The earbuds fit slightly more comfortably and securely, but anyone who didn’t get on with the previous design won’t like the new one and I wouldn’t recommend them for running. They sound better with more depth that makes them a great listen. A chip upgrade makes them more reliable at switching between Apple devices and adds a few extra features including clearer calls.
But it is the noise cancelling in the slightly more expensive model that is most impressive. They cannot match the AirPods Pro with their silicone tips or other plugged earbuds, but they can take the edge off most unwanted noise. I think it is worth the extra cost unless you predominantly wear one earbud only.
Even professionals deserve pink phones. And this is the hill I am prepared to die on.
The prompt warns that I "won't be able to use a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse," despite the fact my Mac mini already has a USB keyboard and mouse plugged in. Indeed, the Mac isn't using any Bluetooth devices, and macOS knows this but doesn't care. Moreover, the Bluetooth prompt appears even when all Bluetooth-related features are disabled such as AirDrop and Handoff. There's no "intelligence" to the prompt.
For over a decade, business was booming in Hollywood, with studios battling to catch up to new companies like Netflix and Hulu. But the good times ground to a halt in May 2023, when Hollywood’s writers went on strike.
The strikes lasted multiple months and marked the first time since the 1960s that both writers and actors joined forces - effectively shutting down Hollywood production. But rather than roaring back, in the one year since the strikes ended, production has fizzled.
I like my AirPods Pro 2 so much that I don't think I will ever willingly switch to the regular AirPods. But all the reviews do seem to indicate that Apple is, once again, doing a great job with this product line, and if AirPods Pro doesn't fit your ear (or if your budget is not compatible), the regular AirPods sounds like a great alternative.
When AirPods Pro doesn't work for me is for sleeping, which I do listen to audio stuff so that I can block my brain for thinking and worrying and other regular stuff that my brain do. For this, I don't have any good recommendations yet except for an old pair of EarPods.
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Once you enable airplane mode, your smartphone no longer has to expend energy searching for networks or powering apps that constantly track your location. As a result, the incoming charge is dedicated solely to charging the battery, leading to faster charging times.
That said, you won't notice a dramatic difference in how long it takes to charge your smartphone with or without airplane mode enabled. The exact time difference depends mainly on the condition of your phone's battery.
Apple, the most valuable company in the world, will have to work this weekend to meet a legal deadline on Monday. That’s after Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson on Friday denied the company’s request for more time to produce 1.3 million documents related to App Store changes it made in January to comply with a 2021 court order.
Putting oneself out there inevitably invites criticism and feedback. This situation serves as a reminder for both creators and critics to approach their work thoughtfully, balancing honesty with kindness and keeping the audience’s needs at the forefront.
I spent this morning migrating my main podcast client to Castro, because I've lost my appetite of the previous podcast client I was using.
OPML is good, but it doesn't really capture how I manage individual show, their priorities in the queue and the limitations in number of episodes. I hope there is a better exchange format. And no, I don't think an online centralized podcast subscription website is the solution. (Think: Google Reader. No, thank you.)
Other than this, I've spent my Sunday sweating in another hot day here at the equator. How's your Sunday?
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I’ve got bummer news: The first few times I tried out Vehicle Motion Cues, it didn’t go so well. After about 10 minutes in the back of a taxi, spent entirely looking at my phone, I felt substantially nauseous. It’s hard to say if I was less vommy compared to how I’d feel if the feature wasn’t on, but it certainly didn’t prevent motion sickness in my case. (FWIW, some Reddit users who’d been testing the Beta version reported better luck, though the results were mixed.)
That’s to be expected. “Our research and that of many others has shown that there are large individual differences when it comes to motion sickness, as well as large individual differences in the effectiveness of sickness countermeasures,” Michael Barnett-Cowan, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Sciences and director of the Multisensory Brain and Cognition Lab at the University of Waterloo, tells SELF. “What this means is that Apple’s application might work for some people, not work for other people, and for some people it could even make symptoms worse.”
Overall, we’re impressed with the moves toward repairability that all the phones in this iPhone 16 lineup have made. The repairability benefits and drawbacks are pretty similar across the whole product family. The dual-entry design is standout, particularly now that even the Pro models are built such that most repairs are possible without taking off the screen.
Adhesives still create some challenges getting inside—and heat required to open the phone means that it’s probably not yet compliant with the upcoming EU Battery Regulation.
iOS 18 has introduced many awesome new software features for the iPhone, particularly when it comes to productivity and privacy. Yet the best new software feature Apple has released this year isn’t for the iPhone. It’s for the Mac, and it’s called iPhone Mirroring. Here’s why it’s so extraordinary. Plus, some tips on putting it to use.
Health Canada this week published approval of watchOS 11's sleep apnea detection feature on the Apple Watch Series 10, Apple Watch Series 9, and Apple Watch Ultra 2. The feature launched in the U.S. and over 150 other countries and regions earlier this month, and Apple is now permitted to make the feature available in Canada.
“All notes are very different in nature. We are helping people capture ideas that change their state of mind. Like something that made you change your perspective or motivated you and you want to relfect on that later. These are the ideas that you collect with Napkin as a mindfulness habit,” Felsmann said.
Using Personal Sections, you have free rein to design your own sections to show the exact content you want with your own ordering and artwork. “You can adjust how the items are displayed and even choose from 3 optional layout designs,” Channels explains. The feature also integrates with Smart Rules for added customization and automation.
If you happen to be, or know, an open-source advocate who’s fallen into Apple IT management, here’s some welcome news: all-remote, open-source device management platform Fleet has introduced iOS device support to supplement its existing Mac, Windows, and Linux device management capabilities.
Apple has left negotiations to participate in an OpenAI funding round expected to raise about $6.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal said on Friday.
Apple TV+ has been around long enough, and has produced enough stuff, that we can now derive a clear sense of its tastes and identity. Yes, it’s a prime purveyor of quality Dad TV, but that doesn’t cover everything: Apple TV+ is now a fully defined programmer that lays claim to the fixations and pleasures of the comfortably wealthy American. This taxonomy is not meant to be a comprehensive accounting; every series available on the streamer is not listed here, and there are many thematic threads left unexplored. But these blocs of programming all reflect something about how Apple TV+ sees the television business, the world, and its customers.
I have been lying to barbers for many years. Whenever the barbers hold up their mirrors after haircuts, and ask me whether the haircuts were okay, I always just say yes. Because, at that point in time, I don't have my glasses on. And because I don't have my glasses on, I can't see anything.
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The failure to corrall support among some of the world's leaders developing cutting-edge AI models shows how governments, including in the EU, still grapple with how to impose instant controls on the fast-developing technology, despite stark warnings in the past two years that it comes with grave risks to the world.
It also showed a mood shift among some tech firms in their support for regulatory controls on AI. A campaign led by Meta this month warned that “in recent times, regulatory decision-making has become fragmented and unpredictable” and that the EU risked missing out on AI technology that could “turbocharge productivity."
There is no word yet on what's included in the firmware, but Apple is planning to add hearing aid and hearing test features to the AirPods Pro 2 in the not too distant future.
Apple on Thursday published the security content notes for iTunes 12.13.3, which was recently released for Windows users. According to the company, the update fixes an exploit that allowed a local attacker to elevate his privileges. Apple says the exploit has been fixed with “improved restrictions.”
The novel idea here is to bring a subscription-based app in-house to serve as a testing ground for RevenueCat’s new features and functionality, the company says. Plus, it will serve as part of RevenueCat’s “build in public” philosophy.
No, I am not in a hurry to have tons of AI on Apple devices. Take your time, Apple.
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After taking a deep dive into the new Passwords app in Sequoia, I’m delighted with it. Unless you’re convinced that you need your secrets protected by another password, I think you should look carefully at it, as it could save you the subscription to a third-party password manager. This article looks inside it to explain which secrets it gives access to, as they can become confusing.
It’s always sad to see a longstanding Apple-focused publication close its doors, but at least iMore’s archives will remain online. I’d be interested to learn more about what drove this business decision—like AnandTech, iMore was owned by publication aggregator Future PLC.
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As we found many years ago, serving ads to eyeballs is a tough business, and I assume that a conflation of factors reduced iMore’s revenues to the point where it was no longer sustainable to generate content.
I respect MKBHD and his work immensely. He presents as a driven craftsman whose work ethic and character have pushed the tech industry forward. He's an inspiration to many creators (including myself). I am continuously awe-struck at what he can produce and admire his temperament under what I can imagine is ungodly amounts of social pressure (including, from yours truly, a stupid coffee cup). But any wallpaper app aiming to celebrate creators must hold itself to a much higher standard. This was a huge and disappointing miss.
Apple TV+ will once again be making the iconic "Peanuts" specials available to non-subscribers for a limited time this holiday season.
Starting today, you can tuck your phone away in your backpack and use the new AllTrails compass feature on your watch whenever you need navigational guidance. You can also track your activity stats on your watch in real time via AllTrails if you want to keep an eye on how long you've been out on the trail, watch your pace, heart rate and how much elevation you've gained. You can even see how much time you have left before you can get back to the trailhead and take your hiking boots off.
Today, I find myself listening to quite a few long notifications while wearing my AirPods Pro, and Siri kept asking me whether I want to listen to the long messages, and I have to either nod or shake my head.
I find that I don't like to do these gestures. I could't get them just right for the phone to understand what I meant, while the AirPods Pro just went beeps and boops. Eventually, I guess, the whole thing timed out, and my music / podcast / audiobook resumes. No, I don't like this at all.
