MacRumors

A new iTunes bug has been discovered that causes Apple Music playback issues related to tracks shorter than 60 seconds. MacRumors was able to reproduce the issue on Macs running OS X 10.11.5 and iTunes 12.4.1.

Specifically, when an Apple Music track that is shorter than 60 seconds is streamed in its entirety, without skipping ahead, the subsequent song in an album or playlist fails to play and appears to be in a state of perpetual buffering.

It looks like the way Apple Music handles streaming is when the current song is a minute from the end, iTunes signals the next track in the queue to start downloading so that it's ready to play when the current song is over. However, when the song is less than a minute long the next song's download is never initiated, apparently because some "one minute remaining" event is never triggered! This means the app just sits waiting for a download to finish that has in fact never started.

The bug only affects tracks streamed through Apple Music, with songs and albums that have been stored locally on iTunes unaffected. The issue was unable to be reproduced on a Mac running macOS Sierra beta, or on iTunes 12.3 or earlier, or on an iPhone running iOS 9.3.2.

The bug has been reported to Apple and should hopefully be resolved in a future iTunes software update.

Update: The bug was originally shared on the Apple Support Communities by user ivoisbelongtous.

Walmart has announced that its mobile payments solution Walmart Pay is now available in 16 additional U.S. states, including Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Virginia. Washington, D.C. is also on board.

Walmart Pay is built into the Walmart app [Direct Link] for iOS and Android and works at any checkout lane with any major credit, debit, pre-paid, or Walmart gift card.

The payments solution is based upon a QR code checkout process that involves opening the Walmart app, selecting Walmart Pay, activating the camera, scanning the code displayed at the register, and waiting for the cashier to finish bagging your items. An electronic receipt is automatically sent to the app.

The word in late 2015 from Walmart senior vice president of services Daniel Eckert was that Walmart Pay allows "for integration of other mobile wallets in the future," providing at least some hope that the retailer may eventually accept rival payment services such as Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Samsung Pay at its stores.

Walmart is among a handful of retailers that have refused to support Apple Pay since its American launch in October 2014. The retailer was originally committed to the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) consortium and its now indefinitely postponed payments service CurrentC before launching Walmart Pay.

Walmart's resistance to Apple Pay persists even as other former holdouts such as Best Buy and Rite Aid have reversed course and begun accepting the iPhone-based payments service at their U.S. stores. Walmart rival Target, meanwhile, is developing a QR code-based mobile wallet solution of its own.

The Walmart app [Direct Link] is free on the App Store for iPhone and Apple Watch.

Yesterday it was discovered that iOS 10 does not feature an encrypted kernel, allowing users and researchers access to the core of the operating system and its inner workings. It was unclear at the time whether the lack of encryption was an accident or intentional, but today Apple confirmed to TechCrunch that the company did not encrypt the kernel for a reason.

“The kernel cache doesn’t contain any user info, and by unencrypting it we’re able to optimize the operating system’s performance without compromising security,” an Apple spokesperson told TechCrunch.

The kernel, which dictates how software can use hardware and keeps the device secure, is unencrypted so that developers and researchers can "poke around" and find potential security flaws. Because the kernel is easier to access and flaws may be easier to find, Apple can more easily and more quickly patch potential issues.

The move is a shift for Apple, who had encrypted the kernel in past versions of iOS, leaving developers and researchers out of the loop on the inner workings of the operating system. As noted by security expert Jonathan Zdziarski, it's likely that Apple has made this shift to prevent groups from "hoarding" vulnerabilities in Apple's software, like the vulnerability used by the FBI to break into the iPhone 5c of the San Bernardino shooter.

In iOS 10, Apple has focused heavily on making 3D Touch more useful and relevant, so if you have an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, there are a whole slew of new gestures you can use on the Lock screen, the Home screen, and in certain apps.

Given the expansive new 3D Touch options in iOS 10, we've created a video that shows you everything you can do with one of Apple's newest iPhones. With Apple introducing so many new 3D Touch capabilities, we can expect 3D Touch to be a feature that will show up in all of Apple's future devices, from iPhones to iPads.

