Apple Music for Android Gets Major iOS-Style Design Revamp
Apple today updated its Apple Music for Android app with a new design that mimics the look of the Music app on iOS devices. Version 2.0 of the app includes the redesigned Apple Music experience that was introduced on iOS devices with the release of iOS 10.
Like the iOS version, Apple Music for Android features a bolder, cleaner look with reorganized sections: “Library,” “For You,” “Browse,” and “Radio.” Also included are iOS 10 features like song lyrics and a revamped For You recommendation section, plus with the redesign, there’s more of a focus on album art.
An all-new design brings greater clarity and simplicity to Apple Music:
Now Playing. Read lyrics for songs as you listen.
Library. Navigate your music easily and see the Downloaded Music you can play offline.
For You. Get recommendations for playlists, albums, and more–based on music you love.
Browse. Listen to new music first, plus playlists for any mood or activity.
Radio. Tune in to Beats 1 shows or listen to stations for any genre.
With the redesign, Apple Music customers who subscribe to and use the service on both Android and iOS devices will have a streamlined listening experience. Apple Music has been available for Android devices since November of 2015, and it continues to be one of the sole Android apps Apple has developed.
Apple Music for Android can be downloaded from the Google Play store for free.
Tags: Android, Apple Music
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Starbucks App for iOS Gains Support for iMessage Gift Cards
Starbucks today updated its iOS app to introduce a new feature that allows Starbucks customers to send digital gift cards to friends and family members using the Messages app.
To send a digital Starbucks gift card, the Starbucks Gifts app will need to be installed from the Messages App Store. From there, the app offers an interface with several different gift card graphic options and $5, $10, and $25 denominations.
Sending a gift card requires Apple Pay, which is used to pay for the gift card directly in the Messages app, charging the amount to an Apple Pay credit or debit card. Giftees can then use the digital gift card like any other digital gift card sent via email.
Along with the new Starbucks Gifts feature, today’s update also introduces new push notifications, a store location filter for the Nitro cold brew, and a new design and interface for the mobile ordering feature.
What’s New in Version 4.3.4
Starbucks(R) Gifts in iMessage
Send a digital gift card with the Starbucks(R) iMessage app and Apple Pay. Surprise someone special with an instant gift, seamlessly integrated into your texting conversation. It’s way more delightful than asking someone you love to check their email.Push notifications
If you’re opted-in to receive notifications, you may receive new messages based on how often you use the app.Mobile Order & Pay
Reviewing your order has a brand-new look and animations. Remove or duplicate items with a tap. You can now see all customizations in the updated card views. Visual updates to suggested items.Store locator
Are you as obsessed with Nitro cold brew as we are? Find it at a store near you with a new filter option.
Starbucks for iOS can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Tag: Starbucks
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Apple Store Set to Open at Dubai Mall as Burlingame, Palm Beach, and LA Area Stores Close for Renovations
Apple today announced that it will be opening its second retail location in Dubai, the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates.
We’re getting ready for our newest store in UAE by celebrating local artists and entrepreneurs. Excited for Apple Dubai Mall! pic.twitter.com/SIT4FeDr1x
— Angela Ahrendts (@AngelaAhrendts) April 4, 2017
The store will be located at The Dubai Mall in downtown Dubai, opposite the Burj Khalifa, the tallest structure in the world. As we reported in February, the store will be split into two floors inside the shopping mall. Apple said the grand opening will be “soon,” but it did not provide a specific date or time.
Apple is celebrating the upcoming grand opening with an artistic display on its website and on the construction barrier covering the storefront.
Meanwhile, in the United States, Apple continues to renovate a number of its older stores with its newer retail design introduced in 2015.
Apple has announced that its stores in Burlingame, California and Canoga Park in Los Angeles temporarily closed for renovations on Sunday. Apple also temporarily closed its store at The Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida on March 25 for renovations. All three stores will likely reopen by the end of the year.
Apple also announced that its current North Point Mall store in Alpharetta, Georgia will be closing and relocating to Avalon, a new mixed-use development in the Atlanta suburb. The grand opening is April 13 at 10:00 a.m. local time.
Elsewhere, construction continues for Apple’s upcoming flagship store near the historic Michigan Avenue Bridge in downtown Chicago.
Apple unloading roof panels for its Chicago River store (Thanks, Steve!)