Is this Siri refusing to read long messages new to iOS 18? I can find the settings to turn off head gestures, but I can't find the setting to tell Siri to just read all the messages all the time, instead of tellling me there is a long message and waiting for my permission to read me the long message. Siri, you already interrupted my audio entertainment, just read the whole messages, will you?
(If I turn off the head gestures thing, Siri will wait for me to speak 'yes' out loud before reading the messages, it seems.)
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The Macalope has to agree with Sandofsky here, it seems pretty straightforward. You downloaded a camera app. It needs access to the camera. To take the photographs. Photographs are much less fun without the lenses and such. Sandofsky could, of course, add more verbiage to the prompt — “The camera will be used to take photographs for the app that you just downloaded to take photographs for. Photographs are images created and stored by interpreting light waves digitally. Also, they steal your soul. A lot of people think that’s just a superstition expressed by stereotypical backward tribal cultures in movies but, yeah, they actually steal people’s souls. Sorry you have to find out this way, in a prompt. Are you still reading this? Just tap ‘OK’ for crying out loud.” — but the Macalope’s not sure how that actually makes the prompt or the user experience any better.
The very odd thing here is that Halide was featured in Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” keynote. And is an Apple Design Award winner. And is just incredibly popular and well-known. And, finally, what are you doing, App Store review? Is this what you wanted to be when you grew up?
The fact that I do not need an iPhone 16 is a testament not so much to the iPhone’s failure as to its resounding success. A lot of the digital software we rely on has grown worse for users in recent years; the iPhone, by contrast, has become so good that it’s hard to imagine anything but incremental improvements. Apple’s teleological phone-design strategy may have simply reached its end point, the same way evolution in nature has repeatedly resulted in an optimized species of crab.
But the downside to capturing every moment is that it creates a mountain of those moments to save for the future. Those photos can be easily lost if they’re not archived properly. All it can take is one accidental dip in the toilet for your phone, and all that data is lost forever.
So what’s a practical backup strategy for the average person? Here are a few ways to make sure memories are never lost.
Come October, listeners will need to subscribe to The Times' audio content to unlock older episodes of The Times' hit shows, such as "The Daily," "The Ezra Klein Klein Show,""Modern Love," or "Hard Fork."
There are some minor protections built into Apple and Google’s current systems — you can display an encrypted ID without fully unlocking your phone, and various authorities can scan your ID wireless if they have special readers. But you don’t want to be in a situation where you’re searching the web for the technical and policy details of your digital ID system when a cop demands your phone — you’re much better off handing over your license.
I am not in favor of having regulators forcing Apple to do alternate app stores and side-loads and what-have-you, but this doesn't mean Apple's existing App Store is good enough for developers.
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While it's nice to be able to launch my iPhone from my Mac, I was surprised at what ended up being the most useful aspect of this feature: Notifications. Once you've connected your phone, its alerts pop up in your Mac's Notification Center, and it takes just one click to launch the app it's tied to. That's useful for alerts from Instagram, DoorDash and other popular apps that have no real Mac options, aside from launching their websites in a browser.
This latest version of the app adds album booklets for thousands of albums. Album booklets offer multi-language liner notes, composer biographies, information about the orchestra, conductors, and soloists, plus where relevant, sung texts and opera libretti, enriching listeners' understanding of the music.
Apple has also added separate Control Center connectivity controls for Wi-Fi and VPN connectivity. In prior versions of iOS 18, these controls were baked into an all-in-one connectivity button, but now they can be added to the Control Center.
Now, you can switch between the rear-facing iPhone 16 cameras and the front-facing selfie camera using Camera Control.
4GB will be the storage required to install and use Apple Intelligence features. This is on top of the storage required to install the iOS 18.1 update itself.
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The footnote at the end of Apple’s documentation notes: “Storage requirements for on-device Apple Intelligence models will increase as more features roll out.”
To keep this constructive, I’ll reiterate and add to my suggestion that Apple should be smarter about asking the user to continue granting permissions for various actions. First, a “Continue to Allow” prompt could appear a small but random number of days after an app was initially granted screen recording permissions. That would cause the user to think about the permissions while the app installation was still fresh and allow them to revoke permissions or delete the app if it was no longer needed. In the hypothetical scenario where a malicious recording app has been installed by a domestic abuser with admin access, a randomly scheduled second prompt would be harder to conceal or intercept.
I don't mean to suggest everyone is like me and I can get behind the idea that some people do need to be protected against apps getting this permission without their knowledge, but I am suggesting the current solution is obnoxious and is bad enough for me that I'm not upgrading for the time being.
With the feature turned on, the iPhone's Taptic Engine will tap and vibrate to match the audio of a song playing in Apple Music, Apple Music Classical, and now Shazam, as long as the device is connected to a Wi-Fi or cellular network.
With Obscura’s support for Camera Control, you can launch the app from anywhere as well as control zoom and exposure. There’s also support for adjusting focus, filters, and formats with the Camera Control in Obscura.
Silvio Rizzi, the developer who built the popular RSS app Reeder, wants to cater to the audience that wants to get away from the pressure of unread count with the redesign of the app. Reeder’s new avatar is more about being compatible with more sources like YouTube channels, Mastodon and Bluesky feeds, Reddit channels, podcasts, and comic strips.
I haven't use iPhone mirroring on my Mac for enough time yet, but I think I will probably soon agree that the tight integration of notifications between iPhone and macOS is a major strength of this new feature.
However, there is one thing that may well be bothersome for me: the iPhone mirroring app behaves just differently enough than the iPhone simulation app in Xcode that I have to occasionally remind myself which app I am in.
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Based on our testing, reader reports, and a growing number of online complaints, the issue appears to stem from a software bug, rather than a hardware fault. Specifically, iOS’s accidental touch rejection algorithm seems to be overly sensitive, causing intended touches to be ignored.
Our teardown lab is filled with iPhone 16 parts, and we’ve been having a blast playing with them. Apple’s latest smartphone series has largely underwhelmed tech reviewers, who are mixed on the usefulness of the new dedicated camera button and twiddling their thumbs waiting for Apple Intelligence to drop.
But in our world, it’s a big deal: the iPhone 16 lineup makes three big leaps for repairkind.
Apple now appears to be working on a half-decade-long cycle. For better or for worse, the iPhone 16 has a nearly identical look and feel as the iPhone 12. Apple has added a lot other features between 2020 and 2024, but it’s undeniable that the days of frequent hardware changes are over.
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But for a company looking to prove that it still has design chops — now that most of Jony Ive’s vaunted team has left the building — the lack of major overhauls in recent years is notable.
After it all ended, I had one immediate thought: I’d never have to leave my couch again! It sounded great… until it didn’t. Here’s my verdict: Watching a runway show on the Apple Vision Pro headset beats any other kind of livestream I’ve ever experienced, and is an incredible option for fashion fanatics who want to watch a fashion show. But the bottom line? There’s nothing like the real thing. It almost made me appreciate the lower back pain I currently have. Back to those cold metal benches I go.
It's autumn, and my belly is filled with mooncakes.
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The Watch Series 10's speakers aren't tinny, but they are definitely quiet. So if you had plans of purchasing the Apple Watch Series 10 for shower parties (and yes, you can wet it because it's swimproof), you need to temper your expectations.
The hard plastic feels nice in the hand and provides decent grip, despite being a cheap feeling material. I just wish the price reflected the feel.
The app is great for photographers, field workers, travelers, or anyone who wants to take location based notes. If you want to remember something about a very specific spot you found, this app helps you do that.
So I have to wonder: with Apple’s increasing emphasis on services, will its black box one day wink out of existence, leaving its TV ambitions about shows and subscriptions alone? After all, as noted, Apple doesn’t appear to love Apple TV. It long called it a hobby. And the modern hard-nosed Apple feels like a company with no time for such trivialities when there’s money to be made and little time to waste.
I can't dance… so I listen to podcasts in my shower, using one of those water-proof (supposedly) pouch to put my iPhone in. Low tech solution (the pouch, not the pouch computer) that works.
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Treski explained that the ANC setup, or the third generation of Adaptive EQ as he described it, is constantly managing and adjusting any equalizers for both active noise cancellation and audio quality at the same time – and in real time. So in addition to the revised shape, the acoustic architecture of the AirPods 4 is also instrumental in providing effective ANC on the open earbuds.
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The new shape for the AirPods 4 also provided an opportunity to improve overall sound quality on the earbuds. The front end of the buds, which Bergeron revealed the team calls the “snorkel,” is very different from the AirPods 3. Since the previous model was more open, she said, the engineers had more freedom to operate. With the new version, the driver had to be adjusted so that it didn’t reflect sound to the internal microphone that monitors noise inside your ear. That’s why the drivers are now pointed down your ear canal, and why they’re slightly recessed.
Let’s say you’re listening to Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso.” The challenge is ensuring that the anti-noise signal filters out the background noise without messing with the song or diminishing its sound quality.
However, the AirPods team managed to dodge this issue with the help of "algorithms and filtering," Treski said, as well as the H2 chip — the processor that the new AirPods 4 earbuds adopted from the AirPods Pro lineup.
Given Apple’s thirst for breakneck change, it’s notable how much of the original Watch remains today in the Series 10. Its rectangular form, soft corners and lozenge section are all still in place, while the San Francisco typeface that was originally designed for Watch is now used in every Apple product and most of the company’s marketing. “We have this real obsession about trying to reflect our love for materiality and traditional horology and so the romance in it is the idea that it's a single piece of metal,” says Anderson. Even some of the Watch’s wild initial concepts – such as the 18-karat gold model worn by Beyoncé – continue to inform its makeup through the refreshed links bracelet and a new titanium colourway.
