MacRumors

The Video Electronics Standards Association yesterday formally announced its new DisplayPort 1.4 standard, setting the stage for improved video quality and color for external display connections over both DisplayPort and USB-C connectors.

Rather than an increase in actual bandwidth, the improvements in DisplayPort 1.4 come due to improved compression, taking advantage of VESA's new Display Stream Compression 1.2 standard to support High Dynamic Range (HDR) video up to either 8K resolution at 60 Hz or 4K resolution at 120 Hz.

DSC version 1.2 transport enables up to 3:1 compression ratio and has been deemed, through VESA membership testing, to be visually lossless. Together with other new capabilities, this makes the latest version of DP ideally suited for implementation in high-end electronic products demanding premier sound and image quality.

In addition to video-related improvements, DisplayPort 1.4 also expands audio capabilities with support for 32 channels, 1536kHz sample rates, and broader support for "all known" audio formats.

The approval of DisplayPort 1.4 comes even though consumers are still awaiting the arrival of devices supporting the previous DisplayPort 1.3 standard. Intel had been expected to support DisplayPort 1.3 in its current Skylake generation of chips, but the company instead opted to offer dual DisplayPort 1.2 support. As we detailed earlier this year, the lack of DisplayPort 1.3 support in Skylake could lead Apple to hold off on releasing a new 5K Thunderbolt Display until next year when chips supporting the standard become available.

Intel hasn't laid out its DisplayPort support plans beyond Skylake, so it's unknown whether the company will first move to DisplayPort 1.3 or if it can jump straight to the new DisplayPort 1.4 standard. Either way, we're unlikely to see Macs supporting DisplayPort 1.4 until 2017 at the earliest.

Apple has made some changes to Night Shift in iOS 9.3 betas 4 and 5. The most notable change is the disabling of the feature when in Low Power Mode. The toggle switch in both the Night Shift settings and Control Center are now grayed out in Low Power Mode.

The new change has generated some complaints since it seems that users will want to use both features in the evening hours.

Meanwhile, tapping the Night Shift icon in Control Center no longer brings up a contextual menu with "Turn On For Now" and "Turn On Until Tomorrow" options. Instead, the toggle now manually activates Night Shift until the next trigger in your automatic schedule, such as sunset, sunrise, or a specific time.

Similarly, there is a new "Manually Enable Until Tomorrow" toggle in the Night Shift settings that keeps the feature turned on until the following morning's sunrise, or another specified time. This means the toggles in Settings and Control Center, which can also disable Night Shift, are essentially the same in this beta.

Also in the settings, the color temperature slider has also been moved to the bottom of the menu. The "Cooler" and "Warmer" labels have been changed to "Less Warm" and "More Warm," while the small blue and orange circle markers have been removed. New fine print says "warmer temperatures can reduce eye strain."

Night Shift is a major new feature in iOS 9.3 that, when enabled, automatically changes the color temperature of an iOS device's display to reflect the time of day. The feature helps to limit your exposure to blue light in the morning and night, which makes the display easier on your eyes and can improve your circadian rhythm.

Apple seeded the fifth beta of iOS 9.3 to developers and public testers on Tuesday. The software update will likely be public released this month. To read about and share other changes, head over to our iOS 9.3 Beta 5 Bug Fixes, Improvements, and Changes topic in our community discussion forums.

Apple has expanded its real estate holdings in Sunnyvale, California with the lease of a 96,000 square foot industrial property that formerly served as a Pepsi bottling plant, reports The Silicon Valley Business Journal. Apple inked a deal for the location in November, but news of the lease has just recently surfaced and it is not clear how long Apple has been at the location.

A property lease in Sunnyvale is notable because it is rumored to be the area where Apple is working on its secret car project. Apple has several known offices at a 7-building campus at North Wolfe Road and Central Expressway in Sunnyvale and one building at the location is suspected to be a shell company serving as a front for Apple's car development efforts.

