Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/02/tuesday-morning-news140217/
Apple is now listed as a member of the Wireless Power Consortium, lending credence to rumours that this year’s iPhone will feature wireless charging. Membership of the WPC promises use of a single wireless charging standard, known as Qi, even though Apple already uses its own version of Qi for the Apple Watch that means you can’t use other Qi-compatible chargers with it. It’s entirely possible Apple will do the same for the iPhone, but Apple has confirmed their WPC membership saying that it allows them to contribute ideas to wireless charging.
Ming-Chi Kuo says this year’s OLED model iPhone will feature something called a stacked logic board design. The stacked logic board design will separate the SoC and radio components, similar to the original iPhone, allowing for a battery as large as the Plus-sized iPhone in a form factor that’s similar to the 4.7-inch device.
A new submission to the ACCC from the banks who don’t currently offer Apple Pay (Commonwealth Bank, NAB, Westpac, Bendigo Bank, and Adelaide Bank) says they’re now focused on gaining open access to the NFC feature that powers contactless payments. The banks say they’re “ready, willing, and able” to participate in Apple Pay just as soon as Apple allows them to have their own mobile payments solutions on the iPhone.
Prince’s Warner Brothers catalog is now available on Apple Music and other streaming music services. Price previously pulled the majority of his music from streaming services, opting for an exclusive with Tidal in 2015. Now that exclusivity period has ended, you can now get Prince on Apple Music and Spotify.
Over at Ars Technica, a developer of DTrace and ZFS takes Apple’s APFS for a spin. With snapshots being one of the major advantages of Apple’s next-generation file system, the good news is that they seem to work as advertised in the AFPS technical preview, even though APFS won’t become widespread until Apple releases iOS 10.3 as early as next month.
Dan Counsell’s review of the subscription-based Setapp says there’s quite a few benefits to subscribing to a Mac app package, especially when the apps purchased individually would cost you well into the thousands. There’s a free month-long trial if you want to see if the package works for you, and being able to cancel your subscription at any time is also a major plus.
Rogue Amoeba pulled Piezo from the Mac App Store, and since doing so, they’ve sold less units but generated more revenue for the last few quarters, due to not having to pay Apple’s 30% cut.
PhotoSweeper X comes recommended by Tools and Toys for quickly scanning through a massive photo library. It lets you rid your photo collection of similar or duplicate photos, allowing you to filter by when the photos were taken so you can quickly cull, and what’s more, it works with Photos, iPhoto, Aperture, or Lightroom.
Dan Moren thinks Apple needs to do three things to make Apple Music more attractive than it currently is. Curiously, none of his recommendations are “more exclusives” — instead, Moren thinks Apple should fix iTunes, improve AirPlay, and make a speaker.
Apple’s first look at Carpool Karaoke gives us a look at some of the celebrity pairings that will be featured as part of the series. There’s still no release date for the series, but we can all look forward to this one soon.