Software update day is here again! Apple has released the fourth developer beta version of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 (likely alongside new seeds of watchOS 6, tvOS 13) today. Apple’s public beta builds should follow at a later date after the latest developer beta has been tested in the wild.

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Plex has announced a pair of notable updates for its apps on iOS and Apple TV today. Today’s updates make further improvements to Plex’s enhanced video player on Apple TV, and add support for Touch ID and Face ID on iOS.

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How to decide when to cut a feature from a project, what could the refreshed MacBook lineup tell us about the future of Apple’s laptops, and how is the current state of Apple’s betas affecting third party developers? Also, why on Earth did Rambo buy a 2008 MacBook?!

Sponsored by Hyper: Save big on Hyper USB-C hubs and power adapters for MacBooks, iPad, and iPhones during Amazon’s Prime Week sale.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/stacktrace/XWFKHNORrV_StacktraceEp45.mp3

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Microsoft plans to explore using the Rust programming language as an alternative to C, C++, and others, as a way to improve the security posture of its and everyone else's apps. From a report: The announcement was made yesterday by Gavin Thomas, Principal Security Engineering Manager for the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC). "You're probably used to thinking about the Microsoft Security Response Center as a group that responds to incidents and vulnerabilities," Thomas said. "We are a response organization, but we also have a proactive role, and in a new blog series we will highlight Microsoft's exploration of safer system programming languages, starting with Rust." The end game is to find a way to move developers from the aging C and C++ programming language to so-called "memory-safe languages." Memory-safe languages, such as Rust, are designed from the ground up with protections against memory corruption vulnerabilities, such as buffer overflows, race conditions, memory leaks, use-after free and memory pointer-related bugs.

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This August, Nintendo is releasing a new Switch model with a longer battery life. It will be priced the same as the current model and, aside from the improved battery, feature the same specs. From a report: The new model's battery life will last between 4.5 and 9 hours, depending on the game. For Breath of the Wild, for example, the battery life will last for an estimated 5.5 hours. In comparison, the current model has a battery life that's between 2.5 and 6.5 hours, depending on the game. Once again, for Breath of the Wild, the battery life is 3 hours.

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Apple’s official iPad Pro and iPhone XS cases see rare discounts while Amazon hosts a massive AmazonBasics tech sale with Mac accessories and more. All that can be found in this episode of the 9to5Toys Lunch Break.

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Ahead of an expected launch in early September, a new report sheds some light on what the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Max, and iPhone 11R might look like in the real world.

President Trump said this week his administration will "take a look" into Google following statements made earlier this week by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel. From a report: "Billionaire Tech Investor Peter Thiel believes Google should be investigated for treason," Trump said in a tweet. "He accuses Google of working with the Chinese Government... A great and brilliant guy who knows this subject better than anyone! The Trump Administration will take a look!" On Sunday, Thiel, a Facebook board member, said that the FBI and the CIA should investigate Google to see if it has been infiltrated by Chinese intelligence. "Number one, how many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated your Manhattan Project for AI (artificial intelligence)?" Thiel said, according to Axios. "Number two, does Google's senior management consider itself to have been thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese intelligence? Number three, is it because they consider themselves to be so thoroughly infiltrated that they have engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the US military," Thiel said during the National Conservatism Conference in Washington.

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Your augmented reality and iPhone photography will never be the same as a 3D sensor is coming to 2020 iPhones. With it, you'll even be able to scan your environment in order to create a three-dimensional reconstruction of the real world.

Microsoft and AT&T on Wednesday said they reached a deal under which the telecommunications company will tap Microsoft's Azure cloud service for its computing needs and use Microsoft 365, which includes Office productivity software, for much of its 268,000-strong workforce. From a report: Under the deal, Microsoft and AT&T will also work together on so-called edge computing, which will see Microsoft technology deployed alongside AT&T's coming 5G network for applications that need extremely small delays in passing data back and forth, such as air traffic control systems for drones. The multi-year deal is worth more than $2 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The agreement is a major win for Microsoft, which will become AT&T's "preferred" cloud vendor and is fighting to gain market share from Amazon Web Services, the biggest provider of public cloud services. Cloud service customers run their software applications in data centers managed by the cloud provider. AT&T will remain responsible for its own core networking operations for cell phones and other devices. But John Donovan, chief executive of AT&T Communications, told Reuters the deal is a fundamental shift for the telecommunications provider to become "public cloud first," meaning that it will predominately rely on data centers built by others to power the rest of its business.

