Apple Decreases Pricing of Apps on the Indian App Store As it Adjusts Pricing for Several Countries

App Store India Pricing January 2018

Apple has adjusted the App Store pricing for several countries this week to account for foreign exchange rate fluctuations and tax changes. App Store developers were notified of this change via an email earlier this week, as reported by 9to5Mac. Apple periodically adjusts the pricing on the App Store to account for these changes and the last major change for pricing of apps for Apple customers in India happened in January 2017 when Apple increased the pricing of apps on the App Store for India by around 25% to 32%.

App Store Pricing Adjustment for India

According to the email that Apple sent out to developers, the pricing for apps in India will decrease.

India: Prices will decrease for apps and in-app purchases (including auto-renewable subscriptions)

As a consumer, it’s obvious to get excited upon reading that, but wait till you hear the new pricing that is now live on the App Store. The pricing of apps on App Store India has been reduced by Rs. 1. That’s right, apps will cost less by a whole Rupee going forward.

Here are the top pricing tiers now active on the App Store:

App Store India Pricing January 2018

App Store India Pricing January 2018

I’m not really sure why Apple decided to make this minor change to the pricing. I’m hoping that this ₹1 discount is just cosmetic — such that the pricing appears in line with the standard xx.99 way and that the change announced in the email is rolling out in the coming days with a notable change in the pricing.

What do you think about this change? Let me know your thoughts on Twitter @preshit or @nuclearbits.

[h/t @macpeercom]

January 26, 2018 ✚ Permalink

No Cutting Corners on the iPhone X

Brad Ellis, an Interaction Designer, writes about the corners present on the iPhone X:

Here’s where the nerd part comes in, iPhone X rounded screen corners don’t use the classic rounding method where you move in a straight line and then arc using a single quadrant of a circle. Instead, the math is a bit more complicated. Commonly called a squircle, the slope starts sooner, but is more gentle.

This is a fascinating look at the squircles seen on the iPhone and how Apple’s attention to detail comes about.

Also Read: Brad’s take on Why Reach Navigation Should Replace the Navbar in iOS Design.

January 23, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Apple Partners with Malala Fund to Support Girls’ Education

Apple Partners with Malala Fund

Apple today announced that it is partnering with Malala Fund to help girls receive free, safe, and quality education. Apple will become the fund’s first Laureate partner, which will enable significant expansion of Malala’s effort to support girls’ education, according to the release issued by Apple today.

“We believe that education is a great equalising force, and we share Malala Fund’s commitment to give every girl an opportunity to go to school,” said Tim Cook. “Malala is a courageous advocate for equality. She’s one of the most inspiring figures of our time, and we are honoured to help her extend the important work she is doing to empower girls around the world.”

Apple Partners with Malala Fund

(Photo: Apple / Karen Kasmauski)

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO will be joining the fund’s leadership council and Apple will be helping Malala Fund by assisting with technology, curriculum, and research into policy changes needed to help girls everywhere attend school and complete their education.

Malala Fund currently runs the Gulmakai Network initiative in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Nigeria and help push for girls’ education in these countries.

January 22, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Apple is Hiring for 9 Different Positions for the Apple Online Store Engineering team in Hyderabad

Apple has updated its Jobs portal with a listing of 9 new available positions for its Apple Online Store (AOS) Engineering team based at its new development campus in Hyderabad, India. These listings were posted on the portal late evening yesterday, just days after the Indian Government approved 100% Foreign Direct Investment for Single-Brand Retail in the country, signaling a major win for Apple, who has been trying to open its own stores in India for a little over 3 years now.

Apple India is hiring for the following positions for the Apple Online Store team in Hyderabad:

  • Software Engineering Manager
  • Machine Learning Engineer
  • Software Engineer
  • Senior Software Engineer
  • Software Engineer in Test
  • DevOps Engineer
  • Engineering Project Manager
  • Platform Engineer
  • Senior Tech Lead

Some of the job descriptions included with these postings:

Today, the Apple Online Store (AOS) provides one of the best multichannel commerce experiences in the world, and operates in 37 countries worldwide.

At AOS, its Engineering team is responsible for the global eCommerce platform that serves millions of customers around the world. We are a team highly skilled Software Engineering Managers, Engineers, Analysts and Project Managers based in Cupertino, London and Singapore.

These nine job listings are specifically for the Apple Online Store Engineering team. There are other available positions currently listed for other teams and other departments, but these 9 jobs were all posted together late yesterday evening.

This development may or may not mean that Apple is preparing to launch an Apple Online Store in India, but one care surely hope. Whatever be the case, what’s certain is Apple is expanding its Apple Online Store Engineering team in Hyderabad, along with its Site Reliability Engineering team, Information Systems & Technology team, the Strategic Data Solutions department, and of course, the Apple Maps team.

