Microsoft shows off new features for Office on iPad

It’s a strange sight having a Microsoft executive present at an Apple event but it has happened. Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Office 365 client applications, took the stage at Apple’s big press event in San Francisco to demo some of the new changes in its suite of apps for Apple’s tablet. Some of the new features include being able to draw freehand shapes on Word or PowerPoint and have these translated into shapes such as arrows and circles. This new feature is designed to take advantage of the new Pencil stylus for the iPad Pro. Users can now draw annotations on documents and have those sync across Office apps on iOS and other platforms. It wasn’t mentioned though it you’ll need the Pencil stylus and only the new iPad Pro to use these features.

The Office suite of apps also now takes advantage of the multitasking features available on iOS 9. You can copy and paste content from different Office apps running side by side. An example is you can copy a chart on an Excel file and paste it to the Word document you have running alongside it on an iPad Pro or iPad Air 2. You can see this push for Microsoft products as Apple’s way to attract the enterprise market to consider its products. Apple recently partnered with IBM and Cisco to push their enterprise entry further.

Source: PCWorld

Apple discontinues 128GB storage and gold options for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models

With the new iPhone 6s models out, Apple’s paring down on its slightly older versions. The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s for sale will no longer be available in gold as well as with the 128GB configuration; perhaps to encourage people to buy the newer devices. So, right now you can only get the iPhone 6 devices in Space Gray or silver and in 16GB or 64GB versions.

Source: Apple Insider

Apple ‘iPhone 6s’ might come with always-on ‘Hey Siri’ functionality

Just ahead of the Apple Special Event, a source told Apple Insider that the upcoming phone from the company will come with always-on “Hey Siri” activation, much like “OK Google” service on Android. Siri can do that too but it must be connected to a power for voice activation to work. The current iOS 9 beta doesn’t support the unplugged “Hey Siri” feature making us speculate that they integrated it at the hardware level. Some Android phones have a specialized voice activation monitoring chip to support “OK Google” feature without it eating too much battery life. Well, we just have a few more hours to wait before we find out what Apple’s cooking in its kitchen.

Source: Apple Insider

The Apple Beat: Is Apple TV ready for primetime?

 

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

A new voice-control interface powered by Siri would be a killer feature, specially for an Apple TV priced in the US $149 range. But Apple will need to step up its game to make the device a true platform. So, aside from iTunes movies and TV shows on demand, we can expect the advent of iOS apps and games to come to Apple TV.

In a few days, we will know what Apple plans on revealing as it takes over the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. The September 9 event is guaranteed to involve the next generation iPhone as well as iOS 9 and possibly some considerable Apple Watch and watchOS 2.0 news, since it has been a year since we first saw Apple’s wearable.

Rumors are getting frenzied right now, as they always do before a huge Apple Event. Since, there haven’t been any significant leaks or spoilers as to what we will see (smartphone case prototypes don’t count), blogs and even established news agencies are scrambling by playing guessing games and giving time to any rumour that seems to make sense (like new colours for Apple Watch Sport straps... ).

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