Whether you are creating a novel or a painting or a film, you are engaged in an act of communication between you and your audience. What you create doesn’t have to be utterly unlike every prior piece of art in human history to be valuable; the fact that you’re the one who is saying it, the fact that it derives from your unique life experience and arrives at a particular moment in the life of whoever is seeing your work, is what makes it new. We are all products of what has come before us, but it’s by living our lives in interaction with others that we bring meaning into the world. That is something that an auto-complete algorithm can never do, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Apple is standing by its decision to terminate the Apple Developer Account of Appstun, a mobile app company created by one of Apple’s own Worldwide Developer Conference 2021 student winners. According to an announcement published on Appstun’s website, Apple moved to terminate the developer’s account after multiple rejections of its app that Apple says violates its App Store guidelines.
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The iPhone maker said Appstun’s app repeatedly tried to mislead users into thinking that it offered features and functionality that it didn’t support and also marketed the app with deceptive ads, leading to negative app ratings and reviews.
These are all little things but they are a cumulative irritation. I do not think my motor skills have substantially changed in the past seventeen years of iOS device use, though I concede they have perhaps deteriorated a little. I do notice more things behaving unexpectedly. I think part of the reason is this two-dimensional slab of glass is being asked to interpret a bunch of gestures in some pretty small areas.
If you're the sort of person who'd rather have one app to rule them all, then you should check out Almighty. It's home to over 50 cool tweaks and utilities—from an emoji picker to a tool that lets you copy text from images—all in a single app.
There may be a time when we cannot tell the difference between purely-human-generated and purely-AI-generated stuff. That time may even be today. But we will always be able to tell the difference between good art and bad art, whether they are created by a human or an AI.
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Apple continues to struggle with the “dual use” nature of face swapping apps, which appear harmless on its App Store, but advertise their ability to generate nonconsensual AI-generated intimate images (NCII) on platforms Apple doesn’t control. Apple does not appear to have any plan to deal with this problem despite the widely reported harms these apps cause, mostly to young women, and has repeatedly declined to answer questions about it.
AppleVis won’t shut down August 31 as announced earlier this summer. The highly-regarded site, which provides news, community forums and a directory of accessible apps aimed at blind and visually impaired Apple users, has been acquired by Be My Eyes, which plans a September relaunch.
Apple and Nvidia are in talks to invest in OpenAI, a move that would strengthen their ties to a partner integral to their efforts in the artificial-intelligence race.
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Apple’s talks to invest in OpenAI underscores its dedication to ensure it maintains access to this technology. OpenAI faces intense competition from other AI startups and big tech companies, but ChatGPT remains a market leader.
New updates for NFL and college football games include enhancements to play-by-play, offering quick access to scoring drives presented alongside the view of every game play.
It has been teased for quite a while that despite clocking in at a whopping 158 minutes, that a lot of material was left on the cutting room floor. Last year, in Empire Magazine, Scott revealed that he has a “fantastic” cut of the movie that runs nearly four-and-a-half hours. As reported by Empire, Scott’s near 270-minute “Napoleon” cut “features more of Joséphine’s life before she meets Napoleon.
Spotify blames the change on Apple, saying the company won’t give it access to the same technology that lets Apple Music play on third-party devices. [...] Although some third-party music services can stream directly from Apple’s HomePod, many major streamers, including Spotify, never adopted the necessary API.
A few days into making One Million Checkboxes I thought I’d been hacked. What was that doing in my database?
A few hours later I was tearing up, proud of some brilliant teens.
I am going to make an important decision soon: should I continue to have both an iPhone and an iPad, or should I combine them and just get a big iPhone? Let's see what Apple will announce for the rest of the year.
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Less than three months after Apple quietly debuted a tool for publishers to opt out of its AI training, a number of prominent news outlets and social platforms have taken the company up on it.
WIRED can confirm that Facebook, Instagram, Craigslist, Tumblr, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, Vox Media, the USA Today network, and WIRED’s parent company, Condé Nast, are among the many organizations opting to exclude their data from Apple’s AI training. The cold reception reflects a significant shift in both the perception and use of the robotic crawlers that have trawled the web for decades. Now that these bots play a key role in collecting AI training data, they’ve become a conflict zone over intellectual property and the future of the web.
I began to suspect that Apple had given me a refurbished iPhone as a replacement, and the previous owner had been banned for violating Snapchat’s guidelines. Searching the web led me to various forum posts from people who had been banned for posting pictures of illegal drugs, and contacting Snapchat support led to automated messages saying I was banned for violating guidelines and they cannot lift device bans.
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My takeaway from this process is a PSA to all app developers: Do not use DeviceCheck for anything other than verifying that a request is coming from an official Apple device. There is no reliable way to determine if the same person is still using the phone.
Even though Apple’s support pages are technically service-agnostic in their description, currently the only service that Apple Music supports transfers with is YouTube Music.
Apple device management vendor Addigy has announced the immediate availability of new Apple Intelligence controls. These controls, now live within Addigy’s platform, allow IT administrators and Managed Service Providers to test the activation and deactivation of Apple Intelligence across their devices ahead of its integration into the public fall OS releases.
Major technology companies, including Google, Apple, and Discord, have been enabling people to quickly sign up to harmful “undress” websites, which use AI to remove clothes from real photos to make victims appear to be “nude” without their consent. More than a dozen of these deepfake websites have been using login buttons from the tech companies for months.
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“What is concerning is that these are the most basic of security steps and moderation that are missing or not being enforced,” McGlynn says of the sign-in systems being used, adding that it is “wholly inadequate” for companies to react when journalists or campaigners highlight how their rules are being easily dodged. “It is evident that they simply do not care, despite their rhetoric,” McGlynn says. “Otherwise they would have taken these most simple steps to reduce access.”
My disappointment stems from the fact that Apple is better positioned and equipped than anyone else in the industry to take on Amazon head-to-head in ebooks. But doing so would require the company to do something different. And I don’t mean its misguided attempts to reinvent the reading experience as it’s tried in the past—most avid readers are pretty happy with their the way they consume books.
Pay me, if you want my data to train your AI: I think we are settling to this business model for everyone. Unless if this is a bubble, and the bubble bursts.
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The layoffs included some engineering roles, and the biggest cuts were made to the team responsible for the Apple Books app and Apple Bookstore. There were also layoffs in other services teams, including the one that runs Apple News.
Apple Books has become less of a priority for the company, which doesn’t see it as a major part of its services lineup. The Books app is still expected to get new features over time, according to the people. As for Apple News, the layoffs aren’t a sign that it’s becoming less of a focus, they said.
The videos weren’t a complete solution to the problem, though. A smartphone’s speaker seems to be powerful enough to push air out from right next to the speaker, but not to solve problems elsewhere in the device — particularly underneath the buttons, the USB port, or the SIM card slot, which were the other most common intrusion spots. And if it didn’t get the liquid out in that first burst, Ritter found it mostly just sloshed the droplets back and forth as the speaker moved.
I’m writing this post to remind everyone to have a little more humility when suggesting you know how other people use software. You may have good intuition and be right more than the average person, but as we see all the time with software, even the people working on things often miss the mark with what their users actually want.
The update brings support for IPv6, provides a Copy button in the output text field, and adds options to show or hide hidden network adapters, display underlying shell commands, and benchmark uplink and downlink separately in the Speed test.
Okay, so should I stop waiting for Apple to expand Apple Books and Apple News to where I live?
:-)
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The expectation, of course, is that Apple will use this event to announce the iPhone 16 line, which is rumored to bring the usual updates to the iPhone’s camera system, a new line of processors, and external design tweaks (including some new colors). We may also see updates to the Apple Watch line, new AirPods, and, of course, official release information for iOS/iPadOS 18 as well as the company’s other software updates.
It could refer to a glowing Apple logo on the back of the iPhone, which is highly unlikely. It could also refer to the new Siri interface, which is far more probable given the Apple Intelligence-inspired color scheme. But that’s not a feature exclusive to the iPhone 16 so it would be strange to use it as a unique feature of the latest iPhone—especially one that’s not coming for several weeks after the phone arrives. Maybe it has nothing to do with the iPhone at all.
James Cuda, CEO of the creativity app Procreate, shocked the creative and technology worlds last week when he announced on X that his company was never going to use generative artificial intelligence in its products. Immediately, the two communities took sides.
“The tech people said this was going to age like milk; that we were going in the wrong direction, and we were probably gonna change our mind,” Cuda tells me over a videoconference from his home in Tasmania.
Creative people, however, felt quite different: every comment Cuda could find on the internet was 100% positive, he says. “There was an overwhelming sentiment of relief within the creative community, because I think we were the first in the creative tools industry to stand up and say, ‘You know what, we don’t think this is a good idea.’”
Image manipulation techniques and other methods of fakery have existed for close to 200 years — almost as long as photography itself. (Cases in point: 19th-century spirit photography and the Cottingley Fairies.) But the skill requirements and time investment needed to make those changes are why we don’t think to inspect every photo we see. Manipulations were rare and unexpected for most of photography’s history. But the simplicity and scale of AI on smartphones will mean any bozo can churn out manipulative images at a frequency and scale we’ve never experienced before. It should be obvious why that’s alarming.
