Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/10/monday-morning-news101016/
Three law firms have joined a class action lawsuit against Apple for the “touch disease” affecting iPhone 6 and 6 Plus units, a flaw thought to be caused by touchscreen controller chips intermittently losing the soldered connections to the iPhone logic board. Class action lawsuits have since been filed in both Utah and California, with the whole thing gaining some steam.
Also in lawsuit news, a French company is suing Apple for its incomplete implementation of HTML5 support in iOS and macOS Safari. It seems like a minor issue, but for some reason both iOS and macOS lag behind other browsers in terms of HTML5 support, at least in the testing suite used by Nexendi, the company behind the lawsuit.
Apple Music has added support for user-uploaded unofficial remixes of single tracks. Previous a market dominated by SoundCloud, these unofficial remixes are generally not uploaded to major music services due to rights issues. Interestingly, Spotify has also gained support for individual remixes.
Feral Interactive’s Andy Wood has spoken about Apple’s Metal graphics API. The developers of the latest Deus Ex title, Mankind Divided, has said that the latest Metal releases aren’t about making Mac game development easier, but more about making releases possible on the Mac with good performance.
There’s now a Mac app that warns you when your webcam or microphone becomes active. OverSight has been developed by a former NSA staffer, who warns that although the software runs continuously in the background, it’ll likely only be a deterrent for casual malware that attempts to access the webcam or microphone.
A report from Six Colors says that the features in macOS Sierra that sync your Desktop and Documents to iCloud Drive, as well as the feature that optimises your iCloud Storage, need a little work. Currently, the feature works great with all-in-one packages of documents and files, but for apps that reference files all over the place, there are a few issues to be worked out.
With the opening of the first iOS Developer Academy in Naples, Italy last week, Apple has announced it plans to expand the program to a further five universities in the Campania region in Italy to make up the iOS Foundation Program.
9to5Mac has more images of how a Jet Black iPhone 7 Plus is holding up to everyday wear and tear after being handled and used without a case.
For all he writes about being iOS only, Ben Brooks still seems to like physical keyboards with his iPads. There’s just something about the in-built software keyboard that makes it unsuitable for long-form writing.