Tuesday Morning News

Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/10/tuesday-morning-news101017/

There’s not that much difference between this year’s Apple TV 4K and the one from 2015. Besides adding 4K and HDR support, there’s also a few minor details that now allow the Apple TV to support AirPods, as well as a tiny white border around the menu button, as detailed in Ars Technica’s review. Perhaps more importantly, with every revision of the Apple TV, Apple gets closer to its vision of the ideal home entertainment device, whether the content companies want to play along or not.

The EFF has spoken out about the misleading iOS 11 Control Centre, which doesn’t turn off the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth radios, but merely disconnects you from whatever network or device you’re currently connected to. They claim it’s a security risk in today’s world of untrusted wireless networks and compromised Bluetooth devices, saying that the only way to turn off the actual Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios is to head into Settings.

The latest rumour from the Apple blogosphere says Face ID could be coming to next year’s iPad Pros. Depth-sensing face recognition technology is one thing, but I won’t consider Face ID to be a success until I can store a copy of my face in a secure enclave and have it age while my own remains the same.

The second betas of iOS 11.1, macOS High Sierra 10.13.1, tvOS 11.1, and watchOS 4.1 have been released to developers and members of Apple’s public beta testing program. AppleInsider says it’s likely iOS 11.1 will launch with the iPhone X in about a month.

Meanwhile, MacRumors notes that the 3D Touch app switching gesture has made a comeback in iOS 11.1 beta 2. The feature was intentionally removed by Apple during the iOS 11 beta testing process, they say, with Craig Federighi explaining it as a technical issue and that the feature would eventually return.

Apple’s support article on deploying apps in a business environment has a link to download iTunes 12.6.3, a version that includes support for the App Store and one that doesn’t prompt you to update to the latest consumer version, 12.7, which doesn’t have the App Store. Might be worth keeping a copy around if you’re working with iTunes in an enterprise environment.

Any designer will tell you that design is in the details, and the developers of Castro have a few design details on how they implemented drag and drop within their podcast client. From making the right things pop-out when dragging, to showing better previews, and showing drop targets, the iOS 11 drag and drop experience is something that developers will have to implement carefully.

Macworld’s Dan Moren speculates Apple is probably working on a heads-up display for AR. It seems plausible enough, given the focus that Apple is giving AR on keynotes and on-stage, so a headset that lets you experience AR all the time seems like the next logical progression.

But by the same token, maybe Apple is right to undersell AR. Even though it’s getting a little time on stage with demos, in the real world AR isn’t perfect, and a lot of a magic goes away when things aren’t scaled properly to fit in your particular world.

In a world where everyone wants to get you to subscribe to their thing, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed about how many subscriptions you have. The good news is, if you want to track your subscriptions, there’s now an app for that.