Wednesday Morning News

Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2018/01/wednesday-morning-news310118/

The US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are the latest groups said to be investigating Apple’s iPhone slowdowns. Specifically, the US government departments are probing whether Apple violated securities laws when they failed to disclose the update would affect performance of older devices with chemically aged batteries. Their investigation is still in the very early stages, so it’s impossible to draw any conclusions so far. But they’re looking into it.

A future iPhone lineup that may include the largest iPhone model yet. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo speculates it’s possible that we’ll see a 6.1-inch iPhone this year using LCD tech, which will hopefully keep the cost lower than the iPhone X. The next generation of iPhone X successors will include a Plus-sized model, with a screen measuring up to 6.5-inches.

Axios claims Apple will be delaying features in this year’s iOS release to focus on reliability and performance. Given the security issues that have been reported in Apple software of late, that’s not a bad thing if for public image reasons alone, but still, I can’t imagine Apple will announce zero new features when the time comes to put iOS in the spotlight on stage, like it once did for macOS.

Apple devices these days are faster than ever before, but there are still performance issues that result in frame rate drops and inconsistencies. While this is all a minor complaint in the overall grand scheme of things, and don’t really affect the overall user experience, the really crazy thing is that these frame rate issues aren’t even consistent across devices.

9to5Mac has tested and confirmed iOS 11.3 will be able to leverage Face ID to approve family purchases. The process for approving family purchases using Face ID sounds very similar to the process that was used by Touch ID, with the password for the Apple ID required the first time, and then a prompt appearing to allow Face ID for family purchases after that.

MacRumors points to a article by CNBC which attempts to point the finger at Apple’s poor services quality in India as one of the reasons why Apple device ownership is so low in the region. Apple sells just 2.5% of devices in the Indian market, and while Apple Music scored well, Maps, Siri, and even dictation in Hindi all need work.

Microsoft has announced major updates to the iOS versions of Office, with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint getting the same real-time co-authoring features enjoyed by their Windows and Mac counterparts, when documents are stored in OneDrive. Speaking of OneDrive, there’s also a major update which brings iOS 11 features to the OneDrive app, including drag and drop support on the iPad, a new design that makes it easy to find the files that you want to work on, and more.

If you’re looking to deploy multiple iMac Pros to your organisation, there’s some bad news. Secure Boot means you cannot use NetBoot to deploy macOS images to the machine, and while the Apple-recommended combination of its Device Enrolment Program and Mobile Device Management (the latter of which works with Macs, despite the name) allows you to achieve the same goal as NetBoot, there are some aspects which are slightly different that you’ll need to know.

The developer behind Streaks has released Outcast for Apple Watch, a standalone Apple Watch podcast client that lets you search, browse, download, and play podcasts without your iPhone. If you’re interested, today’s the last day it’s available at launch pricing of 99 cents, after which the price goes up to $2.99.

HomePod questions by Stephen Darlington pose interesting questions for multi-user usage and voice-controlled music selection. While the HomePod probably won’t work very well with multiple people (and the mess that is multiple Apple IDs and Apple Music libraries), choosing music by yelling artists/genres/playlist names at your HomePod seems like a fun thing I could get behind.

That’s a phablet! Reaching iPad Mini proportions… I’d still get one.

I have been keen for something like this, but it’s already $4.49 in the AU App Store. Sadface :frowning:

Check again?

https://twitter.com/qzervaas/status/958492132871843840

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I just checked and ‘Outcast for Apple watch’ is $1.49 now in the Australian app store

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I could retire my Mini if I bought one of those I suspect…

Thanks Benny and snarl. I ended up jumping to my US account which has had a pile of unused credit on it for ages :slight_smile: