Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2018/07/tuesday-morning-news170718/
Key sales executives have left Apple’s operations in India, following lacklustre sales of iPhones in the region. Bloomberg’s reporting on the issue paints a grim picture for Apple’s sales strategy in a market that seems more attracted to the cheapest devices possible and not necessarily what’s “best”. Selling devices a few generations old in an attempt to hit key price points was always going to be a bit of a bet, but it’s possible that this will turn out to be more of a stumble than a stall.
Today is World Emoji Day, and Apple is celebrating by showing off the diversity they’re including as part of iOS 12. More than 70 new emojis are coming in the update, with new hair options (curly, redhead, or no hair at all), as well as new options for expressing feelings (cold, party, and a face with hearts).
The full teardown of the 13-inch 2018 MacBook Pro gives us a behind-the-scenes look at Apple’s latest laptop. While this machine and its previous generation look identical externally, there are minor changes internally including a slightly bigger battery, and a different 61W USB-C power adapter, which has redesigned internals of its own. Like its predecessor, the new MacBook Pro scores a 1 on their repairability scale, but you already knew that.
Even with the silicon addition to the keyboard to help dampen key noise and keep out dust and debris, Apple says you can’t get a 2018 keyboard put on your previous-generation MacBook Pro; the new keyboard is exclusive to that machine. Not only that, but it seems major repairs for the machines can’t happen in-store until September. Minor components won’t be able to be repaired until later this month, with replacement keys being available in August, which AppleInsider says is pretty standard for a new machine.
The good news is, benchmarks of the latest MacBook Pro say that it has the biggest yearly performance gain of any MacBook Pro since 2011. The scores say the 13-inch now offers the same performance as the 15-inch from the previous year, and as pointed out by Steven Frank, the new hexa-core Core i9 processor in the 15-inch model puts it within striking distance of the 10-core iMac Pro for about two-thirds of the cost.
Shopify’s demo of how AR technology has the potential to change online shopping by being able to preview items in the real world is pretty wild. Shopify plans to support USDZ models of products, allowing prospective customers to view them in AR without leaving the page, so people can get a better idea of how that new thing will look with all of their other things.
The iPhone X has a Suica problem. It’s not something that would be widely publicised outside of Japan, but it’s unclear whether it’s an issue with iOS or with the iPhone X hardware, but whatever it is, it’s annoying enough that there’s plenty of complaints online about the issue that seem specific to the iPhone X.
MacStories has a look back at ten years of App Store gaming. One third of the original titles that debuted on the App Store at launch were games, and while their piece doesn’t give us much history, there’s some great commentary about how the iPhone has allowed new categories of games to emerge, as well as opening up the gates for millions of freemium titles.
Trism was there when the App Store debuted ten years ago, and in two months, the smart sliding puzzler had made $250,000. Although Trism 2 was originally announced a few months after the original release, it’s taken about ten years for it to be released, but the unfortunate thing is, 2018 is a vastly different marketplace for iOS games.
Three new “Close Your Rings” ads from Apple’s Australian YouTube channel tell us about closing your activity rings through everyday activities.
