Everything New in iOS 16.4 Beta 2: Apple Books Changes, Apple Music Classical Mentions, Apple Pay in South Korea and More - MacRumors

Apple today released the second beta of iOS 16.4 to developers, and while not as feature rich as the first beta, there are a couple notable additions in beta two worth knowing about.

Apple Books Page Turning Animation

With the launch of iOS 16, Apple tweaked Apple Books to eliminate the traditional page turning animation that had been used since the early days of the app, a move that upset some Apple Books users.

The second iOS 16.4 beta reintroduces the page turning animation as an option, which is a welcome change for the Apple Books readers who missed it. In the Themes and Settings section of the Books app, there are now three options for page turning: Curl, Side, and None.

Slide is the ‌‌iOS 16‌‌ default, Curl is the old iOS 15 and earlier animation, and None is an even simpler animation that just shifts from page to page with little fanfare. These features are also available in iPadOS 16.4 for those who read on the iPad.

Apple Music Classical Code

Code in the iOS 16.4 beta confirms Apple's continued work on the Apple Music Classical app, and suggests that it could be launching in the not too distant future.

Code in the beta suggests that listening to ‌Apple Music‌ Classical will require users to have the standard ‌Apple Music‌ app installed. "To listen in ‌Apple Music‌ Classical, you'll need to install ‌Apple Music‌," reads a line in the MusicKit framework.

As of right now, there is no sign of an ‌Apple Music‌ Classical app in iOS 16.4, but that doesn't mean that it won't come in a later beta or with the iOS 16.4 launch. It could also be delayed until a later update or even iOS 17, as this is not the first iOS 16 update that has had ‌Apple Music‌ Classical references.

Apple Pay in South Korea

Code in iOS 16.4 confirms that users in South Korea will be able to add credit and debit cards to the Wallet app for use with Apple Pay, suggesting iOS 16.4 will add ‌Apple Pay‌ in the country.

That is in line with reports from early February that indicated South Korea's Financial Services Commission has approved Apple Pay. Apple has been working to bring ‌Apple Pay‌ to South Korea since 2017.

Apple Care Device Coverage

Under Settings > General > About where Apple has a "Coverage" section that lists your Apple devices with AppleCare+, all listed products now have an icon next to them. This section includes your iPhone and connected peripherals like Apple Watch and AirPods.

The section was present in beta one, but the icons are new.

Podcasts Splash Screen

There's a new splash screen in the Podcasts app in beta 2, which explains the new changes.

The Podcasts app now supports channels in Library, expanded CarPlay functionality, and an improved Up Next feature that lets you resume episodes and skip what you don't want to listen to.

Always On Display Settings

Apple made some minor tweaks to the Always On Display section in the Settings app on iPhone 14 Pro models. The toggle to turn off Always On Display is now listed under the toggles for showing wallpaper and notifications, rather than above.

More Features

Know of something that we left out in this list? Let us know in the comments below.

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Everything New in iOS 16.4 Beta 2: Apple Books Changes, Apple Music Classical Mentions, Apple Pay in South Korea and More - MacRumors
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“It’s our job as technologists to improve and make AI better" - CTech

"Thanks to AI, it will be easier to find the information that needs to be acted upon," added Itay Dressler, CTO of theGist, speaking on a panel at the "Developers at the Front" conference together with Shir Chorev, CTO at Deepchecks, and Michael Braginsky, co-founder and CTO at Aidoc

Maayan Manela

15:42, 27.02.23

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Kuo: New iPhone SE With 6.1-Inch OLED Display and Apple's 5G Chip Planned - MacRumors

Apple has restarted development of a fourth-generation iPhone SE with a 6.1-inch OLED display and an Apple-designed 5G chip, according to the latest information shared by reputable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. This reversal comes nearly two months after Kuo said Apple had abandoned its plans to release a new iPhone SE in 2024.

