Tim Hardwick

Tim is a Contributing Editor at MacRumors. He has been covering technology for a decade, but will write about anything that interests him, from philosophy of mind to his own brand of bad fiction. Originally from Liverpool, England, Tim can sometimes be found accessing a personal wi-fi hotspot from a ferry somewhere on the Mersey.



Apple Shibuya Store in Tokyo to Re-Open October 26

Tuesday October 16, 2018 4:09 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple has announced the reopening of its Shibuya retail store in Tokyo on Friday, October 26 – the same day as the launch of iPhone XR – following renovation that began almost a year ago. The Shibuya store opens its doors again on the same date as Apple's Covent Garden retail location in London, although the Japan store has been out of action for significantly longer. During the near 11 months of renovation work, the medium-sized store is likely to have undergone significant remodeling to bring it in line with SVP Angela Ahrendts' objective to increase and modernize Apple's retail presence in the country, which is currently home to nine Apple stores. Back in March, Ahrendts announced a five-year plan for Japan, which aims to boost and significantly increase the company's presence with "extensive modernization" and significant investment. The Shibuya store has been around since 2005, but Apple opened a new store in Shinjuku, Tokyo, in April and another in Kyoto in August, after teasing the opening of more retail locations in the country. (Via Storeteller.de)
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How to Use the Preview Loupe Tool in macOS

Tuesday October 16, 2018 12:40 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
All of Apple's Macs come with Preview, the powerful file viewer that's built into macOS. Preview is the default app that opens up whenever you double-click an image or a PDF, and features several annotation tools for you to use when working with these file types. The most obvious and oft-used markup tools include things like arrows, lines, ovals, rectangles, and text, but in this article we're highlighting what is arguably one of the more under-appreciated of Preview's annotation options: the Loupe tool. The Loupe tool is useful if you want to zoom in on certain areas in an image or document for the purposes of clarity or to bring attention to something in particular. You can access the Loupe tool by selecting Tools -> Annotate -> Loupe from the Preview menu bar, or by enabling the Markup toolbar and then clicking the bottom right icon in the Shape menu. Once you've added a loupe to your image, you can easily increase or decrease its magnification level by dragging the green circle along the loupe's circumference. Similarly using your mouse, drag the blue circle outwards or towards the center of the loupe to expand or contract the area of magnification. You can add multiple loupes to the same image or document, and even have them overlap to zoom in on an area that's already magnified. Additionally, if you arrange two loupes so that one is stacked on top of or behind the other, you can right-click (or Ctrl-click) them to rearrange their order using the contextual menu options Bring Forward, Bring to Front, Send Backward and Send to Back.
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Apple to Donate 1,000 Apple Watches to Eating Disorder Study

Monday October 15, 2018 3:45 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is donating 1,000 Apple Watches to a new study that aims to track biological changes in people with eating disorders (via CNBC). The University of North Carolina's medical school will conduct the study, which is called BEGIN (or the Binge Eating Genetics Initiative), to better understand overeating disorders in which people eat large amounts of food uncontrollably in a small period of time. People who purge or engage in excessive bouts of exercise following the binge are usually diagnosed with bulimia nervosa. The study will enroll 1,000 participants of ages 18 or older who have experience with either binge eating disorder or bulimia nervosa. Each participant will be given a free Apple Watch, courtesy of Apple, so that researchers can monitor their heart rate to see if there are any spikes prior to binge eating episodes. Enrolled participants will also sign up with a mobile app called Recovery Record, which they can use to log their thoughts and feelings, to be shared with a healthcare professional ahead of a session. In addition, participants will receive tests to analyze their genetics and bodily bacteria that the researchers can better understand the root causes of the disease. "We need to collect data from a whole lot of people to see what it looks like," said Cynthia Bulik, founding director of the Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders and author of Binge Control: A Compact Recovery Guide. "We want to know if it has a biological and behavioral signature."Ultimately, researchers hope the collected data might help them to predict binge
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Police Told to Avoid Looking at iPhone Screens Locked With Face ID