When downloading an app, you can press on it to pause or cancel the download, and when 3D Touching on any app, there are new options for bringing up the share sheet. Apps that have accompanying widgets, like Weather, will display that widget when using a Quick Action press on the Home screen.

Pressing on a folder now brings up an option for quickly renaming it, and if there are apps with Notification badges inside of a folder, you can easily access them using 3D Touch.

In the Control Center, there are 3D Touch shortcuts for the Flashlight (change intensity), Timer (pre-set intervals), Calculator (copy last result), and Camera (picture options), while Apple Music offers more info when 3D Touching on a song that's playing and Messages brings up Bubble Effects when using a 3D Touch to customize chat bubbles.

For full details on the new features coming in iOS 10, make sure to check out our iOS 10 roundup. Don't miss out on our previous videos, which have covered watchOS 3, macOS Sierra, and other iOS 10 features:

- WWDC 2016 Overview in Seven Minutes
- iOS 10's Overhauled Lockscreen
- The New iOS 10 Photos App
- The New iOS 10 Messages App
- macOS Sierra - Siri
- iOS 10 Hidden Features
- watchOS 3 Overview
- iOS 10's Redesigned Apple Music Experience

We've also got roundups for all of the upcoming operating systems, including watchOS 3, macOS Sierra, and tvOS 10.

Some minor changes are coming to the front of the iPhone 7 that will render protective LCD films made for other devices unusable on the new iPhone, reports Japanese site Mac Otakara.

According to the site, manufacturers of LCD films have stopped receiving orders as the iPhone 7 is expected to feature some front panel changes that will require new film designs.

Recently, some manufacturers of LCD protection films on Alibaba.com have stopped receiving orders as iPhone 7 has its proximity sensor on the front changed to the dual specification in addition to the ambient light sensor on the side moving from the left side to the right while a slightly longer receiver.

Mac Otakara also reiterates rumors that the iPhone 7 Plus will feature a dual-lens camera while the iPhone 7 will feature a larger back camera, rendering existing iPhone 6s and 6s Plus cases unusable with the new devices

Though only small design tweaks are expected to be seen in the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, there will be enough of a design shift to require accessory makers to create new products and to require iPhone buyers to purchase new products.

Schematics and blueprints suggest the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will be largely the same dimensions as the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s, but with relocated antenna bands, better water resistance, the removal of the headphone jack, and possibly some as of yet unknown reduction in thickness. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has said the iPhone 7 could be 1mm thinner than the iPhone 6s, but case leaks and other rumors suggest more a more modest change.

The Wall Street Journal yesterday called the changes set to be introduced in the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus "subtle," while Kuo has said the device will not have many "attractive selling points." Apple is eschewing a major design revamp in 2016 in order to introduce more expansive changes in the 2017 iPhone, expected to see an all glass body with an edge-to-edge display.

Shenzhen Baili, the Chinese company that claimed the iPhone 6 violated the patent of its 100c smartphone, is reported to "barely exist" following its victory in the Beijing Intellectual Property Office against Apple.

In response to Shenzhen Baili's patent lawsuit, The Wall Street Journal investigated the company, along with its parent Digione, and found that the latter company had collapsed, "brought down by buggy products, mismanagement and fierce competition, according to former employees and investors." Digione has apparently been absent from China's mobile phone market for nearly a year.

Phone calls to the company, Shenzhen Baili Marketing Services Co., ring unanswered. Its websites have been deleted. Visits to its three registered addresses found no company offices.

Baili and its parent, Digione, are part of a rapid boom and bust in China’s new wave of smartphone makers. When Baili took on Apple in December 2014, telling Chinese regulators that the Cupertino, Calif., company’s new models infringed on its smartphone design patents, it had bold aspirations, a big-name investor in Chinese internet giant Baidu Inc. and a team of experienced executives.

All the same, Shenzhen Baili is claiming to continue to battle Apple through its pending appeal process, and the company "is still operational in its necessary functions,” according to Digione lawyer Andy Yang. The company originally filed the patent infringement claim in December 2014, shortly after the launch of the iPhone 6, but the case only recently reached the court system in Beijing.

Despite its assertion to continue going after Apple in court, the financial records of Baili and its parent company reveal that both are insolvent, with debts that greatly exceed their total assets. Former employees of the company even said that the suit against Apple was "always more a marketing ploy than a serious court case."

