Overall, this past week has made me realize how amazing macOS can be when it comes to window management. While it is severely lacking in some areas, especially when it comes to tiling and snapping windows, the fact that you can pick and choose which layers of Apple’s window management tools you want to leverage means that, in just a week, you can get used to a workflow that would have felt completely alien before. There is a certain beauty to this. My only hope is that Apple finally iterates on Stage Manager this year.
The introduction of Speedometer 3.0 is a major step forward in making the web faster for all, and allowing Web developers to make websites and web apps that were not previously possible. In this article, we explore ways the WebKit team made performance optimizations in WebKit and Safari based on the Speedometer 3.0 benchmark.
In order to make these improvements, we made an extensive use of our performance testing infrastructure. It’s integrated with our continuous integration, and provides the capability to schedule A/B tests. This allows engineers to quickly test out performance optimizations and catch new performance regressions.
The growing dumbphone fervor may be motivated, in part, by the discourse around child safety online. Parents are increasingly confronted with evidence that sites like Instagram and TikTok intentionally try to hook their children. Using those sites can increase teens’ anxiety and lower their self-esteem, according to some studies, and smartphones make it so that kids are logged on constantly. Why should this situation be any healthier for adults? After almost two decades with iPhones, the public seems to be experiencing a collective ennui with digital life. So many hours of each day are lived through our portable, glowing screens, but the Internet isn’t even fun anymore. We lack the self-control to wean ourselves off, so we crave devices that actively prevent us from getting sucked into them. That means opting out of the prevailing technology and into what Cal Newport, a contributing writer for The New Yorker, has called a more considered “digital minimalism.”
Apple sent threat notifications to iPhone users in 92 countries on Wednesday, warning them that may have been targeted by mercenary spyware attacks.
The company sent the alerts to individuals in 92 nations at 12pm Pacific Time on Wednesday. The company did not disclose the attackers’ identities or the countries where users received notifications.
On iOS 17.5, as well as iPadOS 17.5, you'll see a new Quartiles word game alongside Crossword and Crossword Mini puzzles in Apple News. Like the crossword puzzles, Quartiles is for Apple News+ subscribers only.
Quartiles gives you 20 tiles, each with two to four letters, and the goal is to use those tiles to build words using just one tile or up to four tiles.
But browser companies criticized how Apple and Google rolled out the new features which they described as slow and clunky, and they believe are slowing the migration of mobile users to new browser choices.
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In iPhones, users can see the choice screen only when they click Safari, and then users are shown a list of browsers with no additional information, said Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, CEO of Norway’s Vivaldi.
I have seen others suggest people may be picking third-party browsers because they are unclear about what a web browser is, or are unsure which one they want to use. I can see legitimacy in both arguments — but that is just how choice works. A lot of people buy the same brand of a product even when they have other options because it is the one they recognize; others choose based on criteria unrelated to the product itself. This is not a new phenomenon. What is fascinating to me is seeing how its application to web browsers on a smartphone is being treated as exotic.
U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz, who had been assigned to handle it, in a brief order said he was required to recuse from the case based on a judicial ethics rule that can restrict judges from hearing disputes in which they or a family member have some close connection or financial tie.
The order said his recusal was mandatory, but Farbiarz did not state the precise reason for his disqualification. Farbiarz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Service providers have been told not to replace watches for the ghost touch problem, instead instructing customers to fix the issue through a force restart. A force restart can be initiated by simultaneously holding down the side button and the Digital Crown for 10 seconds. AASPs have also been asked to make sure affected Apple Watches are running the latest version of watchOS.
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A fix for the ghost touch issue was added in watchOS 10.4, so presumably that version of the software addresses the issue on all impacted models. If not, the wording of Apple's memo suggests a further fix will be coming in the near future.
Apple Reminders, if you didn't know, added a bunch of new features over the past couple years, and at this point it's actually a pretty complete to-do list app. It's not perfect, though: For one thing it doesn't offer a menu bar icon that allows you to quickly check your reminders, nor a system-wide keyboard shortcut for quickly adding a task to your list. The free application Reminders Menu Bar fixes these problems so seamlessly you'd think Apple made it themselves.
A new app called Buffet is aiming to address the loneliness epidemic by helping users meet new people by quickly matching them with a person and a place to meet up (think Tinder + OpenTable). The app is designed to remove the barriers and hassles that come with meeting new people and then trying to find a place to hang out. Buffet aims to help users meet likeminded individuals, whether they’re looking for a new friend, romantic partner or gym buddy.
The software company is offering its network of photographers and artists $120 to submit videos of people engaged in everyday actions such as walking or expressing emotions including joy and anger, according to documents seen by Bloomberg. The goal is to source assets for artificial intelligence training, the company wrote.
I’m not declaring that the Vision Pro has a special destiny because there’s no way to know that. But I do feel comfortable suggesting that those who are declaring it a dead end and a failed product might want to consider how foolish it would have been to say the same thing about a Commodore PET or TRS-80 in 1977.
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While I don’t know what Apple has in store for the Vision Pro, thus far, I’d say the device’s first few months of existence have been about what we all should have expected: fitful and messy but with potential.
The store, located within a mall, has 104 employees that would be part of the union if the effort moves forward. The staff, represented by Communications Workers of America, filed its petition with the National Labor Relations Board on Monday.
This marks the fifth US Apple store where workers have petitioned to unionize, joining locations in Oklahoma City, the Maryland town of Towson, Atlanta and St. Louis. So far, only the Towson and Oklahoma City sites have successfully unionized.
Apple has been criticised after the Palestinian flag emoji was automatically suggested to iPhone users who type "Jerusalem."
Franklin wasn’t the first American delegate to make his way to Versailles to lobby for France’s support in the nascent nation’s war against Britain. (The lawyer Silas Deane had arrived in Paris on July 7.) But over the next eight and a half years, he was the individual who secured the European country’s financial and military support. Without Franklin and the relationship he cultivated with the French minister of foreign affairs, France would not have funded the American war effort as robustly, and Britain might very well have won the war.
Stacy Schiff’s 2005 book, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France and the Birth of America, chronicles the famed polymath’s time in France, from his first clandestine meeting at Versailles in December 1776 to the end of his ambassadorship in May 1785. Now, Apple TV+ is releasing an eight-episode limited series based on Schiff’s biography. The show, titled “Franklin,” centers on its titular character’s “considerable efforts to charm, cajole and bamboozle the French into paying for the American Revolution,” says writer and executive producer Howard Korder.
Hiding apps is one of the commands in macOS that I use the most in managing different windows from different apps. So much so that I hate every minute of it when trying to do windows management over at... well, Windows. Yes, there is a minimize button for (almost) each window, but then the Task View (think: Mission Control) totally ignores minimized windows when activated.
I ended up using virtual desktops over at Windows to help segregate the different windows into different tasks, whereas I can do everything all in one desktop over at macOS.
And if you think advertisements of Apple services in the settings app is bad, you should take a look at Windows' start menu and widget view.
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Thanks for reading.