Wednesday Morning News

Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/10/wednesday-morning-news181017/

With reports of Apple’s first iPhone X shipment only containing 46,500 units of the iPhone with an OLED edge-to-edge display, it’s relatively good news to hear of further supply chain rumours that claim the manufacturing bottleneck contributing to the shortage will be resolved before Christmas. While that still means iPhone X stock is unlikely to be anywhere near demand until well into 2018, that’s kind of what we were expecting anyway, right?

Earlier this week Apple released the third developer betas of iOS 11.1, watchOS 4.1, and tvOS 11.1. Identical versions were also released to members of Apple’s public beta testing program not too long after.

You might have heard about the Wi-Fi vulnerability that affects WPA2 encryption. The good news is, it’s something you can patch from both a client and server perspective, and Apple has already patched the vulnerability in the latest betas of iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. There will probably be some push to release these patches slightly earlier, but with Apple rumoured to be testing the Apple Pay Cash feature announced with Apple Retail employees, that may or may not happen.

Apple’s response to a US Senator’s privacy concerns about Face ID point to existing public info about how Face ID (and other Apple technologies) protect customer privacy and keep your data secure. Face ID data never leaves the device, and once an image of your face is captured, analysed, and compared to the stored version, it is immediately discarded. Apple also prides itself on ensuring Face ID works with a diverse range of races and ethnicities.

Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue says he disagrees vehemently with those that say Apple’s pace of innovation has slowed. Speaking to Indian publication Livemint, Cue said that releasing revolutionary products takes time, and while Apple has certainly released solid products over the last three or four years, perhaps our expectations of the company have changed now that everyone has an iPhone, and everyone else has an iPad.

We’ve heard very little about Apple’s iMac Pro following its announcement at WWDC earlier this year. Benchmarks of a possible Mac that may be the iMac Pro have shown up on Geekbench, which give us some idea of the kind of performance we’ll see from the all-in-one workstation Mac. Both 8 and 10-core models were seen by Geekbench, despite the processors used being beefy 140W TDP models, something that we usually wouldn’t see in the all-in-one form factor of the iMac.

In case you’re wondering about the madness that is patent law, Apple has been ordered to pay US $439.7 million to patent-holding firm VirnetX for infringing on four patents that were invalidated in September last year. Nevermind that this particular patent battle has been running since 2012, Apple says it plans to appeal the decision, but until VirnetX finishes appealing the decision to invalidate the patents, they’re still enforceable, which is why The Verge says Apple is still on the hook. Madness.

Microsoft has announced a redesign for Outlook on both Mac and PC, taking cues from the Outlook iOS app with the overall aim of reducing complexity for both new and existing Outlook users. Mac-specific improvements include changes to both search and calendar, with the changes expected to be available in the Office Insider program sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Apple’s support article on what to do before selling or giving away your Mac includes a new step for owners of models equipped with a Touch Bar. You’ll need to start up from macOS Recovery and then clear its data using a one line Terminal command, but after that you’ll be good to erase and reinstall macOS.

Interestingly, Eftpos is now supported by Apple Pay. Eftpos in Apple Pay is only one card from one bank — ANZ’s Access card — but it’s a start, and hopefully we’ll see other banks that offer Eftpos cards jump on board. Head over to the discussion topic on the forums for more.

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I don’t like the look of the new version of Outlook shown there for the Mac, to me it looks amateur and just plain ugly.