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Apple World Today News Update: June 12, 2018

For this late spring podcast of Apple-related news, we take you to Macau, tell you about changes to the Apple Support iOS app, and talk about a new iPhone app that can help you to get a better night’s sleep:

  • Apple’s newest retail outlet will be the second for Macau, a thriving resort and casino area
  • The Apple Support app gained 20 new regions and nine new languages today
  • Want a better night of sleep? The new SleepScore app uses your iPhone to capture body movement to tell you how you’re sleeping, and makes suggestions that can help you obtain more restful sleep

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, June 12th, 2018. This week’s podcast is sponsored by PDFelement 6 from Wondershare. It’s the most powerful and popular PDF creation, editing and sharing app for Mac and iOS, and you can download a free trial. Read all about it on Apple World Today.

Apple stores are popping up all around the world, with the latest store being the second Apple retail outlet in the Chinese region of Macau. The new store is located next to the Sands Cotai Central resort and across from The Venetian Macau, and the store will open on June 29th at 6 PM local time. If you happen to be listening and can make it to the opening, I’d love one of the commemorative opening t-shirts. Hint, hint….

Speaking of Apple’s international reach, the Apple Support app for iPhones and iPads became available in over 20 new regions today, adding nine new languages at the same time. The new languages are Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Czech. If you’ve never used the app before, well, you should load it onto your iOS devices. It helps to troubleshoot common problems through a set of guides, and links those to the Apple devices that are linked to your Apple ID. If the troubleshooting guides don’t help, there are buttons for contacting AppleCare through a phone call or chat.

There are a number of sleep apps for Apple Watch that can detect changes in your heartbeat and movement, then tell you how good or bad your sleep was the previous evening. The only problem with this? Not everyone owns an Apple Watch or wants to wear it all night. A company by the name of SleepScore Labs released a namesake app called SleepScore today, which is available as a free download with in-app purchases. The app uses the iPhone’s microphone to detect sound waves reflected off of the sleeper’s body. Through processing of that information with sophisticated algorithms, SleepScore can tell if you’re awake, in light or deep sleep, or in REM sleep at any particular point in time. Each morning, users get a score from 1 to 100 that tells them how well they slept, what affected their scores, and so on. The app includes a 7-day sleep h history, and even has a smart alarm that wakes a user up at the ideal time in their sleep cycle within a specific timeframe. SleepScore can also recommend evaluated products and services that can improve sleep quality, ranging from new pillows to sound machines or snoring solutions. The in-app purchase provides a complete sleep history, trend and correlation analytics, exportable data, and a sleep report that can be sent to a physician.

Join me tomorrow afternoon for the next edition of the AWT News Update.

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Steve Sande
the authorSteve Sande
Steve is the founder and former publisher of Apple World Today and has authored a number of books about Apple products. He's an avid photographer, an FAA-licensed drone pilot, and a really bad guitarist. Steve and his wife Barb love to travel everywhere!