Niantic is releasing a new version of its Scaniverse app to let users capture objects around them with more details. Scaniverse 4 will allow users to capture places and objects in 3D through a Gaussian splatting technique, which captures more data points about an object for accurate and rich representation with faster rendering.
Mozilla will soon remove its telemetry service Adjust from the Android and iOS versions of browsers Firefox and Firefox Focus. It appeared that the developer was collecting data on the effectiveness of Firefox ad campaigns without disclosing that.
Apple announced Monday that it will replace Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri on Jan. 1 with current Apple insider Kevan Parekh.
Maestri will continue to lead teams focusing on IT, security and real estate development, Apple said.
And I predict there is nothing glow-y about the new iPhones. It's just an event marketing line.
:-)
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That might be the central problem occupying all device manufacturers today: if people have a complaint about their smartphones, it is that they are too interesting, and so improvements aimed at making them even more thrilling represents both a promise and a threat.
A federal judge mostly sided with state and federal antitrust enforcers in the blockbuster case on Monday that ruled Google’s search business was an illegal monopoly, but threw out a claim by several US states that one of Google’s ad tools was designed to give the company an advantage over Microsoft’s Bing.
That piece could help Apple’s defence in its own anti-monopoly case, experts said.
I’m not saying everything should be allowed and everything is a good idea, but I would ask people to want more from their devices. After all, if you don’t think any of the proposed new features others are suggesting, why do you get excited about new hardware announcements? A faster horse?
On the same vein, I would like to see regulators do more: expand the market for third-party native apps without limiting the consumer's choice of smartphones. A world whereby you can play Fortnite on an iPhone so long as all phones look and feel like an Android is not enough.
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Here’s the thing: wouldn’t it just be good business to offer everyone the same choices no matter where they live? It’s not as if Apple was making two different iPhones to try to appeal to different cultural preferences. It’s making one iPhone that’s more flexible and customizable, and one that isn’t.
Maybe, bit by bit, Apple will cave in and offer parity the way it did with emulators. But think the company should make an uncharacteristic move: drop the charade and let everyone, everywhere have the same iPhone. It would be bold! Courageous, even! But most importantly, it would be a lot more fun.
As someone who finds myself juggling between putting things on Calendar, writing them down in Apple Notes, or setting a reminder, I think this app is pretty helpful. It aims to simplify things, giving you a centralized place to just jot down whatever in a pinch.
In a major step toward the long-awaited fourth season of Apple TV+’s hugely popular soccer comedy, the series’ studio Warner Bros. Television has picked up the options on the three original cast members who had been contracted under the aegis of the UK acting union Equity, sources tell Deadline. [...]
After securing the trio, the studio is expected to start reaching out to Ted Lasso cast members with SAG-AFTRA contracts whose options had expired, so they will need to make new deals, we hear.
Apple failed to create a new product category with its self-driving car project, which was shuttered earlier this year. But the effort did spark an intriguing question within the company: If Apple products can move around on their own, what new experiences could be created?
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The work on robots is led by Kevin Lynch, Apple’s vice president of technology, who previously ran the car team as well as watch software engineering. He reports to Apple’s AI chief and works alongside robotics teams within the hardware engineering division. Recently, Apple has hired top robotics experts from places like Technion in Israel.
The more demands from different regulators in different jurisdictions on Apple's iOS, the more lines of codes Apple will need to write. If Apple continue to maintain one single iOS for everyone and not fork the operating system, there will be tons of codes all over the place. Which means more potentials for bugs. Which means potentially more attack surfaces.
I hope Apple's security continue to be sound. If there are security issues with, say, the alternate app stores in the EU, iPhones outside of the EU shouldn't be affected even before the issues are fixed by Apple.
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Apple’s message was to get on board — and fast — with ScreenCaptureKit. ScreenCaptureKit was only the first part of this migration for developers. The second part — returning to the all-important “and” from the 15.0 release notes — is SCContentSharingPicker. That is the selection window you may have seen if you have recently tried screen sharing with, say, FaceTime.
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This makes sense for a lot of screen recording use cases — for example, if someone is making a demo video, or if they are showing their screen in an online meeting. But if someone is trying to remotely access a computer, there is a sort of Möbius strip of permissions where you need to be able to see the remote screen in order to grant access to be able to see the screen. The Persistent Content Capture entitlement is designed to fix that specific use case.
Apple Inc. is planning to hold its biggest product launch event of the year on Sept. 10, when the company will unveil the latest iPhones, watches and AirPods, according to people familiar with the situation.
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The company is also planning to begin transitioning its Macs over to M4 processors later this year, but Mac updates typically don’t arrive until about a month after the annual iPhone launch.
But mostly, it works by simply staying out of your way and allowing you to focus on your actual to-do items instead of obsessing over the organization of your to-do list.
This season of “Pachinko” builds to many crescendoes, each more tearful than the last. Yet, from devastating deaths to star-crossed loves to harrowing cataclysms, the show never feels like it’s resorting to cheap sentiment. “Pachinko” is, tangibly, a labor of love, from the intimate family dynamics it depicts to the massive collective effort required to bring a dual period piece to life. Season 2 honors what came before it while striking out on its own, just as Sunja would want for her own successors.
A friend found some AirPods on the ground and tapped them to his phone, revealing only the serial number and the last four digits of the owner's number. He turned to me for help.
Some days, I dream about all the devices that I will want to own so that when I eventually retire, I can have fun writing programs for whatever stuff I like to create, listening to podcasts and audiobooks all day, and watching all the Apple TV+ shows.
And on other days, I noted the word 'dream'.
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But maybe the biggest recent reason Apple Podcasts has faded in popularity is its lack of focus on video – ironically the hottest podcast format at the moment. YouTube, Instagram and TikTok all push podcast clips through their algorithms, driving audiences to check out shows. Newer listeners might now associate podcasts with video more than they did in the past.
Apple is making additional changes to its app ecosystem in the European Union to comply with the terms of the Digital Markets Act. The default browser selection experience that's already in place will be updated, Apple will allow EU users to set defaults for more types of apps, and core iOS apps like Messages and the App Store will also be deletable.
But the question, at least when it comes to customers happy with the status quo, is why should they be forced to accept an openness they neither want nor need?
Apple has released a pair of new videos today on its YouTube channel. Both focus on the recent additions to its Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Camera apps. Each video walks through the new features and makes the case for users to use Final Cut as their full-process video production suite.
Starting on October 4, Apple will require that iPhone and Apple Watch users verify their identity to send more than a total of $500 in peer-to-peer transfers, which includes sending Apple Cash via Messages and making Tap to Cash payments.
Nintendo today announced that it will shut down the Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp app for iOS on November 29, seven years after the game originally launched.
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There will be no more events or updates with the Pocket Camp service being discontinued, but Nintendo will release a paid version of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp so that existing users can continue to play an offline version of the game.
For someone with visual and motor delays, using ChatGPT to do research can be a lifesaver. Instead of trying to manage a dozen browser tabs with Google searches and other pertinent information, you can have ChatGPT collate everything into one space. Likewise, it’s highly plausible that artists who can’t draw in the conventional manner could use voice prompts to have Midjourney or Adobe Firefly create what they’re thinking of. That might be the only way for such a person to indulge an artistic passion.
I remember watching video podcasts on iPods when podcasting was still new. The two shows I can recall are NBC Nightly News and Sesame Street. (The latter was for watching with my daughter.)
I didn't know video podcasts are back?
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The novel method involves enticing targets to install a special type of app known as a Progressive Web App. These apps rely solely on Web standards to render functionalities that have the feel and behavior of a native app, without the restrictions that come with them. The reliance on Web standards means PWAs, as they’re abbreviated, will in theory work on any platform running a standards-compliant browser, making them work equally well on iOS and Android. Once installed, users can add PWAs to their home screen, giving them a striking similarity to native apps.
The video shows her going through the purchasing process for an iPad on Apple’s education website. When it comes time to check out, it shows that she is getting $100 off of the iPad as part of a “special offer.”
If one scrolls down, it is revealed that the customer will get a $100 Apple gift card. The website appears unclear that one will be charged for the aforementioned gift card.
Apple Arcade, on the surface, sounds like exactly what they’re asking for. And it would give Apple device exclusivity. But Apple has botched this. It’s hard to believe, but they have.
Matt Fischer, a vice president who has run the App Store business since 2010, is leaving the iPhone maker in October, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be identified because the changes haven’t been announced. The App Store group is being split into two teams: one overseeing Apple’s own store and another responsible for alternative app distribution.
What’s present here is genuinely well-written, sharp, helpful, fast, works well with all kinds of duplicates, and lends a good feature set to the macOS operating system without being overbearing.
A newly discovered bug causes iPhones and iPads to briefly crash. All you need to trigger the bug are just four characters.
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Researchers tell TechCrunch the bug does not appear to be a security issue.
Again, the big problem is that Apple’s update has reset the setting on your behalf, and it’s up to you to change it back without any understanding of why Apple wanted to change it, or how your privacy and security is affected if you change it back.