Sunday October 14, 2018 5:46 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Police in the United States are being advised not to look at iPhone screens secured with Face ID, because doing so could disable facial authentication and leave investigators needing a potentially harder-to-obtain passcode to gain access. Face ID on iPhone X and iPhone XS attempts to authenticate a face up to five times before the feature is disabled and the user's passcode is required to unlock the smartphone. Elcomsoft presentation slide talking about Face ID (image via Motherboard) Given the way the security system works, Motherboard reports that forensics company Elcomsoft is advising law enforcement, "don't look at the sceen, or else... the same thing will occur as happened [at] Apple's event." The note appears on a slide belonging to an Elcomsoft presentation on iOS forensics, and refers to Apple's 2017 presentation of Face ID, in which Apple VP Craig Federighi tried and failed to unlock an iPhone X with his own face, before the device asked for a passcode instead. Apple later explained that the iPhone locked after several people backstage interacted with it ahead of Federighi, causing it to require a passcode to unlock. The advice follows a recent report of the first known case of law enforcement forcing a suspect to unlock an iPhone using Face ID. The action subsequently helped police uncover evidence that was later used to charge the suspect with receiving and possessing child pornography. In the United States, forcing someone to give up a password is interpreted as self-incrimination, which is protected by the Fifth Amendment, but courts have
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How to Enter DFU Mode on iPhone 8, iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR When Recovery Mode Doesn't Work

Friday October 12, 2018 2:49 pm PDT by Tim Hardwick
With the launch of the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X last year, Apple made some changes to the way a forced restart is performed and also to the way the devices are put into DFU mode. These changes remain in place for Apple's latest iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR devices. A forced restart can be used if an iPhone is freezing, throwing up errors, or has stopped responding completely. DFU mode (standing for Device Firmware Update) on the other hand restores an iPhone if a restart or standard Recovery Mode doesn't solve the problem you're experiencing. How to Enter DFU Mode on iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 DFU mode lets the device interface with iTunes, update the firmware, and restore the OS without automatically installing the last downloaded version. It's useful for installing older versions of iOS if a beta persistently hangs your phone, or if a jailbreak goes bad. How to Enable DFU Mode Before following the steps below, make sure you have the latest version of iTunes installed on your computer. Turn on your iPhone if it isn't already. Connect it to your computer using a Lightning to USB cable. Launch iTunes on your computer, and check that your iPhone appears in the list of devices. On your iPhone, press the Volume Up button immediately followed by the Volume Down button. Next, press and hold the Side button (or power button) until your iPhone's screen turns black. Release the Side button and then hold down both the Side button and Volume Down button together for approximately five seconds. Now release the Side button, but continue to press
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Instagram Testing Tap-to-Advance Instead of Scrolling Through Posts

Friday October 12, 2018 1:31 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Instagram is testing a new way of navigating through posts – by tapping through them, just like users tap through Stories. The new navigation system sees users tapping the sides of the screen instead of scrolling up and down with their finger to advance forwards and backwards between posts, which can get tiring after a while. By eliminating thumb swipe fatigue and ensuring the full post always appears on screen, testing tap-to-advance in Explore could get us spending more time on Instagram https://t.co/l2yIHAHUkC pic.twitter.com/Mr0khQQATH— Josh Constine (@JoshConstine) October 11, 2018 It also means users always see media full-screen rather than having to adjust the view with a finger scroll to see the entire post. It's a navigation method that was first used by Snapchat, a platform Instagram isn't shy of taking cues from. Instagram confirmed to TechCrunch that it is testing tap-to-advance in the Explore tab with a small number of users, who were presented with a pop-up in the app explaining the change. As for whether the system could be adopted for the main feed, a spokesperson for Instagram said that wasn't something it was actively thinking about at the
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Apple Acquires iPhone Power Management Technology in $600 Million Deal With Chipmaker Dialog

Thursday October 11, 2018 3:56 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple has finalized a business agreement with Dialog Semiconductor to license its iPhone power management technology and transfer technical assets, in a deal worth $600 million. As part of the agreement, Apple will acquire some of the Anglo-German chipmaker's assets and 300 of its R&D staff, which is around 16 percent of Dialog's workforce. Dialog's shares rose as much as 34 percent on the news, their highest since 2002. Announcing the deal on Thursday, Dialog said Apple would pay it $300 million in cash for the transaction and prepay a further $300 million for products to be delivered to Apple over the next three years. Commenting on the news, Apple SVP Johny Srouji told TechCrunch: Dialog has deep expertise in chip development, and we are thrilled to have this talented group of engineers who've long supported our products now working directly for Apple. Our relationship with Dialog goes all the way back to the early iPhones, and we look forward to continuing this long-standing relationship with them.Dialog shares took a tumble in late 2017 when the company admitted that Apple, its top customer, could build its own power management chips for future iPhones without the chipmaker's help. The admission came as a serious blow to Dialog, which exclusively designs the current main power management chip for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch models. Apple reportedly accounted for nearly three quarters of Dialog Semiconductor's revenue in 2016. However, today's agreement gives Dialog time to reduce its dependence on Apple, which the chipmaker predicts will account for
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How to Take Burst Photos on iPhone and iPad

