Microsoft Windows will make nice with iOS, the father of the iPod speaks, and the Sims are coming to an iPhone or iPad near you:
- A fall release of Microsoft Windows 10 will add features that provide a lot of support for iOS devices
- Tony Fadell, iPod designer and former Nest CEO, talked last night at a San Jose forum on the history and impact of the iPhone
- EA announces The Sims Mobile, a new game in the franchise that will run on iOS
The text version of the podcast can be viewed below. To listen to the podcast here, click the play button on the player below. Note to Apple News readers: you’ll need to visit Apple World Today in order to listen to the podcast.
Text Version
This is Steve Sande for Apple World Today, and you’re listening to the AWT News Update for May 11th, 2017.
In a perfect world, most computer users would be sitting down at Macs every day. But in the real world, chances are good that at least 90% of computer users are going to sit down at something running Microsoft Windows. With the popularity of iPhones and iPads, though, it is good to see that Microsoft is going to incorporate some very Apple-like features into the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update that will work with iOS devices. First up is a feature called Pick Up Where You Left Off, which is similar to Continuity and Handoff for macOS and iOS. If you’re using a compatible app on Windows and need to take your work with you on an iOS device, you’ll be able to do so much in the way that someone creating a presentation in Keynote on a Mac can keep going on an iPad. Next, and once again vary similar to an Apple feature, Microsoft is working on a cloud-based clipboard that allows users to copy and paste between Windows and iOS apps. This is like Apple’s Universal Clipboard, but the service — called SwiftKey keyboard — will turn on pasting in any mobile app when enabled. The update is expected in September.
The San Jose-based Computer History Museum hosted the father of the iPod, Tony Fadell, at an event last night as part of a series of events that are tied to the tenth anniversary of the Apple iPhone. Fadell worked on the iPod and original iPhone before starting Nest, which was sold to Google for $3.2 billion. Fadell was interviewed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Markoff, who is now a historian at the Computer History Museum. Fadell commented on Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, echoing Apple CEO Tim Cook’s sentiment that AR offers a much larger opportunity than VR. He feels that immersive audio is a large part of AR projects, and of course Apple is doing well in that realm with the wildly successful AirPods. Fadell, who is now running an independent project incubator in Paris, France, showed off two health monitoring devices he was wearing. The first was a black ring on his finger that looked like jewelry, but was a pulse monitor. The second item was a continuous glucose monitor attached to his upper arm. The series of Computer History Events called iPhone 360 will continue this year, with “The Making of the iPhone: Evolution of iPhone Technology” on June 20th, a presentation titled “The Global Business of the iPhone” in August, and “The Social Impact of the iPhone” in October.
Are you a fan of The Sims? Electronic Arts announced earlier today that a new Sims game is coming to iOS. The free-to-play game is called “The Sims Mobile,” and is based on The Sims 4 legacy challenge mode where you build and raise a family over several generations. Players will guide their sims through life, getting them to build relationships, improve their homes, gain money and status in their careers and achieve goals. Apparently there will be a “virtual best friend” social element in the app as well, making it possible to bring your friends into the game as well.
That’s all for today; I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with another edition of the AWT News Update.
