iPhone 7 to be followed by model with glass casing, CEO of Apple supplier indicates
Apple is gearing up to make an iPhone made almost entirely out of glass, according to one of its biggest suppliers.
The company will look to differentiate itself by mostly dropping the metal that it is currently constructed out of, according to the firm that makes much of that same metal.
Many rumours have suggested that the phone that’s set to be released later this year – likely called the iPhone 7 – will appear mostly similar to the existing 6 and 6s. But in 2017, the company is expected to completely re-design the phone, bringing in new screen technologies and an entirely new look.
That rumour had led to some speculation among local suppliers that the Taiwanese company that makes much of Apple’s metal casing would lose business to the ones that make its glass screen covers. But Allen Horng, CEO of Catcher Technology, said that the company will still be able to supply products to some of the phones – while apparently confirming that Apple will bring in the glass design.
"As far as I know, only one [iPhone] model will adopt glass casing next year," Mr Horng said after the annual shareholder meeting on Thursday, according to Nikkei. "I don't think this move will have an impact on Catcher's revenue as glass casing still needs a durable metal frame which requires advanced processing technology and would not be cheaper than the current model."
The fact that Mr Horng referred to “only one model” seems to lend support to an existing rumour that Apple could make different versions of the 2017 iPhone. that could include a premium or “pro” version, that might include technologies separate from those available in other models released at the same time.
Apple’s introduction of glass cases has been long rumoured. The design would presumably be something like the iPhone 4 and 4s, which included a glass back rather than the metal that has been seen in every handset since.
Analysts have suggested that Apple will move to the design as a way of making its phones more distinct in a market that has become filled with phones that largely mimic the design of iPhones.
Google opens up Android N beta to everyone
Google unveiled some of the first details of its new Android N operating system at the opening event of the I/O conference, and you can now try a beta version for yourself.
The new features included in Android N are far too many to list, but Google promises the operating system will provide better performance, enhanced security, streamlined notifications, and most importantly, 72 new emojis.
Android N will be released to everyone this summer, but it's possible to try the beta version right now.
A developer beta was released a few months ago, but this is the public beta - it's a bit more stable, and hopefully should be practical as a daily alternative to your current OS.
Unfortunately, if you want to try the beta, you'll need a Google device. The only devices eligible for the test are the Nexus 5X and 6P smartphones, the Nexus 7, 9 and Pixel C tablets, and the Nexus Player media player.
If you've got one of these devices, you can go to the Android Beta Programme website, log in to your Google account, and download and install the beta to your phone.
You should think carefully about trying it out, however. Beta versions of software are much more unstable and unpredicatable than final versions, so your phone may not run quite as smoothly as it usually does.
And if you decide to opt out of the beta and go back to the version you had before, all your data will be wiped - so make sure you back up your phone first.
If there are problems, they should be fixed quickly. Google says the beta will be updated every four to six weeks until the official launch, and there'll be a healthy community of other beta users to get tips from online.
Android N looks set to be a great operating system, so if you want to get ahead of the curve, the beta might be worth a look.
Facebook's politics under scrutiny but federal oversight seen unlikely
As Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg prepares to meet conservative leaders on Wednesday to discuss allegations about political bias at the social media website, one thing he may not have to worry about is federal regulation.
Although the U.S. Senate committee is investigating whether there is liberal bias in how Facebook employees select news stories for its "trending topics," there is little chance the government will try to regulate their practices, said Republican Senator John Thune, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.
"I don't have any reason to believe that would be necessary," Thune told reporters on Tuesday.
The editorial practices at the world's largest social network came under scrutiny after a former Facebook contractor accused editors there of deliberately suppressing conservative news. The allegations were reported by technology news website Gizmodo, which did not identify the ex-contractor.
Facebook denied the allegations of bias and said it would conduct a full investigation into the matter. Zuckerberg also agreed to meet with conservative leaders to "share their points of view," according to a post on his Facebook page.
Attendees at the Wednesday afternoon meeting at Facebook's Silicon Valley headquarters are expected to include conservative talk show host Glenn Beck, former White House press secretary Dana Perino and former Republican Senator Jim DeMint.
Thune sent a letter to Facebook last week to demand that it explain its editorial decision-making and how stories are chosen for the "trending topics" feature. He said his primary concern was that Facebook was potentially being deceptive about how the news curation algorithms work.
The company was criticized in 2014 for secretly manipulating what content appeared for a sample of users to research the psychological effects of social media.
Facebook last week released its guidelines for choosing trending topics, but the operations of the news feed algorithm remain closely guarded.
