I long for the days when the MacBook Pro had a user-replaceable battery that could be swapped in a few seconds (not to mention a matte display). I continue to insist that the 2006 MacBook Pro was peak Apple hardware design. Apple silicon CPUs are nice, of course, but unfortunately for us, Apple has exploited the processor transition as an excuse to lock down the Mac in a number of abusive ways.
[Batteries] are a consumable good with a finite — though not always predictable — lifespan, most often shorter than the actual lifetime usability of the product. The only reason I do not use my AirPods any more is because the battery in each bud lasts less than twenty minutes; everything else is functional. If there is any repair which should be straightforward and doable without replacing unrelated components or the entire device, it is the battery.
Apple and OpenAI have successfully made a deal to include OpenAI's generative AI technology in Apple's software, according to The Information, which cites a source who has spoken to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the deal.
[...]
"Now, [Altman] has fulfilled a longtime goal by striking a deal with Apple to use OpenAI’s conversational artificial intelligence in its products, which could be worth billions of dollars to the startup if it goes well," according to The Information's source.
The new system will allow Siri to take command of all the features within apps for the first time, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the initiative isn’t public. That change required a revamp of Siri’s underlying software using large language models — a core technology behind generative AI — and will be one of the highlights of Apple’s renewed push into AI, they said.
As someone who watches probably too much TV and is constantly working on the go, I'd buy the 13-inch iPad Air with M2 solely for its larger display. It's a great option for students or content creators who don't need to harness the power of the iPad Pro but want a bigger screen. The only thing that would make this tablet better is if the Air continued to live up to its name as the lightest iPad of them all. Hopefully, Apple is saving that for the next generation.
The Sock, Sweater, and Ladder spots all highlight different Apple Card features. Sock focuses on the Daily Cash back reward, Sweater demonstrates the option to see past purchases, and Ladder shows the ease of paying an Apple Card balance through the Wallet app.
The new release brings a top-requested feature – tracking multiple equipment lists as well as the ability to personalize weights, give alternative exercise suggestions, a new Summary Screen for Apple Watch, and more.
A dreamlike spatial puzzle game, Where Cards Fall is a coming-of-age story that tasks players with building houses of cards to bring memories to life.
Logitech today introduced a new lineup of Mac accessories, including the latest MX series keyboards and mice, as well as an ergonomic keyboard.
Apple products that I do want to be lighter: AirPods, iPhones. If the price of getting something extremely light is the trouble in getting the batteries replaced, I am willing to do that tradeoff.
On the other hand, although I do want lighter iPads and MacBooks, it is not a priority for me. I seldom travel with these devices anymore; and I seldom travel.
But, everyone's priorities are different. And, someday, when Apple is bigger and have more resources, perhaps the company can cater equally to all these priorities. (Right now, it can't even do a good iPhone for customers who prefer a smaller but powerful device.)
Someday.
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The one-minute ad features work commissioned by Apple with three different animators/illustrators offering their unique perspectives on what to do with a single piece of green screen footage on an M4 iPad Pro with Apple Pencil Pro.
The animators are listed farther down in the caption; they are Natalie Labarre, Jin & Jay, and Eric Lane. All real people! Personally, I think their work leaves a more lasting impression than the previous one.
Time. Space. Reality. These are three of the elements you can control in Marvel Studios‘ What If…? – An Immersive Story, a new interactive original experience for the Apple Vision Pro inspired by the animated series of the same name.
One-part series original and one-part video game, What If? is available as a free app starting on Thursday, May 30, exclusively for the tech company’s mixed-reality headset.
It’s hard to judge “What If?” overall, because it really does seem like a sampler platter of ways this sort of entertainment could evolve in the future. Is there room for something that’s more interactive than watching TV, but less interactive than a full-on video game? I have no idea. But I do know that the hour I spent with “What If?” was maybe the best hour I’ve spent on the device since I got it. If Apple is looking for a single app that demonstrates all the features of the Vision Pro at its best, “What If?” may be the answer.
This stuff is actually fun to do, but it’s also very constrained by the fact that you can only do it at scripted moments, which sucks. That would be fine if the story was compelling, but it’s not given any room to be. It’s just a series of brief vignettes that serve as setup for the next interactive section, then you’re dropped in to get whichever stone you’re after, at which point you learn a new skill that you may or may not use again later. Each vignette basically follows the same pattern and ends up feeling like it’s building to something that never pays off.
Just sitting on a couch flopping my hand around like a fish felt anti-climactic, considering I was supposedly tasked with saving all of humanity. Ultimately, it felt like a ride on the Jungle Cruise, in that there was a lot of action and story supposedly happening all around, but at no point did I feel like it was in any way real or dependent on me caring.
Following a late April announcement, the upcoming Beats Solo Buds will be available to order starting Tuesday, June 18, with a launch coming two days later on Thursday, June 20.
Apple today announced that support for national My Number Card IDs in Japan will be coming to Apple's Wallet app "late next spring," marking the first expansion of digital IDs in Apple Wallet beyond the United States.
As in other countries where the feature is available, the company has been working closely with major payment platforms in Italy so that they can provide support for Tap to Pay on iPhone to their customers. Nexi SoftPOS and SumUp are among the first platforms to work with Apple in Italy.
The team says its mission with Kino is to “make great, cinematic video easy — while still delivering an app that’s powerful enough for real pros.” In that spirit, Kino sports a simple user interface but complete manual control.
However, while seasoned vets can override automatic tools to dial in their desired settings, Kino promises very sophisticated features to help beginners get cinematic footage. Kino includes “AutoMotion,” for example, which enables users to get a 180-degree shutter angle on footage without tweaking settings. This is achieved through auto control over exposure values.
The update introduces a new masking framework that enables you to add masks by simply double-clicking a layer or selection.
The default new design features a “garden that grows over time,” line charts have arrived for hourly and daily forecasts, weather news is integrated from around the world, and more.
So what happened? What made the screensavers go poof all of a sudden? Is this a temporary reprieve as something about the screensavers gets retooled, or is this permanent? Is it because someone from Apple called someone from Google and got this quietly killed only on Apple TVs?
In a job listing published in recent days, Apple said it’s looking for someone to lead the development of “fun new features” and “help build an application used by millions to watch and discover TV and sports.” A spokesman for Apple declined to comment.
A Chinese court dismissed a case filed by a local consumer against Apple’s commission fees for purchases via its App Store, granting the US company some reprieve as it faces growing scrutiny around the world over its practices.
Apple has not abused its status despite dominating the App Store, the Shanghai Intellectual Property Court said in an unpublished on Wednesday (May 29) verdict seen by Bloomberg News.
Greta always knew she would have to face her first year of high school without a phone. Her parents made their stance clear back when she was in elementary school, then banded together with a handful of other families in the neighborhood to stand firm.
“I know I missed out on hanging out with friends because I just didn’t know or wasn’t able to coordinate. And there were conversations I was not a part of,” says Greta, who is now 17 and finishing her senior year in Richmond, Virginia. Her parents finally relented the summer before Greta began tenth grade. “It was actually a huge deal, in junior year, when I was finally able to get added to this text thread that a group of girls had all started many years before. Getting added to an established group chat can be really hard.” Feeling clueless about viral videos and memes was also deflating. “Sometimes I pretended to know, although that can be embarrassing too. But honestly, my friends usually just explained it all to me, then they sometimes joked that ‘I live under a rock.’”
Remember all those iPad AR demos at all the keynotes before the Vision Pro?
So, why isn't any of these AR stuff on the iPad anymore?
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Today, Apple unveiled the lineup for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, including Keynote and Platforms State of the Union, and shared more information about what developers will learn and experience all week. The free online conference brings the global Apple developer community together to provide them with insights into the latest technologies, tools, and frameworks coming to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS, and watchOS. Throughout the week, developers will be able to hear from Apple engineers, designers, and other experts through more than 100 technical sessions, in-depth consultations, and live forums for guidance on building even more innovative and platform-differentiating apps and games across all Apple products.
Every year, the Apple Design Awards recognize innovation, ingenuity, and technical achievement in app and game design.
But they’ve also become something more: A moment to step back and celebrate the Apple developer community in all its many forms.
What appears to be the first Apple Watch Activity Challenge specifically centered on running is set for June 5 with both indoor and outdoor runs counting to earn the award.
Apple does not provide details on what features might be included in the refreshed firmware beyond "bug fixes and other improvements," so it is unclear what's new in the update.
Adobe Lightroom Mobile is truly excellent, combining the powerful features of its Desktop counterpart, with the elegance of a tablet or phone. Its automatic connection to your Adobe account’s online storage means you can work on your shots wherever you like, bringing ease of use and versatility to your workflow.
Controller for HomeKit, a third-party app for controlling your Apple Home smart home, has a new Floor Plan feature that adds a map interface for interacting with connected devices like lights, locks, shades, sensors and more.
Nomad today announced the launch of the Tracking Card, a super thin Find My-enabled card that is designed to be carried in a wallet so that it's trackable with an iPhone.
[...]
Perhaps the best feature of the Tracking Card is the battery. The battery inside can be recharged by putting the card on a Qi-based charger, and the markings on the card show the alignment.
Job Simulator is a VR game where automation and robots have replaced all human jobs. Players can relive what it was like to work as a human with not-so historically accurate recreations of jobs that include an office worker, gourmet chef, and store clerk.
Playables are free games that can be played on the YouTube website or in the YouTube app for iPhone and iPad. There are more than 75 games available, including Angry Birds Showdown and Cut the Rope.
Apple is set to open its first retail store in Malaysia on June 22, marking a significant expansion of its physical retail presence in south-east Asia. The new store will be located in Kuala Lumpur at The Exchange TRX mall.
The store features a unique, tiered white pyramid architectural design. This will be the sixth Apple Store in south-east Asia, following three in Singapore and two in Thailand.
The leaked documents touch on topics like what kind of data Google collects and uses, which sites Google elevates for sensitive topics like elections, how Google handles small websites, and more. Some information in the documents appears to be in conflict with public statements by Google representatives, according to Fishkin and King.
I was complaining to myself about the hot weather today while working at home and drinking lots of water. Then I saw the news report that the temperature in northern India reaching 50 degrees (about 120 F), and all of sudden, I see no need to complain.
And now, I shall go drink more water.
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Through the study, University of Michigan researchers reviewed a cohort of more than 160,000 participants who answered survey questions and completed app-based assessments to characterize their experience of tinnitus. This research aims to improve understanding of tinnitus characteristics and inform future research on potential treatments.
“Roughly 15 percent of our participants experience tinnitus daily,” said Rick Neitzel, University of Michigan School of Public Health’s professor of environmental health sciences. “Tinnitus is something that can have a large impact on a person’s life. The trends that we’re learning through the Apple Hearing Study about people’s experience with tinnitus can help us better understand the groups most at risk, which can in turn help guide efforts to reduce the impacts associated with it. The Apple Hearing Study gives us an opportunity that was not possible before to improve our understanding of tinnitus across demographics, aiding current scientific knowledge that can ultimately improve management of tinnitus.”
The most powerful person in British media during this election, in terms of having the most direct access to voters, is no longer the editor of BBC’s News at Six or the person who chooses the headlines on Radio 2. Nor are they a newspaper editor, a TikTok influencer, or a podcaster. Instead, they’re the anonymous on-shift editor of the BBC News app, making snap judgments on whether to make the phones of millions of Britons buzz with a breaking news push alert.
