Today’s Apple World Today News Update podcast looks at proof that some people have no sense of humor, a messaging bug in macOS High Sierra, and Swedish Apple Pay:
- We’re sponsored this week by BeLight Software and its Live Home 3D app for Mac. Read more about this amazing home design application here.
- Google tests a Maps feature that measures walks in calories and “mini cupcakes”, gets publicly lambasted on Twitter
- A Messaging bug is affecting some users of macOS High Sierra, and it may be related to an upcoming switch to Messages in iCloud
- Apple Pay may be available in Sweden as soon as the end of this month
The text version of the podcast can be read below. To listen to the podcast here, click the play button on the player below. Apple News readers 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 podcast for Tuesday, October 17th, 2017. This week’s sponsor is BeLight Software, developers of Live Home 3D. If you’ve ever wanted to design your own home or create a virtual model of an existing home to see how improvements change its looks, then Live Home 3D is for you. The $29.99 app is powerful and easy to use, and you can get full information on Live Home 3D at this link.
If you ever needed proof that most people these days do not have a sense of humor, look no further than Google’s Maps app. The company had recently rolled out a test feature to small number of users that showed them the number of calories they could expend by walking instead of driving or taking public transit. In order to show how much of an impact that calorie burn has, Google translated the number into a tangible comparison — mini cupcakes. For example, a 4.5 mile walk that took 1 hour and 26 minutes (including a ferry ride) burned 406 calories and the app said “That’s almost 4 mini cupcakes”. So what happened? Some young women took to Twitter to insult Google. One woman said that “Google is perpetuating toxic diet culture”, while another said “Anyone else feel like the google maps mini cupcake feature reinforces the idea that all exercise must be atonement for the sin of eating?” Seriously, people, lighten up. That’s one of the reasons that your friendly podcaster here no longer uses Twitter very much; nobody can take a joke these days.
Some folks who have upgraded to macOS High Sierra are reporting a strange bug. What happens is that they experience significant delays in receiving iMessages and text messages, and do not get notifications from an iPhone or Apple Watch for the same delayed messages. The users, who are starting to complain on Apple’s support forums, say that they sometimes won’t receive those texts for hours after they’re sent. Some of the workarounds appear to be disabling and re-enabling messages, or sending a message from the Mac to someone who you wish to receive messages from. However, some folks who are experiencing the issue say the only way they’re able to get back to normality is to either disable receiving messages on a Mac or re-installing Sierra. Some are speculating that the bug is related to changes in High Sierra that are being made in advance of iCloud syncing of messages. Messages in iCloud was supposed to be in both High Sierra and iOS 11, but didn’t make it to the versions that we’re currently using. This feature should be added this fall, and will seamlessly synchronize a user’s messages between all devices.
If we have any Swedish folks listening to the podcast, there’s good news today! MacPro.se today announced that Apple will launch Apple Pay in Sweden in the last full week of October, with Nordea being the first participating bank in the country. The website didn’t provide any specific sources for the information so there might be just a glimmer of doubt in the claim, but Apple CFO Luca Maestri did say that Sweden, Denmark, Finland and the United Arab Emirates would all have Apple Pay by the end of 2017. Apple Pay will have to battle for market share in the contactless payment market in Sweden. There’s been a cross-platform contactless payment service called Swish in the country since 2012, and currently more than half the population of Sweden uses it.
That’s all for today; I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with another edition of the AWT News Update.