You want the movie to be seen, and if you maximize the way that people are able to actually see a movie, I think that is good—I watched so many movies that really influenced me on VHS because I grew up in a small town in Colorado, so we just didn’t have those movies in the theaters. But for me, the theatrical experience is still the number one. It’s up to the people that are able to make those decisions to put them in theaters for people to see, and just have the confidence that people will go see them. People want to go to the movies. People love the movies.
Monument Valley 3 may be my very first Netflix game that I will be playing. But, unlike many others, I still am not convinced Netflix is serious about games.
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The name 4-H traditionally conjures up images of teenagers raising farm animals, or learning how to bake or sew — and those skills are still a big part of the organization that has helped support and educate young people across America for more than 100 years. On a recent day at the Franklin County Fair in Columbus, Ohio, 4-H club members presented livestock and displayed quilts they had crafted, but on closer inspection, there were signs of something new, and perhaps surprising.
Outside a 4-H mobile classroom bus parked near the fair’s midway, kids were using iPad to drive Sphero robots across the pavement, while inside, they were coding with Swift and composing music using GarageBand.
For Parekh, creativity is a major aspect of his passion for computer science. “I've always been a creative person,” Parekh said. “Computer science is one of those fields where you can build anything that you want as long as you have access to a computer.”
The UK's Competition and Market Authority (CMA) today announced it had closed an investigation into Apple's App Store policies, as it expects to consider the concerns under a new digital markets competition regime which is expected to come into force later this year.
Apple is increasingly reliant on its App Store fees to maintain its revenue balance. In China, this means extracting substantial fees from big tech groups like ByteDance and Tencent. For instance, on Douyin, Bytedance's flagship short-video platform for the domestic market, users buying virtual gifts must purchase virtual currency through the App Store, where iOS users get less value for their money due to Apple's 30% fee, compared with much lower fees for those using Google's Android system.
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Apple's response has been to subtly reject or delay iOS app updates from the likes of Tencent and ByteDance, according to analysts and developers. This in turn pressures the large Chinese tech platforms to enforce Apple's payment rules and fee rates, shutting down potential "bypasses" by small developers and creators. As discontent continues to simmer among the latter group, the South Korean and Japanese regulatory crackdowns have inspired calls for more forceful regulatory action.
Despite the complicated new rules, a handful of developers have taken advantage of the opportunity to distribute their apps outside of Apple’s walls.
Below is a list of some of the alternative app stores iPhone users in the EU can try today.
Apple in August increased the period in which customers can extend their AppleCare+ coverage after it expires. Apple used to allow coverage to be extended for 30 days after the end of the original AppleCare+ plan, but that has now changed to 45 days.
Today's firmware update introduces support for audio sharing, a feature that was not available at launch. Audio sharing is designed to allow two people to listen to music from an iPhone or iPad.
Even the tiniest of distractions can completely disrupt your flow when you’re trying to put words down on a page, and so a whole cottage industry has cropped up around making tools for distraction-free writing. These apps can’t stop telemarketers from calling you or deflect the deluge of Instagram notifications, but they do strip away the extraneous nonsense found in traditional word processors like rulers, toolbars, and tables, and focus on what’s most important: words.
Distraction-free writing apps come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and at various price points. Here are a few of my favorites.
In short, it took me too long to learn, software can’t automate your thinking. But I do think it can create the conditions for improved thinking: for making new connections between ideas; for reducing the number of times during the day that your attention flits from one app to the next; and for organizing your reading and making it more useful to you in the future.
If you want the old Sonos app back, it’s not coming. In a Reddit AMA response posted Tuesday, Sonos CEO Spence says that he was hopeful “until very recently” that the company could rerelease the app, confirming a report from The Verge that the company was considering doing so. But after testing that option, rereleasing the old app would apparently make things worse, Spence says.
Of all the new products that Apple is likely to release in the remaining of the year -- or, for the iPhones, definitely will release -- I look forward most to the Mac mini and its rumored new mini design.
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Apple Podcasts is expanding to the web, starting today. You can access the new web app version at podcasts.apple.com, in desktop web browsers including Safari, Chrome, Edge and Firefox.
For the first time, Apple Podcasts users can access their Up Next queue, library of saved shows, and browse for new podcasts inside their PC web browser. Previously, only macOS offered a desktop Podcasts app experience.
Today Apple announced that Scamtown will be its next original podcast series. From the team behind documentaries like The Big Conn and McMillion$, the new true-crime series will be an 11-part anthology.
Other than the name change, there’s no functional change coming to Apple IDs.
Researchers at Cisco Talos have uncovered serious vulnerabilities in Microsoft applications for the macOS operating system that could allow attackers to misuse permissions.
The vulnerabilities can be exploited by injecting malicious libraries into Microsoft applications to gain entitlements and user-granted permissions.
New details are emerging about a breach at National Public Data (NPD), a consumer data broker that recently spilled hundreds of millions of Americans’ Social Security Numbers, addresses, and phone numbers online. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that another NPD data broker which shares access to the same consumer records inadvertently published the passwords to its back-end database in a file that was freely available from its homepage until today.
You know how, when you go to your exercise class during a time when the building is otherwise closed and the instructor has to put a wedge in the door to keep it open but someone doesn’t notice and accidentally lets the door shut without the wedge and then you come and the door is locked and you can’t get in?
Now through September 23, anyone new to Apple's music streaming service will get to try it out for free for three months. The deal only applies to first-time subscribers; if you've never succumbed to the music app's temptation, now is as good a time as any to check it out.
As the U.S. National Park Service marks its 108th birthday this week, Apple is celebrating with more ways to support and experience America’s parks. Today through August 25, Apple will make a $10 donation to the National Park Foundation for every purchase made with Apple Pay on apple.com, in the Apple Store app, or at an Apple Store in the U.S. Additionally, this fall, Apple Maps will make it even easier for users to explore national parks with details for thousands of hikes.
As football season quickly approaches, the Apple Sports app now has full support for NFL and NCAA Football. There’s also a new “Stats” tab on game pages, showing box scores, lineups, and more.
Using the app is very simple: You take a look at three images and decide whether or not the image shows a real source or a false one (or, you can select "unknown" if you're not sure). Of course, the app teaches you all the factors you need to consider to make that determination. And that's it!
If Wells Fargo is your card issuer, then they want you using that Wells Fargo Visa card as often as humanly possible to buy everything in your life. Whether you do that in their wallet, through Apple Pay, or through something else, it’s not a huge deal to them.
What I am interested to find out, with this expansion of Apple Podcast to the web:
Is this an effort by Apple to spurce up its podcast service offering, after adding podcast transcripts to the app and forcing many other podcast players to play catch-up?
Or is this an effort by Apple to add Web as another supported platform, after also expanding Apple Maps to the web?
Or both?
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Many Procreate users can breathe a sigh of relief now that the popular iPad illustration app has taken a definitive stance against generative AI. “We’re not going to be introducing any generative AI into our products,” Procreate CEO James Cuda said in a video posted to X. “I don’t like what’s happening to the industry, and I don’t like what it’s doing to artists.”
The best-case scenario is that it all goes smoothly, and most customers aren’t even aware of the switch. But the project’s real worth won’t be tested until years later — when, Apple hopes, it sets the stage for a better iPhone.
For many archivists, alarm bells are ringing. Across the world, they are scraping up defunct websites or at-risk data collections to save as much of our digital lives as possible. Others are working on ways to store that data in formats that will last hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years.
The endeavor raises complex questions. What is important to us? How and why do we decide what to keep—and what do we let go?
And how will future generations make sense of what we’re able to save?
Is Apple playing the long game with modems, or are they forced to play a long game with modems?
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First, a competing tap-to-pay app on an iPhone would need to get the customer to go through the trouble of switching from the default option when the phone is tapped to pay.
It is also not an end-run around Apple. Apple said it would require the developers to have a “commercial agreement” with Apple and “pay the associated fees.” So for example, while Apple Pay typically charges credit-card issuers a fee when their cards are used in the wallet, whether having customers tap a card via the card issuer’s own app is ultimately cheaper, or otherwise more advantageous, might depend on those terms.
I do think, after some off-the-record conversations this week, that both the MacOS and security teams at Apple are trying to get the balance right on these permission issues. I continue to think part of the problem is thinking too small, and requiring what’s effectively whack-a-mole with multiple recurring permission prompts.
SubManager is a simple app that allows you to easily keep track of all of your subscriptions across the web. In a world where it feels like every app wants to charge you monthly for something, this management tool is actually quite helpful!
On Tuesday, Tokyo-based AI research firm Sakana AI announced a new AI system called "The AI Scientist" that attempts to conduct scientific research autonomously using AI language models (LLMs) similar to what powers ChatGPT. During testing, Sakana found that its system began unexpectedly modifying its own code to extend the time it had to work on a problem.
"In one run, it edited the code to perform a system call to run itself," wrote the researchers on Sakana AI's blog post. "This led to the script endlessly calling itself. In another case, its experiments took too long to complete, hitting our timeout limit. Instead of making its code run faster, it simply tried to modify its own code to extend the timeout period."
I sure hope choosing the default NFC app on iPhone to be as easy as switching which card to use for Apple Pay today.
