Wednesday Morning News

Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/07/wednesday-morning-news200716/

AppleInsider casts doubt on recent iPhone part leaks, which were supposed to show the redesigned camera holes and antenna bands of this year’s iPhone. Instead, they claim that recent part leaks are simply mockups of a design from an Apple manufacturing partner and not an actual part, throwing their entire authenticity into doubt. Note that all of this is pretty normal for Apple rumours.

The US Special Operations Command is swapping out the Android devices currently handed out as part of the Android Tactical Assault Kit. The Android-based kit will be replaced with an iPhone 6S, with an unnamed spokesperson saying that the iPhone was faster, smoother, and less prone to locking up when being used to view a live feed from an overhead UAV.

The recent iOS 9.3.3 and OS X 10.11.6 releases fixed an issue where a supposedly terminated FaceTime call could be kept alive, forcing transmission of audio data. The fix was included as part of the security content released by Apple, which also covers watchOS 2.2.2 and tvOS 9.2.2.

Apple Pay has gone live in France, bringing the total number of countries currently supported by Apple Pay to eight. Four French banks support adding both MasterCard and Visa credit and debit cards, with two more banks joining their ranks very soon.

Apple has been granted a patent for placing antennas between the main and display sections of a Mac laptop. Apple’s patent suggests that burying Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antennas in the hinge area could mean better reception and wireless performance, and 9to5Mac notes that the patent also specifically mentions cellular antennas, too.

Analysis of a recently-released research note on Apple Watch sales and comparing to previous sales estimates has revealed that Apple Watch sales are still going strong after 15 months, despite the lack of a new model. Neil Cybart has previously claimed that the Apple Watch is already a $10 billion business.

MacStories checks out the new Glif tripod mount from Studio Neat, which comes with two new accessories to take your iPhone photography to the next level. No promises it’ll make you a better Pokémon trainer, but the kit might help you to take slightly better photos.

9to5Mac have some improvement suggestions for Control Center, which they say could lean a lot from how Android does notifications and shortcut drawers.

Stephen Hackett writes about software rot, which is the most difficult aspect of historic computing to combat. Hardware repairs can be difficult at times — a lack of parts, presumably, or the expertise required — but even if you can preserve the hardware, there’s just no guarantee you’ll be able to run Mac OS 9 on your old iMac.

If you followed WWDC at all this year, you would have seen the wall, a massive wall of text starting with “Hello” followed by phrase that identifies a particular app. Martin Donell of Lyft took a series of shots, and in a blog post, details how he reverse-engineered the wall. The digital replica, while not as physical as the real thing, is equally as cool.

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I don’t know what I expected from that article, but it was more than that. The article mentions the iPhone 4 bumper app as an example of “software rot” since it doesn’t work anymore thanks to the back end infrastructure it relies upon not being in place anymore. I get that that is a limiting factor and as more and more applications incorporate an online “cloud” component it’s more and more likely that this will happen. DRM can be a problem too with games (or other software) which requires an online authorisation. There are already cases of lack of network connectivity (or sometimes just the maker blindly cutting off support) which means you can’t activate and use that software. Sometimes you get lucky and the maker puts out a patch to get around the limitation but in many cases it’s the “old” version so it’s assumed no one cares about.