Thursday Morning News

Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/08/thursday-morning-news180816/
ios-lyrics1An Apple press release tells us about the company’s environmental progress in China, where one of its main glass suppliers has committed to run its Apple-related operations on completely renewable energy by the end of 2018. In addition, all of Apple’s final manufacturing sites — numbering 14 in all — are now zero waste compliant, while Apple continues to power its US and China operations on 100% renewable energy.

The name of the next iPhone has been finalised, and just like the two iPhones prior, the next iPhone will probably be called the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. It seems as though Apple’s going with a new number this time, even though there are minor changes and no real design changes to speak of. It’ll be like an incremental S-upgrade, only sans headphone jack.

There’s also a good chance this year’s iPhone will introduce a model with 256GB of storage capacity, much like you can already get with the iPad Pro. Base storage is also expected to go from 16GB to 32GB, which should please those who enjoy recording 4K video.

Rumours regarding the next iPhone after the iPhone 7 say there’s the possibility we could see an OLED display, but if we do, it will likely be relegated to a “specialised” model rather than making it standard across the board, due to low yields and the impracticality of mass-producing them on an iPhone-scale.

Macworld covers the five stages of grief over Apple’s removal of the headphone jack. At this point, there’s nothing you or I can do about it, regardless of whether you think it’s a good idea or not. All you can do now is go out and buy an Android phone and renounce Apple completely.

Meanwhile, Intel is claiming that USB-C could be the next headphone jack. The advantages include both saving physical space on the phone due to a lack of analog circuitry and allowing headphone manufacturers to bundle in extras such as noise cancelling or EQ on the headphones themselves. While there’s little on how durable USB-C is compared to the headphone jack, I’m sure there will be those that think it’s an awful idea — and besides, Apple are unlikely to adopt it on their devices given they already have Lightning.

But what about on the Mac? Apple’s MacBook already has a single USB-C port for charging and peripherals, and so it’s possible that we’ll see USB-C as the Thunderbolt replacement on Apple’s new MacBook Pros, whenever they decide to show up. AppleInsider breaks down the discussion.

Apple’s deal with Cash Money Records — the music label behind Drake, Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, and others — is for an exclusive documentary. It’s unknown whether this will be for Apple Music, but with Apple having strong ties to Drake (WWDC 2015, never forget), it’s certain that Apple will leverage the partnership for more Apple Music exclusives, which may just give it the edge over Spotify.

Song lyrics are making their way to iTunes and iOS 10, and Kirk McElhearn shows you how to get access to song lyrics in iTunes 12.5 and iOS 10.

Apple’s presentation of behind-the-scenes iOS security from the Black Hat security conference is now available online, presented by Ivan Krstic, Apple’s Head of Security Engineering and Architecture.

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Meh… every time a manufacturer bundles “extra things™” on a media player they just break. My next phone is gonna be an Android.