MacRumors

Following an op-ed shared on Axios earlier this morning by CEO Evan Spiegel, Snapchat has now unveiled its radical redesign with the goal of creating a personalized user experience that's easier to navigate, particularly for new users (via TechCrunch). The app's update will start to roll out to iOS and Android users on Friday, and will be introduced to everyone "within a few weeks."

The update aggregates both Stories and direct messages into one place, to the left of the main camera section of the app, and an algorithm sorts and prioritizes this section by "who you talk to and view most." This personalized content is now separate from premium publishers, celebrity Snapchatters, and aggregated Story events in "Discover" to the right of the camera, where Stories were located previously.

With the upcoming redesign of Snapchat, we are separating the social from the media, and taking an important step forward towards strengthening our relationships with our friends and our relationships with the media. This will provide a better way for publishers to distribute and monetize their Stories, and a more personal way for friends to communicate and find the content they want to watch.

The Discover area is curated by Snapchat employees but is also affected by an algorithm that will sort content based on your past viewing behavior, which Spiegel stated is inspired by Netflix's recommendation algorithms. Spiegel said that research has shown "your past behavior is a far better predictor of what you're interested in than anything your friends are doing," referencing rival companies like Facebook and Twitter.

The biggest change comes on the Friends page and its combination of Stories and direct messages. When you come to this area of Snapchat, you'll first see new Snaps and messages at the top, then Stories from close friends (who you watch and chat with the most), and then last will be other Stories from friends you don't interact with as much. Auto-advancing is back but with a new quality of life fix that provides a brief title screen that pops up with the name of the next friend in the queue, which you can easily swipe to skip.

Snapchat has been facing intense competition from Instagram and its own Stories feature, which it launched in August 2016. The Facebook-owned company's version of Stories quickly caught on with users and eventually managed to capture more daily active users than Snapchat in less than a year.

Waze today announced it is rolling out three new features in its popular crowdsourced navigation app for iOS and Android, the most notable of which is support for high occupancy vehicle lanes, also known as carpool lanes.

If you are carpooling, the feature can enabled under Navigation > Add Toll/HOV pass within Waze's in-app settings. If you have a fuel-efficient vehicle, it can be selected as an option under Navigation > Vehicle Type.

Carpool lane support is initially available to Waze users in 22 states across the United States, and in the Canadian cities of Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. More cities in the United States and Canada will be added over time.

The states supported include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. Washington D.C. is also supported.

Next, a new "OK Waze" voice command allows for true hands-free use, allowing drivers to initiate navigation, get a preview of the route ahead, send traffic-related reports, add stops along the way, and more while staying focused on the road ahead. The feature can be enabled under Sound & Voice > Talk to Waze > OK Waze.

Talk to Waze is initially available to English-speaking Waze users in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, and will continually roll out in more languages soon.

Last, Waze now supports motorcycles as a vehicle type. In this mode, motorcycle riders will be directed on routes optimized for motorcyclists. Waze says the more motorcyclists ride in this mode, the smarter the routing will become.

Waze is a free download on the App Store [Direct Link] for iPhone. Today's update doesn't appear to be available yet, although "OK Waze" functionality is working, so some changes may be implemented on the backend.

Facebook users are beginning to notice a new account verification test on mobile devices that asks for them to upload a clear photo of their face, which will then be used to confirm that they are a real person, similar to other basic captcha tests that prove human users are not a bot. The selfie verification test has been around since at least earlier this spring, but the story is just now beginning to spread after more users have shared screenshots of the test on Twitter (via Wired).

Facebook told Wired that this new photo test was created to "help us catch suspicious activity at various points of interaction on the site, including creating an account, sending Friend requests, setting up ads payments, and creating or editing ads."