How do you build one single camera that can please everyone, all the time? Apple’s thesis is, apparently, to make everyone else do the work. The standard mode will do what the iPhone has leaned into for years — boosting shadows, smoothing out skin tones, aiming for a middle ground that increasingly pleases nobody. But if you want more or less, warmer or cooler, flatter or contrastier, the tools are in your hands now.
That’s an entirely reasonable answer, but it puts a lot of work on the individual to sort it all out. It’s not exactly intuitive, either, and as a result, I think a lot of people will give up trying to figure it out. This might be the best, most personal camera Apple’s ever made, but most people probably won’t experience it like that — and that’s a real shame.
This isn’t the biggest iOS update for power users we’ve seen, but it’s nice to see some more functionality and efficiency being added to the operating system in addition to new Messages features, emojis, and other things with broader appeal.
As a certified jack of all trades, where my freelance work ranges from writing, producing, pet-sitting, and fashion consigning, it goes without saying that notes and to-do lists are essential to keep my life organized. And while I love the simplicity of Apple Notes, it's easy for things to get lost when it comes to execution.
This is where Agenda comes in. The free note-taking app for macOS integrates your notes and your calendar, so no task or piece of research gets lost in the mists of time. Since downloading Agenda, I've been pleased to discover more functionality than any other note-taking or calendar application by itself.
Podcasters have to manually add their own transcripts, with Pocket Casts not going the Apple or YouTube (Music) route of automatic generation. Transcript support in Pocket Casts is based on the Podcasting 2.0 Transcript tag.
The models being recalled are the Anker 334 MagGo Battery (PowerCore 10K, model number A1642), Anker Power Bank (model number A1647), and Anker 334 MagGo Battery (model number A1652). In its recall notice, Anker said that some of the lithium-ion batteries in the devices “may pose a fire risk due to a manufacturing defect.”
Apple has tightened how children in Family Sharing groups are protected against viewing or sending media that an on-device algorithm detects contains nudity. Starting in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15 Sequoia, and watchOS 11, children under 13 will have to enter the Screen Time password to proceed past a warning. Children aged 13 to 17 with Communication Safety enabled for their accounts in Family Sharing will continue to receive just a warning. This new requirement creates a new kind of parent or guardian conversation with children over what a family’s adults think is appropriate to send and receive.
Chip giant Qualcomm made a takeover approach to rival Intel in recent days, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be one of the largest and most consequential deals in recent years.
A deal for Intel, which has a market value of roughly $90 billion, would come as the chip maker has been suffering through one of the most significant crises in its five-decade history.
I didn't find any Control Center buttons that I want on my iPhone's lock screen, so I am leaving the two slots empty, for now.
I also didn't like the multi-page Control Center to my liking, so I have deleted a whole bunch of buttons in order to have just one single page.
And that's enough iOS adventures for the next one year. My hypothesis is that we will never have a home screen nor lock screen nor control center that is exactly what we wanted, so don't bother rearranging stuff every once in a while.
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The real power of the Apple technology, then, might be that it’s targeted to users with mild to moderate hearing loss. Changing the stigma around hearing loss will take far more than gadgets: It’ll require a shift in our understanding of how hearing works. “Hearing loss implies that it’s binary, which couldn’t be further from the truth,” Lin said. Most people don’t lose their hearing overnight; instead, it starts to deteriorate (along with the rest of our body) almost as soon as we reach adulthood. Over time, we permanently damage our hearing through attending loud concerts, watching fireworks, and mowing the lawn, and the world is only getting louder. By 2060, the number of Americans ages 20 years and older with hearing loss is expected to increase by 67 percent, which means that nearly 30 million more people will need treatment. If devices we already use can help people transition more easily and at a younger age to using hearing assistance, that could make the shift in identity less stark, easing the way to normalizing hearing aids and changing the idea that they’re for geezers only.
Apple team members welcomed the first customers, celebrating the launch of these breakthrough products and offering personalized shopping assistance.
Apple has just released public betas of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1, and they include upcoming Apple Intelligence features like text rewriting tools, the glowy new Siri design, a “Clean Up” tool to remove objects from your photos, and more.
As announced last month, up to 1.5 million pilot participants can add the documents to Apple Wallet by scanning their driver’s license or state ID card using their iPhone and then providing a scan of their face using a “series of facial and head movements” as an added security measure. The scans will need to be verified by the state before the documents are made available in Wallet.
However, as it’s still only authorized for limited usage, the state DMV advises users to continue carrying their physical IDs, too.
Microsoft is launching a Windows app today for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, web browsers, Android devices, and even Windows PCs. The Windows app is essentially a hub for streaming a copy of Windows from a variety of sources, including Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop, Remote Desktop, and more.
When I needed support in my hour of need – they came through with the purchased support package, even halfway around the world.
Happy iPhone + Watch + AirPods day.
We are now awaiting for the Mac mini event.
Or will Apple be replacing it with a Mac nano?
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The new Photographic Styles are extremely powerful and, in my opinion, will greatly enhance how all iPhone users experience and enjoy photography with friends. This is a feature that may be worth the upgrade, especially if you don’t consider yourself an expert photo editor with tools like Lightroom.
What’s obvious is that Camera Control clearly was conceived of, designed, and engineered by photography aficionados within Apple who are intimately familiar with how great dedicated cameras work and feel. It surely must have been championed, politically, by the same group. It’s really just rather astounding that there is now a hardware control dedicated to photography on all new iPhones — and a mechanically complex control at that.
While the original announcement of Sequoia at WWDC 2024 focused heavily on a raft of “AI” features – largely absent so far – less attention was given to the privacy and security changes in macOS 15. In this post, we bring you a quick roundup of the features in Sequoia that enterprise security teams should be aware of before upgrading.
To be fair, Apple does not guarantee that hiding an app means there is no way of discovering that it is installed. The UI warns you about this, even. When you confirm you want to hide an app, the modal dialog even says that it may still be visible in “a few places such as Settings”.
With this week’s release of iOS 18, adding smart home devices to Apple Home just got a lot easier. The update brings direct local control of Matter devices to newer iPhones, meaning all you need to set up and control them is an iPhone that can run iOS 18 — no hub or border router required. This is good news for anyone interested in dabbling in smart home gadgets who isn’t ready to go all in.
Apple has published its guidelines for developers, which give us some idea of what we can expect when supported by our favorite photo and video apps.
There’s nothing truly new here. This is the same as the regular Ultra 2. The only difference is that this is black. That’s it. It bears reminding: the Ultra 2 is $800. I think we, rational human beings, can all agree it would be simply ludicrous to upgrade for just a new color. This would be a no-brainer if the black Ultra 2 was ugly.
Alas, it looks sick as hell.
EU watchdogs announced under the bloc’s Digital Markets Act that Apple must step into line with strict new laws on making operating systems fully functional with other technologies. The Brussels-based authority gave the company six months to comply, or face the threat of future penalties.
While the announcement is a step shy of being a formal investigation, the EU aims to compel Apple to re-engineer its services to allow rival companies to access the iPhone’s and iPad operating systems.
Apple is rolling out another firmware update today for AirPods Pro 2 users today. Today’s update comes just under a week after Apple released new AirPods Pro firmware for iOS 18, with new features like Voice Isolation, Personalized Volume improvements, and more.
Apple is also rolling out a new firmware version for the new AirPods 4, version 7A304.
Objective Development has released Little Snitch 6.1 with added support for macOS 15 Sequoia, improved customization of the menu bar, and enhanced Internet Access Policy support.
In addition to adding support for macOS 15 Sequoia, the update brings the Audio Routing Kit (ARK) audio capture backend (which can be set up quickly on a new Mac with no restarts or passwords required) and an updated Permissions window with a new System Audio Access option that enables you to record audio from applications you specify.
You probably think that if you want to check out a museum, you actually have to go there. But that's not the case anymore, thanks to the popularity of smartphones. Today, with apps like Bloomberg Connects, you can see and learn about collections from all over the world.
Party! Disposable Camera is designed with events, like weddings, specifically in mind. Hosts create a QR code that attendees can scan to join the event. From there, all photos each guest captures are collected into a single gallery for the host. The experience basically digitizes how a big bowl of disposable cameras would have been used at weddings back in the 1990s, except it doesn’t create any waste, the number of captures guests can take isn’t limited, and there is no cost to get the film developed.
Stigma over hearing loss — and old-school hearing aids — persists, even though over 30 million Americans suffer from some level of hearing loss. Can the new AirPods convince more people to get their hearing tested, boost their aural faculties, and lead better lives? Attorney Haben Girma, the first deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law School and the author of Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law, is optimistic about what the new AirPods — available this fall in many countries — can offer.
You are unlikely to find that your iPhone, Kindle, or Beats headphones have been modified to include pentaerythritol tetranitrate or hexogen, the two compounds currently suspected to have been used in the Lebanon detonations. That’s not because such a thing can’t be done—as little as 3 grams of these materials can be highly explosive, and it would, in principle, be possible to cram that much into even the small cavities of a circuit-packed iPhone. In theory, someone could interfere with such a device, either during manufacture or afterward. But they would have to go to great effort to do so, especially at large scale. Of course, this same risk applies not just to gadgets but to any manufactured good.
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And yet it’s also the case that a new type of terror has been birthed by this attack. In Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East especially, citizens can now reasonably fear that ordinary devices might also be bombs. Depending on how the devices made their way to their new owners, it’s also possible that the bomb-gadgets have leaked into more general circulation.
