A previously undocumented requirement asks for a passcode in a very particular set of circumstances: When the iPhone or iPad hasn’t been unlocked with its passcode in the previous six days, and Touch ID hasn’t been used to unlock it within the last eight hours. It’s a rolling timeout, so each time Touch ID unlocks a device, a new eight-hour timer starts to tick down until the passcode is required. If you wondered why you were being seemingly randomly prompted for your passcode (or more complicated password)…

No matter how enabling and useful Siri is, though, there will be times when it’s simply not possible or socially acceptable to talk out loud to our phones or tablets. In those situations, being able to type “Cupertino weather” or even “Text Georgia I’ll be late” would be incredibly useful. (via Rene Ritchie, for iMore) It took me a few days to realize just how spot on Rene is with his analysis in this piece. And what it implies for the future of voice-activated UI. There’s a…

I’ve worn my Watch every single day since it was delivered to my house on May 12th of last year. It has never been a question of whether or not I want to wear it. It’s a part of my daily routine, and it became that immediately for me. The only day I haven’t hit my standing goal of 12 hours or more was the first day I received the Watch, since I didn’t get it until 3pm. My average for stand is 15 hours, with…

I’m sure we’ll be hearing tons of jokes about consistency from the spelling and grammar police, but I get why it would be MacOS, as opposed to macOS. Mac is a proper noun. The Mac has always been capitalized. It’s a shortened form of a non-generic product: the Macintosh. The “i” in Apple’s names over the years has always been lowercase, since the original iMac. So, of course it’s iOS.[1] For tvOS, Apple is using tv as a generic term. It doesn’t refer…

If Apple declared that a 3D Touch was the moral equivalent of a long press, it would have to make some adjustments to the iOS interface (including changing how we reorder app icons), but in the end I think we’d have a more cohesive set of common iOS gestures. 3D Touch users would benefit by not having to wait for the OS to pause and see if you intended to long-press an item, but users of non–3D-Touch devices wouldn’t be left out of the party. via Jason…