MacRumors

Apple today seeded the second beta of iOS 9.2 to public beta testers, one day after seeding the second beta to developers and a week after releasing the first iOS 9.2 public beta. iOS 9.2 follows iOS 9.1, which launched on October 21.

Beta testers who have signed up for Apple’s beta testing program and have will receive the second iOS 9.2 beta as an over-the-air update.

Those who want to be a part of Apple’s beta testing program can sign up to participate through the beta testing website, which gives users access to both iOS and OS X betas. As iOS 9.1 was recently released, it will likely be several weeks before we see the public release of iOS 9.2.

According to the release notes for the first iOS 9.2 beta, the Safari View Controller (the view of Safari you see within apps) is being updated with support for third-party Action Extensions that will let it more closely mirror the Safari app. It also includes options to reload content and request a desktop site, as in Safari, and iOS 9.2 beta 2 improves Safari View Controller further, introducing support for dismissing it with an edge swipe.

Along with improvements to Safari View Controller, iOS 9.2 also introduces support for AT&T's NumberSync Wi-Fi Calling feature and includes bug fixes for iCloud Keychain, Apple Watch syncing and pairing, audio quality when streaming to stereo systems, and more.

Sotheby's will soon be auctioning a contemporary Macintosh painting by the late Andy Warhol, a successful artist known for his paintings of iconic American objects like Coca-Cola and Campbell's Soup and celebrities including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali.

The acrylic and silkscreen canvas painting is part of Warhol's "Ads" suite from 1985, one year after the original Macintosh launched. The painting, which features Apple's old rainbow logo sandwiched between the words Apple and Macintosh, is estimated to receive between $400,000 and $600,000 U.S. at auction.

"We went into Sean [John Lennon's son]'s bedroom–and there was a kid there setting up the Apple computer that Sean had gotten as a present, the Macintosh model. I said that once some man had been calling me a lot wanting to give me one, but that I'd never called him back or something, and then the kid looked up and said, 'Yeah, that was me. I'm Steve Jobs.' And he looked so young, like a college guy. And he told me that he would still send me one now. And then he gave me a lesson on drawing with it. It only comes in black and white now, but they'll make it soon in color...I felt so old and out of it with this young whiz guy right there who helped invent it." — Andy Warhol

The starting bid for the Macintosh painting will be $280,000 U.S. when the eBay auction starts on November 12 at 9:30 AM Eastern. The painting is in very good condition overall based on the Sotheby's report, with only light wear and handling along the edges, minor hairline craquelure, possible retouching and a few other blemishes.

Despite Siri's availability on iOS in over fifteen different languages and over thirty countries, the voice assistant's support on the new Apple TV has remained limited to eight countries: Australia, Canada, Great Britain, United States, Germany, France, Spain, and Japan.

In a new report by MacPrime [Google Translate], the importance of "film and television content" -- including altering the phonetic pronunciation of movie titles and actor names -- was given as the main reason behind this initially small Siri support on the new Apple TV.

The explanation: Siri on Apple TV is different in large parts of Siri on iOS. The voice control of the set-top box Apple had to put a special focus on television and film content. These include in particular film titles and names of actors, directors, producers and the like. Apart from the various translations of movie titles, the pronunciation of titles or name differs depending on the country or region.

Specifically, examples for film titles like "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and the actor Matthew McConaughey were given as the most different from the way Americans tend to say them. Since the new Apple TV is fueled by an extensive Siri voice search functionality, Apple feared that releasing the feature to a more global audience, who may run into problems and become frustrated, would dilute its overall appeal.

The project managers that MacPrime spoke to noted incoming support for more countries and languages, although the company has yet to give an exact date to the expanded regions that will gain Siri functionality on the Apple TV. Those areas that still received the fourth generation set-top box at launch, but are without Siri, were given a remote that looks identical to the Siri Remote but has been dubbed the "Apple TV Remote" due to its lack of full voice control capabilities.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who passed away in October 2011 following a lengthy battle with a rare illness, contemplated building a so-called "Apple Car" as recently as 2008, according to his former advisor Tony Fadell.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Fadell, who led Apple's iPod division between 2001 and 2010, said he had discussions with Jobs on multiple occasions to hypothesize about what features an Apple-branded vehicle could have.

