Monday Morning News

Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2019/08/monday-morning-news260819/

A rumour from Bloomberg says Apple will launch its streaming video service AppleTV+ in November. Pricing for Apple’s original video content will start at US $10 per month, although it’s also possible Apple will be offering an extended free trial period while it builds its content library. A small selection of shows will be offered when the service launches globally, with additions to its library coming over the next few months.

A selection of rumours from Bloomberg tells us about imminent hardware refreshes across Apple’s most of their portables. New iPhones will be announced and released within the next few weeks with improvements across the board, although they won’t have 5G mobile networking. Similar hardware revisions will come to the iPad Pro, which will keep the same form factor that it has now, and both the Apple Watch and 15-inch MacBook Pro are expected to have similar hardware revamps with minor design changes in the latter. More expensive AirPods and a cheaper HomePod are also on the cards, but it’s unclear when those will be launching; certainly not within the next month or so.

The Apple Card is now available for everyone in the US to apply for, although if you get an Apple Card, you’ll likely want to opt-out of the arbitration clause in case you ever want to sue Apple or Goldman Sachs. Apple’s support article on cleaning and storing your Apple Card rubbed a few people on the internet the wrong way, but carrying your physical card around when you have Apple Pay is a thing of the past.

Independent lab testing has revealed that iPhones may be emitting higher radiofrequency radiation than allowed by the FCC in the US. Apple has received FCC certification for the radiofrequency exposure limits it submitted for various iPhone models, and while it’s hard to imagine that this is the sort of thing that Apple wouldn’t have taken seriously, it’s possible that differing testing methods have resulted in the discrepancies between Apple’s results and that of a third-party. For their part, the FCC says that it will be performing its own testing to verify the lab’s results.

The eighth developer beta of iOS 13, iPadOS 13, tvOS 13, and watchOS 6 has been released, with the seventh open beta following closely behind. No outlet has published any changes in this version compared to previous versions, so either the changes are incredibly minor, or we’re just getting close to general availability.

Variety says there’s a new Apple Playlist in town, with the Shazam Discovery Top 50 being the weekly global top 50 of the most-popular discovered tracks from Shazam. The idea is that it will help discovery of new music from artists you might not have heard of, not point out the most popular tracks that might already be on the charts (even though those would get their fair share of Shazams, I’m sure).

Apple has claimed that it has created, directly or indirectly, about 325,000 jobs in Korea. One Korean smartphone manufacturer has refuted that claim, saying that Apple’s own website says it only employs 500 people in Korea. The manufacturer says Apple’s claim of "indirect" employment is absurd, saying that it’s ridiculous for Apple to claim that it has created jobs for anyone that develops and publishes an app on the App Store, as that kind of logic is flawed.

The first public jailbreak for iOS devices running iOS 12.4 has been released, marking the first such jailbreak in a long time that applies to fully up-to-date devices. Motherboard reports the jailbreak is possible due to how iOS 12.4 reverses a patch introduced with iOS 12.3, allowing for a specific kind of exploit to happen to allow jailbreaking to happen. Until Apple releases iOS 12.4.1 to resolve the issue, anyone running the most up-to-date version of iOS can jailbreak their device, something that hasn’t been possible in years.

Yubico’s YubiKey 5Ci is a physical security token that works with any device with either a USB-C port or a Lightning one, which makes it incredibly useful for anyone with an iPhone. While you’ll still need an app to work with the physical security token, there’s an argument to be made for physical security keys as a method of two-factor authentication instead of the time-based codes you may be used to.

Released in 2016, Apple’s "Designed by Apple in California" book showcasing 20 years of Apple product design across its 450 pages is no longer available online on the US Apple Store. While you can still get to a store page for the product on Apple’s Australian website, both sizes of the book are unavailable online or in-store, meaning that it’s likely this book’s days are numbered.