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Companies scrabbling to create Apple’s abandoned in-screen Touch ID

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iPhone
Coming soon to an iPhone near you? Probably not.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

How much influence does Apple have when it comes to which technologies get popular? Apparently enough that even those technologies Apple doesn’t use get a boost of credibility, courtesy of their association with the Cupertino tech giant.

At least, that’s our take-home message from a new report suggesting that a number of manufacturers are ramping up their development of in-display fingerprint sensors, the technology that Apple considered before settling on Face ID facial recognition instead for the iPhone X.

Apple Watch Series 4 models found in iOS 12 beta

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watchOS 5 Apple Watch
Apple Watch Series 4 might offer a larger display, with a new type of button.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

It shouldn’t shock anyone to hear that new Apple Watch models are coming soon. But a bit of confirmation is nice. That confirmation is buried in iOS 12 beta 2, released today. 

There are four additional Watches in the offing. Their internal identifiers seem to indicate that Apple isn’t shaking up its wearable offerings this year.

Gaze detection could give iMacs a sixth sense

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iMac
Maxing-out your new Mac is now a lot more affordable.
Photo: Apple

Down the road, as you gaze into the monitor of a new iMac, the screen could gaze back.

Apple was awarded a patent Thursday by the United States Patent & Trademark Office for adjustable reflective display technology that can track your gestures, including eye and head movements.

Future iPhones may borrow squeeze feature from Android phones

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squeeze iPhone
Grip and squeeze could be a feature on future iPhones.
Photo: Dan Rubin/Twitter

While you’re still missing the headphone jack on an iPhone, prepare your mind for a future Apple handset without the side buttons.

Apple applied for a patent this morning on squeeze detection sensors that could replace the input buttons and add “deformable” walls to the housing.

macOS Mojave adds support for HTC Vive Pro VR headset

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Mojave
macOS Mojave makes VR easier than ever on Mac.
Photo: Apple

Who says Macs can’t do virtual reality? When macOS Mojave rolls out this fall, it will include plug-and-play support for HTC’s latest Vive Pro VR headset.

Apple has been working closely with HTC and Valve to make this possible. Vive Pro support isn’t yet available with the first macOS Mojave beta, but it is expected to be made available to developers and testers in a future beta release.

Qualcomm feud could cost Apple billions

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Qualcomm patents
Apple doesn't want to pay twice for Qualcomm chips.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

A complicated, multibillion-dollar intellectual property battle between Apple and chipmaker Qualcomm will soon move through courts and hearing rooms across the globe.

More than 50 lawsuits have been filed in six countries, however, the outcome from upcoming hearings in the U.S. China and Germany could prod the feuding tech companies to negotiate a settlement, according to a Bloomberg report.

Small company claims Apple stole Shortcuts logo

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Apple Shortcuts vs. the Sift logo
Is the Apple Shortcuts logo a ripoff of this company's corporate one?
Graphic: Apple/Shift

Shortcuts is a cool feature in iOS 12 that carries out a collection on actions with a single Siri command. But a startup accuses Apple of stealing its logo.

The company’s name is Shift, and both it and the Apple Shortcuts app have logos that are stylized versions of the letter ‘s.’ Additionally, both use similar colors: blue and magenta.

Lawsuit alleges that every Apple Watch contains the same defect

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apple watch 1
The Apple Watch is the subject of a new legal case.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Every Apple Watch that Apple has made is defective. At least, that’s the argument made by a new class action lawsuit, asking Apple to pay $5 million in damages for refusing to acknowledge an issue which affects its wearable devices.

According to Kenneth Sciacca of Colorado, who filed the suit, Apple Watches contain a flaw “which causes the screens … to crack, shatter, or detach from the body of the Watch, through no fault of the wearer, oftentimes only days or weeks after purchase.”

Legal battle may be to blame for Apple breaking its FaceTime promise

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FaceTime
Apple's open wish for FaceTime never happened.
Screenshot: Apple

At WWDC, Apple revealed that it will finally make it possible to do FaceTime group calls for up to 32 people. That’s great news — provided that all your friends, family and co-workers use Apple devices.

But it didn’t have to be like this. Back in 2010, when Steve Jobs introduced FaceTime, he made a big point about how it was set to become an open industry standard that could be used by Apple’s competitors, as well as Apple. Nearly a decade on, that still hasn’t happened. And now a theory has emerged as to why.

What WWDC’s ‘sneak peek’ at project Marzipan could mean for the Mac

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WWDC 2018
The answer is complicated.
Photo: Apple

WWDC 2018 bug Cult of Mac Near the end of Monday’s WWDC 2018 keynote, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi addressed a question that’s been circulating in the tech press for a while: Are Mac and iOS merging?

His answer was direct and unequivocal: “No.”

Then he delivered a “sneak peek” of Apple’s long-rumored cross-platform project codenamed “Marzipan.” In line with the past six months of rumors, the idea of the framework is to allow UIKit-based iOS apps to run natively on Mac. While that probably sounds exciting to Mac owners, it could yield an unwelcome unintended consequence. It could trigger a “lost year” for Mac apps.