AWT News Update: April 20, 2015

On today’s show:

• Porsche announces CarPlay for upcoming vehicles
• The NAB wants Apple to enable the FM radio built into every iPhone
• Samsung is so hated in Japan that the company is removing its logo from the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge when they are released in the country this week
• Accessibility seekers trying out an Apple Watch can use Siri to enable VoiceOver.

A text version of the podcast is now included at the end of this post for those who would rather read than listen to the news (or watch it on Periscope). 

Thanks for joining us for today’s episode of the AWT News Update, now featuring Accessible Apple news provided by our accessibility editor, Alex Jurgensen. In today’s news:

• Canada may be the first country other than the USA to have Apple Pay, if six leading banks agree to terms
• Two Tulsa roommates stab each other with broken beer bottles during an argument over whether iPhone or Android is the best (we all know that iPhone’s the winner)
• Ex-Apple senior VP Scott Forstall has a new job as a Broadway producer
• Netflix adds support for audio description to the streaming service
• Blind Bargains publishes a guide on how to enable audio description on iOS and Apple TV

It’s hump day, and there’s some interesting Apple news to bring you on today’s AWT News Update:

• Apple is rumored to be moving to a new system font — San Francisco — for iOS 9 and OS X 10.11
• An Apple-backed group presses the US Senate to pass the USA Freedom Act and halt NSA phone surveillance
• Pebble may be having financial issues and slow growth…
• The Apple Watch will be used as a support tool for breast cancer patients
• An Indiegogo campaign seeks to give those who use speech synthesizers a unique vocal identity

The full script for today’s AWT News Update follows for your reading pleasure…

The Apple Watch continues to lead the news this week:

• Apple displays Apple Watch banner ads on the top of the YouTube home page
• Two big solar farms and an initiative with the World Wildlife Fund are announced by Apple for China
• A blogger performs water torture tests with the Watch… and it survives
• Ten years after VoiceOver appears for Mac, Microsoft Office finally supports the accessibility tool

The full text version of the podcast script is available below.

Happy Friday, everyone! Today’s Apple news runs the gamut (or should we say “Gamet”?) from grocery stores to vintage products, and everywhere in between:

• Trader Joe’s is adding Apple Pay support soon
• Sprint adds another seven countries to its free data roaming plan, bringing the total to 22
• Apple is set to make a bunch of old product obsolete on June 9
• Oculus says they’re putting development of the Mac and Linux versions of the Rift Virtual Reality Headset on hold for a while

The full podcast script is available below for your reading pleasure.

Apple’s Eddy Cue has revealed that Apple is “working to” raise iTunes Match’s limit to 100,000 for the release of iOS 9. When responding to a question on Twitter, Cue responded:

“25k for launch and working to get to 100k for iOS 9.”

Our take on the news:

If Apple pulls this off it’ll mean good news for those who want matching in Apple Music but not iTunes Match, as it’ll save them $25 per year.