Thursday October 11, 2018 1:30 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Burst Mode refers to when the camera on your iOS device captures a series of photos in rapid succession, at a rate of ten frames per second. It's a great way to shoot an action scene or an unexpected event, since you're always more likely to end up with the picture you were aiming for. For instance, the picture below was taken when the sun came out momentarily from behind the clouds to throw light on the beautiful yellow ocher leaves of a tree. Burst Mode made it possible to shoot the whole event and then save out the one shot that captured the tree at its most vivid during its brief illumination. To take a photo in Burst Mode, launch the Camera app from the Lock Screen – if your device is unlocked, select the Camera app from the Home screen or slide the Control Center into view and launch it from there. Once you have a shot in frame, tap and hold the shutter button at the bottom of the Camera interface for the duration of the scene that you're trying to capture. Notice the counter increase at the bottom of the frame for as long as you hold down the shutter. This indicates how many shots are being captured in the current burst. Simply take your finger off the shutter when you want to end the burst of shots. When you take a series of burst photos, they automatically appear in the Photo app under the Album name Bursts. You'll also find them in your main Photo Library as well as the Moments section found in the Photos tab. Here's how to view your burst photos and pick out the best images from them for safe keeping. How to View Burst Photos Launch the Photos
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How to Take a Screenshot on Your Mac

Wednesday October 10, 2018 8:00 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
In macOS Mojave, Apple has introduced a screen capture interface that unifies the screenshot and screen recording features on Mac, making accessing them easier from one place. A new floating palette brings the traditional Mac screen capture functions together under a single menu. You can access it by hitting Command-Shift-5. Let's take a closer look at what's on offer. The three buttons to the left of the first menu divider provide you with options to take a screenshot of the entire screen, a selected window, or a selected portion of the screen. Note that the keyboard shortcuts for these actions still function as before in macOS. Taking a screenshot is as easy as hitting Shift-Command-3 to capture the whole screen, or Shift-Command-4 to capture a portion of the screen using the mouse cursor as a crosshair selection tool (a tap of the spacebar also turns it into a camera for capturing windows). Meanwhile, on the right of the palette's first divider are two buttons to begin a screen recording – taking in the whole screen or just a portion of the action. These actions were previously only accessible in the macOS Grab utility. If you choose to capture a window, hover your mouse cursor over it: The window will be highlighted and your cursor will change to a camera. Simply click your mouse button to take the capture. If you're capturing a selected portion of the screen, use the mouse cursor crosshairs to select the area you want to capture. When you take a screen recording, a button will appear in the menu bar for you to click when you're ready to end
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How to Secure Your Instagram Account With Two-Factor Authentication

Wednesday October 10, 2018 5:00 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
With social media account hacking becoming increasingly more widespread, users would do well to make sure they're taking every security measure available to them. That goes doubly for frequenters of Facebook-owned Instagram, where account hijacking in particular is a recurring problem. One of the best ways to protect any online account is by using two-factor authentication (2FA). 2FA offers hardened security during login attempts by requesting that the user provides an extra piece of information only they would know, such as a randomly generated code from a third-party. Instagram has supported two-factor authentication for some time, but it was tied to a phone number and required users to receive text messages, which has proven to be insecure and left some Instagram users vulnerable to SIM hacking. Last week however, Instagram added non SMS-based two-factor authentication to the app with support for third-party authenticator apps. With 2FA enabled, you'll be the only person who can access your Instagram account from another device, regardless of whether someone learns your password as the result of a hack or a phishing scam, so it's well worth taking the time to enable the feature. This article shows you how. Note that you'll need to download an authenticator app to follow the steps below – we'll be using Google Authenticator, but Authy is another tried and tested option that works equally well. How to Protect Your Instagram Account With 2FA Launch the Instagram app on your iPhone and log in to your account if you aren't already. Tap your profile picture
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New Google Photos 'Live Albums' Share Pictures of People and Pets Automatically

