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A Larger Apple Watch Screen Means More Informational Faces

Andrew Orr ·

Rumors claim that the Apple Watch Series 7 released Fall 2021 will have bigger screens. As Mark Gurman reports, this means watch faces can add more information.

The bigger model will have a resolution of 396 by 484, versus 368 by 448 on the model it’s replacing. That increase means the device will have about 16% more pixels, allowing it to show more so-called complications — an industry term for the bits of information that appear on watches. The smaller model will see a similar jump, but both watches will have thinner borders around the screens.

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Roblox Moves to Add Voice Chat With Spatial Audio

Andrew Orr ·

Roblox is preparing to add voice chat with spatial audio to make its virtual worlds mimic the physical world better.

Say you’re hanging out in a virtual skatepark in Roblox with spatial audio enabled: skaters in the half pipe with you would sound loud and clear, just like they would in real life. But you wouldn’t be able to hear someone walking around on the sidewalk across the street, since they’re too far away. To have a private conversation with a nearby friend, you might peel off and walk toward a store down the block.

 

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NGO Files Antitrust Complaint Against Apple in India

Charlotte Henry ·

India non-profit group Together We Fight Society has filed an antitrust complaint against Apple, Reuters reported. It once again focuses on the cut of App Store transactions the company takes.

The allegations are similar to a case Apple faces in the European Union, where regulators last year started an investigation into Apple’s imposition of an in-app fee of 30% for distribution of paid digital content and other restrictions. The Indian case was filed by a little-known, non-profit group which argues Apple’s fee of up to 30% hurts competition by raising costs for app developers and customers, while also acting as a barrier to market entry. “The existence of the 30% commission means that some app developers will never make it to the market … This could also result in consumer harm,” said the filing

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The Day Richard Branson's Spaceflight Veered Off-Course

Jeff Butts ·

Going into space is no trivial feat. It’s actually so dangerous that 1.4 percent of Russian, Soviet, and American crewed spaceflight missions have resulted in fatalities. Still, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origins wants to turn it commercial, and so does Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. Richard Branson’s July 2021 maiden voyage out of the atmosphere veered off course early on. Critics say the pilots should have aborted the mission. They didn’t, and Branson still made it safely into orbit and then back home. Nicholas Smidle might be the most knowledgeable journalist on Branson’s Virgin Galactic efforts. The writer shared his knowledge of and insight on the incident. Even though the crew made it home safe and sound, I’m still worried about the safety of space tourism. At least for now.

The craft was about twenty miles in the air above the White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, and climbing, travelling more than twice the speed of sound. But it was veering off course, and the light was a warning to the pilots that their flight path was too shallow and the nose of the ship was insufficiently vertical. If they didn’t fix it, they risked a perilous emergency landing in the desert on their descent.

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Shedeur Sanders is First College Athlete Signed to be Brand Ambassador For Beats by Dre

Charlotte Henry ·

Shedeur Sanders has become the first college athlete to be signed as a brand ambassador for Apple-owned Beats by Dre. It follows a change in the rules around how such athletes can earn money. The Jackson State University quarterback spoke to People about the move and appears in a new advert for the brand.

The pairing, which Shedeur calls “real” and “organic” as he grew up using the company’s headphone products, comes after the NCAA decided that student-athletes can now — on an interim basis — earn money from their name, image and likeness. “People don’t understand how much work and how much time you put into the game,” says Shedeur. “Stay late at the school just going over film, going over plays, as much time and hard work it is that’s put into this and that we’re able to be rewarded now, it feels amazing.”

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Apple Releases AirTags Firmware Update

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple has released an update to AirTags firmware – moving from internal build number 1A291c to 1A291a. As MacRumors noted, the release comes just a week after the previous iteration was released.

We don’t know what’s included in the new firmware and no new features were found following the first release, so it likely focuses on bug fixes and other under-the-hood improvements. There is no way to force an AirTag update, as it’s something that’s done over-the-air through a connected iPhone. To make sure the update happens, you can put your AirTag in range of your ‌‌‌iPhone‌‌‌, but you have to wait for the firmware to roll out to your device.

