Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/12/tuesday-morning-news061216/
Apple has seeded the sixth beta of iOS 10.2 to developers and public beta testers. No word on a release to the general public, but if I had to guess it would be within the next two weeks.
The fifth beta of watchOS 3.1.1 has also been released to developers only, owing to the lack of a public beta testing program for the Apple Watch. It’s a fairly minor release that mostly keeps the watch up to date with the changes in emoji on the phone, including new skin tone selection for some emojis and new emoji that’s part of the iOS 10.2 release.
The new emoji are also present in the fifth beta of macOS 10.12.2, which has also been released to developers and members of Apple’s public beta testing program.
Burglars have smashed a car into the Palo Alto Apple Store, stealing Mac computers, iPhones, and iPads. According to reports, between eight and ten people were involved in the theft, of which police later apprehended four after the crash disabled the 2016 Kia used in the burglary.
The beta iCloud website gives us a preview of new features coming to the web-based iCloud.com photos app, which now features a sidebar and thumbnail scrubber. Both features are designed to enable easier navigation for users, and should be available to all users soon.
Jean-Louise Gassée’s follow-up piece to the Macintosh Endgame tells us about how Scott Forstall took the core parts of OS X and made it run on a portable device with much less computing power and resources. Perhaps the end result of all of this is that we have phones that are our computers, phones that then plug into all of our peripherals via some kind of dock.
Over at Macworld, Jason Snell says Apple is unlikely to make an ARM-powered Mac due to many iOS-only idiosyncrasies that Macs don’t have. Not that only having a single port would be that much of a problem to overcome, but a processor transition is a big deal.
Jason Snell also writes about recording a podcast locally without a Mac, over at Six Colors. His preferred method is where you’ll need an iPhone to talk on Skype, whilst simultaneously recording yourself on a microphone plugged into an iPad.
The latest update to RunKeeper lets you track workouts with the embedded GPS in the Apple Watch Series 2, letting you leave your iPhone behind.