MacRumors

One of the biggest updates announced for iOS 10 centers around the new design of Apple Music, which the company hopes will simplify its music streaming service into one that better introduces its users to new favorite songs, and is less of a hassle to navigate than the current version.

To discuss the nuances of the revamped service, Eddy Cue, Jimmy Iovine, Trent Reznor, and Robert Kondrk sat down with Billboard, commenting on the importance of Beats 1, the steady growth of Apple Music, and the much-talked-about slow death of downloaded music in iTunes.

Billboard asked Cue and Reznor about a "streaming-only future," but the former reassured fans who prefer to download music by saying that "there's no end date" to paid music services like iTunes, which "is doing very well," Cue said. Reznor admits that such a future is probably inevitable, but doesn't see why paid and streaming music couldn't coexist simultaneously, similar to the niche buyers market of vinyl records today.

Eddy Cue: There’s no end date, and as a matter of fact, they should all be surprised and thankful to the results that they’re seeing because our music iTunes business is doing very well. Downloads weren’t growing, and certainly are not going to grow again, but it’s not declining anywhere near as fast as any of them predicted or thought it would. There are a lot of people who download music and are happy with it and they’re not moving towards subscriptions. We talked about subscriptions bringing a lot of new customers in, people who have never bought music. And if you look at Apple’s music revenue on a quarterly basis, because of subscriptions and because of sales, it’s now higher; it’s actually growing, which is great for the labels.

Trent Reznor: It feels as though we’ve turned a corner in terms of the adoption of streaming. I think it’s inevitable that downloads will diminish, much like CDs. But I’ve started buying vinyl -- probably out of nostalgia, but also there’s something about a physical thing that has meaning to me as an artist. I think coexistence can take place.

When addressing the concern that Beats 1 wasn't directly mentioned during the WWDC keynote, Iovine promised that "Beats 1 is going to be creating a lot more content as well," besides being a part of the overall Apple Music design change. This content encompasses video, according to Iovine, who didn't directly mention which rumored scripted TV project this might entail, but said the team is currently focusing on the "impact" the radio service has as part of the overall music ecosystem at Apple.

As usual, Cue wasn't ready to divulge specific numbers regarding the conversion rates of users transferring from Apple Music's three month free trial to a paid subscription, but he did say that the team has "been very happy with the results we’ve seen." As confirmed during yesterday's keynote, the service has also reached 15 million subscribers a few weeks ahead of its one year anniversary later in June.

You can read the full interview between Billboard and the Apple Music executives here.

Netflix for iOS was today updated with a highly desired and long-awaited new feature, Picture in Picture support. Introduced in iOS 9, Picture in Picture is an iPad multitasking capability that allows a video that's playing to be minimized to a corner while other apps are open.

With Picture in Picture support, iPad users can now watch TV shows and movies on Netflix while doing other things on their iPads.

Picture in Picture is available on the iPad Air, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, iPad mini 4, 9.7-inch iPad Pro, and 12.9-inch iPad Pro. iOS 9.3.2 is required to take advantage of Picture and Picture in Netflix.

Today's Netflix update also includes unspecified bug fixes and stability improvements.

Netflix can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

T-Mobile has announced that its free unlimited video streaming program Binge On now supports over five additional video services, including Azubu, Dailymotion Games, Eyegroove, PBS, PBS Kids, and more. Binge On now supports nearly 90 video services in the United States.

Binge On enables customers on a qualifying Simple Choice plan to stream unlimited 480p video from dozens of partnered services, led by Netflix, HBO NOW, Hulu, and YouTube, without any of the data consumed counting towards their monthly data bucket.

T-Mobile expanded Binge On to thirteen additional video services in May, including NBC and video content from existing Music Freedom partners Google Play Music, Radio Disney, Spotify, and TIDAL, after adding 16 new Binge On and Music Freedom partners in April. YouTube, Google Play Movies, and others were added in March.

Among many iOS 10 announcements made at WWDC yesterday, one notable update to Apple's mobile operating system came in the form of third party developer support in Apple's iMessage chat platform. With the new SDK, developers can create app extensions -- similar to third party keyboard apps available now on the App Store -- that let users interact with apps from directly within Messages.

Following its announcement at the keynote, the developer of Square Cash [Direct Link] shared a little bit more information about how their payments service works as an app extension for Messages. Once a user has Square Cash installed, they can find it with their other apps in the new iMessage "App drawer." From there, "Just swipe up to pick an amount and attach it to a message. One tap to deposit it!" The iMessage App is still limited by Square Cash's own restraints, however, so international payment transfers are unavailable as of now.