The store will include a “grand flight of stairs” going from street level to a walkway alongside the Chicago River’s north bank. At street level, the store will have an entry pavilion that’s 14-feet high. Pedestrians entering from North Michigan Avenue can reach the sales floor by stairs or elevator.
MacRumors has also received a tip from reader David about Apple possibly expanding its retail store at the Providence Place shopping mall in Providence, Rhode Island. David sent us a photo of what appears to be Apple’s typical black construction barrier taking up four units on the lower level of the Macy’s wing of the mall.
The tipster said he confirmed with multiple employees that the construction is indeed for a new Apple Store in the mall, which will replace its much smaller one down the hall. The tipster has heard that Apple is aiming to complete construction by June, and the store will likely open at some point in the summer.
Apple-like construction barrier at the Providence Place shopping mall
Apple’s newer retail layout often includes wider open spaces with some combination of large glass doors, touch-sensitive sequoia wood tables and shelves, seating areas for community events, large 6K resolution video screens, indoor trees, and light boxes extending the length of the ceiling.
Apple is similarly expanding its retail stores at Danbury Fair Mall in Danbury, Connecticut and Woodland Mall in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Related Roundup: Apple Stores
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Leviton’s New HomeKit-Enabled Light Switch and Dimmers Now Available
Leviton’s new line of HomeKit-compatible light switches and dimmers, first announced at CES in January, are now available for purchase from the Leviton website.
The Decora Smart 1000W DH1KD Dimmer is available for $65.99, the Decora Smart 600W DH6HD Dimmer is available for $59.99, and the Decora Smart DH15S 15A Switch is available for $53.99.
Both the dimmers and the switch are HomeKit-enabled and hub free, allowing users to control connected lights and other products using the Decora Smart Home app.
Leviton’s Decora app offers customizable settings based on bulb type, allowing users to adjust fade rate, minimum and maximum illumination levels, and more.
Like all HomeKit products, Leviton’s line of switches and dimmers can be controlled using Siri voice commands and HomeKit Scenes for automation purposes based on time of day, who’s home, and other parameters.
Each of the dimmers includes rocker paddles and an embedded LED to display illumination level, and White and Light Almond color faces are included for all products.
Leviton’s new Decora products are available immediately directly from Leviton and should also be available in retail stores soon.
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Apple Warns iCloud Users Some Disabled Services Were Accidentally Re-enabled in iOS 10.3
Apple today sent out emails to a small number of iCloud users, warning them that a bug in iOS 10.3 may have caused some iCloud services that had been disabled to be mistakenly re-enabled.
The email asks iCloud users to revisit their iCloud settings to make sure to turn off any service that might have been turned on through the iOS 10.3 update.
It’s not entirely clear which iCloud services might have been affected, but MacRumors reader Karl, who sent us the email, said that he typically disables iCloud Mail. Following the update, he found the Mail option turned back on.
We discovered a bug in the recent iOS 10.3 software update that impacted a small number of iCloud users. This may have inadvertently reenabled some iCloud services that you had previously disabled on your device.
We suggest you go to iCloud settings on your iOS device to make sure that only the services you’d like to use are enabled.
Learn more about how to manage your iCloud settings or contact AppleCare with any questions.The iCloud team
iOS 10.3, released on March 27, introduced a new Apple Filesystem among other major features like Find My AirPods, plus it included an overhauled iCloud storage breakdown, which may explain why some iCloud services were mistakenly turned back on.
To check which iCloud services are enabled on your iOS device, open the Settings app and scroll down to the “iCloud” section. A list of apps and services using iCloud is front and center, and anything that was enabled via iOS 10.3 can be turned off using the toggle buttons.
A wide range of first and third-party apps and services use Apple’s iCloud feature, including Photos, Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Notes, Safari, News, Keychain, Find My iPhone, iCloud Backup, and more.
Related Roundup: iOS 10
Tag: iCloud
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New open source font could eliminate those weird characters after translation
Why it matters to you
Developers now have another font style that’s accessible to a wider number of people, while web surfers may notice less of those empty boxes after translating text online.
The World Wide Web has long been bringing ideas across cultural borders, but a new font developed by Adobe and Google aims to simplify the development of apps and websites across multiple languages, eliminating errors when translating text. Source Hans Serif is a new font containing simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and English characters, each in downloads of less than 25 megabytes.
