Apple Seeds Third WatchOS 2 Beta to Developers

Apple today seeded the third watchOS 2 beta to developers, just over two weeks after seeding the second watchOS 2 beta and a month after announcing the new operating system update at its Worldwide Developers Conference.

watchOS 2 requires iOS 9 and can be downloaded over-the-air through the Apple Watch app on the iPhone by going to General -> Software Update.

watchOS 2 is the first major update to the software that runs on the Apple Watch. The new software brings many new features that Apple Watch developers can take advantage of, including native apps that run on the Apple Watch itself instead of the iPhone. It also allows developers to access the Taptic Engine and a number of other sensors in the Apple Watch, including the heart rate monitor, the microphone, and the accelerometer.

Along with these features for developers, which will lead to much more complex and full-featured third-party Apple Watch apps, the update introduces new watch faces (photo albums and time-lapse), third-party Complications, Time Travel for viewing upcoming events in a watch face Complication, and a Nightstand mode that’s activated when the watch is charging, displaying the time.

watchOS 2 is currently only available to registered developers who have also installed iOS 9 on their iPhones. Apple plans to release the software to the public in the fall.

Apple Introduces Revamped Two-Factor Authentication for iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan

With the third betas of iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Apple is introducing a revamped two-factor authentication system, according to both the beta release notes and a detailed support FAQ that outlines the changes.

The new two-factor authentication system is different from Apple’s existing two-step verification system, using “different methods” to trust devices and deliver verification codes. Apple also says it includes a “more streamlined user experience.”

Based on the support document, the new two-factor authentication system works similarly to the existing two-step verification system. Any device that you sign into using two-factor authentication in iOS 9 or El Capitan becomes a trusted device that can be used to verify identify when signing into other devices or services linked to an Apple ID.

Apple recommends that iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan beta testers using the new two-factor authentication system update all of their devices to iOS 9 or El Capitan for “the best experience.” As outlined in the release notes, customers who use two-factor authentication with older devices may be required to put a six-digit verification code at the end of a password instead of using a dedicated verification field.

If you enable two-factor authentication, iTunes purchases on Mac and Windows will require you to append a 6-digit code to the end of your password on every purchase. The 6-digit code will automatically be sent to your iOS 9 or OS X El Capitan devices.

Older devices are also not able to receive two-factor authentication codes when used with devices running iOS 9 and El Capitan, but customers who stick with the older two-step verification system should not run into any issues as Apple tests the newer two-factor authentication system. Apple does not recommend that customers using two-step verification swap over to two-factor authentication until the feature is available to all.

First introduced in March of 2013, two-factor verification is an opt-in system that increases the security of Apple ID accounts. Since its debut, Apple has been working to expand two-factor authentication to cover several different services like iCloud, iMessage, and FaceTime.

It is not entirely clear what other changes the new two-factor authentication system brings to iOS and Mac devices, but the switch to a new system may allow Apple to further extend the functionality of two-factor authentication in the future.

Update: An Apple spokesperson told Macworld that the troublesome recovery key feature that has caused people to lose their Apple ID accounts in the past has been removed in the new two-factor authentication system.

With the existing two-step verification system, either a recovery key or a trusted device/trusted phone number is required to access an Apple ID account. If both should be lost, such as when a trusted device is stolen, an Apple ID is irretrievable.

With the new authentication system, Apple’s customer support team will help users recover their Apple IDs through a recovery process should both trusted devices and phone numbers become inaccessible.

If you can’t sign in, reset your password, or receive verification codes, you can regain access to your account by requesting account recovery. Simply provide a verified phone number where you can receive a text message or phone call regarding your account. Apple will review your case and contact you at the number provided when your Apple ID is ready for recovery. The automated message will direct you to iforgot.apple.com to complete the required steps and regain access to your account.

Account recovery will take a few days—or longer—depending on how much information you can provide to verify that you are the account owner. The process is designed to get you back into your account as quickly as possible while denying access to anyone who might be pretending to be you.

