Apple was quick to deliver iOS 10.0.1 and 10.0.2 last week to address some early bugs, most notably problems that prevented headphone audio controls from working reliably. The company also released macOS 10.12 Sierra, and Michael Cohen offers highlights of the new operating system. That said, if you use a ScanSnap scanner, Adam Engst explains why you should hold off on the upgrade. The developer beta of iOS 10.1 enhances the dual-camera iPhone 7 Plus with the promised Portrait mode, which offers a professional-looking bokeh effect — Glenn Fleishman provides an explanation of the feature and a preview of how it works. Finally, macOS Sierra brought with it an avalanche of app updates, so the long list of notable software releases this week includes: Postbox 5.0.2, Sandvox 2.10.8, Tweetbot 2.4.3, TextWrangler 5.5.2, HoudahGeo 5.1, Parallels Desktop 12.0.2, Mailplane 3.6.7, CleanMyMac 3.5.1, Gemini 2.2.2, Safari 10.0, 1Password 6.3.3, Firefox 49.0, OmniFocus 2.7, Capto 1.1, Lightroom CC 2015.7 and Lightroom 6.7, Pages 6.0, Numbers 4.0, and Keynote 7.0 for Mac, SpamSieve 2.9.25, macOS Server 5.2, KeyCue 8.2, iBooks Author 2.5, and BBEdit 11.6.2.
Apple has released a small iOS 10.0.2 update to address problems with headphones, iCloud Photo Library, and app extensions. The previous iOS 10.0.1 was a necessary download only for iPhone 7 owners, but it too incorporates key bug fixes.
If you use a ScanSnap document scanner to create PDFs, avoid upgrading to Sierra. Otherwise, new and previously scanned PDFs could lose pages and suffer other problems.
If you didn’t know the term “bokeh” before the announcement of the iPhone 7 Plus, you’ll learn it soon enough. A developer release of iOS 10 adds Apple’s new depth-based image mode to the iPhone 7 Plus.
macOS 10.12 Sierra is now out! We look at some of its new features and offer some tips for using it.
Notable software releases this week include Postbox 5.0.2, Sandvox 2.10.8, Tweetbot 2.4.3, TextWrangler 5.5.2, HoudahGeo 5.1, Parallels Desktop 12.0.2, Mailplane 3.6.7, CleanMyMac 3.5.1, Gemini 2.2.2, Safari 10.0, 1Password 6.3.3, Firefox 49.0, OmniFocus 2.7, Capto 1.1, Lightroom CC 2015.7 and Lightroom 6.7, Pages 6.0, Numbers 4.0, and Keynote 7.0 for Mac, SpamSieve 2.9.25, macOS Server 5.2, KeyCue 8.2, iBooks Author 2.5, and BBEdit 11.6.2.
In ExtraBITS this week, we offer a few Apple-specific ways to watch tonight’s presidential debate, or maybe a nice peaceful football game. Apple is working on a fix for a security flaw in iOS 10, while Yahoo is dealing with the theft of data associated with 500 million accounts — ouch! Finally, we note Dejal’s 25th year of Mac development.