Originally published at: https://appletalk.com.au/2019/08/friday-morning-news300819/
Apple has announced the independent repair provider program, which will allow independent phone repair shops to have the same access to genuine parts, tools, and resources as Apple Authorised Service Providers. To qualify, any business wishing to apply to become an independent repair provider needs to have an Apple-certified technician, which Apple says is free, just like becoming an independent repair provider. While the program launches in the US, Apple has plans to bring it to other countries, which should make it easier for Apple customers to get repairs from anywhere.
Apple has sent out media invites to a September 10 event, where we’ll likely see new iPhones, new Apple Watch, as well as potential for new iPad Pros and even a new 16-inch MacBook Pro. Apple’s By Innovation Only event invite has people speculating about what the multi-coloured Apple logo means, with the most hopeful saying that it’s Apple’s return to the six colour Apple logo of the past. It’s possible, but it’s just as likely it doesn’t mean anything.
A new support article on Siri Privacy and Grading gives us a little more info about how the audio that is captured when Siri is activated is used to improve Siri. The article says that while machine-generated transcripts are still kept even for those that don’t opt-in to have their audio samples sent to Apple servers, there are anonymised and not able to be associated with you in any way (besides the contents of the audio recording).
Variety reports Apple’s original TV series Dickinson starring Hailee Steinfeld will headline the Tribeca TV festival starting September 14th. While availability of AppleTV+ hasn’t been confirmed, it’s likely that the service will feature as part of Apple’s iPhone event on September 10, if only we can have a date and a price.
There’s a big focus on Health in iOS 13, and the Health app itself has gotten a pretty big overhaul to support Apple’s future health ambitions. As MacStories tells us, the design of Health is now much more cohesive, giving you a comprehensive view of many health aspects, either recorded manually, or input from your Apple Watch or other health-compatible accessories. Health suggestions give you ideas about what you can do to improve key metrics, and new health categories open up tracking for previously ignored categories like women’s cycle tracking and hearing.
The craziest story I read this week was the one where Samsung made a page of comeback GIFs to send to people who make snide comments about the colour of text messages. Yes, looking down on those with green text message bubbles is a thing, for whatever reason, and Samsung seems to want to draw attention to it, also for whatever reason. Android Authority reminds us that green bubbles are people too, as if we have some reason to look down on those who don’t have encrypted text messaging as a standard feature on their smartphone platform of choice.
While you’re waiting for Apple’s new Mac Pro to be available, or can’t stomach the eventual price, why not build your own hackintosh? With a 3D printer and a mini-ITX form factor, you can put together a pretty convincing, if slightly smaller, replica of a PowerMac G5 Hackintosh, like one guy did. There are probably additional optimisations you could make, although the mini-ITX form factor will be your main bottleneck.
Twelve South’s Journal for iPad Pro is their book-style leather hard case for the iPad Pro, complete with space for a little notepad and somewhere to put the Apple Pencil. It also doubles as typing wedge and stand, for when you need to do some actual work on catch up on your Netflix queue. Pick one up for US $99.
Tomorrow, it will be one day to the year since Shifty Jelly, makers of Pocket Casts and Pocket Weather AU, announced that they would be shutting down Pocket Weather. That’s not to say the app will just stop working overnight, but it becomes an increasingly-probable possibility as we cross the 12 month mark tomorrow. There are a few discussions on what alternatives we have, so hit up that search box in the forums and see what everyone else is using.
An AirPods ad from Apple South Korea tells us about the ways people are customising their AirPods charging case with fun cases. Apple doesn’t usually show off videos showing the ways people modify their Apple products, so this one’s slightly different than normal, but it’s still nice to see.