watchOS 2.2 beta 4 for Apple Watch w/ new Maps app is now available

by | Feb 22, 2016 |

watchOS 2.2 Maps Apple Watch

Apple today has released the fourth watchOS 2.2 beta for Apple Watch developers. In terms of new features, the watchOS 2.2 so far has added a totally revamps Apple Maps app and glance and is required to use iOS 9.3 beta’s new multi-watch feature. We’ll check out the latest beta version of the upcoming release and highlight any changes below.

Pairing multiple Apple Watches to a single iPhone works by activating the most recently unlocked, raised Apple Watch. Switching between hardware works automatically and quickly. Aside from letting enthusiastic customers have multiple Apple Watches for fashion or practical reasons, future beta testing will be easier for developers as multiple watchOS versions will be able to be tested from watchOS 2.2 and on.

watchOS 2.2 also enhances the Maps application with a new screen of actions and Nearby search powered by Yelp. Previously, Maps launched to a current location view. Starting with watchOS 2.2, Apple Watch can instantly navigate to work and home addresses and find local business organized by type. These two features incorporate actions previously introduced in Google Maps and Yelp for Apple Watch.

These changes come as Apple prepares to refresh its Apple Watch lineup next month with new bands and more.

Let us know in the comments, via email at tips at 9to5mac dot com, or on Twitter @9to5Mac if you spot any changes in the new beta, and we’ll update with changes we find as well.

Filed under: Apple Watch, Developers Tagged: Apple Maps, Apple watch, maps, watchOS, watchOS 2.2

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Apple releases iOS 9.3 beta 4 with Night Shift, Touch ID Notes, & Verizon Wi-Fi Calling

by | Feb 22, 2016 |

iPhone lineup

Apple has released the fourth iOS 9.3 beta for developers to test on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The first iOS 9.3 beta appeared in early January. Apple is expected to release the iOS 9.3 software update to all users around next month’s iPhone 5se/iPad Air 3 event. We’ll check out the latest beta version of the upcoming release and highlight any changes below.

iOS 9.3 will introduce loads of new features and enhancements to the iPhone and iPad.

Night Shift, a new mode that changes the display color temperature, enables easier evening and night use while reducing blue light and its effect.

The Notes app is gaining the ability to hide individual notes behind a secure password, and iPhones and iPads with Touch ID can unlock these notes with the fingerprint reader.

3D Touch on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus is getting more capable, too, with new Quick Action shortcuts on additional Apple apps like Settings which offers direct access to battery, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi options.

iBooks on iOS can now sync PDFs and other items through iCloud for iBooks, and CarPlay for iPhone is gaining Apple Music and Maps features previously not offered.

For Verizon customers, iPhones will be able to use Wi-Fi Calling, which is already available on AT&T and T-Mobile for U.S. customers.

When using watchOS 2.2, iPhones running iOS 9.3 will be able to pair multiple Apple Watches and automatically switch between which is active. Apple’s also pushing a major new education initiative lead by shared iPads in iOS 9.3

For more on iOS 9.3 beta, check out our hands-on video:

Let us know in the comments, via email at tips at 9to5mac dot com, or on Twitter @9to5Mac if you spot any changes in the new beta, and we’ll update with changes we find as well.

 

Filed under: iOS Tagged: iOS, iOS 9.3, Night Shift, Night Shift mode, notes, Touch ID, Verizon, wi-fi calling

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9to5Toys Lunch Break: Philips Hue Starter Kit $120, LifeProof FRĒ iPhone 6 Case $30, Brother AirPrint Laser Printer $80, more

by | Feb 22, 2016 |

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Keep up with the best gear and deals on the web by signing up for the 9to5Toys Newsletter. Also, be sure to check us out on: Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+ and Safari push notifications.

TODAY’S CAN’T MISS DEALS:

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Light up your home with the Philips Hue Starter Kit (3 bulbs) for $120 shipped (Orig. $200)

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LifeProof FRĒ Waterproof iPhone 6 Case in multiple colors: $30 shipped (Reg. $72)

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Get ready to file your taxes w/ this Brother AirPrint Laser Printer for $80 shipped (Reg. $100+)

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Review: Audioengine turns it up to 11 with its newest Bluetooth HD6 powered speakers

MORE NEW GEAR FROM TODAY:

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Gift Cards up to 20% off: $50 AMC theaters for $40, $50 Babies/Toys R Us for $40, many more

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Keep your Wi-Fi running during a power outage w/ this APC battery backup: $20 + in-store pickup (Orig. $60)

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DashCam Recorder and Camera offers motion-triggered recording: $27 (Orig: $95)

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Seiki 39-inch 4K 120Hz LED UHDTV w/ 3 HDMI inputs: $300 shipped (Orig. $700)

NEW PRODUCTS & MORE:

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SanDisk announces faster USB-C flash drives and microSD cards at Mobile World Conference

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Garmin’s latest fitness trackers have impressive battery life & can automatically identify your activities

Filed under: Tips and Tricks

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IBM brings Swift to the cloud, releases web framework Kitura written in Apple’s programming language

by | Feb 22, 2016 |

Official image for Swift@IBM

Only months after Apple officially open-sourced Swift, IBM today is announcing that they are bringing Apple’s Swift programming language to the cloud. This makes IBM the first cloud provider enabling Swift application development server-side. IBM has introduced a preview to a Swift runtime and a Swift Package catalog to help with code sharing, and distribution.