By containing multiple characters in one font, Source Hans Serif aims to give developers working on programs in multiple languages consistency across the type design. While English (and many other Latin character-based languages) only needs to span 26 letters with upper and lower case variations along with symbols, accented variants, and grammatical symbols, East Asian languages contain a much broader number of characters. When those characters aren’t part of the font family, the translated letter then becomes a little box marking missing information. The new open source font contains 65,535 different glyphs or characters.
More: Spector makes discovering fonts and colors in print easy
While fonts containing so many characters tend to be at least 40MB, Source Hans Serif is less than 25MB, with downloads available with the set as a whole or in language subsets. The smaller file size doesn’t make any usability sacrifices, Adobe senior manager Dan Rhatigan explained, but instead uses files more efficiently by mapping out each region’s shared glyphs, even with as many as four regional variations of each character within the same language.
The font complements Hans Sans, which launched in 2014 with similar universal goals. The latest font expands on the original as a serif font — or one that contains those little lines where the large line ends, like at the feet of an “A.” Serif fonts are traditionally used in body text while the cleaner look of a Sans Serif (or no serif) font tends to be favored for headings and large text.
Adobe says the font is designed to be screen-friendly, with each glyph containing a separate horizontal and vertical format. The font family also includes seven different weight and style variations (such as bold and italic). By adding a Serif font to the earlier release, the fonts can be used together in more applications, Adobe says.
Source Han Serif (or Noto CJK Serif for Google) supports the subtle differences between writing conventions in four regions.
“Source Hans Serif pushes the boundaries of what’s really capable with the font format,” Rhatigan said. “What we are able to do in combining all of these and looking how these glyphs can be shared, is that we were able to push the envelop in the size of the family while occupying a relatively small footprint compared to fonts offerings from other countries.”
While fonts containing the vast number of characters in Chinese Korean and Japanese are expensive to develop, Source Hans Serif is open source, and available free through Adobe Typekit in North America and Japan. In China and Korea, the font family is available on GitHub. Google is also releasing the font under the name Noto Serif CJK from the Google Noto page.
New open source font could eliminate those weird characters after translation
Why it matters to you
Developers now have another font style that’s accessible to a wider number of people, while web surfers may notice less of those empty boxes after translating text online.
The World Wide Web has long been bringing ideas across cultural borders, but a new font developed by Adobe and Google aims to simplify the development of apps and websites across multiple languages, eliminating errors when translating text. Source Hans Serif is a new font containing simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and English characters, each in downloads of less than 25 megabytes.
By containing multiple characters in one font, Source Hans Serif aims to give developers working on programs in multiple languages consistency across the type design. While English (and many other Latin character-based languages) only needs to span 26 letters with upper and lower case variations along with symbols, accented variants, and grammatical symbols, East Asian languages contain a much broader number of characters. When those characters aren’t part of the font family, the translated letter then becomes a little box marking missing information. The new open source font contains 65,535 different glyphs or characters.
More: Spector makes discovering fonts and colors in print easy
While fonts containing so many characters tend to be at least 40MB, Source Hans Serif is less than 25MB, with downloads available with the set as a whole or in language subsets. The smaller file size doesn’t make any usability sacrifices, Adobe senior manager Dan Rhatigan explained, but instead uses files more efficiently by mapping out each region’s shared glyphs, even with as many as four regional variations of each character within the same language.
The font complements Hans Sans, which launched in 2014 with similar universal goals. The latest font expands on the original as a serif font — or one that contains those little lines where the large line ends, like at the feet of an “A.” Serif fonts are traditionally used in body text while the cleaner look of a Sans Serif (or no serif) font tends to be favored for headings and large text.
Adobe says the font is designed to be screen-friendly, with each glyph containing a separate horizontal and vertical format. The font family also includes seven different weight and style variations (such as bold and italic). By adding a Serif font to the earlier release, the fonts can be used together in more applications, Adobe says.
Source Han Serif (or Noto CJK Serif for Google) supports the subtle differences between writing conventions in four regions.
“Source Hans Serif pushes the boundaries of what’s really capable with the font format,” Rhatigan said. “What we are able to do in combining all of these and looking how these glyphs can be shared, is that we were able to push the envelop in the size of the family while occupying a relatively small footprint compared to fonts offerings from other countries.”