960 Kifer Road, where the former Pepsi bottling plant is located, is less than a mile away from the above-mentioned 7-building campus. According to The Silicon Valley Business Journal, it isn't known what the facility will be used for, but it is a "warehouse-type" industrial site that sits on 5 acres of land and has truck docks in the back.

City permits gave no clues about its use, as only a seismic upgrade was on file, suggesting Apple plans to use the building as is instead of redeveloping it. Apple has also previously leased an 80,000 square foot building at 1150-1170 Kifer Road, just down the street from the new location, and a 140,000 square foot building at 3689 Kifer Road, located across the street from the building at 1150 Kifer Road.

Apple is rumored to be taking on hundreds of employees to work on its car project, which could explain its rapid Bay Area expansion. Apple has also purchased a lot of space in San Jose, including an 86-acre piece of land where it can build a campus that's up to 4.5 million square feet.

Apple's head lawyer Bruce Sewell and FBI Director James Comey today testified at a U.S. congressional hearing on encryption issues, where both sides reiterated many of the same arguments that have been circulating since Apple was ordered to help the FBI unlock the iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook.

Several interesting tidbits came up throughout the testimony, which lasted for most of the day. One of the most concerning points raised at the hearing (via The Verge) covered the precedent that would be set for other countries around the world should Apple be forced to break into an iPhone in the United States.

I think the world is watching what happens in our government right now and what happens right now with this particular debate. Our ability to maintain a consistent position around the world, our ability to say we will not compromise the safety and security of any of our users around the world, is substantially weakened if we are forced to make that compromise here in our own country."

Sewell went on to say that Apple has not received similar demands for data from "any other country," but that if the company is ordered to comply, "it will be a hot minute before we get those requests from other places."

Sewell also shared an interesting tidbit on the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 when asked how quickly Apple is able to respond to government requests for assistance. When the flight went missing, Apple started working with officials "within one hour" to attempt to locate the plane. "We had Apple operators working with telephone providers all over the world, with the airlines, and with the FBI to find a ping," he said.

At the hearing, FBI Director James Comey testified during the first panel, while Sewell testified during the second, accompanied by Worcester Polytechnic Institute professor Susan Landau, who sided with Apple, and New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who sided with the FBI.

Comey asked the committee to consider the implications of places law enforcement can't reach. "If there are warrant-proof spaces in American life, what does that mean? What are the costs?" Comey also reiterated the FBI's position that no other agency, such as the National Security Agency, could or would provide the FBI with a tool able to break an iPhone 5c running iOS 9.

Susan Landau raised some salient questions about the FBI's available technology, suggesting the government agency needs to focus on innovating and recruiting talent to build better tools rather than asking Apple to build the software. "Instead of laws and regulations that weaken our protections, we should enable law enforcement to develop twenty-first century capabilities for conducting investigations," she said.

New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance said New York now has more than a hundred devices it would like to see unlocked, further confirming Apple's point that the argument isn't about just one iPhone. "No device or company, no matter how popular, should be able to exempt itself from court obligations unilaterally," he told the committee.

Statements from Comey, Sewell, Landau, and Vance outlining their positions are available from the Judiciary Committee website, as is a video that includes some of the testimony from the hearing. Apple and the FBI will face off at a court hearing over the iPhone issue on March 22.

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.

Spurred by industry leaders like Apple and Huawei, adoption of dual-camera or dual-lens smartphones is expected to grow significantly over the next few years. "We think the dual-cam rally is more about when than if," Morgan Stanley analyst Jasmine Lu wrote in a recent research report.

Lu believes dual cameras will catch on due to their impressive image quality and for future capabilities like 3D object mapping and depth analysis, all of which have the potential to lead to "killer apps" from smartphone manufacturers and third-party developers.

"We believe dual-cam not only helps narrow the image quality gap with SLR cameras but also allows developers to design new killer apps by leveraging in-depth analysis/mapping for 3D objects," Lu wrote. "We expect dual-cam to trigger a multiyear upgrade cycle for the optical industry."

