Wednesday Morning News

Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/03/wednesday-morning-news150317/

An investigation has found that Apple’s Russian arm fixed prices for iPhones illegally. The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service found that Apple Russia contacted retailers, telling them to hold the price of iPhones, saying that it would contact them if they found their prices to be inappropriate, with Apple also suspected of terminating trade agreements with retailers who refused to comply. No penalty has been set, but it could be as much as 15% of Apple’s sales in Russia.

MacRumors has a roundup of iPhone concepts and designs. None of these represent the final design of the next iPhone, but it’s fun to imagine an iPhone with any display bezels, one with a function bar at the bottom, or vastly reduced bezels on the top and bottom.

A new rumour from DigiTimes says Apple will unveil the 10.5-inch iPad at an event in early April. While it would be nice to announce new iPads along with the opening of Apple Park, the Steve Jobs Theater won’t open until later this year, so it’s unclear where this event will be held, although Apple has plenty of locations for events they’ve used in the past.

Security researcher Jonathan Zdziarski has joined Apple. Announced on his personal blog, Zdziarski said he has accepted a position with Apple’s Security Engineering and Architecture team, and he’s “very excited to be working with a group of like minded individuals so passionate about protecting the security and privacy of others”.

While the iOS and macOS beta releases have their developer and public betas synced up, it looks like the accompanying tvOS and watchOS beta releases are slightly out of sync. But no matter, no matter — both tvOS 10.2 beta 6 and watchOS 3.2 beta 6 have been released to developers.

9to5Mac has a guide on managing and upgrading your iCloud storage. There have been calls for Apple to increase iCloud storage per device signed into your iCloud account, but that would be a management nightmare. Besides, 200GB of iCloud storage — a very generous amount — is an extra $5 per month. If you truly need extra storage, that’s not a cost for you.

A tip from Kirk McElhearn tells us to stop auto-playing HTML5 video in every browser on macOS. Chrome and Firefox both require plugins, but Safari can disable inline video after a quick trip to the Terminal. There’s even instructions for the Safari Technology Preview, if you also run that as a browser.

Six Colors tells us that a motion-sensing Hue was unable to be used as a light-sensing switch. But thanks to Hue Labs, Philip’s beta test playground, the Hue motion sensor can now be used as a light-sensitivity switch.

MacStories tells us about the clamshell iBooks G3. In the 2x2 grid of desktop and portable Apple products for consumers and professionals, the clamshell iBook G3 was the portable for consumers. They were used to introduce wireless networking, being the machine that Phil Schiller jumped from a platform on stage with, and perhaps the only machine to grace the stage with a hula-hoop.

The Verge says the Apple Watch is still the best designed smartwatch. That’s high praise, given the competition, and a similarly-modular design of other smartwatches lacks the price advantage that the Apple Watch has.