Apple has announced that in September, when iTunes 12.7 is released, it will migrate iTunes U collections to Apple Podcasts. iTunes U courses will be available only through the iTunes U app on iOS.
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According to Apple’s announcement and support pages, it will automatically convert iTunes U Collections to podcasts in September and eliminate the iTunes U section of iTunes on macOS. That means there will no longer be a way to download iTunes U course materials on a Mac. The change also means that the iTunes U catalog will only include courses and will only be accessible from an iOS device.
No one really seems to talk about it or acknowledge it, but iMessage is where a lot of mobile usage is trending towards, particularly for Gen-Z, and there are many good reasons why.
Let me preface this piece with three important points, a) the qualitative / quantitative observations I’m talking about here are with direct regard to US based teens / Gen-Z, not international, b) full disclosure that our main product, Fam, is currently premised on the iMessage platform. By no means do I intend to be biased in anything I say with regard to iMessage (hard to believe, but trust me). These insights are based off of quantitative data and now years of observing Gen-Z behavior within the context of mobile, and c) given the limited public information on most of the platforms mentioned in this piece, I had to derive several data points based on the metrics that have been historically disclosed by these companies.
A new page appears on the iTunes desktop and mobile storefronts, and can be found under the New Music, Hot Tracks, and Recent Releases sections. Users can donate in $5, $`0, $25, $50, $100, and $200 increments.
You probably won't need all the info and status reports that iStat Menus can give me, but almost anyone will find at least some of its data useful some of the time. For example, the battery life module can be extremely useful for Mac laptop users.
Apple, which has long been seen as a potential AR game changer due to the popularity of its iPhone and iPad, seems primed to give AR the turbocharge it needs to attract older demographics. When the Cupertino, Calif.-based company releases its iOS 11 mobile operating system in September, hundreds of millions of Apple-device owners will have augmented reality at their fingertips with a set of features called ARKit.
“Apple and Facebook will make augmented reality an everyday reality,” said David Deal, a digital marketing consultant. “We’ll see plenty of hit and miss with AR as we did when Apple opened up the iPhone to app developers, but ultimately both Apple and Facebook are in the best position to steamroll Snapchat with AR.”
Surely one day the ability to interface directly with the nanomachinery connected to our brains will render computer science as we know it obsolete. When experts start arguing for its continued relevance, undergraduates choosing a major will begin to realize that the obscure art of manually punching arcane symbols into keyboards is no longer a safe bet. At the present moment, however, it is only liberal arts majors who have to wonder whether all of the articles and books promoting the marketability of their chosen discipline should make them more or less uneasy about the future. Two additions to this growing field have appeared just in time to try to soothe the post-graduation panic that some within the class of 2017 may be experiencing: George Anders’s “You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Education” and Randall Stross’s “A Practical Education: Why Liberal Arts Majors Make Great Employees.”
I wonder why Apple didn't just create a new 'iTunes U' category in the podcast catalog, with all the existing iTunes U categories underneath as sub-categories?
Maybe Apple didn't find that appendizing, to have a duplication in some of the categories? Maybe Apple just want to get rid of the iTunes name, and can't think of a better name for iTunes U collections? Who knows?
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Thanks for reading.