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HBO Max App Now Available on Vizio SmartCast TVs

Charlotte Henry ·

There is now a dedicated HBO Max app available on Vizio SmartCast TVs, The Verge reported. It means users can access the service directly instead of having to find workarounds like AirPlay.

Prior to today’s announcement, Vizio TVs lacked a native app within SmartCast, Vizio’s smart TV interface. Instead, they’d have to cast its content to their televisions using Apple AirPlay or by casting with Google. The addition of the app directly from the apps menu should make accessing HBO Max far more intuitive for SmartCast users. To mark the launch of the app on its sets, Vizio will also introduce a custom homescreen carousel to showcase HBO Max’s new teaser freebies. HBO Max no longer offers free trials, though it recently announced a limited sampling of the pilot episodes of more than a dozen of some of its most popular series, which can be streamed in-app without paying for an HBO Max subscription. Vizio users will be able to access these rotating teasers directly from the Vizio carousel.

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AccuWeather Creates Alert System Exclusively for T-Mobile Customers

Andrew Orr ·

AccuWeather announced a new alert system called AccuWeather Alerts. Exclusively for T-Mobile customers, it pushes severe weather alerts for iPhones and Androids.

With this newly developed system, T-Mobile customers can received Up to the Minute alerts that read “Severe Weather Potential,” “Severe Weather Threat,” and “Dangerous Weather Imminent!” on their iOS or Android mobile phones for free. Integrated into AccuWeather’s award-winning app, these alerts provide details on upcoming and developing severe weather events, including notifications for hurricanes, snow, tornadoes, flooding, hail, heatwaves, cold waves and other types of threatening weather.

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New Twitter Safety Mode Filters Replies, Blocks Accounts

Andrew Orr ·

Twitter is rolling out a new feature called Safety Mode. When you enable it for your account, it temporarily blocks accounts for seven days for using potentially harmful language or sending repetitive and uninvited replies or mentions.

You can find information about the Tweets flagged through Safety Mode and view the details of temporarily blocked accounts at any time. Before each Safety Mode period ends, you’ll receive a notification recapping this information. We won’t always get this right and may make mistakes, so Safety Mode autoblocks can be seen and undone at any time in your Settings. We’ll also regularly monitor the accuracy of our Safety Mode systems to make improvements to our detection capabilities.

I think a lot of things can be said about Twitter, but at least they’re trying (unlike Facebook).

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Spotify Makes 'Blend' Personalised Shared Playlist Feature Available

Charlotte Henry ·

Spotify announced Tuesday that Blend, which allows two users to create a shared playlist that combines both their musical tastes, is now available. It was released in beta in June and is now accessible by both free and premium users.

The experience includes new cover art to easily identify each of your Blend playlists, taste match scores to see your listening preferences compared to your friends’, and shareable data stories that are unique to every listening pair and can be shared across social channels. Blend, which will be updated daily and adapts based on what listeners stream, combines the best of Spotify’s personalization capabilities and collaborative playlist functionality into a single shared playlist, making it easy for users to get into a social listening session that is made just for them. But creating this experience was no simple feat. There’s a massive team behind the experience, blending their own different skills and expertise to bring it to life.

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Flipboard Gives People Tools to Prevent 'Doomscrolling'

Andrew Orr ·

Flipboard is rolling out a series of personalization tools to help people cut back on doomscrolling.

The company announced this morning the launch of a new controller on the cover of its own main newsfeed, aka the “For You” feed, which now allows users to select new topics to follow and deselect those they no longer want to hear about. The feature, which Flipboard dubs “an antidote to doomscrolling,” allows users to customize their For You feed to deliver a wider selection of stories related to their various interests, instead of focusing their home page on breaking news and politics.