As noted by Apple, not all beta testers and developers will have access to the new two-factor authentication system right away, but Apple plans to add additional testers gradually as we get closer to the release of iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan.

iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan Public Betas Coming Soon

The third betas of iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan launched today, and a new document outlining a revamped two-factor authentication feature built into the operating systems suggests we may be seeing public beta availability in the very near future. A support document accompanying the two-factor authentication changes explicitly states that it’s designed for “the public betas of iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan.”

When Apple introduced iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 El Capitan at its Worldwide Developers Conference, the company promised that a public beta would be available beginning in July, so customers who are enrolled in Apple’s public beta testing programs may not have much longer to wait to get access to the new software.

It is not clear exactly when the public beta will be seeded to customers, but the wording in the support document suggests beta testers will be receiving access to the same third betas of iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 that were seeded to developers this morning.

Public beta tests for major software releases are a relatively new feature from Apple, introduced for OS X with OS X Yosemite last year and iOS with the release of iOS 8.3 in March of 2015. iOS and Mac users can sign up for Apple’s Beta Software Program on the company’s dedicated beta testing site.

iOS 9 Beta 3 Tidbits: 4×4 Folders on iPad, Screenshot and Selfie Folders, News App, and More

Apple today released the third beta of iOS 9, which has turned out to be the biggest update to the operating system so far. It adds a revamped Music app with access to Apple Music, the News app that was first unveiled at WWDC, a new two-factor authentication system, and several other smaller tweaks, along with the traditional performance improvements and bug fixes.

With today’s changes, the beta is feeling faster, more polished, and more full featured. For beta testers and those eager to know what’s coming in the OS ahead of its official release, we’ve rounded up a complete list of all of the new changes introduced in iOS 9 beta 3 below.

News app – Today’s beta is the first iOS 9 beta to include Apple’s new News app, first announced at WWDC. The news app offers up a curated list of news stories based on each user’s preferences and interests. The News app displays specific channels and topics and also supports the addition of RSS feeds from Safari. The News app appears to be available only to U.S. users for the time being.

Two-Factor Authentication – iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 El Capitan include an entirely revamped two-factor authentication system that Apple says is more streamlined.

App folders on iPad – App folders on the iPad now display apps in a 4×4 arrangement instead of a 3×3 arrangement, allowing users to see more apps in a folder at a glance.

Photo app folders – There are new folders for selfies and screenshots in the Photos app. The “Selfies” folder aggregates all photos captured with the front-facing camera, while the “Screenshots” folder houses all screenshots captured by holding down the power button and home button.

Music app – The Music app in iOS 9 has been updated, giving beta testers access to Apple Music, Beats 1 radio, and Apple Music Connect.

Music settings – There’s a new option in the Settings app under “Music” to stream music at the highest quality while using a cellular connection.

Search improvements – When swiping downwards to bring up search, Siri App Suggestions are now displayed.

Camera – As mentioned in the release notes, in iOS 9 beta 3 the volume buttons cannot be used to snap a picture. Given that it’s mentioned in the release notes under the “Known Issues” section, it’s likely that the feature’s removal is a bug that will be fixed in a future beta.

Restrictions – In General –> Settings –> Restrictions there’s a new logo for Siri & Dictation. There’s also a new setting to toggle on/off access to the News app, and the option to turn off Apple Music Connect is gone. People had been using this option to replace Connect with a Playlists tab, but doing so is no longer possible.

Battery Settings – The Battery section of the Settings app has an icon without rounded edges, which may be a mistake. In the app usage portion of the Battery section, there’s a new clock icon to represent the list of apps that use the most battery instead of a hamburger icon.

Additional feature updates in iOS 9 beta 3 will be added here as they are discovered. Apple should continue to release regular updates to iOS 9 at two to three week intervals throughout the beta testing period to bring minor performance boosts and changes ahead of the operating system’s official launch. iOS 9 is expected to be released to the public in the fall, but a public beta test will come first and is expected in the near future.

Hands-On With Apple’s ‘News’ App Introduced in iOS 9 Beta 3

Apple released the third beta of iOS 9 to developers this morning, bringing some significant changes to the operating system, including the new Apple News app.

First introduced at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June, “News” provides curated lists of personalized news content for iOS users, offering up content from popular websites and newspapers and displaying it in an iOS-friendly layout. We went hands-on with News to give our readers a detailed walkthrough of the app and the different features that it offers.