While fonts containing the vast number of characters in Chinese Korean and Japanese are expensive to develop, Source Hans Serif is open source, and available free through Adobe Typekit in North America and Japan. In China and Korea, the font family is available on GitHub. Google is also releasing the font under the name Noto Serif CJK from the Google Noto page.
Sony Xperia XZ news and rumors
To say that Sony’s mobile brand is one dogged by turbulence is a bit of an understatement: The Xperia division recorded a loss of $544 million for the 2015 financial year. That’s partly thanks to tribulations brought on by its parent company’s continued restructuring — it cut 1,000 jobs in Europe and China early last year.
But also to blame are an inexplicable series of management missteps: The Xperia Z3+, one of the first smartphones to sport Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 chipset, was initially plagued by reports of overheating, and when Sony’s latest handset, the Z5, became available in North America an off-contract capacity, it bizarrely shipped without a fingerprint sensor.
Sony’s desperate for a hit, needless to say. Last month, leaked images showed a previously unrevealed Sony handset that’s slightly different from the company’s established design language. Now we’ve got a few renders, and a name — the Xperia XZ. Here’s everything we know so far.
Availability
The Sony Xperia XZ made its official debut in India in 2016 and began shipping there last October.
Design
Sony’s next flagship device isn’t the Xperia XR — it has been wrongly named by notable leaker @OnLeaks. The device is in fact the Xperia XZ, thanks to the Czech version of Sony’s website which accidentally leaked the name as well as the existence of the Xperia X Compact.
Still, these renders from @OnLeaks may indeed show what Sony’s upcoming handset looks like. Keep in mind that we cannot verify any of these images or the name of the handset — take everything with a grain of salt.
So, here comes the first one… #SONY #XPERIAXR (moniker TBC)
Roughly 146.4×71.9×8.1mm pic.twitter.com/gPPhKLsJjw— OnLeaks (@OnLeaks) August 7, 2016
The smartphone is actually quite similar in looks to the Xperia X — there are the same button placements, and the rear camera sits in a familiar place. The top and bottom bezels are a little thick.
More: Get more out of your stylish Sony with these Xperia X tips and tricks
But previous images do show that the handset, which GSM Arena reports might be the “F8331,” features geometry that’s a little more angular than this year’s Xperia X. The aesthetic might almost be described as brutalist: the phone’s top and bottom edges terminate harshly at the edges, and there’s no sign of the rounded, sloping corners of the type on the Xperia X. Rather, the prototype’s longer edges taper at its front and rear, evoking Nokia’s Lumia series of Windows Phones. It’s not entirely seamless — the phone’s rear cover sports a discolored tab near its bottom, presumably to accommodate antennas, and a camera and flash dominate the top-left side. The image’s source claims the screen is larger than that on the Xperia X.
More: Sony Xperia X review
It may not be long before Sony blows the lid on its skunkworks phone, though — it’s scheduled to make an appearance at September’s IFA conference in Berlin. And even if it did, it might be bound for destinations overseas: according to leaked documents obtained by Xperia Blog in July, Sony plans to “defocus” its mobile business in the United States, India, China, and Brazil in the coming months in favor of alternative East Asian, European, and Middle Eastern countries.
Specs
The design renders from @OnLeaks and the leaked images clearly indicate the phone will have a USB Type-C port, a first for Sony. The former leaker also says the Xperia XZ will have dimensions of 146.4 x 71.9 x 8.1 mm. That’s slightly larger than the Xperia X — it’s dimensions are 142.7 x 69.4 x 7.9 mm.
A profiteering user of Njuškalo, Croatia’s dominant classified ads website, has listed a unit of the unreleased smartphone for sale. The seller describes it as ” a new model of Xperia X Performance,” and provided a few specifications.
According to the listing, the phone features a 5.1-inch display, 23MP rear-facing camera and 12MP front-facing camera, 3GB of RAM, and “non-slippery” metal housing. A USB Type-C port appears to be on tap and so too does a 3.5mm headphone jack.
This article was originally published on 07-25-2016. Updated on 04-04-2017 by Kyle Wiggers.
Google forms group of major players to reduce patent disputes
Why it matters to you
Google wants to protect Android from litigation. PAX might just help it do that.