In a series of tweets today, Kuo said the new iPhone SE will be similar to the standard iPhone 14, which features a 6.1-inch OLED display with thinner bezels. The current iPhone SE is equipped with a 4.7-inch LCD display with thicker bezels.

The new iPhone SE will be equipped with Apple's custom-designed 5G modem, with connectivity limited to sub-6GHz bands of 5G, the analyst said. The current iPhone SE already supports 5G, but uses Qualcomm's custom Snapdragon X57 chip.

Kuo did not indicate when the new iPhone SE would be released, but it likely won't be available until March 2024 or later based on when previous models of the device launched. The current iPhone SE was released in March 2022, for example, with pricing starting at $429 in the U.S. The device is Apple's last iPhone with a Home button and Touch ID, but Face ID is likely for the new model if it is based on the iPhone 14.

Update: The new iPhone SE's display will be supplied by Chinese manufacturer BOE, according to reputable display industry analyst Ross Young.

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Zombie Shooter The Day Before Is In The Weirdest Legal Battle - Kotaku

For a while now—or at least until last month, when it was delisted—The Day Before was one of the most hotly-anticipated games on Steam. That was until the wheels started falling off the project, with a delay announced, doubts raised over whether its gameplay footage was even real and now a legal dispute over the game’s name that comes from the unlikeliest of places.

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The dispute itself isn’t new; developers Fntastic cited this as the reason the game was taken off Steam last month:

Dear fans!

Right before the release, Steam blocked our game page at the request of a private individual, because of the name The Day Before.

As you know, our game was announced in January 2021. At the time of the announcement, The Day Before game trademark was available.

After the announcement of the game, the above mentioned individual filled out an application before us to register the game trademark The Day Before in the United States.

What’s next?

Previously, we were not aware of the existence of claims. We found out about this only on January 19, 2023, when we received a complaint from him and a request to contact him.

Now we find out all the circumstances of the incident and we will definitely solve everything.

But where the issue was initially believed to have been an individual filing for the trademark, Eurogamer has confirmed that the existing owner of the name The Day Before is actually...a Korean calendar app that first released in 2010.

The developer and its CEO Lee Sun-jae say they first registered the trademark in Korea all the way back in 2015, and also claim they currently hold trademark rights for the name in “Korea, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, Vietnam, and the European Union”. It should be noted that Lee’s application in the United States wasn’t granted until August 2022, supporting Fntastic’s claim that the trademark had been available in January 2021.

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As we reported last month, the US trademark granted to the calendar app covers “artwork, artistic performances, music, show entertainment, leisure activity [and] online [games].”

“Knowing that the game of the same name was produced”, they say in a statement, “we are taking measures to protect trademark rights.”

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Meta heats up Big Tech's AI arms race with new language model - Reuters

Feb 24 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) said on Friday it was releasing to researchers a new large language model, the core software of a new artificial intelligence system, heating up an AI arms race as Big Tech companies rush to integrate the technology into their products and impress investors.

The public battle to dominate the AI technology space kicked off late last year with the launch of Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT and prompted tech heavyweights from Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) to China's Baidu Inc (9888.HK), to trumpet their own offerings.

Meta's LLaMA, short for Large Language Model Meta AI, will be available under non-commercial license to researchers and entities affiliated with government, civil society, and academia, it said in a blog.

Large language models mine vast amounts of text in order to summarize information and generate content. They can answer questions, for instance, with sentences that can read as though written by humans.

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The model, which Meta said requires "far less" computing power than previous offerings, is trained on 20 languages with a focus on those with Latin and Cyrillic alphabets.

"Meta's announcement today appears to be a step in testing their generative AI capabilities so they can implement them into their products in the future," said Gil Luria, senior software analyst at D.A. Davidson.

"Generative AI is a new application of AI that Meta has less experience with, but is clearly important for the future of their business."

AI has emerged as a bright spot for investments in the tech industry, whose slowing growth has prompted widespread layoffs and a cutback on experimental bets.

