Today through two new support pages that have been posted on Apple’s website, the company announced that iTunes U will be discontinued at the end of 2021 and iBooks Author will become unavailable much sooner: on July 1, 2020.
While both announcements are noteworthy since they concern software with long histories, signs of these moves have been visible for years. iTunes U has received minimal investment of late as Apple has redirected resources to its Classroom and Schoolwork platforms. iBooks Author, similarly, has grown stagnant as many of its features have made their way into recent Pages updates.
I have previously written about my frustration With iBooks Author and iTunes U, and Apple has now announced both of these products are being discontinued. iBooks Author will no longer be updated, and iTunes U is being discontinued at the end of 2021. iBooks Author will continue to work, but you’ll need to make preparations to transition to Pages in the near future. Much of the functionality from iBooks Author has made its way into Pages over the past few update cycles. This announcement shouldn’t come as much of a surprise as we never saw iBooks Author transition into Apple Books Author or include a native iPad app. Apple will be included an import function in a future version of Pages.
As first reported by Macerkopf, all three standard variations of the 27-inch iMac are significantly back-ordered. Apple’s Online Store indicates that orders placed today will ship sometime between June 26 and July 3. There is still scattered availability at Apple Stores, which means you might be able to place a 27-inch iMac order for same-day pickup or delivery in certain areas.
An international regulator is showing nine as yet unannounced Apple iPhone models, assumed to be variants of the "iPhone 12" range due later in 2020, and one new Mac.
By lowering the barriers to importing and exporting data out of its iOS and iPadOS apps, GoodLinks is a far more powerful tool than it would be on its own. The openness of the app to integrating with other apps makes it more versatile than if it forced users into a particular workflow. Instead, GoodLinks can serve as everything from a straightforward read-it-later app to a component of a more complex process involving the collection, processing, and archiving of links across multiple platforms.
Setting it up with Apple HomeKit was simple, and chances are, you're already enrolled in a storage plan, so you'll get 10 days of recorded video. It's great.
The design is what a security camera should be: simple, sleek and easy to power off for privacy.
Popular fitness tracking app Strava is out today with a neat update called Local Legends. The feature marks a shift from ranking users based on speed to rating them on exercise consistency and commitment.
The BookArc is one of Twelve South’s organizational accessories that stores the MacBook vertically in order to reduce desktop clutter.
Bug reports must be extremely descriptive so Apple can reproduce them. The company asks developers and users to list all the steps that caused the bug, as well as the current result and what was the expected result. Feedback Assistant also allows you to upload screenshots and videos to make the bug report more understandable.
Pocket Casts, which was acquired by a group of American public radio companies in 2018, tweeted that it “has been removed from the Chinese App Store by Apple, at the request of the Cyberspace Administration of China,” the country’s internet watchdog.
When Pocket Casts asked for clarification, Apple’s app review team told the podcast firm to contact the CAC directly, an email seen by TechCrunch showed.
[...]
Castro Podcasts, bought by Dribbble owner Tiny in 2018, said in a tweet that while it wasn’t given specifics about its removal in China, the incident might have been caused by its “support of the protests.”
Obviously, I haven't been using iTunes U for a while. But I still have no idea how to easily browse lectures and courses using Apple's Podcast app for my late night listenings.
~
Thanks for reading.