Not because I think Apple's products will become unusable or because I think the iPhone or Apple TV home screen is going to become dominated overnight by Roku-style half-page ads, but because I think that the pressure for Apple to degrade the experience for users and developers in the name of expanding its ad business will gradually increase as Apple tries to satisfy shareholders looking for perpetual growth.
What I wanted was the convenience of an e-reader with the curation of a bookstore. If it could be as affordable as a library without forcing this pajama gremlin to go outside, all the better. I texted this exact spiel to a fellow bookworm a while back. When I was done kvetching, she texted back three words. “Just download Libby.”
Key Apple supplier Foxconn is grappling with disruption at its most important iPhone plant in China after authorities imposed curbs to fight a COVID outbreak and signs emerged that workers were attempting to flee the site.
[...]
The site, which employs 200,000 people, makes about 60% of all iPhones. It is the most important manufacturing facility for the two top-end models released this year, the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, and also produces a portion of the standard iPhone 14.
The rejection of the agreement, which did not have union endorsement, leaves Apple facing the prospect of further union negotiations and industrial action over demands for one weekend off a month and pay rises that more closely meet inflation.
I have been learning to ignore banner ads since the 1990s. The life-long experience has allowed me to pretty much ignore all the advertisements in Apple's App Store. But then, I have also stopped browsing the App Stores. (I used to do this on our family's iPod touch when the platform was new.) It is not something I go and discover new apps.
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"As we approach the holiday season, with our product lineup set, I'd like to share my gratitude to our retail AppleCare and channel teams for the work they are doing to support customers."
Right in the middle of that sentence is the key. Apple is entering the busy shopping season "with our product lineup set."
Halloween is the perfect time to indulge in the horror genre. Whether you're into movies, TV shows or braving a Stephen King novel, horror's scares hit different when the nights draw in. And creepy video games are no different.
QR-code menus are not really an advance. Even when everything goes just right––when everyone’s phone battery is charged, when the Wi-Fi is strong enough to connect, when the link works––they force a distraction that lingers through dessert and digestifs. “You may just be checking to see what you want your next drink to be,” Jaya Saxena observed in Eater late last year, “but from there it’s easy to start checking texts and emails.” And wasn’t it already too easy?
I can't imagine the next MacBook Pros to be anything but a spec update. What I am more interested to find out is the next Mac mini and Mac Pro.
I went back and look at Apple's press statement released back in June 2020, and Apple did promised the transition in "about two years" (emphasis mine). So, we are getting into 2023 before all the Intel Macs are gone from Apple's line up.
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It can’t be great for Apple’s engine of growth to stall out, but the company says there’s no reason to get upset because the services business is especially affected by the strength of the U.S. dollar. It makes sense when you think it through: Apple sets prices for services in local currencies and doesn’t change them when the exchange rates change. So when Apple TV+ debuted in the U.K., it was £4.99, or $6.41 per month. Today, that would only be worth $5.73 per month back home. This is being repeated in almost every territory Apple does business in, and it’s a drain on the Services business more than any other.
[...]
However, there were soft spots, Maestri said. Game revenue in the App Store is apparently flagging, which seems like it might be a side effect of people going out more rather than staying home during earlier stages of the pandemic. And digital advertising was also soft.
Still, the $799-and-up iPad Pro remains The Best iPad in Apple’s lineup, the iPad for those who want the best screen, the best performance, and the latest hardware and are willing to pay for it. This year’s update doesn’t change that.
Apple has released iOS 15.7.1 and iPadOS 15.7.1 to fix 17 security vulnerabilities on older devices that either aren’t yet running or don’t support iOS 16 and iPadOS 16. The new versions have no new features or other bug fixes, but address vulnerabilities.
With this week’s release of iOS 16.1, Apple opened the floodgates for its Fitness+ streaming workouts service. While once limited to Apple Watch owners, Apple Fitness+ is now available to anyone with an iPhone…and Apple has a new video promoting this expansion today.
It’s unclear at this point whether Apple will intentionally not let users shoot ProRes video with the iPadOS camera app or whether the lack of ProRes in the app is just a bug.
Back in June at WWDC 2022, Apple announced that the new Metal 3 API coming with macOS Ventura would enable a new category of games for the Mac. One of the first titles to take advantage of this technology is the popular game “Resident Evil Village,” which is now available for Macs for the first time.
Photoshop users are beginning to feel the bite as Adobe’s controversial decision to dump Pantone Color books from its Creative Cloud tools.
In a letter addressed to Tim Cook, the negotiating committee says they’re disappointed to learn the company won’t be offering workers at the location some new health and education benefits that are rolling out to other retail employees. The union also says that Apple has been spreading “misinformation” by saying workers would have to bargain for those benefits to be included in their contract.
But Apple now looks a lot more stable than its peers, especially as fears of a recession start weighing on ad sales and potential holiday spending. It's largely because Apple relies on hardware and services that people are still buying.
Successfully updated my Mac to Ventura. Apps seem to be running fine. My scripts seem to be running fine. Great.
Not so great, at least for me, is Stage Manager. This is really the first time I've seen Stage Manager in action, as I don't install beta operating systems. My first impression: I have no idea how I can make use of it. Unlike virtual desktops, for example, Stage Manager doesn't present me with a good mental model that I can grasp on. I may still continue to try out Stage Manager, but I don't have the enthusiasm for it.
The new System Settings app -- I don't really care. The previous System Preference has personalities, while this new thing is boring. But, this is not an app that I use every single day, so, yeah, I really can't muster any energy to like or dislike any of it.
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Earlier this week, Apple released a document clarifying its terminology and policies around software upgrades and updates. Most of the information in the document isn't new, but the company did provide one clarification about its update policy that it hadn't made explicit before: Despite providing security updates for multiple versions of macOS and iOS at any given time, Apple says that only devices running the most recent major operating system versions should expect to be fully protected.
[...]
"Because of dependency on architecture and system changes to any current version of macOS (for example, macOS 13)," the document reads, "not all known security issues are addressed in previous versions (for example, macOS 12)."
Apple on Thursday released iOS and iPadOS 15.7.1, which contains several performance enhancements and security updates for the iPhone and iPad. The iOS 15.7.1 update comes after Apple released iOS and iPadOS 16.1 on Monday. Apple presumably delayed the release of the update after several beta testers reported problems with Face ID.
Along with announcing its new Lockdown Mode feature this past summer, the company mentioned an upgraded bounty program, a donation to fund ethical security research, and more. Now Apple Security Research has officially launched with a dedicated website, blog, details on the bounty changes, applications open for the Research Device Programs, and more.
These numbers are mixed in terms of how they compare to analyst expectations. Analysts had predicted $1.27 earnings per share, which Apple narrowly beat. iPad and services revenue missed expectations: $7.17 billion vs $7.94 billion estimated and $19.19 billion vs $20.10 billion estimated, respectively. iPhone revenue also missed expectations: $42.63 billion vs $43.21 estimated.
Cook indicated that Apple’s performance in phone sales was strong despite signs that other smartphone companies are struggling with a recent decrease in demand and said the company grew “switchers,” or people who bought an Apple phone after having an Android device. He added that the company’s high-end phones, the iPhone 14 Pro, were supply constrained.
Mac revenue is set to take a significant hit in the first fiscal quarter of 2023, Apple CFO Luca Maestri said during today’s earnings call. Maestri was providing guidance on December quarter earnings, and he said that Mac sales will be down year over year next quarter because of the strong December 2021 product release timeline.
Apple services, the category which encompasses Apple TV+ and Apple Music, saw another slight drop in revenue during the fourth fiscal quarter ending in September.
I want to acknowledge that we are still living through unprecedented times from war in Eastern Europe to the persistence of Covid 19. From climate disasters around the world to an increasingly difficult economic environment, a lot of people in a lot of places are struggling through it all. We’ve aimed to help our customers navigate through the challenges while giving them the tools to drive progress for themselves and their communities.
Apple does not mention the slower USB-C port on the new iPad’s tech specs page, but we have independently confirmed that the device is limited to USB 2.0 speeds. This limitation might not matter to most customers in this iPad’s target market, but it is still important information that might steer some customers who rely on faster wired transfers towards the iPad mini or iPad Air. AirDrop is also an option for faster wireless transfers.
, The Athletic
The Athletic spoke over the last week to more than a dozen industry sources about those and many other questions in an attempt to piece together some of the details of what the $2.5 billion partnership between MLS and Apple will actually look like in 2023. The sources were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the still-developing plans.
According to their characterizations, there’s still a lot of work left to do, particularly from a technical standpoint. One well-placed industry source expressed confidence that the league will have everything sorted out by the time next season opens on Feb. 25, 2023, but that the process of getting there will be hugely difficult and taxing for those involved. MLS is already nine to 12 months behind where they would ideally be at this stage, another source said.
Things that I will be doing this weekend: Upgrade my Mac to Ventura, and checkout the new Stage Manager and System Settings app.
And if my Mac is working fine, and all my scripts on my Mac are working (and launching in launchctl) fine, maybe I'll watch Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix to get into Halloween mood.
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Thanks for reading.
Apple has “paused ads related to gambling and a few other categories on App Store product pages” after developers and commentators criticized the types of advertisements showing up in the iPhone’s App Store, according to a statement from spokesperson Trevor Kincaid.
From my perspective, this experiment is not a promising development for the road ahead. It feels like a bait and switch: my loyalty in buying products that are better for me as a user is being tested because shareholders need to see more services revenue. Apple knows most people will not switch because it relentlessly promotes its own services across its systems or because there are ads for third-party apps all over the App Store — or, if as rumoured, it rolls out ads in Maps. But it will feel a little bit scummier every time I go to download an app or get directions.
Apple wants no part of being associated with gambling within an app. But now with advertising, it's in it up to its neck. Apple takes money from gambling advertisers, and it doubtlessly places those ads in the places, and at the times, when they are most likely to get a return for those companies.
In the process of patching a vulnerability in the 11th Ventura developer beta, released on October 11, Apple accidentally introduced a flaw that cuts off third-party security products from the access they need to do their scans. And while there is a workaround to grant the permission, those who upgrade their Macs to Ventura may not realize that anything is amiss or have the information needed to fix the problem.
Apple told WIRED that it will resolve the issue in the next macOS software update but declined to say when that would be. In the meantime, users could be unaware that their Mac security tools aren't functioning as expected. The confusion has left third-party security vendors scrambling to understand the scope of the problem.
Apple released iOS 16.1 and macOS Ventura to the public this week. In addition to headlining new features and changes, there are also essential security fixes as well. One of the most notable fixes is for a bug that allowed applications to eavesdrop on your conversations with Siri.