Wednesday October 10, 2018 2:59 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Following yesterday's Google event, the company is rolling out an update for Google Photos that introduces a new feature called Live Albums. Powered by Google's facial recognition algorithms, Live Albums allow users to create albums that are automatically updated with pictures from their library of a specific person or pet. Once an album has been tagged as a Live Album, it can be shared with others and will still automatically update to include new shots when they become available. From Google's The Keyword blog: You can turn any album into a live album. Just choose the people (and pets) you want to see, and Google Photos will automatically add photos of them to your album as you take them. Then, you can share your album with family and friends so they can be a part of special moments as they happen—no manual updates needed.Live Albums in Google Photos are created in the same way as a normal album, by selecting the Album tab and tapping the New album icon – just be sure to tap the new setting "Automatically add photos of people and pets" on the next screen, and you'll then be able to select the ones you want to include. You can also opt to be notified when any new photos are added to the album. In addition, Google says that the 7-inch display on its just-announced Google Home Hub smart speaker will also display these Live Albums including recently added photos. Live albums are rolling out now in a number of countries on Android, iOS and the web. Google Photos is a free download for iPhone and iPad available on the App Store. [Direct Link
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How to Add, Remove, and Rearrange Menu Bar Icons in macOS Mojave

Tuesday October 9, 2018 8:07 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
The macOS menu bar is a great place for quickly accessing system and application functions using menu extras or "menulets", but it can get cluttered pretty quickly as more and more icons vie for a space there. If the corner of your Mac's screen is fast becoming an eyesore, here are some quick and simple actions you can perform to bring order to the chaos, plus a few additional tips for making the most of Apple's menu bar extras. How to Rearrange Icons in the Menu Bar Plenty of menu bar icons offer useful shortcuts to app and system functions, and may take up permanent residence on your screen. But left to their own devices, the arrangement of said icons is likely to become haphazard. Fortunately, re-organizing them is simple, once you know how to do it. Hold down the Command (⌘) key. Hover your mouse cursor over the icon you want to move. Holding down the left mouse button, drag the icon into your preferred position on the menu bar. Other icons will step aside to make space for it. Let go of the left mouse button. Note that the Notifications icon in macOS is designed to sit in the far right corner of the menu bar and cannot be moved elsewhere.
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How to Hide Pictures From the Photos App in iOS 12

Tuesday October 9, 2018 6:04 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Sometimes you might not want certain pictures shot on your iPhone or iPad to take pride of place in your Photo Library, but for whatever reason, you don't want to just outright delete them. Fortunately, Apple's Photos app includes an option to hide certain photos from the main library. This article shows you how. Bear in mind that hiding pictures via the following method ensures they won't appear in the Photos or For You sections of the Photos app, but they will still be accessible in the Albums section. If you're looking for a more secure way to squirrel away pictures, consider using a third-party app like Safe Lock instead. How to Hide Pictures in the Photos App Launch the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad. Tap Select in the top-right corner of the screen. Tap the pictures you want to hide. Tap the Share button in the bottom-left corner of the screen. (It looks like a square with an arrow pointing out.) In the Share Sheet's bottom row of available actions, tap Hide. Tap the prompt that appears at the bottom of the screen to confirm.Note that pictures you choose to hide from your photo library are stored in an album called Hidden, which lives in the Albums tab. How to Unhide Pictures in the Photos App Launch the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad. Tap the Albums tab at the bottom of the screen. Scroll to the bottom and under Other Albums, tap Hidden. Tap Select in the top-right corner of the screen. Tap the pictures you want to unhide. Tap the Share button at the bottom-left corner of the screen. In the Share Sheet's bottom row of available
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Minecraft for Apple TV Discontinued Due to Lack of Players

