Top music interviewer and CBC Radio 2 host George Stroumboulopoulos debuted his new House of Strombo music series on Apple Music on Thursday (via Billboard).
The 10-episode show is a spin-off of the Canadian host's radio series The Strombo Show, which is filmed at his Toronto home in front of a live audience. The show is set to feature video segments, artist interviews, and exclusive behind-the-scenes access. Stroumboulopoulos was interviewed by Zane Lowe on Apple Music's Beats 1 about the partnership.
Stroumboulopoulos (left) with Zane Lowe
"The bands set-up right in my living room, with a live audience packing the place," Stroumboulopoulos explained in a statement. "Lights, smoke machines and amplifiers stacked high -- it's every gig in a small space that you've ever loved, with the best bands in the world."
The video segment of the first show features a performance and interview with Canadian group A Tribe Called Red, an Ottawa-based First Nations DJ collective. Apple Music subscribers can view it in the Browse section of the app under the Strombo banner, where playlists and other content can also be found. Going forward, videos for the show will be available in the Connect section of the Strombo page.
A longer 30-minute version of each episode can be found on YouTube. Check out the first offering embedded below.
Apple may spend several billion dollars to obtain a "substantial stake" in Toshiba's memory chip business, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK. Reuters cited NHK as saying Apple's stake would be greater than 20 percent.
Given concerns from Japanese government officials about Toshiba selling "critical technologies" to overseas buyers, Apple would reportedly have Toshiba keep some shares so that the company retains partial Japanese ownership.
Apple is also considering teaming up with its manufacturing partner Foxconn, which is trying to acquire about 30 percent of the stake, the report said.
Foxconn allegedly offered Toshiba up to 3 trillion Japanese yen ($30 billion) as a standalone bid, but a subsequent report said Toshiba would likely reject the bid due to Foxconn's ties with China, where it operates multiple factories.
Apple's other manufacturing partner TSMC has reportedly already withdrawn its bid, while other potential suitors are said to include technology giants Amazon and Google and rival memory chipmakers SK Hynix and Western Digital. Apple itself was named as a potential bidder by a separate source earlier this month.
Toshiba announced plans to sell its NAND flash memory business in January in order to raise funds to cover write-down costs associated with its U.S. nuclear subsidiary Westinghouse Electric, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March. The company expects to face $9 billion in related charges.
Apple dual sources 32GB, 128GB, and 256GB flash storage from Toshiba and SK Hynix for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
Toshiba, facing an uncertain future, is supposedly expected to select the winning bidder of its memory chip business by June.
Apple is purchasing so many trees for its upcoming Apple Park campus that it's becoming challenging for other companies to source trees, according to a report from the San Francisco Chronicle.
"Buying trees is a surprisingly cutthroat business," reads the Chronicle in a piece about a rooftop City Park that's being built above the upcoming Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco. Adam Greenspan and Patrick Trollip, who are sourcing trees for that project, say Apple has made it hard to track down trees across California and Oregon.
And it's been especially challenging to locate desirable specimens because Apple has been buying up 3,000 trees for its new Cupertino headquarters. When Greenspan and Trollip found a tree they fancied they would "tag it" with a locking yellow tag, so that nobody else -- like Apple -- could get it. Eventually all the tagged trees were moved to a nursery in Sunol, where the transbay project team leased 4 acres.
Apple Park, Apple's second campus with the famous spaceship-shaped main building, will be completely covered in greenery. Landscaping at the site started late last year, and Apple has said it will plant more than 9,000 native and drought-resistant trees, including fruit trees.
In a separate report on Apple Park, The Economist highlighted the parking situation at the campus. For the 14,000 workers that Apple plans to have on site, Apple has built nearly 11,000 parking spaces, many of them located in underground lots beneath the main building and in two garages at the south of the campus.
In total, Apple has built 325,000 square meters of parking, compared to 318,000 square meters of offices and research buildings. So much space has been dedicated to parking due to Cupertino city laws, which require a certain number of parking spaces for employees.
Employees will begin moving into Apple Park in April, but Apple has said it will take more than six months to transition thousands of employees to the site. Smaller building construction and landscaping has not been finished and will continue into the summer, even after the campus sees its grand opening.
Indie high-speed space flier Hyperburner has been named Apple's App of the Week, and as a result, it will be available for free for the next seven days. Normally priced at $2.99, this is the first time Hyperburner has been available for free since it was released in June of 2016.