The BBC does not publish user numbers, but external research suggests about 12.6 million Britons have its news app installed. BBC newsroom sources say the actual number is higher and the assumption is that about 60% of users have notifications enabled. This means that on a conservative estimate, a typical push alert is reaching the phones of 7 million Britons – more than any other broadcast news bulletin in the UK.
None of my desires for a touch-based Mac should be taken to imply that I think iPadOS should be abandoned. iPadOS is a distinct operating system with different choices, different limits, and different freedoms than are on macOS. Adding touch to Mac would not take anything away from iPad users, nor would it take anything away from Mac users who are happy already, it would simply add more flexibility and accessibility to people who aren’t perfectly served today.
After appearing alongside athletes and celebrities, in iOS 17.5 code, and in the FCC database over the past month or so, a next-generation Beats Pill speaker has now been listed on Apple's regulatory compliance website for Europe.
Meeter doesn't care which app you're using or whether you're talking to someone personally or professional, it's like a hub for all of your video calls. All you need to do is connect your calendar to get started and Meeter can automatically pull in all your upcoming calls and let you manage them in one place.
Demeo is “a cross-platform cooperative adventure for up to four players that recreates all of the magic and camaraderie of gathering around a tabletop with friends to do battle against the forces of evil.” There are four heroes available, each with different abilities. It mixes augmented and virtual reality, creating a unique gameplay where players can feel like they’re part of the game.
The Mamutjitji Story app uses a local Dreamtime story about the life cycle of a common desert insect, the antlion, to teach Aboriginal and Western science concepts.
Despite initial skepticism due to underwhelming chatbot experiences, I found plenty of scenarios where generative AI could be helpful. I also came up with a few ways to determine whether they would benefit from it for particular tasks.
All this week, I am rethinking how to tackle my to-dos. Lately, I seems to be stuck, and haven't been happy on how I am working on both my work work as well as my hobby projects. I am really hoping I can stumble upon a better way for me, and not just a placebo effect.
I'll let you know how it goes.
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Thanks for reading.
You can now link your Apple ID with your Canal+ subscription, and unlock the Apple TV+ channel in the Apple TV app itself.
This means users can use all of the usual Apple ecosystem features as if they had paid for Apple TV+ separately, except it’s included for free in their Canal+ membership.
Whether you work out often and track your physical activity religiously, or you like to monitor your steps as a general way to make sure you’re moving enough each day, it is so irritating when your literal fitness tracker doesn’t count your steps. This is especially true when you’re postpartum, and walking is one of the first forms of exercise that’s safe to do (and getting out the door with a wee babe is no small feat).
Most New Year’s resolutions are buried by now. April’s a great time for a fresh start. So today’s post focuses on simple, useful tools to help you revive a good habit or two. Read on for my favorite app for tracking habits plus a few alternatives.
For all its simplicity, Pikmin Bloom adds just the right amount of reward to a walk without distracting from the actual activity. Plus, there are Pikmin.
In downtown Seoul, in front of the iconic Gyeongbokgung palace, dozens of people of all ages sit on wet yoga mats, staring into space. Some are dressed in doctors’ and dentists’ uniforms, while others wear the attire of office workers and students. Welcome to the international “space-out competition”.
The rules are simple: do absolutely nothing. Falling asleep, however, leads to disqualification. Organisers monitor the participants’ heart rates; the contestant with the most stable heart rate wins.
From the web with the seemingly infinite amount of articles to read, podcasts to listen, videos to watch -- and that's just the 'free' stuff -- I don't have a lot of time to just 'do absolutely nothing', even when I am tired of doing anything.
And I will feel guilty if I also don't consume stuff that I paid for with real money -- newspapers, music, audiobooks, and streaming movies and television.
Do I even want to do nothing? Or, maybe, I need to find some time to do nothing?
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Gen Z is extremely capable on tablets and smartphones because they spend so much time in that environment but their skills with a computer are lacking because of it. There certainly are more studies that need to happen based on this thesis, but if you only ever use a tablet and only have ever used a tablet for years, getting the things done that you need to using one will feel like second nature. Even if it’s harder than if you were on a computer — assuming you had equal skills — it’s still possible.
If you look at the iPad as one part of a larger creation system of a desktop computer, a laptop, and external monitors, then it starts to fall apart. Trying to do things the way you’re used to doing them on a computer is a recipe for disaster when it comes to the iPad. But that’s the world tech reviewers live in: they are fluent in multiple types of tech language and when they try and integrate the iPad into an existing workflow, even a workflow designed by Apple, it stumbles and falls.
The iPad can allow itself to be this powerful because some apps, some use cases require a lot of power. Apps like Procreate thrive on a touch interface, and they can utilise all the power of an iPad Pro with an M4 chip. Should these professionals be satisfied with a regular, slower iPad? They should not, so the iPad Pro makes a lot of sense for them, for Apple, and for the market.
For the rest of the regular experience — outside of pro apps, the iPad relies on simplicity, on a “straight-forwardness” that people appreciate about the iPad, especially if they believe that using a computer isn’t that different from using a phone. And just because the iPad Pro runs a desktop-class chip, doesn’t mean it has to do desktop-class things. Fast cars don’t have to all look like supercars.
The practical upshot is that if you use Continuity Camera, you should expect your iPhone’s battery to drop, potentially significantly. If that’s a problem for you, you can try plugging the iPhone in via USB, but even that may not help. Using a mount with a MagSafe Charger, as I do, at least ensures that the iPhone will start charging again after your meeting.
Kanban boards help you find the flow in your work: Instead of a simple list of tasks, your large tasks can be broken into different stages (in columns), and as you move from one stage to another, you can drag the task over to the next section. Kanban boards are useful when you’re collaborating with team members, or when you’re dealing with tasks that take two or more steps before they’re actually done.
By using Forest to work in these 25-minute chunks, you grow a virtual forest as you focus, unlocking new trees along the way. The catch is that once you plant a seed, it’ll only grow into a tree if you resist the temptation to look at your phone. If you leave the app the tree withers.
Accounts filed by the US semiconductor company Coherent, which owns a 310,000 sq ft facility in County Durham, revealed that the loss of its main customer had put the factory’s future in jeopardy.
The Sunday Telegraph understands that the plant manufactures components for Apple that feature in the iPhone’s Face ID recognition system, but that the US giant is believed to have ceased orders due to upcoming changes to the next version of the iPhone.
If a Mac and an iPad turns out to be the exactly same machine, it will really be disappointing and wasteful.
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"If you buy an e-reader and you read loads and loads of books on it, then it's the lowest carbon thing to do," Berners-Lee said. "But if I buy it, read a couple of books, and decided that I prefer paperback books, then it's the worst of all worlds."
Yet Berners-Lee said that reading is still, relatively speaking, a pretty sustainable activity — regardless of whether you read using an e-reader, phone or old fashioned paperback.
Big tech has succeeded in distracting the world from the existential risk to humanity that artificial intelligence still poses, a leading scientist and AI campaigner has warned.
That's a staggeringly large proportion for a program that people are relying on to be accurate and precise, underlining what other end users like writers and teachers are experiencing: AI platforms like ChatGPT often hallucinate totally incorrectly answers out of thin air.
Logic Pro for iPad 2 keeps what was successful with the original Logic Pro for iPad and tries to employ its new AI capabilities in the areas that matter most to a potential user. For a budding songwriter, Session Players allows you to add in drums, piano, and even bass. For a starting band, you can easily split your recording session from a voice memo into separated tracks to adjust and customize.
tinyPod is essentially a case for the core Apple Watch hardware that takes inspiration from the iPod to turn your Watch into something of a tiny phone. Oh, and instead of using your Digital Crown to navigate watchOS, you’ll use the included iPod-like click wheel.
Apple once designed a Tetris clone that has been found on a prototype version of the third-generation iPod, indicating the company was experimenting with releasing the game on the music player. It’s called Stacker and, obviously, is controlled via the iPod’s scroll wheel. The software was spotted by X user AppleDemoYT, who is known for finding rare prototype devices.
It's an unceremonious end for a software program that helped kick off instant messaging on PCs in the 1990s. ICQ, which stands for "I Seek You," was originally developed at an Israeli company called Mirabilis before AOL bought it in 1998 for $407 million.
It seems just a while ago, Apple was losing the AI competition, and has to show some AI during the upcoming WWDC, or it will become irrelevant.
And so, Apple made promises, and changed ML to AI.
A while later, it seems maybe Apple is better off changing AI back to ML?
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According to Apple, the photos that did not fully delete from a user’s device were not synced to iCloud Photos. Those files were only on the device itself. However, the files could have persisted from one device to another when restoring from a backup, performing a device-to-device transfer, or when restoring from an iCloud Backup but not using iCloud Photos.
In a now-deleted post, a Reddit user last week alleged that their photos reappeared on an iPad they sold to a friend, despite them having erased the content of that iPad prior to selling it. Apple confirmed to me that this claim was false.
Apple removed a routine in the function responsible for scanning and re-importing photos from the filesystem, which caused it to reindex old files on the local file system and add them back to people’s galleries.
“Based on this code, we can say that the photos that reappeared were still lying around on the filesystems and that they were just found by the migration routine added in iOS 17.5,” explained Synactiv.
Apple has announced that "Tap to Pay on iPhone" is available in Canada starting today through select payment platforms in the country.
Popular photo editing app Pixelmator Pro was today updated with an overhauled set of AI-powered masking tools that make it easier than ever to make selective edits. Masking was "reengineered from the ground up" in the new 3.6 version of Pixelmator Pro, so it's quicker to create and refine masks.
The HandBrake Team has issued version 1.8 of its open-source video conversion program HandBrake with macOS-specific improvements.
I am satisfied by Apple's elaborations on 9to5Mac. But, wouldn't it better if Apple also write something on their own web site?
On the other hand, is Apple changing the library files of the Photos app? Is it preparing for something big (cough ai cough) coming this fall?
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Feeling angry about Apple’s ranking of the 100 best albums of all time, are you? Good. (From their point of view.) That’s exactly how you’re supposed to feel, given a list that aspires less toward any semblance of an informed or authoritative voice than a seeming sense of randomness that can only be explained away as rage bait. “Nailed it!” is not the desired response, as if there would be a soul in the world who’d say that in response to a list that pits millions of works from dozens of disparate genres across a 70-year period against one another and pretends they can all be evaluated on the same scale. “Nailed it!” would just represent a failure of virality. (And Apple is not in the business of failure, no matter what you remember about the Newton or Cube.)
Most outlets that try their hand at a list like this limit it in some way, like the Best Rock Albums, the Best Hip-Hop Albums or the Best Albums of the 2010s, but Apple chose to just call this the "100 Best Albums," saying it was "the definitive list of the greatest albums ever made." Are they supposed to be the best thematically? The best collections, song by song? The most important historically? Apple doesn't say.
And what kinds of albums are we talking about?
In the first four months, only 38 apps have sought approval for external payment links, and only 17 of those currently engaged in digital transactions, according to evidence submitted in the hearings. That is out of about 136,000 apps in the U.S. that have completed digital transactions in the U.S.
Schiller said the facts emerging in the hearings — all of which he has attended — have prompted him to create “an action item” to prod more iPhone apps to take advantage of external payment options.
Today Marvel and ILM dropped the trailer for the forthcoming “What If?” immersive story, which was just announced a couple of weeks ago, and (surprise!) is launching next Wednesday in the visionOS App Store as a free app.
Marvel and ILM say the immersive story is about an hour long, and is directly connected to the “What If?” animated series on Disney+, which itself is a multiversal riff on various Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.
