Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/10/wednesday-morning-news051016/
If there’s going to be new iPads at some point in the future, there probably needs to be a new A-series chip to go along with them. Benchmarks of an alleged A10X have appeared on Geekbench, and as expected from an X-variant of the chip powering the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, the A10X scores considerably higher than the A10 used in the new iPhone.
With rumours of a much larger display on the next iPhone in a similar form factor, Apple needs some way to keep the Touch ID feature it’s had on iPhones since the iPhone 5S. A patent has recently been granted to Apple which allows fingerprint recognition from any part of the display, which could be the path to Apple abandoning the home button altogether.
A separate patent describes a way for a wearable device to sense ambient light levels through the user’s skin. It’s clear from the patent that it’s designed with devices like the Apple Watch in mind, given their already limited internal space and lack of any real bezel to hide an ambient light sensor behind.
Testing of the sapphire lens covering the camera on the iPhone reveals that it’s not pure sapphire, at least not all the way through. There’s less sapphire on the inside than there is on the outside, and a scratch test reveals it scores less than pure sapphire does on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness.
Universal search on the Apple TV has expanded to a few more countries, including Mexico, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands. For us Aussies, both the ABC iView and Plus7 apps get universal search, along with the current repertoire of Stan, Netflix, and all of iTunes also available in universal search.
The second beta of iOS 10.1 has been seeded to developers, and doubtless we’ll see a release to members of Apple’s public beta testing program in the next day or so.
Similarly, the third beta of macOS 10.12.1 Sierra has been released to members of Apple’s public beta testing program, which comes one day after Apple released the beta to developers.
The good, the bad, and the ugly of iCloud Desktop and Documents in macOS Sierra makes it sound a lot worse than it actually is. I mean, all the feature does is put your Desktop and Documents folders in iCloud Drive so they’re available on all your devices, but as they say, the devil is in the details.
The Mac Observer tells you how to get more information about the CPU in your Mac using Terminal. The model number in particular lets you match it up with Intel’s model number.
The new button-less home button in the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus is pretty great. Haptic feedback makes up most of the feeling that you would have gotten from pressing a physical button, no moving parts is definitely an advantage. It’ll still feel weird when you have your iPhone flat on a desk and press on it, but apart from that, it’s pretty good.