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The key step to achieving privacy in a world of pervasive digital connections is to take ownership of your data and privacy. As mobile apps continue to access sensitive information about users, it’s important to recognize that app providers and owners may not have the incentives to provide the most robust privacy-setting practices. Indeed, failing to effectively manage your app permissions and privacy settings can increase the risk that your data will be exposed to third parties, including people with malicious intent.
It's a natively-designed read-later and link collection app for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It syncs securely using iCloud and can easily add and show articles from anywhere. But the best part is that it comes with convenient research aids usually reserved for note-taking apps.
Apple TV+ viewers might get the chance to finally find out how Dark Matter’s interdimensional travel works and which universe the main characters ended up in after the streamer renewed the sci-fi drama for a second season.
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However, Blake Crouch, author of the book that the series is based on and creator, showrunner and executive producer of the series, will have to come up with new stories as there is no source material on the bookstands.
Disney joins other companies such as Airbnb and Walmart that are using increasingly aggressive strategies in attempts to steer lawsuits they face from consumers into arbitration, a private legal process viewed as disadvantaging plaintiffs. Customers more and more must agree to contracts with sweeping arbitration clauses to use their services, but the consequences can be larger than they can be expected to comprehend.
I guess I cannot sue Disney either?
:-)
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The cynical (albeit technically correct) viewpoint by many journalists and other industry watchers is to view films such as The Relay as mere marketing exercise meant to hawk Tim Cook’s wares. While it is true the film has a marketing component to it—buy Apple because they’re accessible—the more meaningful message lies in how the disabled people are portrayed as exponentially more competent than society historically has given us credit as being.
Following a successful 2022 collaboration with Kim Kardashian for a set of three neutral color options for the Beats Fit Pro earphones, the "Beats x Kim" campaign is back to bring the same colors to the Beats Studio Pro headphones.
An easy-to-use app that could maybe do with a design refresh, Stellar Data Recovery is a great way to recover lost iPhone data – and it’s budget-friendly, too.
Resizing and moving windows on a Mac isn't impossible, or even hard, but I spend more time trying to precisely position my mouse in the corners than I'd like. Swift Shift is a free, open source application that makes it easier by allowing you to move or resize a window from anywhere, just by holding a key and moving your mouse.
This GPS hiking app makes it easy to discover and research routes wherever you are in the world, with handy functions like current weather conditions and downloadable 3D maps to help plan your hike. Once you're on the trail, you can alert your emergency contacts to your location and receive wrong turn notifications if you stray off the path.
Epic Games today officially launched a rival app store for iOS in the European Union, marking the first time Apple’s own App Store has had to face a serious rival. The Epic Games Store will initially offer Epic’s games, including Fortnite, for users to download onto their iPhones, with plans to start onboarding third-party developers’ games beginning in December.
Apple today reminded developers who plan to distribute apps in the European Union to submit their trader status, a requirement that will see the App Store sharing the address, phone number, and email address of each developer. The information will be displayed on a developer's App Store page.
California will soon start rolling out support for digital driver's licenses and IDs in the Apple Wallet app on iPhone and Apple Watch, becoming the sixth state to implement the feature.
Glenn McDonald, a former engineer at Spotify and the self-described “data alchemist” largely responsible for developing the company’s encyclopedia of genres, believes that while accessing new music is technically easy, many of us don’t do it—mainly because we’re not sure where to start looking.
As we grow accustomed to the convenience of shuffling a generated playlist, we forget that discovering music is an active exercise.
The magnetic stripe was invented by an IBM engineer in the 1960s – his wife was instrumental in the process as it was she who suggested melting a strip of magnetic tape onto a card using a clothes iron.
In the decades since, magstripes have been used on bank cards, rail tickets, IDs and even cards containing medical information, to set up hospital machines.
But that murky brown strip of plastic usually made with polluting heavy metals may not be around for much longer.
I am having strange dreams again this past week, where I was dreaming me realizing I was in dreams. I sure hope this is not because of stress, of impending doom, or maybe I am not doing my weekly review of to-dos correctly.
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Starting with iOS 18.1, apps can, through the Secure Element (SE) on iOS devices, offer things like "in-store payments, car keys, closed-loop transit, corporate badges, student IDs, home keys, hotel keys, merchant loyalty and rewards cards, and event tickets, with government IDs to be supported in the future." In addition, iPhone users will be able to set a default payment app triggered by double-clicking the side button.
Access to payments and secure transactions through more than a billion iOS devices will not be free, or freely given. Developers will need to "enter into a commercial agreement with Apple, request the NFC and SE entitlement, and pay the associated fees." Apple says this is so developers and apps that "meet certain industry and regulatory requirements, and commit to Apple's ongoing security and privacy standards," have access.
Apple has changed its screen recording privacy prompt in the latest beta of macOS Sequoia. As we reported last week, Apple’s initial plan was to prompt users to grant screen recording permissions weekly.
Shared ahead of the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris, the ad shows some of the routines, training, and competitions undertaken by disabled athletes across a wide range of sports, assisted by Apple devices. It emphasizes inclusivity and the universality of competitive sport, regardless of one's physical disabilities.
The idea here is to let photographers capture RAW images without the computational and algorithmic changes that Apple makes and then easily do something with those photos. So, when you shoot in Process Zero mode, the phone is taking just one image — unlike the Apple camera, which shoots multiple photos and combines them to make a more balanced result. So while that might lead to an image with more noise and with some darker or lighter areas, it can also be significantly sharper and capture more detail than Apple’s process.
Working with text is annoying sometimes, especially when you're copying-and-pasting something with wonky formatting. Boop is a free and open source Mac application from developer Ivan Mathy. The idea is to paste text in here, transform it in some way with just a few keystrokes, and then copy it again in whatever app you're using it in.
AltStore PAL, a third-party iOS app store that’s available in the EU, is dropping its annual €1.50 (plus tax) subscription after receiving a “MegaGrant” from Fortnite developer Epic Games. AltStore originally charged the subscription to help cover Apple’s Core Technology Fee (CTF), which is a fee third-party app marketplaces have to pay for each annual app install.
The company now has a team of several hundred people working on the device, which uses a thin robotic arm to move around a large screen, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The product, which relies on actuators to tilt the display up and down and make it spin 360 degrees, would offer a twist on home products like Amazon.com Inc’s Echo Show 10 and Meta Platforms Inc’s discontinued Portal.
The device is envisioned as a smart home command center, videoconferencing machine and remote-controlled home security tool, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the work isn’t public. The project – codenamed J595 – was approved by Apple’s executive team in 2022 but has started to formally ramp up in recent months, they said.
Apple Inc. allowed the storage and distribution of child sexual abuse material on its iMessage and iCloud products under the pretense of privacy protections, according to a proposed class action.
Apple knew it had a “dire CSAM problem but chose not to address it,” according to a complaint filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
How many of these 'remote-controlled home security' robotic arm thing is Apple expecting us to buy, per household? Or does this thing also self-drive all over my house, climb over steps, and detect when I've fallen and can't get up?
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Spotify will begin showing in-app pricing information for iPhone users in the European Union starting today, following a yearslong legal battle against Apple. In an update to an old blog post, Spotify says that EU iPhone users will now see things like promotional offers and pricing information for each subscription tier — including how much a plan costs once a promotion ends.
Patreon, with an army of devoted creator fans on its side, should call Apple on this bluff. I don’t think they could lose.
I don’t mind Apple getting into the services business. My only concern is that the company keeps its priorities in order. Apple’s services business exists because of its products business. It’s our attachments to our iPhones, Macs, and iPads–and the ecosystem that connects them together–that make Apple’s services so desirable.
That’s why Apple needs to be very careful in figuring out how to expand Services revenue. The last thing Apple wants is for the public to believe that buying a new Apple product is somehow lesser or incomplete unless you pungle up for an ongoing subscription. Buying an iPhone can never, ever feel like you’re buying an empty box with a subscription sign-up form inside.
Apple Watch owners can earn an Apple Watch activity award by doing a workout that lasts for 20 minutes or more on August 25, 2024.
An interactive music player, a place to trigger shortcuts, or some nifty utility? NotchNook is an app that makes all of that possible.
When you want to bring only a few cards, snap your wallet on and go. It won’t replace your regular wallet, be it luxury or RFID blocking. Think of this as your night-out wallet. It keeps everything together and carries the essentials alone, typically three to four cards.
When you watch this year’s English Premier League soccer games, there’s a high chance you may get mad at some of the offside calls. However, unlike past seasons, your anger won't be because the call, or the lack thereof, was obviously lousy. That’s because the League's new offside-detection system is apparently able to spot a player's position on the field, and call them offside, with more accuracy than ever—and it’s all powered by iPhones.
In this case, the leaking helium from the MRI machine infiltrated the iPhones like a “tiny grain of sand” and caused the MEMS clocks to go haywire. This isn’t news to Apple, however, which explicitly mentions that “exposing iPhone to environments having high concentrations of industrial chemicals, including near evaporating liquified gasses such as helium, may damage or impair iPhone functionality” in the phone’s manual.