Rumors suggest Apple is working on a version of the iPhone 7 Plus that includes dual-lens camera technology acquired in its LinX purchase last year. LinX worked on smartphone cameras with the potential to cut down on noise, boost light sensitivity, enable refocusing, and improve the level of detail in captured images, narrowing the quality gap between DSLRs and mobile device cameras.

LinX camera modules were also capable of creating detailed depth maps to create 3D models. Such capabilities in the iPhone could lead to apps that are able to do impressive things, from mapping the layout of a room for envisioning new furniture layouts to 3D scanning a real-world object for printing or manipulation purposes. New augmented and mixed reality games that merge real-world objects with virtual objects are also a possibility with that kind of technology. Apps, says Lu, are a key factor that could heavily impact the appeal of dual camera devices.

Early dual camera smartphones may not focus on advanced features like 3D depth mapping, but as dual camera adoption expands and technology improves, it is a logical direction for dual camera evolution.

Apple, with the iPhone 7 Plus, and Huawei, with the upcoming P9, are expected to be the main drivers of dual camera adoption in 2016. The iPhone 7 Plus won't be available until September, but the P9, images of which were shared this morning by VentureBeat, is expected in the first half of 2016. Rumors suggest the camera will enable features like post-capture refocus and simulated aperture adjustment.

Apple today seeded the fifth beta of an upcoming iOS 9.3 update to developers and public beta testers for testing purposes, just over a week after seeding the fourth iOS 9.3 beta and three months after the public release of iOS 9.2, the last major update to iOS 9. iOS 9.3 has been in testing since January 11.

The fifth iOS 9.3 beta is available as an over-the-air update and through the iOS section of the Apple Developer Center (developers only).

As promised by Apple, today's update restores full navigational functionality to the Apple Pencil. In earlier betas of iOS 9.3, the Apple Pencil has been unable to be used for tasks like selecting text, scrolling, swiping between apps, accessing menus, and general editing functions in non-drawing apps. The feature removal upset many iPad Pro users, leading Apple to confirm that its absence was only temporary.

As a major .1 update to the iOS 9 operating system, iOS 9.3 introduces several new features. There's a Night Shift mode to reduce the amount of blue light iOS users are exposed to in the evening by shifting the iPad or iPhone display to a warmer (yellower) color spectrum, and there are several features designed to improve the iPad for Education program, such as multi-user login. Multi-user login, while an appealing feature, is limited to MDM customers and is not available to the general public.

Multiple apps and features are also seeing updates in iOS 9.3. Apple News includes more personalized recommendations, faster updates, a landscape view on the iPhone, and support for in-line video, while Health includes a new Apple Watch-style "Activity" view, Notes has an option to password protect individual entries, and third-party apps can add songs to Apple Music.

Apple Music for CarPlay offers "New" and "For You" sections for better music discovery, and a Nearby Feature in CarPlay Maps offers more information about what's close by. Paired with watchOS 2.2, an iPhone running iOS 9.3 is able to support multiple Apple Watches, and for iPhone 6s users, there are new Quick Actions for Weather, Settings, Compass, Health, App Store, and iTunes Store.

The second iOS 9.3 beta added a Control Center toggle for the Night Shift feature, while the third iOS 9.3 beta focused on fixing bugs and added Verizon Wi-Fi calling.

What's new in iOS 9.3 beta 5

Night Shift Control Center toggle - The Night Shift toggle in the Control Center no longer has a pop up menu with options to "Turn On For Now" or "Turn On Until Tomorrow. The button's function is now simpler, turning Night Shift on and off on demand.

Apple today seeded the fifth beta of an upcoming watchOS 2.2 update to developers, just over a week after seeding the fourth watchOS 2.2 beta and more than two months after releasing watchOS 2.1, the first major update to the watchOS 2 operating system that runs on the Apple Watch. watchOS 2.2 has been in testing since January 11.