When it comes to patent infighting, Google’s laying down the law. In a blog post yesterday, the search giant announced PAX , a patent licensing group founded to “[promote] innovation and healthy competition.” Its members will agree to the terms of an “Android Networked Cross-License Agreement.”
PAX, which Google describes as a “patent clearing house,” counts Google, Samsung, LG, Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn, Nokia device maker HMD Global, HTC, Chinese smartphone company Coolpad, BQ, and Allview among its founding members. It will grant royalty-free patent licenses that cover Android and Google Applications on “qualified devices” — namely, smartphones and tablets that ship with Google’s proprietary Android services.
More: The 18 most important patents Google takes home with Motorola
Google says that this will shore up the Android ecosystem’s more than 400 partner manufacturers and 500 carriers against intellectual property disputes. “[This] ensures that innovation and consumer choice — not patent threats — will continue to be key drivers of our Android ecosystem. PAX is free to join and open to anyone,” Google said in a blog post.
According to Google, PAX’s members own more than 230,000 patents worldwide.
PAX, on its face, is principally aimed at heading off legal spats over Android’s core features.
In 2011, Oracle accused Google of infringing on intellectual Java programming language property the former acquired from Sun Microsystems in early 2010. And in 2012, Apple sued Samsung for violating software design patents including Android’s pinch-to-zoom gesture, the slide-to-unlock motion used to unlock Android’s lockscreen, the kinetic rubber-banding effect at the bottom of settings menus, and universal search.
More: Microsoft announces tenth Android patent deal
It’s also meant to combat the pricey licensing arrangements sought by companies which claim Android violates their intellectual property.
Microsoft is reported to be earning $2 billion a year from licensing email, calendar, contacts, and signal strength patents to Android handset manufacturers like Samsung, Acer, ViewSonic, Quanta, Onkyo, and HTC.
And in 2011, Rockstart, a patent holding company jointly owned by Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and Ericsson, launched lawsuits against Google and Android partners like HTC, Huawei, Asus, LG, Samsung, ZTE, and Pantech.
More: Google is letting budding inventors search through patents in 11 more countries
In a report commissioned by lawyers from Apple’s law firm and an executive from Intel, analysts estimated that about $120 of the $400 cost of a representative smartphone is spent on patent licensing — about 30 percent.
In 2012, Google went so far as to acquire smartphone maker Motorola — and its collection of 170,000 patents — in order to “protect” Android software and devices.
PAX represents a more open — and permanent — solution
“In Latin, the word ‘pax’ means ‘peace,’” Google said. “We encourage […] companies large and small around the world to join us in PAX and enjoy patent peace.”
New law repeals ISP privacy rules that would limit sale of users’ browsing data
Why it matters to you
President Trump’s decision makes it easier for internet service providers to use your browsing history to deliver targeted advertising.
President Donald Trump has signed off on the repeal of legislation designed to limit internet service providers’ capacity to retain and sell users’ browsing history. This development comes after both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives voted to remove the limitations put in place while former President Barack Obama was still in office.
The legislation was designed to prevent both home and mobile internet providers from sharing their users’ browsing history, app usage, and other private information without their consent, according to a report from Ars Technica. Users would have had to opt in to allow their data to be sold.
Now, ISPs will not require customers’ consent in order to analyze their browsing history for the purposes of advertising. For bigger companies with their own advertising platforms, this means that users’ browsing habits can be fed directly into the mechanisms that determine what ads are delivered to an individual.
More: If ISPs get their way, your web browser won’t be ‘sensitive information’
However, this repeal also means that ISPs are free to sell user data to third parties. Companies could potentially leverage existing customers to provide new revenue streams by treating their browsing history as a resource that can help advertisers reach receptive audiences.
It remains to be seen to what extent ISPs will take advantage of the access to user data granted by this repeal. In January 2017, a group of companies including AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile, and Verizon published an open letter that stated their intention to allow customers opt out of their browsing history being used for advertising.
There are now fears that Trump might make changes to other legislation related to internet access, like net neutrality rules. Both net neutrality and the legislation that prevented ISPs from sharing user data without consent were facilitated by the FCC’s 2015 decision to reclassify ISPs as common carriers — something that White House press secretary Sean Spicer criticized in a briefing held last week.
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