Apple Seeds Third Beta of tvOS 11.3 to Developers

Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming tvOS 11.3 update to developers for testing purposes, two weeks after seeding the second beta and just a day after releasing the tvOS 11.2.6 update.

Designed for the fourth and fifth-generation Apple TV models, the tvOS 11.3 developer beta can be downloaded onto the Apple TV via a profile that’s installed using Xcode and Apple Configurator.

The tvOS 11.3 update introduces support for AirPlay 2, allowing the Apple TV to be added to the Home app as part of a HomeKit setup.

With AirPlay 2, you can play the same song on multiple Apple TVs in different rooms, and when AirPlay 2 officially launches, that functionality will extend to other AirPlay 2 devices like HomePod and AirPlay 2 compatible speakers.

Other new features in tvOS 11.3 include enhancements to Match Content support, automatic frame rate switching on the fourth-generation Apple TV (a feature that was added to Apple TV 4K in a past tvOS update), and automatic mode switching for AirPlay video sessions.

Related Roundup: Apple TVBuyer’s Guide: Apple TV (Buy Now)
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Apple Seeds Third Beta of iOS 11.3 to Developers

Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming iOS 11.3 update to developers for testing purposes, two weeks after seeding the second beta and one month after releasing iOS 11.2.5, an update that focused primarily on bug fixes and security improvements. The update also comes just a day after the release of iOS 11.2.6, which fixed a bug that caused iPhones and iPads to crash when a character from the Indian language Telugu was rendered improperly.

Registered developers can download the new iOS 11.3 beta from Apple’s Developer Center or over-the-air once the proper configuration profile has been installed from the Developer Center.

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iOS 11.3 is a major update that introduces a long list of new features, like Messages on iCloud for storing your iMessages in the cloud, and ARKit 1.5, a new, upgraded version of ARKit that can more accurately map irregularly shaped surfaces and recognize and place objects on vertical surfaces like walls.

There are four new Animoji on the iPhone X (dragon, bear, skull, and lion), and in the Health app, there’s a new Health Records feature that aggregates all of your medical records in one easy-to-access place. Health Records are limited to participating institutions, though.

AirPlay 2 features have been introduced in iOS 11.3 and tvOS 11.3, allowing audio to be played to multiple Apple TVs, and for HomeKit, iOS 11.3 introduces official support for HomeKit software authentication options.

As of iOS 11.3 beta 2, the update includes a new “Battery Health” feature that’s designed to provide iOS users with more information about their batteries.

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Battery Health offers details on maximum battery capacity and peak performance capability, and for devices with degraded batteries, it provides information on if and when a device is being throttled with performance management features. It also provides a way for customers who do have a device with a degraded battery to turn off performance management all together.

By default, iOS 11.3 disables performance management on the iPhone, and the feature is only re-enabled once a device experiences an unexpected shutdown.

Other features in iOS 11.3 include a new “For You” section in Apple News that displays the top videos of the day, support for Advanced Mobile Location (AML) for more accurate location when placing an emergency call in a supported country, more information about app size in the Updates tap in the App Store, and a new Privacy screen and icon that will show up whenever Apple asks you for info.

iBooks has also had the “i” removed from its name, so it’s just “Books” now, and the App Store now lets you sort reviews by most helpful, most favorable, most critical, and most recent, a handy change for better finding the app info you’re looking for.

Business Chat, which will let you interface with businesses like Wells Fargo, Delta, Hilton and Lowe’s right in the Messages app is coming when iOS 11.3 is released, and improvements to Apple Music will bring better support for music videos. Users will be able to stream music videos without adds and create and view music video playlists.

iOS 11.3 will be released to the public in the spring. Spring kicks off on March 20, so iOS 11.3 will be in testing for at least another month.

Related Roundup: iOS 11
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Lost and found: Here’s how to locate your iPhone when it goes missing

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It’s an all too common scenario. You and your friends go out for a few drinks on a Saturday night. One drink turns to two, then three, and somewhere — probably in between the four shots of horrendous well whiskey and your oh-so-fantastic karaoke rendition of Jewel’s You Were Meant for Me — you go from a casual night out to painting the town red. Along the way, your iPhone, the essential piece of tech that’s basically become an extension of you, disappears without a trace.

Fortunately, Apple is hip to this sort of thing. The Cupertino, California-based company has conveniently been offering the Find My iPhone feature and accompanying mobile app since 2010, allowing users to remotely locate, lock, or wipe their iPhone using iCloud or another iOS device. Using Find My iPhone is simple, requiring little more than the initial setup and activation, and can really save you should you discover that your precious device is nowhere to be found. The software even works on other devices including your iPad, iPod Touch, and even your Mac. It won’t prevent you from losing your phone, but it may help you find it so long as you activate the feature prior to losing your device. Now, just make sure to check the crevices of your couch one last time before following these steps.