The updated design is a notable departure from the current iCloud design, showing full tiles with previews for Photos, Mail, iCloud Drive, Notes, and more, on a customizable Home page.
iOS 16.2 beta 1 launched yesterday to developers with a handful of new features and changes. As it turns out, the update includes a new Lock Screen widget option for Sleep data from the Health app. There’s also a new Medications widget coming soon as well.
A lot of people are now complaining that the iPad lineup is “confusing”. I disagree. There are specific aspects of the iPads in the lineup that are confusing, or at least disappointing. These aspects are mostly related to peripherals — which Pencils and which keyboard covers work with which iPads — and I wrote about these issues last week. But in terms of the fundamental question facing would-be buyers — “Which iPad should I get?” — I don’t think this lineup is confusing. I’d argue, in fact, that it’s less confusing, because the lineup is more complete. Prior to last week, there was a significant gap between the 9th-generation iPad (which remains in the lineup, unchanged in price) and the iPad Air. The 10th-gen iPad fills that gap.
Following the public release of macOS Ventura, Apple has issued a support document about .ps and .eps file support being removed from Preview.
Shirt Pocket has released SuperDuper 3.7, adding full compatibility with macOS 13 Ventura. However, while SuperDuper supports bootable backups for Big Sur, Monterey, and Ventura, Shirt Pocket notes that Apple bugs may cause startup to be unsuccessful, although restoration is still possible.
Duolingo has become known for its app that teaches new languages in a fun and intuitive way. The company has been expanding this experience to other areas of education, such as basic reading for children with Duolingo ABC and now math with the new Duolingo Math app.
Thousands of California residents were alerted ahead of Tuesday's magnitude 5.1 earthquake in the Bay Area, thanks to the MyShake app.
The app, which was developed by the Berkeley Seismology Lab, alerted 95,000 devices of the earthquake up to 18 seconds before the quake, advising users to "drop, cover and hold on," said officials from the California Office of Emergency Management and USGS.
A new set of Machine Learning lessons teaches users to train an app to recognize images. Users can train the model with a rock, paper, scissors game.
Another lesson, "Laying Out Views," challenges users to match a UI mock-up in code.
The new iPad Pro comes in packaging that is almost entirely fiber-based, and is completely biodegradeable, says Apple's Lisa Jackson.
Apple Music appears to have joined the widening list of businesses distancing themselves from Kanye West in light of his repeated anti-Semitic remarks.
The streaming music giant has apparently pulled Kanye West Essentials Playlist, after the rap veteran, who now goes by the name Ye, made offensive comments online and, again, in interviews.
But industry analysts say the decision to take down Ye’s music is complicated by several factors, including contract requirements streamers may have with record labels and publishers, free speech considerations and whether it is appropriate to take action against an artist’s behavior outside of their music.
"We will allow our developers to advertise more on our App Stores."
"Do we need to vet these ads? Do we need to approve each advertisement?"
"Of course not. Our crack team of app reviewers already vet through every single app that were submitted. Our App Stores are full of safe and trusted apps. Therefore, all of the ads are also going to be for safe and trusted apps. Don't worry about it."
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Joswiak said that the EU lawmakers and Apple have “been in this little bit of a disagreement” about the idea of a common charger regulation. He noted that despite the fact that the EU has good intentions, it’s a tricky thing to regulate. In particular, he points out that the EU lawmakers once tried to standardize on the now-outdated micro-USB connector.
“If we’re going to enter a market and go down the road of building an application, we have to be in it in a way that’s going to make a difference, that we’ll have a lot of customers, and have a great experience,” Federighi said.
“If we just shipped an app that really didn’t get critical mass on other platforms, what it would have accompanied is it would have held us back in innovating in all the ways we want to innovate in messages for our customers and wouldn’t have accomplished much at all in any other way,” Federighi explained. iMessage on Android seemed like a “throw-away” that “was not going to serve the world,” he concluded.
“Now my app’s product page shows gambling ads, which I’m really not OK with,” tweeted Arment. “Apple shouldn’t be OK with it, either.”
As noted by Arment, Apple provides advertisers with the choice to have their ad shown in app categories different than their own app’s category, allowing ads for gambling ads to appear in listings for unrelated apps like the podcast app Overcast.
On Monday, Apple quietly updated its App Store rules to require that iOS developers use in-app purchases — and thereby give Apple 30 percent — on “sales of ‘boosts’ for posts in a social media app.” This primarily affects Facebook and Instagram, which let people pay to boost the reach of their posts. It’s the first time Apple has directly taxed advertising in iOS apps.
Spotify says Apple’s rules make the process of buying an audiobook on Spotify “far too complicated and confusing,” adding that Apple changes its “rules arbitrarily, making them impossible to interpret.” [...]
As outlined in a webpage Spotify specifically made to support its cause, the company says Apple rejected its proposed audiobook purchasing process three times because it went against the App Store’s policies. To comply with Apple’s rules, Spotify hides the price of its audiobooks and doesn’t let users buy content in the app. Instead, you select the book you want to buy and Spotify then emails you a link to check out on the web.
iOS 16.2 beta now asks users for feedback when they cancel Emergency SOS mode. The system shows a notification that opens the Feedback Assistant to send Apple data about what happened at that moment.
Code seen by 9to5Mac confirms that when this option is enabled, Live Activities (and consequently Dynamic Island interactions) will request updates at shorter intervals to show “more real time information.”
With the new beta of iPadOS 16.2 provided to developers today, Apple has re-enabled external display support on iPads that have an M1 or M2 chip.
The company is out with extensive updates to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote today with new features for collaboration, optimizations for iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura, and more.
Just before the annual Final Cut Pro Global Summit starts in November, Apple has updated its flagship video editor, plus iMovie with macOS Ventura compatibility, stability fixes, and performance improvements.
For years, Big Tech has insisted that the death of the password is right around the corner. For years, those assurances have been little more than empty promises. The password alternatives—such as pushes, OAUTH single-sign ons, and trusted platform modules—introduced as many usability and security problems as they solved. But now, we’re finally on the cusp of a password alternative that’s actually going to work.
The new alternative is known as passkeys. Generically, passkeys refer to various schemes for storing authenticating information in hardware, a concept that has existed for more than a decade. What’s different now is that Microsoft, Apple, Google, and a consortium of other companies have unified around a single passkey standard shepherded by the FIDO Alliance. Not only are passkeys easier for most people to use than passwords; they are also completely resistant to credential phishing, credential stuffing, and similar account-take-over attacks.
Between inflation and the licensing fees, it seems inevitable.
During Spotify’s third-quarter earnings call on Tuesday, co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek said the company is considering one as well.
“When our competitors are raising their prices, that is really good for us,” he said, noting that the company has raised prices more than 40 times in markets around the world.
I wish the iPhone lock screen customization stuff makes it to the iPadOS too, because I don't like the clock's font that Apple has chosen for me.
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A new Continuity Camera feature does away with the need for a poor quality built-in Mac camera because it allows you to use your iPhone as a webcam for your Mac.
Apple wisely takes an ain't-broke-don't-fix-it approach to macOS's standard multitasking model in Ventura by turning Stage Manager off by default and making people go hunting for it if they want to use it. You can't change your Mac's UI in a major way by accident.
[...]
The major difference between Stage Manager on the Mac and Stage Manager on the iPad is that the Mac has a robust, decades-old, multi-window multitasking user interface undergirding it. Once in a "stage," windows interact with each other in familiar ways, with no need for padding between the apps and the edges of the screen. It's always clear which window on which stage has focus, and when apps communicate with each other (say, when clicking a link in a non-browser app, bouncing you to a browser), the interaction makes logical sense, swapping stages or jumping to an already-open stage on other monitors gracefully.
[...]
The overarching problem is that System Settings bends or breaks some of Apple’s own rules about what makes a good Mac app.
I’ve used macOS Ventura for the past few months and haven’t had any issues. It seems like a pretty safe upgrade. And yet I can’t shake the feeling that Apple is rushing some of its features out the door before they’re fully baked. I hope the company spends the rest of this product cycle improving what it’s shipping as macOS 12.0. For now, I’d give it an incomplete grade and attach a note that it requires more effort to keep it from getting a failing grade.
Despite its sometimes confusing design, one of the benefits of Stage Manager over features like Spaces is that it’s more immediate. Whereas Spaces suffered from being out of sight and, therefore, out of mind, Stage Manager’s strip on the left side of the screen keeps your app sets front-of-mind and makes it easy to switch between them. That’s a win as far as I’m concerned, but it comes with some very big caveats.
With this update, Apple is adding several features that did not make it into the launch version of iOS 16. There is support for iCloud Shared Photo Library for managing a photo library with friends and family, plus it adds Live Activities to the Lock Screen and the Dynamic Island on iPhone 14 Pro models.
In a support document (opens in new tab), Apple states that when this feature is enabled, your iPhone gains an overview of the carbon emissions being used in your area, and iOS 16.1 will charge your device during times when cleaner energy production is being used.
If you just upgraded to iOS 16.1 and want to see what Live Activities are all about, you should start with these apps (in alphabetical order), which have all been updated with Live Activities support.
Alongside iOS 16.1, Apple today released iPadOS 16.1, with the update coming after several months of beta testing. This is the first version of iPadOS 16 that has been available for Apple’s tablets, as iOS 16 was released on its own back in September. iPadOS 1 was delayed in order for improvements to be added to the Stage Manager feature.
At the end of all this, here’s how I feel about Stage Manager: Apple started from a good idea – make the iPad more useful by using more apps at once – and botched the execution in iPadOS 16.1 with an over-designed, poorly tested, muddled constellation of missing features, bugs, and confusing interactions.
[...]
Stage Manager makes iPadOS feel disjointed and broken, an erratic OS confusingly looking for an identity that used to be within reach.
Here in the real world, trying to figure out how Stage Manager works turns into a wild puzzle requiring a wall of Polaroids and a ball of yarn.
[...]
There’s really no discernible mental model to help you understand how Stage Manager works, and it often doesn’t seem like anyone at Apple has used this thing for very long.
I love what some of these changes signal about how Apple views the iPad. A trackpad is standard issue on even the low-end iPad’s keyboard accessory—that’s an endorsement in using the iPad with a traditional laptop-style input method. The new placement of the FaceTime camera suggests that Apple is acknowledging that horizontal orientation is preferred over vertical. Adding a function row to the keyboard suggests that Apple has gotten the message that iPad keyboard users would prefer the same quick controls that users of Apple’s laptops have had for ages.
I just wish that future iPad vision was here across the entire product line rather than scattered here and there. Apple seems to be taking the iPad in a good direction. I just wish we were there already.
