Apple today published a new commercial on its Japanese YouTube channel, titled ”Race”.
The 30-second television spot is all about iPhone 7, which in Japan comes with a special chip supporting Sony-developed FeliCa mobile payments technology.
With FeliCa support, folk in Japan can buy tickets via Apple Pay at terminals supporting Suica, QUICPay or iD. Apple Pay launched in Japan at the end of October 2016.
Popular cloud-storage service Dropbox has refreshed its iPhone and iPad application on the App Store with three new features: bulk-renaming of photos, offline folders and recent save locations. In addition, the company announced a major infrastructure push enabling faster sync speeds thanks to several new proxy servers established across the globe, including accelerators in California, Texas, Virginia, New York, Washington, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Google wants to make it even easier for Apple fans to switch from iOS to the Android platform so it's turning the mobile Google Drive app into a migration tool of sorts with new features that let you upload and synchronize your contacts, photos, videos and calendar events.
The search giant also provides a Quick Switch Adapter with its Pixel smartphones that allows users to quickly transfers data directly from an iPhone to their Pixel phone.
Google Drive is available at no charge from the App Store.
Over the past few months, Apple has been quietly hiring engineers away from Here, a Berlin-based automotive mapping company, for mapping jobs in Berlin. Interestingly, Apple's never publicly confirmed that it has an office in Berlin.
According to LinkedIn profiles discovered by Business Insider, Apple's poached at least half a dozen employees from Here, jointly owned by German car makers Audi, BMW and Daimler.
Don't bother trying to lock your Apple Watch by tapping a dedicated Lock button in Control Center!
That's because watchOS 3.1.1 update (currently pulled over bricking complaints) has killed that button. It's not a bug—the feature disappeared from Control Center in the first beta of watchOS 3.1.1.
I'm unsure as to why Apple has tweaked how manual unlocking works, but am certainly not a fan of the change. Actually, I've felt so ticked off by this apparent “feature” of watchOS 3.1.1 that I've decided to come up with a few workaround solutions for those of us who manually lock our watches before going to sleep.
1Password developer AgileBits was there on day one with a brand new Apple Watch app when the wearable device made its April 2015 debut. As useful as it was, the app wasn't exactly a speed demon and was limited in functionality by only supporting items stored in your Primary vault. Those issues are now a thing of the past as 1Password for Apple Watch is now a 100 percent native app that takes full advantage of the speed and performance enhancements afforded by running directly on Apple Watch hardware.
As a bonus, the new app now permits you to add items from any vault to your Apple Watch, including items stored in your 1Password.com account vaults.
Following yesterday's public releases of iOS 10.2, macOS Sierra 10.12.2, watchOS 3.1.1 and tvOS 10.1, Apple on Thursday seeded to its registered developers first betas of what would become minor software updates in the form of iOS 10.2.1 beta 1 (build 14D10), macOS Sierra 10.12.3 beta 1 (build 16D12b) and tvOS 10.1.1 beta 1 (build 14U707). These betas are available via Apple's portal for developers and can be installed over the air on devices with an appropriate configuration profile installed.
Instagram today announced a new feature in the mobile app for iOS and Android: Saved Posts. As the feature's name suggests, this lets you save posts you’d like to revisit later (don't worry, only you can see what you saved). Simply tap a new bookmark icon underneath a post in your feed to save it to a new, private tab on your profile, labeled Saved. This feature requires Instagram 10.2 for iOS, a free download from the App Store.
Twitter today announced that users of its mobile app can now broadcast Periscope-powered live video. Why go live on Twitter? Because live video broadcasts “bring moments and events to life in a way that no other medium can,” said the popular microblogging service. This newly added feature requires an update to Twitter's mobile app, which is rolling out to everyone on the App Store today.
Following last week's additions of AMC and The Hallmark Channel to the list of apps which work with tvOS's universal search, as many as ten additional apps have now gained support for this feature, including Apple Music. Apple's list of universal search providers was updated at pos time to reflect this. With universal search, 4th generation Apple TV owners can use their voice to search movies and TV shows across all supported apps.
As Apple has admitted that unexpected iPhone 6s shutdowns are plaguing other models “outside the affected batch”, South Korea's Agency for Technology and Standards (KATS) is considering launching an investigation into the issue. “The agency is well aware of recent iPhone issues and is taking a close look at it,” an official told the The Korea Herald.
After soft-launching a dedicated Apple Support app in the Netherlands last month, Apple is currently rolling out this application to more countries, including the United States, where it is now available for download.