January 20, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Matt Birchler’s Relatively Modest Proposal for watchOS 5

Over on BirchTree, Matt has a modest proposal for Apple’s upcoming release for Apple Watch software:

It strikes me this year that we’re hitting the 5th major version of watchOS. This is not a brand new platform anymore, even though the Apple Watch feels relatively new in the grand scheme of things.

Some of the items on Matt’s list have been requested since watchOS 1.0, but we’re yet to see them. I see myself buying the next Apple Watch Series only if it has an always-on display and custom watchfaces.

January 17, 2018 ✚ Permalink

FBI Hacker Calls Apple ‘Jerks’ and ‘Evil Geniuses’ for Encrypting iPhones

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, writing for Motherboard:

FBI forensic expert Stephen Flatley lashed out at Apple, calling the company “jerks,” and “evil geniuses” for making his and his colleagues’ investigative work harder.

Sure, buddy. The people that are actually giving a fuck about customer privacy are “jerks” because it’s making your job harder to do.

That means, he explained, that “password attempts speed went from 45 passwords a second to one every 18 seconds,” referring to the difficulty of cracking a password using a “brute force” method in which every possible permutation is tried. There are tools that can input thousands of passwords in a very short period of time—if the attempts per minute are limited, it becomes much harder and slower to crack.

Yeah, no shit, Sherlock!

January 12, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Shahid Kamal Ahmad has a Few Things to Say about his MacBook Pro

Shahid Kamal Ahmad — best known for his work at Sony’s PlayStation division, has a few words to say about his MacBook Pro in his post titled, “MacBook Pro? No“.

Let me count the way my latest MacBook Pro is not suitable for professional use, but before I do that, you should know that I’ve been buying and recommending Macs since 2001. I’ve spent a fortune on them. I love them, but I only like my latest MacBook Pro (a 2016 model with the Radeon Pro 460). I write this with a heavy heart and a malfunctioning keyboard.  This is a story about unrequited hardware love.

and

You know that a design has failed when you’re forced into using it. The Touch Bar is Apple’s Clippy. An embarrassment.

I currently use a Mid-2011 iMac as my desktop computer and a Mid-2013 MacBook Air as my notebook. Both these Macs are now old, slow and I’m looking to replace them with better & faster Macs. The iMac will probably be replaced by a 27-inch 5K iMac, largely because I cannot afford the iMac Pro at ₹4,15,000 here in India. The MacBook Air on the other hand, or just in general for that matter, won’t be replaced with another notebook — at least in the near future, for one very simple reason.

Apple does not currently make a better & faster notebook computer.

The current MacBook Pro lineup raises more questions than it solves, and Shahid outlines many of them perfectly. I’d have loved to replace both my Macs with a single MacBook Pro machine, but today’s lineup is anything but a “Pro”.

There are so many incredible things that Apple brought to the table in the past years, but decided to throw them away for no good reason.

  • I want a MacBook Pro that’s actually powerful.
  • I want a MacBook Pro with a keyboard keys that doesn’t stop working in a few months.
  • I want a MacBook Pro with a decent number of ports
  • I want a MacBook Pro without a Touch Bar — or at least one where the Touch Bar doesn’t take away functionality. Move it to the bottom of the screen if you want to.
  • I want a MacBook Pro where I can upgrade the default RAM. Apple doesn’t offer BTO options in India.
  • I want a charger with an indicator light at the end to tell me the charging status.
  • Heck, I want a charger that ships with a goddamn cable.

I absolutely loved my 2008-era 15-inch MacBook Pro and I’d love to use a MacBook Pro as my primary machine, but as it stands today, I just can’t.

January 11, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Another Password Related Bug Found in macOS High Sierra

Another password-related bug has been discovered in macOS High Sierra, this time in the App Store Preferences in the Settings.app.

Joe Rossignol, reporting for MacRumors, says:

The security vulnerability means that anyone with administrator-level access to your Mac could unlock the App Store preferences and enable or disable settings to automatically install macOS updates, app updates, system data files, and, ironically, even security updates that would fix a bug like this one.

This sounds really embarrassing for Apple, but this is far from being a major bug. First, the App Store preferences are unlocked by default for admin users — and it doesn’t work for/affects the non-admin users. Additionally, if anyone with malicious intent has admin access to your Mac, there’s a lot worse that is possible. That’s not to say that this bug shouldn’t be taken seriously. Apple has already fixed this bug in the beta of its upcoming High Sierra release.

I’d love to join Apple’s QA team. Seriously!

January 11, 2018 ✚ Permalink