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Bose Launches 'QuietComfort 45' Noise Cancelling Headphones

Andrew Orr ·

On Tuesday Bose has announced the launch of its latest pair of noise cancelling headphones – QuietComfort 45.

The QuietComfort 45 maintain the hallmarks of their predecessor with amazing audio performance, all-day comfort and stability, super- simple controls, rock-solid connectivity, and an update to the iconic design that made QCs one of the most recognizable wearables ever. The QuietComfort 45 headphones will be available starting September 23rd for $329.95, and pre-orders start today at Bose.com and select resellers.

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Instagram Asking Users to Share Their Birthday

Charlotte Henry ·

Instagram announced Monday that it is asking users to confirm their birthday if they have not shared it with the photo-sharing service before. Pavni Diwanji, VP of Youth Products at the Facebook-owned app, said in a blog post that it was aiming to create better safety features for younger users.

First, we’ll start to ask you for your birthday when you open Instagram. We’ll show you a notification a handful of times and if you haven’t provided us with your birthday by a certain point, you’ll need to share it to continue using Instagram. This information is necessary for new features we’re developing to protect young people. Second, if you see warning screens placed on posts, we’ll ask you for your birthday before you can see the post. These screens aren’t new, and we already show them on posts that may be sensitive or graphic, but we don’t currently ask for your birthday when viewing these posts. Now, we’ll start asking for your birthday on some of these screens if you haven’t shared it with us previously.

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Was That a Notchless Next-Gen iPhone on Ted Lasso?

Jeff Butts ·

We’ve been hearing speculation that the next generation of the iPhone will have a smaller camera notch than current models. Through either an unintentional leak or just a post-production editing mistake, the Ted Lasso audience got a peek of a notchless next-gen iPhone in the August 27 episode. The handset looks like an iPhone 12 from the rear, but images of the screen seem to show iOS 14 wallpaper without the usual cutout from the camera notch.

Apple is notorious for its secrecy, so it seems unlikely that this is a deliberate signal that the notch is disappearing from the iPhone 13. That said, it’s been rumored for months now that the iPhone 13 would have a much smaller notch or a hole-punch selfie camera. However, a completely notchless display isn’t believed to be in the cards for this year’s iPhone.

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Examining Apple's Carefree Attitude Towards Employee Privacy

Andrew Orr ·

Zoe Schiffer, writing for The Verge, investigates Apple employees and “the blurring of personal and work accounts.”

This is how it starts: a new Apple employee is told during onboarding that collaborating with their colleagues will require them to make extensive use of iCloud storage, and their manager offers a two terabyte upgrade. This will link their personal Apple ID to their work account — in fact, the instructions for accessing this upgrade explicitly say “you must link your personal Apple ID with your AppleConnect work account.”

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Private Search Engine 'Xayn' Releases Web Version of its App

Andrew Orr ·

An AI company based in Berlin, Germany called Xayn has launched a web version of its private search engine app.

Both versions of Xayn use Masked Federated Learning to protect users’ data privacy while still providing them with an individually tailored web experience. They are created with the same code base in Flutter, a developing framework that’s designed to function both on mobile and web. The team transferred the AI to work directly in the respective browsers with high speed via WebAssembly so that all personal data stays privately within the browsers.

Looks like it doesn’t work yet on Safari.

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AdGuard: 'People Should be Worried About Apple CSAM Detection'

Andrew Orr ·

Adblocking company AdGuard is the latest to offer commentary on Apple’s controversial decision to detect CSAM in iCloud Photos. The team ponders ways to block it using their AdGuard DNS technology.

We consider preventing uploading the safety voucher to iCloud and blocking CSAM detection within AdGuard DNS. How can it be done? It depends on the way CSAM detection is implemented, and before we understand it in details, we can promise nothing particular.

Who knows what this base can turn into if Apple starts cooperating with some third parties? The base goes in, the voucher goes out. Each of the processes can be obstructed, but right now we are not ready to claim which solution is better and whether it can be easily incorporated into AdGuard DNS. Research and testing are required.