CarPlay on iOS 11 has DND while driving

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 5, 2017

A real important step for safety in the car was just introduced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference that's currently underway in San Jose: Do Not Disturb mode while driving. Apple's proactive assistant on iOS 11 determines when you're driving and offers to automatically turn on DND mode via CarPlay.

With DND active while driving, CarPlay won't be showing any notifications, similar to DND mode on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. And if someone message you while DND mode is active on CarPlay, the Messages app on your iPhone will auto-respond with a message on your behalf telling the sender that you're currently driving and will be getting back to them soon.

Like with DND on iOS, DND for CarPlay allows you to cherry-pick contacts whose messages will get through while you're driving in DND mode. The Messages app on iOS 11 will permit users to respond with a simple “reply” message if they'd like their muted message delivered to CarPlay, as long as they're on your whitelist.

Those and other CarPlay improvements will launch for everyone when iOS 11 releases for public consumption this fall.

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Messages in iOS 11 gains iCloud syncing, revamped app drawer & more

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 5, 2017

Apple announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference today that Messages on iOS 11 will now synchronize your chats across devices via iCloud while making it a lot easier to get to your favorite iMessage apps and stickers using a redesigned app drawer.

With the redesigned drawer, your favorite iMessage apps and stickers live as horizontally-scrollable thumbnail icons lined alongside the bottom of the interface. Before today, getting to a sticker pack or an iMessage app you wanted to use was a multi-tap affair. With a new Messages in iCloud feature, when you sign in to a new device all your existing conversations will be automatically synchronized, and stay in sync.

For example, if you delete a message on your iPhone it will get automatically deleted from Messages on your iPad, and vice versa. And because your full Messages archive is now synced via iCloud, iOS 11 only keeps the most recent messages on the device while downloading older ones on demand.

As a result, Messages will consume a lot less storage space on your device, and device backups will be faster, too. According to Apple, iOS 10 is now installed on 86 percent of supported devices in the wild, up from the 79 percent adoption rate for iOS 10 reported on February 20, 2017.

iOS 10 features 96 percent customer satisfaction.

Image: The current Messages app on iOS 10.

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Apple unveils Apple Pay person-to-person transactions, and Apple Pay Cash card

Steffen Reich ∙ June 5, 2017

The number one contactless payment service in the mobile world, Apple Pay, will be implementing person to person payments starting with iOS 11. What the rumor mill had treated for the longest time as Apple Cash is now going to be located in your redesigned iMessage app drawer, and serve as an easy way to send money to any friend or family member on Apple's iMessage service.

Money transferred via iMessage winds up in the recipient's Wallet app in the shape of a brand new card called Apple Pay Cash card. From there, the card can be thought of as a multi purpose account, facilitating purchases on the App Store, storing the money for future transactions, but also offering the handy option to withdraw the money to your private bank account. As expected, Touch ID authentication is required to go ahead with any one transaction.

 

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Control Center gets major redesign in iOS 11

Cody Lee ∙ June 5, 2017

One of the many new features in iOS 11 is a completely redesigned Control Center. As you can see in the above screenshot, it looks nothing like the previous design, with more of a widget-style interface, and yes—it's back to a single page.

Apple describes it as far more customizable than previous versions of Control Center, allowing you to quickly access the settings for things you do most. We haven't tried it yet, but it looks like you can customize at least some of the settings and app shortcuts that appear here.

This being a smaller feature in the grand scheme of the iOS 11 update, there aren't many other details available yet. We are currently installing the developer beta and will be sure to publish a post with a full breakdown of the new CC.

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Apple announces new iMac Pro, the most powerful Mac ever made, coming later this year

Cody Lee ∙ June 5, 2017

In addition to unveiling macOS High Sierra and updates for the iMac and MacBooks, Apple today announced the new iMac Pro. It looks a lot like the current iMac, but it comes in an awesome Space Gray finish and Apple says it's the "most powerful Mac" they've ever made.

“We’re thrilled to give developers and customers a sneak peek at iMac Pro. This will be our fastest and most powerful Mac ever, which brings workstation-class computing to iMac for the first time,” said John Ternus, Apple’s vice president of Hardware Engineering. “We reengineered the whole system and designed an entirely new thermal architecture to pack extraordinary performance into the elegant, quiet iMac enclosure our customers love — iMac Pro is a huge step forward and there’s never been anything like it.”

Apple says this new 5K iMac has Workstation-class performance in a beautiful iMac design. The starting configuration has 8-core Xeon processor, but you can get up to 18 cores. It has a new set of fans that are "dual centrifugal," allowing for much more efficient and powerful airflow. You can also get up to 128GB of ECC memory and up to 4TB of SSD. You can see some of the other features in the above image.

Also worth noting that the iMac Pro comes with the new Radeon Pro Vega GPU, the most advanced graphics ever in a Mac. Featuring a new next-generation compute core and up to 16GB of on-package high-bandwidth memory (HBM2), iMac Pro with the Vega GPU delivers up to an amazing 11 Teraflops of single-precision compute power for real-time 3D rendering and immersive, high frame rate VR. And for half-precision computation, ideal for machine learning, iMac Pro delivers up to an incredible 22 Teraflops of performance.

The new iMac Pro starts at $4,999 and will be available in December. So, who's getting one?