The packages that access IBM’s Cloud services will help develops using Swift for IBM’s services. Developers that want to take advantage right away can play around in the Swift Sandbox provided by IBM, start building applications on Bluemix and quickly deploy them, or begin creating and sharing packages to the Swift Package Catalog.

IBM’s announcement today comes with the news that they are also releasing a web framework written in Swift named Kitura. The framework would allow developers to build end-to-end applications, deploy, and collaborate on web services written in Swift.

IBM Swift Sandbox

For a list of all the resources at IBM dedicated to IBM, be sure to check out Swift @ IBM. Kitura is available as an open-source on Github under an Apache 2.0 license. The Swift Sandbox can be used within a browser and found at the IBM Swift Sandbox page.

Filed under: Developers, Enterprise Tagged: Apple, Bluemix, IBM, iOS, Kitura, Open source, Swift, Swift Package Catalog, Swift Sandbox, Swift@IBM

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Former senior Apple PR exec Natalie Kerris joins Twitter as VP of Global Communications

by | Feb 22, 2016 |

kerris

A few weeks ago it was rumored that Natalie Kerris could be joining Twitter in a new leadership position, and today Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has officially announced that she has joined the company. Kerris previously held a senior PR role at Apple and worked with the company for 14 years before leaving almost a year ago.

Her departure after almost a decade and a half at Apple followed a few notable shakeups in Apple’s public relations department.

First, long-time PR chief Katie Cotton left Apple two years ago after working at the company for over 18 years. After Cotton’s exit, the PR chief spot was vacant for a whole year with Kerris and Steve Dowling the most senior ranking employees in the PR department.

Internally, Dowling acted as interim head of PR during part of that time. About a year after Cotton’s exit, Dowling was officially named as her permanent replacement.

A few days later, we learned that Kerris would not be staying with Apple (you can read between the lines here) and publicly stated that “it’s time to move on and see what adventures life holds for me next!”

Today both Jack Dorsey and Natalie Kerris have tweeted about her new communications position at the social network.

The only thing that would make this more interesting is if Apple bought Twitter. 🙂 As a frequent Twitter user, it’s always nice to see someone hired in a leadership position that actually uses Twitter (and the Apple values don’t hurt).

Filed under: iOS Devices

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iOS 9.3 allows apps to add content from Apple Music directly to your library

by | Feb 22, 2016 |

apple-music
In his security and privacy post regarding iOS’s current music library, Ben Dodson adds a small addendum explaining that with iOS 9.3 apps can now add music that currently exists in the Apple Music catalog directly to a user’s music library. While a small and under-discussed feature, it opens up further possibilities for many different kinds of apps and application developers.

Looking at the framework’s revisions, we see that the additions brought in with iOS 9.3 now allow apps to add Apple Music tracks to the user’s music library and play it. The app would first have to check if the device is even allowed to access the Apple Music catalog, for example the user may not have signed up for Apple Music, or may reside in a country where it currently isn’t supported. Then the app could fetch the track and even play it by using it’s iTunes product ID.

Accessing the Music Library

New methods in the Media Player and StoreKit frameworks let you add an Apple Music track to the music library and play it. First, use the SKCloudServiceController API to determine the current capabilities, such as if the device allows playback of Apple Music catalog tracks and the addition of tracks to the library. Then, you can use the MPMediaLibrary method addItemWithProductID:completionHandler: to add a track to the library and the MPMusicPlayerController method setQueueWithStoreIDs: to play a track.

– iOS 9.3, What’s New in iOS

This features expands the possibilities for a multitude of iOS apps. If a user is subscribed to Apple Music, the songs could then be streamed off of there and quickly added to the user’s library. Apps like Shazam show the user multiple sources of where to play their discovered music. From playing it within Apple Music or Rhapsody, starting a station within Pandora or Apple Music, or just streaming the video from within YouTube. Shazam appears to be really striving to make the song playing experience as easy as possible. With this new iOS 9.3 feature, an app like Shazam would also be able to have a “quick add” button that would add the song directly to the user’s music library.