The fifth watchOS 2.2 beta can be downloaded through the dedicated Apple Watch app on an iPhone running the iOS 9.3 beta by going to General --> Software update. To install the update, the Apple Watch must have 50 percent battery, it must be placed on the Apple Watch charger, and it must be in range of the iPhone.

watchOS 2.2, along with iOS 9.3, introduces support for pairing multiple Apple Watches with a single iPhone. Both updates are required, with each watch running watchOS 2.2 and each iPhone running iOS 9.3. watchOS 2.2 also includes a revamped look for the built-in Maps app on the Apple Watch with access to the Nearby feature first introduced with iOS 9 and new buttons for quickly accessing directions to home and work.

There were no other obvious outward-facing changes introduced in the first four watchOS 2.2 betas aside from the changes to the Maps app, but the update undoubtedly includes under-the-hood performance updates and bug fixes to address issues that have been discovered since the release of watchOS 2.1. WatchOS 2.2 is expected to debut in the spring, perhaps at Apple's rumored March 21 event.

Apple today provided developers with the fifth beta of an upcoming 9.2 update to tvOS, the operating system that runs on the fourth-generation Apple TV and powers its built-in App Store. Today's tvOS 9.2 beta 5 comes just over a week after Apple released the fourth beta of tvOS 9.2 and more than a month after the release of tvOS 9.1.1, a minor update to tvOS 9.1. tvOS 9.2 has been in testing since January 11.

tvOS betas are more difficult to install than beta updates for iOS and OS X. Installing the tvOS beta requires the Apple TV to be connected to a computer with a USB-C to USB-A cable, with the software downloaded and installed via iTunes or Apple Configurator. Those who have already installed the first four tvOS 9.2 betas will be able to download the fifth update over the air.

tvOS 9.2 is a significant update for the tvOS operating system and new features have been added continually throughout the beta testing process. It brings support for Bluetooth keyboards, allowing a keyboard to be paired to the Apple TV for text entry. Bluetooth keyboard support is a major feature that was missing from previous versions of tvOS and its addition should make it much easier to do tasks like entering passwords on the fourth-generation Apple TV.

Along with Bluetooth keyboard support, the tvOS 9.2 update introduces support for grouping apps into folders on the Home screen like on iOS devices, plus it includes a new look for the App Switcher interface and it brings support for iCloud Photo Library and Live Photos. There's an update for the Apple TV Remote firmware, adding improved motion sensor performance and support for additional sound bar and receiver hardware.

Support for dictation allows Apple TV users to dictate text and spell user names and passwords rather than typing them in. Dictation capabilities are available in all countries where Siri is available on the Apple TV. With tvOS 9.2, Siri also gains the ability to search for App Store apps, improving app discovery. Siri can search for a specific app or bring up a category of apps, such as games.

tvOS 9.2 also introduces MapKit so developers can incorporate maps into their tvOS apps, and it adds Siri support for US Spanish (in the US only) and French Canadian (in Canada only). UK English, Australian English, and US English are also now available as Siri options in the UK, Australian, and US Storefronts when English is set as the tvOS language.

We'll update this post with any new features that are discovered in the fifth beta of tvOS 9.2.

Apple today seeded the fifth beta of an upcoming OS X 10.11.4 update to developers and public beta testers for testing purposes, just over a week after seeding the fourth OS X 10.11.4 beta and more than a month after releasing OS X 10.11.3. OS X 10.11.4 has been in testing since January 11.

The fifth OS X 10.11.4 beta, build 15E56a, can be downloaded through the Apple Developer Center (developers only) or via the Software Update Mechanism in the Mac App Store (for developers and public beta testers).

OS X 10.11.4 offers a couple of new features, such as Live Photos support in Messages, the ability to password protect notes in the Notes app, and an option to import notes from Evernote, but like the recent OS X 10.11.3 update, it appears to focus primarily on under-the-hood bug fixes and performance improvements. Almost all of Apple's OS X updates to date have been smaller updates that improve performance rather than introduce new features.

We'll update this post with any features or significant changes that are discovered in the fifth beta of OS X 10.11.4. OS X 10.11.4 is likely to see a spring release alongside iOS 9.3, tvOS 9.2, and watchOS 2.2, with the new software coming as early as March 21, the date of Apple's planned spring event.