Thursday Morning News

Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2018/04/thursday-morning-news190418/

As some had suspected and speculated when Apple purchased Texture, the company will be looking to integrate Texture into Apple News as a subscription-based news service. The rumour comes from Bloomberg, who says Apple News will soon have a premium new subscription to add to Apple’s internet software and services offerings, with Bloomberg drawing parallels between the acqusition of Beats which led to Apple Music’s subscription, and the one that will be offered by Apple News in the future, thanks to the acqusition of Texture.

Several new iPhone models have been registered by Apple in the Eurasian Economic Commission database, pointing to new devices that could be release by Apple very soon. The previously-unseen model numbers give nothing away, but the fact that all devices are listed as running iOS 11 could point to either one of two things. Either we won’t see iOS 12 before these devices are released (suggesting a release within the next 2-3 months), or we won’t see iOS 12 this year at all. The latter seems unlikely given WWDC, but only time will tell.

CNBC says Apple has a design problem that’s getting harder to solve, and reading through their article, it really seems like Apple’s relentless push for featureless slabs of technological marvel is catching up with them. Apple’s already removed the headphone jack, the home button, and most of the bezel surrounding the display on the iPhone, so what’s next? Besides moving to under-display tech for key components currently housed within the notch, there’s honestly not that much that can be changed.

An Apple patent describes a method of attaching accessories to the device. As pointed out by AppleInsider, there’s limited places where you can plug a device into the Apple Watch, due to its compact size and design, but the patent points out one possibility of attaching a backplate to the Apple Watch. Such a backplate could anchor itself to the slots currently used by Apple Watch bands to attach themselves to the Apple Watch.

Earth Day is this Sunday, and Apple VP of environment, policy, and social initiatives Lisa Jackson will be speaking at a special event at the Union Square Apple Store on April 26th, alongside water preservationist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer Alexandra Costeau. There’s also an event on Earth Day, with photographer Oscar Nilsson leading a photo walk around San Francisco showing off portrait photography in nature, if that’s even a thing in the concrete jungle of SF.

Six Colors’ Jason Snell has a post about writing on his iPad at home, and it’s a pretty serious setup. A Bluetooth mechanical keyboard and iPad-specific stand to bring the iPad closer to eye level seems like a lot of effort to go to replicate something you can get pretty easily with a regular Mac and external display setup, but there’s a lot of advantages about writing on the iPad that I’m probably not seeing.

The Verge’s Dieter Bohn says iPhone notifications need an overhaul, which seems to be a recurring theme that rears its ugly head every few years. Remember the bad old days, when iOS notifications took up the entire screen and you could only see one at a time? Bohn’s point seems to be that while iOS notifications aren’t as bad as they were, there’s still room for improvement and even more ways to make notifications be even less intrusive.

I continue to use Microsoft Translator because it has interesting features over its more popular Google Translate counterpart, and now a new offline mode with dramatically improved translation packs for several popular languages should help the two apps serve their own translation niches.

MacStories runs us through the changes in Things 3.5. There’s a bunch of improvements across the board, including improved UI, tagging and automation changes, and better clipboard integration. Things continues to cement its position as a serious to-do app for Mac and iOS.

New Apple ads from Apple Turkey show off the capabilities of the sixth-generation iPad with Apple Pencil.

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News subscription? REally? No.