Tuesday October 9, 2018 5:07 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Minecraft has reached its end of life on Apple TV. The game has been removed from the tvOS App Store through lack of sales, while existing owners of the near two-year-old title for Apple's set-top box are met with the following announcement upon launch: Effective from Monday, 24 September, the Apple TV version of Minecraft will no longer be updated or supported. We're grateful to the Apple TV community for their support but we need to reallocate resources to the platforms that our players use the most. Don't worry though, you can continue to play Minecraft on Apple TV, keep building in your world and your Marketplace purchases (including Minecoins) will continue to be available.The Apple TV Edition of the wildly popular multi-platform construction game was announced at Apple's October 2016 keynote, where its potential for cross-platform play was enthusiastically promoted. "You can build new worlds on your Apple TV, and play with your friends using iPhones and iPads," said CEO Tim Cook. The game was officially launched two months later for $19.99, but despite the Minecraft franchise continuing to thrive on other platforms, it looks like the Apple TV version just didn't take off as Apple and developer Mojang had hoped. The removal of the title appears to be the latest example of the video game industry's continuing lack of interest in the Apple TV, which ships with a touch-based remote rather than a dedicated game controller like typical game consoles do. RIP Minecraft on Apple TV. That didn't last long https://t.co/E67YOcYr8G— Steve Troughton-Smith
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U.K. Court Blocks Mass Legal Action Over Google's Alleged Tracking of Safari Users

Monday October 8, 2018 3:48 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
London's High Court on Monday blocked attempts to bring a collective lawsuit against Google over alleged historical snooping of millions of iPhone users in the United Kingdom (via Reuters). The lawsuit's claimants alleged that Google illegally gathered the personal data of over 4 million iPhone users in the U.K. between 2011 and 2012 by bypassing the default privacy settings on Apple's smartphones which allowed it to track the online behavior of users browsing in Safari. Original explanation of the "Safari Workaround" in 2012 WSJ article Veteran consumer rights campaigner Richard Lloyd, who led the collective 20,000-strong lawsuit, had claimed that Google's "Safari Workaround" breached the U.K. Data Protection Act by taking personal information without permission, and wanted the tech giant to pay out several hundred dollars in damages to each person affected. As a ballpark figure, a claim by 5.4 million people for £500 each would result in a £2.7 billion ($3.63 billion) payout for Google. When the case was first brought in November 2017, it was the first time a collective action has been brought in the U.K. against a leading tech company over alleged misuse of data. "Collective action" is where one person represents a group with a shared grievance, similar to a class action lawsuit in the U.S. However, Google said it was "not new" and vowed to defend itself, having defended similar cases before. "We don't believe it has any merit and we will contest it," said the tech giant at the time. On Monday, the court ruled in Google's favor. "Today's judgment is
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Yoink 2.0 for iOS Brings iCloud Sync, Handoff Support, Siri Shortcuts, and More

Monday October 8, 2018 3:08 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Eternal Storms Software today released Yoink 2.0 for iOS and Yoink 3.5 for Mac, two major upgrades to the popular drag and drop-improving "shelf" app. For those unfamiliar, Yoink acts like a convenient shelf for users to drag in files and other content, do something else (switch apps, tabs, and so on) and then easily access those items again by dragging them out of Yoink. Version 2.0 of Yoink for iOS brings iCloud sync support, so items stored in Yoink are available across iOS devices logged into the same Apple account. Each device has its own "shelf" in iCloud, so all items are grouped for easy discoverability. The different shelves are accessible through both the Yoink app and also in its extensions, users can access all items via the Today Widget, the keyboard, the file provider, and Spotlight search. Yoink 2.0 for iOS also brings support for Handoff across iPhones, iPads and Macs, so items selected on one device can be handed off to another and those files are transferred right away. Elsewhere, Yoink now also includes support for Siri Shortcuts. Using Siri, users can store clipboard contents or download the link to the clipboard in Yoink, without having to switch to or activate Yoink itself. Items can also be copied from Yoink using Siri (the most recently added image, PDF, text or link, for example), while Yoink can be opened using the virtual assistant to show a specified, synced device's items. In addition, Yoink for iOS has expanded support for keyboard commands, an optional Dark Mode interface, and optional smaller icons for showing more
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Some Apple Watch Series 4 Models Caught in Reboot Loop Due to Daylight Saving Time Bug

Monday October 8, 2018 2:23 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Some Apple Watch Series 4 owners in Australia experienced crashes and reboots on Saturday due to a bug that surfaced because of the daylight saving time change (via 9to5Mac). According to Reddit users hit by the Apple Watch bug, the root of the problem appears to be the Infograph Modular face's Activity complication, which displays a timeline graph with hourly data for the user's Move calories, Exercise minutes, and Stand hours. When daylight saving time (DST) lops an hour off the typical 24-hour day, the Activity complication is apparently unable to compute the change and draw the timeline graph with only 23 hours, which throws the Apple Watch into an endless reboot loop until the battery runs out. According to reports, the bug corrected itself when the date rolled over the next day and the normal 24-hour day was reinstated, but some users were able to restore normal function to their watch before then by removing the Infograph Modular watch face via the iOS Watch app. This isn't the first time Apple has been caught out by daylight saving time changes, but the company has a few weeks yet to fix this latest DST bug before it happens again when Europe and the U.S. change their clocks on October 28 and November 4,
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Apple Tells Congress 'Nothing Was Ever Found' to Suggest Alleged Supply Chain-Based Hack