Step 1: Check the requirements

Although optimized for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, Find My iPhone is available on all devices equipped with iOS 5 or later. The utility is completely free and compatible beginning with the iPhone 3GS, third-generation iPod Touch, iPad, iPad Mini, and all the latest versions of ech A valid iCloud account is also required and devices without cellular data must be connected to a registered Wi-Fi network to be located.

Step 2: Find the app

The Find My iPhone app has been a part of iOS for quite some time. You don’t need to install the app, and you can’t remove it. To find it, just swipe down from the middle of your screen to bring up spotlight search and type Find My iPhone. Then just open the app and log in with your Apple ID.

Step 3: Activate Find My iPhone

Tap the main Settings icon and then tap your Apple ID banner at the top of the screen. Go to iCloud and then scroll down to Find my iPhone. Select it and make sure it is turned on.

Find My iPhone does more than just allow you to track your iPhone in a pinch. The feature also enables Activation Lock, which securely stores your Apple ID in Apple’s activation servers and automatically links to your device. This feature then requires your password be entered before anyone can turn off Find My iPhone, erase your device, or reactivate it. It requires no action on your part and serves as yet another security measure designed to prevent theft and unauthorized use of your phone.

Step 4: Lose your iOS device

Obviously, this doesn’t come recommended, but finding your iOS device once lost is likely the reason you chose to use the app in the first place.

Step 5: Locate your iOS device

Once lost, you can either use another iOS device or access your iCloud account on the web to locate your lost or stolen device. Again, keep in mind that it’s not possible to locate the device if you didn’t activate the Find my iPhone function before losing your device.

Using another iOS device

Find the Find my iPhone icon as described in step 2 (the icon resembles an old-school radar display), then enter your iCloud login credentials in the appropriate fields. Once logged in, select the lost or stolen device from the list of devices set up with Find my iPhone to view the device’s location.

Additional options for remotely wiping the phone and forcing it to play a sound — accessible via the Actions option located at the bottom of the display — are also available, along with an intuitive Lost Mode that provides options for locking the device with a four-digit passcode and displaying a contact phone number of your own choosing directly on the lock screen.

Using your iCloud account on the Web

Open your favorite browser and navigate to the iCloud homepage before signing in with your Apple ID and password. Than click the large Find My iPhone icon, select All Devices at the top of the window, and select the lost or stolen device from the resulting list of activated devices.

Additional options for remotely wiping the phone and forcing it to play a sound should appear in the upper-right corner, along with an intuitive Lost Mode button that provides options for locking the device with a four-digit passcode and displaying a contact phone number of your own choosing directly on the lock screen.

Step 6: Take action

Once you locate your iPhone or iOS device, use one of Find My iPhone’s built-in functions to help recover the device. Tap the gray Play Sound button featuring the speaker to have your phone play a high-pitched ping continuously for two minutes, or tap the gray Erase iPhone button followed by the Erase iPhone confirmation to completely wipe your device of all content and settings.

If running iOS 6 or later, tap the middle Lost Mode button followed by the Turn On Lost Mode confirmation before entering a phone number where you can be reached. Then, tap the green Next button in the upper-right corner, enter your desired message in the resulting text field, and tap the green Done button to activate the message.

There’s no guarantee the ringing, erasing, or messaging will help you get your device back — regardless of whether you know its precise whereabouts. Rather than confront the potential thief yourself, it’s wise to contact your service provider and the police, informing them of the situation and your intentions to recover the device. You never know when things might escalate like they did in San Francisco in 2012.

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Snapchat Updating Friends and Discover Pages With ‘Tabs’ for Easier Navigation, Introduces GIPHY Support

Over the past few weeks Snapchat has been rolling out a major user interface overhaul to more and more users on its iOS and Android apps. Most users have responded negatively to the app redesign, which separates friends from brands so that users can focus on people they actually know, but condenses stories and text chats into one page.

Today, Snap Inc. announced an additional update to Friends and Discovery pages that should help make it easier for users to navigate between stories and chats.

On the Friends section of Snapchat, users will be able to cycle through tabs related to active stories, group chats, and “all” content. The Discovery section’s tabs will focus on separating publishers, creators, and the community. Snapchat said tabs will be launching fairly soon on iOS, and Android will follow in the coming weeks.

In addition to tabs, today Snapchat users will have many more GIF sticker options to choose from thanks to full support from GIPHY. Snapchat has partnered with GIPHY and greatly expanded its library of GIF stickers that users can discover and place into a story. Previously, the only GIF stickers available in Snapchat were in-house designed stickers that launched late in 2017.

Users can tap the sticker icon, type in the search field, and a new GIPHY section in results will showcase GIF stickers related to the search query. Like other stickers, GIF stickers can be scaled, rotated, pinned to a video story, and more than one can be added to a snap. Snapchat’s GIPHY support launches one month after Instagram announced a similar wide-scale support for GIF stickers in its own version of stories.