One of the first things I do after I set up a new Mac is install Itsycal, a small yet mighty calendar app that stays docked in the menu bar. I use it to replace the Mac's more limited default calendar, and it serves as a quick and accessible calendar whenever I need to plan something, confirm a date for a deadline, or look up the day's events.
Described by developer Lior Halphon as possessing the "world's most accurate Game Boy emulation core," SameBoy offers save states, rumble support, scaling filters, motion control emulation, rewind and external controller support.
Hoffman filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which resulted in a confidential settlement in December 2022. Subsequently, Hoffman alleges that the studio retaliated by denying her credit and accolades and “attempting to erase her contributions.”
International lawyers representing the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo said on Wednesday they had new evidence gathered from whistleblowers, which deepened concerns that Apple, opens new tab could be sourcing minerals from conflict areas in eastern Congo.
I have my own best albums of all time, and I am not telling what they are.
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Researchers from the University of Maryland say they relied on publicly available data from Apple to track the location of billions of devices globally — including non-Apple devices like Starlink systems — and found they could use this data to monitor the destruction of Gaza, as well as the movements and in many cases identities of Russian and Ukrainian troops.
At issue is the way that Apple collects and publicly shares information about the precise location of all Wi-Fi access points seen by its devices. Apple collects this location data to give Apple devices a crowdsourced, low-power alternative to constantly requesting global positioning system (GPS) coordinates.
Recently acclaimed film graphic designer Gina Alessi revealed how she led an art department crafting the world of Manhunt for Apple TV+, a period drama about the hunt for Abraham Lincoln's assassin.
The project required hundreds of graphic designs, creating and recreating era perfect wallpapers, posters and signage as well as books, carpets and even the blanket Lincoln died on.
But another part of that argument was new to me: People who get streaming services by signing up via broadband companies like Comcast or Verizon are much less likely to stop and start their subscriptions. Which would make Netflix much more willing to take a discounted rate for this kind of bundle than it would be if it were part of a different bundle.
“This court should reject the invitation to forge a new theory of antitrust liability that no court has recognized, that would harm innovation, and that would only deprive consumers of the key competitive features that make iPhone distinctive,” Apple wrote in its filing.
[...]
Motions to dismiss are commonly filed in antitrust cases, though rarely granted in government lawsuits. Alphabet Inc.’s Google filed one in the Justice Department case concerning its advertising technology business, but failed to get the case tossed out.
Apple Inc. hired a new diversity chief for the fourth time in recent years as the iPhone maker seeks to make its workforce more inclusive.
Banking veteran Cynthia Bowman is taking over the role from Barbara Whye, becoming vice president of inclusion and diversity. Bowman left Bank of America Corp. earlier this year after a 17-year career there, serving most recently as chief diversity, inclusion and social responsibility officer.
Shazam's Live Activities keep the user updated when searching for music in the background, which is particularly useful when multitasking or identifying songs in other apps.
A description of the Parkour episode invites Vision Pro wearers to join the "world's leading parkour athletes" as they go on a "gravity-defying trek across the streets and rooftops of Paris."
Apple and Île-de-France Mobilités today introduced an easy, secure, and private way for customers to add a new Navigo card to Apple Wallet and purchase passes to ride transit in the Paris region. Riders can buy passes from the Île-de-France Mobilités iOS app or directly from Apple Wallet, and use an iPhone or Apple Watch to tap and ride. Additionally, beginning this week, real-time transit information in Apple Maps is available in Paris to help users navigate their travels throughout the city.
“Generative Remove” — powered by the company’s Firefly AI model — is now available to try in early access across Lightroom’s mobile, web, and desktop apps. Described as Lightroom’s “most powerful remove tool yet,” the feature allows users to “paint” over unwanted objects or people in images and then delete them with a click of a button.
The key new features include DNS encryption, easier access to blocklists, a redesigned interactive traffic chart, a new Control Center in the menu bar, new hierarchical grouping options in the connection list, new sound notifications, and an overhauled user interface.
Guzmán’s latest app is QuickTune, a remote control utility for Apple Music. The app is the spitting image of QuickTime 7 running on Mac OS X Tiger, with a sprinkling of modern features and fun interactions that make it a pleasure to use.
Apple is offering unprecedented price cuts in China as big brands and retailers launch promotions for the annual “618” shopping festival in the face of sluggish consumer demand.
The hefty discounts by the iPhone maker come at a time when it is battling stiff competition from Chinese smartphone manufacturers, such as Huawei and Vivo, and declining market share in the world’s second largest economy.
On its own, this seems to be yet another example of a tech company blowing past ethical concerns and operating with impunity. But the situation is also a tidy microcosm of the raw deal at the center of generative AI, a technology that is built off data scraped from the internet, generally without the consent of creators or copyright owners.
My daughter is nine years old. When I was her age, in 1989, I had my own small cassette player and a beloved pile of my own tapes – brand new, or made up of songs from the radio – that I could listen to whenever I wanted. The same went for my parents’ modest CD collection (Genesis’s Invisible Touch was awesome; their three Lionel Richie albums were boring). There were a few vinyl records knocking about and there were at least two radios – invariably set to Capital FM – that I could turn on whenever.
My daughter has none of these things. The only way she can access music is by making me get my phone out and play a song on my Spotify account. The inconvenience is trifling, but more painful and alarming is the growing gap between us when it comes to musical experience.
There are rumors that Apple will be adding an iPhone ultra to its lineup, increasing the price of the top-end of the iPhone line.
Yes, maybe Apple has hit a price ceiling on what 'innovations' they can put into an iPhone, whether it is a super-duper display or a super-duper camera.
But that's the easy way. The challenge facing Apple is on the other end of the price spectrum. For whatever standards Apple is measuring, 5c failed. 12/13 mini failed. The SE is still around, but is standing still.
Sure, make an Ultra. But don't forget to also innovate on the lower-end. It is not easy. But that's why you are Apple.
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Apple has quietly released iOS 17.5.1 and iPadOS 17.5.1 to address what it says is a “rare issue where photos that experienced database corruption could reappear in the Photos library even if they were deleted.” Apple hasn’t yet updated either set of release notes with the text in the screenshot below, and I would be surprised if the company offered any explanation.
Also, the anecdote of photos being restored to the same device after it had been wiped has been deleted from Reddit. I have not seen the same claim anywhere else which makes me think this was some sort of user error.
This is obviously a privacy concern. It raises valid questions as to how Apple stores photo data and whether iPhone owners can truly trust that their deleted data is actually deleted. The Verge has reached out to Apple multiple times to comment publicly on the matter but has yet to receive a response. Doing so would at least shed light on why this bug happened, what’s been done to fix it, and what it’s doing to ensure that this won’t happen again. However, Apple has yet to respond.
What’s troubling is that, so long as Apple remains silent, we have no idea of how far this bug goes. Some iPhone owners have reported the same thing happening with deleted voicemails. Did the bug only impact people who use iCloud photo backups? Another post claimed that old photos appeared on an iPad that was sold to another person. All today’s fix confirms that this bug did exist, it was a problem, and it had something to do with database corruption. And by ignoring requests to comment publicly on the matter, it doesn’t impart confidence that this won’t happen again.
The most potent enemy of reading, it goes without saying, is the small, flat box that you carry in your pocket. In terms of addictive properties, it might as well be stuffed with meth. There’s no point in grinding through a whole book—a chewy bunch of words arranged into a narrative or, heaven preserve us, an argument—when you can pick up your iPhone, touch the Times app, skip the news and commentary, head straight to Wordle, and give yourself an instant hit of euphoria and pride by taking just three guesses to reach a triumphant guano. Imagine, however, that your foe were to become your literate friend. Imagine getting hooked on a book, or on something recognizably book-esque, without averting your eyes from the screen. This is where Blinkist comes in.
[...]
This takes us to the very nub of Blinkist. Apart from the vexed ontological question of whether blowing up little green pigs with crates of cartoon TNT does or does not have any meaning, in a universe already rich in absurdity, two features are worth noting. One, the mild shade of pedagogy in Seim’s gentle insistence on teaching and being taught. (German educators of an older and sterner school might well frown with approval.) Two, the way in which, far from denying that phones have assumed possession of our lives, Seim leans into that stubborn fact. Why struggle? Why not collaborate with our captors and see what comes of it? “The social-media apps—they made us addicted to checking our screens all the time,” Seim tells me. “That is happening. That is a trend, whether we like it or not.” Since I’m fated to doomscroll anyway, I might as well channel that itchy-thumbed habit into browsing a Blink of Eric Schlosser’s “Command and Control.” Or “Chernobyl,” by Serhii Plokhy. Or something on Fukushima. Get me some real doom.
The iPhone maker has filed a suit at the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg to topple the March decision, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
[...]
Apple declined to comment other than pointing to an earlier blog post in which it said that EU regulators failed to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm.
There are many sensible uses for it, even if it’s past its prime. If you have an old Mac mini that has been replaced by a newer model, here are a few ideas on how you can put it to good use.
Rogue Amoeba has issued Audio Hijack 4.4.1, introducing a new Audio Device Selection section for enhanced audio capture through Application blocks. These updated controls offer more refinement over how audio is captured from applications, including channel-level fine-tuning.
It was my first conference and solo business trip since the pandemic started in 2020, and it took some time to update my travel gear and habits.
MacWhisper is a super useful utility for quickly transcribing spoken audio on the Mac. Version 8 is launching today with new features around video, speed, AI, and more.
It was Segall who persuaded Jobs in 1998 to use “iMac” as a new computer name instead of the internally-developed and rather dreadful moniker MacMan. (Thank Segall that there was never such a thing as the ManPhone.)
[...]
“The 'i' needs to go,” he says. “It's now meaningless. Sure, [Jobs] built [Apple] around it, but remember, the 'i' has always been a sub-brand. There might be marketing experts who say Apple would be crazy to drop the prefix—it's still in front of some of the greatest brands ever—but it can't be protected, and for too long there have been companies with 'i' internet-connected things, and that's an issue for Apple, known for innovation.”
ASML Holding NV and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. have ways to disable the world’s most sophisticated chipmaking machines in the event that China invades Taiwan, according to people familiar with the matter.
So, Microsoft has released the new Copilot + PC thing, which, it seems to me, have two main messages for customers. Firstly, the brains of the new computers are finally competitive with Apple Silicon. Secondly: AI, AI, AI.
Two questions I am looking forward to see being answered by reviewers and customers in the next few months: Number one: is the performance per watt really that great, and can it keep up with what Apple is doing. Two: if Copilot is really helpful, or is it just a backseat driver?
But, this definitely does signal the end of Wintel.
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At the moment, Apple News is as good a partner in Big Tech as many media companies are going to find. Almost every publisher Semafor spoke to said that Apple paid well and directed eyeballs to their longer, more ambitious work. While some of the articles surfaced by the app are algorithmic and based on user behavior, the company also employs a team of journalists — led by editor-in-chief Lauren Kern, a well-regarded former New York Magazine editor — who seem to prioritize putting quality journalism front-and-center on the app. As a reader, it’s a nice product, and in many cases a better reading experience than publishers’ own homepages and apps.
Apple has launched a limited time promotion, offering boosted trade in values when buying a new iPhone. From now until June 3, customers trading in their iPhone 11 or newer at the Apple Store can get extra credit towards the purchase of their new phone.
The value of the promotion isn’t that dramatic, however. Depending on model, the trade-in amounts have increased by approximately $10-$30 as part of this promotion.
