Apple's new Chicago Riverfront store exemplifies its new retail vision

Video by Chicago Sun-Times

Apple opened its new flagship Apple Retail Store in Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Mirroring the Second City's illustrious history and connection to arts, music and architecture, the Riverfront Apple Store also serves as a destination and hub for locals and visitors alike.

Apple says the new store is, "Intended as a gathering place for the local community, the store will host year-round Today at Apple programming, building on Chicago’s city-wide initiative to enliven the Riverwalk. To celebrate the opening, Apple Michigan Avenue will host “The Chicago Series,” a month-long set of events that will provide attendees with the tools to pursue their passions, from photography and music to coding and app design."

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Google Chrome for iOS adds drag and drop support, new widgets

Safari, for obvious reasons, is the fastest browser on iOS. But if you’ve been a Google Chrome user for years, you might be more comfortable using the Chrome app on your iOS device, especially with things like tab syncing and Google continuously improving the app. This time around, Chrome gets the drag and drop support for the iPad into its app. This means you can drag URLs from other apps and into Chrome or you can drag URLs out of the app and into other apps like Notes or Evernote. You’ll need to have a support iPad running on iOS 11 to get this feature to work, though.

If you don’t have this, Google is also introducing two new Today widgets. One is called Quick Actions and as its name suggests, you can do things like start a new search, begin an incognito search or a voice search, and scan a QR code. If you use 3D Touch on the Chrome icon, these are the same shortcuts you get. The other new widget is called Suggested Sites and it gives you quicker access to the sites you frequent.

Source: Cult of Mac

Apple tax might force Facebook to make a new subscription tool exclusive on Android

Facebook is looking to help out publishers monetize their content on its platform. The social network plans to introduce a new subscription tool for its mobile app that will either put up paywalls on certain articles on Facebook’s news feed or redirect readers to the publishers’s sites to buy subscriptions. The issue with bringing this feature to Apple is what can be called Apple tax, where Apple requires app developers to pay as much as 30 percent off an app’s revenue to the company. And, of course, Apple wants in with this new tool, since they reason it is being coursed through the Facebook app. However, Facebook wants to give all the revenue to the publishers.

The two tech giants have been at an impasse for months already. But the tool is already ready to be released on Android in the coming weeks. According to Facebook, they are already working with publishers like Hearst, Washington Post, and Tronc. Whether Apple and Facebook can work it out is something we can’t say right now.

Source: Recode

Microsoft updates Cortana for iOS, introduces new look and better performance

Microsoft is looking to improve the capabilities of Cortana on Apple’s platform with this latest update. The company changed up the look of its artificial intelligence assistant app to make it simpler to supposedly offer a better user experience. Some of the new changes include being able to create reminders on the app in a simpler and faster way as well as getting a new look for the profile and settings page for managing preferences. According to Microsoft, they’ve also tweaked performance to make sure there are faster page transitions and app responsiveness. On top of that, the update also brings the usual bug fixes and performance improvements.

Source: MacRumors