Although not specifically detailed, the iMessage App extensions for already-existing apps, like Square Cash, will presumably be free upgrades for users who already own or have downloaded the base apps. On Apple's developer site, a heavy emphasis is placed on the "purchase" of various sticker packs, however, suggesting that the various Disney and other brand-related stickers will not be free to download.

Help users express themselves in richer ways by providing stickers for purchase on the App Store for iMessage. Users can tap to send stickers in a thread, adjust their size, or place them on top of bubbles, other stickers, and photos. There's no need for you to write code to create stickers — simply drag the images into the designated folder in Xcode.

Not many other iMessage Apps have been detailed by Apple and developers yet, but wording on the developer beta site mentions users will be able to "share content, edit photos, play games, send payments, and collaborate with friends." While some might be similar in execution to third-party keyboards in iOS 9, now that Apple has granted developer access to its Messages platform, it'll be interesting to see what new kind of shortcuts and message-enhancing features come out of the new App Store for iMessage.

Anyone who needs to catchup with the WWDC keynote -- or if you just want a refresher -- can do so by watching MacRumors' 7-minute recap video. Likewise, our iOS 10 tidbits post has more information on iMessage updates, individual read receipts, the ability to remove pre-installed apps, and more.

Apple confirmed during its WWDC 2016 keynote that Apple Pay will be expanding to France, Hong Kong, and Switzerland over the next few months in partnership with Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.

Visa and MasterCard will be supported in all three countries, while American Express will also be available in Hong Kong. The specific credit, debit, and prepaid cards that can be used in each country vary depending on the participating issuers listed below.

France

Participating banks and issuers in France at launch will include Banque Populaire, Boon, Caisse Epargne, Carrefour Banque, Orange, and Ticket Restaurant.

Apple Pay will be accepted at many retailers in France, including Apple, Bocage, Boulanger, Cojean, Dior, Le Bon Marché, Louis Vuitton, Orange, Pret a Manger, Sephora, and elsewhere contactless payments are accepted.

Hong Kong

Participating banks and issuers in Hong Kong at launch will include the Bank of East Asia (BEA), Bank of China (Hong Kong), DBS Bank (Hong Kong), Hang Seng Bank, HSBC, and Standard Chartered.

Apple Pay retailers in Hong Kong include 7-Eleven, Apple, Colourmix, KFC, Lane Crawford, Mannings, McDonald's, Pacific Coffee, Pizza Hut, Sasa, Senryo, Starbucks, ThreeSixty, and elsewhere contactless payments are accepted.

Switzerland

Participating banks and prepaid issuers in Switzerland at launch will include Bonus Card, Cornèr Bank (Cornèrcard), and Swiss Bankers.

Apple Pay will be accepted at many retailers in Switzerland, including ALDI SUISSE, Apple, Avec, Hublot, K Kiosk, Lidl, Louis Vuitton, Mobilezone, Press & Books, SPAR, TAG Heuer, and elsewhere contactless payments are accepted.

Six years after making its debut in iOS 4, Game Center has now been quietly removed from Apple's mobile operating system, as a few initial iOS 10 beta testers have noted. Although the company has given users the ability to delete some of its pre-installed apps with the new OS, it appears Game Center in particular is permanently deleted. It is unclear, however, whether the app might be made available to download from the App Store when iOS 10 goes public this fall.

As pointed out by MacRumors' sister site TouchArcade, Game Center is still not completely gone away as a service. In the release notes for the first beta of iOS 10, Apple explains that if a developer wants Game Center-like leaderboards in their app, they will have to implement such features themselves.

• The Game Center app has been removed. If your game implements GameKit features, it must also implement the interface behavior necessary for the user to see these features. For example, if your game supports leaderboards, it could present a GKGameCenterViewController object or read the data directly from Game Center to implement a custom user interface.
• A new account type, implemented by the GKCloudPlayer class, supports iCloud-only game accounts.
• Game Center provides a new generalized solution for managing persistent storage of data on Game Center. A game session (GKGameSession) has a list of players who are the session’s participants. Your game’s implementation defines when and how a participant stores or retrieves data from the server or exchanges data between players. Game sessions can often replace existing turn-based matches, real-time matches, and persistent save games, and also enable other models of interaction between participants.

When it was introduced, Game Center was presented as a way for users to visit a centralized hub of all of their gaming applications on iOS, although not every game supported Apple's app. Game Center provided profiles, achievements, leaderboards, status updates on friends' most recently played games, and a specialized "Turns" tab to keep track of games that used asynchronous multiplayer features.