Whenever you hear some developers proclaiming they are rewriting their apps from scratch, and the new apps with the new codes will be so much better than ever, start your plan B. Chances are, the new rewrite-from-scratch apps will have tons of missing functionalities, loads of edge cases failing, and a whole bunch of new bugs and resurfaced old bugs. What can you, as a customer, do? Start making sure you have back-ups of all your stuff, start searching for alternate apps that you can switch to, and start testing you can migrate all your stuff to the new apps. If the new rewritten app is bad, you can straight away execute plan B.
If you are a developer and you have the itch, go re-read (I assume you have already read?) Joel Spolsky's old article on Things You Should Never Do. This article is from the early 2000s, and nobody learnt anything since then.
And if your excuse is Apple switching from Objective C to Swift, and you feel that you have no choice but to rewrite everything from scratch, go read the very first paragraph of this Apple documentation, where you are explicitly warned: You don't need to rewrite your entire app in Swift at once.
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Patreon today confirmed upcoming changes to its iOS app, which will see fees for new subscriptions go up because Apple is enforcing its App Store rules on digital purchases. Apple is requiring Patreon to adopt the in-app purchase system, a process that Patreon started at the beginning of the year.
In January 2024, Patreon started using in-app purchases and paying Apple a 30 percent fee on digital products, but beginning in November, new Patreon memberships will also need to be done through in-app purchase and will be subject to the fee as well.
This might epitomize the way Apple can be penny-wise but pound-foolish when it comes to the App Store. However much money they think they might get from these Patreon subscriptions once the Patreon iOS app switches to IAP, I refuse to believe it’s worth the further degradation of Apple’s brand that this dispute with Patreon is incurring. The paying users of Patreon are fans. They are such dedicated and devoted fans of certain creators and artists that they choose to pay those creators money. And now these users are being informed that Apple is putting the squeeze on these creators and inserting themselves into a relationship that these fans see as being between them and the artists they support.
Whether that decision was made by Apple or Patreon, of if it is something which is a consequence of how App Store billing works, is unclear to me. But one thing is true regardless: Apple’s 30% commission is at least double the rate charged by Patreon itself, and only the latter has any material effect on the relationship between a creative professional and their supporters.
The whole notion of a platform like Patreon just doesn’t fit with the App Store’s model of taking a fee out of every single transaction for digital goods or services. It could, perhaps, if Apple were willing to only accept a commission from Patreon’s own share — a commission on a commission — but they’re not.
Apple is providing negative value and then taking a larger cut. Sure, it is providing access to its platform, but it’s forcing creators into funding models that work for Apple, not necessarily for them. A lot of creators create things when they have the time to create them, not on some pre-defined schedule. Apple’s obsession with subscription-based revenue, however, something that lets it level out its quarterly results, is now having a knock-on effect on other platforms, spreading like a services revenue venereal disease.
This is the rule for what Apple calls a “Multiplatform Service”, which is somehow different from a “‘Reader’ App” that allows users to subscribe to “magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video”. A “reader” app does not have to provide In-App Purchases which are equivalent to those available outside the app, but a “Multiplatform Service” does. It seems likely to me both Patreon and Substack are “Multiplatform Services” in Apple’s view.
iPhones are such an essential part of the market that it’s suicide for most businesses to not ship on the iPhone, which means they’re forced to use Apple’s terms and conditions. I think this gives too much power to Apple and they should be forced to either give up their excessive commissions or their exclusivity on software distribution.
We’ve already passed the point of security alert overload. The first time or two that the Sequoia beta prompted me to reauthorize, I admit that I didn’t read the text of the alert beyond determining that I should click Continue To Allow to capture the screenshot I needed for whatever I was writing. The dialog came in direct response to the keyboard shortcut I had just pressed, and I have used and trusted CleanShot X for years. It wasn’t until the dialog popped up a few more times that I read it closely to see if I was missing something. I wasn’t.
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By prompting for continued permission, Apple is asking if we still trust previously trusted apps. What would change in any short period of time that would have us reconsider this action? We would need new information to make a different choice. I could see an argument for double-checking permissions a few days after the first launch to ensure the user knows the app is still active, but repeated checks? After every restart?
Flighty is an app that helps me track my flights on a day-to-day basis and keeps an ongoing record of my travels worldwide. The paid version even gives you a year-end summary that can be a fun look back at your recent travels.
In August, Flighty got a big upgrade. The latest version allows users to see, in many cases, why their flights are delayed. Flighty now tracks late aircraft issues and airspace congestion to help predict delays hours in advance. That can help you get a jump on other passengers and potentially switch flights or even skip the trip altogether.
The appeal of this app is being able to seamlessly transfer playlists from Spotify to Apple Music; you just need to connect your accounts to the app and it will match the songs in your Spotify library to the equivalent versions on Apple Music. It's as simple as clicking your playlist, and then clicking the "save to your library".
Apple recently rejected DOS emulator iDOS 3 from the App Store, but following App Store rule changes that look to have cleared the way for PC emulator apps, iDOS 3 is now available for download, developer Chaoji Li announced.
India's antitrust body has taken the unusual step of recalling two reports that detailed alleged breaches of competition law by Apple, which complained that the regulator had disclosed commercial secrets to competitors including Tinder-owner Match.
The move will prolong an already delayed investigation, which began in 2021, centering on Apple's alleged abuse of its dominant position in the apps market to force developers to use its proprietary in-app purchase system, at a fee of up to 30%.
As Mr John Gruber has pointed out, there are many business models that does not work with Apple's App Store business model. Essentially, if you are a middle man, you will not survive in the App Store.
However, if you are the middle man, your business model will have to take care of marketing for your customers. In fact, marketing is probably one of your core competency you need to have for your platform to be successful. And you cannot out-source that to Apple, or Google or Microsoft or anyone else.
Perhaps it's time to get out of Apple's eco system. If your customers can already discover you outside of the App Store, then just put a big bold message telling your customers why you are not on Apple's App Store, and how you are going to use the money you save from not giving Apple any percentage.
Apple will listen when money is at stake.
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It’s plausible that these companies figure out a balance here, as regular users actually encounter this stuff, relegating text summarization and generation to the real contexts where it’s effective, accurate, and unintrusive. For now, though, in assuming that everything should be summarized, they risk the opposite effect: Making everything feel like work.
The campaign will showcase creatives, developers and artists who have challenged norms and share their stories of success across the App Store, Apple Music and Apple TV, in an effort to inspire everyone to start realising their own dreams.
One of these Indie developers is Joan Low, the founder and CEO of ThoughtFull Chat, who had left her banking job to devote herself full-time to her app after she was profoundly impacted by her experience taking care of a loved one battling mental health challenges.
The four new models — likely to be called the iPhone 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max — won’t look meaningfully different than current versions or add major new features.
[...]
But the more important changes will appear next September with the iPhone 17. That lineup will offer a new type of smartphone — what I call the “fourth iPhone model.”
Flipboard is an innovative alternative to experiencing news content. By centering the reader’s experience around flipping pages, and curating magazines, the creators have produced an app that stands apart from almost all other news apps.
Brad Pitt and George Clooney don't often appear in movies together, which is why I think Apple changing its release plan so drastically is such an irritating waste of what should be a landmark event. The actors are both amazing at their craft, and they're still two of the biggest names in Hollywood - despite the industry's ever-changing landscape. Their past collaborations have resulted in not just some of the best George Clooney movies, but the best Brad Pitt movies too. So, while I'm still thrilled to see their upcoming project, Apple's decision has impacted how I planned to enjoy it.
Charging more, cracking down on passwords, and subjecting users to advertising are relatively safe bets when you’re still growing, and a reasonable response to growth slowing down. Once you’ve hit the top — especially if you’ve started spending less on actual content for people to consume, as many streaming platforms have — they turn risky.
If Mr Mark Gurman's reported rumors turn out to be true, then I will also agree that we will not see a huge spike in iPhone sales this year, AI or no AI.
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Of course, nobody expects dialog boxes to be a complete solution to our privacy and security woes. A user places some trust in each layer of the process: in App Review, if they downloaded software from the App Store; in built-in protections; in the design of the operating system itself; and in the developer. Even if you believe dialog boxes are a helpful intervention, Apple’s own sea of prompts do not fulfil the Jobs criteria: they most often do not tell users specifically how their data will be used, and they either do not ask users every time or they cannot be turned off. They are just an occasional interruption to which you must either agree or find some part of an application is unusable.
It’s good to be reminded of the software you have installed that requests, or outright requires, access to private data and sensitive hardware APIs. It’s very good to be alerted to any software you might have installed that has acquired such permissions without your knowledge or recollection. (Like, say, if an abusive partner has installed some sort of monitoring software unbeknownst to you.) But it’s infuriating to play whack-a-mole to dismiss a barrage of permission prompts to confirm the same permissions you’ve previously granted to the same software, and it’s even worse when you need to dig three or four levels deep into System Settings to do it.
The killer feature of Paprika is the ability to convert an online recipe into an easy-to-read traditional recipe format. Long blog posts with SEO spam like "What is Flour?" and ramblings about the author's childhood are reconfigured into a list of ingredients with step-by-step instructions. Once that's done, you can dynamically adjust the number of servings, categorize the recipe, change the title, edit ingredients, add notes, and more.