Earlier in November, Facebook announced a trial for a "non-consensual intimate image pilot" program, where part of the process asked users to send such images to themselves on Facebook Messenger. This was intended to eventually prevent any of these images from being spread online by reviewing and hashing the image, "which creates a human-unreadable, numerical fingerprint of it." This way, if someone else did try to share the image on Facebook, the company's database of hashes would spot the image and prevent it from being uploaded.

As with any of Facebook's tests, it's unclear how widely available the new image verification system is currently, or if it will expand to a wider user base in the future. According to a deleted Tweet spotted by Wired, if Facebook asks you for the photo log-in you might be locked out of your account completely until you provide the image, with a message stating: "You Can't Log In Right Now. We'll get in touch with you after we've reviewed your photo. You'll now be logged out of Facebook as a security precaution."

Microsoft looks set to release a new iOS app for Windows 10 users in the coming months that lets them transfer photos from their Apple devices to their PCs more easily.

First discovered by Italian blog Aggiornamenti Lumia, the companion app is said to support the fast transfer of photos and videos from Apple smartphones to PCs provided they're connected to the same Wi-Fi network. The app appeared briefly as an update on the Windows Insider "Fast Channel" and should become available to all Windows 10 testers soon.

The app seems to be for people who don't use Microsoft's OneDrive cloud backup service, as it replicates some features already available in the OneDrive app, which lets users upload pictures from an iPhone and import them directly into the Windows 10 Photos application.

The new software is part of Microsoft's wider mobile strategy to improve its iOS offerings, now that Windows 10 Mobile hardware is no longer a focus for the company. Microsoft officially ended support for Windows Phone back in July, and is no longer developing new features or hardware for Windows 10 Mobile.

(Via The Verge.)

Apple has taken down games from its App Store that glorify the Philippine government's deadly drugs war, according to a regional organization supporting victims of illegal drugs (via The Philippine Star).

Last month, the Asian Network of People who Use Drugs (ANPUD) sent Apple CEO Tim Cook a letter demanding that the company remove several iOS games which it said valorized "the emerging tyranny of Duterte's presidency and his government's disregard for human rights principles".

In a statement posted on its website yesterday, ANPUD said that it never received a direct response from Cook, but the runner games that its letter accused of promoting murder, extrajudicial killings and violence appeared to have been removed as of Tuesday.

They include Duterte knows Kung Fu: Pinoy Crime Fighter, Duterte Running Man Challenge Game, Fighting Crime 2, and Tsip Bato: Ang Bumangga Giba!, all of which featured Duterte or Philippine National Police chief (Ronald) Bato dela Rosa shooting down criminals while evading obstacles.

Despite their removal from Apple's App Store, the games remain available for Android users to download from the Google Play store.

Police chief Ronald dela Rosa told the Philippine Star that the removal of the games was a good idea, and that the government's operation to tackle drug users was not about killing or the use of violence. His comments were made despite Duterte openly endorsing extrajudicial killings in his drugs war campaign.

"They made the wrong interpretation. Tokhang [the campaign] is not about shooting people," dela Rosa told reporters. Rather, he said, it involved policemen knocking on people's doors and urging suspects to stop illegal drug-related activities.

As least 7,000 suspected drug dealers and users were killed in the first six months of Duterte's crackdown, according to estimates from The Human Rights Watch group. Many of the killings are attributed to "unidentified gunmen".

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Radio streaming service iHeartRadio has updated its official iOS app to include support for podcast playback through Apple's CarPlay feature, meaning listeners can now tune into their favorite iHeartRadio podcasts when they're on the road.

The latest update introduces podcasts in CarPlay through a number of new features, according to a iHeartRadio blog post announcing the changes.

"Continue Listening" lets you resume your last podcast right where you left off, without even having to think. "Your Podcasts" provides easy access to all the podcasts you follow on iHeartRadio right on your screen — no need to take your eyes off the road to find the content you love! And "Podcast Topics" helps you find that specific podcast you've been looking for.

