Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2018/12/monday-morning-news031218/
Apple’s Chief Design Officer Jony Ive received Cambridge Union’s Stephen Hawking Fellowship, and his acceptance speech talked about the role of designers in the sometimes challenging field of technology. Ive spoke about how both curiosity and resolve were needed to solve problems, at times “teetering towards the absurd” in order to solve problems with no precedent, such as when Apple were designing the original iPhone.
9to5Mac has shared the iPad Pro workflows of creative professionals, telling us about how they’ve adopted the iPad as part of their creative workflow and the kinds of apps they use. Whether you’re creating digital artwork across a range of different apps, or doing slightly more practical writing, teaching, and presenting with an iPad, there’s plenty of things you can accomplish on an iPad.
A few graphs from Six Colors shows us just how incredible the price-to-performance ratio is on the 2018 iPad Pros. Going by GeekBench results, the iPad Pro beats out every portable Mac currently available, with a plot of multi-processor scores versus price giving a similar story. Sure, there’s more to the iPad Pro than just price/performance, but that’s one metric where they’re untouchable.
Speaking of charts, How-To Geek shows that despite everyone’s complaining that iPhone places too big of an emphasis on ever-thinner devices, iPhones are getting thicker. Only by a few millimetres, but the trend is there — along with successively larger capacity batteries starting with the iPhone 4 onwards.
Apple Music is coming to Amazon’s Echo devices in a few weeks starting December 17, which seems like a strange move given that Echo devices compete against Apple’s own HomePod in terms of smart home speakers. Sure, everyone knows that you’ll get far better sound quality out of a HomePod than you will any Echo currently available, but there will be some drawn to an Echo which has vastly better integrations for a much cheaper price.
New silicon cases for the iPhone XS and XS Max now come in three new colours: Hibiscus, Mellow Yellow, and Pacific Green. There are matching Apple Watch Sport Bands, and Apple now also sells new Apple Watch Nike Bands and Apple Watch Sport Loops in the Celestial Teal, Olive Flak, and Smokey Mauve colourways.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says new AirPods with wireless charging case will be coming in early 2019, with an all-new model with updated design debuting in 2020. Kuo’s prediction record on AirPods is now slightly sketchier — back in 2017 he claimed that we would see updated AirPods in the second half of 2018, and later clarified his position in October, saying that updated AirPods would launch late in Apple’s Q4 or early in the first quarter of 2019.
Apple has approved the Indian Government’s Do Not Disturb app, which blocks text messages and calls. Apple initially expressed concerns at the privacy implications of the app, saying they wanted to work with the government on a version of the app that didn’t share a user’s call logs or message history with authorities. It’s unclear whether this version of the app contains those additional privacy protections, but the threat of banning iPhones from Indian mobile networks was enough for Apple to approve some version of the TRAI DND app.
Rogue Amoeba shows off the first major update to Loopback, the company’s audio routing utility for macOS. Loopback 2.0 is both more powerful and more accessible than the previous version, whether you’re using it for podcast production, pairing it with Audio Hijack, or combining it with multiple hardware devices. While Loopback 2.0 will cost you US $99 if you’re buying a new standalone license, upgrade pricing is available if you owned Loopback 1.
Apple’s latest video is a two-minute documentary on the Japanese decotora phenomenon of decorating cargo trucks with incredible displays of light and art, part of Apple’s shot on iPhone campaign.