Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/05/tuesday-morning-news020517/
The first third-party case for the next iPhone has leaked, and sure enough, it follows the recent trend of vertically-aligned dual camera lenses on the rear of the device. Notably, there’s also no rear Touch ID sensor, and the rest of the buttons, speaker grilles, and cutouts all seem to be pretty normal. Meanwhile, a mould and diagram of the iPhone layout also seems to suggest vertically-aligned dual camera lenses will be a feature of the next iPhone.
If you have a first-generation Apple Watch, Apple has extended the warranty coverage to three years to cover you for an expanded/swollen battery issue. Technically the service article from Apple claims an additional two years over the original one, so it’s unclear how the extended warranty works in Australia when we already have two years under Australian Consumer Law, although I’d suspect we still get an additional year for a total of three years coverage from the original date of purchase.
It’s said Apple will start selling the iPhone SE via its own online store in India, before it opens up physical brick-and-mortar stores in the country. Manufacturing of the iPhone SE will also begin happening in India, with production expected to hit 300,000 to 400,000 units, presumably per year.
As part of Apple’s ongoing court battles with Qualcomm, the company has stopped paying royalties. Apple claims Qualcomm has been charging excessively high patent licensing fees for years, and so they are no longer paying them until a court decides how much it owes. As a result, Qualcomm has had to adjust its revenue guidance for the next quarter, dropping $500 million due to Apple.
A new partnership between Apple Music and music video app Musical.ly sees Apple Music being one of the services that supplies the music to go along with your video. Musical.ly will promote Apple Music to users, and Apple Music subscribers will be able to play full songs within the app, although Recode says Musical.ly’s popularity may have already peaked.
It’s said Apple’s standalone Siri speaker will borrow design cues from the Mac Pro, and it’s easy to imagine an AirPort-like device that has integrated Siri functionality, although the rumour says that the Amazon Echo and Google home competitor will have a concave top with physical controls.
Apple has asked for changes to the terms and conditions that allow it to test autonomous vehicles on Californian public roads. In a submission to the California DMV, Apple requests changes to the reports that would allow it to include slightly less information, in order to not cause public alarm about how autonomous vehicle testing is going.
Macworld seems to think Apple going after a peer-to-peer payment solution is a great idea, because it’s mostly an unsolved problem. That’s not saying Apple’s solution would be perfect, but at the very least they’d have a unique take on it and bring the idea of peer-to-peer payments into the mainstream.
Good Reads for the month just gone by had an article from Ars Technica about what Apple’s upcoming Mac Pro refresh could look like. But the rising popularity of Hackintoshes means that Apple should probably just go ahead and make an expandable, versatile Mac tower that lets users use their own components, while still offering thin-and-light laptops for that crowd.
Apple’s latest iPhone ad tells us about portrait mode on the iPhone 7 Plus, which lets you focus on the subject even in a busy city environment.