I will keep trying. I will sync. I will cloud. I will keep the app open because, apparently, I have a lot of photos to back up, and the backup will pause when the app is closed. This is extortion. I love you.
I do have all my photos up on the cloud. The question I have, instead: will anyone care?
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As it exists today, it’s a remarkably iterative update to the iPhone 15 Pro — it’s hard to find reasons to upgrade from last year’s model. And I’m not at all convinced that it’s worth upgrading to the 16 Pro from older Pro models just yet, either — the Camera Control and Action Button are nice, but not game changing, and unless you’re excited about dialing in the new Photographic Styles and the new tone control, you might find the even-brighter-and-flatter photos to actually be a step backward in photo processing. If you can’t tell, I am personally thrilled by the tone control, so this is an easy choice for me, but it feels like it’s worth waiting a tick for everyone else.
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That’s not to say the iPhone 16 Pro is a bad phone — it’s a great phone, with some fascinating ideas about smartphone photography embedded in it. But it’s also clearly unfinished, and I think it’s worth waiting to see if Apple Intelligence can complete some of these thoughts before spending the money on an upgrade.
It’s a good year for the basic iPhones, and that hasn’t been the case over the past few generations. To be sure, there’s nothing groundbreaking here, and certainly nothing you should trade in your iPhone 15 for. But if you’ve been on the fence for a while about upgrading from an 11 or 12, then I think this is the year to go for it.
You’ll get a couple of new buttons to play with, and who knows, maybe you’ll get along better with the Camera Control than I did. And If Apple Intelligence arrives and proves to be the time-saving, stress-easing set of features Apple insists it will be, then this phone will be ready for it. But even if they never arrive, you’re still getting some upgrades that matter in the long run. It’s a catch-up year for the regular iPhone, and that’s a good year to upgrade indeed.
This year, Apple has done something quite interesting by introducing the Camera Control button that not only functions as a shutter button but also brings up the camera app with a simple press. It also allows for adjusting manual exposure and zoom thanks to a handy sliding interface that operates similarly to a camera dial. You can also use the button as a touch interface on the menu the Camera Control button brings up, so there are many ways to make quick adjustments. Having used the new controls extensively, I can say that I like the additional level of control that it provides. With practice, the operation became predictable and repeatable, and it is always good to have more ways to manipulate a camera at your fingertips.
I was excited to see Apple launch this button because the best photos are often made when you have as much control as possible over your camera. While shooting landscapes in Alaska, for example, I wanted lots of depth of field so I could gather details in the foreground and background and keep everything in the frame as sharp as possible. While shooting white overland trucks, it was helpful to bring my exposure down a little so that the vehicles weren’t blown out when set against a darker background.
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A heads up for anyone who lives in a rainy environment. While shooting in an Alaskan downpour it was hard to get the Camera Control button to react to my sliding finger, so I had trouble changing my exposure or focal length. Many times I had to wipe the button dry with my shirt in order to get it to work. Keep in mind that when you buy a phone case you’ll need to make sure you buy one that either comes with a cutout so that you can directly access the button, or one that Apple has certified so that the phone case button covering the Camera Control button interacts appropriately and doesn’t cause any weird delays or interferences.
Despite a deluge in hardware news at Apple’s “Glowtime” iPhone 16 event, Apple didn’t take any time to discuss repairability. It was a strange oversight, given the momentum that the right to repair movement has gained in recent years. A deeper dive after the event, however, has revealed several new iPhone 16 features designed to improve user access to device repair.
Apple has temporarily paused the rollout of the iPadOS 18 update for M4 iPad Pros. The company has stopped signing the update for these iPads, meaning it will no longer be offered to users when they check, and Apple's servers won't activate the update if it's installed some other way.
The update has supposedly been "bricking" devices for some M4 iPad Pro users; anecdotal reports from Reddit and MacRumors forum users suggest that some users have installed the update without issue, and others have ended up with unresponsive devices. Apple is apparently offering hardware replacements to users who have been affected, which points to a pretty serious bug—usually devices can be put into recovery (or DFU) mode as a last resort in the event of a botched software update.
Apple’s AI feature set will expand to include localized English in the UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand in December, with India and Singapore joining the mix next year. The company already announced plans to support Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish next year as well.
The GSM Association, the organization that develops the RCS standard, said on Tuesday it’s working to enable end-to-end encryption (E2EE) on messages sent between Android and iPhone. E2EE prevents third parties, like your messaging service or cell carrier, from viewing your texts.
A deal between JPMorgan and Apple would further tie together America’s biggest bank and one of the largest technology companies in the world. JPMorgan already offers Chase customers deals on Apple products and pays the company whenever one of its millions of card customers uses Apple Pay. Landing the deal would grow Chase’s card business— already the biggest in the country—while bringing along a loyal base of Apple customers to whom it can pitch more financial products. Apple, meanwhile, needs to find a new home for its credit card, which has over 12 million users, after Goldman decided to abandon its push into consumer finance.
And so artmaking—the cultural industries—occupies the middle of an uneasy Venn diagram. First, the value of an artwork is internal—how well does it fulfill the vision that inspired it? Second, a piece of art is its own end. Third, a piece of art is, by definition, rare, one of a kind, nonfungible.
Yet the end point for the working artist is to create an object for sale. Once the art object enters the market, art’s intrinsic value is emptied out, compacted by the market’s logic of ranking, until there’s only relational worth, no interior worth. Two novelists I know publish essays one week apart; in a grim coincidence, each writer recounts their own version of the same traumatic life event. Which essay is better, a friend asks. I explain they’re different; different life circumstances likely shaped separate approaches. Yes, she says, but which one is better?
Reading all these iPhone reviews gave me mixed feelings. On the one hand: I am envious of the new phone. On the other hand, I am no photographer.
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Thanks for reading.
Charged with making this year’s Apple Watch irresistible, the company made a bunch of upgrades. The Series 10 now comes in a polished jet black finish that is indeed very shiny. The watch's case is also much thinner and lighter, with a new S10 chip that is single-sided to be flatter, and a brighter, bigger, wide-angle display. The Series 10 now tracks your breathing disturbances while you sleep and can tell you if you might have sleep apnea. It charges faster, has a new speaker, a new depth gauge, and a new water temperature sensor. And watchOS 11 is still the best watch OS. It just is.
The Watch Series 10 might not deserve breathless adulation, and I'm pretty sure Beyoncé isn't going to release pap photos of herself wearing it (unless she does, in which case, my bad), but this is still just the best smartwatch for iPhone users. The absence of blood oxygen sensing is a significant obstacle, but at the end of the day, it’s still the watch that’s the hardest for me to take off.
Between a big display, comfort, and great battery life, you only get to pick two with most smartwatches. The Series 10 is the closest Apple’s gotten to nailing all three. On top of having the biggest display of any Apple Watch ever, the Series 10 is the thinnest, lightest, and fastest-charging. watchOS 11 also brings several training-focused fitness features to the device. The end result is the Ultrafication of the Series 10. It may not be the splashiest update, but if you can’t wow’em, you might as well make smart refinements. And that’s the Series 10 to a tee.
With iOS and iPadOS 18, Apple is entering a second phase of customization for its modern platforms: after widgets and Lock Screens, the company is now turning its attention to icon customization, Home Screen layouts, and functional customization of Control Center. And as expected, there’s a whole developer narrative to unpack here.
Perhaps more than any of Apple’s other operating systems, iOS is about balance. For many people, their iPhone is their primary computer—in some cases, their only computer. Every year, Apple rolls out new features to the platform, but it wants to do so in such a way that it enhances the experience of using its phones without getting in the way of users who rely on the device.
This year’s update, iOS 18, walks that line carefully. There are new improvements that range from those that won’t really affect you unless you seek them out (big changes to home screen customization, for one) to those that will impact every single person who uses a phone (a brand new interface for Photos). The good news is that most of these features also come to the iPad too.
I know that these changes made a lot of people cranky this summer, but I think the app ended up in a great place. Sure, if you are someone whose idea of using Photos is to launch it and only see the very latest items, I guess this update adds clutter. And Apple should probably let people say “I don’t want to launch in this view” and honor that request. But for the vast majority of iPhone users, Collections are a boon, a way in to your library that offers major improvements over long scrolls through the Library.
For the first time, Apple is taking your phone’s ability to save login details and putting them in a standalone app. It could help improve millions of people’s terrible passwords.
The New tab includes sections like Latest Songs, New Releases, and Updated Playlists. All of these sections will now be curated based on the individual’s music tastes, rather than everyone seeing the same page of content.
Does a macOS update without a headlining feature still feel like a macOS update? The answer is: mostly yes! Which should encourage even those of you who are deeply skeptical of Apple Intelligence and other generative AI features that it's an update worth installing.
I do often find that I take a shine to the new flagship features of a given macOS update—I don't use a ton of the widgets from Sonoma, but the ones I do use are always present and quietly useful; I use Dark Mode from Mojave basically by default; I have a couple of Shortcuts from Monterey that I would hate to give up. But by and large I find my favorite macOS additions are off to the side of the flagship additions, or buried in some obscure corner. Sequoia has just as much of those features as any other macOS release in the last 15 years.
This release contains some classic Apple moves, like adding a feature found in third-party Mac utilities for years, but with a simplified “now it’s for everybody” feature set. It’s got some surprising (to me, anyway) and useful integrations with the rest of its ecosystem that make the Mac and iPhone work together like never before. A useful OS feature has gotten promoted to a full-fledged utility app, hopefully with the end result of more people using it. One of my favorite Messages features, left for years to dry on the vine, has finally gotten a long-deserved expansion. Safari has received a bunch of updates that should help users cut through the distractions and confusion of the Web.