In Hyperburner, players take control of a spaceship in a distant colonial solar system. The idea is to navigate the ship through an increasingly dangerous series of courses, unlocking improved ships and endless gameplay modes as the game progresses.
Hyperburner features fast-paced gameplay, instant respawns, simple and customizable controls, and six zones to complete. Our sister site TouchArcade gave Hyperburner four and a half out of five stars, praising both the level design and the soundtrack.
Each zone has its own signature art style, complete with unique hazards to face. Said objects might be moving or static, but either way it's going to take some skill to navigate around them. The patterns are wonderfully crafted, almost puzzle-like -- so there's no feeling of cheap deaths or haphazard design flaws. Every death is your fault, and betters you in some manner. There's only several worlds but each one looks entirely different, almost like a different game in a way.
They throw a lot of very tight "thread the needle" type of situations at players constantly, forcing people to learn from their mistakes as they hit that replay button over and over. It's addicting and beautiful at the same time.
Hyperburner will be available for free until next Thursday, when a new App of the Week is chosen. It can be downloaded from the App Store. [Direct Link]
Apple today updated its iMovie video editing app for the Mac to version 10.1.5, introducing a couple of important bug fixes to address issues that have popped up in previous updates.
Today’s iMovie update fixes an issue that could add a red tint to video imported from some camcorders and it fixes a bug that prevented some videos shot on the iPhone from appearing in the import window.
According to Apple’s release notes, the update also improves the performance and stability of the app.
iMovie 10.1.5 comes nearly six months after the last major iMovie for Mac update, which was released in October of 2016. iMovie 10.1.3 introduced support for the Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pro, allowing MacBook Pro owners to use the Touch Bar for editing purposes.
Apple has also updated Final Cut Pro, its video editing software for professionals. Like iMovie, Final Cut Pro has received several bug fixes and performance improvements, as listed below:
- Ability to expand the width of the Inspector to view and adjust effect parameters - Fixes issues with updating older libraries - Faster redraw of audio waveforms when using clips that are being imported while recorded to disk - Diamond icon in the Timeline Index to show when the user has modified display of roles in the timeline - More color options in the Role Editor - Reveal in Browser correctly displays the location of the original clip in the browser - Support for Canon Log 3 and Sony S-Log3/S-Gamut3 log processing - Resolves an issue in which the viewer could occasionally disappear when exiting full screen - Resolves issues in which Share to DVD could become unresponsive - Improves font quality of DVD menu and chapter titles - Improves image quality when creating a DVD - Enhanced DVD User dialog messages with embedded links to documentation
iMovie for Mac is provided for free to those who purchase a new machine, and it can also be downloaded from the Mac App Store for $14.99. [Direct Link]
Three additional Apple suppliers, including Compal Electronics, Sunwoda Electronic, and Biel Crystal Manufactory, have promised to use 100 percent renewable energy when manufacturing iPhone components, Apple VP of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson told Bloomberg in an interview.
96 percent of the energy Apple uses comes from renewable sources like wind and solar, allowing the company to reduce its carbon footprint, and in 26 countries, Apple facilities are powered with 100 percent renewable energy. With much of its own company using renewable energy, Apple has started focusing on its suppliers to further its sustainability efforts.
"We look at our carbon footprint as so much more than just our office, our data centers, our stores, even our distribution centers," Jackson told Bloomberg Television. "All that's included in our 96 percent, but now we're moving onto our supply chain."
Late last month, Apple promised to honor the commitment it made under the Obama administration to fight climate change, and today, Jackson said Apple plans to continue on its path and make its values known to the Trump administration, which has started to rescind environmental rules and protections.
"One thing this administration has made clear is that they want to hear from business and so we're going to do everything we can to make our values known," Jackson said.
Along with Compal Electronics, Sunwoda Electronic, and Biel Crystal Manufactory, four other suppliers have committed to using clean energy: Lens Technology, Solvay Specialty Polymers, Catcher Technology, and Ibiden. In March, Apple said that by the end of 2018, the company and its supplier partners expect to generate more than 2.5 billion kilowatt hours of clean energy per year.
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.
Although Hulu's new live TV bundle is set to launch before spring is over, details about the service have been noticeably scant ahead of the its launch. Today, sources speaking with TechCrunch who have knowledge of Hulu's plans have claimed that the new cord-cutting bundle will cost subscribers exactly $39.99 per month, which comes in right under Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins' promise of a bundle that would cost users "under $40" per month.