Tag: Snapchat
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UK National Grid plans superfast country-wide EV charging network

Range anxiety could soon be a thing of the past for electric vehicle drivers in the UK, as National Grid is proposing a network of superfast charging points that would mean 90 percent of motorists would always be within 50 miles of a charging station. The strategically-placed points would offer up to 350KW of power, drawn directly from the country’s high-voltage power grid, which is managed by the company, and could charge a car in between five and 12 minutes — much faster than the 20 to 40 minutes it currently takes.

The proposal covers 100 motorway-adjacent chargers, equating to around 35MW of electricity — enough to power 14,000 homes. According to National Grid estimates, the infrastructure required to get the fleet up and running would cost between £500 million and £1 billion, or just 60p per driver per year.

“If you overlay the motorway network over the electricity transmission network, there is a synergy,” says Graeme Cooper, project director for electric vehicles at National Grid. “We want to show that infrastructure needn’t be a barrier to EV growth and a structured and co-ordinated roll out of rapid chargers is achievable.”

We’ve seen other examples of companies pioneering EV charging across the UK before — Ecotricity has points at service stations around the country, while the government has made noises about installing charging points at petrol stations — but National Grid is the first to propose an offering that could make a meaningful difference to EV drivers. The company is currently in talks with the government about rolling out the program, and there’s no timescale involved yet, but as Cooper says, “It’s about doing it once and doing it right.”

Via: FT.com

Intruders ‘borrowed’ Tesla’s public cloud for cryptocurrency mining

Tesla isn’t immune to the plague of cryptocurrency mining hijacks, it seems. Security researchers at RedLock have reported that intruders gained access to Tesla’s Kubernetes console (where it deploys and manages containerized apps) without needing a password, exposing the EV brand’s login credentials for Amazon Web Services. From there, the attackers both abused Tesla’s cloud resources for cryptojacking and accessed private data held in Amazon’s S3 service. The culprits were creative, too.

While many of these mining attempts rely on a public mining pool, the perpetrators here installed mining pool software an d pointed a script to reach an ‘unlisted’ destination. The move made it harder to simply block the cryptojacking based on internet addresses. The intruders also masked the address of their mining pool server through CloudFlare, and minimized processor use to avoid giving away its presence.

RedLock said it notified Tesla right away when it discovered the breach, and that the automaker has already patched the flaw. It’s not clear at this point what private data was involved, although this doesn’t necessarily mean customer data. We’ve asked Tesla for comment on the incident and will let you know if it can share more.

There doesn’t appear to have been much damage at first glance, but the intrusion continues a recent trend of companies and even militaries leaving sensitive info relatively unprotected. RedLock pointed out that there have been “hundreds” of instances like this at other companies. While the solutions in these cases are sometimes straightforward, that they’re necessary at all suggests it’ll take a while before companies are diligent about preventing slip-ups like this.

Source: RedLock

Google Pay is the new Android Pay

Google recently admitted that Android Pay and Google Wallet probably didn’t need to exist as two different services. After a fictional, Highlander-style battle, it was Google Pay that emerged victorious, taking on a new name to define this united brand. And so today, Android Pay becomes Google Pay. The app still does everything you’d expect it to, though there’s a new Home tab that puts recent transactions, nearby stores and rewards in one place. The Cards tab, on the other hand, is more a catalog of your payment cards, gift cards, loyalty schemes and offers. Unexpectedly, Google Pay doesn’t actually include Google Wallet functionality, meaning you can’t use it to send or request money. Not yet, anyway.

For that, you still have to use Google Wallet, which is now called Google Pay Send to keep it on-brand, if a bit awkwardly. The services won’t be split for too much longer, though, as people in the US and UK will be able to send and request cash through the actual Google Pay app “within the next few months.” So, beyond the new naming scheme and Android Pay redesign, not a great deal is changing on day one. But soon enough, you’ll start to see the brand name appearing in more apps and on more sites, as well as a Google Pay checkout option popping up in new places like Chrome and the Assistant.

Source: Google

Nuance Discontinues Swype Keyboard for iOS and Android

After over three years on the App Store, developer Nuance has decided to discontinue the gesture-based Swype Keyboard apps for both iOS and Android devices. The company’s announcement of the iOS app’s discontinuation came earlier this month, but it’s only just begun to garner attention due to a confirmation of the Android app’s removal given to XDA Developers.

On Android, the company discontinued its Swype+Dragon for Android keyboard app, which combined Swype’s unique swipe-to-type feature with Dragon’s voice dictation. On iOS, it appears that one version of Dragon remains on the App Store in the United States, called Dragon Anywhere. Attempts to search for “Swype Keyboard,” however, do confirm the third-party keyboard app is gone from the App Store, with results surfacing rival company apps like SwiftKey.