Thune said Facebook has been in communication with his staff in the week since he wrote the letter. "More than anything else, it's an opportunity for them to set the record straight," he said.
Legal experts said the government has few tools to dictate how a private company makes news decisions.
"As a legal matter, Facebook is not required to be even-handed," said Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Congress can't introduce something that tries to prohibit Facebook from making these kinds of choices."
Only 11 percent of Americans said they thought the federal government should play a role in determining what users see on social media sites, according to a poll of 2,000 registered voters conducted by Morning Consult and released on Wednesday.
According to the poll, 55 percent of U.S. voters said they get their news from social media sites such as Facebook.
The controversy over Facebook's trending topics has sparked questions about how transparent the company should be about how content appears on users' news feeds, given its influence over 1.6 billion members.
Research commissioned by Facebook has shown that messages notifying users that their friends had voted during the 2010 midterm election prompted 340,000 additional people to cast ballots.
"This story is connected to the largely invisible digital apparatus that influences the public," said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a consumer advocacy group.
(Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Dustin Volz; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Tiffany Wu)
Twitter 'to stop counting photos and links in character limit'
Microblogging site Twitter is to stop counting photographs and links in its 140-character limit for tweets, according to a report from Bloomberg.
The change could be made within the next two weeks, Bloomberg quoted a source as saying.
The company has not yet commented on the report.
But in January, founder Jack Dorsey said Twitter would explore ways of enabling its users to write longer posts.
10 years of Twitter: The tweets that changed lives
Should Twitter ignore its users?
Links currently take up to 23 characters of a tweet, reducing the space available to users for their own writing when sharing other online content.
The 140-character limit was originally added to make tweets fit into a text message. When the company launched in 2006, before smartphones were available, many users typed their tweets as texts before posting them.
Mr Dorsey has since described the limit as a "beautiful constraint" that "inspires creativity and brevity".
However, the company has struggled to attract new users and has seen its share price decline by more than 70% over the past year.
Last June, Twitter announced it would increase the limit on direct messages between one user and another to 10,000 characters.
In January, China's biggest microblogging service, Sina Weibo, dropped its 140-character limit, allowing some users to write longer posts.
How to use or avoid hidden iPad keyboard options
Q. The keyboard on my iPad has moved up the screen. How do I pull it back down?
A. This option to “undock” iOS’s standard keyboard, added back in iOS 5, possesses a frustrating combination of qualities: It’s both unadvertised and possible to invoke by mistake.
Although you won’t find any mention of this in Apple’s iOS-keyboard help page or a separate introduction to the iPad’s onscreen keyboard, you only need to tap and hold the hide-keyboard button in the bottom right corner to get a menu to pop open with “Undock” and “Split” items.
The first moves the keyboard about 40 percent of the way up the screen. I am not sure what benefit that provides. I do know that when I undocked my iPad mini 4’s keyboard with an errant swipe that must have lingered over the hide-keyboard key for too long, I quickly got annoyed at how the undocked keyboard sat in the way of Safari’s shortcuts to frequently-visited pages.
The second option, “Split,” can be a little more useful. It cleaves the keyboard in two while also moving it to the undocked position for easier thumb-typing, especially on larger iPads. For some of you, it may also summon memories of the split ergonomic keyboards that had a brief heyday in the 1990s.
To reverse either change and go back to the standard keyboard position and layout, tap and hold the hide-keyboard button and select either “Dock” or “Dock and Merge.”
If you don’t want to see either of these options again, open the Settings app, tap “General” in its left-hand pane and then tap “Keyboard” in the right-hand pane. Tap the slider to the right of “Split Keyboard” so it’s no longer green.
(FYI: Not all keyboard settings live under that corner of the Settings app. Others, such as the option to have the keyboard’s letters appear in uppercase all the time, are squirreled away under the “General” section’s “Accessibility” category.)
You also retain the option of dumping Apple’s keyboard entirely and switching to somebody else’s. And the support for third-party keyboards that Apple added in iOS 8 and made less buggy in iOS 9 got a little more useful with the debut Thursday of Google’s Gboard.
This free alternative keyboard allows you to “gesture type” by tracing a path from letter to letter with your fingertip, just as you can in Google’s Android keyboard and in third-party keyboards like Nuance’s Swype and Microsoft’s SwiftKey.
Like those competing apps, Gboard also learns your vocabulary--but Google says it stores that personalized data on your iPhone or iPad. The only text it sends to Google are the Web searches you can enter using its built-in search shortcut, which doubles as a tool to find the appropriate emoji or animated GIF for your next round of post-literate communication.
