Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/09/tuesday-morning-news270916/
Manufacturing challenges are reported to be behind the lack of Jet Black iPhone 7 shipments, even though it was the most popular model with preorders. While overall shipments of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are expected to be down over last year’s iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, you’ve got to give Apple credit where it’s due. This year’s iPhone launched in 28 countries on day one, compared to the handful of countries it has launched in previously.
Bloomberg reports Apple kicking it up a notch with HealthKit, with the HealthKit team at Apple looking into new insights from patient health data. It’s said Apple are planning a sleep tracking app for the Apple Watch, as well as a fitness-oriented app that analyses heart rate recovery rates after strenuous exercise, with the end goal being to fix the interoperability and analysis problems that have plagued the health industry for decades.
Apple will soon be selling Sonos speakers on their online store, with the wireless speakers also coming to stores in the US starting October 5th. I haven’t been able to find confirmation that we’ll see Sonos speakers in Apple locations this side of the pond or online, but The Verge does say online sales should be available in the coming weeks.
In a camera shoot-out between the iPhone 7 Plus’ JPEG, RAW, and a Sony A7R II, there’s no contest between an iPhone camera and the sheer sensor size and large, fast, glass of a US$4,500 camera setup. But the camera on the iPhone 7 Plus is definitely one of the best smartphone cameras available today, and that’s something worth writing about.
If you’ve upgraded to macOS Sierra to take advantage of unlocking your Mac with your Apple Watch, you’ll first need to make sure you have two-factor authentication turned on for iCloud. There’s an older two-step authentication method, as explained by Macworld, who also show you how to turn off two-step and turn on two-factor.
The Mac Observer tells us about some apps adopting 3D Touch widgets on the home screen, which is pretty cool. Apps like the Music app let you tap on album art to start playing, while Australia’s own NextThere tells you about the next train or bus from your closest stop.
Touch ID on iPhones and iPads means it’s getting harder to use an iOS device without a fingerprint login. The iOS 10 setup assistant prompts you to setup Touch ID, and there are (probably) serious security concerns if you care about the contents of your device. But for users, the convenience of unlocking via a fingerprint is unrivalled.
Included in iOS 10 is an image markup tool which quietly sherlocks some popular annotation tools. But it’s a little hard to find — it’s not located in the share sheet, but tucked away behind a menu in the editing feature of iOS 10’s Photos app.
Similarly, I had almost forgotten you could send handwritten messages in iOS 10. Unlike the Digital Touch messages which probably more resemble scribbles from a first-grader, you can also send pre-written options which look like someone cheated and used a stylus on the iPhone screen.
Benjamin Mayo expresses a certain sadness with the release of macOS Sierra, because he feels as though it feels incomplete. Maybe not quite rushed, but definitely unfinished — there haven’t been any major show-stopping bugs, but what features are there feel half-baked.