Wednesday Morning News

Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/07/wednesday-morning-news060716/
ios_10_messages_app_storeThe Wall Street Journal reports Apple will be ditching the 16GB storage option in the base iPhone in favour of 32GB. 16GB never made a whole lot of sense given the 4K video recording capabilities of the iPhone 6s, and alongside increased megapixel counts and rumoured dual cameras, the move will be welcomed by those who don’t think they’ll need the rumoured 64GB or 128GB options.

Apple will be bringing organ, eye, and tissue donation to iOS 10. A partnership with the American organisation Donate Life America means that the Health app in iOS 10 will allow opt-in organ donation from within the app. The news appears to be localised to the US for now, but there’s no reason Apple can’t partner with similar organisations outside of the US.

The second beta of macOS Sierra has been seeded to developers. The only change discovered thus far is the Auto Unlock feature, which wasn’t available in the first beta. Auto Unlock requires an Apple Watch running a beta of watchOS 3, and 9to5Mac has a video of how it all works.

The second developer beta of iOS 10 has also landed. The release mostly has a bunch of minor changes, such as tweaks to 3D Touch shortcuts from the home screen, or the Music app now supporting dynamic type sizing, or the ability to send lower-quality images in Messages. There’s still no word on when the iOS 10 or macOS Sierra public beta will be available, with the Apple website still saying sometime “later this month”.

Like macOS Sierra and iOS 10, watchOS 3 and tvOS 10 also get their second developer betas today. There’s no word on any significant changes yet within those beta releases, but if there is, we’ll probably hear about them tomorrow.

Rumour has it Apple are expanding their part suppliers, forcing existing manufacturing partners to accept lower prices for fear of losing orders to a competitor. Lower part quotes are also being utilised by Apple in order to keep profit margins high, with Chinese manufacturers also seeking to broaden their clients in order to have stable profits.

A 9to5Mac writer has resigned himself to the fact that his next machine will be worse than his current one, a 17-inch MacBook Pro. While the chances of Apple bringing the 17-inch back into production are slim, it’s the lack of upgradeability that hurts the most. But haven’t we been over this already?

Tidbits has myths and misconceptions about macOS Sierra, and their points bear repeating here. No one, including Apple, is forcing you to upgrade, and just because you don’t want the new features, that doesn’t mean they’re useless. Apple isn’t abandoning professionals because of an OS update, and that Apple is furthering the Mac when it represents such a small business for them (compared to iOS) is something to celebrate.

A story from Ars Technica tells us about how the graphical interface of Macs and the power of apps made them more useful than other early computers.

Queue more privileged, first-world folks (mostly men) complaining that Apple did not do what they wanted…