The price of the service's add-on cloud DVR feature has also been detailed, which will reportedly cost users $20 each month to gain extensive video recording functionality. Subscribers to Hulu's base $39.99 package will have a limited DVR feature (small storage space, no fast-forwarding), but Hulu's alleged $20 DVR add-on package would include "unlimited" storage capped at 200 hours of programming as well as allow for fast-forwarding.
The live TV service will allow for a certain amount of recording and storage space in its base package – a feature that’s quickly becoming a standard offering for these types of businesses. But this recording space will not be a fully functional DVR, as it will not support fast-forwarding.
However, Hulu is considering an add-on package to its live TV service that will include an unlimited DVR with up to 200 hours of programming, as well as unlimited streams. (There may be a cap on concurrent streams outside the home, though – we’ve heard three.)
This add-on bundle will allow users to optionally upgrade their live TV service with the cloud DVR and unlimited streams, and will be priced under $20 per month, sources tell us.
Concurrent streaming on devices in the same home is said to be capped at three, and that number may lessen for users who don't opt-in for the cloud DVR bundle. In total, the Hulu Live TV bundle would cost upwards of $60 on the high-end, which does still come in under most low- to medium-level traditional cable packages. Subscribers currently using Hulu's $7.99/month or $11.99/month (ad-free) on-demand options will simply have to pay the difference of an upgrade to the live TV service when it launches.
Reports about included channels have been circulated in the past -- including CBS and NBC -- but the look of the specific channel bundle that will be on offer, and if there might be more than one tier, remains a mystery. Most packages, like DirecTV Now, give users tiers ranging from $35/month to $70/month to access more channels. In the original rumor, Disney and Fox were floated as potential partners with Hulu's service, and Time Warner's stable of channels will also help bolster the channels available to subscribers.
Although the cord-cutting bundle options have become plentiful in the past few years, ranging from Sling TV to Playstation Vue to DirecTV Now, Hulu's alternative will be interesting as the first to combine live television with exclusive video on-demand options. One of the most important aspects of Hulu's bundle -- its actual launch date -- has yet to be rumored, but the company has until June 20 to debut the service before the end of spring.
Apple has partnered with the National Hockey League to provide coaches with iPad Pros for use behind the bench during the 2017 Stanley Cup Playoffs, which began on Wednesday, as reported by The Associated Press.
Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock (Image: Sportsnet)
All sixteen NHL teams that qualified for the playoffs have up to three iPad Pros available to them to review plays. The real-time video footage will help players make shift-by-shift adjustments during games, while coaches can better decide when to challenge offside or goaltender interference calls, aka a Coach's Challenge.
“By the time the player gets off his shift, that content is available within a minute, I guess, from the time it actually took place,” NHL executive vice-president and chief technology officer Peter DelGiacco said. “Today generally speaking a lot of that would be done between periods and there’s a limited amount of time. ... This kind of gives the coaches and the players real-time access so that they can make adjustments.”
The arenas of all sixteen NHL teams that qualified for the playoffs have also been outfitted with Macs for video coaches as part of the collaboration with Apple.
As the competition between Instagram and Snapchat continues to heat up, a new blog post by Instagram today has revealed that the company's Snapchat clone "Instagram Stories" now has more daily active users than Snapchat itself.
Of its 600 million users, Instagram now has more than 200 million users posting to or interacting with Stories every day, while Snapchat reportedly has around 158 million people using the original ephemeral social networking app, as of the last count. Snapchat's numbers don't specifically tie into use of its own "Stories," and include any interaction with the app, from text messaging to video calls.
That last Snapchat update centered on data related to the fourth quarter of 2016, so it's likely those numbers are higher, but the growth of Instagram Stories in less than a year is quite noticeable.
Facebook's copying of Snapchat in Instagram has gone far better than the same plan that the company recently enacted within Facebook itself, called Facebook Stories. Following a weak launch, the company updated its iOS app to make it look as if people were posting to Facebook Stories, when in fact they weren't.
In more general update news, users on Instagram Stories can now create "Selfie Stickers" to post on their Story, which can also be pinned to specific places within videos. Today's app update also makes it easier to get to your favorite stickers, includes simplified video controls, and comes with new geostickers for Chicago, London, Madrid and Tokyo.
