The Boylston Street Apple Store in Boston will be playing host to an event this weekend, which will see Christy Turlington-Burns, ultramarathoner Scott Jurek, and founder of dooce.com Heather Armstrong talk about their training experiences for the Boston Marathon. Apple’s Jay Blahnik will also be present, talking about how each experienced training with the Apple Watch.
There have been a number of reports about bad Bluetooth call quality for some iPhone SE users, prompting Apple to investigate the issue internally. The issue manifests in distorted or broken audio when calls are taken on Bluetooth devices that work fine on other iPhones, as reported by AppleInsider.
As part of Apple extending the upgrade cycle for the Apple Watch, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says the company’s Apple Watch successor will come out later this year, focusing on internal upgrades rather than external changes. Kuo also notes Apple Watch shipments will fall 25% year-on-year, dropping to the 7.5 million units mark versus the 10.6 million Apple Watch units shipped in 2015.
Uncertainty looms for the venerable Mac spec bump, as Intel announced last month that it would be moving away from their Tick-Tock upgrade cycle in favour of a three-year process-architecture-optimisation one. While it means some machines will not see CPU upgrades for lengthy periods of time, it opens up the field for improvements in other areas.
An article from the Wall Street Journal reports Apple is selling less iPhones through its own Retail and Online channels, with consumers choosing to buy iPhones direct from carriers instead. It’s not all bad news for Apple though — people are still buying iPhones, after all — but it means that Apple doesn’t get to provide the experience of purchasing a device from the Apple Store, and make marginally more money doing so.
Chinese server vendor Inspur has joined Apple’s server supply chain, as Apple moves to bring more of its data-centre operations in-house instead of working with third parties.
An Apple R&D facility in Japan has been delayed, now with a new opening date of March 2017 according to a board posted outside the construction of the facility.
The Apple Pencil means handwriting recognition is now within the realms of possibility, and Macworld writes that handwriting-to-text across the board in iOS would be nothing short of amazing on the platform, at least on iPads where the Apple Pencil is supported.
The Loop Magazine app is dead, which goes to highlight the kind of App Store economy we’re dealing with. Despite being one of the best publishing and reading experiences, it wasn’t enough.
Speaking of which, even games aren’t immune to the cutthroat App Store economy. Paid mobile games can be a viable but risky niche, Touch Arcade says, so often it makes sense to make a free-to-play game which carries its own risks, sure, but also has a payoff orders of magnitude greater than a premium title.
Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/04/tuesday-morning-news120416/