In a vacuum, there’s very little to complain about with the 10th-gen iPad. It’s an excellent tablet that does all of the things you expect from a tablet very well. Even though its screen isn’t as good as other iPads, it’s still good enough, and its performance is unimpeachable. If this was the only iPad Apple sold, many people would buy it and be perfectly happy with it.
But in context with the many other iPads that Apple sells, I’m not sure why you’d pick this one. If cost is a factor, you’re buying an iPad for a kid, or need a headphone jack, the still-available and much less expensive ninth-gen model is the one to go with. For a lot of people, the ninth-gen model is the better iPad for their needs. If you want the bigger screen and more modern design, the iPad Air is right there with its better display, even faster processor, and better accessory landscape, and you can frequently get it for less than $100 more than the new iPad.
When considered individually, these new iPads are solid options in their respective categories – each delivering on the different goals Apple set out to accomplish for these product lines in 2022.
It’s when you zoom out and take a broader look at the new state of the iPad lineup that things become…a bit more confusing.
Today’s update introduces an extended battery life option when using Outdoor Walking, Running, and Hiking Workouts. You can opt to reduce the frequency of heart rate and GPS readings if you have an Apple Watch Ultra, a second-generation Apple Watch SE, or an Apple Watch Series 8.
According to Apple’s release notes, HomePod software version 16.1 includes support for the Matter smart home standard.
Most notably, this update includes a redesigned interface for Siri that is more compact and with more personalized responses.
Apple is now requiring that apps provide the App Review team with full access to an app, with an active demo account or demo mode for apps that include account-based features. The change will make it easier for app reviewers to investigate all of the parameters of an app.
Apple specifically guides against any app functionality that lets NFT holders “unlock features or functionality within the app,” which may have served as an oblique workaround to its payments rule. That may affect some NFT projects that use the token like a membership card, providing added perks and access not otherwise accessible.
Apple revealed in an advisory today that it's aware of reports saying the security flaw "may have been actively exploited."
The bug (CVE-2022-42827) is an out-of-bounds write issue reported to Apple by an anonymous researcher and caused by software writing data outside the boundaries of the current memory buffer.
Apple said the increase in Apple Music subscription price was due to increased licensing costs. The company said artists and songwriters will earn more per stream as a result of the pricing tier changes. Regarding Apple TV+, the company said the increased price reflects the growing catalog of original TV shows and movies.
Both Pixelmator for iPad and Pixelmator Photo for iPad have been updated to support the new iPadOS 16, bringing new features including Apple Pencil hover.
Now Apple's CEO Tim Cook is calling on its suppliers to accelerate the decarbonization of Apple-related production.
"Fighting climate change remains one of Apple's most urgent priorities, and moments like this put action to those words," Cook in a statement. "We're looking forward to continued partnership with our suppliers to make Apple's supply chain carbon neutral by 2030."
Could Chinese manufacturers outside China be targeted by American sanctions? For now this is unlikely, believes Nana Li of Impax, an asset manager. “There are no handy alternative [suppliers] available with the same level of experience, efficiency and cost-effectiveness,” so cutting them off would hurt American firms, she points out. In time, that could change. Countries like India and Vietnam are keen to build up their own suppliers. Tata is reportedly in talks with Wistron, a Taiwanese manufacturer, about making iPhones in India. Indian manufacturers report that “the fruit company” is discreetly on the hunt for local suppliers.
Given the direction of relations between America and China, it is surely sensible for Apple to place some side-bets, before restrictions go any further. Chinese firms outside China are safe for now, says one Western investor in Asia. But “the noose is tightening”.
The UK financial regulator has warned that Big Tech’s growing interest in payments, lending and other finance products might harm competition and leave traditional providers at a disadvantage.
The Financial Conduct Authority is launching an inquiry this week into moves by Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook’s parent Meta into retail financial services. It is asking the Big Tech companies, their partners and potential rivals for their views on Silicon Valley’s expansion into payments, deposits, credit and insurance.
This morning, when I reach office, I noticed a new icon appearing on the top-left corner of my iPhone; a new icon that I don't recognize. It's a little television icon -- that also looks like a little monitor.
Strange. I have not updated to the new iOS 16.1 yet, so it couldn't be a new feature, can it? Did my iPhone suddenly connect to a wireless monitor somewhere in my office? Or did I accidentally started playing some videos on some Apple TV somewhere in the meeting rooms?
One DuckDuckGo search, one Google search, and one reboot later -- I remembered. Last week, I've set up a new Focus mode that is only enabled when I am in office. All the new focus mode did was to switch lock screen to one with the battery widgets so that I can easily see how much battery was left in my AirPods while I work.
And thanks to hybrid work arrangement, I've forgotten all about it until this morning when I, five days after setting the new focus mode, step into office. And panicked.
:-)
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More than a dozen app developers who spoke with WIRED say the app review process has not improved despite Apple’s 2020 introduction of the appeal mechanism, which can lead to a phone call with an app store reviewer. The company added the process in what seemed a moment of contrition, after a dispute with software company Basecamp over the rejection of an email app and a lawsuit from Fortnite developer Epic Games alleging Apple’s 30 percent cut of in-app payments is unfair.
But developers commonly describe the process of convincing Apple’s reviewers to green-light their submissions as “nightmarish." They see the new appeal process as more of an attempt to deflect criticism than to substantially improve app reviewing, which remains slow and arbitrary. Former Apple employees told WIRED that app reviewers often have only minutes to review each app and work under a system that permits wide variation in standards.
Taiwan sees this dominance as a crucial security guarantee — sometimes referred to as its “silicon shield”. The government believes that the concentration of global semiconductor production in the country ensures the US would come to the rescue if China were to attack.
[...]
As competition between the US and China heats up and the risk of a military conflict over Taiwan increases, Washington is seeking to both cut Beijing off from supplies of key advanced semiconductors and reduce its own dependency on Taiwan for chip supplies.
Both of those objectives potentially undermine TSMC, whose success is built on serving customers in all markets and on doing so from a cost-efficient cluster of plants almost entirely in Taiwan.
Outlined in an official press release, the European Council today gave the European Parliament’s common charger directive approval, finalizing the legislative procedure that will make a USB-C port mandatory across a wide range of consumer electronic devices, including the iPhone and AirPods, by the end of 2024. The directive has now been officially adopted and is set to be published in the official journal of the European Union. It will come into force 20 days after publication, and the rules will apply exactly 24 months after that date.
At first glance, it looks virtually the same as Spotlight, but with the added benefit of many times faster search speeds. While with the native feature, we have to wait a moment after typing our query, with Alfred, everything is instantaneous. This benefit was what initially convinced me. But there are several such benefits, and they are worth it.
But the streaming business, at least right now, isn’t as lucrative as pay-TV. Too many streaming services are spending billions of dollars to compete for a finite amount of attention. That’s why most experts believe Lions Gate, Paramount, NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery and AMC Networks will merge or disappear in the next few years. Netflix, Disney, Apple and Amazon could be buyers, or they could look into the second type of deal.
A gaming company will buy a TV company or a TV company will buy a gaming company. Every big tech and media company is trying to sell bundled services. Apple sells one. Amazon sells one. Disney is trying to sell one. Microsoft kind of sells one. Music and video streaming serve as major components of these bundles. But, other than Microsoft, no one has really cracked the gaming component.
The larger album art on the new iOS lock screen does look great. And, sometimes, the bleeding of the album art colors onto the background looks great too. Except when it doesn't. For example, when I am listening to BBC's Global News podcast, the almost-all-red lock-screen background looks extremely horrible.
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“If you think about how GPS works, we are computing the distance between you and the satellites that are 20,000 kilometres above you,” explains Ron Huang. “They’re doing that by doing very precise timing between the satellites and your watch with these signals that are travelling at speed of light. So it’s easily perturbed and easy to incur some error from things like passing through different layers of the atmosphere. There’s a particular band of the atmosphere called the ionsphere that has a lot of plasma that disrupts the radio waves for example. Because L1 and L5 are 400 MHz apart, you can independently correct for that kind of effect.
“But it really becomes special when you combine it with [our] custom algorithms. So for example, we monitor and model your entire arm swing while you’re running so we’re not catching the speed of your arm swing, but the speed of your run.”
In an email to developers this week, Apple announced that app-related ads will begin appearing in the App Store’s main Today tab and in a “You Might Also Like” section at the bottom of individual app listings starting Tuesday, October 25, in all countries except China. All ads in the App Store have a blue background and an “Ad” icon.
Testing performed by RTings.com on how the AirPods Max handles noise isolation was updated on Friday, warning that the introduction of firmware 4E71 has changed ANC. After the update, the report found the system "blocks out a bit less noise between the mid-bass to high-bass range than the previous firmware."
The Android and iOS apps are available now under a Mozilla Public License 2.0, a copyleft license that stipulates all derivative projects or modifications have to be released under the same license.
With all due respect, I don't care. Apple designs their products and everything is a dance inside these computers to make everything work together. While I can appreciate the challenge this might create for Apple's designers, that's really not my problem, and the camera setup is plainly wrong and needs to be fixed.
The result, for now, is more of a tribute website than an archive. More than a dozen archivists and scholars who spoke to The New York Times questioned even calling it an archive. It has worried historians who fear it may inspire other wealthy and influential figures to curate the historical record about them just as ordinary people curate their lives on Instagram.
“One of the things that excites me about archives is the warts and all,” said Courtney Chartier, an archivist at Columbia University who has worked on Martin Luther King Jr.’s archive and the papers of Tony Kushner, the playwright. “People are complicated, and that’s something we shouldn’t shy away from.”
“I’d thought if we could just put our music within reach of people, they might choose to reach out toward it. Not quite. As one social media wisecracker put it, ‘Woke up this morning to find Bono in my kitchen, drinking my coffee, wearing my dressing gown, reading my paper.’ Or, less kind, ‘The free U2 album is overpriced.’ Mea culpa.”
I wonder where is my U2 albums... Over the years, I've lost track of where I've stuffed it in iTunes. It is definitely not in my Apple Music library, which I've just checked... I think.
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The one that I just don’t get, though, is the keyboard accessory schism. I don’t see why the new iPads couldn’t have been designed to work with the Magic Keyboard. And if there’s a market for the new two-piece Magic Keyboard Folio in addition to the cantilever-hinged Magic Keyboard, why couldn’t it have been designed as option that worked with the iPad Air and 11-inch iPad Pro, too?
While the new iPad is set to launch October 26, the adapter is already facing a 3-4 week shipping delay on Apple’s online store in the U.S. for orders placed today.
The compact remote requires Apple’s Music app to be running, but once it is, you can minimize Music and use Music Remote instead. The app includes buttons to play/pause and skip forward and back, as well as a couple of unique buttons above and below the play/pause button. Above play/pause is a button that opens a separate window that lets you pick from your playlists. Below is a stop button. It works the same as pause, except that when you resume playback, it will start with the next song in an album or playlist instead of picking up mid-song.