"We had a couple of walks," Fadell said in an interview with Bloomberg's Emily Chang. The pair posed hypothetical questions to each other, such as: "If we were to build a car, what would we build? What would a dashboard be? And what would this be? What would seats be? How would you fuel it or power it?"

Jobs, who drove a Mercedes, decided not to move forward with the idea at the time, said Fadell, instead focusing Apple's efforts on the iPhone, which accounted for about two-thirds of the company's net revenue last year according to SEC filings.

Fadell, who now serves as Nest Labs CEO at Google parent company Alphabet, said he does not have firsthand knowledge about Apple's car plans, but he did reflect on the similarities between smartphones and modern vehicles.

"A car has batteries; it has a computer; it has a motor; and it has mechanical structure. If you look at an iPhone, it has all the same things. It even has a motor in it," said Fadell, who's now the chief executive officer of Alphabet's Nest home appliances company. "But the hard stuff is really on the connectivity and how cars could be self-driving."

Apple has considered building a car before 2008, Bloomberg noted. Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller disclosed in 2012 court testimony that Apple discussed building a car before the original iPhone launched in 2007, while former Apple board member Mickey Drexler has also said Jobs wanted to build a car.

Apple faces growing competition from tech rivals such as Tesla and Google, and traditional automakers, if it chooses to enter the electric vehicle market. Recent rumors suggest Apple has assembled a team of hundreds of employees to develop an electric vehicle that could enter production as early as 2020.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has released a new research report outlining his expectations for Apple's 2016 iPhone launches, including several interesting tidbits about the upcoming devices.

First, Kuo believes Apple still has a new 4-inch iPhone in the works that "resembles an upgraded iPhone 5s". The device is said to be targeted for launch in the first half of next year and will come equipped with an A9 processor.

As there is still demand for a 4-inch iPhone, we believe Apple will upgrade this product line. Because the iPhone 5s is more popular than the iPhone 5c, we think Apple is likely to launch an upgraded iPhone 5s. We predict Apple will mass-produce this new 4-inch iPhone in 1H16 with metal casings. In order to make the current iOS 9 or next-generation iOS 10 run smoothly, Apple may adopt an A9 chip for this new phone.

Kuo believes this new 4-inch iPhone will not include 3D Touch support as part of an effort to keep it differentiated from the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. He also projects Apple could ship 20-30 million units of this new iPhone through the end of 2016.

Looking ahead to the next full refresh with the iPhone 7, Kuo expects the usual third-quarter launch in 2016 with an unsurprising upgrade to a new A10 chip to offer increased performance. He does, however, believe Apple will opt to differentiate between the two sizes of the iPhone 7 when it comes to RAM, with the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 carrying the same 2 GB seen in current iPhones while the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus will include 3 GB of RAM for performance reasons.

Kuo believes major winners for the 2016 iPhone cycle include Foxconn, which he expects will be the exclusive supplier for the new 4-inch iPhone, and TSMC, which he expects will be the sole provider of the A9 chip used in that phone as well as the A10 chip used in the iPhone 7.

Since launching in September alongside the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, iOS 9 has seen its adoption rate grow to 66 percent of active iOS devices, according to numbers on the Apple Developer Support page. Two weeks ago, iOS 9 adoption sat at 61 percent.
After 24 hours, iOS 9 adoption was in line with the adoption rate of iOS 8. However, in late September Apple announced that the newest version of iOS had the fastest adoption ever and was on pace to be downloaded by more users than any other version of the mobile operating system. iOS 8 only achieved a 64 percent adoption rate by December 23 and a 68 percent adoption rate by January 7, ending up with a high of 87 percent on the eve of iOS 9's launch.

Apple released the first major update to iOS 9 two weeks ago with iOS 9.1, which featured a slew of brand-new emojis. Since that update, iOS 9 adoption has grown by 5 percent. Earlier today Apple seeded the second beta for iOS 9.2, the second major update to its newest mobile operating system.

Apple today seeded the first beta of an upcoming update to tvOS, the new operating system that runs on the fourth-generation Apple TV. Today's tvOS beta marks the first software update to tvOS 9.0, a final version of which was released alongside the new Apple TV.

tvOS betas are not as easy to install as beta updates for iOS and OS X. The update will require 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.

