Skip to main content

Apple Rolls Out New Betas Across Its Platforms

Image
By

Happy Monday from Apple! The company has just rolled out new software betas for each of platforms, including the desktop (El Capitan 10.11.4), mobile (iOS 9.3), Apple TV (tvOS 9.2), and Apple Watch (watchOS 2.2). Beta releases for Apple Configurator 2.2 and Xcode 7.3 also became available at the same time.
Some of the standout features included in the upgrades is the new ability to support the pairing of multiple Apple Watches to a single iPhone, a new Maps experience in watchOS, a “Night Shift” mode in iOS for better nighttime reading, an upgraded Notes app with Touch ID support, a better Health app, new features for Education users, and more.
iOS 9.3
One of the more interesting features to be spotted in iOS 9.3 is “Night Shift” – a feature that will slowly shift the iOS device’s color palette at nighttime to eliminate the issues with blue light and its ability to interrupt our natural sleep patterns. Amazon’s Fire tablets and Google Play Books also recently did the same thing, though Apple users may be more familiar with the feature thanks to an app called F.lux for Mac devices, and its jailbreak version for iOS devices. 
Explains Apple on its Preview Site for the new software, “Night Shift uses your iOS device’s clock and geolocation to determine when it’s sunset in your location. Then it automatically shifts the colors in your display to the warmer end of the spectrum, making it easier on your eyes. In the morning, it returns the display to its regular settings.”
That is, when it gets later in the day, the device will automatically make its adjustments. This, apparently, has become a new standard feature for mobile devices, as more users today read on their phones and tablets before bed, but then face sleep disturbances. With Amazon and Apple now both offering this sort of setting on their platforms, they’re likely establishing a new baseline for competitors, as well.
notes_large_2x
The Notes app also has been upgraded to include support for Touch ID – meaning you can secure access to the app, where a number of people casually record things like medical details and passwords. Now you’ll be able to make it so you have to enter in a passcode or use your fingerprint to launch Notes, depending on your preference. You can also sort your notes by date created, date modified, or alphabetically, says Apple.
Apple’s News app has been more personalized in iOS 9.3 with more suggestions for things like trending topics and Editor’s Picks. Plus, it now plays video in your feed, is a little speedier, and supports landscape mode on iPhone.
news_large_2x
Meanwhile, the Health app is now making it easier for you to find third-party health apps, as categories like Weight, Workouts, and Sleep have a new slider menu that help point you to related App Store apps. It also now displays your move, exercise and stand data, plus goals, from your Apple Watch.
health_large_2x
CarPlay in 9.3 received a couple of new features, including “New” and “For You” recommendations from Apple Music, and a “Nearby” feature from Maps will now help you find gas, parking, restaurants and more.
More importantly, Education got a big push with iOS 9.3, as the upgraded software introduces more features that make iOS in the classroom setting a better experience, including the addition of a single portal for school admins called “Apple School Manager”, support for a new kind of ID for education called “Managed Apple IDs,” a new Classroom app for teachers, and support for a Shared iPad for students.
The focus here is on offering schools, admins and teachers more tools for using Apple devices in the classroom, ranging from the School Manager dashboard where admins can shop apps and prep devices for MDM (mobile device management) to tools that let students log into an iPad in the classroom to make it their own.
Hopefully, this multi-account support is something that could make its over to the consumer side in the future, as families often share a device – like an iPad shared with kids – but don’t have a way to create separate profiles or personal experiences.
 
 

watchOS 2.2
Meanwhile, on watchOS, there’s the above-mentioned support for pairing multiple watches with a single iOS device, which requires iOS to be also running iOS 9.3
Plus, the Maps app and glance now offers quick directions to a location, the ability perform searches, and the ability to view nearby points of interest. A new Nearby feature also makes it easy for users to browse through categories such as Food, Drinks, Shopping, Travel, and Health, and find the closest places in each category. Tapping a category will give you additional options, like Nightlife, Music & Drama, Parks & Recreation, and Movies options in the Fun category.
WatchOS 2.2 also delivers an upgraded Core Text framework, which allows for complex text layout and rendering graphics contexts, and includes an upgrade to the HealthKit framework, which now includes a summary of the user’s activity for the day (e.g. stand hours, time spent exercising, active energy burned.)
tvOS 9.2
With Apple TV’s software upgrade, the platform is also getting a ton of new features, including support for pairing Bluetooth keyboards, the ability to move apps into folders on the homescreen, a new App Switcher interface, and its own Podcasts app.
The Podcasts app will look familiar to those who use the iPhone version, as it also offers tabs for Unplayed, My Podcasts, Featured, Top Charts and Search.

