Tuesday Morning News

Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2018/05/tuesday-morning-news080518/

20 years ago last Saturday, the iMac was unveiled by Steve Jobs. Newsweek had the original exclusive, telling us the story of how the iMac was the product of Steve Jobs’ return to the helm at Apple, following years of internal turmoil and confusion about where the company was. The consumer-focused iMac was the answer to all of that, cementing Apple’s longer-term strategy and beginning an impressive rise to the top.

Apple CEO Tim Cook also celebrated the 20th anniversary of the iMac by tweeting a short 30-second clip of the original announcement. In the clip, Jobs told us all about the “so cool” design of the iMac, which featured USB ports, an optical drive, and a back that looked better than the front of every other computer at the time.

9to5Mac has a look back at the iMac’s 20 years of design iteration. The translucent colourful plastic shell was a stark contrast to the beige of computers at the time, with even more colours — including Bondi Blue — being introduced a few years after the originals. The lampshade iMac signalled the introduction of LCD technology and still remains one of the most iconic machines to this day, and the all-in-one design of the iMac G5s hasn’t changed all that much today.

Six Colors has a similar story about the iMac, the computer that ended up changing Apple’s fate. They point out the first 30 minutes of Steve Jobs’ original iMac presentation was him convincing the crowd that the company was now doing OK, and that the iMac would be the computer to carry Apple to never-before-seen heights. The iMac wasn’t just for existing Mac users, it was a computer for everyone. There’s probably some interesting parallel to be drawn between the internet-focused iMac and the iPhone of today.

Apple has acknowledged a microphone issue affecting some iPhone 7 and 7 Plus devices. Affected devices show a greyed-out speaker button on phone calls, with Apple’s advice to authorised service providers being to first disconnect any Bluetooth and audio accessories, then running a diagnostic to confirm the issue. Curiously, the issue only appears to affect devices running iOS 11.3 or later.

A new rumour claims Apple will launch a device with three rear cameras next year. I mean, anything is possible, but I’m not sure the space required for triple lenses on the rear of the device would outweigh the advantages of having a 3x zoom level.

The fourth developer betas of iOS 11.4, macOS 10.13.5, tvOS 11.4, and watchOS 4.3.1 have been released, with their open beta counterparts surely not far behind. Very few user-facing changes are expected in this release, with the main features being the inclusion of Messages in iCloud and AirPlay 2.

It’s claimed that Apple’s HomePod will be getting Calendar support in iOS 11.4. At the moment, Siri on the HomePod only supports Messages, Reminders, and Notes, with Apple’s decision to only support a single device being one of the major criticisms of the HomePod. The new Personal Requests setup screen now lists the Calendar icon as well as the aforementioned apps.

Shifty Jelly announced a new partnership for Pocket Casts on Friday, with a combined group of some of the biggest names in podcasting partnering with the company for the greater good of the podcasting industry as a whole. The announcement is pretty light on details about what they’ll be doing, or what this means for Shifty Jelly’s other app, but they seem to think they’re doing the right thing, just now with a whole lot more resources backing them.

Applications for The Orchard are now open. Should you wish to apply for a year-long stint at the Marketing Communications group at Apple, you should get your application in before June 1 and for everyone outside of the US, also ensure that you are legally allowed to work in the United States.