Apple

Sage Bionetworks co-founder joins Apple to work on health projects

Sage Bionetworks said in a media release today that is president and co-founder Dr. Stephen Friend has joined Apple. “Dr. Friend has accepted a position with Apple Inc. where he will work on health-related projects,” reads the release.

He will stay on as Sage's chairman of the board.

Sage was one of the launch partners for ResearchKit, a framework Apple launched in March 2015 to accelerate advanced medical research by allowing medical professionals to create iOS apps which tap into the iPhone's many sensors to collect anonymized data on various diseases and symptoms.

Obstacles to launching Apple Music in Korea reportedly removed

Although Apple had previously attempted to roll out its subscription-based music-streaming service in Korea, the Cupertino firm ultimately failed to reach a consensus with local music copyright associations. But as of recently, Tim Cook & Co. have apparently managed to cut deals with local right holders and copyright associations.

As a result, the service could launch in South Korea, a 50 million people market, sooner than later, according to a news report today by The Korea Herald. No firm date for the launch was given at post time.

Purported iPhone 7 pricing leaks: 256GB version across all models, ‘iPhone 7 Pro’ mentioned

Citing a post on Chinese social network Weibo, PocketNow reported this morning that the flagship 256-gigabyte version of the iPhone 7 Plus could price-match the top-of-the-line 128-gigabyte iPhone 6s Plus model. According to the leaked pricing, the next iPhone lineup would include 32/64/256GB models for the 4.7-inch iPhone 7.

Its bigger brother, the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus, somewhat strangely gets listed with 32/128/256GB storage choices. The Chinese price list also mentions a brand new model for the upcoming iPhone refresh, referred to as 'iPhone 7 Pro'.

iTunes 12.4 bug causing Apple Music playback issues with tracks shorter than 60 seconds

There seems to be a bug in iTunes 12.4 which causes playback issues with Apple Music tracks shorter than 60 seconds, MacRumors reported today.

The problem allegedly stems from a buffering bug that apparently causes iTunes to never begin downloading the next song in the queue if it's shorter than 60 seconds. Basically, iTunes is left waiting for a download to finish that has in fact never started. The bug has been reported to Apple and we expect it to be fixed in a future iTunes update.

Instagram is working on a text translation feature

Yesterday, Instagram took to its own photo-sharing service to announce that it's working on a text translation for its mobile app. The new feature will begin rolling out in the coming month.

A Translation button will appear on feed stories and profile bios if they're written in languages different from your own. Captions and comments on posts in your feed and the bio on your profile will be translated automatically based on the language they're written in and the language settings of the person viewing it.

T-Mobile offering free 4G data to US customers traveling in Europe this summer

Deutsche Telekom-owned carrier T-Mobile USA on Thursday announced a new promotion which gives postpaid customers free unlimited 4G LTE data across all of Europe, except Andora, between July 1 and August 31, 2016. Only postpaid customers who reside in the United States and primary use T-Mobile's US network are eligible for this promotion. In addition to free data, texting is free and calls are just 20 cents a minute throughout Europe and a host of other destinations.

Apple explains why iOS 10 kernel is unencrypted

Following the discovery by MIT Technology Review that the kernel in iOS 10 beta is unencrypted, Apple has gone on the record to explain why that's the case. Speaking with Dave Mark of The Loop, an Apple spokesperson has officially confirmed that the decision was intentional.

Now, some security experts speculated that leaving the iOS 10 kernel unencrypted would aid anyone, nefarious users included, looking for security weaknesses in the iOS software.

Apple explains why such fears are unfounded.

WhatsApp is about to get a whole lot better

Facebook-owned WhatsApp has some notable improvements in the pipeline, including support for large emoji characters, all-new public groups, the ability to share locally stored tracks and Apple Music songs with friends and family, deeper Facebook integration, profile codes, stickers and multi-account support, to name a few.

But we're just getting started.

Does your Mac meet minimum system requirements to run macOS Sierra?

During his WWDC 2016 keynote segment, Apple's software boss Craig Federighi briefly flashed a slide listing Mac models that will be able to run the operating system out of the box when it releases publicly this fall (the macOS Preview webpage does not yet mention anything in terms of the minimum system requirements for the new OS).

It seems that Macs manufactured in 2008 and older models won't be eligible for the new OS. But if your Mac is not on Apple's list, an unofficial option might allow you to run macOS Sierra anyway, with some caveats.

tvOS 10 tidbit: download prompt for companion apps for your Bluetooth accessories

In addition to helping you manage your HomeKit accessories remotely through the fourth-generation Apple TV, tvOS 10 beta also packs in expanded support for a wider variety of Bluetooth accessories. It's interesting that after connecting an accessory to the Apple TV, tvOS 10 puts up a prompt offering a user to download a companion App Store app.

The same hardware accessories download prompt first appeared on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch following the iOS 3 software update back in September 2009, but this is the first time we've seen it implemented on tvOS.