 
 
Above: new tvOS features; image credit: 9to5Mac
Rolling out folder support for Apple TV indicates that Apple is already thinking about the user experience, and making it easier to get to favorite apps without a lot of scrolling. The feature works similarly to that on iOS devices – you press the Play/Pause button to move the apps to folders or delete them.
Siri also now speaks Spanish (U.S.) and French Canadian.
OS X 10.11.4 (El Capitan)
The OS X beta is more of an incremental release, compared with that of iOS or even watchOS. According to release text, it will focus on stability, compatibility, and security improvements.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Here’s how to keep track of Elon Musk’s Roadster and Starman in space

By
Elon Musk’s Starman, the mannequin driver of the Tesla Roadster SpaceX launched aboard its Falcon Heavy rocket, is taking a trip around our solar system, in a large elliptical orbit that will bring him relatively close to Mars, the Sun and other heavenly bodies. But how to track the trip, now that the Roadster’s onboard batteries are out of juice and no longer transmitting live footage? Thanks to the work of Ben Pearson, a SpaceX fan and electrical engineer working in the aerospace industry, who created ‘Where is Roadster,’ a website that makes use of JPL Horizons data to track the progress of the Roadster and Starman through space, and to predict its path and let you know when it’ll come close to meeting up with various planets and the Sun. The website tells you the Roadster’s current position, too, as well as its speed and whether it’s moving towards or away from Earth and Mars at any given moment. It’s not officially affiliated with SpaceX or Tesla, but it is something Elon...
Post a Comment
Read more

Visa confirms Coinbase wasn’t at fault for overcharging users

By
Yesterday, we wrote that Coinbase customers were being charged multiple times for past transactions. While some speculated that the erroneous withdraws were down to a Coinbase engineering issue, Coinbase issued a statement saying it wasn’t liable for the duplicate charges. The blame, instead, rested with Visa for the way it handled a migration of merchant categories for cryptocurrencies, Coinbase said. While you can read my post yesterday for an in-depth description of what happened, the basic gist is that Visa refunded and recharged (under a different merchant category) a month of old transactions. Many users saw the recharge come through before the refund processed, making it look like they were double charged. Honestly, the issue was likely exacerbated by existing payment rails — it’s normal for refunds to take multiple days to show up on credit and debit statements. But here’s where it gets weird — this morning Visa issued a statement to some publications shifting the blam...
Post a Comment
Read more

Engineering against all odds, or how NYC’s subway will get wireless in the tunnels

By
Never ask a wireless engineer working on the NYC subway system “What can go wrong?” Flooding, ice, brake dust, and power outages relentlessly attack the network components. Rats — many, many rats — can eat power and fiber optic cables and bring down the whole system. Humans are no different, as their curiosity or malice strikes a blow against wireless hardware (literally and metaphorically). Serverless software deployment to the cloud, this is not. New York City officially got wireless service in every underground subway station a little more than a year ago, and I was curious what work went into the buildout of this system as well as how it will expand in the future. That curiosity is part of a series of articles I’ve written on an observed pattern known as cost disease, the massively inflating costs of basic human services like health care, housing, infrastructure, and education. The United States spends trillions of dollars on each of these fields, massively outspending sim...
Post a Comment
Read more

How ad-free subscriptions could solve Facebook

By
At the core of Facebook’s “well-being” problem is that its business is directly coupled with total time spent on its apps. The more hours you pass on the social network, the more ads you see and click, the more money it earns. That puts its plan to make using Facebook healthier at odds with its finances, restricting how far it’s willing to go to protect us from the harms of over use. The advertising-supported model comes with some big benefits, though. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said that “We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.” Ads lets Facebook remain free for those who don’t want to pay, and more importantly, for those around the world who couldn’t afford to. Ads pay for Facebook to keep the lights on, research and develop new technologies, and profit handsomely in a way that attracts top talent and further investment. More affluent users with more buying power in markets like the US, UK, and Canada command higher ad prices, effectively...
1 comment
Read more

Montana-based mapping startup onXmaps raises a round of funding fit for Big Sky Country

By
A mapping startup based in Missoula, Mont., which allows users to download sophisticated offline topographic maps outlining public and private lands and a number of other features geared towards hunting, fishing and camping, has pulled in its first major outside funding. onXmaps has closed a $20.3 million Series A round led by Summit Partners. Bessemer Venture Partners, Millennium Technology Value Partners, Next Frontier Capital and NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke also participated in the round. The company is calling the fundraise one of the biggest ever among startups based in Montana. onX Hunt app This is impressively the first bout of outside funding that the 70-person startup has ever taken since being founded in 2009. The company’s founder and CEO Eric Siegfried, an avid outdoorsman himself, had created a more basic program to integrate these maps with his own Garmin GPS. After finding his friends were interested in having a product like this too, he put down $27k of his...
Post a Comment
Read more