Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/10/thursday-morning-news201016/
Apple has made the rumoured event on October 27th official, sending press invites that say nothing beyond “hello again”, although perhaps even that teaser pays homage to a previous Apple ad campaign. There’s a good chance we’ll see new Macs, and although there’s nothing to say the event will be live-streamed, precedence says it will be, given the extremely limited seating capacity at Apple’s Town Hall location.
Whatever new Macs Apple announces next week, it’s likely an e-ink keyboard won’t be among them. Instead, that feature has been rumoured to be included in 2018 MacBooks by the Wall Street Journal. The company behind the e-ink keyboard tech also denies its CEO meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook, quashing any rumours about a potential acquisition.
A report from Bloomberg says Apple is partnering with home building companies to put HomeKit into homes from the outset. Apple’s VP of product marketing Greg Joswiak says the best place to start bringing home automation into the mainstream is to start when a house is just being created. A few thousand dollars worth of gadgetry is all it takes to add HomeKit integrations to a few key areas, although packages can run into the tens of thousands of dollars, depending on what you want done.
We hear about lawsuits against Apple all the time, but rarely do we hear about Apple bringing lawsuits against other companies. This time around, Apple has sued the New York-based Mobile Star company for selling counterfeit power adapters and charging cables on Amazon, believing that these fake products are of lesser quality and could be harmful to the public.
Interestingly, Apple has been listed as an exhibitor at the 2017 Mobile World Congress. It’s the first time Apple has been slated to make an appearance at a trade show, and the fact that it’s MWC — arguably the most important trade show in the mobile industry — is especially intriguing.
Apple has released the fifth beta of macOS Sierra 10.12.1, and the fifth beta of iOS 10.1 to developers and members of its public beta testing program.
Apple seems to have jumped the gun on a Final Cut Pro X update, with a corrupt download of the Final Cut Pro X 10.3 trial being posted on Apple’s website. According to Mark Gurman and as reported by 9to5Mac, Final Cut Pro X 10.3 will bring improved audio mixing as well as subtle user interface tweaks.
Google’s Gboard keyboard for iOS devices now has the same cursor-moving magic that can be accomplished with 3D Touch and Apple’s stock keyboard. It might only let you move horizontally within a text field, but for those that prefer swiping to typing, it’s still a welcome addition.
IBM’s first app in partnership with Apple is Watson Element for Educators, which offers insight data on students to teachers, such as interests, accomplishments, and so on.
Speaking of IBM, they currently deploy 1,300 Macs per week and their Mac users require much less support than their PC counterparts. LEGO also now offers Macs as part of their corporate IT solution, and both companies have seen some measure of success with Macs in a corporate environment.