Belkin’s iPhone Mount with MagSafe for Mac Notebooks has a bad name but is a very good accessory. It lets you clip your iPhone onto your laptop so you can make use of macOS Ventura and iOS 16’s Continuity Camera feature, which turns your phone into a webcam that absolutely crushes pretty much anything that’s built into MacBooks these days. And if that was all it did, I’d still be happy with it — but its design and features are what truly make it worth considering, even though there’s already a flood of other accessories meant to do the same job.
Apple recently started sending payments to select App Store developers as part of a $100 million settlement it reached in the lawsuit Cameron et al v. Apple Inc., which alleged that Apple had a monopoly on the distribution of iOS apps and in-app purchases. Apple referred to the settlement as a “Small Developer Assistance Fund.”
The departure was announced inside the Cupertino, California-based technology giant this week, with Hankey telling colleagues that she will remain at Apple for the next six months. Hankey oversees several dozen industrial designers, and the company hasn’t named a replacement.
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“Apple’s design team brings together expert creatives from around the world and across many disciplines to imagine products that are undeniably Apple,” a spokesman said in a statement. “The senior design team has strong leaders with decades of experience. Evans plans to stay on as we work through the transition, and we’d like to thank her for her leadership and contributions.”
I am hoping Apple will not reject Live Activities they weren't expecting. It shouldn't be restricted to sports updates and car locations and other obvious use cases.
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Apple Fitness+ is set for a big update. Starting with iOS 16.1 on October 24, users in the 21 countries the service is available will be able to use it without an Apple Watch. Along with that, SilverSneakers, Target, UnitedHealthcare, and Mobile Health will be offering Fitness+ at no cost, and all-new content including an Artist Spotlight series featuring Taylor Swift is on the way.
In other words, I send you a message and then time how long it takes until I see the indicator that you have received (not read) the message. The timing will indicate the distance traveled by the message.
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The attack is limited in its application, so can only really be used against specific targets about whom you have knowledge.
For interior designer Tammy Cody, the tools at her disposal play a key role in the work she can create. Designers balance creativity with the ability to execute ideas on a large scale, whether with a team of 50 or on a solo project. Specializing in design documentation and 3D visualization, Cody has spent the last eight years teaching interior designers how to use SketchUp, a 3D modelling program originally launched in the early aughts, and runs SketchUp for Interior Designers.
The iOS 15.7.1 Release Candidate made available earlier this week appears to be prevent Face ID from working on at least some iPhones, according to user reports across Reddit and Twitter. Affected devices include iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro models at a minimum, but it is quite possible that other models are impacted too.
Bandbreite is an app that provides comprehensive information about every official Apple Watch band ever released, including details such as color, release date, model number, and price. The app also lets you keep track of bands that you already own, complete with stats and insights about your collection, such as which colors you prefer most.
Moft is out with its newest Apple accessory, a clever origami-style folio plus stand that offers handy versatility for iPad while keeping a minimalist design. The Snap Float Folio features vegan leather with four ways to lift your iPad Pro, Air, or mini with secure magnets.
Many of the app’s toys have new Halloween content that offers fun open-ended play while encouraging growth with imagination, curiosity, storytelling, fine motor skills, cause and effect, and more.
When it stays true to its deepest roots, technology is still driven by a moral impulse: the impulse to construct places, tools, and techniques that can help humans not only survive but flourish together. Of course, that impulse is easily joined to, or pushed aside by, others: the impulses to dominate, exterminate, immiserate, surveil, and control.
But those darker motivations aren’t at the heart of our technological capacity as a species. And we can’t let them define the modern technological order. Because if technology loses its association with shared joy and comfort, we risk becoming alienated from one of the most fundamental ways we care for the world and one another.
According to sources, Bungie is set to bring back the Marathon series with a new game that will be a 3-man squad extraction-based shooter.
Does Bungie still know how do a good Mac game?
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However, there’s more at work here than just currency fluctuations and tax. On its entry-level iPad, Apple appears to have taken a hit in order to minimise the price increase, whereas the iPad Pro models have seen a real-terms price increase beyond anything that can be explained by currency conversions. We assume the extra costs relate to the price of doing business in each country as well as other factors, such as the high price of fuel and the cost of importing goods from China and elsewhere.
Apple has sold ads inside Apple News and the App Store since 2016 but in recent months has shown a new determination to muscle into an industry dominated by Google, Meta, and Amazon. In June, Apple expanded the ways companies could pay to get in front of its customers’ eyeballs, allowing them to buy ads on the front page of the App Store. In August, Apple job postings suggested it was building a self-service platform for businesses to book ads to be served to customers through Apple products. This month, reports surfaced that Apple was courting potential buyers for ads on Apple TV+. What form those ads would take, such as pre-roll spots like those on YouTube or traditional TV commercials, is unclear.
Those moves all suggest Apple’s users will begin to see more ads inside its services and that the company will shift into more direct competition with ad-supported rivals such as Google and Meta. “Everybody’s been letting Google and then Facebook take all this money,” says Michael Cusumano, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management. “For Apple to step in and say ‘I want a piece of this too’ kind of makes sense.”
Apple’s latest watch face, Metropolitan, is a bit different. While it references timepieces from the past, there is no single dial design or wristwatch archetype it points to. Instead, there are subtle connections to nearly a century of fine watchmaking.
Ever since the introduction of the Apple Watch, I imagined a face quite like this one. When I first saw Kevin Lynch present the face at the 2022 WWDC keynote, I was smitten. Unsurprisingly, it’s far better than I envisioned.
This latest update makes further optimizations to memory utilization and export speeds. But most of all, I’m just happy that I can use Lightroom by its lonesome and not feel like I’m missing out on Photoshop’s best capabilities. The ones I care about are all included now.
The forthcoming release of DaVinci Resolve for iPad was first revealed by Apple in its introduction to the new iPad Pro models. Now details of the app's features and pricing have been announced, alongside the news that it will launch before the end of the year.
"DaVinci Resolve for iPad is truly a revolution for post production," Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO, said in a statement. "Customers will have the power of Hollywood post production tools for editing and color correction literally in their hands, creating a whole new generation of creative editors and colorists."
Usable only in close range and only among Apple devices, AirDrop is one of few relatively untraceable methods for sharing files in China. And some Chinese residents are using the feature to secretly spread protest messages based on the banners of the Beijing demonstrator, whom some refer to as the “bridge man.”
Citing unnamed sources, the Journal reported that Japan's government has signaled it would welcome the Apple supplier to build beyond its initial manufacturing plant in the country, though no decisions have yet been made. The factory currently under construction in Japan is meant to focus on less-advanced chips used in automobiles, for example, but additional capacity could focus on more-advanced technology, the Journal reported.
Not only do customers get notification prompts to track or monitor, but also believe it "encourages virtuous behavior" as well as ensures "workers behave a certain way on their property.” When it comes to instruction, customers are "emboldened to correct and instruct delivery workers because the activity takes place on their property, and with the doorbell camera they can see it in real time from any location” even when such requests, interpreted as orders, are unreasonable ones or clash with a driver’s other responsibilities (e.g. making other deliveries on-time). Customers were also open about how the use of surveillance cameras encouraged them to penalize drivers more, whether by reporting them to Amazon, alerting law enforcement, or sharing footage online to shame them. All of these forms of customer behavior are for the most part indistinguishable from various forms of workplace management.
I'm from Singapore, listening to a lot of podcasts that came from the US and the UK. And that's probably why I am listening to so many advertisements in podcasts that are simply advertising other podcasts. Repeatedly.
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The redesign of the iPad—I hesitate to call it the “base-level iPad” for reasons that will be shortly apparent—makes it very similar to the iPad Air, including a USB-C port, Touch ID on the power button, and the same 12MP wide camera. It’s also very slightly larger than the iPad Air in every dimension by about a millimeter, and weighs in at 16 grams heavier. So I guess the “Air” is still earning its moniker there. Sort of.
Apple has a new keyboard case for its redesigned lower-end iPad, the Magic Keyboard Folio, and unlike the company’s other keyboard covers for its tablets, this case has an entire row of 14 dedicated function keys.
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Apple’s Magic Keyboard Folio comes in a two-piece design. The keyboard attaches to the bottom of the iPad while it’s in landscape mode and also has a large trackpad. The back panel / stand combo, which can be set up at different viewing angles, attaches to the back of the iPad.
The 10th-generation iPad only supports the first-generation Apple Pencil, meaning that it requires an adapter to charge separately via a wired connection since the device has moved to USB-C.
Apple today started selling a new version of the Logitech Crayon with a USB-C port for charging. The original model with a Lightning connector remains available.
The new 10th generation iPad now requires either wireless headphones, or the use of a USB-C adapter as it becomes the latest device to lose the famous 3.5mm headphone connector.
The new iPad Pro also bring faster Wi-Fi networking, with support for the latest Wi-Fi 6E standards. This means downloads can be up to 2x faster when connecting to a 6E network. Cellular models now support more 5G bands for better worldwide coverage.
Apple says that the new iPad Pro can now detect when the Apple Pencil is up to 12mm above the display. This means your iPad Pro can automatically detect when your Apple Pencil is nearing the display and you can “see a preview of your mark” before you actually make it.
One example cited by Apple is that text fields automatically expand when the Apple Pencil gets near the display for Scribble.
I get it. The iPad Pro isn’t ready for a complete hardware redesign, nor did Apple want to redesign the Magic Keyboard this year. But the result is that the leading iPad is missing innovations that the cheap iPad offers. It’s weird.
The new iPad Pro (6th generation) has a sign on the back that says "iPad Pro," and now everything is right with the world.
The new Apple TV 4K adds HRD10+ and Dolby Vision, bumps the default storage capacities, and keeps Ethernet only on the more expensive model.
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Notably, the two Apple TV 4K offerings have some substantial differences besides storage. The pricier model is the only one that offers an Ethernet port, and it's the only one that will work as a border router with Thread smart home accessories.
Apple has changed the charging port on the remote to USB-C, but chose this year to exclude a charging cable from the box.
Alongside the new Apple TV 4K today, Apple has also announced some updates coming to tvOS 16. The company says that a future tvOS 16 update will bring an all-new Siri experience with a new design, personalized recommendations, and more.
macOS Ventura (or macOS 13) comes with several new features. The next version of the operating system enhances the continuity features between iPhone and Mac, so that an iPhone can now be used as a computer webcam. Another new continuity feature lets you transfer a FaceTime call from an iPhone to a Mac or vice versa.