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Photos for Mac will sync faces across devices, support printing services & more

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 5, 2017

Photos for Mac is gaining some interesting new features in macOS High Sierra, which is the official name of the upcoming 10.13 version of the desktop operating system powering Mac computers and notebooks. For starters, the app will now synchronize any named or recognized faces across your devices via iCloud.

Facial recognition has received a boost, thanks to advanced convolutional networks and machine learning. You'll notice a new persistent sidebar within the app, allowing for one-click access to the commonly used features. You also get a new view for all your imports, allowing you to view them in chronological order and so forth.

Speaking of filters, you can now filter your photos and videos by things like your favorites, media type and more. There are also some new editing tools, like support for precise curve-based adjustments of your color, contrast and more. You can now select content areas by color as well.

The app now plays nicer with third-party apps like Pixelmator.

Now when you edit an image in Pixelmator and save the changes, Photos automatically updates the image in its library. Last but not least, Photos for Mac will feature support for additional third-party printing services, allowing users to easily order wall-mounted photo prints and even publish their images using website templates.

Apple did not say when the updated Photos app will release or if it will require macOS High Sierra.

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Apple brings APFS to macOS High Sierra

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated May 23, 2018

Apple is bringing its renowned Apple Filesystem (APFS) to the macOS platform for the first time with the newly-announced macOS High Sierra operating system for Macs.

APFS first debuted in iOS 10.3 to replace the dated HFS, and the speed improvements were quickly noticed by users.

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Apple introduces macOS High Sierra

Cody Lee ∙ June 5, 2017

Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi has taken the stage at Apple's WWDC keynote to introduce the next major version of macOS. They're calling it macOS High Sierra.

Think of this like a Mountain Lion-style update—Craig said "we wanted to spend this year perfecting Sierra." There have been several improvements made, but it doesn't sound like much in terms of new features.

“macOS High Sierra delivers important forward-looking technologies and new opportunities for developers wanting to tap into the power of machine learning and create immersive VR content on the Mac,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “The core technology innovations in macOS High Sierra, combined with our advances in hardware, will continue to push the Mac forward in exciting new ways.”

Among those new ways  is a faster Safari. Craig says Safari in High Sierra is the "fastest browser in the world." It also has a few new features like blocking AutoPlay videos and something called 'Intelligent Tracking Prevention,' which uses machine learning to protect your privacy from sites/ads that want to track you.

There is also Mail enhancements, a new file system—Apple File System replaces HFS, improvements to the Photos app, enhanced 4K support, and Metal 2 for better graphics performance. An important note: Metal 2 supports external graphics, which opens up the door for Virtual Reality content creation.

Other new features:

Safari can automatically use Reader to open articles in a clean, uncluttered format, while Autoplay Blocking stops media with audio from automatically playing in the browser. Mail search gets faster and easier with Top Hits, which puts the most relevant results at the top of a user’s message list. Siri on the Mac responds with a natural and more expressive voice, and when using Apple Music, it learns music preferences, creates custom playlists and answers music trivia. Notes adds simple tables, where a user can type in cells, make edits and move rows and columns. Spotlight provides flight status information, including departure and arrival times, delays, gates, terminals and even a map of the flight path. iCloud File Sharing lets users share any file stored in iCloud Drive and collaborate with other people.

macOS High Sierra is available in developer beta form today, and will be released to the public this fall.

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Music app undergoes major redesign in watchOS 4

Steffen Reich ∙ June 5, 2017

Apple has taken the wraps off the new Music app design on Apple Watch coming this fall. It looks to do away with the sometimes cumbersome, manual iPhone to Apple Watch synchronisation process of playlists, and instead promises automatic syncing based on what you like to listen to on your iPhone.

As a result, your favorite playlists and most frequently played tunes (including My New Music Mix, My Favorites Mix, Heavy Rotation, My Chill Mix) will automatically appear on Apple Watch, furthermore multiple playlists outside of those are going to be permitted as well.

The new design seems to abandon small fonts and lettering in favor of album covers and images where possible, though we have yet to see the full extend to which the app has been overhauled. In any event, the Digital Crown was touted as the go-to button for swift and effective music selection on your wrist.

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Workout app gaining support for 2-way gym equipment sync, multiple workouts in a single session & more

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 5, 2017

Apple's Kevin Lynch, who is in charge of the watchOS software, said at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference today that the stock Workout app for Apple Watch will be gaining some much-needed new features. For starters, you'll be able to connect your watch with a number of gym equipment in use today.

With support for multiple workouts, users can easily start a workout session like an outdoor walk, then switch to another workout such as an outdoor run. Apple is working with major gym equipment manufacturers responsible for about eighty percent of equipment in use in gyms today.

watchOS 4 will feature two-way data change in real-time with supported gym equipment. Your watch will send things like your heart rate to, say, the treadmill machine, while getting info like the distance and pace from the machine.

The user interface for the Workout app has also been reworked to be easier to use, with bolder headings and easier to select workout sessions.

The Pool Swim workout now has auto sets, a feature that automatically marks each set that you’re doing. Calisthenics buffs will be pleased to learn that the Workout app in watchOS 4 will be gaining support for a new workout type: Hight Intensity Interval Training, the most popular workout in the world.

These new features will be part of watchOS 4, which will be released as a developer-only preview later today and this fall for public consumption.

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