Apple today has rebranded iTunes Podcasts to be called "Apple Podcasts," and updated its marketing website for podcasters to learn how the new branding can help promote their shows. Apple Podcasts promo materials now include a new "Listen on Apple Podcasts" badge, while most of the pre-existing graphics standards and podcast identity guidelines remain unchanged.
The rebranding also stretches to the company's Twitter account, where iTunes Podcasts has now turned into @ApplePodcasts so users can get up-to-date recommendations on the newest and best podcasts right from their Twitter feed. The functionality and look of the official Podcasts iOS app appears to have remained the same for now.
The new name falls in line with Apple's recent decision to place the company's name in front of the service or product in question -- like Apple Music and Apple Pencil -- and further distances itself from iTunes. During the Code Media Conference this past February, Eddy Cue admitted that Podcasts are seeing a "huge resurgence," and that Apple will "absolutely" do more with the medium in the future.
Today's rebranding could be the first step in that direction for the company.
Last month Apple acquired work automation app Workflow, which gives users the ability to create a variety of workflows that can translate articles, create GIFs from photos, calculate tips, and more. It's still unclear what Apple plans to do with the app in the future, but Workflow remains on the App Store in the wake of the acquisition, and now it appears that the app will no longer receive any noticeable updates down the line.
In an email from Workflow support sent to a user of the app, and discussed on the Accidental Tech Podcast (via iGeneration), the company has confirmed that there are "no further planned updates for Workflow," but it will continue to support the app's current functionality and has no intention to fully abandon it.
"But just so you know, we have no further planned updates for Workflow. That being said we are continuing to support Workflow's current functionality and have no plans to end support, so let me know if you run across any bugs or crashes."
Following the acquisition, Apple made Workflow free to download on the App Store and reimbursed customers who had recently paid for the app. Certain features were also removed from the app after Apple bought it, including workflow functionality that involved Google Chrome, Pocket, LINE, Telegram, and Uber.
Apple is predicted to include Workflow directly into iOS in the future, at which time the current Workflow app will likely be removed from the App Store. As such, the app is now sitting in a sort of limbo stage between its recent acquisition -- where Apple also received Workflow team members Ari Weinstein, Conrad Kramer, and Nick Frey -- and a future integration in iOS, perhaps iOS 11 this fall.
A user on Weibo has shared an image of what appears to be a manufacturing-related design drawing of Apple's rumored 5.8-inch iPhone with an OLED display, which is tentatively named the iPhone 8 or iPhone X.
The drawing, which surfaced on /LEAKS earlier today, appears to be on a computer belonging to an Apple manufacturing partner such as Foxconn. It's unclear when the photo was taken, or if it's authentic, so treat this rumor with some caution until actual parts start to leak from the supply chain.
The drawing appears to be from the EVT, or Engineering Verification Testing, stage. In other words, this could be one of over ten iPhone prototypes that Apple has supposedly been testing this year, and the iPhone that ultimately enters mass production later this year might have an entirely different design.
The drawing shows an iPhone with a larger display that takes up nearly the entire front of the smartphone, as widely rumored. However, while many sources suggest the display will resemble the Galaxy S8 with only top and bottom bezels, the drawing shows very slim bezels along the left and right edges as well.
On the rear of the iPhone, the drawing shows a vertically aligned dual camera system, which has been rumored only once before by Japanese website Mac Otakara in December. Touch ID has also been relocated to the rear shell, in line with multiple reports claiming the iPhone 8 won't have a Home button on the front.
It has been more frequently rumored that Apple will integrate Touch ID underneath the iPhone 8's display glass, but Cowen and Company analyst Timothy Arcuri recently said that Apple is facing yield issues with an under-display solution. If it cannot resolve those issues, he said Touch ID on the rear is one possibility.
The drawing depicts an iPhone 8 measuring 149.5mm tall and 72.5mm wide, compared to the iPhone 7's 138.3mm length and 67.1mm width, so the iPhone 8 would be slightly larger than a 4.7-inch iPhone as expected. It's depth is 8.6mm, compared to the iPhone 7 at 7.1mm, possibly due to a rumored glass and stainless steel frame.
If accurate, the iPhone 8 would be approaching the thickness of an iPhone 4, which also had a glass and stainless steel design.
Using the Pythagorean theorem, we calculated that the iPhone 8 would have an overall footprint of about 6.5 inches on the diagonal, compared to around 6 inches for iPhone 7 and around 6.9 inches for iPhone 7 Plus. In other words, the iPhone 8 would be smaller than an iPhone 7 Plus, yet with an even bigger display.