The Vision Pro got its first Virtual Boy emulator in an app called VirtualFriend, finally giving me, a person with an irrational love for Nintendo’s most short-lived console, a chance to play it in immersive 3D once more. The app is also available for iOS and iPadOS, where it’s a virtually identical experience, minus the 3D effect.
Bryant realized that the sellers hawking office devices, prototypes, and manufacturing equipment often weren't aware of their products' significance, so he couldn't comb tags or descriptions to find enterprise gems. Instead, he devised an optical character recognition processing cluster by chaining together a dozen dilapidated second-generation iPhone SEs and harnessing Apple's Live Text optical character-recognition feature to find possible inventory tags, barcodes, or other corporate labels in listing photos. The system monitored for new listings, and if it turned up a possible hit, Bryant would get an alert so he could assess the device photos himself.
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“The main company in the talk for proofs of concept is Apple, because I view them as the most mature hardware company out there. They have all their hardware specially counted, and they really care about the security of their operations quite a bit,” Bryant says. “But with any Fortune 500 company, it’s basically a guarantee that their stuff will end up on sites like eBay and other secondhand markets eventually. I can’t think of any company where I haven’t seen at least some piece of equipment and got an alert on it from my system.”
Why did we make technology that will live for 18 months, die, and never rot?
This week, I learnt that there are a bunch of macOS apps that uses screen recording capabilities just to make the UI looks better. For these apps, I will suggest that it is time to stop using screen recording capabilities. I don't want to have to figure out whether I want to trust your app to not snoop.
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However, despite these concessions (if that is what the reduced ad-blocking functionality is), Distraction Control is still likely to give publishers anxiety considering that ads can still be blocked for a while.
Apple updated its Apple Maps on the web feature to add support for the Firefox browser this week. Firefox users on Mac, PC, and iPad can now visit Apple Maps on the web, and the site works as intended.
Whether you’re flying over afternoon cumulus clouds at 8,000 feet, or evaluating thunderstorm tops in the flight levels, this app works pretty well. Of course, you don’t want to rely on this app as your sole source for making an in-flight weather decision, but it sure is a nice tool to have on your iPad or iPhone in the summertime.
And then, boom: Apple's services business — the part of the company Apple needs to keep growing while its hardware business slows — instantly grows by nearly 50%.
I have not try out Distraction Control yet -- I don't have extra devices lying around to try out Apple's beta operating systems. But I do wonder if Apple should spend its resources on doing this feature, or perhaps it should spend its resources on making Safaris' Reader even better.
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Apple is today announcing some updates to its Digital Markets Act compliance plan in the European Union, with changes to external linking that give developers more freedom to direct customers to non-App Store purchase options and sales.
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There are two fees that are associated with directing customers to purchase options outside of the App Store. A 5 percent initial acquisition fee is paid for all sales of digital goods and services that the customer makes on any platform that occur within a 12-month period after an initial install. [...] The store services fee, which is in addition to the initial acquisition fee, is a commission that developers pay Apple on all sales of digital goods and services that the customer makes on any platform that occur within a fixed 12-month period from the date of an install, including app updates and reinstalls.
What many people want is for Apple just give in, concede, and allow iOS apps in the EU to just collect payments however they want, in-app or through links to the web, freely. [...] What Apple wants is to continue making bank from every purchase on digital good from an iOS app. We’re left with a mess where no one is happy with the result.
The new model — due later this year — will mark the first major design change to the mini since it was revamped under Steve Jobs in 2010, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The device will be far smaller than its predecessor, approaching the size of an Apple TV set-top box, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the work is secret.
Apple today announced that the Apple Vision Pro ecosystem has crossed a new milestone, with the visionOS App Store now featuring more than 2,500 native spatial apps.
1Password has shared that its software for Mac has a vulnerability that exposes users to a potentially serious threat. Along with attackers being able to compromise credentials, the flaw can give bad actors access to your account unlock key.
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Fortunately, version 8.10.36, available now, fixes the vulnerability. So be sure to check what build you have installed.
Before these apps invaded our lives, we would peek outside in the morning and dress accordingly while knowing that in Canada, the temperatures can rise and drop by more than 20 C in the course of a day. We would grab a sweater or raincoat or tuque, just in case, and head out to face the unknown. Now we first check the weather apps and still don’t know what will actually occur.
Apple’s rise to become the world’s foremost producer of smartphones—using a range of exclusive deals, anti-competitive practices, and race-to-the-bottom sourcing strategies—is intimately intertwined with why we needed to pass the CHIPS Act in the first place. No single company is more responsible for thinning out America’s chip manufacturing than Apple.
Yes, I do like to have a smaller Mac mini. I do not live in a big house, and a smaller computer just means I can have more space for other stuff. Or, perhaps, just more empty space. I do like empty space too.
I am already saving up to buy a new Mac mini. But if the rumors are wrong, and the next Mac mini is still the same size, I may now be tempted to wait for the next version. (Hopefully, Apple will update its Mac mini more frequently in the Apple Silicon era.)
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Apple says that the Advanced Data Protection bug in iOS 17.6 affected a small number of users. If a user attempted to turn Advanced Data Protection on and it failed, they were presented with a clear error message so they were aware the change failed.
If a user attempted to turn the feature off and it failed, the interface would show that the feature had been turned off, but it was still active on iCloud. After installing iOS 17.6.1 and macOS 14.6.1, these users will be prompted to go to Settings and verify that they still wish to disable Advanced Data Protection.
We’re now told that a recent iCloud issue affected a small number of users who were unable to enable or disable Advanced Data Protection (ADP) successfully. This update addresses and resolves that problem.
You can imagine the scenarios: A domestic abuser installs an app on their partner’s device and grants blanket permission without their knowledge, giving them access to everything they do. Or a scammer convinces a user to install software via social engineering, including clicking exactly the right permissions buttons to grant their software complete control over the user’s system.
One clear way to combat these abuses is to not allow permanent approval but prompt the user later, when they might realize what’s been happening without their knowledge. I get it. It’s a smart approach. But here’s the problem with what Apple’s testing in the latest macOS Sequoia betas: There’s no end to it. It’s a subscription you didn’t buy and can’t cancel.
Having to click through these confirmation nags every week, for every such utility you use, is not a little thing at all. It’s the sort of thing companies do when decisions like this are made by people looking to cover their asses, not make insanely great products.
Why? Is there any evidence that the Control-clicking shortcut was insufficient? If so, what is that evidence? It seems to me that the sort of technically unsophisticated non-expert users whom these features are meant to protect are the same users who have no idea the Control-click shortcut to launch non-notarized apps even exists.
Apple's broken promise is shameful. The company apparently hopes we forget that it ever made the promise. Apple talks a good game, claiming "privacy is a fundamental human right", yadda yadda, but talk is cheap. When it comes to our right to stop our devices from phoning home to Cupertino, Apple is not interested. And if we can't trust Apple to keep its promises, then why should we trust anything else that Apple says, such as that our IP addresses are not logged? After all, it's impossible for us to verify this from the outside. Trust is earned through actions, and in this case Apple has neglected to act.
This decision comes after researchers from Israeli cybersecurity startup Oligo Security said they discovered a zero-day security vulnerability that allows a malicious actor to access private data on a user's internal private network. The researchers will present their findings this weekend at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas.
At the same time, Apple has changed its plan for Wolfs to have a wide theatrical release before it lands on Apple TV+. It instead will receive a limited theatrical release on September 20, and then debut globally on Apple TV+ on Friday, September 27.
Apple confirmed the release pivot, but sources said it does not signal a change in its hybrid strategy of a streaming service release preceded by a wide theatrical with P&A that was undertaken with Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon.
Chambers acknowledges that Mozilla lost sight of Firefox in recent years as it chased opportunities outside the browser, such as VPN service and email masking. When she replaced Mitchell Baker as CEO in February, the company scaled back those other efforts and made Firefox a priority again.
“Yes, Mozilla is refocusing on Firefox,” she says. “Obviously, it’s our core product, so it’s an important piece of the business for us, but we think it’s also really an important part of the internet.”
Nebo is a note-taking app that helps you save and organize your ideas and other things you want to remember and it comes with some of the best handwriting recognition we’ve seen.
Ultimately, if you dabble in network testing and miss Apple’s Network Utility like me, I encourage you to download DEVONtechnologies’ Neo Network Utility. Stash it in your Utilities folder for the next time you’re curious about what’s happening with your network or Internet servers.
It costs money to manage your money with the help of a good app. That comes with some benefits. You’re paying for something that’s easier to use than a free Google Drive spreadsheet, and you’re paying for the convenience of having your bank accounts, including all of your transactions, synced with the app instead of needing to manually add every expense yourself. You’re also paying for security, so that hackers don’t get their hands on your financial info.
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But sometimes the most compelling free option out there is the trusty spreadsheet. After all, if one of the leading budgeting apps started out as a spreadsheet, why not get back to basics?
TBWA\Media Arts Lab, London has commissioned French illustrator Simon Landrein to depict people in sporty, everyday situations for an outdoor campaign that has been popping up on the streets of Paris and Marseilles.
