MacRumors

Twitter today announced a major change to the way Direct Messages work on the Twitter platform, removing the 140-character limit that restricted the length of private messages. With the change, Twitter's Direct Message feature is on par with other chat and messaging apps, allowing for unrestricted conversation.

Twitter first announced its plan to remove the 140-character limit from Direct Messages in June, but the change began rolling out to users around the world today and will continue to become available to users over the next few weeks. The 140-character limit has been removed across the Twitter platform, which encompasses the Twitter app for iOS, the Twitter app for Android, Twitter.com, TweetDeck, and Twitter for Mac.

While Twitter is largely a public experience, Direct Messages let you have private conversations about the memes, news, movements, and events that unfold on Twitter. Each of the hundreds of millions of Tweets sent across Twitter every day is an opportunity for you to spark a conversation about what's happening in your world. That's why we've made a number of changes to Direct Messages over the last few months. Today's change is another big step towards making the private side of Twitter even more powerful and fun.

There are no plans to remove the limit from the public side of Twitter, so tweets will continue to be restricted to 140 characters. To get access to Direct Messages that have no character limits, Twitter advises users to upgrade to the latest version of the company's apps.

Twitter for iOS can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Twitter for Mac can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for free. [Direct Link]

TweetDeck can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Apple this week joined the NFC Forum as a sponsor member, earning itself a place on the NFC Forum board of directors, reports NFC World. The Near Field Communication (NFC) Forum is the group that works to develop NFC specifications to ensure interoperability between different devices and services.

The team also encourages companies to develop products using the NFC Forum specifications and they make sure products with NFC capabilities comply with those specifications.

"The top tier of NFC Forum membership, sponsor membership, entitles an organisation to a seat on the NFC Forum board of directors, the association's governing body," NFC Forum director Paula Hunter says. "We are delighted to welcome Apple to our board of directors as an NFC Forum sponsor member."

Joining the NFC Forum board of directors on Apple's behalf is Aon Mujtaba, who serves as Director of Wireless Systems Engineering at Apple. According to his LinkedIn profile, Mujtaba leads the iPhone Systems Engineering team and specializes in wireless systems engineering, architecture, and design.

Other companies who are on the NFC Forum board of directors include Broadcom, Google, Intel, Nokia, NXP Semiconductors, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony, STMicroelectronics, Visa, and MasterCard.

Apple began using NFC with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which include the technology to facilitate wireless payments using Apple Pay. Apple has also included NFC chips in the Apple Watch, the iPad Air 2, and the iPad mini 3, and will continue using NFC in future devices.

Quartz yesterday published an article which analyzed data from Apple Music's Beats 1 radio station, in an attempt to get a feel for the station's most played songs and artists throughout the month of July. The company took data collected from 12,445 songs specifically from "early July to early August," and discovered that artists The Weeknd, Drake, and Disclosure were the top three most-played musicians for the month.

The Weeknd was also on top of the most played song chart, with the song "Can't Feel My Face" -- which he performed live at WWDC in June -- played a total of 107 times in July. Artists including Rachel Platten, Beck, and Selena Gomez, amongst others, round out the rest of the list thanks to the popularity of their current chart-topping songs "Fight Song," "Dreams," and "Good for You," respectively.

Beats 1 has something that is rare in the world of digital music: scarcity. Listeners can’t choose a song and play it over and over. (They can do that elsewhere on Apple Music.) But curation doesn’t mean songs aren’t repeated. We counted 12,445 tracks but only 3,371 unique songs, meaning each track was played an average of 3.7 times. Eighteen of the 20 songs in the table above were played over 50 times.

Quartz also found the top genre on Beats 1 to be hip-hop (1,726 plays), with alternative (1,506 plays) and electronic (802 plays) rounding out the top three spots. Still, "a quarter of the songs in the dataset" that Quartz measured were only played one time, so Beats 1 is still managing to present a few diverse tracks into the mix every once in a while.