The sides of the iPhone include the usual volume toggles, mute switch, lock button, SIM card tray, Lightning connector, speaker grille, and what is likely a second faux speaker grille. In line with the iPhone 7, there is no 3.5mm headphone jack, suggesting that the legacy port won't be making a surprise comeback.
Chinese social network Weibo has been the source of numerous part leaks and Apple-related rumors in the past, but as is usually the case with leaks this far from launch, the iPhone depicted in today's image could end up being much different from the one that debuts later this year.
As a point of emphasis, the iPhone drawing pictured above is largely inconsistent with rumors and expectations from Apple analysts that we've heard. A vertical-aligned camera and Touch ID on the back of the iPhone in particular are largely one-off rumors that have not been substantiated by multiple sources.
However, this design cannot be entirely ruled out. As mentioned, Apple prototypes several different iPhones at once, and it will ultimately proceed with a model that is best suited for manufacturing at scale. Over the coming weeks and months, we should begin to see a clearer picture of which design Apple went with.
Around this time three years ago, a similar design drawing and a few real-life photos of a device that ended up being the iPhone 6 surfaced from within Foxconn, so these types of leaks are sometimes credible.
Apple's iOS has dropped to its lowest share of the smartphone market in urban China since July 2014, according to new data collected and shared by Kantar Worldpanel. Today's report specifically details smartphone shares around the world for the three months ending in February 2017. In total, devices running iOS dropped 8.9 percentage points from the same year-ago quarter, receding from 22.1 percent of the China market to 13.2 percent.
Apple rival Android remains the dominant force in China at 86.4 percent of the smartphone market in the country, growing 9.3 percentage points year-over-year. Although the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus remained the top selling devices in China, Apple has trouble competing with local vendors -- like Oppo and Vivo -- who produce cheaper smartphones at a massive rate that are far easier to obtain by the Chinese consumer.
"In the three-month period ending February 2017, iOS accounted for 13.2% of smartphone sales in urban China, a decline of 8.9 percentage points from 22.1% a year earlier. This marks iOS’ lowest share since the three-month period ending July 2014," reported Tamsin Timpson, Strategic Insight Director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech Asia. "That said, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus remained the top selling devices in the region, accounting for 8% of smartphone sales. By comparison, iPhone 6s and 6s Plus accounted for 14% of smartphone sales in the three months ending February 2016."
Not much has changed for either iOS or Android in the United States since Kantar's last report, although the latter OS has continued to see a decline in market share throughout December, January, and February. Android has dropped three percentage points when compared to the same year-ago quarter, now accounting for 55.9 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, while iOS has grown by 3.7 percentage points year-over-year to take 42 percent of the market in the U.S.
As in China, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus remained the top-selling smartphones in the U.S., which the devices have been since Kantar's report on the three months ending November 2016. Kantar's analysts cited hope that Google Pixel "might soften the drop in Android sales" that happen annually around every iPhone launch -- and which dropped even more dramatically last year because of the Note7 -- but the Pixel doesn't appear to have picked up the slack for the Android market in the U.S.
In terms of overall growth, iOS saw its biggest percentage point increase in the quarter happen in Great Britain, growing 4.5 percentage points year-over-year. In most of Europe's big five markets -- Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain -- Apple has done well to boost sales of iOS devices, with France housing the biggest growth for the Apple operating system over the holidays. Outliers still remain, like Spain's 1.7 percentage point dip in today's report.
Kantar's report also looked forward to the rest of 2017, admitting that the three months ending in February is a "challenging time" to report on due to its awkward middle ground proximity between the holiday season last year, and upcoming announcements at events like WWDC in the summer.
“The February period is always a challenging time to report on consumer behaviour and plans, since many people put purchases on hold following the holidays, waiting for the latest phone announcements from Mobile World Congress,” Guenveur said. “The much-anticipated March 29 announcement of the Samsung Galaxy S8, combined with the somewhat unexpected launch of the (PRODUCT) RED iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and the capacity upgrade to iPhone SE a week before that, may mean that the remainder of Q1 and Q2 could yield some interesting, even unpredictable, shifts in the market.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook has remained vocal in his optimism about the company's presence -- and future -- in China, mentioning in an earnings call last year that, "We may not have the wind at our backs that we once did, but it's more stable than the common view of it." More recently, Cook went into even more detail about Apple's China plans, stating that, "We're not just someone who's here to access the market," and that the company intends to bolster its presence in the country through providing jobs and improving people's standard of living.