The Podcast Topics feature offers listeners 18 different categories to choose from, such as Fantasy Football, NPR, Business & Finance, Sports, and Spoken Editions.

Apple already includes its own Podcasts app in CarPlay, but according to PodTrac's industry audience rankings, iHeartRadio is the second largest podcasting publisher in the industry, hosting more than 520 original shows.

iHeartRadio is a free app for iOS devices and can be downloaded through the App Store. [Direct Link]

Instagram today announced the launch of a new "Remix" feature for Direct Messages, which is designed to allow users to remix their friends' photos and then send them back for "fun conversations."

When viewing a photo message from a friend, you can tap on the camera icon at the bottom and to create a reply. The reply includes a photo sticker of the image you're replying to, which can be moved, resized, and edited with additional stickers, text, and drawings.

Instagram is also now allowing users to control replays. The new "One View" option will let friends see a message just once, while "Allow Replay" will allow friends to view the message for the standard period of time. Photos and videos sent using the "Allow Replay" option will loop automatically.

Instagram says the new features are part of Instagram version 24, which is available now on iOS devices.

Apple may be leasing a former Fiat-Chrysler vehicle testing site in Arizona for autonomous vehicle research purposes, according to an unnamed source that spoke to Jalopnik.

Apple has reportedly been recruiting automative test engineers and technicians from vehicle proving grounds around Arizona to work at the site, located in Surprise, Arizona, but neither Apple nor Fiat-Chrysler would confirm Apple's presence at the location.

Fiat-Chrysler in the early 2000s used the site to test the impact of hot temperatures on cars and their components. The location is said to contain multiple road surfaces, a high speed oval, steep grades, and areas dedicated to wet weather testing.

There's no clear link between Apple and Route 14 Investment Partners LLC, but Apple has been known to use shell companies for leasing properties, trademarking, and other purposes.

It would also not be unusual or surprising for Apple to lease an autonomous vehicle testing site, as the company has made it clear that an autonomous system is something that's in the works.

While Apple was originally said to be working on developing a full autonomous electric vehicle, the company's focus shifted to an autonomous driving system in 2016 after the return of Bob Mansfield, who took over the project.

In June of 2017, Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly confirmed Apple is working on autonomous driving systems.

"We're focusing on autonomous systems. It's a core technology that we view as very important. We sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects. It's probably one of the most difficult AI projects actually to work on," he said.

Each year, Apple shuts down iTunes Connect for a week around the holidays to give its App Store staff time off from work. This year, iTunes Connect will be shut down from December 23 to December 27.

While iTunes Connect is shuttered, Apple will not accept new apps or app updates, so all price changes and app submissions will need to be locked in before that date.

Developers often offer sales and promotions ahead of when the App Store closes for the holidays, and those sales remain available until the App Store re-opens in late December.

Apple says developers can let customers know about promotions, upcoming features, and in-app events using the promotional text field available in iOS 11.

While app store submissions will be unavailable, other iTunes Connect tools will remain accessible to developers throughout the holiday period.

Apple today seeded the fifth beta of an upcoming tvOS 11.2 update to developers for testing purposes, a week and a half after seeding the fourth tvOS 11.2 update and a month after the launch of tvOS 11.1.

Designed for the fourth and fifth-generation Apple TV models, the tvOS 11.2 developer beta can be downloaded onto the Apple TV via a profile that's installed using Xcode.

According to Apple's release notes, the tvOS 11.2 update enables a new AVDisplayManager feature for developers, designed to allow the device to automatically switch video display modes to match the native frame rate and dynamic range of video content.

The update includes support for switching the Apple TV 4K display output to SDR for apps that are GPU-bound when running in HDR and it re-introduces the Unwatched category in Home Sharing for Movies, TV Shows, and Home Videos.

Apple says tvOS 11.2 also adds new features, bug fixes, and security improvements to the tvOS operating system.

Update: Apple has also seeded a new version of tvOS 11.2 for public beta testers.