Landrein created all of the illustrations on Apple’s latest iPad Pro and the campaign's showcasing approach follows that of Apple’s Shot on iPhone.
I wish Firefox is a stronger and better browser. Safari definitely need some good competition, and Chrome is not a good competition.
Maybe Apple can throw some money over to Mozilla. Make Apple Maps the default map service on Firefox or something.
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The 2024 Apple Design Award (ADA) winner for Innovation is a point-and-click adventure that follows two young siblings, Toto and Gal, through a beautifully animated world of forbidden forests, dark caverns, friendly frogs, and mischievous gnomes. To advance through the game’s story, players complete fun mini-games and puzzles, all of which feel like a Saturday morning cartoon: Before the journey is out, the pair will fetch a sword from a stone, visit a goblin village, soar over the sea on an enormous bird, and navigate the real-world challenges of sibling rivalry. They will also order several pizzas.
Distraction Control reduces annoying elements like content overlays or sign-in banners on articles and web pages.
Apple is eliminating the option to Control-click to open Mac software that is not correctly signed or notarized in macOS Sequoia. To install apps that Gatekeeper blocks, users will need to open up System Settings and go to the Privacy and Security section to "review security information" before being able to run the software.
With macOS Sequoia this fall, using apps that need access to screen recording permissions will become a little bit more tedious. Apple is rolling out a change that will require you to give explicit permission on a weekly basis to these types of apps, and every time you reboot your Mac.
Apple Arcade has announced its upcoming releases with three new games and a range of updates landing in September. Headlining the new launches is NFL Retro Bowl ’25 featuring official teams and players with nostalgic graphics and gameplay.
With real-time updates on Apple Maps, users in Tokyo can view detailed schedules, real-time departure and arrival times, and transfers to help plan their journeys. Apple adds that important real-time transit information such as service suspensions and delays will also be provided.
With version 2.0, GoodLinks adds highlighting and note-taking combined with excellent Shortcuts support, giving users full access and flexibility to incorporate saved URLs, highlights, and notes into their workflows however they want.
Flighty is using aviation authority data and machine learning to provide early warnings of delays, and when a delay is official, the reason for the delay. Most delays are due to airspace issues and late aircraft, both of which Flighty will monitor.
In a significant update, version 2.0 of the app adds support for controlling multiple iPhones remotely. With the feature enabled, one iPhone acts as a controller, and other iPhones can be connected using the app via a wired or Wi-Fi network. Users can then control app features like zoom, focus, white balance, frame rate, shutter angle, and lens selection, and synchronize the cameras to record simultaneously.
To celebrate 25 years of SpongeBob SquarePants, Paramount Plus and the team at Nickelodeon are debuting a 'Bikini Bottom' environment for the Apple Vision Pro.
It’ll transport you to Conch Street to see the famous pineapple under the sea, Patrick’s rock, and Squidward's humble abode. But the real fun starts when you realize it’s not just a visual treat – it's interactive, too. You can look around and open doors – or rather the lid for Patrick – to hear sound bites, making the experience truly engaging.
According to the judge, it’s not just that Google pays Apple not to challenge its search supremacy — it would be unbelievably difficult for Apple to get in on the action at all. Unsurprisingly, both Google and Apple have looked into this, and their own internal estimates came out at trial.
Apparently, Apple has calculated that “it would cost $6 billion annually (on top of what it already spends developing search capabilities) to run a GSE.” Meanwhile, in “late 2020, Google estimated how much it would cost Apple to create and maintain a GSE that could compete with Google.” Apple would have to spend something “in the rough order of” $20 billion in order “to reproduce [Google’s technical] infrastructure dedicated to search.”
I am not sure I buy that $6 to $20 billion figures thrown out about how much Apple need to spend to replicate Google's search business. You don't need to index the entire world wide web in order to run a fine-enough search engine.
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During closing arguments, Mehta homed in on those payments, wondering how other players in the market could possibly displace Google from that position. Since only a company with enough capital to offer Apple a comparable or better deal and the ability to create a quality search engine with limited user data could stand a chance, Mehta asked, “If that’s what it takes for somebody to dislodge Google as the default search engine, wouldn’t the folks that wrote the Sherman Act be concerned about it?”
Judge Amit P. Mehta's ruling, which holds that those deals are inhibiting competition, doesn't include his remedy. And Google says it plans to appeal his decision regardless. But if the ruling is ultimately upheld, and requires Google to stop making exclusive search deals, then it could threaten what's become an incredibly lucrative revenue stream for Apple.
But the iPhone maker has already been moving away from its dependence on traditional internet searches.
With Apple revamping its Siri digital assistant to handle queries more deftly – and integrating artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots into its software – it is betting that AI technology will eventually take over.
That underlines the government’s struggle with the technology industry - it moves so quickly that by the time a serious reckoning comes, the industry is already restructuring itself around the next innovation.
Apple’s latest developer betas launched last week with a handful of the generative AI features that were announced at WWDC and are headed to your iPhones, iPads, and Macs over the next several months. On Apple’s computers however, you can actually read the instructions programmed into the model supporting some of those Apple Intelligence features.
Apple and other heavyweight companies sold off on Monday as U.S. recession fears and Berkshire Hathaway's sale of half of its stake in the iPhone maker further deflated a months-long rally fueled by optimism about AI.
None of this is to say that AI itself doesn’t still have revolutionary potential, nor that the industry won’t eventually fulfill those dreams. The dot com crash in the early 2000s was in part due to overinvestment and overvaluation of startups of the era, but Evans notes that what was left over set the stage for mega-companies of today like Google and Meta. The same may one day be true for AI companies. But unless the financials improve, it may not be these AI companies.
All of this highlights the problem of collectively putting too much money into one technological bet when it doesn’t offer a clear case for doing so.
Disney+ has been at the forefront of offering unique environments on its Vision Pro app, so you can watch movies at Avengers Tower or on the Monsters Inc. Scare Floor. On Monday, the company is rolling out another one: Iceland! In conjunction with Disney-owned National Geographic, the new Disney+ environment is based on imagery from Thingvellir National Park in Iceland. In the daytime view, snowflakes fall around the rocky mountain scene. In the nighttime view, there’s a spectacular aurora above you.
For those who make journaling a habit, it’s common to imagine the book itself as a listener—hence the classic refrain “Dear Diary.” But what if your journal could not only hear you, but also understand and respond to you?
That’s the concept behind Rosebud, an AI-powered journal that can ask questions, carry a conversation, remember patterns, and more.
But another way to look at it is that services are just another form of software. Software that runs not on the personal computing devices Apple sells to customers, but which run on servers in the cloud. And, importantly, is sold to users via lucrative recurring subscriptions. Content often isn’t what we think of as software (like say music, movies, and TV shows) but content from the App Store is. But the key is that it’s all stuff that the users of Apple’s devices consume on those devices. Apple’s core business is designing, engineering, producing, and selling those devices. Services are just a huge, and growing, part of what users do and consume on those devices.
Ironically, back in 2000 it was CNET Networks Inc that paid $1.6 billion to acquire the then tech-publishing behemoth Ziff-Davis Inc and its online services company ZDNet. Though so much has happened in the last two decades in the form of divestments and realignments that today’s inverted purchase isn’t as ouroboric as it might seem.
Tim Cook has previously declared that Google has the best search engine in the world, so, even if Google is forced to not pay Apple for keeping Google as the default search engine on Safari, Apple will still keep Google as the default search engine. Right?
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I am surprised. Someone is willing to pay CNET for one hundred million dollars?
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The problem is that Screen Time—the Apple tool, and the broader fixation—doesn’t seem to help. The main issue is that it flattens phone usage into a single number. “We treat screen time as this unitary experience,” Nicholas Allen, a psychologist at the University of Oregon and the director of its Center for Digital Mental Health, told me. “And of course, it’s an incredibly diverse experience. It can be everything from finding out useful information, to being bullied, to catching up on the news, to watching pornography, to connecting with a friend.”
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Screen Time and the whole ecosystem of tools like it reinforce the vague sense that everyone should be using their phone less, even if we’re not exactly sure why. The problem with the smartphone is also its greatest achievement: The device squishes an enormous amount of capability into the palm of your hand. So much of it is necessary. So much of it is a waste.
Yahoo is a giant in the world of fantasy sports, but its app hasn’t gotten a meaningful update in years. Ahead of the 2024 NFL season, though, the company is rolling out a completely overhauled version of the Yahoo Fantasy Sports app that brings both a cleaner design and a huge amount of new content for fantasy players.
Whether these companies will succeed in accelerating growth is less clear. Spotify is developing a premium tier, but the Swedish company and record labels haven’t agreed on the best features. Some want Spotify to sell limited-edition vinyl or early access to tickets. Other want fans to pay more for early releases of new music.
Apple and Amazon are more focused on other initiatives than innovating in music streaming, while SiriusXM Holdings Inc. is having a tough time right now. Having identified the problem, everyone just needs to agree on a solution.
I’m told that the iPhone launch will occur around the same time as last year — a quick look at the calendar makes Sept. 10 a probable date — and users will need to upgrade their new hardware to iOS 18.1 in October to get rolling with Apple Intelligence.
