Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2019/04/monday-morning-news080419/
Heritage Victoria has rejected Federation Square management’s proposal to demolish the Yarra Building to make way for an Apple Retail location in its place. According to The Age, Heritage Victoria said that the proposed Apple Store design would have been "visually dominant", and the demolition of the Yarra Building would have diminished the public square. An Apple spokesperson has said that the company would no longer be pursuing its plan for a location in Federation Square, which presumably means no Melbourne CBD Apple Store for the foreseeable future.
A HomePod price drop late last week now see Apple’s smart home speaker retail for $469 in Australia, down from the original RRP of $499. There’s been nothing from Apple about why it reduced the price of the HomePod, but any price drop, no matter how minor, is a welcome one.
The iPhone part leaks for 2019 start with what’s alleged to be the rear chassis for one of this year’s iPhones. The chassis shows cutouts for a triple-lens camera setup as previously rumoured, with similar cutouts nearby for the flash and microphone. While we’ve seen renders of what a multiple-lens iPhone could look like, it will be months before we start to have a clearer picture about what Apple plans to do with all of those light-capturing elements.
Developer Steve Troughton-Smith says he’s fairly confident that this year’s macOS release will see separate new apps for Music, Podcasts, and Books. Although Books currently exists in the form of the iBooks Mac app, there’s evidence to say that the breakup of the iTunes monolith will begin when Apple introduces its TV app on macOS later this year. While Troughton-Smith says the new Music, Podcasts, and Books apps will likely be UIKit, there’s a good chance they’ll be the first Marzipan apps — which doesn’t make sense, as surely Apple would build them as Marzipan apps first, if that’s what they wanted to do.
The latest addition to Apple’s leadership team is Adrian Perica, now Vice President of Corporate Development. Perica now reports directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook as he works on mergers, acquisitions, and other strategic investments, as well as overseeing the integration of new technologies and services into the existing Apple fold. Perica joined Apple in 2009 from Goldman Sachs, and Deloitte before that, as well as serving in the US Army.
Macworld says that with AirPower now dead and buried, there are other Apple products that could quickly go the same way. Not that Apple’s laptop keyboards, the HomePod, or the Mac Pro haven’t been huge successes for Apple, but it’s possible they haven’t been as successful as Apple has hoped. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a place in the Apple product lineup, but with plenty of new and exciting stuff on the horizon, at some point you have to wonder if Apple may be spreading themselves too thin to release truly great updates for everything.
MacStories tells us about the PageTurn app, an interesting take on a PDF reader that uses face recognition for hands-free page turning. That makes it ideal for musicians that need to turn pages when playing an instrument, but could also be useful for those cooking up a storm in the kitchen. You’ll need a device that supports Face ID to use it, and as long as someone doesn’t see you using mouth control or wink control to turn pages, you’ll revel in your ability to make things happen with your new, face-based gestures.
Nigel Kersten tells us about the time Steve Jobs sent him a polite but dismissive email about reverse-engineering support for OS X 10.3.9 on new Macs, which could only run OS X 10.4 or later – sound familiar? Anyway, WWDC 2005 was just around the corner when he cracked the secret of kexts, which caused ripples all through the Australian education community using Macs at the time, all of which culminated in a phone call from AppleCare. I won’t spoil the ending, but you may know the story already, and if not, go and read it.
A Canadian accountant in charge of approving company purchases used a corporate credit card to purchase thousands of iPhones and iPads totalling roughly US $4.5 million. The devices were then on-sold to a small-time electronics store in Toronto, or to overseas businesses in Hong Kong or elsewhere. Crazy to think they were able to get away with it for so long or that that kind of money going missing didn’t raise any eyebrows.
Apple’s latest Shot on iPhone series of ads shows off the iPhone XS camera and surfers in Cuba. The associated behind-the-scenes shows off some of the extra accessories used to grab the shots used in the final film.