Charlotte Henry

Users who like dark mode regularly complain that their favorite iOS app does not support it. On Cult of Mac, indie developer Graham Bower explains why it takes time.

The problem is that while some parts of your user interface — like the background — automatically switch to dark, others do not. Some text becomes unreadable because it’s black-on-black. Headers with white backgrounds look too bright and annoying. Illustrations and icons designed for a light background look terrible. Yes, if the app had been built using Apple’s default buttons and styles, maybe it wouldn’t have looked so bad. But in reality, life is never that simple. Even Apple’s built-in apps often deviate from the default user interface elements these days.

The 15 Apple Stores in Germany are going to reopen their doors on May 11 following the coronavirus-enforced closure, reported 9to5 Mac. As with other places that have reopened, customers to the retail outlets will have to adhere to some health and safety rules.

Germany hasn’t mitigated coronavirus infections to the extent of other regions where Apple Stores have reopened, but the country has seen a steady decline in daily new cases for over a month. The flattened curve was enough for Chancellor Angela Merkel to begin easing Germany’s national lockdown and allowing larger retail stores to resume business. Apple Stores in Germany will adhere to familiar health and safety precautions for the foreseeable future.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is officially the fastest-selling Nintendo Switch game. Nintendo said that a record 13.4 million units of the game were sold in the first six weeks it was available, Reuters reported.

Nintendo has defied scepticism over its ability to draw in consumers beyond a hardcore base in the Switch’s fourth year with the runaway success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which has become the console’s fastest-selling title since launching on March 20. The appeal of the title among consumers looking for escapism in coronavirus-hit economies around the world underscores Nintendo’s games-maker credentials at a time when investors have been frustrated by the company’s conservative management, which includes what many regard as a half-baked foray into mobile gaming.

A nearly 200-year-old bookstore in Boston is adapting to the age of Zoom, Inc. reported. It is curating collections of books for customers that they can have in the background in order to give off the right impression.

The Brattle Book Shop, founded in Boston in 1825 and acquired by the Gloss family in 1949, inhabits a three-story gray brick building near the Boston Common. Ken Gloss, president and owner since 1985, believes his used-and-rare-book business can survive up to a year of pandemic with no layoffs. For the time being he, his wife, and their staff of eight are trying to be productive while awaiting the return of foot traffic. The store’s new service: selling curated selections of books for display in the backgrounds of video meetings. “People want to project an image of prestige and expertise,” says Gloss, who is also an appraiser on Antiques Roadshow. “They are looking to show off intellectually, politically, and business-wise.”

One of the big ‘wow’ moments when Apple unveiled the new iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard was the way it integrated a new kind of cursor. In an interview with Techcrunch, Apple SVP Craig Federighi explains how the company did.

In some ways, the work on the new iPad OS cursor began with the Apple TV’s refreshed interface back in 2015. If you’ve noticed some similarities between the way that the cursor behaves on iPad OS and the way it works on Apple TV, you’re not alone. There is the familiar ‘jumping’ from one point of interest to another, for instance, and the slight sheen of a button as you move your finger while ‘hovering’ on it. “There was a process to figure out exactly how various elements would work together,” Federighi says. “We knew we wanted a very touch-centric cursor that was not conveying an unnecessary level of precision. We knew we had a focus experience similar to Apple TV that we could take advantage of in a delightful way. We knew that when dealing with text we wanted to provide a greater sense of feedback.”“Part of what I love so much about what’s happened with iPadOS is the way that we’ve drawn from so many sources. The experience draws from our work on tvOS, from years of work on the Mac, and from the origins of iPhone X and early iPad, creating something new that feels really natural for iPad.”

Apple appears to be turning an increasing amount of attention towards developing bendable designs for the MacBook and MacBook Pro. At least that’s what a new patent suggests to AppleInsider.

“Planar hinge assembly,” US Patent No 10,642,318, chiefly describes how such a design could apply to a MacBook Pro-style device. “A personal computing device comprises a single piece body having a seamless overall appearance and that includes a bendable portion that is capable of having a smoothly curved shape,” it says. “The single piece body includes a first part capable of carrying a display suitable for presenting visual content, and a second part that is capable of carrying an input device suitable for accepting an input action.” Apple is careful to always describe “a personal computing device,” and its details can also apply to “a smart phone cover or a tablet computer device.” But it all hinges, so to speak, on what’s referred to as “a multi-state bending assembly.”

While nothing has been confirmed, there is lots of talk that Apple wants to put its own, custom-made, ARM processors into upcoming Macs. But what exactly is one, and why is Apple so keen to introduce them to Macs? iMore has a great explainer.

Apple designs its own CPUs and CPU cores that implement ARM instruction sets. The company’s work is completely custom, rather than a repackage of ARM processors. Theoretically, Apple could license x86, the instruction set architecture used in processors from Intel and AMD, and build custom desktop and laptop chips that way, but the team is by now versed in ARM, and chips made with the ARM instruction set are known for their lower power consumption compared to x86. This is all a way of saying that “ARM transition,” while a convenient shorthand, doesn’t fully describe what we expect to happen with upcoming Macs. We expect that, like the A-series chips in iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs, Apple’s Mac processors will be completely custom.

The UK’s coronavirus contact tracing app has been approved by the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, BBC News reported. Testing will now begin on the Isle of Wight, in the UK’s Channel Islands.

Project chiefs have said their so-called “centralised” approach gives them advantages over a rival scheme advocated by the US tech giants and some privacy experts. But fresh concerns have been raised. The Information Commissioner’s Office has declared that “as a general rule, a decentralised approach” would better follow its principle that organisations should minimise the amount of personal data they collect. The House of Commons’ Human Rights Select Committee also discussed fears about plans to extend the app to record location data.

There was discussion about whether or not the latest iPad Pros have Apple’s U1 ultra wideband chips in them (spoiler alert: they haven’t). However, the processors could have a dramatic effect on the next generation of iPhone, as Samuel Axon explained for Wired.

Apple has been silent about its long-term plans for the chip, but researchers have found many applications for UWB. It was initially pitched to consumers (with little success) as a way to rapidly transfer large files to nearby personal devices, but the proliferation of smart home and location-based technologies has given it a new life. For example, UWB could be used to unlock your automobile door when you approach it. While this is possible with other wireless technologies, UWB is significantly more accurate than, say, Bluetooth Low Energy – accurate enough to know which specific door you’re standing next to, so only that one is unlocked. Leaks from Cupertino have indicated that Apple plans a competitor for Tile – the electronic tags you attach to valuables so you can locate them with an app. Because Tile products rely on Bluetooth LE, U1-equipped smartphones and locator tags would be more accurate at finding a precise location.