Put another way: On-demand food delivery is not working for customers, couriers, restaurants, or even the companies behind the apps themselves. The food delivery bubble is definitely bursting — but maybe that’s not a bad thing.
There is good screen time, and there is not-so-good screen time.
If you see me sitting in a coffee-shop with my eyes glued to my little mini screen, and you walk over and tell me I should put my phone away and enjoy listening to all the people around me, I will whack my portable e-book reader on your head and tell you to mind your own business.
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Thank Goodness You're Here! is a quirky comedy video game set in a fictional northern town
"Dead reyt", "faff" and "keep gu'in" are words you don’t often see in video games.
But two pals from Yorkshire have changed all that.
God's Own Country, as the locals call it, is the inspiration for Thank Goodness You're Here!, a new game created by James Carbutt and Will Todd, from Barnsley.
In 2022, Apple agreed to pay a $50 million dollar settlement for certain eligible 2015-2019 MacBook owners who experienced problems with their butterfly keyboards. The claims process opened in late 2022, and the settlement got final approval last May. Starting today, eligible MacBook owners are finally receiving their payouts.
With the slimmed-down fall upgrades, many Apple customers in the EU will feel like second-class users. Apple is likely to have deliberately factored in this resentment in order to persuade the EU to give in. However, this tactic of instrumentalizing EU citizens as a means of exerting pressure against regulations must not be allowed to work under any circumstances. The long-term benefits of a fair digital market far outweigh the personal restrictions. Then I'll just get some features later.
But the magnitude of this selling suggests it could be more than just a tax-saving move.
After declining in the first quarter on concerns it was falling behind on artificial intelligence innovation, Apple shares took off in the second quarter, gaining 23% to a new record as it gave more detail to investors about its future in artificial intelligence.
If the butterfly keyboards were good, if they were successful, perhaps, one might argue, Apple may get to introduce a whole slate of MacBooks that are really thin and really light and great.
It's just that there is no evidence of Apple wanting and able to do that.
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Without good hardware and software, Apple’s services would be irrelevant. I hope everyone in a position of authority at Apple understands that. Services are a way to help make Apple’s hardware even more profitable than it already was. But services can never, ever take precedence over Apple’s hardware. If Apple ever begins to see its hardware as merely a vessel for selling more subscription services, the game will be over.
Tasks automatically moving to the following day was one of the main reasons I chose Things 3. I’ve used several apps in the past that do something similar by marking the task as "overdue." To be honest with you, I'm more likely to feel overwhelmed when I see lots of overdue tasks than I am if I just see a big to-do list that needs chipping away at.
Apple probably has no great ideas to propel the TV+ business forward in any significant way, but I do hope Apple will put in more effort in nurturing the other service businesses that are not dependent on their hardware and software products. From music to books to news to podcasts, there are still so much more potentials to be so much better for their customers.
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Apple reported its earnings results for the third quarter of the 2024 fiscal year, and it satisfied investors' expectations at the top level with 5 percent growth year over year. The company set a third-quarter record with $85.8 billion in revenue.
Despite that growth, a couple of key things investors were concerned about—overall iPhone sales and revenue in China—slipped downward, and Apple's stock fell slightly in after-hours trading.
Apple Inc. predicted that its new artificial intelligence features will spur iPhone upgrades in coming months, helping the company reemerge from a sales slowdown that has hit its China business especially hard.
Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, speaking on a conference call Thursday to discuss third-quarter results, said that upcoming Apple Intelligence features will provide a fresh reason for customers to buy new phones.
At the heart of all of our innovations are the values that guide everything we do. We believe fundamentally that the best technology is technology that works for everyone, and in honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we introduced all-new capabilities to give users more ways to take advantage of all our products can do. These include eye tracking for users to control iPhone or iPad visually, music haptics to give those who are deaf or hard of hearing a tangible way to experience music, and vocal shortcuts that tie tasks to a user’s voice.
Apple today refreshed its App Store Guidelines created for developers, modifying the emulator rules to include express permission for PC emulators to download games.
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UTM SE was the first PC emulator app to be allowed on the App Store, but the guideline changes today will streamline the approval process for similar apps.
Apple Inc. is ramping up pressure on Tencent Holdings Ltd. and ByteDance Ltd. to make fundamental changes to China’s most popular apps, an unusual move that may inflame tensions in the world’s largest smartphone market.
The iPhone maker in recent months has demanded the two companies close loopholes that their in-app creators employ to funnel users to external payment systems, circumventing Apple’s typical 30% commission, according to people familiar with the matter.
Tech giant Apple issued an apology on Friday after its recent advertisement sparked widespread criticism for negatively portraying Thailand.
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“We would like to apologise that the advertisement has failed to present the Thai way of life in a complete and appropriate manner,” a statement from Apple said, adding that the advert had been pulled off the air.
The change means users can use the Wallet app to add an Apple Account Card, which displays the Apple credit balance associated with an Apple ID. If you receive an App Store or Apple Store gift card, for example, it is added to an Apple Account that was previously visible in the App Store and Apple Store apps.
Apple has asked a federal judge to dismiss the Justice Department’s antitrust case against it, claiming that the government is asking the court “to sanction a judicial redesign of one of the most innovative and consumer-friendly products ever made: iPhone.”
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Apple says in a new filing that the DOJ’s argument “is based on the false premise that iPhone’s success has come not through building a superior product that consumers trust and love, but through Apple’s intentional degradation of iPhone to block purported competitive threats.” It calls that idea “outlandish” and says that antitrust law protects its ability “to design and control its own product” rather than cater to third-party developers.
While Europe's AI rules aren't really becoming effective until February 2025, with some of the provisions applying as late as August 2026, the practical outcome for users right now is that the U.S. tech giants are extremely wary of offering AI features to European users.
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Tech giants such as Apple and Meta certainly won't simply give up on AI in Europe. When it announced its AI features will arrive late in Europe, Apple said it will try to find a way to "deliver these features to our EU customers without compromising their safety," and the AI stuff will certainly come in one form or another. But this is just the beginning; as AI becomes more deeply integrated with the devices we use and rely on, it might get increasingly difficult to make them work similarly in the U.S. and Europe, given the different rulesets.
How AI will the next iPhone be? Are there anything beyond whatever that has already been announced for iOS, or will there new AI stuff that is exclusive to iPhone 16 family? That, I think, will determine if Apple will sell a whole lot more iPhones, or if Apple will just sell a lot iPhones.
(The leak photos doesn't seem to indicate a major exterior design change. That used to help sell more iPhones.)
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The same developer told us that at the beginning of their Arcade deal they would receive prompt monthly payments from the Bonus Pool, Apple’s term for ongoing royalty payments. But there’s now a five month backlog on their payments.
Two other developers we spoke to had similar problems. We were told one indie developer was not paid for six months, and nearly went out of business as a result. Another said they have been chasing payments for two months now, but had been “stonewalled” by Apple reps.
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They also described a grim QA and update process, and a back-and-forth with Apple over a single update that cost their team two months’ work. “Submitting updates is so painful our developers started trying to avoid it,” they said.
The last thing you want when traveling is to have your reliance on technology make you more stressed, and I’m pleased to say that the state of the world is such that it generally smooths things over instead—and, in some cases, actually makes traveling even more of a joy. I appreciate that I can both stay connected to home and get the most of out the country I’m in.
The best thing I did for this trip was track it all in a single note in Apple Notes.
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Oh, and to facilitate quick access, I added a Notes widget to my home screen, and set it to point to my specific 2024 UK Trip note, so I had one-tap access to everything in that note, without any messing around inside the Notes app.
iPhone and Apple Watch users in Ohio are now able to add their digital IDs and driver's licenses to the Wallet app on the iPhone, providing a convenient alternative to a physical card.
Google has announced new Waze and Google Maps features rolling out for iPhone and CarPlay users that aim to keep them safer and more informed on the go.
The redesign of iStat Menus 7.0 includes an updated interface with new menu bar modes, such as stacked labels and values, and new menu bar items, such as the Wi-Fi network name and GPU frames per second. For users of Apple silicon Macs, the update brings frequency monitoring and additional sensor support.
It’s time for Apple to expand its health hardware, and adding sensors to the AirPods and offering a ring seem like good starts. When Apple introduced the watch a decade ago, it wasn’t sure what the product would be good for–but over the years, it’s become clear that health and fitness are answers. Now it’s time to take the next step and follow those answers to a new set of Apple hardware products.
How has it stuck around? Not by changing with the times, it seems. On the surface, absolutely nothing is different about Candy Crush than it was 10 years ago. It’s still a free game in which you swap colourful sweets around to make satisfying lines of three, and then they disappear, and more cascade into the level, and on you go until you have your fill. Behind the scenes, though, a tremendous amount of refinement has gone into how Candy Crush is made. It’s still free to play, with only a small percentage of people ever paying for power-ups, more time or more levels – but now it props up that revenue with ads, too.
I don't play Candy Crush. But one of the game I am still playing was released in 2009: Orbital.
I play this when I am listening to audiobooks during my train commute, so that I have something to do with my eyes and hands.
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