Meet macOS: your Mac will completely change this FALL

OS X is dead. Long live macOS. 

At its annual Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday, Apple announced macOS Sierra, the next version of its computer operating system for Macs shipping this fall as a free update. It'll be available as a developer preview in July.

With macOS, Apple now has all of its operating systems for its various devices all tidied up. iPhone, iPad and iPod touch have iOS, Apple Watch has watchOS, Apple TV has tvOS and now Macs have macOS.

It's not just new branding. macOS will come with some useful new features.

Auto-unlock is one new feature that lets you automatically unlock your Mac when it detects you're wearing your Apple Watch right near it.

Apple Pay is also coming to the Mac via the web. "So now when you're shopping online, you'll have a pay with Apple Pay button," Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said. Authentication is made with your iPhone's Touch ID fingerprint sensor.

IMAGE: SAMANTHA MURPHY KELLY/MASHABLE

Siri, Apple's personal voice assistant, finally makes its debut on the Mac. Siri is able to perform sophisticated queries according to Federighi. "Show the files I worked on last week about the offsite." Siri on the Mac works in conjunction with the Mac's Finder and works similarly to Windows 10's Cortana.

IMAGE: SCREENSHOT: APPLE

Picture-in-picture lets you shrink your video down into a smaller window so you can do something else while the video is running in a corner. The video window is resizable and you can move it anywhere on the screen.

iCloud Drive does more, too: You can sync multiple Mac desktops as well as view files stored on your Mac from your iPhone. 

Optimized Storage will also smartly manage your files for you so your Mac always has enough storage; it does so by uploading files into the cloud and deleting them off your hard drive so you'll always have space, but never lose the files.

Universal clipboard, a feature that uses Continuity, will let users copy and paste between Macs and iOS devices.

While the new name and features are a big deal, macOS isn't a fundamental leap from the previous OS. Under the hood, macOS is still based on Unix. It's just a new name is all — and a whole bunch of new features

Facebook Messenger now let you send text messages - Android only

Today the Vice President of Messaging products at Facebook, David Marcus, announced that the Messenger is getting a brand new feature for the Android version.

SMS integration

The new feature is the ability to send SMS messages from the Messenger. This will allow users to focus all of their messaging on one app instead of using separate apps for SMS and instant messaging.

David commented,

“Very excited to announce a major new feature for Messenger on Android today! From now on, you’ll be able to send and receive your SMS messages from Messenger, which means you now have one integrated place for all your messaging!

Aside from the usual options in SMS apps, the Messenger will allow sending voice clips, stickers and let you share your location via SMS. All of this is done on the client side and none of the SMS are sent to Facebook’s servers, if you were wondering about the security aspect.

He added that a lot of texting apps for Android did not have enough features and options for the users, which led them to design the Messenger so it works as a texting app as well, killing two birds with one stone.

The app will include Messenger exclusive features as well such as chat heads and more. It’s limited to Android for now.

The update is expected to be released today and will be available for most countries by Friday including Pakistan. 

Microsoft to BUY LINKEDIN

Microsoft has announced that it is planning to acquire LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, for $26.2 Billion in cash.

Yes, Microsoft announced today that it would buy LinkedIn for $196 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at $26.2 BILLION.

It is so far the biggest acquisition made by Microsoft, which has made 8 takeovers, including Skype in 2011 and Nokia in 2013, worth more than $1 Billion.

According to the tech giant, LinkedIn will retain its own brand and product, and also LinkedIn's existing CEO Jeff Weiner will remain as the company's chief executive.

LinkedIn will now become a part of Microsoft's productivity, and business processes segment and Weiner will report directly to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Here's what Nadella said about the deal:

"The LinkedIn team has grown a fantastic business centered on connecting the world's professionals. Together we can accelerate the growth of LinkedIn, as well as Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics as we seek to empower every person and organization on the planet."

The offer of $196 per share on LinkedIn represents a premium of 49.5 per cent to LinkedIn's Friday closing price.

LinkedIn is the world’s most popular as well as largest professional social network and continues to grow. With the launch of new version of its mobile app last year, the company has increased its member engagement and enhanced its news feed to deliver better business insights.

