Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/06/thursday-morning-news290617/
The latest improvement to Apple Music is a new personalised playlist called “My Chill Mix”. The new curated playlist will offer relaxing tunes from your favourite artists and genres, and while not all Apple Music subscribers will be able to access their chill mix from the “For You” section of Apple Music straight away, Apple are selectively turning it on worldwide.
With all the hype around the iOS 11 open beta, there’s still a new developer betas for iOS 10.3.3 and macOS 10.12.6. Those operating systems will continue to be supported well after the public release of iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra later this year, but how many more beta releases we’ll see for iOS 10 and macOS 10.12 remains to be seen.
Jim Dalrymple’s thoughts on iOS 11 says there’s many little improvements that make it the best iOS release yet, without even talking about the headlining features that were shown off on stage at WWDC earlier this month. Running the open beta has shown that there’s even plenty of features I haven’t come across yet in day-to-day usage, but I can safely say that our long national nightmare of not being able to go directly to alarms (or stopwatch) from Control Center is now over, with the customisable Control Center in iOS 11.
Interestingly, for whatever reason, the 3D Touch shortcut to access multitasking is currently missing from the iOS 11 betas. There’s seemingly no good explanation for where it’s gone, and other 3D Touch shortcuts still appear to work just fine, so perhaps it has something to do with an upcoming redesign of the iPhone.
One of the coolest features on iOS 11 is the one-handed keyboard. I have to give this one a little more usage to see how it works when I’m waiting to cross the road or in the supermarket checkout line, but already I feel as though this might be the gateway to larger-screened devices; no longer will they require two-handed usage, or at least not all the time.
Pandora’s CEO is stepping down, and the company is also shutting down operations in Australia and New Zealand. Anecdotally, I feel as though Pandora was never particularly popular here, with Spotify and Apple Music being the dominant music streaming services. Pandora will be focusing its efforts on the US market going forward.
Things are still being written about people thinking that the iPad isn’t a laptop replacement, with Gruber’s latest telling us the difference about “your” versus “my”. While it can’t be some author’s replacement for a laptop, it doesn’t need to be. Best tools for the job, and all that.
Matt Gemmell claims that there’s no such thing as a laptop replacement, and if there was, the iPad isn’t supposed to be one. Comparing something else that isn’t a laptop to your laptop and how it works is a flawed argument, he writes, because anything else that isn’t your laptop is guaranteed to be insufficient in some way.
There’s about a week left in this year’s Steam Summer Sale, so now is the time to pick up a few titles at discount. Macworld has a slideshow of Mac-compatible picks, and now is a good time before all digital purchases start getting taxed.
The latest iPhone ad comes from Canada in light of Canada day this Saturday, showing off “a portrait of Canada’s inclusive spirit shot on iPhone”.