Unlike in past years, this year’s iPadOS and iOS updates were not released simultaneously. Instead, Apple decided to delay iPadOS 16 until later in the fall to allow it more time to refine the update, including Stage Manager. Stage Manager is the biggest new addition coming to iPadOS 16 that offers users of select iPad models a new windowing system for apps.
iCloud Shared Photo Library was one of the headlining features when Apple first showed off iOS 16. And even before that, something like it was a highly requested capability for years. Now after being delayed past the initial iOS 16 launch in September, the iOS 16.1 release candidate notes have revealed that the highly anticipated feature will be arriving on October 24.
Last week, Apple announced a new feature for Apple Card users that allows you to automatically add your Daily Cash rewards to a new integrated savings account. Apple didn’t announce a release date for this feature at that time, but the release notes for iOS 16.1 indicate that the new savings account option will be included in next week’s update.
Apple today announced a new iPad Pro and entry-level iPad through press releases on its website and not through a typical digital event. Despite this, Apple has released a 9-minute video featuring different Apple employees talking about and presenting the new iPads.
Apple significantly increased the price of existing iPad mini models in non-US markets after updating its online store with new entry-level iPad and iPad Pro models on Tuesday.
A new music sketching app from Ableton will to allow users to create tracks on the go.
Note, which is currently only available on iOS devices, is a musical sketching tool and a place to “start ideas”, rather than created fleshed-out music.
Adobe MAX kicked off on Tuesday, and as expected, the company has announced a slew of new features and tools coming to its flagship products.
Ahead of iOS 16.1 launching, Apple today announced that developers can now submit apps with support for the Live Activities feature to the App Store. Developers can build their app using the Xcode 14.1 Release Candidate, test, and submit it for review.
To figure out why this was happening, I asked people struggling with the problem to demonstrate how they pick up and put away their phone. People who don’t have flashlight woes were careful not to touch the glass, holding their smartphone gingerly on the edges like a CD. The iPhone owners who did turn on their lights were more likely to hold on to the phone like it wasn’t a giant slab of touch-sensitive glass, griping the front and the back of the device between their fingers.
People of all ages appear to struggle with this issue. Tori Daniels, 25, says they have been turning on the flashlight for years, most recently when they walked into a pitch-black room and realized it was illuminated by their back pocket. Daniels says it’s a button-placement issue by Apple more than a user error.
Does Apple has a vision of what the entire line of iPads will look like in the future? Does it have an unifying vision, but has problems -- supply chain? -- reaching it? Or does it think that different iPads will look and work differently?
The front-facing camera in two different locations on iPads launched on the same day doesn't seem to be indicate strength in Apple's design vision.
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Once again, I don't think iPadOS should be taken away from anyone, and I also don't necessarily think I should be able to choose between iPadOS and macOS at checkout when buying an iPad (although the mock up at the top of this post was fun to make), but some form of tablet device running macOS would be super valuable to me, and I suspect many other people as well.
While the new temperature sensor on the Apple Watch Ultra isn’t a way to diagnose illness, it can raise a red flag if you do see an unexplained rise, and provide more info on what’s happening to your body during an infection.
Building on its focus of privacy and customization, the new release comes with the new Firefox View feature that lets users see up to 25 of their most recently closed tabs plus three active tabs on other devices. It also comes with new shortcut buttons for private mode, a PDF editor, text recognition, and fresh wallpapers.
The Retail and Fast Food Workers Union, whose members are taking the action, the Australian Services Union and Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association complain 70 per cent of Apple’s 4000 staff will not get pay rises under the company’s offer.
The proposed four-year agreement guarantees annual wage rises of 2.6 per cent and 2.8 per cent but only for people on the minimum wage in the agreement. Most Apple staff earn above the minimum so will not receive the pay rise, unions say.
I don't want an iPad that can run macOS. I want a Mac that is as light and as thin as the iPad Pro.
(And I am still waiting for Apple to 'update' its website while battling sleepiness. Well.... good night. See you tomorrow.)
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In a memo seen by MacRumors, Apple acknowledges that some users of the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max may see a message that reads “SIM Not Supported” appear on their device. After displaying the pop-up message, the iPhone may entirely freeze, according to the memo. Apple says it’s “investigating” the issue and notes it’s not a hardware problem, adding that customers should keep their software up to date.
In the meantime, as the investigation is ongoing, Apple advises customers to wait a few minutes to see if the message disappears. If it doesn’t, customers should not attempt to restore the device, Apple emphasizes in the memo.
I’ve traded in a few iPhones to Apple over the years without issue. This year, however, I received an email about a week and a half after I mailed in an iPhone 13 Pro Max saying that the box had arrived at Apple’s trade-in facility, but that there was nothing inside the box.
Mercedes-Benz announced today that it’s bringing support for Apple’s Music’s spatial audio to certain vehicles. Apple Music launched spatial audio with Dolby Atmos last year on a range of devices, including the iPhone, Mac, HomePod, and Apple TV, but this is the first time it’ll be available natively in a car.
As you might have guessed, the integration doesn’t come cheap.
Apple has put on hold plans to use memory chips from China's Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC) in its products, multiple sources told Nikkei Asia.
The move comes amid the latest round of U.S. export controls imposed against the Chinese tech sector and is a sign that Washington's crackdown is creating a chilling effect down the supply chain.
According to rumors, we are going to be getting a whole bunch of press releases from Apple real soon now. I am curious to see what the new Mac Pro will look like, but that may not arrive this month.
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Caregivers have turned to Apple’s tiny, $29 tracking devices after finding other methods of monitoring people with dementia aren’t a fit, or are too expensive. Many tracking apps require people to have their phones with them. People with dementia might forget them when they leave the house, say caregivers. They do tend to remember keys and wallets, however, to which the AirTags were designed to attach.
Public-health officials say tracking people with dementia is ethically murky, because some individuals don’t want to be tracked—though the people caring for them are often in a bind. And even the people using AirTags find they lack the precision to be useful in dire situations. Helping people stay safe in their homes as they age is placing a growing strain on families who are often the caregivers of loved ones with dementia. An estimated 6.5 million Americans ages 65 and older have Alzheimer’s dementia, a number that is expected to reach 12.7 million by 2050, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.
The very idea of a radar—a device used to monitor and alert for danger—has negative, anxiety-provoking connotations, McFarlane told me, and is generally “an inappropriate metaphor for the sound design with respect to waking up pleasantly and effectively.” The volume follows a receding pattern, starting off loud and getting softer, before repeating in a quick loop. Evolutionarily, McFarlane said, loud receding sounds indicate a nearby threat, potentially inducing anxiety or, as many Radar critics point out, a fight or flight response.
So, yeah, Radar is fine for, say, a reminder to turn off the oven or a warning that enemy troops are approaching. But for rising peacefully and productively from slumber? Not so much.
After my experience of the past week, that allure has definitely worn off. Indeed, even that return train trip to Glasgow seems like a nano-second compared to the amount of time I have spent waiting around to find someone to fix my iPhone.
We constantly hear people complaining about waiting times in the NHS and how difficult it is to get an appointment to see their GP. To them, I say this “try getting some actual service in the Apple Store”.
Put simply, the EmptyMyFridge app works to reduce food waste by monitoring the contents of your fridge. This ensures that no food gets pushed to the back of your fridge and forgotten, only to be thrown out when it’s finally discovered.
This year, 5.3 billion mobile phones will be thrown away the international waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) forum says.
Its estimate, based on global trade data, highlights the growing environmental problem of "e-waste".
Someone need to do an app to tell me whether the food in my fridge that has expired are still edible.
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Part of it may have to do with podcast listening habits; unlike with video streaming services, it seems that the average podcast consumer has no desire to switch through multiple apps, which means that if you take a podcast exclusive to an app they don’t use, they’ll just stop listening to it. That was my experience when Spotify pulled two of my favorite Gimlet shows off RSS.
The voice over for "Call To The Wild" is a man reading a famous ad credited to Ernest Shackleton trying to recruit men for his expedition to explore the Antarctic.
With the second-generation buds, I was disturbed by fewer announcements and chatty passengers than with the legacy model. The sound quality was noticeably better, too.
Burst Photo is an open-source application available for free on macOS that promises to significantly reduce noise and improve overall image quality for images captured using any camera.
The latest model in the Mophie Powerstation Plus line of external batteries includes two integrated charging cables —Lightning and USB-C. This simplifies charging an iPhone, iPad or Mac.
Workers at Apple’s Penn Square store in Oklahoma City have voted to unionize with the Communications Workers of America, with 56 yeses, and 32 nos. According to the National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the election, all regular full-time and part-time employees at the store were eligible to vote, 95 in total.
Audience member Samantha Coleman explained in a tearful Instagram video Wednesday that she has hearing loss and was actually using a captioning device to better follow along.
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“I think it’s a misunderstanding but we still need to talk about it,” Coleman said in her Instagram post.
She added that “to be publicly ridiculed really hurts” and criticized Broadway for systemic accessibility issues.
i have stopped listening to quite a few BBC podcasts since they started doing 'windowing'. Sure, BBC Sounds (the app) is free, and the podcasts are still free, but I am 'too lazy' to use more than one app to listen to podcasts.
Besides, I have more than enough great podcasts to listen. I can't even finish the podcasts I subscribe to.
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Apple is launching a no-fee, high-yield savings account with Goldman Sachs for its credit card customers, underlining the tech giant’s ambitions to offer more financial products to its billion-plus base of iPhone users.
Apple said the high-yield savings account would be available to Apple Card customers “in the coming months”.
But beyond issues of reliability, Apple’s smart home implementation has remained at times an exercise in frustration. Even now, years after its first release, it’s still missing a couple features whose absence leaves me scratching my head.
There’s never been a better time for a Swifties to start their fitness journeys. In a Thursday (Oct. 13) Instagram post, Apple Fitness+ announced that its newest set of exercise programs will be designed around the music of Taylor Swift, featuring songs specially curated for yoga, treadmill and HIIT workouts.
But where Anker does begin to mix things up for its latest MagSafe power bank is the additional functionality. It’s a design we’ve seen in the past, but now the brand is adding in a fold out kickstand for propping up your device.
But existing restrictions around Sunday Ticket have slowed negotiations between Apple and the NFL in recent months, according to people familiar with the matter. Talks between the league and potential buyers of Sunday Ticket are continuing, the people said.
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Apple isn't interested in simply acting as a conduit for broadcasting games, according to Eddie Cue, Apple's senior vice president of services. Cue oversees Apple's media and sports partnerships and its streaming service, Apple TV+. Apple is looking for partnerships with sports leagues in which it can offer consumers more than standard rights agreements — such as having free rein to offer games globally or in local markets.