I think there is a general lack of imagination out there from the ardently anti-touch-on-Macs crowd out there. It feels to me like they’re pointing to what they think are “impossible” problems and immediately throw their hands in the air as if nothing can be done. I'm not saying this mock up is perfect, but it is an attempt to actually address the issue rather than throwing in the towel at the first sign of any challenge.
Was Hulu -- the original version, where different studios pooled their shows to form a streaming service to compete with Netflix -- a fluke? Music labels are not combining their albums to form a service to compete with Apple Music and Spotify? Book publishers are not setting up an alternative to the Kindle store? And newspapers are not aggregating their offerings to get a more direct relationship with their customers, as opposed to outsourcing to Apple News+?
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Apple’s newest iPad Pro is remarkably rigid for how thin it is, and apparently also a step forward when it comes to repairability. iFixit shows during its teardown of the tablet that the iPad Pro’s 38.99Wh battery, which will inevitably wear down and need replacement, is actually easy to get to. It’s a change iFixit’s Shahram Mokhtari says during the video “could save hours in repair time” compared to past iPad Pro models.
For now Apple’s M3 MacBook Air is the best all-round laptop in the world and certainly the best option in its price range. You won’t find a better blend of features, functionality and performance anywhere else. You’ll power through your daily work with ease.
A good interface, perfectly responsive, with a great collection of varied and diverse brushes, coupled with numerous powerful customisable layer properties, Adobe Fresco is definitely worth giving a look if you’re into drawing and painting.
I just had my lazy Sunday, just to get over all the excitement over the week. I hope you have a restful Sunday too.
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The latest report suggests that the erased and sold iPad is somehow restoring old photos from an Apple ID that is no longer signed in to it. The Reddit user says the photos that are reappearing are from 2017, which is in line with similar reports. The images were initially taken on an iPhone, and so had been synced to the iPad via iCloud Photo Library before the iPad was wiped and sold.
Apple's fine print below the grayed-out toggle says "this setting cannot be changed because a profile is restricting it, or because your Apple ID is being managed, does not meet the minimum age requirements, or is missing age information." However, many affected users say none of these reasons actually apply to them.
Intego’s researchers now say they have found a new variant that was pretending to be Homebrew, a popular macOS software package manager. The attackers set up a fake landing page, seemingly identical to the authentic Homebrew page, which deployed the infostealer.
It effectively geofences the development team. Browser-makers whose dev teams are located in the US will only be able to work on simulators. While some testing can be done in a simulator, there's no substitute for testing on device – which means developers will have to work within Apple's prescribed geographical boundary.
Apple today published its second annual App Store Transparency Report, highlighting details like the number of apps that were rejected during the year, the number of customer and developer accounts deactivated, the number of apps removed from the App Store, and more.
This bug of bringing back deleted photos even to devices that have changed Apple IDs, if the reports are true, seems really bad. Not only, it seems, that Apple is not doing its job correctly, it has not being doing its job correctly for quite a long time.
Apple definitely owns all its customers an explanation. I hope the explanation will come soon.
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I have no doubt that Apple sells plenty of iPad Airs, but the product’s value to Apple isn’t limited to the number of units it shifts. It’s all about the way it makes customers feel about the other iPads.
"We have to look at the way we're distributing," Iger told analyst Michael Nathanson at a MoffettNathanson-hosted conference. "Unlike Netflix, we distribute largely through third-party app stores. There's obviously an advantage to that to some extent, but there's a cost to that, too. And we're looking at that."
With the new bundles, the streamers are trying to strike a balance between the total consolidation of cable and the total chaos of streaming. That new balance may well be superior to the status quo, but the trade-off between having things in one place and paying for things you don’t need will remain. As long as it does, we’ll never feel totally satisfied.
Apple has announced Tap to Pay on iPhone in Japan, allowing independent sellers, small merchants, and large retailers in the country to use iPhones as a payment terminal.
CCC 7.0 introduces a new Backup Volume Setup Assistant that guides you through formatting destination volumes and ensures the destination is dedicated to the backup task to avoid conflicts.
Bare Bones has released BBEdit 15.1, renaming ChatGPT Worksheet to AI Chat Worksheet with preferences that let you select alternative services (ChatGPT, Claude, and Ollama service models are included).
You know music alters mood. Now a new app promises the right tracks can sooth stress, bolster productivity and even boost your gym gains.
Apple Inc. received at least $13 million, and probably much more, in tax forgiveness from the city of Chicago after settling a lawsuit that claimed the city’s “Netflix tax” on streaming entertainment violated federal law, newly released documents reveal.
[...]
The documents, characterized as jeopardy assessment workpapers and drafted by the Chicago Department of Finance, estimate the city forgave $13 million in back taxes, interest, and penalties that should have been applied to popular services such as Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple Fitness over a seven-year period.
There will always be stuff that I've paid, but didn't watch. Even on Apple TV+, the HBO of streaming service (maybe), there are quite a few shows that I couldn't stomach.
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Apple today announced new accessibility features coming later this year, including Eye Tracking, a way for users with physical disabilities to control iPad or iPhone with their eyes. Additionally, Music Haptics will offer a new way for users who are deaf or hard of hearing to experience music using the Taptic Engine in iPhone; Vocal Shortcuts will allow users to perform tasks by making a custom sound; Vehicle Motion Cues can help reduce motion sickness when using iPhone or iPad in a moving vehicle; and more accessibility features will come to visionOS.
Lots of iPad enthusiasts covet the sort of flexibility and customizability that MacOS has always offered and iPadOS, in its current form, does not. Maybe Apple will make them happy with announcements at next month’s WWDC. But Ternus also pushes back on the notion that the iPad Pro is less than “pro”—a term, he says, that isn’t defined by the Mac.
“There’s a funny perception thing,” he says. “Maybe it’s Mac people with their notion of what professional is. You saw what the Procreate team has done with Apple Pencil Pro. There is no more professional drawing application in the world than Procreate—I mean, they’re the lifeblood of artists.”
By default, the Photos app has a “Recently Deleted” feature that preserves deleted images for 30 days. That’s not what’s happening here, seeing as most of the images in question are months or years old, not days.
With the 10th-gen iPad, you’re not sacrificing the aesthetics for a low price. You’re having your cake and eating it. Despite its $349 price tag, this model manages to follow the same modern design language adopted by the flagship iPads. Sure, its display bezels may not be as thin amd the tech not as high, but, otherwise, it looks and feels pretty similar. And its chip packs enough power to handle casual users’ typical tablet needs.
Goodnotes' Fountain Pen now includes Dynamic Ink with an ink flow that is able to respond to the rotation of the Apple Pencil. Instead of just responding to pressure sensitivity, the Fountain Pen is able to make thinner or thicker lines based on the orientation of the Apple Pencil, for a more natural pen-like feel.
I, for example, like to get up and walk around the house during my breaks—with this application installed I can start my break on my laptop, get up, and get my "back to work" reminder on my phone.
RetroArch brings with it an abundance of supported game systems ranging from Nintendo favorites like the N64, SNES, Game Boy, and Nintendo DS to Sony’s PlayStation and PSP, Sega consoles, and more.
I continue to be excited about spending a week learning how I can improve my craft, be more considerate in my designs, and spending time with others who feel the same way. If I can still feel that way after 15 years of doing this, then I’m a part of something truly special.
I choose to go all in with Apple’s frameworks and technologies. It keeps things simple, but more importantly, it increases the odds of getting featured on the App Store.
Is Apple’s walled garden perfect? No. But as an indie developer, it makes my life easier. I can focus on the things that are important and deliver value to my users.
Yes, the iPad is looking better with the price cut. Will we be getting a M1 iPad anytime soon? That will be the one to get, if Apple manage to not increase prices too much.
Me, on the other hand, is waiting to see what Apple will do to the iPad mini.
I like minis.
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But let’s invert our thinking on this. Instead of starting with the hardware and pondering what the ideal software would be like to take advantage of its power, let’s start with the software. A concept for simplicity-first console-style touchscreen tablet computing. A metaphor for computing with smartphone-style guardrails, with tablet-specific features like stylus support and laptop docking. A tablet OS that is unabashedly a souped-up version of iOS, not a stripped-down version of MacOS. What type of hardware should Apple build to instantiate such a platform?
Apple's latest iPad Air and iPad Pro models feature a new Battery Health menu in the Settings app that is not available on older iPads, and which includes options that were once limited to iPhone 15 models.
From 2020 through 2023, Apple prevented a combined total of over $7 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions, including more than $1.8 billion in 2023 alone. In the same period, Apple blocked over 14 million stolen credit cards and more than 3.3 million accounts from transacting again.
As published in its fourth annual fraud prevention analysis released today, Apple found that in 2023, it rejected more than 1.7 million app submissions for failing to meet the App Store’s stringent standards for privacy, security, and content. In addition, Apple’s persistent efforts to stop and reduce fraud on the App Store resulted in the termination of nearly 374 million developer and customer accounts, and removal of close to 152 million ratings and reviews over fraud concerns.
The Apple Vision Pro has shown up in China's product regulatory database as Apple prepares to bring the headset to additional countries sometime in the near future. Both the Vision Pro (A2117) and its Battery Pack (A2697) have shown up in the Chinese database, indicating that a launch in China could be coming soon.
The high-frequency motion API released in watchOS 10, which takes advantage of the latest accelerometer and gyroscope in Apple Watch to detect rapid changes in velocity and acceleration, has equipped developers such as Golfshot with tools to create innovative new experiences that help users improve their golf swing and performance. For swing practice, Golfshot’s new Swing ID On-Range experience, launching today, utilizes this API to detect the precise moment the club strikes the ball. Apple Watch sensors also offer a comprehensive analysis of a golfer’s swing from the beginning to the end of the motion, and users of any skill level can track key swing metrics with precision, including tempo, rhythm, backswing, transition, and wrist path, to improve their gameplay.
According to Mysk, a security patch related to the MarketplaceKit framework has resulted in a bug that prevents iPhone users in the EU from reinstalling an alternative app marketplace like AltStore if they happen to delete the app after initially installing it. Apple will likely fix this issue in a subsequent update, such as iOS 17.5.1.
Developer Michael Tigas, maker of Focused Work, has launched a new app for Mac, iPhone, and iPad called focusOS. This new app is designed to elevate your focus and productivity by eliminating distractions through a variety of different tools. The one I’m most excited about helps your Mac imitate the iPad’s one-app-at-a-time design.
I simply cannot for one second believe that Apple signed off on this name. I'd sooner expect them to send out a weekly coupon book. Either they just learned of the name Comcast chose alongside the rest of us, or that's how dire things are with Apple TV+ right now.
Still, as the first day of I/O wound down, it was hard to escape the feeling that the web as we know it is entering a kind of managed decline. Over the past two and a half decades, Google extended itself into so many different parts of the web that it became synonymous with it. And now that LLMs promise to let users understand all that the web contains in real time, Google at last has what it needs to finish the job: replacing the web, in so many of the ways that matter, with itself.
[...]
But to everyone who depended even a little bit on web search to have their business discovered, or their blog post read, or their journalism funded, the arrival of AI search bodes ill for the future. Google will now do the Googling for you, and everyone who benefited from humans doing the Googling will very soon need to come up with a Plan B.
"Taken together, our findings imply that return to office mandates can imply significant human capital costs in terms of output, productivity, innovation, and competitiveness for the companies that implement them," the report reads.
Putting both iPadOS and macOS on a single device will eventually kill both iPadOS and macOS. That's my hypothesis.
Rather, I hope Apple can find a way to make iPadOS more powerful -- not that it isn't already quite powerful -- and to entice more app makers put pro-level apps on the iPad. I also hope Apple can find a way to make Mac computers extremely portable, including a way to efficiently make use of cellular data.
