Apple today announced that iOS 16.4, iPadOS 16.4, and macOS 13.3 will include several new features for its Podcasts app across the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and CarPlay. The software updates were released in beta today and will be available to the public in the spring.
Home Screen web apps have access to push notifications via the HTML5 standard Web Push API, including badges, for the first time. Access to the Apple push notification service was previously only available to App Store apps.
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Of course, every web app will also need permission to send notification alerts, just like native apps. Once set up, web app push notifications can also integrate with the Focus system. If you add the same web app to multiple devices, their Focus state will stay in sync for all of them.
[S]tarting with iOS 16.4, developers and users will find a special menu to enroll an iPhone or iPad in the Apple Developer or Apple Beta Software Program. The menu is similar to what was introduced with iOS 16 for the HomePod in the Home app; a similar option already exists on tvOS.
New emoji designs have arrived on iOS as part of the first iOS 16.4 beta, including the shaking face, two pushing hands, and the much-requested plain pink heart emoji.
A total of 31 new emojis have made their Apple device debut in today's beta release, with all 31 of these designs drawn from Unicode's September 2022 recommendation list, Emoji 15.0.
Here’s an iOS 16.4 surprise: the Messages app now supports rich previews for Mastodon posts when you share a link to a post in an iMessage conversation. This brings Apple’s Mastodon support up to parity with the long-standing integration with Twitter for similar tweet balloon previews.
This means that users will see a new category specific to the Always-On display in the Battery menu, similar to how it already shows specific categories for things like Personal Hotspot and No Cell Coverage.
In the Software Update section of the Home app, iPhone and iPad users who have not yet upgraded to the new architecture are seeing a “Home Upgrade Available” option after updating to iOS 16.4.
T-Mobile today announced that its customers can receive a free subscription to MLS Season Pass, allowing them to watch live MLS matches through the Apple TV app.
Today, Microsoft is formally blessing Parallels as a way to run the Professional and Enterprise versions of Windows 11 on Apple Silicon Macs. The Arm version of Windows running under Parallels has some limitations—no support for DirectX 12 or newer OpenGL versions, no support for the Linux or Android subsystems, and a few missing security features. But it can run Arm-native Windows apps as well as 32- and 64-bit x86 apps thanks to Windows 11's Arm-to-x86 code translation features; pretty much anything that isn't a game should run tolerably well, given the speed of Apple's M1 and M2 chip families.
You can find route photos for any sport featured in the Routes section of the app, including running, trail running, walking, hikes, rides, mountain bike rides, and gravel rides. According to Strava, the platform has roughly 2.3 million photos from 200 million user-uploaded public activities in the past year to pull from. It estimates that more than 30,000 photos will be added to the Routes feature weekly from Strava users all over the world. That said, Strava says it won’t use any photos from activities or profiles that have enabled privacy settings.
I'm just me, so I should make me things.
Instead of waiting for contracts that are typically renewed every 12 to 15 months to expire, Apple is firing contractors outright, sources said. One contractor claimed to have been blindsided, saying Apple management had assured him that all jobs were safe. Only a few weeks earlier, some had been gloating that Apple hadn’t overhired like other tech companies, the source added.
New episodes of shows on Apple TV+ arrive on Friday mornings, and I am working from home on Fridays, so I am grateful I get to watch new episodes of TV+ shows during my Friday solo lunch at my table.
And now, back to work.
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Thank goodness I never have to reboot my mouse.
(I hope I am not giving any ideas to Apple.)
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Thanks for reading.