Tuesday Morning News

Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2018/05/tuesday-morning-news010518/

A Barclays analyst thinks this year’s iPhone will not include a Lightning to Headphone Jack adapter in the box. It’s been a couple of years since iPhones have had a headphone jack, so perhaps it’s about time Apple stopped giving us the option. Chances are, even if the Lightning to Headphone Jack adapter isn’t included in the box, you’ll still be able to buy one separately.

Everyone’s favourite analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has left KGI Securities, leaving a noticeable hole in the world of Apple rumours. It’s said that Kuo will be covering companies other than Apple at his new place of employment, meaning that we can expect a relative quiet over the next month as someone else takes his place at the top of the Apple rumours pile.

Perhaps it’s time for some old favourites to share the spotlight. Favourites like Digitimes, who claim that this year’s 13-inch Retina MacBook Air is unlikely to launch at WWDC this year. Production of the updated MacBook Air has reportedly been pushed back to Q3, and while it’s said that the laptop will be an updated MacBook Air, Apple could have something else up their sleeve.

AppleInsider claims to have the numbers on butterfly keyboard failure rates, which they say has been collected from service data for MacBook Pros released in 2014, 2015, and 2016, and a smaller data set for machines released in 2017. The 2016 MacBook Pro appears to be failing twice as often within the first year of use as its 2014 or 2015 counterparts, with the overall keyboard-related failure rate still just under 12%. I’m incredibly interested to know how they managed to get the data.

An implementation of the Apple Newton Dock protocol in Swift is definitely one phrase I wasn’t expecting to read today, but here we are. I’m not sure what, exactly, you would do with this particular Swift package, but I’m sure it’ll be interesting to someone.

The Bear 1.5 update includes improvements to note management aspects of the app. Tag and note archiving may not be the most glamorous options, but along with additional note export options and a bunch of other minor changes, they add up to welcome usability changes.

Somewhat hilariously, Google says they’ll be updating Inbox for iOS for the larger display size of the iPhone X “soon”. It’s said Google did some crazy interface things with Inbox which completely broke with the release of the iPhone X, so the update is taking a little longer than expected. Evidently, Gmail’s UI was either a lot simpler or just had more priority internally at Google.

There’s a new Harry Potter title available on iOS, with some of the voice actors from the original movies reprising their roles in the game. But that’s just about where the good news ends, with Macworld saying Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery feels like it was designed by Voldemort himself. Unfortunately, the only mystery here is why the developers chose to make in-app purchases as pervasive as they did; which is a shame, seeing as the rest of the game is not bad.

Dan Frakes picked up an iPhone 8 Plus after five months of iPhone X ownership. While Frakes admits there are real advantages of the iPhone X, the iPhone 8 Plus screen offers real usability differences compared to the one on the iPhone X, plus there’s less minor annoyances such as the awkward Control Centre gesture or accidentally taking screenshots. After reading his take, I’m one step closer to understanding why people want a Plus-sized iPhone X — but I just can’t give up the perfect white back, black front, and chrome edge combination of the iPhone X.

An old video pointed out by The Loop is an interview with Steve Jobs from October 1997, following him joining the company after a tumultuous year which included Apple purchasing NeXT in February, the ousting of then Apple-CEO Gil Amelio in July, and the naming of Jobs as interim CEO in September.

Stop right there. Since when has anything any “analyst” said about Apple been at all useful, let alone worthy news?

While analysts often get it wrong, I think they play an important role in the Apple rumour-sphere. I’d place them up there with supply chain rumours in terms of overall contributions to Apple rumours, which are the other half of the equation of Apple news.