Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2018/04/monday-morning-news090418/
An internal memo to Virgin Mobile employees claims Apple will release Product(RED) versions of the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus tomorrow. A Product(RED) iPhone X isn’t mentioned at all, so it seems unlikely that Apple will release that in the near future, but I’ll be interested to see how Apple makes the Product(RED) version of the glass-backed iPhone 8 and 8 Plus work — the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus Product(RED) devices looked great, but we’ll see if the glass versions look as good.
Recode has put up the full transcript of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s comments when he was interviewed by Recode’s own Kara Swisher and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. The full video isn’t available online, but you can listen to the full audio via the Recode Decode podcast. The trio talked education, as well as Apple’s responsibility for social and economic change (especially with regards to Facebook and privacy), and iPhones.
The Saudi Crown Prince met with Tim Cook at Apple Park to discuss app development, new partnerships, and education opportunities. The meeting between the Crown Prince and Cook followed similar meetings between other tech companies, including Google, with discussions being centred around ways for Apple’s technology to benefit Arabic educational content in schools and partnerships for app development in Saudi Arabia.
Apple has been hit with a lawsuit related to heart rate detection technology as used in the Apple Watch. Omni MedSci alleges the Apple Watch heart rate technology infringes on its patent for near-infrared and mid-infrared broadband lasers, saying that the company met with Apple from 2014 through to 2016, but with the pair never reaching any kind of partnership agreement. Omni MedSci seeks an injunction against Apple and damages.
A concept for iOS 12 makes minor changes to iOS staples, including the lock screen, emoji keyboard, and multitasking view. There’s a now-standard dark mode, lock screen complications borrowed from watchOS, and a Siri interface that doesn’t take up the entire screen. It’s a good start, and I particularly like that there’s different volume controls to account for the iPhone X notch, but we’ll have to see what iOS 12 is shaping up to look like at WWDC.
Dan Moren writes about what the 2019 Mac Pro will be like. He says that presumably it won’t be an all-in-one machine, as that slot has already been filled by the iMac Pro, so it’ll be interesting to see what Apple comes up with in terms of an expandable, upgradeable Mac. But with the iMac Pro already being much faster than anyone really needs, that calls into question how much faster the Mac Pro will need to be.
DaisyDisk 4.5 was officially released last month, with the headlining feature of the best-looking disk usage visualiser being AFPS support. The DaisyDisk also put up a short FAQ about APFS and High Sierra, particularly how it relates to Time Machine’s local snapshots, which are now counted as purgeable space. DaisyDisk 4.5 is a free update for existing users.
The Verge says Apple has an iPad gesture dilemma, in that using an iPhone X and iPad Pro is getting confusing. There’s now a dichotomy between the gestures used on both devices, and with upcoming rumoured changes to the iPad Pro, the question becomes: will Apple continue to persist with the iPad’s gestures, or adopt those used by the iPhone X? Time will tell.
For the retro gaming fans among us, the source code to the Mac OS 9 version of System Shock has been released as GPL on GitHub. While you can absolutely compile the source code yourself, you’ll need a PowerPC Mac to do so, or an emulator.
MacRumors tells us about the six oldest products Apple still sells today. While we’re all talking about how the Mac Mini hasn’t been updated for over 1,200 days, Apple’s AirPort Extreme is also getting long in the tooth.