now use Microsoft’s Edge browser on the iPad, at least in beta format. The Edge iOS preview was updated with iPad support over the weekend, bringing mostly the same features to the iPad previously enjoyed by the iPhone. The Verge points out that in terms of being a modern iOS app, Edge for iPad doesn’t support Split View, and tab syncing between PC and iOS still isn’t available yet.
Paste is a new iOS clipboard manager with a visual interface. It’s been on the Mac for ages now, and the debut of the Paste iOS app comes in the form of a minimal clipboard manager, with iCloud sync that mostly works fine.
Apple’s latest iPhone X ad shows off the easy unlocking of Face ID. It’s a nice, clean ad that shows off a single iPhone X feature well, which is why it’s kind of a shame there’s a bug in it. Blink and you’ll miss it, though, so check out this post on The Verge.