The response to Apple Music has been mixed, with the service's detractors pointing to the initial speed bumps syncing with iTunes and an over-reliance on specific musical genres in Beats 1, the latter of which Quartz has now detailed. The rest of Quartz's report on Beats 1 is definitely worth checking out, with charts analyzing the volume of songs played on weekdays versus the weekend and even one highlighting songs played most frequently in pairs.

Apple today updated its Apple Store app for iOS with a minor but important change, adding the ability to make purchases using an Apple Store Gift Card. Prior to today's update, customers who wanted to purchase an iOS device or an accessory using an Apple Store gift card had to use the Apple website.

The app previously had no way to enter a gift card at checkout, so the only available option was to use a credit or debit card. Following the update to version 3.4, users can tap "Buy with other payment options," which has a new section for entering a gift card.

Gift cards can be scanned with the camera on an iPhone or iPad or imported from the Passbook app, with the gift card total then applied to the order total.

What's New in Version 3.4

You can now make purchases with an Apple Store Gift Card. Use the built-in Camera to scan new Gift Cards or import existing Gift Cards from Passbook.

The Apple Store app can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Apple today added 20 new Flyover locations to Apple Maps on Mac and iOS, highlighting new cities and landmarks in the United States, Austria, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, Hungary, Spain, France, Mexico, Sweden, Puerto Rico, and Japan. With the new additions, there are now more than 150 Flyover locations available in Apple Maps.

For those unfamiliar with the Flyover feature in Maps, it lets users see photo-realistic 3D videos of select areas, which they can zoom, pan, and rotate through to get a close up look at notable landmarks and points of interest. Some of the locations below were previously available as Flyover destinations, but have just been officially added to Apple's list of Flyover locations.

- Graz, Austria
- Aarhus, Denmark
- Rotterdam, Netherlands
- Bobbio, Italy
- Turin, Italy
- Budapest, Hungary
- Cádiz, Spain
- Chenonxeaux, France
- Dijon, France
- Millau, France
- Nice, France
- Strasbourg, France
- Omaha Beach
- Ensenada, Mexico
- Loreto, Mexico
- Gothenburg, Sweden
- Malmö, Sweden
- Mayagüez, Puerto Rico
- Sapporo, Japan
- Rapid City, SD

Flyover was first introduced alongside iOS 6 in 2012, and over the course of the last three years, Apple has been steadily adding new Flyover locations to the Maps app. As of February, some Flyover locations have been updated with real-time animated landmarks, making the Flyover experience more immersive, and many Flyover locations have an additional City Tour feature that walks users through different landmarks.

While recent rumors have claimed that Apple has ditched plans to release the so-called "iPhone 6c" until at least the second quarter of 2016, noted mobile phone leaker Evan Blass believes that the 4-inch budget smartphone could still be released alongside the "iPhone 6s" and "iPhone 6s Plus" later this year.

Blass, who has accurately leaked several images and details about unreleased smartphones on Twitter (@evleaks) in the past, recently tweeted that it "sounds like iPhone 6s, 6s Plus, and 6c will all arrive concurrently," suggesting that Apple could release three new smartphones at its annual iPhone event in September.

Password management app LastPass [Direct Link] today announced that new users joining the service will be able to sign up for free without having to pay for a LastPass Premium or Enterprise subscription on mobile devices. Those users who get started on iOS, Android, or Windows will be able to use the service and even sync passwords amongst other smartphones for free.

Now, if you get started with LastPass on your Android, iPhone, or Windows Phone, you’ll have completely free access from your smartphone, and can even sync across smartphones for free. The same is true for tablets, if that’s where you get started.

We want to ensure that LastPass is accessible for all users, including mobile-only users who need help managing their passwords and apps. Wherever you get started, you can use LastPass on that device, and any others of the same device type – desktops, smartphones, or tablets – for free!

The company even promises that wherever a user gets started -- be it on desktop, mobile, or a tablet -- they will be able to use and sync LastPass on that device and any device of the same type. Users who then want a more robust experience, and be able to migrate from mobile to tablet to desktop, will need to sign up for a LastPass Premium subscription for $12 per year.