To do dual-booting will just collapse both computing models back to a single one, which we all already have back in the days.
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For now, it’s just an iPad. The best iPad ever, I think — maybe even the best iPad you could reasonably ask for. But the story of the iPad — the “magic pane of glass,” as Apple is so fond of calling it — is actually all about software. The iPad’s software has let its hardware down for years. Apple has led us to believe that’s about to change, that this year’s WWDC will be the great turning point for AI and iPads and everything. We’ll see. Until then, the iPad Pro is almost too good for its own good.
The iPad Pro is so much faster than most people need it to be—so loaded with expensive, cutting-edge technology—that it seems like it exists more for Apple to show off what it’s truly capable of than it does for most actual user needs.
As with most things in life, you get what you pay for—but I’m not sure most of us need to pay this much to get what we need. The cheaper iPad Air—or even the even-cheaper regular iPad—will already exceed most people’s purposes.
If the iPad Pro works for you, you won’t be disappointed by this one. I just wish more people could fit in that category.
Apple’s John Ternus describes a “cowling” over the metal logic board cover that dissipates heat and creates a “central rib” that runs through the whole iPad Pro Pro to “tremendously” improves the device’s stiffness. Ternus says the cowling is a new part of the iPad Pro.
In a relatively specific set of circumstances, HDR highlights are blown out on certain blue shades including navy and indigo to a point that they almost appear white on screen. The best way to spot it would be to look at a character wearing a navy blue shirt — the creases appear to shimmer, like a spider’s web placed over the surface; at other times it appears like an inky blob morphing over it:
[...]
Apple has confirmed to iMore that it is aware of the issue and is working on a software fix to address it.
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call the new Airs the "default" iPad for most buyers—the now-$349 10th-gen iPad still does everything the iPad is best at for less money, and it's still all you really need if you just want a casual gaming, video streaming, and browsing tablet (or a tablet for a kid). But the M2 Air is the iPad that best covers the totality of everything the iPad can do from its awkward perch, stuck halfway between the form and function of the iPhone and the Mac.
My standard buying advice is to buy the best stuff you can afford and then keep it as long as possible. But I’m confident that even a two-year-old 10th-generation iPad is capable enough to do most things really well for a long time. So is the Air, obviously! But the bad news for Apple, and the good news for you, is that every iPad is a great iPad — including the cheapest one.
Apple has released the latest updates for virtually all of its actively supported devices today. Most include a couple handfuls of security updates, some new features for Apple News+ subscribers, and something called Cross-Platform Tracking Protection for Bluetooth devices.
Apple and Google have worked together to create an industry specification — Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers — for Bluetooth tracking devices that makes it possible to alert users across both iOS and Android if such a device is unknowingly being used to track them. This will help mitigate the misuse of devices designed to help keep track of belongings. Today Apple is implementing this capability in iOS 17.5, and Google is now launching this capability on Android 6.0+ devices.
Apple News+ introduced Quartiles, a new original spelling game, and a new Offline Mode that automatically provides recent and personalized News content for subscribers when they’re not connected to Wi-Fi or a cellular network.
While watchOS 10.5 is primarily a bug fix update, it does introduce a new Pride watch face to go along with the Pride band that Apple introduced earlier in May.
Get ready for the next cable-like streaming bundle: Comcast later this month will launch a three-way bundle — with Peacock, Netflix and Apple TV+ — offered at a deep discount, Comcast chief Brian Roberts said.
[...]
The three streaming services, Peacock, Netflix and Apple TV+, will “come at a vastly reduced price to anything available today,” Roberts said, although he didn’t reveal any pricing.
According to MacPaw, Setapp will provide a "carefully selected assortment of apps" across categories like productivity, design, lifestyle, utility, and more.
Lately I’ve seen some people argue on Mastodon and Threads that folks who criticize iPadOS do so because their ultimate goal is to have macOS on iPads, and I wanted to clarify this misunderstanding. While I’m on the record as thinking that a hybrid macOS/iPadOS environment would be terrific (I know, because I use it), that is not the point. The reality is that, regardless of whether macOS runs on iPads or not, iPadOS is the ideal OS for touch interactions. But it still gets many basic computing features wrong, and there is plenty of low-hanging fruit for Apple to pick. We don’t need to talk about macOS to cover these issues.
Lastly, I wanted to provide readers with the necessary context to understand what I mean when I mention the limitations of iPadOS. My iPad setup and workflow have changed enough times over the years that I think some of you may have lost track of the issues I (and others) have been experiencing. This article is a chance to collect them all in one place.
I am pretty sure I will not be buying an iPad Pro anytime soon. Why? Because I don't need it. Just like the Mac Pro, it does seem that the 'Pro' status of iPad has graduated to the level where if you have to ask whether you should buy a Pro, you probably shouldn't.
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Apple Music today announced the release of its 100 Best Albums of all time, a celebratory list of the greatest records ever made, crafted by Apple Music’s team of experts alongside a select group of artists, including Maren Morris, Pharrell Williams, J Balvin, Charli XCX, Mark Hoppus, Honey Dijon, and Nia Archives, as well as songwriters, producers, and industry professionals. The list is an editorial statement, fully independent of any streaming numbers on Apple Music — a love letter to the records that have shaped the world music lovers live and listen in.
In recent weeks, Apple Inc.’s Hollywood studio has told its business partners that it wants to change the way it pays talent. After years of compensating people as though all their projects were successful, Apple will soon begin basing pay on how a series or movie performs.
Apple is lumped in with the “big tech” held responsible for the threats posed by AI. Tim Cook has publicly proclaimed that AI will play a big part in Apple’s future. Apple has to be careful in the way it communicates.
With Crush, Apple did not show much care. In fact, it didn’t show any care. The ad made it feel like the company was suddenly insensitive to the threat. To creators, it felt like a sucker-punch delivered by a old friend.
The ad may not be your cup of tea, and perhaps even upset you, and that’s OK. Creative will forever be subjective, and no campaign in the history of humankind has experienced universal love.
Yet this one’s not even remotely worthy of saying sorry for.
At the heart of it is a free video streaming service called NASA+ that collates all the video content from various NASA departments. There is live coverage, original on-demand series, one-offs, and videos organized by theme. Think of Netflix but where all the content is space-themed. Through all of this, it is possible to lift the lid on NASA and be treated to all its inner workings. If you’re remotely interested in space, you’ll probably find yourself drawn in and amazed at what goes on at the government agency.
iPhone users without a penchant for jailbreaking can finally enjoy the blocky polygons and shifty textures of the original PlayStation with Gamma, a free PS1 emulator that hit the iOS App Store last night. Gamma comes courtesy of developer ZodTTD, which has been creating emulators for the iPhone since the earliest days of third-party iOS apps.
Apple is preparing to include an AI-based privacy feature in the Safari browser in the next iOS 18 software update that will remove ads or other unwanted website content, according to reports.
In a letter sent on Friday to Apple’s government affairs chief in the UK, the News Media Association, which represents 900 national, regional and local titles, raised concerns about how this would affect digital revenues in the industry.
"If we’re going to make the online world safe for young people, we can’t just go in guns blazing with strong beliefs and a one size fits all solution - we really need to make sure that we’re sensitive to having our minds changed by data," he said.
The study did not look specifically at social media - which is what much of the most heated debate around online safety is focussed on - but took a broader approach to assessing access to the internet.
Hmmm... 100 best albums of all time... in U.S. English only?
Hmmm... doesn't Safari's reader already remove ads or other unwanted website content?
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I was admittedly dismissive of the Solo 4 for their lack of firepower at first, but over multiple days of testing, the sound kept calling me back. Their warm, clean, and buttery performance stems from a redesigned acoustic architecture that proves Apple’s sonic influence on the Beats brand runs deep. You can get a lot more tech from other options, but there’s enough here to make the Solo 4 worth considering for some—especially once the price inevitably drops.
Generally, I think it's the AirPods Pro, but the other AirPods models have their good and bad features. I've used every generation of every model of AirPod in some capacity, so this is the definitive ranking on the lineup. If you're looking to buy your first pair or just a new pair, these are the AirPods models you should buy.
"The issues at the forefront of this action include concerns over work-life balance, unpredictable scheduling practices disrupting personal lives, and wages failing to align with the area's cost of living", IAM said in the statement.
Dazzling images of the northern lights — visible as far south as Arizona — have been made possible, in part, by dark mode photography features on our cell phones.
Old bones and creaky joints. That's what I have.
Any day where I wake up without me noticing is a good day. Today is not that day.
Hope you have a better Sunday than me.
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I've discovered that starting in February, Apple mistakenly subtracts the price of the previously purchased app twice from the proceeds of a "Complete My Bundle" purchase, thereby causing me to take a loss on each such bundle purchase. This accounting change has cost me thousands of dollars over the past few months.
What's the solution here for Apple? Dunno. There honestly probably isn't one. Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches. But I do think kicking off WWDC by opening with the video playing backwards, un-crushing the souls of the creative community, would be a pretty incredible show of humility and sense of humor.
You can use your Mac’s camera to scan ISBN barcodes, which enables you to import metadata and cover art found in Google Books (requires macOS 10.14 Mojave or later).
Training Today is a clever app that offers Apple Watch users a “readiness to train” score to help know when to rest, push, and more. Now the watchOS and iOS app have been updated with “dynamic cycling workouts” to train more intentionally on rides.
It has a superior build, and even at the higher price is a great solution for people who find their phone fading during the day or who need to use their phone for long periods away from their wall charger.
Bungie just announced that the first game in the original trilogy has surprise-dropped on Steam, and it’s available on both Mac and PC. Even better, you can play it for free.
The two sides have been finalising terms for a pact to use ChatGPT features in Apple’s iOS 18, the next iPhone operating system, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the situation is private. Apple also has held talks with Alphabet’s Google about licensing that company’s Gemini chatbot. Those discussions haven’t led to an agreement, but are ongoing.
The CEOs of Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Nvidia Corp. are among the industry chieftains who’ve swung through the region in past months, committing billions of dollars in investment and holding forth with heads of state from Indonesia to Malaysia. Amazon.com Inc. just this week took over a giant conference hall in downtown Singapore to unfurl a $9 billion investment plan before a thousands-strong audience cheering and waving glow sticks.
[...]
Take Tim Cook and Satya Nadella, who last month embarked on their biggest tours across Southeast Asia in years. The investments they pledged are set to help turn the region into a major battleground between the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google in future frontiers such as artificial intelligence and the cloud.
It's the weekend. Maybe go play a tune on a trumpet. Maybe paint some trees on a canvas. Or maybe go stop an alien invasion aboard the Marathon.
Go have fun.
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None of this would be possible without Apple having adding Log ProRes recording to the iPhone 15 Pro. Log is to video what raw is to still photography, and the story of how Apple Log transforms the definition of “Shot on iPhone” from a dalliance to a responsible, even desirable strategy for filmmaking is still ongoing.
Truly “pro” features like color-accurate OLED screens on iPads and ProRes Log on phones don’t just sell a few devices to a few filmmakers. They preserve and elevate Apple’s reputation as the choice of creative professionals in all fields. Apple hardware is vastly overpowered for most of its customer’s uses, so as Apple looks around for folks in need of their very best, they find the Zbrush artist, the Redshift renderer, and now, improbably-but-deservedly, the professional cinematographer.
Basically, Apple used the M3 generation to get to 3nm before everyone else, but it knew that it would need a new design for the system TSMC was building toward. Hence the M4–and presumably the A18–were redesigns Apple absolutely had to do.
