Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/05/tuesday-morning-news310516/
There’s a few rumours flying around that Apple will ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack in the next iPhone. Some say it will be gone with this year’s iPhone, while others say the 2017, 10th anniversary iPhone will be the one to move to wireless (or Lightning) headphones as the default option. One Chinese company is betting on the former, releasing Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adapters ahead of this year’s iPhone.
9to5Mac make their iOS 10 predictions for the iPhone and iPad ahead of this year’s WWDC, based on previous rumours and using a little intuition to determine what’s possible and what’s likely. Surprisingly, there’s nothing completely groundbreaking here — just solid iterations to core iOS components such as the App Store, Apple Music, Siri, iCloud, and Apple Pay.
India’s Commerce and Industry Minister has said that she is not in favour of Apple selling refurbished iPhones in the country. It’s another setback for Apple in India, who previously was not granted an exemption from a rule that said retailers in the country must sell 30% of goods produced locally or within the country.
Apple considered buying Time Warner last year, in a bid to raise its own entertainment profile. According to the Financial Times and reported by 9to5Mac, the deal would have been Apple’s largest acquisition to date if it had ever entered serious negotiations. Instead, the company will continue to spend on original content from its media platforms to the tune of several hundred million a year.
More Apple and VocalIQ rumours claim that the deal will not only beef up Apple’s own personal assistant, but also offer a natural language API for developers to tap into. A breakdown of VocalIQ technology says that it remembers user preferences across sessions, and also retains context across conversations.
Caltech has accused Apple of violating its Wi-Fi patents. Caltech says many Apple products use IRA/LDPC codes for encoding and decoding that improve performance, with MacRumors saying the technologies included in the 802.11n and 802.11ac standards. It’s possible Apple’s recent removal of AirPort products from US Apple Stores is somehow related to this.
The new Union Square Apple Store cost some US $23.6 million to build, with the shell of the building valued at $19 million. Additional costs included $800,000 worth of solar panels on the roof providing 50KW of power, and the new staircases, which cost $1.1 million. BuildZoom has a more complete breakdown of the entire cost of the new store.
An Apple patent describes using point-to-point networks for close proximity communications, like how you might use a walkie-talkie. The patent appears to apply to a set of Lightning-enabled headphones, which can also be used wirelessly for the close proximity communication aspect.
Over at the Loop, Dave Mark points out where Google lags behind Apple is in software updates. While 84% of active iOS devices are running iOS 9, just 7.5% of Android devices are running some variant of Android 6, Marshmallow.
Last but not least this morning, Macworld tells us how to export a Live Photos movie into OS X.