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In yet another sign that it’s moving to diversify product manufacturing beyond China, Apple’s reportedly been trialing AirPods production in Vietnam, per a communication seen by Nikkei.... Read the rest of this post here "Apple has reportedly been trialing AirPods...

The Unicode Consortium has opened up the emoji proposals process via its redesigned website, and now invites you to adopt a character to support its ongoing efforts.

Texbook publishing giant Pearson will soon be publishing a lot fewer textbooks. It said this week it's ending regular revisions of all print textbooks in its higher-education category. As Pearson faces mounting pressure from the resale market, the move signals a growing shift in the publishing industry to a "digital-first" model. From a report: Instead of revising all 1,500 of its active titles every three years according to the print schedule, the British education publisher said it will focus on updating its digital products more frequently, offering artificial intelligence capabilities, data analytics and research. Pearson is billing the decision as a way to help drive down college costs for students. But the company and the education publishing industry as a whole have been criticized for years for the rising prices of textbooks. That has pushed a majority of students into secondhand textbook markets like Chegg or spurred them to forego buying class materials altogether. The average cost of college textbooks rose about four times faster than the rate of inflation over the last decade. "Our digital first model lowers prices for students and, over time, increases our revenues," Fallon said in a statement. "By providing better value to students, they have less reason to turn to the secondary market. Pearson's e-books can cost about $40 on average and go up to $79 for additional learning tools like homework assistance. That compares to prices that can go as high as $200 or $300 for a print textbook, according to Pearson CEO John Fallon, though students can still rent one for $60 on average.

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Yesterday I received a special package in the mail from China. The package contained three new iPhone 11 dummy models representing Apple’s upcoming iPhone lineup.

Included inside the package were dummy models of the upcoming iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Max, and iPhone 11R. Watch our hands-on video walkthrough as we explore these well-made mockups. more…

The post Hands-on: iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Max, and iPhone 11R dummy models [Video] appeared first on 9to5Mac.

Look in the comments section of pretty much any piece on 5G — here or elsewhere — and there’s a good chance that the 5G health hazard myth will be raised by someone. Sometimes with colorful claims, like 5G tests killing birds in mid-flight…

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An iDownloadBlog reader took it upon himself to try connecting his iPod nano to an iPhone running the iOS 13 software to see if he could browse the music player in the Files app.

With Apple’s new payment card appearing to be set for imminent launch in the US, the question of when we’ll see Apple Card in the UK and other countries is back on the lips of many…

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Follow along with iDownloadBlog's step-by-step tutorial as we teach you how to add a beautiful monochromatic effect to your Portrait mode photos.

To celebrate World Emoji Day, Adobe has released an in-depth study on the latest emoji trends in the US including the most popular ones, the top emotions users like to express through emoji, the top reasons why users like to use emoji, and much more.

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Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens passed away Tuesday evening of complications following a stroke he suffered on July 15. He was 99 years old. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares a lightly edited version of Ars Technica's 2010 story that originally marked his retirement from the Supreme Court: In April 2010, the Supreme Court's most senior justice, John Paul Stevens, announced his retirement. In the weeks that followed, hundreds of articles were written about his career and his legacy. While most articles focus on 'hot button' issues such as flag burning, terrorism, and affirmative action, Stevens' tech policy record has largely been ignored. When Justice Stevens joined the court, many of the technologies we now take for granted -- the PC, packet-switched networks, home video recording -- were in their infancy. During his 35-year tenure on the bench, Stevens penned decisions that laid the foundation for the tremendous innovations that followed in each of these areas. For example, Stevens penned the 1978 decision that shielded the software industry from the patent system in its formative years. In 1984, Hollywood's effort to ban the VCR failed by just one Supreme Court vote; Stevens wrote the majority opinion. And in 1997, he wrote the majority opinion striking down the worst provisions of the Communications Decency Act and ensuring that the Internet would have robust First Amendment protections. Indeed, Justice Stevens probably deserves more credit than any other justice for the innovations that occurred under his watch. And given how central those technologies have become to the American economy, Stevens' tech policy work may prove one of his most enduring legacies. In this feature, we review Justice Stevens' tech policy decisions and salute the justice who helped make possible DRM-free media devices, uncensored Internet connections, free software, and much more. As the report mentions, Stevens was the Supreme Court's cryptographer. "Stevens attended the University of Chicago, graduating in 1941. On December 6 -- the day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor -- Stevens enrolled in the Navy's correspondence course on cryptography." "Stevens spent the war in a Navy bunker in Hawaii, doing traffic analysis in an effort to determine the location of Japanese ships," the report adds. "He was an English major, not a mathematician, but he proved to have a knack for cryptographic work."

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