Meta said LLaMA could outperform competitors that examine more parameters, or variables that the algorithm takes into account.

Specifically, it said a version of LLaMA with 13 billion parameters can outperform GPT-3, a recent predecessor to the model on which ChatGPT is built.

It described its 65-billion-parameter LLaMA model as "competitive" with Google's Chinchilla70B and PaLM-540B, which are even larger than the model that Google used to show off its Bard chat-powered search.

A Meta spokeswoman attributed the performance to a larger quantity of "cleaner" data and "architectural improvements" in the model that enhanced training stability.

Meta in May last year released large language model OPT-175B, also aimed at researchers, which formed the basis of a new iteration of its chatbot BlenderBot.

It later introduced a model called Galactica, which could write scientific articles and solve math problems, but quickly pulled down the demo after it generated authoritative-sounding false responses.

Reporting by Yuvraj Malik and Eva Mathews in Bengaluru and Katie Paul in New York; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Grant McCool

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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New Lensbaby Double Glass II Lets You Shoot with Customizable Bokeh - PetaPixel

Lensbaby has unveiled its new Double Glass II optic at CP+ 2023 in Japan. The latest in Lensbaby’s long line of unique creative photography lenses and accessories, the Double Glass II is a new-and-improved version of Lensbaby’s Double Glass optic for its Optic Swap system.

The Double Glass II optic improves upon its predecessor by incorporating an all-metal construction and a 12-bladed manually adjustable internal aperture diaphragm. The original Double Glass optic was launched way back in 2008. The Double Glass II utilizes a drop-in magnetic aperture system and ships with nine drop-in aperture disks. The special disks include a five-pointed star, a heart, and seven designs developed by visual artists in the Lensbaby community. These aperture disks modify the look of out-of-focus areas.

Lensbaby Double Glass II on the Lensbaby Composer

The Double Glass II is a 50mm lens with an adjustable aperture ranging from a reasonably quick f/2.5 down to f/22. The lens creates a “sweet spot” of focus surrounded by blur and bokeh, allowing photographers to integrate special aperture disks into the area surrounding the subject.

© Stephanie DeFranco

Photographers must use the Double Glass II with an Optic Swap lens body, such as Composer lens bodies. When used on a Composer body, the manual focus lens can focus as close as 15 inches (380 millimeters). The effective maximum magnification ratio of this focus distance depends upon the crop factor of the attached camera. The Double Glass II is compatible with all Optic Swap macro accessories, including Lensbaby’s 46mm Macro Filter Kit and Macro Converters, further improving the new optic’s close-up performance.

© Annick Paradis

The Double Glass II is compatible with full-frame, APS-C, and Micro Four Thirds cameras, including DSLR and mirrorless cameras. The Optic Swap system is available for Canon EF and RF, Fujifilm X, L Mount, Micro Four Thirds, Nikon F and Z, Pentax K, and Sony A and E mounts.

“We’re thrilled to introduce the Double Glass II to our Optic Swap System,” says Craig Strong, Lensbaby’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer. “With its dual aperture system and all-metal construction, this optic brings the very best of creative photography in a single, unique lens. Visual artists everywhere will soon be creating magic with this versatile new photographic tool.”

© Kate Kanters

© Simone Gernhardt

© Rich Ormanowski

© Marisa Kraft

© Khandie Photography

© Kaitlin Michael

© Sharon Covert

The Lensbaby Double Glass II is available now. The optic by itself is $199.95. A kit including the Double Glass II and Lensbaby Composer Pro II is available for $369.95.

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Image credits: Lensbaby. Sample image photographers credited in captions.

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First iQOO Z7 teaser arrives - GSMArena.com news - GSMArena.com

The iQOO brand is gearing up for a new smartphone announcement and iQOO India CEO Nipun Marya shared a teaser for the upcoming iQOO Z7 series. The poster reveals the backside of the upcoming device with its dual cameras.

iQOO Z7 series teaser

We can also spot an OIS sticker that confirms the main camera will be optically stabilized. The design of the phone falls in line with recently launched iQOO and vivo phones but we don’t get any specs details for now.