And this release also features Apple’s continued ratcheting up of its macOS security and privacy procedures—which isn’t a bad thing on its own, but comes with associated degradations of the user experience that Apple doesn’t seem appropriately concerned about mitigating.
What may turn out to be one of the most useful productivity-enhancing features in Sequoia is the increased integration between the Mac and iPhone. While EU customers won’t get this feature yet, iPhone Mirroring lets you use your iPhone on your Mac in a compact mini window. This lets you interact with iPhone apps via your Mac, and also lets you drag-&-drop files between the devices (though, that feature won’t debut until later this year). I think this could get really interesting if you use an iPad and a second Mac, too, as the implication is that you’ll be able to move files and folders around between the machines to your heart’s content in a quite focused way.
Apple has just released watchOS 11, the latest version of its smartwatch operating system, alongside iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. The update, available for the Apple Watch Series 6 and later models, will finally allow users to take rest days without breaking their activity streak and introduces FDA-cleared sleep apnea detection.
Sleep apnea is a condition that can cause a person to stop breathing during sleep and can lead to an increased risk of hypertension and Type 2 diabetes if left untreated. Apple’s sleep apnea detection feature, which uses the accelerometer to monitor for small wrist movements associated with sleep interruptions, was announced alongside the new Apple Watch Series 10 and is now available for both the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Apple Watch Ultra 2. If sleep apnea is detected, the Apple Watch will alert the user and provide additional information that can be shared with a doctor, who can make a formal diagnosis.
Apple's visionOS 2 update allows users to create 3D spatial photos from 2D images, taking advantage of depth information and machine learning to add natural-looking depth and dimension.
The code refers to an unreleased Mac mini model with an Apple silicon chip and five ports, which lines up with a previous report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman that said the next Mac mini will be equipped with five USB-C ports. Similar to the Mac Studio, Gurman said two of the ports will be located on the front of the new Mac mini.
Alongside the major updates to its new operating systems for 2024, Apple has released security fixes for the current versions of macOS, iOS, and iPadOS macOS. The release notes for macOS 14.7 Sonoma, macOS 13.7 Ventura, iOS 17.7, and iPadOS 17.7—to the extent that they’re updated—say only that they provide important security fixes and are recommended for all users.
The latest version of the Apple Sports app on iOS 18 and watchOS 11 introduces Live Activities support for all teams and leagues available within the app. This feature enables live scores and play-by-play information on the iPhone's Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island on newer models, and on the Apple Watch starting with watchOS 11.
Customization is one of the big themes of iOS 18, ranging from new Home Screen options to a completely revamped Control Center design. Widgetsmith taps into all of that with this new system of Actions. These widgets allow you to “quickly launch an app, run a Shortcut, make a call, send a text, or play music.”
adoc Studio is an environment for creating and previewing text written in AsciiDoc, a plain text markup language aimed at technical content. AsciiDoc is extremely similar to Markdown but focuses more on the semantic elements of a text—items like headings, sidebars, blockquotes, references, admonitions, equations, and comments. It also boasts powerful features for modularizing and reusing text with includes, conditionals, substitutions, and passthroughs.
MacStadium has officially released Orka Desktop 3.0, an enterprise-grade macOS virtualization tool that is free for developers, testers, and IT administrators. This tool offers easy macOS virtualization on Apple Silicon devices, supporting macOS 15 Sequoia from day one.
Setapp Mobile, a third-party iOS app store offering multiple apps for a single monthly subscription, is now available to anyone in the EU. It follows an invitation-only beta that launched back in May.
After the initial round of the streaming wars where gaining market share was the sole objective, streamers have been applying a more disciplined approach in their shift to profitability, with big-budget scripted series like Time Bandits under particular scrutiny, tasked with clearing a higher viewership bar in order to continue.
But the biggest difference is that Apple, under Jobs, was quirky, and I think would have remained noticeably more quirky than it has been under Cook. You’d be wrong, I say, to argue that Cook has drained the fun out of Apple. But I do think he’s eliminated quirkiness. Cook’s Apple takes too few risks. Jobs’s Apple took too many risks.
Tim Cook is no mere beancounter. Far from it. He shares with Jobs a driving ambition to change the world. Cook, just like Jobs, surely relates deeply to this quip from Walt Disney: “We don’t make movies to make money. We make money to make more movies.” But the ways Cook is driven to change the world are different.
Somewhere underneath that processed clamor and yearning desire for relevance lies a modest, moving account of an artist attempting to come to terms with their fate by questioning their beginnings. The contours of that album are interesting but they’re lost through U2’s quest to remain the biggest band in the world, a desire that culminated in the group forcing its music on every Apple user on the planet—a move that ironically finally brought the band back down to earth. Streaming still hasn’t fully reconciled the opposing forces of digital privacy and music accessibility, but it’s a lot better than the grim future predicted by Songs Of Innocence‘s rollout.
Helicopter parenting often doesn’t end when a child graduates from high school. Today’s parents have more tools than ever at their disposal to stay involved (or overinvolved) in their children’s lives and keep track of their whereabouts, habits, and activities, from tracking services like Life360 to Facebook groups specifically for parents of college students. If college is historically meant to be a time of self-exploration, complete with bad decisions and murky mistakes, an increasing number of parents seem to be attempting to curtail that growth.
Today, at long last, I have one regular devices that I am continuing to use that will no longer be on the latest operating system: my good old iPad Pro. (This is the one and only 10.5-inch version.)
But, so long as I can still watch television, read e-books, and play Apple Arcade games, I'm fine.
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Thanks for reading.
But I’ve been genuinely impressed by what they are capable of. If you just put the AirPods 4 in and turn on noise cancellation without any audio playing, you might not be wowed. You’ll hear… well, absolutely everything — but the din is less overwhelming. The ANC is best at tackling lower-frequency noises from airplane cabins, city traffic, and those random hums at many offices. The AirPods 4 even did a fairly remarkable job of cutting down the rumble of ferry engines at the pier near our office.
You’re always going to hear a fair amount of ambient sound if you’re not listening to something, but once the music starts, that’s where the ANC proves its worth. I’ve found that I can keep the volume at around 50 percent and barely notice any distractions. With past AirPods (and with the non-ANC AirPods 4), I routinely find myself cranking the volume to combat my surroundings. You won’t need to face that battle with the AirPods 4 with ANC, and that means you should be listening at safer levels more often than not.
The AirPods 4 struggle with TV noise and human voices, but they do well with constant, low rumbling distractions. On similar models I’ve tested from other companies, active noise cancellation made little to no difference, and only served to drain the battery faster. If you’re looking for something close to silence, the AirPods 4 won’t give you that. However, the earbuds will deliver a noise reduction that will put a dent in raucous environments, and do so most effectively with low-frequency sounds.
While it doesn't entirely block out the world around you in the way that the best noise cancelling earbuds do – remember these are open-ear earbuds – when paired with music, it can reduce loud rumbles, like a jet engine, down to a drastically reduced sound.
I think folks who desire the ability to block out the world around them without fully sealing off the ear will find a nice middle ground here. The Transparency mode, as well as how these pick up the user's voice, is very well done and sounds incredibly natural.
The US Food and Drug Administration Monday published approval for sleep apnea detection on the Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Watch Ultra 2. The green light comes four days ahead of the Series 10’s September 20 release date.
The feature, announced at last week’s iPhone 16 event, will arrive as part of the imminent watchOS 11 release. Once enabled, it requires 10 nights of sleep tracking data spread out over a 30-day span to determine whether a user may have the condition. During that time, it also offers insights into nightly sleeping disturbances, utilizing the on-board accelerometer.
It’s not just a new clicker with some haptic-like feedback like the Action Button. This means it’s not as simple as just slapping some extra rubber or a nice metal cap on top and calling it a day for the case makers. Because you can slide your finger across the touch sensor in the button as well as click it, case makers are going to have to find a way to ensure these finger movements can translate through the case.
Apple Stores can replace the battery inside an iPhone 16 Pro or iPhone 16 Pro Max for $119 in the U.S., which is up from $99 for the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
There's still plenty of friction possible ahead with Apple challenging the Commission's fine and DMA enforcement in the courts even as it wrangles with regulators over how to comply with the law and how its services can meet the new legal standard.
Tonight at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards, Apple TV+ scored wins for acclaimed, hit Apple Originals, with “Slow Horses” making its Emmy debut and “The Morning Show” star Billy Crudup earning his second Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his magnetic performance in the celebrated series.
Occasionally I stop and think about how drastically the world has changed since 2006, in many ways for the better. The iPhone has framed almost every memory I have of my adult life. What’s changed, too, is my perception of freedom. Sometimes I wonder who’s more free – me now, with the whole world at my fingertips, or my teenage self. My world was unquestionably smaller, but perhaps I was able to experience more of it on my own terms. I suppose there’s no knowing who I’d be if smartphones hadn’t altered life so enormously. But I do know that experiencing the world through the filter of a screen doesn’t do it justice.
Groups supporting women in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) fields are struggling to survive as corporations’ shrinking budgets, and cultural changes, see diversity strategies take a back seat.
Ada Lovelace Day – a global annual celebration of women working in Stem – is on borrowed time.
Happy operating system upgrade day… if you are going to update to the latest and greatest on day 1.
