Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2019/05/wednesday-morning-news080519/
With WWDC less than a month away, Bloomberg gives us an idea of what to expect. There are updates to Apple’s core iOS apps, of course, as well as new apps for the Apple Watch that will make it even more independent from the iPhone. Bloomberg claims watchOS will get its own App Store, available on-device for the first time, and while we’ll get more watch faces and complications, custom watch faces still aren’t on the table. Many changes are planned for iOS 13, including a system-wide Dark Mode, revamped Health and Home apps, redesigned widget style, and more. And last but not least, macOS will gain the ability to run iOS apps in some shape or form, whether that’s starting with iPad apps this year, and/or expanding to iPhone apps next year.
TechCrunch highlights that one of the rumoured features coming to iOS is a swipe-compatible keyboard from Apple themselves. The move will undoubtedly all but kill third-party keyboards that offer the same feature, although we’ll have to wait and see if it does anything special; your guess is as a good as mine whether this is something that will be supported by default on the same keyboard you use today, or whether you’ll have to enter some kind of special mode to type-by-swiping.
There are a lot of iPad Pro owners out there, and many of them will say that the software is the limiting factor to the iPad Pro, not the hardware. Over at the Muzli blog, Daniel Korpai says that people who think the iPad isn’t a true computer replacement usually fall into one of two camps: either the iPad doesn’t offer the kind of desktop-class file management that you expect from a fully-fledged computer, or doesn’t allow for the same kind of advanced multitasking that computers do. His concept for a version of Finder on the iPad gives us an idea of what file management on the iPad could look like, and it’s files and folders all the way down.
CNBC has the full interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook from the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting, which revealed two key things. First, Cook learned about the importance of stock buybacks from Warren Buffet, who said that if Cook believed Apple stock was undervalued, Apple should buy it back from shareholders. And the second of which is the fact that Apple buys smaller companies far more often than we hear about, with Cook saying Apple will acquire a company for talent or IP every 2-3 weeks, with 20-25 companies purchased in the last six months. If you have a few minutes, the whole interview is worth reading or watching.
Apple and SAP are continuing and expanding their partnership with a slew of new apps planned across Apple’s iOS and macOS software platforms with machine learning as a core focus. Nine applications in total are planned in procurement and other aspects of SAP’s business, although I wonder how successful the original apps or SDKs are that came out from Apple and SAP’s original partnership back in 2011.
For the first time, you can now run a preview version of Microsoft’s Edge web browser on the Mac. Edge for Mac is based on the Chromium rendering engine which powers Chrome, and Microsoft has removed and re-written many parts of Chromium to integrate it into its own next-generation browser offering, which makes it the first time Microsoft are publishing a browser for the Mac since Internet Explorer’s last update 16 years ago.
9to5Mac goes hands-on with the totally wireless Beats Powerbeats Pro, which are currently available for pre-order in Australia for $349.95. Their photo of the charging case compared to an AirPods charging case really gives you a sense of how much bigger the Powerbeats Pro charging case is — it’s not something you’re going to want to carry around with you in your pocket.
There are a trio of iPad Pro keyboard case reviews this morning, with Six Colors taking a look at both the Logitech Slim Folio Pro, and Brydge Pro 12.9 keyboard case, the latter of which gives you a more laptop-like experience than the former. There’s also the Zagg Slim Book Go, which adds a detachable keyboard to the entire setup for additional flexibility.
Macworld checks out Apple’s first new iOS game since Texas Hold ‘Em launched alongside the App Store in 2008. Warren Buffet’s Paper Wizard is a quirky take on an early Buffet story as he started out as a paperboy in his local hometown, and although there’s not much to the game, it’s a quick bit of fun that Macworld also says might have been better kept as more of an inside joke than released for millions of people to download and play. Even the app icon is just an animoji representation of what I assume is Buffet himself.
Apple’s latest video tells us to do one last great thing with your iPhone and trade it in, so it can be refurbished and sold back on to someone else to do great things with it.