Why launch the M4 on the iPad Pro rather than a more popular product, like a MacBook Air? Chances are pretty good that at the beginning of a chip cycle, the volume of chips coming out of the factory will be low. The iPad Pro doesn’t sell in remotely the same numbers as a MacBook Air, allowing Apple and TSMC to ramp up deliveries.
Apple has now responded to this criticism, issuing a public apology to Ad Age saying it “missed the mark with this video.”
Today there’s widespread uncomfortableness, perhaps outright concern, that the digital world is consuming the analog one. It plays differently today than a decade ago to emphasize that an iPad can replace a veritable truck-full of artistic tools and toys.
The company is placing high-end chips — similar to ones it designed for the Mac — in cloud-computing servers designed to process the most advanced AI tasks coming to Apple devices, according to people familiar with the matter. Simpler AI-related features will be processed directly on iPhones, iPads and Macs, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plan is still under wraps.
And there’s the challenge: Photoshop, the most professionalized fake-image program, now has to walk a middle path. It needs to offer generative-AI tools to stay cutting-edge, but it also cannot risk alienating its clientele by taking off the guardrails. Adobe is a technology company that serves artists, and in the art world, AI is deeply polarizing.
Lots of apps have great origin stories, but the tale of Tucker MacDonald and Tide Guide seems tailor-made for the Hollywood treatment. It begins in the dawn hours on Cape Cod, where a school-age MacDonald first learned to fish with his grandfather.
“Every day, he’d look in the paper for the tide tables,” says MacDonald. “Then he’d call me up and say, ‘Alright Tucker, we’ve got a good tide and good weather. Let’s be at the dock by 5:30 a.m.’”
Plinky lets you save links to web pages, apps, videos, images and even app stores; label them neatly; and organize them in different folders. You can customize these labels and folders, and even how a link shows up in the app. Additionally, you can search for links and pin them for easy access.
While the company made an official statement on the matter, it hasn’t appeared to address a concerning issue – the update has broken accessibility for visually impaired users.
Today the company launched Pathways, a collection of videos, documentation, and other resources that will walk you step by step through the journey of developing your first app.
And so we carry around these pocket miracles, and very useful they are too — until something unfortunate happens. It’s brilliant to have your tickets, keys, phone, address book and cash all in the same little box of delights, as long as you don’t drop the box of delights down the toilet. As Earl Wiener put it, “Digital devices tune out small errors while creating opportunities for large errors.” Next time, I’ll print the ticket.
Those who pay to gain access to the tools can lose themselves in more than 4,500 charts — each ranking as many as 1,500 titles — that cover 60 genres and span 270 countries, regions, and cities. While radio is not the commercial force it once was, Apple also harnessed Shazam to monitor what’s playing on over 40,000 radio stations (terrestrial and internet) across the globe.
It is okay for Apple to sell an iPad that is not meant for you and your work. It is okay if you find that you are better off using macOS rather than iPadOS. Stop asking Apple to do an iPad that can run macOS, but start asking why MacBook's portability is still far behind iPad's.
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Thanks for reading.
Over the years, the company repeatedly said it likes to give its app developers the ability to make the most out of its hardware. Sure, you can just use the default camera app, but at a certain point, it’s just not powerful enough. That’s why Apple itself relied on Blackmagic’s camera app in its productions, including the very impressive “Scary Fast” event from last year which was visible in the company’s behind-the-scenes video it published shortly after.
But with Final Cut Camera, Apple signaled very loudly that it is shifting its perspective: it’s now making the software required to take full advantage of its capture hardware. There really is no other definition of a camera company than that.
One thing I’m taking away from this is that it’s wrong to think about M-series generations as year-over-year annual iterations, like the A-series chips in iPhones. Rather, it seems like Apple is evolving the M-series chips in parallel, designing them with very specific but widely variant products in mind.
The Smart Keyboard Folio was thin enough that you never really had to make a choice; you could always just leave it on no matter what you were doing.
Starting with the Apple Pencil Pro, the product artwork is surrounded by actual art.
But what Apple is doing is destroying these things to convince you that you don’t need them — all you need is the company’s little device, which can do all that and more, and no need for annoying stuff like strings, keys, buttons, brushes or mixing stations.
But the ad has been interpreted more as a visual depiction of the tech industry’s devastation of cultural industries. “The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley,” actor Hugh Grant commented on X.
Filmmaker and actor Justine Bateman, who has served as an adviser to SAG-AFTRA on AI issues, had a similar incredulous reaction: “Truly, what is wrong with you?” she said in quoting Cook’s post.
The last time Apple did this, people weren’t talking quite as urgently about AI automation snapping up all the jobs humans once held.
It would have been better to start with this ‘impossibly thin’ device, and then show all these amazing things emerging from it.
Gonzalez Rogers was particularly pointed as she grilled Fischer about whether Apple had deliberately made it more cumbersome and confusing for consumers to make digital purchases through alternative services.
[...]
Fischer maintained Apple is complying with the judge's order while still trying to shield iPhone users from bad actors on the internet and enabling the Cupertino, California, company to reap a return on its investments in the app store and other mobile software.
Digital Music Europe expressed concern in a letter submitted to the European Commission on Tuesday that Apple's proposal to comply with the regulator's March order, in which the iPhone-maker was fined 1.84 billion euros, does not provide concrete and effective remedies.
Matter 1.3 adds support for a range of new device types and features, including water management devices, electric vehicle chargers, kitchen and laundry appliances, and TVs.
We have reached the chicken-and-egg stage of a new protocol. If the platforms don’t support the new device types, manufacturers are less likely to spend resources supporting them (on top of all the other support they need to add to their products to work with Alexa or Google Home or Apple Home, if they can’t do it through Matter). But if there are no devices, then why should the platforms bother putting time, effort, and resources into supporting the new device types?
An hour-long interactive and immersive Disney+ story is coming to the Apple Vision Pro in the near future, according to an announcement from Marvel Studios. The Disney+ original is connected to the "What If…? animated series and it will be released as a new app for the Vision Pro.
For whatever reason, the lineup of sci-fi shows on Apple TV Plus has steadily grown over the years, not just in terms of size and quality but also tone and scope. The genre has become one of the service’s strongest selling points.
Apple today released an iTunes 12.13.2 update for Windows users, with the software introducing support for the new iPad Air and iPad Pro models.
Planning a day like this, you're much more likely to finish the tasks, as they are now anchored to a time block. Plus, you can be mindful about spacing them out so that they aren't overlapping (something the app will alert you about).
Following the announcement of new iPads on Tuesday, Logitech today announced a new version of its popular Combo Touch keyboard case for the latest M2 iPad Air and M4 iPad Pro. The accessory works as a great alternative to Apple’s Magic Keyboard, as it also features a full-size keyboard and multi-touch trackpad.
More functionality for Vision Pro has landed with two new third-party app updates. The popular Duet Display and Screens are both now available for Apple’s headset. Here are all the details and features.
The new app moves backward in certain areas, but Sonos has succeeded at some of its over-arching design goals. Whether you’re a fan of the new app will vary depending on how you use Sonos products in the first place.
If Cook were to stay that long, people within Apple say, the most likely successor would be John Ternus, the hardware engineering chief. In a company whose success has always come from building category-defining gadgets, the ascension of a hardware engineering expert to the CEO job would seem logical. Ternus, who’s not yet 50, would also be more likely than other members of the executive team to stick around for a long time, potentially providing another decade or more of Cook-esque stability.
Ternus is well-liked inside Apple, and he’s earned the respect of Cook, Williams and other leaders. “Tim likes him a lot, because he can give a good presentation, he’s very mild-mannered, never puts anything into an email that is controversial and is a very reticent decision-maker,” says one person close to Apple’s executive team. “He has a lot of managerial characteristics like Tim.” Christopher Stringer, a former top Apple hardware designer, called Ternus a “trustworthy hand” who’s “never failed with any role he’s been elevated to.” Eddy Cue, the Apple executive known as Cook’s closest confidant, has privately told colleagues that Ternus should be the next CEO, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
At least 224 people with diabetes have reported injuries linked to a defective iOS app that caused their insulin pumps to shut down prematurely, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
On Wednesday, the agency announced that California-based medical device manufacturer Tandem Diabetes Care has issued a recall for version 2.7 of the iOS t:connect mobile app, which is used in conjunction with the company’s t:slim X2 insulin pump. Specifically, the recall relates to a software issue that can cause the app to repeatedly crash and relaunch, resulting in the pump’s battery being drained by excessive Bluetooth communication.
The store and Apple have reached a series of agreements, none of which are considered to veer greatly from Apple’s preexisting policies. The union told employees there are ongoing negotiations regarding pay, overtime, unpaid leave of absences, time-away benefits and scheduling.
While video calling isn’t bleeding-edge tech, the Zoom cashier captures what often happens when an industry integrates new tech into its business model: Jobs don’t really disappear, they just shrink, along with their paycheck, and this degradation is presented as the natural outcome of automation and technological progress.
Somewhere in my house, there are still lightning cables that I am not using, a DVD player that can play physical media that I have not switch on for many years, and an iPod nano that can play radio but I never listen.
What I am saying... well... firstly, I am not a hoarder. I try very hard not to be a hoarder and do get rid of things that I no longer need nor want.
But, I don't like to throw away things, or things being destroyed when they are still working fine. Things that are still useful, still functional, still beautify, should not be just destroyed.
Which is why I was feeling so much uneasiness during this crusher bit during the 'live' Apple iPad event.
Yes, I know no real stuff are being destroyed. All these can be done, and are probably done, in CGs. (I hope I am right on this.) Yes, I know the messaging Apple is going for, that the thinnest iPad is made up of all these stuff. Yes, I know Apple is not messaging that AI is coming to crush us all.
Nevertheless, I feel so uneasy during that spot during the event. And, furthermore, the whole crushing thing went on and on for so long. I had to, and I did, look away towards the end.
To use this as an advertisement, it's not good. Not good at all.
And yes, AI is out to get you all ended up as the unintended message. I'm pretty sure someone somewhere is probably making a supercut with all the "AI" uttered during the event and intersperse with this no-good advertisement.
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Thanks for reading.
The new 13-inch and 11-inch tablets have a fresh design, more powerful internals, and a thinner profile than ever before, and they come with a major display upgrade. As rumored, Apple has switched to OLED screens on both sizes, bringing perfect blacks, richer color saturation, and enhanced contrast to its flagship iPads. Oh, and the front-facing camera is now in the correct (landscape) position for video calls.
A new sensor in the Apple Pencil Pro allows users to squeeze the accessory to bring up a tool palette to quickly switch tools, line weights, and colors. In addition, a new gyroscope allows users to rotate the Apple Pencil Pro for precise control of shaped pen and brush tools.
Alongside the long-expected OLED iPad Pro and M2 iPad Air, Apple has also released a lightly updated Magic Keyboard with an aluminum palm rest and a larger trackpad with haptic feedback — and, finally, a function row.
For gaming enthusiasts, the two most exciting announcements also happened to be bits of info that weren't leaking out much ahead of the Apple Event. The more powerful GPU built into the iPad Pro's M4 chipset means that the tablet will support both ray tracing and mesh shading. Both features are brand new to these tablets and are also features that some gaming PCs aren't always able to offer.
The newly announced iPad Pro hides a sneaky upgrade option that Apple didn’t mention during its event today. When you cough up the $600 it costs to jump from the 256GB base model iPad Pro to the 1TB version, Apple doesn’t just double the RAM along with that — it also puts a faster chip inside, going from a nine-core M4 chip to a 10-core version.