It is not yet clear what is included in the new version of tvOS, but Apple's release notes for the update include references to networking and scrolling tweaks and we will include any other external facing changes below.

Apple today seeded the second beta of an upcoming OS X 10.11.2 El Capitan update to developers, one week after seeding the first beta and two weeks after releasing the first OS X El Capitan update to the public, OS X 10.11.1.

The new beta, build 15C31f, can be downloaded through the Apple Developer Center and through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store.

It is not known what improvements the second update to OS X El Capitan will bring, but it’s likely to focus on bug fixes, security enhancements, and performance improvements to address issues that have been discovered since the release of OS X 10.11.1. Apple's beta 1 release notes asked developers to focus on Graphics, Mail, Wi-Fi, Calendar, USB, Notes, Photos, and Spotlight.

Apple today seeded the second beta of iOS 9.2 to developers for testing purposes, one week after seeding the first iOS 9.2 beta and two weeks after releasing iOS 9.1 to the public.

The new iOS 9.2 beta, build 13C5060d, is available as an over-the-air update and through the Apple Developer Center.

The first beta of iOS 9.2 introduced some changes for the Safari View Controller within apps, letting it work more like the standard Safari app with support for third-party Action Extensions and the ability to long tap on the Reload button to reload content without content blockers or request desktop site.

iOS 9.2 also includes a number of bug fixes and performance enhancements, many of which are under-the-hood improvements. Thus far no other outward-facing changes have been discovered, but updates in the second beta will be listed below if found.

Bug Fixes in iOS 9.2 Beta 2:

- Un-paring and re-pairing the Apple Watch will no longer cause the Stocks glance to go missing.
- Syncing Music to the Apple Watch has been fixed.
- An issue impacting audio quality when playing audio over USB in some car stereos has been fixed.
- A bug with iCloud Keychain has been fixed, so users should no longer see "Could Not Set Up iCloud Keychain" errors.
- Videos with 'folw' track associations will no longer fail to play on 32-bit devices.

New Features in iOS 9.2 Beta 2:
- It's now possible to dismiss the Safari View Controller with an edge swipe.

- The second iOS 9.2 beta includes support for AT&T's NumberSync feature, which is part of Wi-Fi Calling. With NumberSync, AT&T users can receive calls to their phone numbers on Macs and iPads even when those devices are not on the same Wi-Fi network as the iPhone.

The functionality is similar to the Continuity feature that allows phone calls to be answered on devices other than an iPhone, but that feature currently requires an iPad or Mac to be on the same Wi-Fi network as the iPhone and signed into the same iCloud account. With the addition of NumberSync, the devices are no longer required to be on the same network and answering calls on a Mac or an iPad is even possible if an iPhone is missing or has a dead battery.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday granted Apple a patent for a low-travel keyboard design with Force Touch-like sensors that measure the pressure placed on a key when a user presses or rests a finger on it.

As summarized by AppleInsider, the exhaustive patent filing details how the keyboard would have a switch-less QWERTY input mechanism, rather than mechanical switches, allowing for less key travel and potentially thinner Mac keyboards.

Apple's current MacBook and Mac accessory lineups employ modified scissor switches, or butterfly switches on the 12-inch Retina MacBook, nestled within hollow key caps. Today's patent mirrors the aesthetic of existing designs, but deviates from established technology by replacing mechanical switches for a stack of sensors, actuators and supporting circuitry.

Theoretically the system operates akin to Apple's Force Touch trackpads, but on a much larger scale; one force sensor package for each keyboard key. Force sensors configured to measure downward pressure are integrated beneath the keyboard's key caps, while integrated actuators — part of the key stack — generate haptic feedback.

The patent filing does not guarantee that Apple will release a Force Touch keyboard, but a pressure-sensitive keyboard is plausible alongside the Magic Trackpad and Force Touch trackpads on MacBooks.

Apple's new Retina MacBook has been criticized by some over its all-new butterfly mechanism keyboard, which has low key travel, so whether Apple implements this new keyboard design into the rest of its MacBook lineup remains to be seen.

Apple was granted U.S. Patent No. 9,178,509, and credits Jeffrey T. Bernstein as its inventor.