Tuesday Morning News

Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/05/tuesday-morning-news310516/
17042-14210-Screen-Shot-2016-05-30-at-20950-PM-lThere’s a few rumours flying around that Apple will ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack in the next iPhone. Some say it will be gone with this year’s iPhone, while others say the 2017, 10th anniversary iPhone will be the one to move to wireless (or Lightning) headphones as the default option. One Chinese company is betting on the former, releasing Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adapters ahead of this year’s iPhone.

9to5Mac make their iOS 10 predictions for the iPhone and iPad ahead of this year’s WWDC, based on previous rumours and using a little intuition to determine what’s possible and what’s likely. Surprisingly, there’s nothing completely groundbreaking here — just solid iterations to core iOS components such as the App Store, Apple Music, Siri, iCloud, and Apple Pay.

India’s Commerce and Industry Minister has said that she is not in favour of Apple selling refurbished iPhones in the country. It’s another setback for Apple in India, who previously was not granted an exemption from a rule that said retailers in the country must sell 30% of goods produced locally or within the country.

Apple considered buying Time Warner last year, in a bid to raise its own entertainment profile. According to the Financial Times and reported by 9to5Mac, the deal would have been Apple’s largest acquisition to date if it had ever entered serious negotiations. Instead, the company will continue to spend on original content from its media platforms to the tune of several hundred million a year.

More Apple and VocalIQ rumours claim that the deal will not only beef up Apple’s own personal assistant, but also offer a natural language API for developers to tap into. A breakdown of VocalIQ technology says that it remembers user preferences across sessions, and also retains context across conversations.

Caltech has accused Apple of violating its Wi-Fi patents. Caltech says many Apple products use IRA/LDPC codes for encoding and decoding that improve performance, with MacRumors saying the technologies included in the 802.11n and 802.11ac standards. It’s possible Apple’s recent removal of AirPort products from US Apple Stores is somehow related to this.

The new Union Square Apple Store cost some US $23.6 million to build, with the shell of the building valued at $19 million. Additional costs included $800,000 worth of solar panels on the roof providing 50KW of power, and the new staircases, which cost $1.1 million. BuildZoom has a more complete breakdown of the entire cost of the new store.

An Apple patent describes using point-to-point networks for close proximity communications, like how you might use a walkie-talkie. The patent appears to apply to a set of Lightning-enabled headphones, which can also be used wirelessly for the close proximity communication aspect.

Over at the Loop, Dave Mark points out where Google lags behind Apple is in software updates. While 84% of active iOS devices are running iOS 9, just 7.5% of Android devices are running some variant of Android 6, Marshmallow.

Last but not least this morning, Macworld tells us how to export a Live Photos movie into OS X.

Maybe we are all spoilt by using Apple devices… or maybe for me it was a history of relatively quick turn over of devices that hid the problem… also possibly the fact that I lived on xda-developers back in the day so was always running some custom Windows Mobile ROM and/or looking for the next upgrade.

So I’ve seen that sort of chart for Windows Mobile and Android at different times over the years and the story has always been much the same. Users crying out for the upgraded ROM, discussion about how model x is clearly capable and speculation that the new rom will come “next month”… which never comes.

Of course this is in the more nerdy space of informed users and for every one of them (us) there are a thousand users who just wanted a phone that lets them get on facebook… Upgrades? What for? Facebook works? So does Farmville and Clash of Clans…

If app developers pushed the requirements for the new version of Android we could very quickly see things change, but then they would lose revenue because people would simple move onto the next Boom Beach or whatever the kids are playing now (get off my lawn! shakes fist)

For shits and giggles I looked at the system requirements for Clash of Clans on iOS (normally I like to link to things but I refuse to support these vultures… but maybe that’s just me) and was a little surprised to see that is supports iOS 5.1.1+ Yep, that’s right. While it doesn’t say as much, it’s technically capable of running on an iPad 1. That’s the only reason it could support an iOS that old… Boom Beach and Farmville require the far more modern iOS 7+ (Farmville 2 is only iOS 6+). A quick flick through the current top apps shows iOS 7+ being the standard.
I’m getting off track a little here, but clearly the app developers aren’t helping push the agenda (even on the Apple side).

Long story short, unless Android moves to a more Chrome like release schedule where everything is just iterative I can’t seem them getting over the lagging software upgrade cycle.

I don’t think the lag is with Google, with regard to software updates. Its the phone manufacturers, and then the others (like Telstra) which dont make any effort to create the update. Why would they, when they know that the punters will buy new phones, because they are so cheap. Except… That does not seem to be happening.

I have three Android phones, none of which can be legally updated from their original install. Its hardly surprising that the installed base of the current Android is so low. Nobody makes an effort, and you just have to pray theres some way of rooting the phone and getting the latest that way.