Before it had a dedicated Mac app, the service was a web-only password management tool which has now grown to include features like quick search, secure logins, and automatic password change. LastPass promises that existing users can expect to continue using the service "without any changes" to their current experience. New users interested in testing out the desktop version can sign up for a 14-day free trial of the LastPass service on the Mac app [Direct Link].

Despite the immense popularity of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, a recent KGI prediction estimates that Apple may sell somewhere between 65 and 75 million of the so-called "iPhone 6s" and "iPhone 6s Plus" in Q4 2015, pointing towards a strong possibility of zero or negative growth year-over-year for the smartphone line.

According to Apple Daily [Google Translate] (via GforGames), the report states that the two biggest factors for the predicted performance plateau or decline of this year's iPhone lies in weak sales for China and public ambivalence towards Force Touch as a flagship feature of the "S" generation.

The analyst quoted by the Taiwanese media says there are two main factors that could contribute to these results. First of all, compared to last year, smartphone sales in China have declined along with the spending power, and as you should all know, China is the largest smartphone market in the world.

Secondly, the analyst says that another big reason that could contribute to the iPhone 6s duo yielding zero or negative growth is Force Touch. More to the point, the technology itself should not slow down the market performance, but because Force Touch is supposed to be one of iPhone 6s’ main new driving feature and due to the fact that the public hasn’t been wowed by FT on the Watch and the new MacBook, the inclusion of Force Touch on the upcoming iPhone flagship might not attract as many customers as Apple might hope.

Apple still has high hopes for China, remaining bullish on the country as becoming its "largest market in the future," spurring the company to factor in Chinese consumer tastes as major influences for the design of its products worldwide. If KGI's estimates become true, it would indeed come under Apple's results from earlier in the year, which the company reported to be 74.5 million iPhones sold total.

Although not a complete confirmation of the rumor, the KGI report also suggests that Apple recently reduced its manufacturing orders for the iPhone 6s by a total of 1 percent, pointing towards the possibility of a lower yield on this year's generation of iPhone. The most recent news on the "iPhone 6s" and "iPhone 6s Plus" described the way Force Touch may work on iOS, hinted at a stronger shell to avoid another "Bendgate" scandal, and pointed to a late-August ramp-up for mass production ahead of the predicted September reveal.

Update 7:45 AM: MacRumors has obtained a copy of Kuo's note outlining his thoughts on China and Force Touch.

Weaker-than-last-year China consumption a concern for new iPhone shipments momentum. China was the primary growth driver for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus shipments in 3Q14-2Q15. Demand from China could be weakened YoY in 2015 due to the stock market correction there, leaving shipments momentum of the 2015 new iPhone models in doubt.

No killer application created by Force Touch as yet. Force Touch has already been used in Apple Watch and MacBook without prompting strongly positive market feedback. We are, therefore, not certain whether it can provide sufficient appeal to shore up shipments momentum of the new iPhone models to be launched this year, though we are positive on its potential contribution to the Apple user experience in the long run.

Kuo notes Force Touch players in Apple's supply chain will see a strong boost regardless of iPhone 6s sales numbers, given it's an entirely new business for these companies, but the effect on the rest of Apple's supply chain partners remains to be seen.

iOS remained the top platform for smartphone activations in the second quarter, despite its overall market share falling from 70% to 64%, according to Good Technology's twelfth quarterly Q2 Mobility Index Report. Android trailed behind with 32% market share during the quarter, up from 26% last quarter, while Windows rose to 3% market share to finish a distant third place.

iOS continued to lead in regulated industries, including the public sector (79%), education (76%), healthcare (70%), insurance (65%) and financial services (63%). Meanwhile, Android moved ahead of iOS in the high-tech sector with 53% of device activations and also experienced growth in the energy (48%) and manufacturing (42%) sectors.

Good Technology's data is based on monthly activations among all its global customers that had at least five activated devices during the second quarter. The full-length Mobility Index Report Q2 2015 offers detailed insight on app, platform and device preferences among enterprise users.