After 13 years with The Mac Observer it’s time for me to hang up my Managing Editor hat and move on to new adventures and experiences.
Mac App Store Categories, USB-C iPads – TMO Daily Observations 2018-11-02
On Jeff’s final episode, he’s joined by Bryan Chaffin and host Kelly Guimont to chat about Mac App Store category cleanup and USB-C potential on iPad Pros.
Apple News App to Offer Live Election Night Coverage
On November 6th Apple is replacing the 2018 Midterm Elections channel in the News app with Election Night. The updated channel will offer real time updates, news, infographics, and election results. The switch will happen at 8 PM eastern time, according to TechCrunch. They say,
All the news coverage in the hub isn’t being driven by algorithms. For Apple News’ team, Election Night is an all-hands-on-deck type of situation involving real human editors. In fact, human editorial oversight is a key difference between Apple’s approach to news aggregation and curation, compared with competitors like Google, Twitter and Facebook — all of which have come under fire for their outsized roles in the spread of information, and, at times, disinformation.
The Election Night channel will replace the News Digest tab at bottom of the News app so it’ll be easy to find.
Pokémon GO Apple Health Integration is Here
Pokemon on GO’s integration with Apple Health is live. Players can now have the game track all their movements, not just those that happen when it’s open
Stanford Reveals Details Behind Apple Heart Study
The latest details of the Apple Heart Study have been revealed by Apple and Stanford University.
Walmart App Adds AR Product Scanning
The Walmart app received a new function recently: Customers can use the AR scanning tool for product comparisons.
Apple Hampers Mac App Store Discoverability by Removing Several Categories
Apple removed several app categories from its Mac App Store, potentially hampering discoverability for users and developers.
Inside Look at MacStadium's Mac Mini Server Farm
Remember at Apple’s keynote where we saw that a company had created a Mac mini server farm? That was MacStadium, and YouTuber Snazzy Labs visited the place. Besides Mac Minis, the company also has racks of the 2013 Mac Pro, and MacStadium recently added some iMac Pros. Since there aren’t a lot of companies doing this, MacStadium had to build custom server racks to house the minis. The company uses VM software in order to avoid needing expensive internal storage. The Mac Pros have had their internal storage removed entirely, and the minis boot off of the Mac Pros to create a giant external storage enclosure. The video is a fascinating glimpse into MacStadium, which is a company that provides the server farm as an “infrastructure-as-a-service.”
Wall Street Makes Money From Your Location Data
Thasos Group recently captured user location data around a Tesla factory, created a map of it, and sold it to its hedge fund clients.
Smartphone Makers Face Challenges with Global Shipments Down 6%
Global shipment of smartphones tumbled in the third fiscal quarter of 2018, IDC’s Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker shows. The firm says 355.2 million units were shipped in total during the quarter, a year-on-year decline of 6%. This fall was in large part down to Samsung, whose sales in the quarter dropped 13.4% from the same time last year. Huawei beat Apple for sales this quarter, but researchers said that the holiday period could see Apple return to the top of the pile. IDC believes there could be growth in the smartphone market in 2019. Manufacturers will certainly hope so—Q3 2018 was the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines.
Apple’s newest iPhones helped push third quarter shipments to 46.9 million units, up 0.5% from the 46.7 million units last year. Apple once again launched three new devices at its Fall event, as the new 6.5-inch iPhone XS Max and 5.8-inch iPhone XS were joined by the more affordable iPhone XR in the Apple line-up. The new XS Max and XS continue off the success from last year’s iPhone X but bring a new screen size option with more power and increased performance to the table. And Apple has once again improved the camera, upped the storage, and added a new faster processor via the A12 Bionic chip, which is the first 7-nanometer chip for Apple. Older iPhones, such as the 6S, 7, and 8, all received price cuts late in the quarter, which will balance the iPhone portfolio across all price tiers for the holiday quarter. The older SE and iPhone X from last year have been dropped from the Apple line-up. The fourth quarter will include shipments for the vastly popular iPhone XR, which have not been counted in IDC’s Q3 figures.