News is built around topics and channels that are selected by each individual user, which are then used to populate an individualized “For You” tab that displays a list of stories each day. There’s a Favorites section that display the sites you’ve added to a favorites list for quick browsing, a search feature for finding new content, and an Explore tab for casual browsing. Explore suggests topics or channels you might be interested based on what you’ve previously read.

If you come across a favorite story, you can add it to the “Saved” section in News, and you’re able to share stories with friends by using the Share Sheet when reading content. In Safari, there’s also a feature that will let you add any RSS feed to News by visiting a site and choosing “Add to News.”

News includes more than a million topics, and as you read more stories, the app will get better at offering content that might interest you. Media content like photos and videos can be displayed full screen and there are features like built-in audio and photo galleries.

News is only available in iOS 9 beta 3, which is limited to registered developers. Public beta testers will likely get access to News in the near future when the first public beta test is released, and the general public will be able to access the app when iOS 9 launches in the fall.

Serif’s Image Editing App ‘Affinity Photo’ Launches for Mac

Professional image editing app Affinity Photo, created by the same team that’s behind the award-winning Affinity Designer app, is today launching in the Mac App Store. Affinity Photo is designed to allow photographers to enhance, edit, and retouch images and is the culmination of five years of work.

The app includes a huge range of photo editing tools for everything from minor manipulations to drastic edits that alter shapes and remove objects from images. It’s been in beta testing since February and has been updated with features and improvements that beta testers have requested.

As an app oriented at professionals, Affinity Photo includes features like lens and exposure corrections, live filter layers, controls for channels and masks, advanced layer handling, RAW support, 16-bit channel editing, ICC color management, detailed EXIF info, Photoshop PSD import and export, and frequency separation editing that separates color from texture for retouching skin. According to Affinity Photo‘s developers, the speed at which it completes tasks and the app’s ability to show edits in real time are the most notable features to be aware of.

“The performance of the product is what we are most proud of,” said Tony Brightman, head of Affinity development. “We take full advantage of all the latest Apple technologies like OpenGL, Grand Central Dispatch and Core Graphics. What this means to the user is whether it’s a 100 megapixel image or a complex composition with 1000s of layers, you can still pan and zoom at 60fps and see live views of all adjustments, brushes, blend modes and filters with no compromise. It’s this speed and depth of features which really makes Affinity Photo a joy to use, and sets it apart from anything else out there.”

https://player.vimeo.com/video/132757806?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0
Affinity Photo also includes specific task-focused workspaces for developing, post-processing, liquify, and export, plus it has customizable toolbars with drag and drop panels. It offers vector drawing and text editing tools, an advanced brush engine with custom brush options, unlimited layers, a snapping system with pixel alignment, and an undo history for undoing changes.

For retouching and making corrections to photos, there’s an Inpainting brush for removing unwanted objects, a selection brush for selecting detailed elements in an image, a tool for removing blemishes and red eye, single-plane and dual-pane perspective correction, and a Liquify tool for manipulating images with warps, pinches, twirls, and more. There are also quite a few effects for adding features like tilt-shift, shadows, glow, blurs, and distortions.

In addition to taking advantage of features like OpenGL and Core Graphics, Affinity Photo is compatible with Macs that have a Force Touch trackpad, enabling pressure sensitivity. It supports Retina displays, is fully optimized for 64-bit and multi-core processors, and includes iCloud Drive support.

To celebrate its launch, Affinity Photo is available from the Mac App Store for $39.99 until July 23. After that time, the price will increase to $49.99. [Direct Link]

T-Mobile Now Offers Unlimited Talk, Text and 4G LTE Data in Canada and Mexico at No Additional Charge

T-Mobile has announced a new “Un-carrier” move called “Mobile Without Borders” that enables customers with Simple Choice postpaid and prepaid plans to send and receive unlimited phone calls, text messages and use 4G LTE data in Canada and Mexico at no additional cost. The extended three-country plan will be available starting July 15 in select Canadian and Mexican markets.

T-Mobile customers with Simple Choice plans will be able to make unlimited calls to and from the United States to any number, including landlines and mobile phones, in Mexico and Canada, alongside unlimited text messaging and the full monthly allotment of 4G LTE data they would normally have in the U.S. at no extra charge. Music Freedom is included while roaming in Canada or Mexico.

