Ahead of Tuesday’s “California Streaming” event from Apple, comes news that certain watch bands for Apple Watch are no longer available. This isn’t surprising, since Apple refreshes their watch bands quite often. Usually it happens without any fanfare. In this instance it’s more proof that a Series 7 Watch will get stage time next week. There have been conflicting reports as to whether or not bands will fit the new watches. Apple kept compatibility with 38mm and 42mm bands on the 40mm and 44mm models. The flat-edged design calls into question whether or not they will actually fit and, if they do,…
Tag: apple
Spotify once again makes me wish Apple would get more into the core features of what makes listening to music so great: shared experiences. Today they announced Spotify Blend, a “blended playlist” feature where two people can combine their tastes into one auto-generated playlist. This is very cool stuff. Apple Music does nothing like this. You can’t share a playlist others can contribute to, let alone combine two people’s music preferences into a singular list. Apple can’t even be bothered to compete with Spotify Wrapped. This feature that makes me jealous every December. Here’s what the Blend feature will do:…
Six beta versions into iOS 15 and it’s obvious Apple has no idea what they’re going to do with Safari. Back in June at WWDC Apple unveiled a complete overhaul to Safari on all platforms. On the iPhone the address bar is now on the bottom, all controls are basically hidden in the Share menu, and the address bar basically “floats” over content. I kinda liked it, but had my small gripes. It was a big change and people have been vocal (as beta testers can be) about this. Now it seems Apple is making concessions. In Beta 5, Apple…
Over on Twitter, Kosta Eleftheriou announced the discontinuation of FlickType for iPhone. This is a keyboard app specifically for visually-impaired users. The twitter thread goes into some detail about Eleftheriou’s issues with dealing with Apple’s App Review and the insane hoops developers have to jump through. I can’t say I blame him for tossing up his hands on this app and calling it quits. I am disappointed at Apple, especially when they are generally all for accessibility within their products. FlickType for iPhone is an asset to the platform. Thankfully the Apple Watch version of FlickType isn’t going anywhere because…
Stumbled upon a video from Greg over at AppleExplained with this good explainer about why it’s unnecessary to kill iPhone apps from within the App Switcher. It’s quick, concise, and Greg gets right to the point. The video itself is well done. Not killing apps has a bunch of benefits: Easy way to bring up a recently-used app App resumes right where you left off The app does not need to reload everything over again because it was left in a frozen state. iOS manages all the power and memory without the need for a person to intervene While I…
More information is coming to light over on The Verge about Wear OS 3 and what this means going forward with both the software and hardware. This quote strikes at the heart of the matter: It’s not just about improving on the low bar of either Wear OS or Tizen. There are low bars everywhere for Android users. As Wear OS stagnated, OnePlus, RealMe, Oppo, Fitbit, and others have turned to proprietary, simplified platforms that lack the features you’d expect in a smartwatch today. The fact that Wear OS had an entry as the first wearable OS to market and no less…