Despite the setback, Apple has confirmed that both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have stayed on sale in China thanks to an administrative order appeal from a regional patent tribunal in Beijing last month.

At WWDC last week, Apple revealed its all-new Swift Playgrounds iPad app, which aims to help younger users learn how to code in Apple's programming language by making the experience more interactive and fun.

For those unfamiliar with Swift, the open-source language was announced by Apple at WWDC 2014, and developed over four years to be "concise and expressive" in order to make coding for iOS, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch more approachable.

Using Swift Playgrounds, Apple invites users to "solve puzzles to master the basics using Swift" and "take on a series of challenges" to step up to more advanced creations. Swift Playgrounds requires no coding knowledge from new learners, but it also "provides a unique way for seasoned developers to quickly bring ideas to life," claims the company.

Users start out by learning the underlying concepts of coding, like commands, functions, loops, parameters, conditional code, variables, operators, types, initialization, and bug fixing. The learning takes place as users create code on the left side of the screen, while they observe the results on the right side in real time.

Learning to code with Swift Playgrounds is incredibly engaging. The app comes with a complete set of Apple-designed lessons. Play your way through the basics in "Fundamentals of Swift" using real code to guide a character through a 3D world. Then move on to more advanced concepts.

The Swift Playground interface supports the iPad's Multi-Touch capabilities, and lets students tap, drag, or type text and numbers, and then interact with their creations.

For example, tapping a number to edit it brings up a pop-up keypad, while statement boundaries can be conveniently dragged around existing code. Commonly used pieces of code can also be dragged from a Snippets Library to minimize typing.

In addition, a specially designed QuickType keyboard for coding lets users quickly access commonly used characters by holding each key, and intelligently suggests commands in the Shortcut Bar as users type.

Swift Playgrounds also comes with templates that are pre-loaded with advanced code to help users integrate iPad technologies like accelerometer, gyroscope, and Multi-Touch into their programs.

Students can add their own graphics and audio to these templates, and their completed code is readily shareable over Mail, Messages, and AirDrop, and they can also post video to Youtube of their programs in action.

Once users have mastered the basics with the app's built-in library of lessons, they can advance to new challenges that appear in a regularly updated App Store-like area of Swift Playgrounds. Finally, any code created in the app can also be exported to Xcode and vice versa when students are ready to take the next step.

Swift Playgrounds will be available in the iOS 10 public beta this July. The final version of the app is expected to launch for free on the App Store sometime in the fall. You can watch Apple's WWDC demo of Swift Playgrounds in action here.

iOS 10 introduces an all new Apple Music experience and a redesigned Music app, which is aimed at making it easier for users to find new content to listen to. As seen in the video below, the new look of the Music app focuses on album art with a bright, simple aesthetic featuring big, bold headlines and lots of white space.

At WWDC, Apple execs said the redesigned app was meant to bring "greater clarity and simplicity to every aspect of the experience."

The Library portion of the Music app houses songs saved from Apple Music and previously owned music, with a new section that makes it much clearer which songs have been physically downloaded on a device. For You includes a better mix of music and new daily playlists, while Browse features curated playlists and top charts.

The search feature searches through both Apple Music content and each user's own personal library, and "Radio" tab is largely unchanged with access to Beats 1 radio shows. Apple Music in iOS 10 also has a new focus on lyrics, and for many songs, lyrics can be accessed by scrolling up from the album art when content is playing.

Apple Music design changes introduced in iOS 10 have also been expanded to macOS Sierra and tvOS 10, both of which feature a new look and the same new features.

For full details on the new features coming in iOS 10, make sure to check out our iOS 10 roundup. Don't miss out on our previous videos, which have covered watchOS 3, macOS Sierra, and other iOS 10 features:

- WWDC 2016 Overview in Seven Minutes
- iOS 10's Overhauled Lockscreen
- The New iOS 10 Photos App
- The New iOS 10 Messages App
- macOS Sierra - Siri
- iOS 10 Hidden Features
- watchOS 3 Overview

We've also got roundups for all of the upcoming operating systems, including watchOS 3, macOS Sierra, and tvOS 10.