Canadian and Mexican residents looking to take advantage of this T-Mobile promotion are out of luck, as Simple Choice customers must reside in the U.S. and primary usage must occur on T-Mobile’s network in the U.S. The carrier also warns that Simple Choice plans are not intended for extended international usage. Data Stash will be available for use while in Canada or Mexico later this year.

Coverage in Canada includes Banff National Park, Bay of Fundy, Brampton, Burnaby, Calgary, Edmonton, Gatineau, Halifax, Hamilton, Kitchener, Laval, London, Longueuil, Markham, Mississauga, Montreal, Niagara Falls, Ottawa, Quebec City, Regina, Richmond, Saskatoon, St Johns, Surrey, Toronto, Vancouver, Vaughan, Victoria, Whistler, Windsor and Winnipeg. Coverage in Mexico includes 117 markets.

Starting next Wednesday, customers that sign up for a new Simple Choice postpaid or prepaid plan will automatically be enrolled in the Mobile Without Borders program. Existing Simple Choice customers can opt-in online, by phone or at a T-Mobile store for free. T-Mobile customers on promotional or legacy plans can add Mobile Without Borders for $10 per month. Mobile Without Borders business plans are also available.

Facebook Planning Music Streaming Service to Compete With Apple Music and Others [Updated]

Facebook is in the early stages of planning a dedicated music streaming service, with the intention of competing against the just-released Apple Music along with other industry heavyweights like Spotify and Rdio (via Music Ally).

A few reports earlier in the month tied the company to record labels with the idea of creating an ad-supported native video service, but according to sources speaking to Music Ally off the record, the bigger picture is to build an in-house music streaming service for Facebook users across the globe.

Sources told Music Ally that talks for the music-video side of things are at an advanced stage, with a rollout expected to happen in the next few months.

It’s Facebook’s plans to build on this with a Spotify-style audio streaming service that are making waves within the music industry, even though the launch date and specifics of the business model and payout formula have yet to be nailed down. Sources have told Music Ally that an audio service is very much on Facebook’s roadmap, but that both the social network and rightsholders realise that it has to get the monetised-video service right first.

Given Facebook’s history of acquiring various technology companies into itself — Oculus, Instagram, WhatsApp — it’s easy to see the social media giant doing the same in attempting to build its own streaming service. All the same, Music Ally‘s sources suggest Facebook wants to “build rather than buy,” but at this point nothing is “set in stone.”

Competition in the music streaming business is beginning to heat up with the launch of Apple Music. Just yesterday, Spotify began encouraging customers to cancel their subscriptions made through the App Store and to sign up again on its website to save $3.

Update 9:36 AM: A Facebook spokesperson tells The Verge the company has “no plans to go into music streaming.”

Facebook iOS App Introducing ‘See First’ Option for a More Customizable News Feed

Facebook’s News Feed has gone through a number of changes over the years, with the company attempting to streamline the best way for users to visualize the content they care most about right at the top of the social media site. Today, Facebook hopes to be one step closer to that goal, with the roll out of a new “See First” option to its iOS app that will allow users to choose up to 30 people or fan pages that will automatically appear at the top of their News Feed every time they check the site (via Re/code).

Photo via The Verge
As Re/code reports, Facebook promises that any pages or people added to a user’s See First list won’t be used to target customers with ads. In fact, Facebook hopes that the more streamlined experience will encourage users to visit the site more often, and perhaps counterbalance the fact that users may generate less ad income for the company thanks to not needing to scroll through the News Feed for as long anymore.

“It sounds counterintuitive, but the worse we do on rankings, the more we make people try and scroll through, the more likely they are to just go away,” a company spokesperson told Re/code. “If we show you the stuff you really really want first, you’ll come back more often.”

The update will present users with possible suggestions for following pages and people when initially beginning the process to set-up a See First list, and also allow users to unfollow friends and pages from within the app, which you could only do on the web in the past. The update for Facebook [Direct Link] will begin rolling out throughout the day today, with the company promising the same features will be coming to Android and the web sometime soon.