Apple Brings Apple Music, iTunes Movies and iBooks to China

Apple today announced that it would be bringing three of its entertainment services -- Apple Music, iTunes Movies and iBooks -- to customers in China today. This marks the first time customers in China will have access to Apple's entertainment ecosystem. 

 

“Customers in China love the App Store and have made it our largest market in the world for app downloads,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “One of the top requests has been more great content and we’re thrilled to bring music, movies and books to China, curated by a local team of experts.”

Customers in China will be able to sign up for the three-month free trial of Apple Music starting on September 30. The service will include music from Chinese artists like Eason Chan and JJ Lin in addition to international artists like Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift. Likewise, iTunes Movies will include movies from Chinese film studios in addition to Hollywood blockbusters like Jurassic World and Avengers: Age of Ultron. iBooks will include free and paid Chinese language books.

Improved Water Resistance of iPhone 6s Attributed to New Gaskets and Seals

iFixit began its teardown of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus after the new smartphones became available last Friday, discovering the specifics of the smaller batteries, Taptic Engine, and 3D Touch display. After a few iPhone fans began extensive water resistance testing over the weekend, iFixit decided to revisit its teardown of the new devices with a renewed focus on components placed by Apple that could point to the company's interest in a more liquid-proof smartphone.

Twitter to Expand 140-Character Limit With New Product

Twitter is planning to introduce a new solution that will allow users to create tweets that exceed 140 characters in length, reports Re/code. Twitter will implement longer tweets through a new product, but it is not yet clear what that product will look like or how it will work.

There are existing services designed to let users publish long-form content on Twitter, like TwitLonger, which directs users to a website to read a full tweet, or OneShot, which lets users post images of text, but Twitter may have a better solution in mind for its own product.

A9 Chip Manufacturing Split 60/40 Between TSMC and Samsung, Not Segmented by Device Size

Teardowns of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have revealed two different A9 chips inside the devices, one created by TSMC and one developed by Samsung, which is slightly smaller in size, having been manufactured on a 14-nanometer process instead of a 16-nanometer process.

There was early some speculation that the chips were divided by model, with the iPhone 6s getting the smaller Samsung chip and the iPhone 6s Plus receiving the larger TSMC chip, but new data collected by an iOS developer suggests that is not the case.


Hiraku Wang has created an app that's able to determine whether an iPhone has a TSMC chip or a Samsung chip, and has shared some data on results gathered from users who have installed his app.

Apple Seeds Second OS X El Capitan 10.11.1 Beta to Developers

Apple yesterday seeded the second beta of an upcoming OS X El Capitan update to developers for testing purposes, more than a week after releasing the first OS X 10.11.1 beta and one day before the scheduled public release of OS X El Capitan on September 30.

The new beta is available through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store and 



 

through the Apple Developer Center.

Apple Releases iOS 9 With Proactive Siri and Search, iPad Split-Screen Multitasking, Transit Directions, and More

Apple  released iOS 9 to the public, making the download available to all users who have an iPhone 4s or later, iPad 2 or later, 5th-generation iPod touch or later, or any iPad mini. The update can be downloaded through iTunes or over-the-air by going to the Settings app and tapping General --> Software Update.

As with all major software updates, it may take a few minutes for the update to propagate to all users due to high demand. Some users are seeing "Software Update Failed" messages and may have better luck installing via iTunes.

Public beta testers who have the iOS 9 golden master installed will receive the release version of iOS 9 over-the-air.

iOS 9 builds on content introduced with iOS 8, bringing subtle design changes, refined features, improved functionality, and performance enhancements. From Apple's release notes:

iOS 9 Hidden Features: Settings Search, Selfie Folder, Home Sharing for Music, Go Back to App, and More

Wednesday September 16, 2015 11:05 am PDT by Juli Clover

There are quite a few major changes in iOS 9, like split-screen multitasking for the iPad, improvements to search and Siri, under-the-hood performance boosts, and revamped apps, but there are also dozens if not hundreds of lesser-known tweaks and refinements that make the iOS 9 experience better than ever before.

We've had a lot of hands-on time with iOS 9, so we've rounded up a list of the best hidden features in new operating system. These are great little changes you're going to want to know about, so make sure to check out the video and the list below.

 

Settings search - There's a new search bar in the Settings app that lets you quickly locate a specific setting by typing in what you're looking for. Want Siri settings? Search for Siri, and all the settings options for Siri will be shown in a list.