Apple appears to be addressing multiple user issues with its stock apps in the iOS 10 developer beta, allowing for the removal of over 20 of its first party applications, a long-requested feature many users have been asking for over the past few years.

Read up on more iOS 10 features in our tidbits post here.

Update: As one user has pointed out on Twitter, "Game Center" was mentioned in name during the watchOS 3 section of the keynote. What this means for the future of the service, on either iOS or watchOS, is still unclear.

Update 2: Apple has confirmed to TechCrunch that "Game Center will continue as a service, but it will no longer be available as a standalone application."

With the announcement of iOS 10 at WWDC on Monday, Apple mentioned its adoption of "Differential Privacy" – a mathematical technique that allows the company to collect user information that helps it enhance its apps and services while keeping the data of individual users private.

During the company's keynote address, Senior VP of software engineering Craig Federighi – a vocal advocate of personal privacy – summarized the concept in the following way:

We believe you should have great features and great privacy. Differential privacy is a research topic in the areas of statistics and data analytics that uses hashing, subsampling and noise injection to enable…crowdsourced learning while keeping the data of individual users completely private. Apple has been doing some super-important work in this area to enable differential privacy to be deployed at scale.

Wired has now published an article on the subject that lays out in clearer detail some of the practical implications and potential pitfalls of Apple's latest statistical data gathering technique.

Differential privacy, translated from Apple-speak, is the statistical science of trying to learn as much as possible about a group while learning as little as possible about any individual in it. With differential privacy, Apple can collect and store its users' data in a format that lets it glean useful notions about what people do, say, like and want. But it can't extract anything about a single, specific one of those people that might represent a privacy violation. And neither, in theory, could hackers or intelligence agencies.

Wired notes that the technique claims to have a mathematically "provable guarantee" that its generated data sets are impervious to outside attempts to de-anonymize the information. It does however caution that such complicated techniques rely on the rigor of their implementation to retain any guarantee of privacy during transmission.

You can read the full article on the subject of differential privacy here.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Apple has been granted a patent for a possible future iPhone with a wraparound all-glass display (via Patently Apple).

The application was submitted in 2011 but granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today, detailing various embodiments of a portable consumer device with a wraparound screen.

In one example, the device is described as having a transparent housing and a flexible display enclosed within it which is capable of showing visual content at any position inside the housing – using virtual buttons in place of physical volume controls on the handset edge, for instance.

The same embodiment is also described as having a second flexible display assembly that works in concert with the primary one to present visual content in positions beyond the main screen.

The concept images appear to show an old 30-pin connector on the device, likely because Apple's Lightning port had yet to come to market when they were being drawn up.

Nevertheless, the granted patent is timely for Apple – rumors since the beginning of the year have suggested it is looking at the possibility of adopting a curved display for the 2017 iPhone, however it is unclear whether the invention described here would be linked to any special "anniversary iPhone" Apple may be working on.

Other rumors about the 2017 iPhone, which may be called the "iPhone 8" instead of the traditional "iPhone 7s" because of the changes expected, include an edge-to-edge bezel-free display with built-in Touch ID functionality, no home button, and a glass body.

Apple has quietly dropped the requirement that tvOS developers make their games playable using the Siri Remote as a controller.

The policy change was discovered in an update to an existing Apple TV support document covering the use of game controllers, and highlighted by MacRumors' sister site TouchArcade as a revision that will surely be welcomed by developers and gamers alike.

The wording reflects a subtle but significant softening of the company's previous stance on Siri Remote controller support. At the launch of the fourth-generation Apple TV last year, Apple initially encouraged game developers to support the Siri Remote included with the device, but eventually hardened its stance by stipulating the support as a necessary requirement.

That vexed some developers who complained that the Siri Remote simply doesn't function well as a controller for more complex games that involve finer grained control and subtler movements.

The reversed stance therefore paves the way for developers to bring games to Apple TV that would have previously been considered unplayable on the platform.

On the flip side of course, it's also likely to mean that some games which subsequently appear in the Apple TV App Store will be out of reach of users who do not own a compatible third-party MFi game controller.

In related news, Apple yesterday demoed an updated Remote app for the fourth-gen Apple TV and tvOS which mirrors the functionality of the Siri Remote and also allows users to play games using their iPhone.

The company also used its WWDC 2016 keynote to announce an updated version of tvOS that includes new functionality and features for Siri, single sign-on and more.