Screenshot showing the details of a song discovered using Shazam

Another possible area the iOS 9.3 feature could reach into is apps specifically designed around and about celebrities. With the success of celebrity applications in the iOS App Store, this feature introduces another method to integrate fans further into the experiences. Whenever a celebrity releases a new song on Apple Music (which some artists may refuse to do…), they could push a notification to let the user know and quickly add it to their music library.

If an advertising company was able to get a complete list of your music library (along with changes to it over time) then they could very easily target you with specific ads. Added a lot of Taylor Swift recently? Here are some ads relevant to that.

– Ben Dodson, Your music library is a security and privacy risk on iOS

This level of user device is the crux of what Dodson points out in his article. In iOS 9.3, users will have to give explicit permission for apps to add music into their libraries, but users do not have to give explicit permissions for music in the library to be fed into the app.

Advertising companies can use this information to track music and listening habits to cater content around your tastes. While the general idea may be welcome by some users, the fact that they are never informed this may/is happening, is not.

According to Dodson, “…the last message I had from Apple was to say it was a security issue and that in keeping with their policy they would not provide any further updates on when (or if) it would be fixed.” Unfortunately, this response is exactly the type of response that Craig Federighi lamented recently.

Be sure to read the rest of Dodson’s article, and dupe the bug report if you feel it is a concern as well. iOS 9.3 is currently in its third beta, with expectations of a final release next month at Apple’s March event. We’ll hopefully begin to see more developers take hold of this new feature in the coming months. iOS 9.3’s framework changes can be found at What’s New in iOS, and more specific API information can be found at the iOS 9.3 API Diffs page.

What do you think of the possibilities of app developers being able to add in music to a user’s music library? How do you feel about advertisers or any application being able to read the music library without asking for explicit permission? Do you feel that either might be taking a step too far in something deemed so personal?

Let us know in the comments below. If you find posts on under-discussed iOS features and their potentials welcome, let me know in the comments or @gregbarbosa on Twitter.

Filed under: Apple Music, Developers, iOS Tagged: 9.3, craig federighi, Developement, developers, Eddy Cue, Genius, iOS, iOS 9.3, John Gruber, MPMediaLibrary, MPMusicPlayerController, privacy, Security, the talk show, Xcode

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Samsung, LG, & others show off new devices at MWC ahead of Apple’s iPhone 5se event

by | Feb 22, 2016 |

MWC-2016

It’s Mobile World Congress this week in Barcelona, which means most of Apple’s competitors are unveiling their upcoming smartphone lineups that will inevitably compete with Apple’s own 2016 lineup.

But while we usually have to wait until the fall for a new iPhone from Apple, this year is different in that Apple’s event planned for early next month will likely see it unveil the much anticipated iPhone 5se, a rare non-flagship and mid-year iPhone upgrade that will be a low to mid-tier smartphone competitor at pricing that will take over the current iPhone 5s lineup around $450 off contract. 

Among the announcements: Samsung has officially announced its Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones — both with a similar premium metal and glass design as previous generations but with upgraded internals — while LG showed off its all-new metal modular design for its new flagship LG G5. Also on show this week is a new smartphone flagship from Acer that offers an impressive 1TB of hybrid local/cloud storage, HTC’s One X9, and a trio of Xperia X smartphones from Sony, two with high camera specs including predictive focus.

And Apple is also planning to introduce its iPad Air 3 next month, which will inevitably go up against the new tablets being announced at MWC this week from its Android competitors.

Head below for a roundup of all of our MWC coverage courtesy of our sister site 9to5Google:

Filed under: Tech Industry Tagged: Acer, galaxy S7, iPhone 5se, lg, LG G5, Mobile World Congress, MWC, Samsung, Sony, specs, Xperia

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Apple Stores ready pair of improvements to in-store Genius Bar support services

by | Feb 22, 2016 |

store

Apple is readying a pair of notable improvements for Apple Store Genius Bars to be rolled out over the next couple of months, according to sources. Currently, Apple Stores allocate a fixed amount of time to each customer per Genius Bar appointment: 10 minutes for iOS devices and 15 minutes for Macs. If a customer’s issue requires more than that time amount, the customer is typically asked to book a successive appointment.

Apple has relied on this system in order to fit in as many Genius Bar appointments per day at each store and maintain a uniform experience. However, Apple has realized that not all technical support problems are the same and is preparing to officially allow for longer Genius Bar appointments.

Starting in the coming months, Genius Bar technicians will be able to extend the length of a pre-booked appointment at the point of service, allowing the Genius Bar appointment to continue without the 10 or 15 minute constraint.

Apple Store employees speculate that this feature will utilize a new algorithm to automatically re-assign appointments to other employees in the store as needed so that stores still serve all scheduled appointment despite the new variable time limits. Employees also believe that this change will potentially push back break times until an appointment is completed, but these breaks will not change in length.

Apple is also preparing improvements to walk-in appointments, those not pre-booked online or via the Apple Store application.

