Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2018/05/wednesday-morning-news160518/
Apple CEO Tim Cook was interviewed by Bloomberg, where he talked about Apple Music user numbers and Apple’s push into TV and movies. It turns out, Apple Music has about 50 million users in total, including both paid subscribers and trial users, and Apple converts about 4 million trial users to paid subscribers every month. Cook also remained tight-lipped about Apple’s content strategy, saying that Apple will be playing in video in a way that’s “consistent with their brand”, whatever that means in the context of video streaming.
Inconsistencies abound with iPhone SE successor rumours. Some case manufacturers are saying that it will come with a notch, like the iPhone X, but if the next iPhone SE doesn’t have Face ID and has no home button, then the addition of a notch seems like a strange move. Why take some ideas from the flagship device and not others? What’s the rationale behind that?
The iPad Pro and iPhone X have won displays of the year awards in the annual Display Industry Awards, which are apparently a real thing and not made up at all. Apple’s iPad Pro picked up the award for ProMotion display refresh rates that make everything smoother than butter. Meanwhile, the iPhone X picks up a display of the year award for… just being an edge-to-edge display, the first OLED display in an iPhone, with support for HDR and True Tone? Sure, OK.
On a more serious note, Apple News now allows publishers to serve ads via Google’s DoubleClick. Traditional banner ads, including animated GIFs can now be served within Apple News articles, which is a great shame due to Apple News being one of the last ad-free places to read news articles from reputable sources. Thankfully, pre-roll and HTML5-based ads aren’t possible.
Macworld imagines a world where Macs can run iOS apps. That’s probably not quite congruent with what will happen, but if WWDC arrives and brings a bunch of new APIs that make iOS apps work on the Mac, it won’t be too far off. It it happens, isn’t it possible that Apple could make touchscreens more of a possibility on the Mac? Isn’t that the next logical step?
Mercedes-Benz now has a range of iPhone cases in materials such as leather, aluminium, and carbon fibre. They’re part of Mercedes’ range of mobile device accessories, with tablet cases and laptop bags also available. The iPhone cases don’t look too bad, but other than that, it’s otherwise pretty standard car manufacturer stuff.
One of the cool things the best real-time public transport app NextThere does now in Sydney is track live train loads. There’s a good blog post that explains how NextThere gives you pretty good estimates of how packed Sydney’s Waratah trains are, which involves some numbers, estimates of how much the average passenger weighs, and a little maths to cap it all off.
Tweetbot 3 for Mac was released by Tapbots overnight, and the main changes from the previous version are an overhauled interface, multiple column to show you different timelines, and a night mode for those who want an interface that’s easier on the eyes. MacStories has a review that runs us through the changes. While you may be hesitant to drop $15 (on the Australian Mac App Store) on a Mac Twitter client, given that Twitter may or may not make major functionality changes to third-party apps soon, Tapbots says Twitter will continue to work just as it does now, just perhaps a little slower.
Twelve South’s latest product is something that expands the capabilities of AirPods. AirFly is the AirPods accessory you didn’t know you wanted, allowing you to use your AirPods (or pretty much any Bluetooth headset) with any wired headphone jack, including those on airplanes.
Boing Boing tells us the story of the hotel where Steve Jobs unveiled the first Macintosh prototype. Apple were later banned from the hotel (read the story to find out why), and there’s even a plaque on the wall that commemorates the occasion.