Few more days away from Apple’s first event of the year – WWDC 2018 in US, starting June 4 and ends on June 8.

Apple is likely to introduce the next version of its mobile OS iOS 12. Over the internet we can see  some illustrations shared by anonymous Apple enthusiast on how Apple may revamp the lock screen with iOS 12.

Here is sample :

Pic Credits : iHelp BR & GadgetsNow

Some of the concept images are from iHelp BR via GadgetsNow and 9to5 Mac. The iOS 12 lock screen could get Apple Watch kind of feature and the users will be able to choose app shortcuts that will be shown on the lock screen to make it easier for access.

Icons might support 3D Touch, with a detailed view. The above images shows apps such as the Phone, weather, music and stocks.

Pic Credits by Avdan

Apple iOS 12 may have  a new volume indicator that doesn’t take less screen area. Now a days the floating sound controller is available in Android and the similar one can be made available in iOS as well. Also the long awaited feature such as dark mood might be made available.

Anyway we are yet to see how many of these actually see the light of the day and that is today.

When you ask someone to complete a task for you, it depends on how you ask, what you are asking and why you want it.

The delegation of work or assigning tasks and getting them successfully completed is a management practice. When your approach of asking someone to do a task for you is clear, it is more likely that you will get it delivered as you want it and when you want it.

A great approach exists to make sure our task assignment is thorough and our team member has the clear idea of what are the task requirements? 

Having worked directly with the higher level management for few IT projects,  we observed that they have practised and created a better approach of how to assign a task and get it delivered as they wanted it. This might be a well-known practice all over the industries, but to put it simple, it is just a group of 6 letters - CPQQRT.

Most managers actually bear in mind these 6 letters when a task is being assigned to a team member and explain the necessary.

Context - Requirement, why is this task required?  does it have any background or are there any previous efforts which have been put into it, which created the need for this task? Are there any issues which need's to be addressed?

Purpose - Objective & Reason, what is the aim/ objective of this task and reason for doing it. 

"Context actually provides historical information related to issue and explains the current situation, whereas Purpose looks ahead to achieve what is desirable or solve the issue".

Quality - Outcome, what are the required outcomes?  what standards are required to perform the task and what key parameters are to be identified from the outcome to say we got the successful outcome. This is to make sure the outcome has desired standard and form you prefer. 

Quantity - Measure,  it is the physical measure of an outcome. This describes how many and how much measures does an outcome needed to have. Every outcome might not have this kind of measure.

"Quality is about the standard to which the task is completed and Quantity is about the physical measure".

Resources - Parameters, what does a person have to use and complete the assigned task. Is it the technology skill set, equipment, tools, workspace, vehicles, meeting rooms, budget, people for assistance and how much of their time have to be utilised for the task.

Time - (how long: effort & duration) how long does it take to complete a task and what milestones have to be achieved. Communication of their progress is needed all the way through reports or through regular discussions. 

Reference:  How to use CPQQRT

All new apps submitted to Mac App store must support 64-bit architecture and the existing ones have to be updated to 64-bit by June 2018.  The reason behind this is, Apple has made clear that macOS High Sierra will be the last OS to support 32-bit architecture. As of 31st January'18, new applications submitted to mac app store should support 64-bit architecture apps in Mac App Store and those existing have to updated to 64-bit  and support by June'18. 

Apple's reminder: 

"To prepare a future version of MacOS where 32-bit software will no longer work without compromise, starting with MacOS High Sierra 10.13.4. The user will also be notified when launching an application that relies on  32-bit software. The alert will appear only once per application."  The idea behind this is to create awareness to users and ask them to update the apps to latest versions.

It is a wonderful thing to see that Apple released a new version of iPhone's along with new iOS.  Apple is thriving. Many people along with us are really excited to use new iPhone and see how better they are from the previous ones. As part of this interest of people, Tech Insider released a video on it saying "I won't trade in my iPhone 6s for an iPhone 8 or iPhone X — here's why". 