An Italian school has launched the first Android-specific course in Apple's increasingly popular open source Swift programming language.
The Swift University based in Reggio Emilia claims to be the first, globally, to offer the course for Android, and aims to show students how to use the programming language across both platforms while avoiding the limitations associated with cross-platform middleware such as Xamarin.
At the heart of the course is the use of a bespoke integrated development environment (IDE), rather than a converter, that allows coders to program in Swift instead of Java while using the normal classes of the Android SDK. The course summary, through Google Translate, is as follows:
By attending this course you will learn how to program apps for Android devices via the Android SDK but written in the Swift language. Thanks to this innovative course, students can easily port iOS projects to Android and/or develop a multi-platform app without using a middleware. This course is suitable for those who are already programmers in Swift, Java, C #, Objective-C and other programming languages. Topics are updated to the latest version of Android SDK.
Swift was introduced by Apple in 2014, with the aim of replacing Objective-C as an easier-to-learn language, and garnered major support from IBM and a variety of apps like Lyft, Pixelmator, and Vimeo. Since then it has steadily risen to prominence among both emerging and established developers, and last month broke into the top 10 in the TIOBE Index, which ranks programming languages by popularity.
Apple has actively promoted Swift as ideal for children who are keen to code, demonstrating its gentle learning curve in Swift Playgrounds, an app that teaches children how to use the language. Apple has been updating and refining Swift since its debut, and unveiled Swift 3.1 on March 27.
Burger King made headlines yesterday when it began running a 15-second television ad made to intentionally activate Google Home speakers and Android phones within earshot.
The simple commercial involves someone posing as a Burger King employee who leans into the camera to ask the question "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?" – a request designed to prompt Google virtual assistants nearby to start reading the burger's Wikipedia entry. To the relief of many, Google quickly moved to prevent its Home speakers from responding to the ad by registering the sound clip and disabling the trigger.
Voices on TV have been inadvertently triggering smart speakers for months now, but the ad represents the first attempt by a company to purposely hijack users' devices for commercial gain. One likely reason Burger King chose to target Google Home rather than iPhones is that unlike Apple's Siri, the virtual assistant cannot be trained to recognize a particular user's voice, which highlights one of the main issues with connected smart speakers currently on the market.
As it stands, Google Home can only be used with a single Google account at a time, and lacks the ability to differentiate users by their voice patterns. Google has said its ultimate goal for Home is to be able to identify different people in the same room – and hints of multi-user functionality have briefly appeared in the Google Home app – suggesting some sort of voice identification feature is likely coming.
Likewise, Amazon is known to be working on a similar system that would allow its Echo range of smart speakers to distinguish between individual users based on the sound of their voices. According to sources, Amazon's feature would work by matching the person speaking to a pre-recorded voice sample, or "voice print", to verify the speaker's identity. Currently, Echo users can set up multiple profiles and jump between them, but the user must say "switch accounts" or use the Alexa app to do so.
Last May it was rumored that Apple will launch an Echo-like speaker with Siri integration, enabling users to play music, get news headlines, and more, without needing to interact with their iPhone.
According to one source, Apple's speaker could process many typical iPhone Siri commands. For example, users may be able to ask the device to read e-mails, send text messages and tweets, and stream content from Apple Music. Apple is even said to have considered integrating map information into the speaker, allowing the device to notify a user when it's time to leave the house for an appointment.
However, all of these capabilities would require Siri to know exactly who it is interacting with – a feat which, in a communal setting, could pose significant technical challenges for a company high on privacy. In this sense, the appearance of an Apple smart speaker may ride on Apple's ability to make user voice recognition as secure as biometric authentication features like Touch ID.
On the other hand, Apple could bring in biometric features to augment the speaker's user identification system. Indeed, some of Apple's speaker prototypes in testing are said to include technology related to facial recognition, potentially aided by Apple's acquisition of Faceshift and Emotient, which may help the device act based on who is in a room or a person’s emotional state. How secure such systems would be in these scenarios remains unclear, however. According to rumors, Apple's smart speaker-esque device could release later this year.
Microsoft has begun inviting Mac users to try its new Google Calendar and Contacts support in Outlook 2016 by downloading and installing the application from its preview site.
