Wednesday Morning News

Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2018/02/wednesday-morning-news210218/

Apple’s latest round of publicly-available updates fix the Telugu character crashing bug from last week. New versions across all of Apple’s software platforms, released as iOS 11.2.6, watchOS 4.2.3, tvOS 11.2.6, and the macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 Supplemental Update, all contain the same change: a fix for an issue that caused certain character sequences to crash apps. The iOS update also resolves an issue where third-party apps may sometimes fail to connect to external accessories.

New developer betas of iOS 11.3, tvOS 11.3, and macOS High Sierra 10.3.4 are now available for developers. Besides new build numbers, there’s not much else that wasn’t already in the first betas, including Messages in iCloud for macOS, as well as Health Records, new Animoji, and battery health in iOS.

However, it looks as though any and all AirPlay 2 features have been removed from iOS 11.3 and tvOS 11.3. Speculation says this is another sign that HomePod multi-room audio and stereo pairing is further delayed, although there’s really no evidence of that. The inclusion and disappearance of the feature probably does mean something… but what?

A rumour claims an iPhone SE successor will potentially be unveiled at WWDC. According to China’s QQ, the new iPhone SE will have a larger 4.2-inch display but feature the same classic design — in which they mean a metal back and frame, bezels on the top and bottom of the screen, and a home button, as opposed to the new design like the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X.

The Verge says truly wireless earbuds still aren’t anywhere near AirPods. Apparently, Apple weren’t kidding when they said they added secret sauce in the form of Apple’s W1 chip, which seems to give AirPods the edge over every other pair of wireless earbuds out there, improving pairing, range, and battery life. While other wireless earbuds aren’t complete rubbish, they don’t come close to the reliability of AirPods.

The latest “getting work done on an iPad” starts with a hardware issue on a MacBook Pro. But that was a few weeks ago, and now the author says there’s a number of ways the iPad is preferable to a laptop, but there’s still a couple of ways it’s worse, too.

Continuing his series on Keyboard Maestro, Gabe from Mac Drifter tells us about simple, efficient window positioning using Keyboard Maestro and Moom. Arranging windows becomes as easy as pressing a keystroke with those two applications, no matter how messy your windows are to begin with.

Twitterrific for Mac has added new multi-user features, given that it’s now in a two-horse race for Twitter client superiority on the Mac. Follower and following lists have also been added as part of the latest update, as covered by MacStories.

Also in app update news, Homecam’s support for HomeKit-enabled cameras is what makes it good, but attention to detail is what makes it great. Displaying a grid of all the HomeKit cameras in your home makes it easy to spot the one you’re looking for, and now an Apple TV version of Homecam lets you control accessories in the same room.

New photography tutorials from Apple show us how to shoot overhead on an iPhone, how to shoot in black and white, and how to adjust slow-motion timing. They’re all available via Apple’s YouTube channel, but I kinda wish they’d add all of these tips to their iPhone photography how-to page.

Also Swype is dead, which I guess is news to the 12 people that use 3rd party keyboards on iOS :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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