Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/03/wednesday-morning-news010317/
A paywalled article at the Wall Street Journal claims the next iPhone will have a curved OLED display and a USB-C charging port. While that would certainly fulfil all of our wildest fantasies, Apple dropping Lightning for USB-C seems like a very strange move, especially so soon after releasing Lightning-compatible EarPods. The curved OLED display isn’t a big deal — after all, OLED has been rumoured for months now, and curved displays are the flavour of the month.
Apple has been granted a patent for a fingerprint reader embedded into the display, paving the way for the bottom feature bar that was previously rumoured. This embedded fingerprint sensor would remove the need for a separate Touch ID sensor located at a specific place on the front of the device, and also allow for a more seamless experience when authenticating, as the device would be able to read the fingerprint already on the display.
Ars Technica tells us the tale of a suspicious antivirus installer package for the Mac, which prompts users to install it using an override designed to allow untrusted certificates to run. As it turns out, nothing malicious was happening here, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be keeping a keen eye out for any shenanigans when it comes to certificates or installer files.
At Apple’s annual shareholders meeting, Apple CEO Tim Cook referred to AirPods as a “cultural phenomenon” that posed no health and safety issues. Cook also promised the shareholders that the company was going to “do more in the pro area”, saying that neither something Apple had done or was doing was a signal about misaligned priorities.
Dan Frakes writes about AirPods after two months, separating aspects into the bad, the debatable, the good, and the great. He points out that one of the AirPods major strengths — the ability to seamlessly connect and switch between multiple devices — was overlooked by many early reviewers, but is a huge drawcard for people that connect to a myriad of devices to listen to music.
In case you’re after some more animated stickers for iMessage, Rando Emoji has selections of animated text-based emojis.
Over at Medium, Adam Howell says that not only is the iMessage App Store dying, it might already be dead. Sticker discoverability is awful, there are way too many taps involved to even start using stickers, for starters. Luckily, Howell also has suggestions on improving iMessage app usability.
MacStories has a review of RAW Power, a powerful image editor that is neither the cataloging replacement for Lightroom, Aperture, or Photos that you were looking for, but instead an image editing powerhouse that can be used as a standalone app or as a Photos extension. And when its lead developer was formerly the Senior Director of Engineering for Aperture and iPhoto, it makes RAW Power worth a look.
The Verge tells us how to better use the Mac menubar for productivity. It’s no surprise Bartender makes an appearance for hiding away the useful, but less-frequently-used menu bar apps, but there’s plenty of other cool utilities you wouldn’t find on an iOS device.
Apple’s latest iPad Pro ad tells us about how the iPad Pro lets you do away with printing, with the sign and send capabilities of the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil.