How to fix the most annoying thing in iOS 10 – CNET
Matt Elliott/CNET
Granted, I’m still in the getting-to-know-you phase with iOS 10, but I dearly miss the slide-to-unlock gesture that I’ve been conditioned for years to use to unlock my iPhone. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve swiped to the new lock screen widgets when attempting to unlock by phone, but it’s pretty close to the number of times I’ve picked up my phone since updating to iOS 10.
With iOS 10, you press down on the home button to unlock your iPhone instead of the tried-and-true slide-to-unlock gesture. Of course, holding down the Home button calls up Siri, so when I’m not swiping by accident to the lock screen widgets, I’m holding down the Home button too long and having an unwanted conversation with Siri.
iOS 10 doesn’t offer a way to bring back slide to unlock, but you can avoid the press-home-to-unlock gesture if you have a Touch ID-enabled device (that is, an iPhone 5S, iPad Pro, iPad Air 2, or iPad Mini 3 or later). With these devices, you can get past the lock screen as you did with Touch ID on iOS 9. Here’s how:
Head to Settings > General > Accessibility > Home Button and tap the toggle switch to turn on Rest Finger to Open.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
With this setting enabled, you can simply rest your finger on the Home button to unlock your iPhone instead of needing to press it. The screen, however, must be on — either by pressing the power button or, more likely, iOS 10’s new raise-to-wake feature that turns on the screen when you pick up your iPhone.
Raise to wake should be enabled by default, but if it isn’t you can turn it on by going to Settings > Display & Brightness and tapping the toggle switch for Raise to Wake.
For more, check out our complete guide to iOS 10.
Sony UBP-X1000ES Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
Sony
In August Microsoft said it was supporting 4K Blu-ray discs in its revitalized Xbox One S game console. To follow suit, rival Sony was expected to announce its new PlayStation 4 Pro would also support the new hi-res format — one which it had also helped create. But sadly it was not to be. A week later, however, and Sony is finally announcing a real player, but even so it’s probably not what we had hoped for.
Yes, the UBP-X1000ES is a 4K Blu-ray player, capable of spinning virtually any other kind of optical disc too, but no, you won’t be able to buy one off the shelf. Like Sony’s other high-end “ES” components released in the US, this model will only be available through custom installers.
From the outside, the X1000ES looks very similar to the “premium” 1080p UHP-H1 player, and it performs many of the same functions, such as streaming Amazon Video and YouTube. But it has the added benefit of playing 4K discs.
4K Ultra HD Blu-ray is the latest disc-based standard and includes features such as 4K resolution (3,840×2,160 pixels), high dynamic range (HDR) and better color depth.
From a hardware perspective the new player includes a high-end 32-bit processing DAC, which will play disc-based media like SACD and CD, as well as stream native DSD (at up to 11.2MHz) and PCM (up to 192kHz).
Sony has yet to announce pricing and says it will be available in spring 2017, which is a little later than originally announced.
My take: Too little too late?
Oh, Sony. You had one job: make a 4K Blu-ray player that people can actually buy. Sony is the most popular manufacturer of Blu-ray players and this distinction could easily translate to the 4K version. But the company has seemingly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory for the second time in a week.
Given Sony’s history of popularizing disk formats through enabling native support in new consoles — PlayStation 2 and DVD; the PS3 and Blu-ray — Sony was widely expected to announce support for 4K Blu-ray with its PS4 Pro last week. It didn’t — the console can only do 4K streaming — and Sony has extended the disappointment with the UBP-X1000ES.
Despite being one of the first companies to produce 4K Blu-ray discs, it appears Sony is reticent to let people play them on anything. Subconsciously or not, the company is helping to scuttle the format with this lack of hardware support. And the UBP-X1000ES doesn’t really count.
ES components are only available through custom installers in the US, probably because the company has the potential to make more money than in the cutthroat retail market. But this isn’t helpful to ordinary people who just want to buy a Sony 4K Blu-ray player. At this stage, only if you have enough money to install a home security system or a dedicated theater room will you be able to drop a lazy grand (I’m guessing) on a 4K Blu-ray player.
Sure, 4K Blu-ray is a couple of years later to market than it should be to really have a chance, but it’s a real format and the company is selling the discs already.
I still hold out hope that Sony will now announce a companion player, at a sensible price, for release at a similar time to the UBP-X1000ES. Perhaps then 4K Blu-ray will have a fighting chance.
Facebook Messenger has an unreleased public chat feature
Facebook’s lovable but unfortunately short-lived standalone Rooms app might see the light of day again — in some form at least. According to TechCrunch, Facebook Messenger has an unreleased feature, also called “Rooms,” that allow users to create public, sharable group chats
After a little digging, TechCrunch found several mentions of the feature inside Messenger’s code, including a logo and a basic description: “Rooms are for public conversations about topics and interests. Each room has a link that can be shared so anyone on Messenger can join the conversation”. Some TechCrunch readers were also able to launch a chat room with both friends and strangers, and an admin screen showed some sharing features that aren’t available with regular group messages. For its part, Facebook offered a statement saying “We often run small tests – nothing more to share beyond that.”
The original Rooms app harkened back to the good old days of open chat rooms and was something of a departure for Facebook in that it allowed users to be anonymous or use a pseudonym rather than their real name. While this rooms feature for Messenger isn’t quite as full-fledged, it does offer a happy medium between the back-and-forth posting on a Group’s public newsfeed and private Messenger groups — something that might be useful as the social network looks to capitalize on messaging and chatbots.
Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is now a virtual reality music video
We’ve all heard the dramatic faux-opera that is Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody — but have you ever wondered what a song like that might look like? The folks at Google did. In a new collaboration with Queen and Enosis VR, artists and developers at Google have created The Bohemian Rhapsody Experience — a virtual reality experiment created to take viewers on “a journey through frontman Freddie Mercury’s subconscious mind.” That’s a fancy way of saying they turned the iconic song into a 360-degree virtual reality music video.
The video itself is viewable only through the Bohemian Rhapsody Experience, but it can be seen in a basic 360-degree mode, or in stereoscopic 3D using Google Cardboard. The app takes viewers on a tour of a surreal mindscape of shapes, sound and animation — first leading them through a dreamlike mishmash of images that seems to represent Mercury’s mind, then onto the stage of a Queen Concert, complete with an animated band and then, after a brief stop in the underworld, into outer space for a neon-light finale. It’s gorgeous, and thanks to a spatial audio mix, fairly immersive.
It sounds like a project that came out of left field, but to folks familiar with the band’s lead guitarist, it makes a lot of sense. In addition to being a world-class guitarist and holding a PHD in astronomy, Brian May is also the director of the London Stereoscopic Company, where he maintains resources on streo photographs and helped create the OWL Virtual Reality Kit — a collapsible VR viewer in the vein of Google Cardboard. You can find that over on his company’s website. Just want the Bohemian Rhapsody app? The iOS version isn’t ready quiet yet, but Android users can head on over to Google Play.
Via: Verge
Source: YouTube, The Bohemian Rhapsody Experience
Photos in iOS 10: How to Edit Memories
Within the new Photos app in iOS 10, there’s a tab called “Memories,” which curates various photos and videos you’ve taken in the past into specific memory collections. Without any steps required on your part, Memories gives you an automatic homemade movie from these past family gatherings or vacations, but thanks to a few editing tools, you can also tweak each memory to your liking (note all steps are in portrait mode, although landscape is available).
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Navigate to Photos to find the new “Memories” tab in the center of the app, where you can scroll through your personally curated list of memories and choose whichever one you wish to edit and share. Within each detailed memory view, you’ll find a list of all the photos and videos contained in the memory (tap “Show all” to see more than a summary), the geographic location the pictures were taken, nearby photos, and related memories you might be interested in.
A few examples of Memories in the new Photos app
The last two options at the very bottom let you favorite the memory or delete it permanently. Although the “Select” option on this page might seem like an option to remove photos only from this memory, it should be noted that deleting any content through this method will delete it from your iPhone and iCloud Photo Library, not only the memory. Jump to the instructions for “complex memory editing” below to discover how to delete photos and videos only from the memory, as well as add more.
Simple Memory Editing
There’s a wealth of customization features offered once you actually begin viewing your memories, which are outlined in the following steps:
Tap on the carousel at the top of the memory’s page to play it.
Photos will begin playing the memory, so tap anywhere on the screen to bring up editing controls and tap the pause button.
Choose the emotional theme to assign to your memory, like “Happy” or “Epic,” by scrolling through the topmost editing tool.
After deciding your theme, choose a short (~20 seconds), medium (~40 seconds), or long (~1 minute) video length. You may see only two, or even one, of these options, depending on the breadth of media Apple has included in your memory.
If the memory is now to your liking, you can tap the Share extension in the bottom left corner to show your memory to friends and family via email, text message, AirPlay, Facebook, and more.
Complex Memory Editing
Memories allow for even more in-depth customization tools for anyone who truly wants to personalize each photo and video collection. There are a few interesting tools that let you tweak each memory, but since the potentially most common question surrounding memories will be how to add and remove photos from each collection, we’ll detail that in the steps below:
When looking at the basic editing screen (with the emotion and length toggles), tap the editing slider button in the bottom right corner of the screen, and then tap “Photos & Videos.”
To delete a piece of media, find the photo or video in question by scrolling through the selector at the bottom of the screen.
Simply tap the trash can icon at the bottom right of the menu to remove the image or video from this memory.
To add a piece of media, tap the “+” icon at the bottom left of the menu.
Here you’ll see every item potentially available for inclusion in this memory, as curated by Apple.
Tap any non-selected media to add it into the memory (you can also use this screen to remove content by deselecting its check mark).
Tap “Done.”
You can even edit any video in this section of the app by swiping through to find the desired video in the “Photos & Videos” menu, and then using the yellow toggle slider at the top of the screen to expand or shorten each clip. When you think you’re done touching up the memory, tap the back arrow to return to the main edit screen.
In this section of Photos, you can also edit the title, duration, and even soundtrack of each memory. Additional song cues can be downloaded, and the app supports any song you have downloaded in your iTunes music library in order to add a bit more of a personalized flair. To officially save every alteration made to the memory, tap “Done” to travel back to the basic editing menu with the emotional themes and length toggles. Once again, here you can use the Share extension to spread your new memory to a wider audience.
Some limitations are placed in customizing memories, including the lack of support for streaming tracks from Apple Music. Otherwise, Apple’s automatic algorithm of putting together interesting slideshows of old photos and videos is largely a simple, hassle-free experience, since most of the work is taken off of the user. Although not entirely clear, new memories show up in the Photos app every few days, curating new collections for you to peruse and share, and even ranking events like “Best of Last 3 Months” or “Best of the Year.”
iOS 10 includes a host of new features, and MacRumors will be covering a number of them in guides and how-tos to help users getting their hands on the new operating system version for the first time become familiar with what’s new. Check back for new articles and how-tos, and be sure to visit our forums for discussions on iOS 10, the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, and more.
Related Roundup: iOS 10
Discuss this article in our forums
Apple Surveying MacBook Pro Users About Headphone Jack and Other Ports
In recent weeks, Apple has been sending out surveys to users asking about MacBook Pro features, most notably the headphone jack. A survey question shared by MacRumors reader Blake asks “Do you ever use the headphone port on your MacBook Pro with Retina display?”
There are several other reports on Twitter from users who have been asked similar questions about the headphone jack, suggesting Apple is exploring the removal of the headphone jack in a future version of the MacBook Pro. Apple has eliminated the headphone jack from the iPhone, so it makes sense that the trend will continue for other products.
Apple is also asking users about battery life and other ports, including the SD card slot. One question asked “How do you upload photos from a digital camera or phone to your MacBook Pro with Retina Display?”
Based on a leaked MacBook Pro shell, the upcoming MacBook Pro will include four USB-C ports and a headphone jack, with Apple doing away with all other ports on the machine. If the shell is an actual part, the machine will not include an SD card slot, HDMI port, USB-A port, or a MagSafe connection.
The design of the MacBook Pro that’s launching in 2016 has already been finalized ahead of its release, and Apple is likely to continue using the same design for several years going forward, so the removal of the headphone jack is probably not something that MacBook Pro users need to worry about for the foreseeable future.
Rumors suggest Apple will release a redesigned MacBook Pro with a redesigned chassis and an OLED touch panel as early as October.
Related Roundup: MacBook Pro
Buyer’s Guide: Retina MacBook Pro (Don’t Buy)
Discuss this article in our forums
This is Sony’s first Ultra HD Blu-ray player with 4K and HDR support
Sony’s really getting into 4K now.
The company is officially supporting 4K in a physical format, with the introduction of the UBP-X1000ES. It’s Sony’s first Blu-ray player capable of Ultra HD Blu-ray playback. It not only brings support for full 4K support but also HDR, though we don’t know if it’s using HDR10 or Dolby Vision.
The X1000ES also supports standard Blu-ray content, CDs, DVDs, and it can upscale 1080p content to 4K 60p resolution.
Sony hasn’t yet announced pricing, but the X1000ES is part of Sony’s ES series, so consider this a high-end option. It’ll likely be expensive. If you want something more affordable that does both 4K and HDR, you should check out the company’s PS4 Pro. Unfortunately, it’s not an Ultra HD Blu-ray player. However, Pocket-lint has a round-up of the best Ultra HD Blu-ray players out there.
- Best Ultra HD Blu-ray players: Spinning 4K discs
Ultra HD Blu-ray is a new thing for 2016. The format has been standardised – discs and players are available. So, it’s full steam ahead as we cast those aging DVD players aside, retire the venerable Blu-ray player, and step into the future.
The X1000ES is expected to ship next spring. Stay tuned to Pocket-lint’s Sony hub for the latest news.
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