The iQOO Z7 series is expected to launch in March with two members – the iQOO Z7 and Z7 Pro. We’ll make sure to provide more details about the iQOO Z7 phones once they are available.

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7… D-Lux 007! Leica celebrates 60 years of James Bond with limited edition camera - Digital Camera World

If you're a big James Bond fan or a lover of Leica, then this news is really going to put a smile on your face: Leica has announced a new 007 edition of its beloved compact camera, the Leica D-Lux 7, with only 1,962 copies available worldwide.

Yes, that very particular production run is significant; ever since the world’s most famous secret agent made his on-screen debut in Dr No, back in 1962, photography has occupied a central role within the James Bond universe. 

• Check out the best Leica D-Lux 7 deals (opens in new tab) on the non-Bond version of the undercover compact

Producer Michael G Wilson, who is a keen photographer and passionate collector, has opened EON's photographic archive for an exhibition of legendary Bond images. The 'Photographs from the James Bond Archive'exhibition is currently on display at Leica Gallery London until March 21 2023. 

Goldfinger (1964) James Bond (Sean Connery) and his iconic Aston Martin DB5 which first appeared on screen in Goldfinger. On Thursday September 17 1964, Goldfinger had its world premiere in London's Leicester Square. Photograph by Bert Cann Goldfinger © 1964 Danjaq, LLC and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved. (Image credit: Bert Cann)

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) Bond (Pierce Brosnan) waits for Carver to send a hitman; instead, he sends Paris. Photograph by Keith Hamshere Tomorrow Never Dies © 1997 Danjaq, LLC and Eighteen Leasing Corporation. All Rights Reserved. (Image credit: by Keith Hamshere)

Refined, discreet, and always ready for action: The classic James Bond values also perfectly describe the Leica D-Lux 7. The limited special edition offers a particularly elegant exterior and comes with a range of exclusive accessories.

In the opening scene of Dr No, we encounter 007 in Le Cercle Casino at London's Les Ambassadeurs Club, seated at a baccarat table. Suave and reserved, Bond has just played his winning hand when his opponent, Miss Sylvia Trench, questioningly addresses him as "Mister…?" Since then his reply has become synonymous with the franchise, including the most recent film, No Time to Die (2021): "Bond. James Bond."

(Image credit: Leica)

The same air of timeless sophistication characterizes the Leica D-Lux 7 007 Edition. The camera trim is made of a high-performance, rhombus-textured material that is unprecedented on a D-Lux 7. Its subtle rhombus pattern is repeated on the hand grip, which together with its wrist strap ensures the safe handling of the camera. 

The top plate is adorned with the famous 007 logos: the set also includes an automatic lens cap with the classic 'gun barrel' design, made famous by the opening sequence of James Bond films. 

Another distinctive element of this special-edition set is the leather case in the style of a holster. This enables the camera to be transported comfortably while being instantly ready for action. 

(Image credit: Leica)

With its large, 17MP Micro Four Thirds image sensor, and fast Leica DC Vario-Summilux 10.9-34mm f/1.7-2.8 ASPH lens (35mm equivalent: 24-75mm), the Leica D-Lux 7 combines outstanding image quality with conveniently compact dimensions – a form factor that any Leica camera lover can appreciate.

The set comes in a specially designed presentation box and will be available globally at all Leica Stores, the Leica Online Store, and authorized dealers starting today, with a recommended retail price of $2,131 / £1,750 / AUS $3,059.

Today's best Leica D-Lux 7 deals

If you enjoyed this article, you might want to learn more about the best Leica cameras (opens in new tab), or if you want to be as nimble as Bond without breaking the bank, check out the best compact cameras (opens in new tab) without the big red dot!

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