Sunday October 7, 2018 1:31 pm PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple's top security chief told the U.S. Congress on Sunday that it had found no indication of suspicious transmissions or other evidence that its China supply chain was ever compromised (via Reuters). In a letter to the Senate and House commerce committees, Apple Vice President for Information Security George Stathakopoulos wrote that the company had repeatedly investigated and found no evidence to support Bloomberg Businessweek's bombshell report that alleged tiny chips were discovered inside Apple servers which allowed for backdoor transmissions to Chinese spies. "Apple's proprietary security tools are continuously scanning for precisely this kind of outbound traffic, as it indicates the existence of malware or other malicious activity. Nothing was ever found," he wrote in the letter provided to Reuters.Stathakopoulos repeated Apple's statements to the press that it had never found any such planted chips or been contacted by the FBI over the alleged matter. The letter follows a statement issued on Saturday by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security saying it had no reason to doubt the companies who denied that they had ever discovered the tiny chips. Apple, Amazon, and Supermicro all strongly rebutted the report, which alleged that Chinese intelligence planted microchips in Supermicro servers, which Apple and Amazon previously used in their data centers. Despite the denials, which are also backed by the UK's national cyber security agency, retired Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell, and other unnamed Apple senior executives, Bloomberg said it stood by its
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Popular Camera App 'Halide' Gains Smart RAW Feature for iPhone XS, Apple Watch App Update, and More

Sunday October 7, 2018 12:40 pm PDT by Tim Hardwick
Popular photo taking app Halide Camera was today updated to version 1.10, introducing a number of new features including Smart RAW for iPhone XS and iPhone XR, and a tweaked watch app for Apple Watch Series 4 models. The Smart RAW feature works using a new automatic logic built for getting the best RAW shots out of the iPhone XS and XR, enabling photographers to get even more detail out of their iPhone camera. According to developer Sebastiaan de With, the Halide auto-exposure on iPhone X already optimizes for the lowest possible ISO and the highest amount of detail, making Smart RAW unnecessary on the iPhone 8 and X. However the iPhone XS and XR benefit from Smart RAW because of the new sensors in the phones. The Smart RAW feature is on by default and promises to bring noticeably lower noise and better highlight recovery in RAW shots taken with auto-exposure. Interested users are encouraged to search Instagram using the #SmartRAW hashtag for some early examples of the enhanced shooting mode. This update also adds an option to compare JPEG images with RAW equivalents, while the Halide watch component has been optimized to make better use of the larger screen on Apple Watch Series 4. Lastly, the developer has done some cleaning up and managed to cut down the app size to half of what it was in the previous version. Earlier in the week, Sebastiaan de With published an in-depth look at the front and rear-facing cameras in the iPhone XS and XS Max, providing some insight into complaints about a possible skin smoothing "beauty mode" that results in less
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Amazon Alexa App Gains Redesigned Interface for Controlling Devices and Groups

Friday October 5, 2018 3:42 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Amazon is currently rolling out an updated version of its companion app for Alexa-enabled devices that includes a significantly redesigned user interface. The visual changes are immediately apparent on firing up the app, and center around a new Devices and Groups tab located in the lower right of the screen. With the new menu selected, the devices are listed in a horizontal strip along the top of the interface, allowing users to control individual smart lights, audio devices, and power outlets all from the same screen. Below that, Alexa devices are also grouped by room indicated by colored cards, which have on/off buttons and can also be tapped to control and edit included devices. Elsewhere, users can add new devices by tapping a plus button in the upper right of the interface, while the original clunky sidebar menu remains available via a button in the upper right. The changes to the app come on the heels of Amazon's recent additions to its ecosystem of Alexa-powered devices, which include new Echo speakers, a subwoofer, amplifiers, a microwave, wall clock, and more. The Amazon Alexa app is a free download on the App Store for iPhone and iPad. [Direct Link]
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