Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/06/wednesday-morning-news290616/
Fastcodesign’s John Brownlee spoke to Apple director of software engineering for location and motion technologies about the year-long journey to optimising watchOS for wheelchair users. Support wheelchair users and allowing them to track their fitness and activity as much as everyone else was important to Apple, a company that’s been traditionally better than average on pushing accessibility features to the forefront.
Apple has also invited retail employees in wheelchairs to test watchOS 3. MacRumors notes that retail employees have been invited to test iOS and macOS betas in the past, but watchOS is a special case due to not being able to be downgraded without a special adapter, something I’m assuming Apple Stores have access to.
One of the new features in the companion Watch app on your iOS device is the Face Gallery, which allows the customisation of your Apple Watch face from your iPhone. It also shows you every version of watch faces that have more than one main feature or layout, giving you a better birds-eye overview of the possibilities.
Speculation surrounding conservative chip orders for Apple’s next iPhone suggest that Apple doesn’t expect the handset to sell very well. With recent reports also predicting lower-than-ever iPhone sales due to a declining market and a lack of innovation in this year’s iPhone, it remains to be seen whether Apple will be able to sell as many iPhone as it expects.
MacStories reviews iOS app Pennies, which helps you keep track of how much you’re spending in specific areas. By tracking where you spend your money, Pennies can be a kind of budgeting.
A man in Florida has sued Apple for over $10 billion, alleging that Apple infringes on his patents for a reading device from 20 years ago. Interestingly, AppleInsider points out other “frivolous” lawsuits, but $10 billion is an insane amount of money.
AppleInsider also discovered an Apple patent which tells us about Apple’s potential plans for micro-LEDs in upcoming devices. The actual patent is concerned with “micro device with stabilisation post”, which appears to be some manufacturing method.
A primer on LCDs, OLEDs, quantum dots, and micro-LEDs from The Mac Observer breaks down the major differences between the types of screen technologies.
Apple’s latest series of shot on iPhone ads focus on colour, with the bright and vibrant colours of iPhone photography heading to a billboard near you.
Another iPhone part leak shows off the bottom of the device, which now comes sans headphone jack. In its place is a secondary speaker — while some might question the value of another speaker, I remember seeing something saying that the majority of videos on the iPhone are played via the speaker, not via headphones or Bluetooth devices.