One year ago, we reported on Apple’s revamped Genius Bar appointment system for walk-in appointments, noting the shift to a text message-based system. The system allows a user without an appointment to walk-in to a store, explain their situation, provide their phone number, and receive a text message when a Genius Bar appointment becomes available.

However, this text message system has been one-sided, with customers unable to reply. A new version of the system in testing will allow customers to reply to Apple’s text messages in order to reschedule or cancel walk-in appointments.

Filed under: AAPL Company Tagged: Apple Store, Genius Bar

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Former NSA and CIA chief says Apple is right on the bigger issue of encryption back door

by | Feb 22, 2016 |

hayden

Retired General Michael Hayden, former head of both the NSA and CIA, told USA Today that while he “trends toward the government” on the ‘master key‘ approach to the San Bernardino case, he thinks Apple is right that there should never be a back door to encryption. His remarks were made as Tim Cook called for the government to drop its demands that Apple help the FBI break into an iPhone.

Hayden went so far as to specifically call out FBI Director Jim Comey in his comments.

In this specific case, I’m trending toward the government, but I’ve got to tell you in general I oppose the government’s effort, personified by FBI Director Jim Comey. Jim would like a back door available to American law enforcement in all devices globally. And, frankly, I think on balance that actually harms American safety and security, even though it might make Jim’s job a bit easier in some specific circumstances.

Comey has repeatedly attacked Apple’s use of strong encryption on iPhones …

Hayden said that while he would have loved a back door into encrypted devices while he was running the NSA, the problem – as I argued – is that others would inevitably gain access to it.

“When you step back and look at the whole question of American security and safety writ large, we are a safer, more secure nation without back doors,” he says. With them, “a lot of other people would take advantage of it.”

Hayden said that there were, though, no easy answers.

What we’re trying to do here is what free people and this free people have done since the inception of the republic, which is to balance two things, both of which are virtues: our security and our privacy. There are no permanent answers to that. We debate them continuously based on the totality of circumstances in which we find ourselves. The point I make to our countrymen: This is not a struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. This is a good people, trying to find the right balance.

Lest anyone think Hayden has gone soft in his retirement, he had uncompromising things to say about everything from waterboarding (justified to get information to protect America) to the NSA’s mass surveillance of phone records (the NSA should have been a bit more open about it, but people over-reacted).

The entire piece – including Hayden’s assessment of current Presidential candidates – is well worth a read.

Photo: FPA

Filed under: AAPL Company, iOS Devices Tagged: CIA, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Encryption, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, iPhone, James B. Comey, National Security Agency, NSA

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Tim Cook tells Fortune that Apple is only “exploring” cars, and doesn’t worry about ‘peak iPhone’

by | Feb 22, 2016 |

cook0315-11

In a Fortune interview with Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO suggested that Apple is not yet committed to making a car, but is only exploring the idea at this stage. Asked by Adam Lashinsky why Apple wouldn’t comment on its plans given that it is known to have acquired a high-profile team to work on the project, Cook said hiring people wasn’t the point at which the company committed itself.

We don’t have to spend large amounts to explore. So I can’t talk about this certain area that you’re talking about. But when we start spending large amounts of money, we’re committed at that point. But we explore things with teams of people. And that’s a part of being curious […]

Once we start spending gobs of money—like when we start spending on tooling and things like that—we’re committed … 

Lashinsky also asked how Cook responded to ‘peak iPhone‘ concerns …

Cook gave the usual company line, stating that the company focuses on products, not financials.

I’m good at blocking out the noise. I come back to, Are we doing the right things? Are we remembering our North Star? Are we focused on making the best products that really help people enrich their lives in some way? And we’re doing all those things. People really love our products. Customers are happy. And that’s what drives us. Over time I’m sure that everything else will catch up.

Cook also argued that cycles tend to be good for innovation – at least in Apple’s case.

I think, in sort of a bizarre way, cycles can be really great. They have been for Apple because we tend to steadfastly continue to invest in innovation. And what other companies tend to do is retreat. Some of our greatest innovations and products were born in a period of challenge. Also, assets get cheaper, so you can double down on innovation through the downturn.

He also promised that Apple Pay is on the way to new retailers.

In the last couple of quarters we’ve seen a dramatic uptick as more merchants accept it. But over the next few months you’ll see it going into places that people use daily.

Cook noted that Apple doesn’t yet have a date to move into its new Spaceship campus beyond “early 2017,” and that it is still talking about how the company would pay homage to Steve Jobs in the new building.

We will definitely honor him in the right kind of way. We’re working with Laurene [Powell Jobs, Steve’s widow] and the family.

Photo: Joe Pugliese/Fortune

Filed under: AAPL Company, Apple Car Tagged: Apple Car, interview, peak iPhone, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook

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