Both Mr. Weiner and LinkedIn’s chairperson, co-founder and controlling shareholder Mr. Reid Hoffman back the deal.

"Just as we have changed the way the world connects to opportunity, this relationship with Microsoft, and the combination of their cloud and LinkedIn's network, now gives us a chance also to change the way the world works," Weiner said in the statement.

"For the last 13 years, we have been uniquely positioned to connect professionals to make them more productive and successful, and I’m looking forward to leading our team through the next chapter of our story."

The Legendary Yahoo Messenger is Finally Shutting Down

One of the oldest Messenger apps is shutting down after 18 years of service. Yahoo has announced they will be signing off and closing their the app permanently on 5th August.

Yahoo messenger was originally named as “Yahoo Pager” and it was launched in 1998. It became quickly popular with its user-friendly interface and maintained a strong following over the years by introducing interesting additions to its functionality such as its famous emojis that provided its users with a unique online chat experience.

It developed a faithful user base in Asia-Pacific region and many of us have memories of the Yahoo and MSN Messenger days. Amazingly, according to Bloomberg, Yahoo Messenger still had a following among oil traders who used it to gossip and even bid on prices of commodities.

Last year, Yahoo announced a more modern and cross-platform supportive Messenger that laid the foundations of the End-of-Life for the Legacy Messenger.

Yahoo made this announcement with their official blog post, saying,

In December of 2015, we announced a brand new Yahoo Messenger for mobile, the Web and in Yahoo Mail on the desktop, built on a new modern platform. This complete revamp brings users an incredibly fast, beautiful and smart way to send — and unsend — messages, photos and animated GIFs in 1:1 and group conversations.

While today we provide basic interoperation between the legacy product and the new Messenger, we encourage all of our users to complete their transition to the new Yahoo Messenger as we will no longer support the legacy platform as of August 5, 2016. We intend to continue our focused efforts on the new Messenger, with a goal of delivering the best experience to our users.

The announcement indicates that Yahoo is reviewing its future projects and it wants to develop and enhance new apps.

After August 5th, anyone still using the legacy Messenger will no longer be able to log in or send messages. Same applies on messages sent through third-party apps built on top of Yahoo’s API. The new Messenger  is available on the iOS Store and Google Play.

This Case for the iPhone Runs Android

You may have seen dozens of hacks that put Google’s Android on every Apple iPhone out there (and in desperate cases, a cheap Chinese copy) but hardly any solution is as easy or convenient as the one which comes courtesy of developer Nick Lee, who has made a special case which brings Android brains to a traditionally iOS phone.

Nick Lee, who is already known for undertaking adventurous procedures such as when he made it possible to run Windows 95 on an Apple Watch, made the case so that he did not have to choose between two great platforms all the time.

The case may not win a lot of casual users because of its bulky design but that is not without reason. (You can argue that Apple itself has a case quite reminiscent to this one and that only holds a tiny battery pack.)

It contains its own SoC, which is Huawei’s Kirin 620 (no slouch), 2 GB worth RAM and 8 GB internal storage. He also made it possible to boost connectivity through options including HDMI, USB ports, Lightning port and a microSD card slot. He 3D printed these into a case along with a battery and the result is one of the coolest looking, if not the most attractive case that you have ever seen.

The version of Android which can run as a result is the version 6.0.1 Marshmallow, which appears to be running adequately if not completely smoothly. It is launched via a custom-built app courtesy of Nick Lee’s employer, Tendigi, which allows the circuitry in the board to interact with the display of the iPhone 6S.

Before he came up with this remarkable case, Lee also streamed Android on the iPhone through a microUSB cable from the Nexus 5, thanks to the Android Open Source Project to make sure that the concept worked.

Projects like these make sure that the smartphone industry remains open to all sorts of intervention from the hacking community. The project may not be very polished and certainly not practical for day-to-day use, but has a sort of sophistication that begs to be acknowledged.

Now, if only someone puts the circuitry into a transparent case and brings it out into the market that would be awesome.