Apple's new iPad Pro models have different amounts of RAM based on storage capacity, with the higher-tier models offering double the memory.
The nano-texture option is limited to the 1TB and 2TB models. It adds $100 per model.
It’s such a big difference that the larger model, which I’ve always felt was kind of preposterously huge, feels much more comfortable to hold and use.
Its adoption by carriers has been relatively low. mmWave deployment in the US is championed by Verizon, where customers can see 1-2 gigabit speeds in select areas. mmWave is also useful in highly-congested areas like sports stadiums. However, the vast majority of 5G coverage in the US is carried over sub-6 GHz.
The 10-megapixel Ultra Wide rear camera on the last three iPad Pro generations is also absent on the latest models, which only have a 12-megapixel Wide rear camera.
On the previous generation models, the cellular versions of both the iPad Air and the iPad Pro included a physical SIM card slot. In the new devices, that's no longer the case. All cellular models now support eSIM only.
Apple is selling a new Smart Folio for the 11-inch iPad Pro in Denim, Black, and White. There's also a Smart Folio for the 13-inch iPad Pro in the same color options.
Apple has unveiled its 2024 iPad Air, now in two sizes for the first time thanks to a new 13-inch option. The company also updated the 11-inch iPad Air. Both tablets are outfitted with Apple’s M2 chip and will be in blue, purple, starlight, and space gray colors.
Today’s price drop of $100 reflects the price that the tablet actually sold for at many retailers outside of Apple.
Apple will push entry-level buyers to the 10th-gen model, which is clearly a superior machine.
Final Cut Pro for iPad will now support external projects, allowing users to keep their media on external connected storage without using up the limited internal storage of the iPad itself. Final Cut Pro 2 will also include new Color-grading presets, new titles, soundtracks and dynamic backgrounds.
Logic Pro 2 updates include a new ‘stem splitter’ feature that splits input audio into separate tracks for the different instruments, allowing for easier edits.
Apple is releasing a new Final Cut Camera app for iPhone and iPad that can take video and stream it live back to an iPad for a Multicam shoot, as well as provide more controls for filmmakers. The company’s new pro-level app provides “precise manual controls” and can be used as a plain standalone camera app.
But now, you’ll be able to have a full-fledged news reading experience without an Internet connection. No planning ahead required.
In a memo distributed to Apple Store teams on Tuesday and viewed by 9to5Mac, Apple explained that Apple stickers will not be included in the box for the new iPad Pro and iPad Air. The company says that this is part of its environmental goals, as it strives to ensure its packaging is completely plastic-free.
Apple Stores, however, are receiving shipments with a limited quantity of Apple logo stickers that can be distributed to customers who buy a new iPad Pro or iPad Air, but only upon request. So, if you buy an iPad Pro or iPad Air from an Apple Store, you can request an Apple sticker at the time of purchase.
You don’t have to be a fan of science fiction to wonder about the road not taken. Pretty much the only thing about human existence that everyone can agree on is that our choices define us. But the new Apple TV+ sci-fi show Dark Matter asks whether our choices may not be the only thing about selfhood that truly matters. In one of the most mind-bending series of the year, Dark Matter asks big questions, but smartly, puts those questions into relatable packages.
To complete the challenge, Apple Watch owners will need to record five or more mindful minutes using the Mindfulness app or any app that adds mindful minutes to Health app.
So, why didn't iPad mini get updates, or get cheaper, or removed from store, this week? I can think of a few possibilities.
Maybe, yes, Apple is no longer interested in iPad mini, but it remained in the store because sales are still good enough?
Or maybe, they just couldn't get the Apple Pencil Pro to work just right yet on a smaller iPad, but Apple is sure working hard on this right now?
Or maybe, just maybe, we are getting a foldable iPhone + iPad mini this fall, or why bother doing anything this week?
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Thanks for reading.
The improved video quality from using Continuity Camera, the enjoyment of seeing photos at my desk, the convenience of StandBy at night, and the improved usability of better positioning in the car are all worthwhile, especially when bolstered by less worry about running out of power.
Whatever your scenario—maybe you’re having to use Microsoft’s operating system temporarily or wondering how buying a Windows laptop might limit what you can do with your existing Apple services—here’s the state of play right now.
According to developers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk, several major app makers are simply ignoring Apple's requirements, and using tracker-happy APIs without sticking to the rules. Big Tech players like Google, Meta, and Spotify - the duo claim - are providing reasons for this API usage, collecting that data, and then not abiding by the requirement to keep that information on the device.
The band features a fluorescent design inspired by multiple pride flags with a laser-etched lug that reads "PRIDE 2024." Black, Hispanic, and Latin communities, as well as those impacted by HIV/AIDS, are represented on the band by the black and brown colors, while transgender and non-binary individuals and represented by the pink, light blue, and white colors.
Five new games join Apple Arcade in the next month — Rabbids: Legends of the Multiverse, Return to Monkey Island+, Tomb of the Mask+, Fabulous - Wedding Disaster+, and Apple Vision Pro spatial title Where Cards Fall. The service introduces players to their next favorite titles while providing new experiences for their go-to games that they enjoy daily, with no ads or in-app purchases.
Screens by Edovia is a screen-sharing app that lets you control your computer from another device, and today, version 5.2 is out with an excellent set of updates that improve the app’s performance and usability. However, the biggest change is that Screens now works on the Vision Pro, which is a big deal for anyone managing computers remotely.
That’s because it ran in a single market at the time: Japan.
It turns out Apple relied on whimsical puppetry to convince Android users to switch to iPhone for a few years.
TunnelVision, as the researchers have named their attack, largely negates the entire purpose and selling point of VPNs, which is to encapsulate incoming and outgoing Internet traffic in an encrypted tunnel and to cloak the user’s IP address. The researchers believe it affects all VPN applications when they’re connected to a hostile network and that there are no ways to prevent such attacks except when the user VPN runs on Linux or Android.
I am getting ready to watch the iPad event 'live': dinner is already in my tummy, and I've showered and changed into my jammies. Thanks for reading, and see you tomorrow.
In general, Apple is pushing to solve a core tension in the model world: the bigger a model gets, the better and more useful it can be, but also the more unwieldy, power-hungry, and slow it can become. Like so many others, the company is trying to find the right balance between all those things while also looking for a way to have it all.
A lot of what we talk about when we talk about AI products is virtual assistants — assistants that know things, that can remind us of things, that can answer questions, and get stuff done on our behalf. So it’s not exactly shocking that a lot of Apple’s AI research boils down to a single question: what if Siri was really, really, really good?
As computers get smarter, however, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and others hope to fully remove the language barrier Andre and I shared that day. But it’ll take faster neural machine learning for that to happen, which “might be a few years out,” one developer I spoke to admitted.
Not that the wait matters. In fact, many consumers are surprised to learn just how good today’s translation apps already are.
For authors who can’t afford to produce their own audiobooks, it’s easy to understand why virtual voices appeal to them. But for listeners who want options, or at least the ability to support only human-created works, the filtering and labeling systems have to improve.
If you are faced with a zero-click exploit delivering spyware, experts say there is very little you can do to protect yourself or restore security to your devices. “The best thing to do if you are targeted is to entirely abandon both the hardware and any associated accounts,” says Aaron Engel, chief information security officer at ExpressVPN. “Get a new computer, get a new phone number, and create completely new accounts linked to the device.”
Detecting spyware can be challenging, but unusual behavior such as your battery draining quickly, unexpected shutdowns, or high data usage could be indicative of an infection, says Javvad Malik, lead security awareness advocate at security training organization KnowBe4. While specific apps claim to spot spyware, their effectiveness can vary, and professional assistance is often necessary for reliable detection, he says.
But truly anything can be the sandwich. Grabbing coffee. Having tea and a cookie every night before bed. Sometimes, I’ll just go through what I already have planned and think about what good things I have coming up that I can focus on.
The new teaser at the top of the page cycles between the various illustrations of Apple logo, with a twist that you can erase the art with your mouse pointer on Mac, or finger on your iPhone’s touchscreen. When the logo is fully erased, a new variant animates in.
I just noticed that Audible app now supports Shortcuts, including a nice shortcut that plays the current audiobook that works even when my iPhone is locked.
This makes me very happy: I have now the complete set of shortcuts that plays the three most important (to me) audio entertainment: audiobooks, podcasts, and music. And I can trigger these shortcuts without unlocking my phone. Granted, this was more important four years ago when I was all masked up and I cannot easily unlock my phone. But this ability is still great.
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I looked forward to my egg-and-rice dinner tonight. For tomorrow, I will be looking forward to the iPad event, even though I know I will not be buying anything. My iPad Pro back from 2017 is still working fine, and iPad is no longer a priority for me. (Got to prepare for my eventual retirement when I will have much less income.) And, because of the new timing, I am able to watch the event 'live' at 10pm local time. And, because of the rumored less-than-40-minutes run-time, bedtime will probably not be affected.
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And I am probably starting too many sentences with the word 'and'.
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Thanks for reading.
Shortly after I became pregnant with my second child, in the fall of 2022, I decided to try a modest experiment. I wanted to see whether I could hide my pregnancy from my phone. After spending my twenties eagerly surveilling and sharing the details of my life online, I had already begun trying to erect some walls of technological privacy: I’d deleted most apps on my phone and turned off camera, location, and microphone access for nearly all of the ones that I did have; I had disabled Siri—I just found it annoying—and I didn’t have any smart devices. For the experiment, I would abide by some additional restrictions. I wouldn’t Google anything about pregnancy nor shop for baby stuff either online or using a credit card, and neither would my husband, because our I.P. addresses—and thus the vast, matrixed fatbergs of personal data assembled by unseen corporations to pinpoint our consumer and political identities—were linked. I wouldn’t look at pregnancy accounts on Instagram or pregnancy forums on Reddit. I wouldn’t update my period tracker or use a pregnancy app.
[...]
I had felt little satisfaction hiding from the ad trackers—if anything, I’d only become more conscious of how much surveillance I was engaged in, as both subject and object, and how much more insidious the problem was becoming.
One of the most under-appreciated Mac features is the services menu, which you can find by right-clicking just about anything—highlighted text, say, or any image. Hover over the "Services" section and you'll see a bunch of quick actions.
Apple Notes is one of those apps you can turn to on a daily basis without ever really making full use of all the different features and functions it’s got to offer. That’s where this particular guide comes in. The idea is to point you to some of the lesser known but very useful tricks that Apple Notes can do.
The Flying Calmly app uses weather data to keep passengers informed about in-flight turbulence trends. To access this information, you'll just need to enter your flight date and number.
The billionaire investment tycoon Warren Buffett has stressed his empire will remain a key investor in Apple after it sold billions of dollars’ worth of shares in the iPhone maker.
North Yorkshire Council is to ditch the problematic punctuation point as it says it can affect geographical databases.
The council said all new street signs would be produced without one, regardless of previous use.
Residents spoken to by the BBC urged the authority to retain apostrophes or risk "everything going downhill".
My phone just alerted me that, over the past week, I've taken less steps than usual. I think the phone is worried that I may not have noticed I was not out and about at all.
But, no, I did notice. I didn't go out at all the entire week because, well, I've had Covid. Again.
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Thanks for reading.
Lucasfilm said they received more than 300 submissions for the spot, with a total of 172 fans becoming involved with the production. Lucasfilm said it’s the largest number of fans they’ve ever had in a project sanctioned by the company.