Netflix announced today that its new Basic with Ads tier is slated to launch on November 3rd, 2022, for $6.99 in the US, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, and the UK. In exchange for making you watch an average of four to five ads per hour that run anywhere from 15–30 seconds, Basic with Ads will give subscribers access to a large swath of Netflix’s programming but not the platform’s full catalog.
I was wrong. I did not expect Apple to be that interested in sports programming. And Apple seems to be confident in its capability to pick and choose, and to support a not-that-popular league.
Now, let's see what Apple in the rest of the world.
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Apple and MLS are hiring English-, Spanish- and French-speaking announcing teams and crews to handle streams that will go to dozens of countries. In the past, even MLS players and their families have struggled to keep up with games if they are in some parts of the world. Garber said if a player from Paraguay takes the field for Sporting Kansas City, the MLS team there, the game will be available in the U.S. but also “in Paraguay, to anyone picking up their phone and seeing this one game accessible to anyone with a connected device.”
For Apple, which operates around the world including in China, the MLS deal represents a “huge global opportunity,” Cue said. He said “a lot of fun things” are in store on the production side, noting that this season’s MLB streams on Friday nights have enabled the company to experiment with elements like on-screen statistics, high-definition cameras, and microphones on the playing field.
The German airline Lufthansa reversed itself on Wednesday, saying that Apple AirTags and other Bluetooth tracking devices would once again be allowed in checked baggage.
“The German Aviation Authorities (Luftfahrt-Bundesamt) confirmed today, that they share our risk assessment that tracking devices with very low battery and transmission power in checked luggage do not pose a safety risk,” the airline said. “With that these devices are allowed on Lufthansa flights.”
Both Apple Music and Apple TV will be available in preview versions soon for Windows, allowing Apple subscribers to access music and TV shows natively on Windows without having to use web versions or the pre-existing iTunes app. Microsoft is also integrating iCloud photos into its built-in Photos app on Windows 11.
AirPods Pro 2 have been widely praised since their release last month, but there have been a few early bugs. Many AirPods Pro 2 users are now taking to Reddit and other online forums to complain about a pesky audio drifting issue, which occurs even when Apple’s features like Spatial Audio and dynamic head tracking are disabled.
1Password lets you selectively sync login information from the iPhone to the Apple Watch. That’s still something iCloud Keychain doesn’t offer. Now the latest version of 1Password 8 includes a totally rebuilt watchOS 8 with a new set of features.
It’s part of a broader effort to reward workers at the Cupertino, California-based company, which has had to navigate inflationary pressure, a tight labor market and changing demands of workers during the pandemic. But the company was quick to inform the employees at its unionized retail location -- a store in the Baltimore suburb of Towson, Maryland -- that they wouldn’t get the new perks.
The reason given was that the Towson store needs to negotiate benefits with Apple via the collective bargaining arrangement that comes with a union. The approach isn’t unique to Apple.
After more than 30 years, Microsoft Office is being renamed “Microsoft 365” to mark the software giant’s collection of growing productivity apps. While Office apps like Excel, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint aren’t going away, Microsoft will now mostly refer to these apps as part of Microsoft 365 instead of Microsoft Office.
I can understand why Microsoft rebranded Office 365 to Microsoft 365. It's obvious: who wants to be in Office 365 days a year?
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The airline has not issued a specific policy prohibiting baggage trackers. Rather, it says it is at the mercy of the rules. On Tuesday, the airline said it was “in close contact with the respective institutions to find a solution as quickly as possible.” It also indicated its own examination saw no danger from their use.
[...]
An F.A.A. advisory from 2017 allows devices to use low-powered wireless communication like Bluetooth on board planes in the United States. In a statement on Monday, the Transportation Security Administration confirmed Apple’s view that “tracking devices are allowed in both carry-on and checked bags.”
On Tuesday, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency said that its regulation “does not in itself ban or allow devices such as the Apple AirTags.” But the E.A.S.A. seemed to kick the matter back to Lufthansa, saying, “It is the responsibility of operators to prohibit the use of devices which could adversely affect the flight safety or the aircraft’s systems.”
It turns out that SOS in the status bar is how Apple now indicates that the phone isn’t connected to a cellular network but can still make emergency calls. You may also see “SOS Only” where the carrier name usually goes. This feature works in Australia, Canada, and the United States.
For the last two years, Apple allowed PBS to air the iconic Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas Peanuts specials. This year, they are Apple exclusive however. Apple will stream them for free for everyone — no subscription needed — for a limited time.
But over the past few years, I've noticed that Apple charging cables have radically improved.
And I know this because I've been testing them.
Nearly four years after its last major release, VirtualBox 7.0 arrives with a host of new features. Chief among them are Windows 11 support via TPM, EFI Secure Boot support, full encryption for virtual machines, and a few Linux niceties.
A new resource featuring interactive Q&A’s and one-on-ones for developers has launched today called “Ask Apple.” Coming as an extension to its Tech Talks and Meet with App Store Experts, the company is aiming to “provide developers with even more opportunities to connect directly with Apple experts for insight, support, and feedback.”
Apple, Digiday has learned, is preparing a more serious push into monetizing its original video content with an ad play, according to several media agency sources that held separate exploratory discussions with the digital giant.
But building a car is harder than it sounds. The odds of any company selling a self-driving passenger vehicle in 2025 are close to zilch, and anything less than that puts Apple in an already crowded marketplace. It’s a no-win situation that has churned through executives in Cupertino.
In the meantime, e-bikes have been booming, with plenty of room left to grow. There is no feasible path to net zero emissions that does not include a proliferation of light electric vehicles. And this presents Apple with the chance to do something it hasn’t done since the iPhone: make a category-defining product that also rewires how people relate to time and space.
I still believe Apple should make a self-driving wheelchair. It is probably more achievable than a self-driving car, and it will have greater impact on making humankind better.
Of course, my mind also goes to the 'wheelchairs' in Wall-E. And that is… not that great.
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“There’s no silver bullet, in terms of activating crash detection,” says Huang. “It’s hard to say how many of these things have to trigger, because it’s not a straight equation. Depending how fast the traveling speed was earlier, determines what signals we have to see later on, as well. Your speed change, combined with the impact force, combined with the pressure change, combined with the sound level, it’s all a pretty dynamic algorithm.”
The system does, however, need to detect multiple data points at once, so simply dropping the phone in a moving car shouldn’t accidentally trigger the feature.
Apple is continuing to fix some of the early bugs affecting iOS 16 as well as the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro. The company is now rolling out iOS 16.0.3, which includes additional bug fixes and performance improvements for notifications, the Camera app, and more.
The update, which is now available to Apple Watch users, fixes a number of bugs, including one that affected the microphone on some Apple Watch models and another that could cause interruptions in Spotify’s audio streaming.
watchOS 9’s new Low Power Mode has thus been a revelation. It no longer dumbs down Apple’s smartwatch but merely disables some less-necessary features and reduces performance.
Tired of QWERTY? Starting with iOS 16—which launched last month—the Apple iPhone now supports the 86-year-old Dvorak keyboard layout natively. Previously, Dvorak typing aficionados needed to install a third-party app to use the layout.
Riding a city bike comes with two certainties: thieves will target you and tourists will walk in your path. AirBell addresses both issues by discretely hiding one of Apple’s AirTag trackers inside a small mechanical bell with a loud and pleasant ding.
Swift was required to be a language that you can define OS libraries in, and that automatically makes a bunch of things harder. This is where that knee-jerk reaction comes from: being an OS library developer is harder than being a third-party library developer (or an OS-internal-only library developer!). But that’s something that should be understood as a trade-off, and it’s valid to weight the sides of the trade-off differently, especially when some of the negatives show up nearly every year given how Apple does things.
This reads to me, pretty clear, as Lufthansa taking the by-the-book stance that AirTags are not expressly permitted, which is very different from saying AirTags are expressly banned. They’re neither officially allowed nor officially banned. People put all sorts of electronic devices in their checked baggage without removing the batteries.
The union representing Apple Store workers in Australia has called a strike as part of ongoing negotiations for a new pay and conditions deal.
The strike, agreed to yesterday by members of the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU), will see some staff at Australian Apple Stores stop work for an hour on October 18. Union members will also decline to undertake 15 specific tasks including accepting deliveries, installing screen protectors, meeting with Store bosses, or anything to do with arranging contracts with telecommunications carriers.
Once upon a time, when we were still using battery-operated alarm clocks, rather than relying on iPhones as alarm clocks and hope that there weren't bugs introduced to prevent the alarm from going off.... now where was I.... oh yes.... once upon a time, an alarm clock in our luggage simply went off just as my wife and I were clearing customs in an airport.
Fun time.
This was also before airport security went many notches up. So, thankfully, we and the custom staff just laughed it off.
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The iPhone 14’s new Crash Detection feature, which is supposed to alert authorities when it detects you’ve been in a car accident, has an unexpected side effect: it dials 911 on rollercoasters. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the feature has had law enforcement sent to amusement parks on numerous occasions after mistaking a thrill ride’s twists, turns, and hard braking for a real emergency.
[...]
Bringing smartphones on rides isn’t really a smart idea to begin with, but the risk of false 911 calls might be all the more reason to leave the iPhone 14 (and other devices) behind before getting in that bumper car. Otherwise, you can opt to put your phone on airplane mode or just disable the feature altogether.
The fantasy began to consume me at the turn of the millennium.
I’d always felt like a half-being, a cyborg of incompatible substances: gringa daughter of a Puerto Rican MD and a long-unemployed Mexican man with addiction issues. Native or alien. Nerd or rebel. I was white and not white but thought I had to choose.
No wonder, then, that the greatest ambition of my youth was to achieve digital immortality, or uploading my mind to the metaverse. Goodbye, flawed body. Hello, god-self.
The vast, cavernous spaces of the two turbine halls are now filled with restaurants and shops, including Ralph Lauren, Mulberry and Reiss, as well as Uniqlo, Mango, Superdry and Swatch. A floor above Levi’s, the former control room B has been turned into a slick bar, which has the original stainless-steel control panels and switch dials for managing the flow of electricity.
Apple will relocate more than 1,500 employees from offices around London to its new UK base inside the boiler house, across six floors. Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, who had a private tour of the building recently, said: “Once a source of energy for much of London, the transformation this building has undergone honours London’s past and celebrates its future. We’re so glad to be a part of it.”
I am probably too old for roller coasters nowadays, but I have been on quite a few roller coasters back in the days. Of course, then, I didn't have to debate whether to bring my mobile phone along for the ride... because I didn't have any mobile phones. Nor did I have any pagers either.
Then, the next phase of roller coasters riding was with my young daughter. As you can imagine, it wasn't really hard-core rides. The most 'exciting' one was probably Space Mountain in Hong Kong Disneyland. I did bring my mobile phone along in my pants' pockets, and I don't remember having to think twice about it. And, of course, the mobile phones then were not calling emergency services no matter what happened. (No, no mobile phones ever dropped out of my pockets.)
