Tuesday Morning News

Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2018/09/tuesday-morning-news250918/

Today’s the day anyone can download macOS Mojave, which introduces some nice refinements to the overall Mac experience and paves the way for the future. There are great new user-facing features like Dark Mode and Stacks on the desktop to help you stay organised, and certain apps have been re-written using Apple’s Marzipan framework to allow iOS apps to be ported across to the Mac with minimal work. Ars Technica has the detailed review of macOS Mojave, covering all the changes, new features, and the context surrounding them so you can better understand some of the thinking behind them.

But put that one on your Instapaper list for now, as most outlets can recommend upgrading to macOS Mojave on day one given that it doesn’t contain any changes significant enough to break something you use day-to-day. That’s not to say that it won’t, but that it’s unlikely to. Succinct reviews of all of the headlining features from both Six Colors and TechCrunch tell us about the usefulness of being able to organise stuff on your desktop based on kind, relative dates, the new user interface options including dark mode and new accent colours, as well as improvements to taking screenshots give you a pretty good idea of what Apple were trying to do.

Apple has announced its acquisition of Shazam to the world, and they say that the app will soon become ad-free for all users. It’s still hard to know where Shazam fits into Apple’s overall music strategy, but the press release hints at new methods of music discovery and experiences, so maybe that’s where Apple’s going with this one.

Apple also announced a partnership with Salesforce this morning. The move will enable Apple to sell more devices that integrate better with the world’s major CRM platform, with Salesforce offering exclusive new features on iOS, the introduction of a new Salesforce Mobile SDK, and a new iOS development course on Salesforce’s free web-based learning platform, Trailhead. It’s another in what’s undoubtedly a long line of strategic partnerships between the world’s largest company by market cap and key business partners.

A teardown of the Apple Watch Series 4 reveals minor internal changes to go along with the Apple Watch’s first major redesign. There’s a 17% smaller capacity battery by Watt-hour (although Apple still says it will last the full 18 hours as the Series 3), and a thinner Taptic Engine, larger speaker module — nothing too unexpected all up, and the overall reparability of the Series 4 is even up compared to previous iterations.

This is likely not news for anyone that has gone through the setup process on a new Apple Watch Series 4, but fall detection is turned off by default unless you’ve told your Health app that you’re age 65 or over. Apple’s support article on using fall detection mostly tells you about the options you get when the Apple Watch has detected a fall, and within the Watch app there’s paragraphs of caveats on the feature including how the Apple Watch can’t detect all falls, and may produce false positives if you’re more physically active.

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says the iPhone XS Max is significantly outselling the iPhone XS, with the 256GB model being the most popular. The newly-introduced 512GB model is under serious constraints due to Samsung being the sole supplier of the NAND flash used in that model, and Kuo also claims Apple Watch Series 4 demand is “much better than expected”.

The iPhone XS Max has also taken home DisplayMate’s best smartphone display award thanks in part to its near-perfect calibration and performance. There’s plenty of detailed results for you to peruse, although I’m surprised at some of the superlatives bestowed upon the display of the iPhone XS Max — “highest absolute colour accuracy”, “visually indistinguishable from perfect”, “highest contrast ratio (infinite)”.

A trio of new radio technologies introduced with the iPhone XS and XS Max have seen notable improvements in wireless performance. 4x4 MIMO provides double the throughput of the iPhone X, with QAM and LAA assisting to eke every iota of performance from a data connection, making the overall device capable of utilising faster data connections where available.

Australia’s second redesigned Apple Store will be Robina on the Gold Coast, with the new store opening this Saturday at a new location within Robina Town Centre. Like Chadstone, the redesigned Robina store is expected to feature large open spaces, accessory walls made from wood panels, and maybe even a large LED wall display.

I wonder why I am able to download Mojave to a machine with which it is not compatible (2010 Macbook White)… I would have thought the system would detect incompatibility and not offer it up. I’ve never been in this position before, so I dont know what the norm is.

I recall something so similar in the dim dark past. Maybe in the classic MacOS era? I know they had spring loaded folders, but I’m sure there was a way of “stacking” files together on the desktop as well.

Apple’s Advanced Technologies Group came up with Piles, but I’m not sure it ever shipped?

They’ve been sitting on piles all this time?

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