For me, I'll wait until the weekend. Make sure there are no hard-disk erasing bugs. :-)
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In reality it is shaping up as more a product feature than a new product category. As recent announcements from Apple and Google show, it is proving most useful as a technology to soup up the gadgets and software we already use, rather than reset the world order.
That disconnect has big implications for how we are using artificial intelligence at work and in our personal lives. It’s also going to shape the landscape of winners and losers among startups and tech giants currently investing a deluge of cash in building this technology.
I wrote this post after years of hearing people say that Safari was great on battery life and Chrome was a battery vampire. More recently, I read the argument that it’s so bad that Chrome running it’s Chromium engine ought not be allowed to exist on iPhones and iPads. My findings tell me that everyone should put this myth that Chrome is somehow the worst battery hog in the world to rest. I’d be happy to see other testing that shows different results, but if you spend most of your browsing time watching YouTube, browsing social media, looking at sites and articles with tons of ads, and working in Google web apps, I don’t see any evidence that Chrome is fundamentally flawed. If it was, I would have expected it to rear its ugly head here, and in fact it outperformed Safari.
Soundiiz allows you to transfer playlists between Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, Deezer, SoundCloud, and 20 other streaming services I’ve never even heard of. There’s a simple user interface to connect your streaming services and pick the playlists you want to transfer over, including ones that someone else has created.
The headline feature of Blackmagic Camera 2.0 is its support for multi-camera workflows. This capability allows a single iPhone or iPad to function as a controller for multiple iPhone cameras connected via a wireless or wired network.
CardPointers helps users maximize their credit card rewards and offers, saving users money.
The stakes are especially high for Ireland which relies on corporate tax receipts from a handful of multinationals to bankroll government spending and budget surpluses. It had been willing to forfeit the $13bn to underpin this system. While shoring up its appeal to tech and pharma giants Dublin must now also figure out what to do with a tainted bonanza that has prompted recrimination, embarrassment and excitement.
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The stakes are especially high for Ireland which relies on corporate tax receipts from a handful of multinationals to bankroll government spending and budget surpluses. It had been willing to forfeit the $13bn to underpin this system. While shoring up its appeal to tech and pharma giants Dublin must now also figure out what to do with a tainted bonanza that has prompted recrimination, embarrassment and excitement.
I'll probably need to go down to an Apple Store soon to check out the new iPhone Pro Max: what I want to know is if I can replace both my iPhone mini and iPad Pro (which I no longer do pro stuff) with an iPhone with the largest screen? Or should I continue to wait for the folding iPhone + iPad combo?
(My wallet and my pants pockets are now crying for help.)
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The Notes app doesn’t have a specific purpose. Instead, it holds the jotted-down ephemera of daily life that might otherwise go on Post-it Notes and the backs of envelopes that we toss out: Why keep your Scrabble scores after game night is over? Users often don’t think about an audience when they write notes, but they also don’t always bother to delete them. Like a diary, the app keeps your thoughts in chronological order over a span of time; unlike diary entries, many notes are unmediated by self-reflection. The result is that the app functions like a years-long internal monologue—a lens into what someone is actually thinking.
In other words, Notes is fascinating—and embarrassing. Influencers sometimes share a peek into curated versions of their Notes app on social media; it’s so widely understood as an intimate medium that celebrities use apologies written in the Notes app to signal the authenticity of their (edited, vetted) statements. But the idea of unfettered access—letting another person in on your inner monologue—can be excruciating. Perhaps even more vulnerable is auditing the record of your own past self.
Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies, confirmed the 8GB of RAM number in an interview with Geekerwan. This marks the first time that Apple has publicly confirmed the amount of RAM in the iPhone 16. Notably, this is a departure from previous years, as Apple typically shies away from sharing these types of specs publicly.
In messaging distributed to Apple Store teams this week and seen by 9to5Mac, Apple confirmed that the iPhone 16 will not come with Apple stickers in the box. Instead, the company says that stickers will only be available to iPhone 16 buyers upon request.
SmartCapsLock is a simple utility that lets you use the Caps Lock key to your advantage. Once installed, the app is unobtrusive, and does only one thing: If you've accidentally capitalized a few words, you can quickly select those words and tap Caps Lock again to convert them into sentence case.
With it, you can quickly create a list of things you need to get done, estimate how long it will take you to do them all, and plan your time accordingly. The application is also built to track time spent on those tasks, helping you figure out how much time you're really spending on things.
Apple asked a court Friday to dismiss its three-year-old hacking lawsuit against spyware pioneer NSO Group, arguing that it might never be able to get the most critical files about NSO’s Pegasus surveillance tool and that its own disclosures could aid NSO and its increasing number of rivals.
A redacted version of the filing in San Francisco federal court cited a July article in the Guardian, which reported that Israeli officials had taken files from NSO’s headquarters. The newspaper said the officials asked an Israeli court to keep the action secret even from those involved in an earlier, still pending hacking suit against NSO filed by Meta’s WhatsApp. Israeli ministry of justice communications that were hacked showed that officials were concerned about sensitive information reaching Americans, the newspaper said.
I found a zero-click vulnerability in macOS Calendar, which allows an attacker to add or delete arbitrary files inside the Calendar sandbox environment. This could lead to many bad things including malicious code execution which can be combined with security protection evasion with Photos to compromise users’ sensitive Photos iCloud Photos data. Apple has fixed all of the vulnerabilities between October 2022 and September 2023.
Yes, I will miss getting the Apple stickers. I have quite a few somewhere in my shelves from years of giving money to Apple, but I don't have a lifetime supply of Apple stickers yet. :-)
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Thanks for reading.
The FDA on Thursday announced that it has granted what it calls “the first over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aid software device, Hearing Aid Feature.” Specifically, it has approved the software update that enables that functionality.
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The news was made possible in part by the FDA’s October 2022 move to allow for the sale of hearing aids without a prescription. That move has given rise to an new industry of more easily accessible hearing devices.
Apple’s latest theft-prevention measure went live for beta testers yesterday: Activation Lock for iPhone components.
The move is likely to generate some controversy, as it introduces another barrier to DIY repairs using parts harvested from broken devices, but the company is also working on a solution to that.
It was as if the noisy world around me disappeared, allowing Carpenter's sugary sweet vocals to take center stage. Even if you're not in a crowded room nor a noisy street, you don't realize how cacophonous your surroundings are until you turn on ANC. From the tick-tock of a nearby clock and distant traffic to the hum of an air conditioner to the buzz of a refrigerator motor, these environmental sounds negatively affect the immersion of your listening experience.
"Espresso" already sounds like a warm vanilla brew with a frothy finish, but with ANC on, it felt like Carpenter was serenading me in a cozy soundproof café while I sipped on a pumpkin spice latte.
But as those of us who have had to rely on our backups in the past know, the act of backing up is only the first small step in the full equation — it’s being able to restore that really matters.
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Take a few minutes to identify some critical files and see if you can restore them successfully from your backups. If a bootable backup is part of your backup strategy, make sure you can actually boot from it.
Next week is going to be fun. Not only is every OS being updated on Monday, but Apple is opening up the iPad to alternative app marketplaces and browser engines in the EU according to a post by the company on its developer news site.
On the eve of pre-orders beginning, Apple has shared three new videos showcasing iPhone 16 Pro with Apple Intelligence. The latest ads, which star English actor Bella Ramsey, tout Apple Intelligence features in the Mail app, Photos app, and Siri.
The standout, of course, is "face with bags under eyes," whose long-suffering thousand-yard stare perfectly encapsulates the era it has been born into.
Now it seems Spotify is again interested in spending money, but this time, the team is focusing on video. The company is making offers, reaching seven figures, to encourage video-oriented creators to distribute their shows to the platform in addition to YouTube, according to people familiar with the conversations who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
I sure hope the AirPods Pro's hearing aid feature will be available everywhere, even in places where approval are not given. Surely Apple can offer this feature -- just don't call it hearing aid?
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Thanks for reading.
With Private Cloud Compute, Apple has developed an array of innovative cloud security technologies. But the service is also significant for pushing the limits of what is an acceptable business proposition for a cloud service, seemingly prioritizing secure architecture over what would be most technically efficient or economical.
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To remove many of the potential attack points and pitfalls that cloud computing can introduce, Apple says its developers focused on the idea that “security and privacy guarantees are strongest when they are entirely technically enforceable” rather than implemented through policies.
This image of an adorable small dog wearing a party hat and smiling behind a birthday cake isn't just any random pup. Her name is Bailey, and she belongs to Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, who created the image for his wife in honor of Bailey's recent birthday.
There were rumors Apple was going to remove all physical buttons from the iPhone. As recently as April of this year, there was reporting that the iPhone 16 lineup would have no physical buttons! But in 2 years they’ve added 2 physical buttons to the iPhone. Probably not too bold a statement, but I think people are happy with more functions available on these phones.
By spreading new features widely, it might make upgrades more tempting. Yet it’s also showing increasing zeal for ambitious updates to older products—the furthest thing possible from the planned obsolescence it’s sometimes accused of orchestrating.
Apple updated its $19 Polishing Cloth compatibility list this week with a few new items.
Following its iPhone 16 event on Monday, Apple shared a PDF on its website with a list of all new features and changes coming with iOS 18.
The list includes many features that were already announced, including Apple Intelligence, new customization options for the Home Screen and Control Center, a redesigned Photos app, several enhancements to the Messages app, a Passwords app, and more.
