Friday

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Apple is fixing one of the worst parts of the concert experience: waiting in line for a beer while you miss your favorite song. Last week’s BottleRock music festival near San Francisco was the first to try a new ‘order ahead with Apple Pay’ feature that Apple hopes to bring to more events. You just open the festival’s app, select the closest concession stand, choose your drinks, Apple Pay with your face or fingerprint, and pick up the beverages at a dedicated window with no queue.

Check out our demo video below.

BottleRock’s upscale wine & oldies music fest, 100 miles from the tech giant’s headquarters, has become a testbed for Apple Pay. Last year, every concession stand got equipped with the Square’s Apple Pay-ready point of sale system and special fast lanes for customers who used it instead of cash or credit card. 30% of all transactions at BottleRock were made with Apple Pay, according to an Apple spokesperson, proving people wanted a faster way to get back to the show.

With order ahead, your drinks are ready for pick up so you don’t even have to break your dance stride. Having gone to 14 Coachellas, I’d learned to forego booze rather than risk losing my friends or a chance to hear that hit single while stewing in the beer garden lines. But Apple Pay powered the best concert commerce experience I’ve had yet. I’m sure I’m not the only one who knocked back a few more drinks last weekend because it was so convenient.

That’s why I foresee music festivals jumping at the chance to integrate order ahead with Apple Pay into their apps. They and their vendors will see more sales, while attendees see more music. Meanwhile, it’s a smart way for Apple to reach a juicy demographic. Apple Pay is especially helpful when you’re in a rush, but festival goers will return home more likely to use it day-to-day.

Often times, music festival tech like friend finding apps and location-based alerts can interrupt the moment. Apple Pay succeeds here by fading away, keeping you in harmony with the present.

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Facebook today announced that it will remove its “Trending” section from the web and all mobile devices starting next week, in an effort to “make way for future news experiences.” Facebook says that its users have found Trending “less and less useful,” leading to the closure of the section, which stacks the latest news articles from the day into various categories.

On the web, Trending is found on the right toolbar, but in iOS it’s a bit more buried in the More tab > Explore > Trending News. Facebook launched the section in 2014, but it’s since only been available in five countries and accounts for “less than 1.5 percent of clicks to news publishers on average.” The removal of Trending will also mark the elimination of products and third-party partner integrations that rely on Trends API.

We’re removing Trending soon to make way for future news experiences on Facebook.

We’ve seen that the way people consume news on Facebook is changing to be primarily on mobile and increasingly through news video. So we’re exploring new ways to help people stay informed about timely, breaking news that matters to them, while making sure the news they see on Facebook is from trustworthy and quality sources.

In its place, the social media company outlined three ways it will keep users in the know about breaking news. One is a “Breaking News Label,” which is a simple indicator publishers can place on their posts in a user’s News Feed, as well as breaking news notifications. There is also a test for a new “Today In” section to connect users to important news from local publishers in their own cities.

Lastly, there will be new videos to view in Facebook Watch thanks to a dedicated section in the United States where users can check out exclusive live coverage, daily news briefings, and weekly deep dives. Facebook has long been attempting to expand its video presence within the mobile Facebook apps, debuting Watch last August for its exclusive video and TV content.

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At Google I/O in May, the company introduced a series of time management tools for Android users that help better manage screen time, track app usage, and limit the phone’s ability to distract, including a “shush” mode which turns on Do Not Disturb by flipping the phone over, and a “wind down,” color reduction mode for bedtime. Now, it seems Apple will follow suit with its own digital wellbeing features in an upcoming release of the iOS mobile operating system, a new report claims.

According to Bloomberg, Apple will introduce a new set of digital wellbeing features for iOS users at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Jose on Monday.

The tools will be later released as a part of iOS 12 operating system for iPhone and iPad devices, which typically arrives in the fall.

The report was light on details in terms of which specific metrics Apple will track, but says those details will arrive in a new menu inside the Settings app in iOS 12.

The initiative, called “Digital Health,” will monitor how much time users spend on devices, but it’s unclear if it will also include tools that help users silence their phones using new gestures or settings, or otherwise disengage from their devices.

The digital wellbeing movement is part of a fairly recent course correction for Silicon Valley tech companies, which are now being held accountable for the addictive nature of the devices, apps and services they’ve created.

 

From the beginning, tech company engineers and designers were encouraged to make their products ever more engaging by taking advantage of specific design patterns that prompt regular, addictive usage of their products, and those that increase users’ time spent in apps.

But more recently, some tech execs have come to espouse regrets for what they’ve built. Former Facebook president Sean Parker stated Facebook’s design exploited weakness in the human psyche to addict users, and said he worried about what it was doing to kids’ brains. Meanwhile, former Google exec Tristan Harris launched a coalition of technologists and activists called the Center for Humane Technology, which aims to encourage “humane design” – that is, design that reduces distractions and stress, and keeps people from being hooked on their devices.

Now the industry giants are putting some of these principles into practice.

Facebook earlier this year changed how its News Feed operates to reduce users’ time spent on the site in favor of well-being. Instagram last month introduced its first time well spent feature, by informing users “you’re all caught up” when they’ve viewed all the new posts. Google launched parental control tools in its Family Link service that allow parents to limit kids’ screen time, and introduced the above-mentioned digital wellness features for Android in May.

If Apple were to avoid the topic, it would be the odd one out at this point.

The new digital wellbeing tools will likely be detailed during Monday’s WWDC keynote address, and may include some additional protections for children through an update to iOS’s parental controls. We do know that more robust parental controls are at least coming, as Apple promised this explicitly following criticism from major shareholders about children’s iPhone addiction.

image credit: child on device, Shestock / Getty Images

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Apple is widely rumored to release what will essentially be a lower-priced but lesser-featured iPhone X later this year. Ahead of then, renders have surfaced that may reveal what the device will look like.

Steve Hemmerstoffer, who runs the OnLeaks account on Twitter, has teamed up with the blog MySmartPrice to share photos and a video of the alleged 6.1-inch iPhone, expected to be announced in September alongside the second-generation iPhone X and a larger 6.5-inch model dubbed the iPhone X Plus.

In addition to the 6.1-inch display, the renders suggest the device will have a notch like the iPhone X, presumably for Face ID given the lack of a home button. The device also has a glass back, making wireless charging a possibility, and an aluminum frame like the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus.



The renders also suggest the device will sport a single rear camera, whereas the iPhone X has a dual setup with telephoto and wide-angle lenses.

The rest of the device is par for course for an iPhone, with a Lightning connector and speaker grilles along the bottom, volume buttons and a mute switch along the left side, and a power button on the right side.

The renders corroborate information previously shared by former KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who also said the 6.1-inch iPhone will feature a single-lens rear camera and aluminum frame. He also said it will have an LCD, 3GB of RAM, and perhaps most interesting of all, apparently lack 3D Touch.

Kuo said the 6.1-inch iPhone will be priced from between $700 and $800 in the United States, so tradeoffs were inevitable, including the lack of an OLED, stainless steel frame, 3D Touch, and dual-lens rear camera system. The 6.1-inch iPhone could also be slightly thicker at 8.3mm, versus the iPhone X at 7.7mm.

Earlier today, Korean website The Bell claimed the 6.1-inch iPhone might not launch until November, but the more likely scenario is that Apple unveils and releases all of its new iPhones in September, as the company has reportedly resolved the supply chain issues that led to a staggered rollout last year.

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