The AWT News Update is on hiatus while my compadre, Steve, is on an “eclipse” road trip. In its place, I’ll offer a text-only (no podcast) summary of breaking stories with a tip o’ my hat to my former website, Apple Daily Report.
Intel launched its 8th-generation processors today, starting with the with the new “U-series”chips for notebooks that boast a 40% performance boost compared to the previous generation. Alas, while this series is suitable for use in MacBooks and the dual-core MacBook Pro, it won’t help provide users with a 32GB memory option.
If you have a Barclays bank account, you can now make payments simply by instructing Siri to do it. The feature, added to the latest version of the company’s iOS app, uses the Siri integration for payment apps Apple introduced with iOS 10.
Independent label Drag City has added most of its back catalog to Apple Music. Some of the musicians under the label include Smog, Ty Segall, Will Oldham, Joanna Newsom, and Bonnie “Prince” Billy.
In a note to clients, KGI’ Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the group believes that Apple has a significant lead on Qualcomm in the 3D sensing technology space. KGI reports that Qualcomm won’t be making significant shipments until at least 2019.
Apple has released the seventh developer betas of macOS High Sierra, iOS 11, tvOS 11 and watchOS 4. Interestingly, the tvOS beta makes references to a “J105a” model of the Apple TV with support for HDR (high dynamic range).
And what would a day be without some iPhone rumors. To wit:
A Korea Herald report on the Samsung-made OLED display for the iPhone 8 claims that the speed of the facial-recognition system used in the device will be measured in “millionths of a second.” Purportedly, Apple is replacing TouchID in the next gen smartphone and replacing it with face recognition for both unlocking and Apple Pay authorization.
New images claim to show an assortment of parts for the upcoming iPhone 8, including a display assembly, a Lightning connector, and associated flex cables.
Rosenblatt analyst Jun Zhang thinks the iPhone 8 won’t have a fingerprint sensor due to low yield and that the device’s mass production could move up a week to the third week of September.