According to Nuance, the company’s decision to shut down Swype was a “necessary” move, granting it the ability to focus on selling AI solutions in the enterprise market. Recently, Nuance has been working on voice dictation software for medical professionals, as well as placing it within vehicles.

Nuance will no longer be offering the Swype keyboard on iOS app store. We’re sorry to leave the direct-to-consumer keyboard business, but this change is necessary to allow us to concentrate on developing our AI solutions for sale directly to businesses.

We hope you enjoyed using Swype, we sure enjoyed working with the Swype community.

Although Swype is no more, users still have access to third-party iOS keyboard apps like Gboard, SwiftKey, Fleksy, Grammarly, and more. In terms of functionality, SwiftKey is the app that aligns most with Swype’s swipe-to-text abilities, letting users enter text one handed using the SwiftKey Flow feature.

A current search for Swype on the iOS App Store
When Swype launched in the fall of 2014 alongside iOS 8, it was one of the few keyboard apps that did not require “full access” to the iPhone to function, limiting some of its feature sets but providing better user privacy.

iOS 8 updated iPhones and iPads with the ability to support third-party keyboards on a systemwide basis, and at the time Fleksy, SwiftKey, and Swype jumped to the top of the paid and free iOS App Store charts in multiple countries. Although Fleksy has had a rocky development history, Swype is the first of these initial keyboard apps to see its development discontinued completely.

Tags: Swype, Nuance
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Spotify Job Listings Say Company ‘On Its Way’ to Launch of First Physical Products, Hinting at HomePod Rival

Following an ad for a senior product manager last spring that hinted at Spotify’s interest in creating a hardware product, this week a collection of new job listings further suggest the launch of a physical Spotify product will be coming in the future (via Music Ally). The listings call for an Operations Manager: Hardware Product, Senior Product Manager: Hardware Production, and Project Manager: Hardware Production and Engineering.

According to the page for the Operations Manager, Spotify is “on its way” to developing and launching its “first physical products,” potentially hinting at an upcoming rival device to Apple’s HomePod. Although the job listing pages are not full confirmations of Spotify’s entry into the smart speaker market, in terms of physical hardware a speaker of some kind does make sense for the music streaming company. The “connected hardware” could also refer to devices like wireless headphones and other music-based products.

A Spotify speaker would enter the market as a competitor to products like Apple’s HomePod, which as of now can play Spotify but lacks deep integration with the service and instead favors Apple Music. Spotify’s speaker could flip that and focus on the company’s own streaming customers, of which there is a large market of more than 140 million subscribers worldwide who could be interested in a Spotify-focused speaker.

The person who gets hired for the position will help the company in setting up an operational organization for manufacturing, and build up the supply chain, sales, and marketing, all while working out of the company’s office in Stockholm. All three job listings state that the employee’s work will “impact the way the world experiences music.”

Spotify is on its way to creating its first physical products and setting up an operational organisation for manufacturing, supply chain, sales & marketing.

We are looking for a passionate and seasoned Operations Manager that will contribute in the creation of innovative Spotify experiences via connected hardware. You will define and manage Distribution, Supply, Logistics, fulfillment and Customer Service for Hardware Products. You will also work with partners to deliver the optimal Spotify experience to millions of users. Above all, your work will impact the way the world experiences music.

As the rivalry between Apple Music and Spotify has grown since the former service’s mid-2015 launch, Apple Music is now forecasted to overtake Spotify in paid subscriber numbers in the United States as soon as this summer. That prediction came from The Wall Street Journal earlier in the month, in a report that stated Apple Music’s monthly growth rates have been exceeding Spotify’s by about three percentage points. In terms of worldwide numbers, Spotify still has about 70 million paid subscribers compared to Apple Music’s 36 million.

Tag: Spotify
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Apple TV 4K With 64GB is Back in Stock After Extended Shipping Delays

Apple TV 4K models with 64GB of storage are finally back in stock following months of shipping delays for the larger capacity model.

64GB configurations are currently estimated for delivery in 1-2 days in the United States and several other countries on Apple’s online store, while same-day pickup is now available at dozens of Apple’s retail stores.

Back in November, shipping estimates for the 64GB model fell back to 4-5 weeks. The estimate began to shrink gradually in January and has now improved enough for next-day delivery to be a possibility again as of this week.

Apple never provided a reason for the shipping delays, but it may have been due to a recent shortage in the NAND flash storage market.

Apple TV 4K was released last September in 32GB and 64GB sizes for $179 and $199 respectively in the United States. Apple recently began selling refurbished units for $30 off in the United States, a roughly 15 percent discount.

Related Roundup: Apple TVBuyer’s Guide: Apple TV (Buy Now)
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