Now, I can imagine theme parks reminding riders to please turn off car-crash mode. In fact, I can see this as a marketing slogan: Our rides are so exciting that your iPhones will be calling for help!
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Tumblr sees nowhere near the number of posts of any kind that it did six years ago, and not to be crass, but there are constantly rumors that it is itself at death’s door. GIFs are “cringe” in part because they are too easy to make and find—they have been totally devalued by the public. And they are being replaced—Frazier noted that people communicate with other kinds of moving images now, such as TikTok clips with text over them and super-short Twitter videos that add humor by incorporating sound.
The Apple Watch apparently picked up on the signs of pregnancy before the woman even had any idea that she was pregnant, leading to the discovery. While the watch didn't outright deduce that the woman was pregnant, but it did report the heart rate data accurately enough to alarm her of the change.
I pronounce jif. And I prefer tabs over spaces. (But I don't intentionally change spaces to tabs when I am working on someone else's source code.)
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Medications has a terrific amount of utility for a new feature within an existing product. I’ve used it to replace recurring reminders that were inflexible and didn’t provide me with long-term information about how well I’m adhering to my medication schedule.
Minor quibbles aside, I have high hopes for the Medications feature because it’s sufficiently easy to set up and use, either by an iPhone owner or on behalf of someone who needs it. For adult children helping their elderly parents or parents helping their children, Medications could provide both a tool for improved health and a medical record that can help determine if an ineffective drug intervention is due to pills not being taken properly.
When the watch is submerged, the touch screen becomes unresponsive, and there’s not much you can do about it. Zeier then remembered about AssistiveTouch, which was introduced last year as part of the watchOS 8 update. This accessibility feature allows users to navigate the system interface using hand gestures such as a pinch or a clench.
Apple appears to be rolling out a wide-reaching branding change about how it refers to its Mac portable lineup. Up until recently, Apple officially referred to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro as “Mac notebooks” or just “notebooks,” leaning on the relatively outdated industry terminology of notebook computers.
But now, everything user-facing appears to be slowly converting to using a “laptop” nomenclature. Updates to the Apple Online Store product pages, articles in the Apple Support knowledge base, and even the Mac operating system is beginning to reflect this branding update.
Like so much that is emerging in the Apple enterprise, Orka Workspace meets the needs of remote work. Specifically, it’s built for companies who seek secure and flexible ways for employees to access secure work computing environments from anywhere.
Parcel is one of the most popular package tracking app for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. This week, the app received a major update that added support for Siri commands, so users can now ask Apple’s virtual assistant about the status of their packages.
If you’re looking for a beautiful and simple way to stay in tune with what mother nature is up to, you should definitely give this amazing free app a try.
A Nikkei teardown of Apple's flagship models in the iPhone 14 series revealed that production costs have soared about 20% from its previous model to an all-time high. Short on new functions, the iPhone 14 still reflects Apple's strategy of showcasing ultrahigh-performance devices such as proprietary 4-nanometer chips and new camera components.
Lufthansa is telling passengers to switch off tracking devices placed in their luggage, rendering the hardware useless in keeping track of bags.
[...]
Air tracking hardware like the Apple AirTag became a saving grace for passengers during a summer of travel chaos where thousands of bags were lost.
Some passengers were even able to use data from their tags to contradict airlines' claims about where their luggage was located, while an Apple AirTag helped track a lost bag to an airline worker's home, who was subsequently charged with theft.
My favorite app is Find My Friends. If you do not know what this is, it’s an app that lets you share your location at all times with fellow iPhone havers. I have access to the locations of nineteen friends and they have access to mine. I also have two friends, both named Nick, who refuse to share their locations with anyone—but I have given mine to both of them out of loyalty, just because I like the idea that they know where I am. I like looking at the map of New York, seeing little bubbles with my friends’ initials pop up in the usual and the surprising places.
The Classic II sits on a desk in the corner of my living room, just beside my main front window. It takes up a small amount of space, is unassuming, and always looks happy, ready to serve me whenever I call on it.
My favorite Mac is the one that I am using. :-)
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Many of our complaints about Focus from last year still hold. It remains overly complicated, and with the addition of Lock Screen linking and Focus Filters, the overall iOS 16 user experience can become even more unpredictable. Less attentive users should give Focus a wide berth beyond Do Not Disturb, Driving, and possibly Sleep (which is the only way to turn off the iPhone 14 Pro’s Always-On display automatically). But Apple seems to be in love with Focus, and if used carefully, it can be a powerful way to cut out distractions for better productivity during work, higher quality family time, and more focused activities.
Often, a truly great app is a reflection of the people who built it. Entrepreneurs around the world are launching apps on the App Store to provide meaningful avenues for connection and empathy, make the world more inclusive and accessible for everyone, and honor their rich cultures and identities. The teams from Encantos, BightSite, and Yana — comprised of Hispanic and Latin founders and developers — showcase how creativity combines with passion and skill to bring best-in-class apps to life.
One of the best reasons to keep macOS up to date is protecting yourself against security issues — and Jamf found a big one in the summer of 2022 that allowed attackers to bypass macOS Gatekeeper.
Jamf Threat Labs found the vulnerability in macOS Monterey 12.5. The company reported it to Apple on May 31, 2022, and Apple patched it in July.
For me, the always-on display has provided the iPhone with a new level of utility. In the always-on display, the glanceability of the Apple Watch comes to the iPhone. If I ultimately end up with an Apple Watch, perhaps my tune will change.
For now though, my iPhone is more useful than ever before.
Our initial impressions and review ended up proving true in the long run. The MagSafe Battery Pack remained our favorite way to charge the iPhone when away from a dedicated charger.
Podcasters are increasingly offering subscriptions as a way to grow complementary revenue and offer listeners bonus content or additional benefits. But they’re waiting on Apple, Spotify and other podcast-hosting platforms to offer more flexibility and features to grow listenership and make it easier for people to find the shows that offer subscriptions.
Mick Payne remembers the moment the madness of the way we dispose of our data was brought home to him.
The chief operating officer of Techbuyer, an IT asset disposal company in Harrogate, was standing in a large windowless room of a data center in London surrounded by thousands of used hard drives owned by a credit card company. Knowing he could wipe the drives and sell them on, he offered a six-figure sum for all the devices.
The answer was no. Instead, a lorry would be driven up to the site and the data-storing devices would be dropped inside by authorized security personnel. Then industrial machines would shred them into tiny fragments.
I'm still using only just a single focus mode; it turns off most of my notifications, and switches to a black-and-white wallpaper. Probably because I am already starting with a very limited set of allowable notifications, I didn't find a need to set up more focus modes.
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This is the new iPhone that most people want. It’s not the iPhone with the neat new display features or a high-resolution camera. It’s the iPhone with a big display and a battery that goes for days.
That’s really all you need to know about it, honestly. If you’d rather have an iPhone with the best possible battery life than an iPhone with the very newest features, then the iPhone 14 Plus is the one for you.
The blue Apple picked for the iMessage bubbles provides a better color contrast against the white text on it compared to the green Apple picked for the Android bubbles. In other words, Apple picked a darker blue but a lighter green to make iMessage texts more readable.
If fall product events from Apple, Google, and Samsung are any indication, the industry’s strategy is to wring more dollars out of each existing customer by upselling them on accessories and subscriptions that function uniquely well within each ecosystem—and make it ever more inconvenient to shift to a competitor’s platform. An Apple spokesperson disputes that the company makes it hard to use competing products, citing the vibrancy of its app store and suggesting that it’s easy to switch device ecosystems. Google and Samsung spokespeople say their Android and Galaxy experiences are, respectively, supportive of user choice and open to integration with partner devices.
Apple today updated the Shazam app for iPhone and iPad, introducing a new feature that is designed to allow songs identified using Siri to be added to both the Shazam App library and the Music Recognition History view in the Control Center. Note that this functionality requires iOS 16.
Apple today announced that artists and bands can now personalize their Apple Music profile page with a custom bio and the option to add their hometown, birth date or year formed, and more. Artists can also quickly add lyrics for their songs on Apple Music.
An Apple Watch Series 7 user is speaking out after their device overheated, started smoking, and eventually exploded. The case was brought to Apple’s attention and the company confirmed it would investigate what happened. At the same time, however, Apple also attempted to coerce the user into staying silent and not sharing the story.
Bare Bones has released BBEdit 14.6, marking the triumphant return of font ligatures (when supported by the display font in use) and improving Unicode character rendering.
"Companies are no longer willing to sit and wait for a policy change in China, or put their eggs in one basket for their sourcing needs," Oscar De Bok, CEO of logistics company DHL's supply chain business, told the BBC.
"They want to make sure they have two or three alternatives," said Mr De Bok, adding that this trend towards "omni-sourcing" had clear beneficiaries in countries like India, Vietnam and Mexico.
Fast Company's website finally came back online eight days after the publication took it down due to a cyberattack. The business publication was initially hacked on September 25th, but it wasn't until the second security breach on September 27th that it had to take drastic measures to contain the situation. If you'll recall, Apple News users who are subscribed to Fast Company received a couple of obscene push notifications with racial slurs in late September. The bad actors had also defaced the website with obscene and racist messages and posted details on how they were able to infiltrate the publication.
The iPhone Plus, with more than two days of battery, sure sound nice. I have to remind myself: it's 50% heavier than my iPhone mini, and I cannot sit down with that phone in my pants' pocket.
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This may seem like an obvious point. After all, pretty much every iPhone owner gets a new iOS version in the fall, while far fewer will get a new iPhone. But it feels more pronounced this year than in recent history. This year’s iPhones feature minor upgrades over last year’s models, while iOS 16 provides more dramatic, dare I say fun, new features than other OS version upgrades in recent history.
Put simply, Stage Manager is a big deal for the iPad because it gives it windows for the first time, while the Mac has been a window-based computing device since Steve Jobs first took it out of that bag in early 1984. And that contrast gets to the core of why putting Stage Manager on the iPad is a much bigger job than adding it to the Mac.
The long-running push for the launch of the new smart home standard Matter is taking a big step forward. The Connectivity Standards Alliance announced today that it, along with members of the alliance, are formally releasing the Matter 1.0 standard and certification program.
This opens the door to official product certification for the first Matter accessories, and it comes as the latest iOS 16.1 betas add support for the technology.
Apple releases a new flagship smartphone like clockwork in the latter half of every year, so it’s safe to assume that we’ll see a new iPhone (likely to be called the iPhone 16) released around the same time as the rules come into effect in late 2024. But given iPhones are typically launched in September and the EU’s legislation won’t come into effect for 24 months after it’s formally approved by the European Council, the iPhone 16 could end up being launched just before the new rules come into effect. That would make 2025’s iPhone 17 (if Apple continues with its current naming convention) the first model forced to use USB-C for wired charging.