The star of the event will be a new iPad Pro with an updated design and crisper screen. It will be the first iPad to get an OLED display — organic light-emitting diode — the technology used in the iPhone since 2017. In addition to improving the image quality, OLEDs allow for thinner devices, and Apple is expected to slim down the Pro tablet accordingly. The new iPads are poised to come in 11-inch and 12.9-inch screen sizes and may also include Apple’s first M4 processors. Those chips will help power artificial intelligence tasks — part of a broader push into AI that Apple will explain further in June.
Some Swift Student Challenge winners today began receiving congratulatory certificates from Apple, with one Distinguished Winner sharing a images of the letter he received from Apple.
Starting today, Apple Maps users in the Netherlands can access cycling route data on iPhone and Apple Watch.
Whether splitting rent among roommates, divvying up grocery costs, or sharing the burden of household utilities, learn about the best apps to split bills.
MidiWrist Unleashed “turns your Apple Watch into a standalone MIDI controller that directly connects to any advertised Bluetooth LE MIDI device,” and it’s completely independent from the iPhone.
It’s interesting that Cook calls out generative AI, which is basically the sort of stuff that Apple hasn’t spent the last few years rolling out inside its various products. He acknowledges that they’ve been investing in this technology and once again touts that Apple will share things soon. That could be Tuesday, at its video event, but it’s more likely to be at WWDC in June.
But with Apple's business having declined in size in five of the past six quarters and with the company expecting just low single-digit growth in the current quarter, Buffett may face questions this weekend at the shareholder meeting about whether he still sees the same power in the moat, particularly with regulatory pressures building around tech's mega-cap companies.
The first time I remember watching Star Wars, it was on a local free-to-air television channel. And, if I also remember correctly, there wasn't regulation on the number of advertisement per hour back then. So, this Star Wars was so full of commercials that I gave up halfway.
The first Star Wars movie that I watched in cinema was The Phantom Menace.
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Thanks for reading.
Earlier this week, the European Commission said that iPadOS is also a gatekeeper platform under the Digital Markets Act. [...] With iPadOS being added to the mix, Apple has also confirmed that users who install the same app on both iOS and iPadOS in a 12-month period will only generate one first annual install for that app rather than two, which should help developers keep below the CTF threshold.
Apple is exempting more developers from the Core Technology Fee (CTF) it introduced in the European Union. In an update on Thursday, Apple announced that developers of free apps without monetization won’t have to pay the new fee.
[...]
The company also says small developers with less than €10 million in global annual business revenue will receive a three-year free “on-ramp” to the CTF “to help them create innovative apps and rapidly grow their business.”
iPhone sales, which usually buoy Apple’s results, took a hit this quarter, posting $46 billion in revenue, which is a 10 percent decrease from the second quarter of 2023. Wearables, Home, and Accessories revenue was also down 10 percent. iPad sales were also down 17 percent.
Apple’s Services set a record for the quarter and saw a jump in revenue YoY of 14 percent, while Mac sales increased about 4 percent.
Cook said Apple is making significant investments in the burgeoning technology and that the company is uniquely positioned to make the most of AI because of its “seamless integration of hardware, software, and services,” including its “neural engine” AI chips, as well as its “unwavering focus on privacy.”
"Looking ahead, we’re getting ready for an exciting product announcement next week that we think our customers will love, and next month, we have our Worldwide Developers Conference, which has generated enormous enthusiasm from our developers. We can’t wait to reveal what we have in store."
"We continue to feel very bullish about our opportunity in generative AI. We are making significant investments, and we’re looking forward to sharing some very exciting things with our customers soon. We believe in the transformative power and promise of AI, and we believe we have advantages that will differentiate us in this new era, including Apple’s unique combination of seamless hardware, software, and services integration, groundbreaking Apple Silicon with our industry-leading neural engines, and our unwavering focus on privacy, which underpins everything we create."
Apple's atrial fibrillation (AFib) history feature on Apple Watch has been qualified by the FDA under its Medical Device Development Tools (MDDT) program, the first digital health technology feature of its kind to do so.
It’s an essential songwriting tool that encourages musicians to workshop arrangements on their own, but it really shines in a live setting when a capable musician employs a looper to conjure a towering wall of sound with minimal assistance.
HoverBar Duo is primarily marketed as an adjustable iPad mount for using the tablet hands-free. However, the arrival of FaceTime for Apple TV 4K makes HoverBar Duo a versatile solution for positioning your iPhone camera just right.
Apple today has added nine new design templates to its collection of Figma resources, significantly increasing the number of resources available for Figma users.
Notifications can intrude into every moment of our lives, fighting for our attention without tact. Yes, we can turn them off or click “unsubscribe” on emails that never made it into the junk folder, but the point is they shouldn’t be happening in the first place. Would we be okay with a stranger holding up a sign that read, “Hey! Remember when your friend died?” as they ran up to us in a cemetery? Would we accept our ex-partner shouting, “It was supposed to be me!” in the middle of our wedding ceremony? Enough intrusive thoughts go through my head on a daily basis. I don’t need an algorithm reinforcing them because it mathematically concluded I want to see what it wants to show me.
Rabbit holes can be fun, but I don't want to be in one of them all the time. Sometimes when I listen to music, I prefer to hear a blend of what's trending in the culture right alongside a bunch of old songs I already love and haven't heard in ages. Sometimes I want to hear weird music I'd never seek out and that the algorithm would never recommend to me. And yes, I like it when my music is occasionally interrupted by an actual human being who tells a corny joke or comments on the news.
The new CTF rules that Apple updated is indeed very Apple-ly. Once again, they blanket a lot of stuff to reduce any possibilities of loopholes, they leave enough room for interpretations, and they make sure big companies do not get away with paying.
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This year’s winners come from all over the globe, representing more than 35 countries and regions. Many of their app playgrounds were sparked by something personal, such as helping people in their community or a favorite hobby. For Distinguished Winners Elena Galluzzo, Dezmond Blair, and Jawaher Shaman, inspiration also came from their families — and they share the hope that one day, their apps can make an impact on others as well.
Nintendo has so far said nothing whatsoever about Delta, and neither has Sega, but we can be sure these companies are preparing a response. Could this provoke a sea-change in the legal status of emulation as a whole? One thing that Delta proves is that there is a simply enormous audience of people nostalgic for older games that they have no other way of playing, save for hunting down an old cartridge on eBay. Delta’s developers have created something that’s much better at playing older games than anything available through a game company, including Nintendo’s own Switch Online service. The experience is excellent. But how much longer will people get to enjoy it?
Nothing about the web has changed that prevents us from going back. If anything, it's become a lot easier. We can return. Better, yet: we can restore the things we loved about the old web while incorporating the wonderful things that have emerged since and developing even better things as we go forward.
In time for Mental Health Awareness Month, Apple Podcasts is shining light on a new category of podcasts to listen to.
The two standout improvements center around messaging: editable messages and emoji reactions. These join a handful of service-wide enhancements that are driven by Snap’s AI efforts, such as AI reminders, creating custom Bitmoji looks, and more.
Like the ChatGPT app, Claude's new mobile app serves as a gateway to chatbot interactions, and it also allows uploading photos for analysis.
Alphabet Inc. paid Apple Inc. $20 billion in 2022 for Google to be the default search engine in the Safari browser, according to newly unsealed court documents in the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google.
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Apple first agreed to use Google in the Safari browser in 2002 for free. But the companies later decided to share revenue made from search advertising. By May 2021, that translated to Google paying Apple more than $1 billion a month for its default status, prosecutors said in the filing.
VR, AR, AI. I don't think I have the energy to be excited with these supposedly future of technology.
Maybe I need to find a new hobby.
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Apple has introduced a new URI scheme in iOS 17.4 to allow EU users to download and install alternative marketplace apps from websites. Once an authorized browser invokes the special URI scheme marketplace-kit, it hands off the installation request to a MarketplaceKit process that starts communicating with the marketplace back-end servers to finally install the app. As part of the installation flow, the MarketplaceKit process sends a unique client_id identifier to the marketplace back-end. Both Safari and the MarketplaceKit process allow any website to make a call to the marketplace-kit URI scheme of a particular marketplace. As a result, multiple websites can trigger the MarketplaceKit process to send the same unique identifier client_id to the same marketplace back-end. This way a malicious marketplace can track users across different websites.
Apple has not stated the cause of the problem, but posters on social media and the Apple Support Community think the cause is a toggle in iOS called Attention Aware Features. With this feature on, the iPhone checks if the user is paying attention to the iPhone before “dimming the display, expanding a notification when locked, or lowering the volume of some alerts.” Turning this off seems to fix the alarm problem.
Apple has spent the last year trying to convince gamers that they can get a console-like, triple-A experience on the latest iPhones. The newest test of that promise will be Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Mirage, which now has a release date and pricing information.
Apple's Beats brand today is announcing an update to its most popular line of headphones with the new Beats Solo 4. The on-ear headphones have been re-engineered inside and out to deliver upgraded performance and fit while featuring even longer battery life compared to the previous generation.
The Apple-owned brand is also introducing the $79.99 Solo Buds, which now serve as its entry-level wireless earbuds. They deliver “big Beats sound in the smallest case we’ve ever made,” the company said in its press release. Again, there’s no ANC to be found here — apparently, a Beats product must have “Pro” in its name for that — though Beats claims the Solo Buds provide a good amount of noise isolation to help mitigate ambient noise.
The omission of noise cancellation on the Solo 4 could be a real obstacle for some, but I don’t think it’ll be enough to dampen their appeal to the masses who’ve been cycling through Beats products for so many years now. Even if you’re buying largely for the cool factor, at least these on-ear headphones are now platform-agnostic, more comfortable, and more versatile since you can just plug in if you manage to run through that 50-hour battery life.
With iOS 17.5, Apple is adding a "Repair State" feature that is designed to allow an iPhone to be sent in for service without deactivating Find My and Activation Lock. The fourth iOS 17.5 beta that came out today adds a "Remove This Device" option for all devices in Find My, and using it with an iPhone puts that iPhone into the new Repair State.
There is no word on what features, fixes, or updates might be included in the new firmware, and Apple does not offer release notes for Apple Pencil software releases.
“Trying” is a simple show, and that’s arguably its biggest strength. It’s not a twisting thriller or an emotionally-taxing drama, but rather it’s a feel-good comedy without a cynical bone in its body.
Shawn Hickman has always pitched Sofa as a downtime organizer instead of a media tracker, which makes more sense now than ever before. It’s an app that makes it easy to decide what to watch, read, play, or listen to next.
TikTok may be routing around the App Store to save money on commissions. According to new findings, the ByteDance-owned social video app is presenting some of its users with a link to a website for purchasing the coins used for tipping digital creators. Typically, these coins are bought via in-app purchase, which requires a 30% commission paid to Apple.
The feature may be hidden from most users, either by design or because it’s only shown to users in a specific group, like testers or high spenders. In any event, those who do have access to the new option are seeing a screen that encourages them to “recharge” — that is, buy more coins — via tiktok.com. Although these screenshots were discovered within the iOS app by TechCrunch tipster David Tesler, it’s not clear how many TikTok users are seeing them or when or how they’re being shown.
Wasn't there some rumors out there that the next version of AirPods (the non-pro version) will have some form of noise cancelling feature? I sure hope that is true without any significant price increase. I've grew to really love this feature on my AirPods Pro.
The other feature that I really love is the Announce Notifications. I hope Apple will also make this feature available on non-AirPods earphones -- at least, just the announcement part without the listening for replies by Siri.
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