Up until now, many of Outlook's more advanced email features have only been available to users with an Outlook.com, Office 365 or Exchange email address. This week's global rollout means anyone with a Gmail account can take advantage of several of Outlook's advanced features, including Focused Inbox and richer experiences for travel reservations and package deliveries.
Previously only available to Microsoft's Office Insider Fast Community, the new updates support all the core actions and enable anyone to add, delete, and edit events in a Google Calendar through Outlook for Mac. All changes update between the desktop software and Gmail or Outlook for iOS, ensuring everything is synced across devices.
Anyone who wants to try Outlook for Mac with their Google Account and test drive the new updates should visit the Microsoft preview website and click the Download button. This will install the latest preview version of Outlook 2016 for Mac, which can be used until June 30, 2017.
Outlook users signed up to Office 365 who want to test the features need to join the Insider Fast community, by opening Outlook, clicking Help > Check for Updates, and following these directions.
At a nondescript office in Palo Alto, Apple is rumored to have a small team of biomedical engineers researching better methods for monitoring blood sugar, reports CNBC.
Apple's work on glucose monitoring is said to have started with former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who wanted to develop a sensor that could continuously and non-invasively monitor blood sugar levels to improve quality of life. Apple is far enough along in its research that feasibility trials are being conducted at clinical sites in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it has hired consultants to sort out regulatory issues.
The glucose team is said to report to Johny Srouji, Apple's senior vice president of hardware technologies. [...]
One of the people said that Apple is developing optical sensors, which involves shining a light through the skin to measure indications of glucose.
Rumors of Apple's work on advanced healthcare initiatives like diabetes management aren't new. Early Apple Watch information suggested the wearable device would be able to measure things like blood pressure and blood glucose levels.
Many health-related sensors that Apple wanted to include in the original Apple Watch were reportedly dropped because the technology was not consistently accurate, but rumors at the time said Apple would pursue its work on more advanced health sensors. Apple has also made several health-related acquisitions and around the time the Apple Watch was in development, hired dozens of biomedical experts.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has since said that Apple does not want to put the Apple Watch through the FDA approval process, something that would need to happen for more advanced healthcare features, so it is not clear if this is a feature Apple foresees being added to the wrist-worn device. From Tim Cook in 2015:
"We don't want to put the watch through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) process. I wouldn't mind putting something adjacent to the watch through it, but not the watch, because it would hold us back from innovating too much, the cycles are too long. But you can begin to envision other things that might be adjacent to it -- maybe an app, maybe something else."
If Apple is planning on more advanced sensors for the Apple Watch, such features are not likely to be included in the third-generation device rumored to be coming in the fall of 2017. Information on that device thus far points towards a smaller update focusing on improving battery life and perhaps adding features like cellular connectivity.
While Apple works on its in-house own blood sugar monitoring solution, it has launched CareKit, a platform that allows app developers to create integrated software that allows patients and doctors to better manage medical conditions. Diabetes monitor One Drop was one of the first companies to support CareKit.
Former software engineer Scotty Allen wanted to find out if it was possible to build an iPhone entirely from spare parts, so he decided to visit Shenzhen, China to see if he could collect all the requisite pieces.
As it turns out, it is indeed possible to build an iPhone from scratch using a hodgepodge of parts, as Allen demonstrates in the video below.
He built a like-new 16GB iPhone 6s using components that were purchased in the cell phone parts markets of Huaqiangbei, China. The finished iPhone 6s is fully functional and comes complete with a working Touch ID Home button because the logic board and the Home button were purchased together.
Allen didn't save any money building an iPhone from the ground up -- on reddit, he says he spent "well over $1,000," but that ended up including extra parts, components that broke, or tools that were unnecessary. He thinks approximately $300 worth of parts actually went into the iPhone.
Because iPhone 7 parts were still difficult to find when he embarked on the project, Allen chose to build a previous-generation iPhone 6s. While most of the parts weren't too difficult to obtain, he says it was hard to get his hands on a logic board. He also had help from many of the vendors who sold the parts during the assembly process.
Allen outlines his experience building the iPhone in the video above, but additional details on sourcing the components and the assembly process can be found on his blog.
Apple today updated its iMovie video editing app for the Mac to version 10.1.5, introducing a couple of important bug fixes to address issues that have popped up in previous updates.
At a nondescript office in Palo Alto, Apple is rumored to have a small team of biomedical engineers researching better methods for monitoring blood sugar, reports 
