| Cult of Mac

Full-body Animoji? Smart tech uses iPhone camera to track body motion

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Animoji
The future of Animoji?
Photo: Carnegie Mellon

Forget only animated avatar faces: a team at Carnegie Mellon University wants to bring the world full-body Animojis. As the director of the Future Interfaces Group at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Chris Harrison‘s job is to help create the computer features of tomorrow.

In a newly published demo, shown off this week, Harrison’s team has come up with a way to let regular iPhones do full body tracking using only the front-facing camera — by estimating what the rest of your body is doing.

It works surprisingly well.

Replacing iPhone notch with hole-punch camera makes no damn sense

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Replacing iPhone notch with holepunch camera makes no damn sense
This isn’t an improvement.
Artists concept: Cult of Mac

Apple might get rid of the screen notch in the 2022 iPhone. But before you start celebrating, there’ll be a hole-punch camera in its place, according a trusted analyst. If true, this will be one step forward and two steps back.

The notch is a superior solution to a hole in the middle of the display. Here’s why.

iOS 13.4 beta 2 brings more tweaks to Mail toolbar

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iCloud folder sharing is in iPadOS 13.4 and iOS 13.4
iCloud folder sharing finally arrives in iPadOS 13.4, and iOS 13.4 too.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Apple seeded the second beta build of iOS 13.4 and iPadOS 13.4 to developers this morning bringing a bunch of bug fixes and some small new features to the iPhone and iPad.

Included among the changes are some more changes to the controversial toolbar in the Mail app. Apple also added some under-the-hood improvements and some changes to how location authorization works in apps.

How to add a custom iMessage avatar in iOS 13

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Memoji are awesome. Here's how to make your own.
Now you can use Memoji in iMessage profiles.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

You know how you can add an avatar to pretty much any social app ever, and all your friends, family, contacts, etc., will see it? Well, in iOS 13 you can finally do the same for iMessages.

No longer will you have to hope that your contacts use a nice photo of you, or worry that your boss is using a picture of a cute pig or pussycat to represent you in the group chat. Now you can add and share your own avatar, or even a Memoji. Let’s see how.

How to make and use Memoji stickers without Face ID

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iPad with stickers
No, not that kind of sticker.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

iOS 13 automatically turns all your Memoji into iMessage stickers. Even better, anyone can create new Memoji, on any device. You no longer need an iPhone or iPad with a depth-sensing Face ID camera to create them.

Using the new Memoji creator tool in the Messages app, you can do almost everything that can be done with Face ID. Here’s how to make and use Memoji stickers in iOS 13.

What’s new in iOS 13 beta 2

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iOS 13 has almost too many features to cover -- but that won't stop us trying.
iOS 13 has almost too many features to cover -- but that won't stop us trying.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

The second iOS 13 and iPadOS betas bring both good news and bad. Unless you’re a total “thrill-seeker,” it’s still not a good idea to install these betas on your main iOS device. In fact, there will be far more spills than thrills: The code remains raw and buggy as hell.

I have iPadOS running on an old iPad. While this latest version seems much less ragged around the edges, many apps still crash. And I still can’t make the Slide Over apps hide themselves at the side of the screen. Nor do all my favorites appear in the Files app.

The good news is that, despite this, the latest betas offer several new features — and lots of stuff has been fixed. Let’s take a look at the highlights of what’s new in iOS 13 beta 2.

iOS 13 will bring new Animoji to iPhone

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Animoji have become one of our favorite FaceTime features.
Animoji have become one of our favorite FaceTime features.
Photo: Apple

iPhone owners can expect to get a new batch of Animoji characters later this year according to newly leaked details regarding Apple’s iOS 13 update.

After revealing Animoji as a feature on the iPhone X, Apple has been slowly updating its library of characters over the last few years. The last iOS 12.2 update added new characters for giraffe, shark, boar and owl and it appears that we’ll get at least four more fun characters to play with later this year

iOS 12.3 beta 1 arrives with new TV app [Updated]

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iOS 12 features
There's a new iOS beta out for iPhone and iPad.
Photo: Apple

Apple has one more major update for iOS 12 before it unveils iOS 13 at WWDC 2019.

Developers just received the first beta build of iOS 12.3 this morning, bringing a bunch of new features and bug fixes to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. There is also a new beta for tvOS 12.3 available.

UPDATE: The public beta is out now too.

iOS 12.2 beta 5 is out now for developers

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iOS 12 and Siri make finding photos a breeze.
This could be Apple's last big update for iOS 12.2.
Photo: Apple

iOS 12.2 inched closer to a public launch today with the release of the fifth beta of the software update to developers this morning.

Coming just one week after iOS 12.2 beta 4 was released, the new beta build packs a ton of bug fixes and performance improvements for iPad and iPhone to go with some UI changes and new features Apple added in previous builds.

iOS 12 adoption rate hits 80% on all iOS devices

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iOS 12.2 public beta 1 is more than just a collection of bug fixes.
iOS 12.2 adds even more goodies for iPhone and iPad.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

iOS 12 is proving to be Apple’s most widely adopted software updates for iPhone and iPad in years.

Apple published its latest adoption percentages for iOS 12 today revealing that 80% of all iOS devices in the world are now running iOS 12, far outpacing iOS 11’s adoption last year.