To be clear, the researchers did not gain access to Apple’s headset to see what they were viewing. Instead, they worked out what people were typing by remotely analyzing the eye movements of a virtual avatar created by the Vision Pro. This avatar can be used in Zoom calls, Teams, Slack, Reddit, Tinder, Twitter, Skype, and FaceTime.
The researchers alerted Apple to the vulnerability in April, and the company issued a patch to stop the potential for data to leak at the end of July. It is the first attack to exploit people’s “gaze” data in this way, the researchers say. The findings underline how people’s biometric data—information and measurements about your body—can expose sensitive information and be used as part of the burgeoning surveillance industry.
Roots is designed to gently guide you to offline activities while holding a firm boundary with your app time limits.
Apple explains that these offers are designed to reach an app or game’s previous subscribers and encourage them to return. The offers will only be shown to customers the developer determines are eligible for targeting. They can be displayed across the app’s product page, in the editorial selections on the Today, Games, and Apps tabs, as well as in the app itself and in Subscription settings, helping to reach those users who had downgraded their subscription or moved back onto the app’s free tier, for instance.
It’s not every day that a security researcher acquires the ability to generate counterfeit HTTPS certificates, track email activity, and execute code of his choice on thousands of servers—all in a single blow that cost only $20 and a few minutes to land. But that’s exactly what happened recently to Benjamin Harris.
I am not spending money tomorrow. I am not spending money tomorrow. I am not spending money tomorrow.
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When Apple introduced the Action button last year, it suggested it could be used as a camera shutter button, and a lot of people probably used it as such. But the Camera Control is entirely about taking pictures and it’s on all four new iPhone 16 models, which I think gives it a better chance to succeed. The Action button can be repurposed for pretty much anything you want it to do, but Camera Control should remain focused on camera stuff. Apple needs to stay committed to it, continue to improve and refine the software attached to it, and avoid attempts to overcomplicate things. It will only succeed if it’s as easy to use as the shutter button on a traditional camera.
While Apple headlined its keynote with the new Apple Intelligence features coming later to the new iPhone 16 line-up, there was also big news on the camera front.
But looking at the specs, it’s hard to argue against better battery life, larger displays, and a more powerful camera system.
Apple shared quite a bit of news for AirPods users yesterday, including the launch of new AirPods 4. For AirPods Pro users, however, there was also some exciting news, with Apple unveiling new hearing health features rolling out over the course of the coming months.
The new firmware version rolling out to AirPods Pro 2 features the build number 7A294, up from the previous firmware version of 6F8. Apple hasn’t published any release notes for the update, but it likely lays the ground work for the new features coming to AirPods Pro next week.
On its website, Apple says that AirPods Pro 2 offer “up to 2x more Active Noise Cancellation compared with AirPods Pro (1st generation) and AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation.”
The key difference between AirPods Pro and AirPods 4 is the design.
If you want to change up your AirPods Max at a lower cost, however, ear cushion sets in the new Blue, Orange, Purple, Midnight, and Starlight color options are available to purchase on a standalone basis for $69 on Apple's online store. Apple says the ear cushions are compatible with both the Lightning and USB-C versions of the AirPods Max.
Apple Intelligence is cool, useful, and perhaps most importantly, charmingly unfinished. Unlike some other AI projects, this upgrade to the software that powers iPhones, iPads, and Macs does not appear to threaten our very existence. Its standout features are supposed to include privacy and a Siri that actually works. But none of it works quite yet, and despite its imminent launch, it probably won’t for many months.
At WWDC, the company indicated that Apple Intelligence would first be made available to certain categories of apps, including Books, Browsers, Cameras, Document Readers, File Management, Journals, Mail, Photos, Presentations, Spreadsheets, Whiteboards, and Word Processors. Over time, Apple is likely to open up these capabilities to all developers across the App Store.
The AI functionality will be built on top of the App Intents framework, which is being expanded with new intents for developers. The eventual goal is to allow users to interact with Siri not just to open their apps, but to from within them.
It's been nearly 20 years since the PSP learned these lessons. The market has changed, as devices like the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch have blurred the lines between the stuff you play on a TV and the portable market. But I still think it's misguided to think anyone wants to play stuff not specifically designed for mobile on their phones.
[...]
But straight-up bringing giant games to iPhone just because it’s possible seems like a problematic approach to entering the business. Here’s to hoping Apple reassesses its approach to the market in the months ahead.
Generative A.I. steals creativity. At worst, it creates actual harm ecologically, financially, and by rapidly spreading misinformation. While the technology has some worthy use cases, the danger it poses outweighs any of the benefits for many. So, even if the likes of NaNoWriMo decide to embrace A.I., writers are confident in their old-school method of sitting down and grinding out a story, one human-written word at a time.
Though I’d heard this XOXO festival would be the last one, many people I spoke to seemed not to believe it. I was told by previous attendees that festival organizers Andy Baio and Andy McMillan — affectionately called “the Andys” — “always say that.” But from the festival’s beginning, it also seemed clear that the Andys didn’t plan to do this forever.
Anyway, this year’s XOXO felt like an Irish wake to me. It was like we had all gathered over the body of a specific period on the internet to pay our respects.
The physical home button was the thing that failed first on my very first iPhone. (I suspect this is not an uncommon problem, since many people started using the Assistive Touch feature that puts a virtual home button on the screen back then.) So, I was not sad to see Apple slowly removed physical buttons all over their devices.
(Years later, Apple once again proved that they can't be trusted with physical buttons with their butterfly keyboard.)
So, am I welcoming the Camera Control button -- which sounds to me like a physical button and not a fake-it-with-haptics alternative -- on the new iPhone? Well, I am cautiously optimistic. Maybe Apple has finally figured out button. But, also important, this button is optional in the operation of the camera. For now.
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At its Glowtime event on 9 September 2024, Apple unveiled the new iPhone 16 lineup, keeping the base models at their traditional screen sizes, with the 6.1-inch iPhone 16 and 6.7-inch iPhone 16 Plus. However, Apple increased screen sizes on the Pro side, giving us the 6.3-inch iPhone 16 Pro and 6.9-inch iPhone 16 Pro Max in exchange for 2 millimeters more height. New cases will be required anyway since all four iPhone 16 models gain the innovative Camera Control that allows photographers to manage the Camera app in various ways with clicks, light presses, and touch interactions. The entire iPhone 16 lineup will be able to take advantage of Apple Intelligence once iOS 18.1 ships next month.
The button itself feels really good. It’s a real button—if you push it all the way down, you can feel it depress with a pleasing tactile response. But it’s also a touch- and pressure-sensitive button that lets you “push halfway” to bring up another set of options, for things like zooming in or switching between photographic styles. If you keep your finger on the button and half-push twice in quick succession, you’ll be taken up one level in the hierarchy and can swipe to different commands. Then half-push once to enter whatever controls you want, and you’re back to swiping. It takes a few minutes to get used to the right set of gestures, but it’s a potentially powerful feature—and at its base, it’s still very simple: push to bring up the camera, push to shoot, and push and hold to shoot video.
Apple released a new, more powerful version of the MagSafe charger during its September iPhone 16 event today. The puck will be compatible with all iPhones and any Qi2 device, but only the new iPhone 16 models are listed as supporting the fastest 25W wireless charging rate.
There is no replacement for the FineWoven material, and Apple does not have leather cases or any kind of equivalent for purchase. For the iPhone 16 lineup, customers can choose a Silicone Case or a Clear Case.
They come in four colors: Midnight Black, Summit Stone, Riptide Blue, and Sunset Purple.
At its Glowtime event, Apple introduced the new Apple Watch Series 10, a significant redesign of the flagship model that provides a larger display in a case that’s thinner and lighter than its predecessors. It also features an impressive new display, faster charging, depth and temperature sensing, audio playback through its speakers, and voice isolation for calls. The base model continues to use aluminum but adds a jet-black polished finish, whereas the fancy model swaps heavy stainless steel for aerospace-grade polished titanium.
If you wear your watch to bed, you’ll get an alert pushed to your phone in the morning if it detects disturbances in your breathing. You will also be urged to visit your clinician, and can show them Watch data. All of this information will be collated in the Health app on iPhone.
[...]
Apnea detection is also coming to both the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, and Apple says it expects the FDA and other regulatory agencies to give their blessings in the coming days. It says the feature will be available in more than 150 countries and regions later this month.
Apple has refreshed the Apple Watch Ultra 2 with a new black titanium color option and sleep apnea detection feature, the company announced during its September event today. It’s the first time Apple has offered the Watch Ultra in more than one color since it launched two years ago.
Apple is launching a new version of AirPods called the AirPods 4, with a refined new shape that Apple says is its “most comfortable AirPods ever.” It keeps an open-air design, has a “massive improvement” in audio quality, and includes support for personalized spatial audio.
The earbuds will be available in two models: an entry-level model, known as the AirPods 4, and a higher-end model with noise cancellation, known as the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), a first for the standard AirPods line.
If hearing loss is detected, the hearing aid mode is then available to use. The AirPods will make it easier to hear sounds from the world around you. A custom hearing profile is automatically applied when listening to audio, like music or podcasts.
The hearing aid feature is currently making its way through the FDA and other regulatory bodies. Apple said the functionality will be available in more than 100 countries.
After almost four years without a hardware update, a new version of the AirPods Max has been announced by Apple today, with the primary upgrade being a switch from Apple’s proprietary Lightning port to USB-C.
While Apple’s game-changing earbuds are known for being easy to use, as any long-time user will tell you, keeping them in pristine, clean condition is a bit more challenging. With this in mind, Belkin has launched an updated version of its AirPods Cleaning Kit to help keep your wireless earbuds clean.
