Monday Morning News

Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2019/07/monday-morning-news220719/

A rumour claims Apple will start sourcing OLED displays from LG soon, perhaps even starting with this year’s iPhones. As reported by MacRumors, Samsung is currently believed to be Apple’s sole supplier for OLED displays, which can cause problems if anything ever goes wrong. Apple is believed to be investigating LG for OLED displays as early as this year, with Chinese company BOE also on the cards for supplying OLED displays.

Silicon manufacturing processes improve year on year, and while it’s widely expected that this year’s iPhones are expected to use chips based on a 7nm fabrication process just like last year’s devices, there’s a good chance that 2020 iPhones will use chips based on a 5nm process. TSMC recently released a statement which backs this speculation, saying that they had a breakthrough with their 5nm plans and are now ramping up for full-scale 5nm production in the first half of 2020, right around the time that Apple starts scouting for iPhone production partners.

Bloomberg writes that Apple will be moving into a futuristic office building in Vancouver, Canada. 400 West Georgia is a 24-storey building comprised of a stack of rotated glass cubes, and should be completed by sometime in 2020. Apple will join other tenants Deloitte and IWG Plc as key tenants, although is said to be only taking up two floors.

Apple’s hip-hop playlist is now called Rap Life, with Beats 1 radio launching a new show around it. Apple’s global editorial head of hip-hop and R&B Ebro Darden says that while the channel will primarily feature hip-hop from North American artists, there will also be representation of the genre worldwide. Darden himself will be hosting the associated Beats 1 radio show, with Darden attributing the success of the hip-hop genre on Apple Music to the music streaming service’s multifaceted approach, despite competitors having larger user bases.

Wired tells us it’s time to switch to a web browser that upholds your privacy and limits the ways companies can track your web browsing habits online. While I don’t necessarily think you should go the somewhat extreme length of using Tor, browsers like Safari on macOS and iOS already include a number of privacy-focused protections built-in, and combined with a plugin that blocks tracking and other scripts like Ghostery, you should be able to restore a modicum of privacy on the open web.

It’s claimed that a new surveillance tool called Pegasus from Israeli firm NSO Group can harvest all on-device data and any encrypted communications with the cloud. Both the iPhone and Apple’s iCloud are said to be susceptible to the software, which is otherwise silent and does not alert the victim in any way. While Apple hasn’t denied the existence of such software that could be used to target a very small number of device, the good news is that it is unlikely such a tool would be deployed against a widespread number of consumers.

An AppleInsider staffer replaced their Mac with an iPad Pro for a week. Running the iPadOS beta proved to have it own challenges outside of having to adapt specific workflows to the iPad, or having to take a little extra time to do things that would have been easier on a Mac. Shortcuts are great and all, but in some cases they’re only necessary due to inherent limitations of the way iOS forces you to do things, particularly when it comes to bulk actions.

When it comes out later this year, macOS Catalina will run 32-bit apps. While you may have already seen prompts about your apps not being optimised, what that really means is that they’re still 32-bit and won’t run on macOS Catalina. Go64 is a new free app that scans all of the apps on your Mac, checks to see if they’re 64-bit or not, and offers upgrade advice if you’re simply running an outdated version.

David Sparks writes about Voice Control and how it’s a game changer for voice to text dictation on Apple devices. Voice Control has been billed as an accessibility feature, but Sparks says that he’s cancelled his Dragon subscription on the Mac due to how good Voice Control is as a voice input method.

New game Sky: Children of Light is now available on iPhone and iPad, following its unveiling at the 2017 iPhone event. The title from Journey creator and studio thatgamecompany brings a somewhat different gaming experience than Journey ever did, with much more capability placed on social interactions with other players that you encounter. It’s available now as a free download from the App Store, although you’ll need to wait a little longer for the Apple TV version.

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I still marvel at how far voice recognition has come since the days of having to adopt a Southern Californian accent in order to be understood.