While Apple has switched to USB-C on the Mac and most of its iPads, several products still use the proprietary Lightning port that was introduced with the iPhone 5 in 2012, including the iPhone 14. Here are 10 devices that will need to switch as soon as Apple updates them.
As firmware updates are released quietly over the air, Apple does not provide release notes. We do not know what new features or bug fixes might be included in the software, but given the recent release of both the iPhone 14 models and the AirPods Pro 2, the firmware could have optimizations for these devices.
The bug seems to trigger battery replacement notifications from the Find My app on nearby devices when the battery of the AirPods Pro earbuds or MagSafe Charging Case is low.
The release brings a slew of updates and fresh features like a new Home Screen, Smart Inbox, Priority Email, Set Aside feature, Command Center, “Gatekeeper” email blocking, and much more.
Apple has highlighted how its continuing Community Education Initiative (CEI) is bring coding, creativity and work opportunities around the world.
Apple has been talking with a number of its suppliers about increasing production in India, including of key acoustics devices, as early as next year, three people familiar with the matter told Nikkei Asia.
In response, iPhone assembler Foxconn is preparing to make Beats headphones in the country, and hopes to eventually produce AirPods there as well, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The National Labor Relations Board has filed a complaint against Apple, alleging that the company “discriminated against employees” at its World Trade Center store, according to Kayla Blado, a spokesperson for the regulator. The NLRB’s investigation was spurred by charges filed in May by the Communications Workers of America, the union working with organizers at Apple retail stores in New York, Atlanta, and Oklahoma. The later store is preparing to hold a vote later this month on whether to become the second US location to unionize.
The one thing that I find as the most fun on the new iOS: the little animation that occurs when one taps on the "Search" button in the bottom of the home screen. I have no idea why I like this particular animation so much -- it's not much of a different from many of the other animations found in the operating system. But for whatever reasons, I enjoy this a lot.
Of course, I don't get to see any Dynamic Island stuff at all on my iPhone mini. That may be more fun to other people. But for me, I'm definitely going to choose holding on to the iPhone mini (thin and light!) than to upgrade for Dynamic Island.
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Apple highlighted its human curation in Apple Music that powers its recommendation algorithms. The company believes a human touch is more important than ever to connect artists and fans.
Apple Music Today is the newest example of human curation at the company. Every day, editors will pick a new song and explore its history.
Apple also emphasizes that, despite such a huge expanse of songs, Apple Music continues to lead the charge of human curation.
Zillow today announced that it has integrated the Apple Maps Look Around feature into its real estate app, allowing potential home buyers to get a closer look at the neighborhood around a house they are interested in.
The EU's long-debated plan to enforce a common charger standard on manufacturers of smartphones, tablets, cameras and other devices, has become law. It was voted into law on October 4, 2022, by the EU Parliament with 602 votes in favor, 13 against, and 8 abstentions.
Apple Original Films has dated the run-from-slavery thriller Emancipation for a December 2 theatrical opening, followed by a December 9 release on its Apple TV+ streaming site. [...]
There has been much speculation — and erroneous reporting — as Apple and its filmmakers plotted just what to do with a meaningful film whose status as an awards-season frontrunner changed the moment Smith slapped presenter Chris Rock during the last Oscars, after the comic disparaged his wife with a joke about her hair.
What will be my last device still using a Lightning cable? My bet will be my Magic Keyboard.
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A defiant Apple may well just cover up the Lightning port on new iPhones, and tell Europeans to go use a MagSafe or Qi charger.
After all, isn't that what Apple did to the Sim tray in U.S. this year?
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“Personally, I felt as if there was a new life-saving identity on my iPhone,” Federighi said. “It’s a very delicate animation effect, but it’s a little different from anthropomorphism, but I think it gave the iPhone a new strong personality and vitality.”
The iPad shouldn’t be a big iPhone and it shouldn’t just become a Mac. So what’s left? The trickiest needle to thread of them all: making the iPad truly its own device. A good start would be to question the assumptions that the tablet inherited from iOS. For example, is a simple screen full of application icons the best use of the device’s most valuable real estate? There’s no reason to be beholden to decisions made for an entirely different device.
As of October 1, Apple SIM is no longer available for activating new cellular data plans on supported iPad models, according to an Apple support document.
GrowWithJo feels like it's focused more on genuinely being healthy and learning better habits to incorporate into your life, rather than enrolling in a boot camp to get a “summer body.” That, a gal can appreciate.
The Rachio 3 sprinkler controller added HomeKit support back in 2018. Recently users have been reporting "no response" errors.
Since April 2022, Rachio has been detailing the work its engineers have done "working with Apple's dev team" to resolve the problem, but have concluded that they cannot.
On Sunday night, six people were killed in a car crash in Lincoln, Nebraska, in what police have described as the 'worst crash in Lincoln in recent memory.'
While there were no witnesses to the crash and everyone in the car was either dead or incapacitated, one of the passenger's iPhone 14 automatically alerted first responders to the crash.
I've encountered a problem on Apple's website. I've created a ticket and received a case number. And shortly after that, I think I solved the problem on my own.
Now I have a new problem.
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Smartphones have gradually become more useful for people with a range of physical abilities, thanks to tools like screen readers and adjustable text sizes.
Today, we take global time synchronization for granted. It is critical to the Internet, and therefore to civilization. Vital systems—power grids, financial markets, telecommunications networks—rely on it to keep records and sort cause from effect. N.T.P. works in partnership with satellite systems, such as the Global Positioning System (G.P.S.), and other technologies to synchronize time on our many online devices. The time kept by precise and closely aligned atomic clocks, for instance, can be broadcast via G.P.S. to numerous receivers, including those in cell towers; those receivers can be attached to N.T.P. servers that then distribute the time across devices linked together by the Internet, almost all of which run N.T.P. (Atomic clocks can also directly feed the time to N.T.P. servers.) The protocol operates on billions of devices, coördinating the time on every continent. Society has never been more synchronized.
For decades, Mills was the person who decided how N.T.P. should work (though he disputes the suggestion that he acted with total sovereignty). Quirky, prickly, authoritative, and sometimes opaque—“He does not suffer fools gladly,” one longtime collaborator said—he has served as the Internet’s Father Time. But his tenure is coming to an end. Mills was born with glaucoma. When he was a child, a surgeon was able to save some of the vision in his left eye, and he has always worked using very large computer displays. Around a decade ago, his vision began to fail, and he is now completely blind. Examining computer code and writing out explanations and corrections have become maddeningly tedious. Drawing diagrams or composing complex mathematical equations is nearly impossible.
Apple held the first screening for Will Smith and Antoine Fuqua’s upcoming film, Emancipation, on Saturday in Washington D.C. Though the fate of the project seemingly hung in the balance following Smith’s now-infamous Oscars slap, the screening indicates Apple is looking to release it soon.
It's October. It's almost time for Apple to show us what is being replacing the Mac Pro.
Not that I am buying one.
Not that I can even afford one.
But, maybe, just maybe, there is a mini version of the Mac Pro? (The only Intel Mac that Apple is still selling is the Mac Pro and the Mac mini.) Can I afford a mini Mac Pro?
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As other companies, such as Meta itself, double down on the term, Cook believe that the average person likely doesn’t even know “what the metaverse is.”
“I always think it’s important that people understand what something is. And I’m really not sure the average person can tell you what the metaverse is,” he explained.
Stern recruited Michael Barabe to crash his demolition derby car with a heavy-duty steel frame into two unoccupied vehicles parked in a junkyard — a 2003 Ford Taurus and a 2008 Dodge Caravan. The results were mixed, with the iPhone and Apple Watch only detecting some of the crashes, which Apple said was the result of the testing conditions in the junkyard failing to provide enough “signals” to trigger the feature every time.
Personally, I think that the Action button should always perform its secondary action while the user has a workout active, regardless of how you have it configured. This would avoid my situation and also make the user experience much more consistent. Otherwise, it becomes very difficult for the user to know what is going to happen. Or at the very least while you have a workout active, pressing it shouldn’t end that workout and start another without some form of confirmation.
In the spot, a filmmaker uses the iPhone 14 Pro to shoot a series of action sequences, including a chicken running, a restaurant fight scene, a dance number, stop motion animation, a car chase, a helicopter ride, and more.
Micromat has released Techtool Pro 16, upgrading the hard drive repair and system maintenance tool with new features. Techtool Pro includes the new Techtool Monitor, which operates in the background to keep track of drive health, battery condition, data usage, and more. You can configure Techtool Monitor to save APFS snapshots, track free space on your drives, and review the SMART routine results for your drives. The update also adds a new tool to rebuild macOS databases such as Mail, Spotlight, and Launch Services.
Apple Watch aficionado Craig Hockenberry of The Iconfactory has scratched his own itch with a new app we can all appreciate.
Mobile games are great, and billions of people play them. To meet that demand, game developers — ranging from triple-A publishers to one-person teams — have pumped out an enormous number of games, far too many titles to sort through on your own.
Let us help.
It’s unusual to jam podcasts in a music app like this. Apple has both the most popular podcasts app and a fledgling music service, but it keeps them separate because that’s what people expect. Amazon serves podcasts through its Amazon Music app, but the company is more focused on external distribution. Podcast fans that ditch the native iOS app usually do so in favor of a podcast-only service like Stitcher or Overcast. The only reason to bundle music and podcasts together is if, like Spotify, you’re a popular music app trying to leverage your way into the podcast business. For the vast majority of listeners, it just doesn’t make sense.
In the field of mental health, few new areas generate as much excitement as machine learning, which uses computer algorithms to better predict human behavior. There is, at the same time, exploding interest in biosensors that can track a person’s mood in real time, factoring in music choices, social media posts, facial expression and vocal expression.
Matthew K. Nock, a Harvard psychologist who is one of the nation’s top suicide researchers, hopes to knit these technologies together into a kind of early-warning system that could be used when an at-risk patient is released from the hospital.
“After over half a decade of debunking this hoax every time there was a flood or hurricane, I can’t believe I’m looking at an honest-to-god street shark,” wrote Jane Lytvynenko, a freelance reporter. “Good to finally meet you, pal.”
I am never a Spotify customer, and I have never used Spotify's app. However, I have listened to music, podcasts, and audiobooks on the same app -- the iPod app -- for many, many years, and it worked fine. It is definitely do-able to have a single app that does all sort of audio programs.
However, when I want to listen to music, I want to listen to music. Similarly for podcasts and audiobooks. Spotify need to understand that. These are distinct activities, and the app must respect that.
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