Tag: iOS

Yesterday at Google I/O it was announced that Google Assistant would be receiving six new voices that you could use to suit your personal preferences with as you interact with it on your phone or Home devices.  Just a day later, those new voice models are now live in the Assistant or Home app on your Android phone.

You can find the new voice models under Settings>Preferences>Assistant Voice.  There you can listen to a script read by each of the voices to pick the one you like the best.  There are three male and three female voices to chose from in addition to the stock male and female voices that have already been in Assistant.

Apple seems to be getting serious about apps sending location data without user consent.  Over the course of the past few weeks, Apple has sent developers emails if their apps are in violation of two key parts of the legal section of the App Store Review Guidelines.  Those have to do with the sending of location data to third parties without the users explicit consent to do so.

The sections in question are 5.1.1 and 5.1.2, both in the legal part of the guidelines.  Those sections of the guide call out data collection and transmission guidelines which is what Apple is cracking down on with these apps.

It appears that once again Apple is upping device security with the upcoming release of iOS 11.4.  In a new report on Elcomsoft indicates that when the new build of iOS rolls out, it will come with a Lightening Connection lockdown that requires the device to unlocked or the password/fingerprint to be entered every seven days.  The feature is meant to prevent tethering a device to a PC or Mac and brute force cracking the device to gain access.

The feature first appeared in iOS 11.3 but was dropped during the beta testing.  It reappeared in 11.4 and, to this point, has pretty much gone unnoticed until now.  What this means is after 7 days, if the device hasn’t been unlocked either with biometrics or a password, the Lightening connector becomes a charging port only.  No data is transmitted to or from the device by the connected laptop.

Google Photos is arguably one of the most popular and successful apps that Google has produced today.  But that success is not stopping the company from continue to develop and push Artificial Intelligence – which is already deep inside photos – even further.  Today at I/O, Google announced that Photos will be gaining several AI-driven suggestion features and the ability to add color to black & white photos.

The new suggestions will be based on the content of the photos and the overall quality of them.  If there are pictures of friends for example which are identified by Google Photos, you could see a suggestion to share those photos with that person.  Likewise, if a photo can be enhanced, the suggestions will give you one-tap ability to enhance the photo to improve it.

Gmail for iOS has a new update rolling out in the App Store, bringing with it two key new features in tow.  The new build, version 5.0.180422 for those keeping score at home, brings the ability to snooze emails along with sending money to contacts via Google Pay.

The ability to snooze emails is a new feature to Gmail in general, having arrived in the new user experience for the mail service online as well as in the Android app.  It allows you to select a day and time when you want to respond to an email.

A week after the third beta of iOS 11.4 was released, a fourth new beta of the next update to Apple’s mobile platform has been released to testers.  For those who have a device registered in the Apple Beta Program, you should see the update as available to download to your compatible device.

The beta released today is a bit of a surprise given Apple usually spaces out their updates several weeks during beta testing.  The quick release likely indicates that an issue was discovered and needed to be patched quickly but Apple has not confirmed this fact.