Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2018/12/monday-morning-news171218/
In case you missed it, on Friday Commonwealth Bank announced Apple Pay would become available to consumer customers in January 2019. The move marks an end to our long national nightmare of Apple Pay not being available on what is undoubtedly Australia’s largest bank, with CBA playing up Apple Pay as part of their commitment to being a better, simpler bank, although we all know what the real story is there. Bankwest customers are also included in the Apple Pay availability, and here’s hoping the rest of the Australian banking sector follows suit.
Apple has signed an agreement with a Canadian broadcasting studio for TV shows, specials, and short films starring Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and the other members of the Peanuts cast. It’s hoped that exclusive short-form content featuring Astronaut Snoopy will get kids excited about STEM subjects, with TechCrunch reporting that Snoopy is just the latest in Apple’s list of family-friendly content.
Apple will address Qualcomm’s sales ban of iPhone devices in China by releasing a software update sometime this week that resolves the alleged infringement on Qualcomm’s patents that resulted in the ban in the first place. Devices affected by the ban include anything newer than the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, so you can see why Apple would want to be completely sure that those devices aren’t banned from sale in one of Apple’s biggest markets.
As an additional measure against Qualcomm’s war on Apple, it’s possible that Apple could shift iPhone production to Taiwanese manufacturer Pegatron. The reason for doing so is simple: Pegatron is exempt from the Qualcomm/Apple patent spat due to correctly licensing the patents Qualcomm is contesting. Moving iPhone production away from Foxconn and Wistron would save Apple $5 billion, according to sources.
Apple has begun notifying artists that it will soon be removing their ability to post content to Apple Music Connect, with previously posted content also being removed. All signs point to Apple Music Connect — initially introduced as a way for artists to connect with their fans on the Apple Music platform — being discontinued come May next year, with only a marginally longer lifespan than Apple’s other failed music social media network, Ping.
As previously reported, Apple Music is now playable on Amazon Echo speakers a few days ahead of schedule, but only in the United States. It remains to be seen whether the ability to play Apple Music content over your Echo speaker via Amazon’s Alex voice assistant will eventually be available in other countries, although the original announcement from Amazon does specify only Echo devices in the US will be able to access Apple Music via Alexa.
The Cydia Store for apps for jailbroken iPhones has been shutdown. Creator Jay Saurik laying out in a Reddit post that he originally planned to shut down the Cydia Store before the end of the year, but moved the timetable up due to recent security issues, and the fact that it has not made any money for quite some time. Repos are still available, so it’s not as if jailbroken apps are totally gone, but the future doesn’t look bright for jailbreaking.
Impressions of the 2018 iPad Pro by a developer says there’s plenty to like about the device, and can recommend it if you like iPads, don’t own last year’s generation, and can afford it. But that said, the keyboard folio is boring and bland, and as you might have heard or read before, iOS is limited by what you can do on it, with more pro apps needed for the iPad to make it as a platform.
An unofficial project puts a full Apple Music player on the web. Apple doesn’t currently allow full access to your Apple Music account via the web, but playapplemusic.com lets you login to your Apple Music and get access to your playlists, albums, and personalised recommendations, all from a nice little web interface.
A hilarious story about a simple want to play music over a quality pair of headphones (and going to great lengths to do so, designing his own IC and soldering together his own hardware), is entirely unrelated to Apple besides the author’s insistence that Apple is “a symbol of pretentiousness and ignorance”.