We were analyzing whether to upgrade to a new iPhone or continue with the existing iPhone or the latest Android phone. As Tech Insider released a video, we would like to add some more information to it.  Anyway, this matters to people who are using iPhone 6S  and later versions. If you analyze your needs with the features of iPhones 6S and iPhone 8, you will be able to find out how better is iPhone 8 than your existing iPhone. Then compare the price with the difference in features, you might be amazed at the outcome. 

People with iPhone 5 or 5S versions in hand are obviously welcomed to get an iPhone 8 as this upgrade gives them boost in having a larger iPhone screen, better features, better performance and a better camera at some good price. 

Countries like the US, UK provide us the latest phones on contract for affordable rates per month along with talk time and internet along with upgrade feature as, get a new phone every two years and keep the old ones with you. With this kind of feature getting an iPhone 8 is better than buying an iPhone 8 out of contact is not recommendable. And if you compare to the countries like India, people have good buying capacity even without the contracts kind of feature. (No Gadget Insurance Cover as well)

Yet it depends on person to person, on how badly they wanted to get a new iPhone, is it for development, is it for review,  is it that they just wanted to have the latest phone, or is it necessary to have a phone or an iPhone latest only, based on personal circumstances. Here come's few things one needs to consider before they take a step and buy an iPhone 8. Affordability, Luxuriousness, and Smartness are three top things which make us manage our budgets well enough and also sometimes they allow us to identify a true value of an object according to the personal circumstances. 

Vary the features of iPhone 6s to iPhone 8 and decide whether to buy or not to buy an iPhone 8 if at all you are using iPhone 6s or later.

Personally, we use an iPhone 5S, iPhone 6,  Moto X 2nd Gen and also use a DSLR Nikon D3100 and MacBook Pro Mid 2012 model. These things are smart enough to keep us going forward and do the best what we could. Greatly we received the new iOS 11 and Mac OS High Sierra, no complaints.. everything's working fine except iMessage on MacBook Pro is little odd and it doesn't allow us to delete multiple messages at a time. Ended up deleting one of after the other. We wish if Apple could attend this issue.

Finally, today Google officially launched the mobile payments app in India. The app is available from Google Play Store for Android phones and App Store for iOS devices. This app helps you to make payments through their mobile wallet by linking phones to their bank accounts and then to pay for goods purchased a physically at retail stores and online, this app will also allow you to make person-to-person money transfers as well. 

Penetrating into Indian mobile payments market might not be easy for 'Tez' as it is already occupied by many well-known competitors such as PayTM, MobiKwik, BHIM and almost every bank has got its own app to facilitate their customers to make online payments through their mobile devices.

The app supports multiple languages such as Hindi, English, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati. Online transfers are limited to ₹1,00,000 in one day across all UPI apps and 20 transfers per day.

Banks such as Axis, HDFC, ICICI, SBI, and many other banks which support UPI are supported by Google Tez. Online payment can be done to RedBus, Dominos through 'Tez'.

Business owners can also integrate 'Google Tez for Business' to their businesses as a smart & secure payment facility.

Android Phones are being developed by multiple brands in the market. Some of the named brands like Samsung, Lenovo / Motorola, LG, HTC, Panasonic, Honor, Oppo,  Redmi MI etc.., come up with different versions of Android operating system and hardware capabilities.  Each of them is customising the Android OS with their branded apps. The 'Contacts',  'Messages' and 'Phone'  app's work and look different from mobile to mobile. Here the functionality differs from phone to phone for 'Contacts' app and it does not suffice to maintain 'Contacts' from multiple Google Accounts.   Google released a dedicated 'Contacts' app for Pixel Phone's, which is now made available for all Android phone's which are running Android 5.0 or newer. You might prefer this app once you start using, it.  This dedicated app will handle contacts from multiple Google Accounts and gives you a seamless transition and consistent interface between web and phone. Works well with third party app's like Facebook, Twitter. Based on contact info, the app automatically suggests Contact's merge to remove duplicates. 

Source: Google Play