Apple plans to release the next versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS to the general public on September 16, the company announced via its website following its iPhone-centric product event earlier today. We should also see updates for tvOS and the HomePod operating system on the same date.
The new releases bring a number of new features and refinements to Apple’s platforms: better texting with Android devices thanks to support for the RCS standard, iPhone Mirroring that allows you to interact with your iPhone via your Mac, more UI customization options for iPhones and iPads, and other improvements besides.
Apple today announced that iOS 18.1 will be released to the public at some point in October. The software update will add the first Apple Intelligence features to the iPhone 15 Pro models and all four new iPhone 16 models.
The ECJ ruled that a lower court win for Apple should be overturned and backed the commission’s 2016 decision that Ireland had granted Apple unlawful aid relating to the tax treatment of profits generated by Apple’s activities outside the US which Ireland is now required to recover.
[...]
Apple said after the ECJ ruling: “This case has never been about how much tax we pay but which government we are required to pay it to. We always pay all the taxes we owe wherever we operate and there has never been a special deal. Apple is proud to be an engine of growth and innovation across Europe and around the world, and to consistently be one of the largest taxpayers in the world.
“The European Commission is trying to retroactively change the rules and ignore that, as required by international tax law, our income was already subject to taxes in the US. We are disappointed with today’s decision as previously the general court reviewed the facts and categorically annulled this case.”
Set to officially open later today, The Observatory is the most significant building to be completed on the campus since the Steve Jobs Theater opened in 2017.
Designed "as a contemplative space", the subterranean building will be used for launch events and to showcase the brand's latest technology.
Apple earlier this month teased new Powerbeats Pro 2 earphones that are set to come out next year, and MacRumors has found more information on the new earbuds tucked away in Apple's latest software updates.
This year, I am really interested in finding out from reviewers how good the noise canceling is on AirPods 4, and that may affect my future buying decisions.
But for the other two products, iPhone and Apple Watch, the improvements are really refinements than something totally new. So one can already make up their mind on whether to pre-order them straight away. I am not doing any purchases for now, just because the existing versions I am using are still good.
Perhaps the Camera Control button is really great and it makes snapping photos (and videos) so much the better. But, hey, even if it is not that great, you don't lose anything as all the touch-screen stuff are still there.
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It has been just over a year now that I have not used my laptop to edit my images. And it's the freest and most liberating feeling, leaving the laptop and its bulkiness behind and just being able to shoot-edit-share in a seamless fashion. I even tried this method for three paid assignments, and 'the system' didn't put a foot wrong; I shot everything on my camera, uploaded the images to my phone, edited them, put them into a private Dropbox folder and emailed them off to the clients. Simple!
Gaming hits this sweet spot: it needs power from all three – CPU, GPU, and memory – whether you play on a Mac, a PC, or a console. With the rollout of Apple silicon, starting with the Apple M1, Apple leveled the playing field across the Mac device lineup. Whether you buy a MacBook Air or a Pro, the performance has a high baseline thanks to Apple's chips.
[...]
Apple is also offering a Unified Gaming Platform, which allows you to start a title on the Mac, save it in the cloud, and pick it up on your iPhone or iPad, or vice versa. Brooks called out Apple's unique fundamental value proposition within the market, as Apple silicon is the base architecture across the device portfolio. The software platforms – macOS, iOS, and iPadOS – share “so many critical frameworks like Metal. It really simplifies and makes it much more efficient to bring a title to all these devices.”
At these times, I often head to my local library and just pick the first book that takes my fancy. I couldn’t help but think that surely there was a more intelligent way of choosing new books. Thankfully there is, and the app’s name is StoryGraph.
The non-Epic iOS software available exclusively in the EU is ... well, nothing of interest. Maybe some apps that help with content piracy. Other than that, nothing. Admittedly, the DMA only went into effect 6 months ago. Long-term, maybe there will arise a thriving ecosystem of useful and fun apps and games that are exclusively available in EU marketplaces. Right now, it’s Fortnite.
Meanwhile no one in the EU will get Apple Intelligence or iPhone Mirroring, both of which features are very useful, and, dare I say, fun. Should we judge how much fun each side of the continental divide is having by how much fun they theoretically could be having, or by how much fun they are having?
Maybe when I retire from my day job, I will stay up past midnight to watch some of these Apple events 'live'.
Of course, these Apple events are pre-recorded nowadays, so maybe it doesn't make too much sense to stay up past midnight?
Anyhoo, I'll see you again tomorrow after the announcements. Have a happy iPhone day.
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Thanks for reading.
Internal Apple documentation obtained by MacRumors suggests that macOS 15.0 Sequoia will be officially released to the public by mid-September.
[...]
The new annual version of iOS has historically always been released at least a week before the new version of macOS. Sometimes, Apple leaves a considerable gap between the releases; in 2020, the company left nearly two months between the release of iOS 14 (September 16, 2020) and macOS Big Sur (November 12, 2020).
FitBee is a modern calorie and macronutrient tracker for the iPhone, focused on speed and data accuracy. A lot of other calorie counting apps will take too much time to process, can’t find the food you’re looking for, or contain inaccurate data. FitBee aims to streamline this process for everyone.
After last month’s Apple Card offers ended a few days ago, the company is now testing two new offers for cardholders to earn $200 in Daily Cash, both for new and existing customers.
For director and executive producer Ben Stiller, a three-year gap between seasons has them hoping these new episodes live up to fans’ lofty expectations.
“It’s an interesting experience,” he said of working on Season 2 of “Severance.” “I’ve never been through it before — a second season of anything. Everything I’ve done has gotten canceled back in the day. But, you know, I feel like there’s an expectation that the audience has — that they should have if they love something. For us, it’s just been the process of trying to live up to our expectation of what we think the show should be and commit to that.”
If a director shot a film as one single long take, must I also watch the film entirely in one sitting?
(Just finished watching 1917 over multiple nights. No, I did not watch it over two nights. It was more than that.)
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This is performative regulatation. None of this deletable apps nonsense increases competition; it merely increases the chances of profound user confusion.
To be clear, just like with the browser choice screen, I don’t think these “default apps” and “deletable apps” compliance concessions from Apple are going to matter much. By design, deleting apps in iOS is a multi-step process and requires a long tap-and-hold even to get into jiggle mode. Even novice users don’t accidentally delete apps. But it’s also true that there’s no measurable demand from users to be able to delete essential system apps. So what’s the point of requiring Apple to support this? Just to watch the company dance?
There are no intermediate servers involved, files can be of unlimited size, it can send folders without archiving them first, it doesn’t mess with photo or video quality, and it encrypts files in transit. Blip even resumes automatically after network interruptions.
You can build a reminder and task management system for yourself, and use a service that works for your team. But it might not be easy to get your family members or friends to use the same task management app. iOS app Karo (which means “do it” in Hindi) aims to solve the problem even if the other person doesn’t use the app.
Satechi is out with several new releases today at IFA Berlin. Headlining its new products is the Vegan-Leather Passport Cover with Find My. The cover/wallet features Apple’s official item tracking, a MagSafe/Qi2-rechargeable battery, RFID protection, and more.
Stolen phones can already be tracked and have their data erased through services such as "Find My iPhone" and "Find My Device", from Android.
But policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said this week the government wanted manufacturers to ensure that any stolen phone could be permanently disabled to prevent it being sold second-hand.
This weekend, I am having fun with SwiftUI.
(By fun, I mean reminding myself again and again that what I am seeing is likely my bug, not Apple's.)
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Thanks for reading.
The most significant product announcement will be the iPhone 16 line, but the company is also preparing major updates to both the Apple Watch and AirPods. Apple Intelligence — a new suite of AI tools that includes an updated Siri digital assistant — also will feature prominently. The theme of the event, “It’s Glowtime,” is a reference to Siri’s new interface.
[...]
The iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, meanwhile, will retain the iPhone 15 Pro line design save for one noticeable change: the displays. The screen sizes are increasing to 6.3 inches on the smaller model (up from from 6.1 inches) and going to 6.9 inches from 6.7 inches on the Max version. While the changes represent an increase of less than 5% on both models, the shift will come with bezels that are now about a third slimmer. That should make for a sleeker overall look.
These are plausible outcomes, and there are some less extreme possibilities, too. But we’re about to see Apple confront this new world in so many ways: as the company is pressured to change its App Store rules, give developers access to previously unavailable system features, and allow users to pick more of their own defaults, the question is the same across every surface. Was Apple’s legendarily tight control about preserving user experience and making sure users got the best of everything with the least amount of work, or was it about Apple making its devices worse just to make them harder to quit? No one’s ever had a fair fight with Apple before. But the playing field is beginning to level.
"What Apple could, and should have said, here is that 'This is no longer correct, as we fixed it in iOS 17.x,'" said OWA. "Instead they appear to have, bafflingly, chosen to mislead the regulator about the existence of the issue entirely."
[...]
In its defense, Apple could claim it was simply addressing Safari's present behavior and making no statement about the past or the accuracy of allegations made at a prior date. Whether that omission could be construed as an attempt to mislead the CMA is a question only the CMA can answer.
Earlier today, Apple announced several new and updated games are coming to Arcade, including one of my favorites of 2024: Balatro. Balatro is a roguelike deck-builder that mixes the familiarity of poker with special joker and other cards for combos that result in an incredibly fun roller coaster ride that’s hard to put down.
Iconic bands New Order and Oasis are set to have their music released in immersive Dolby Atmos spatial audio on Apple Music this month, offering fans a chance to experience these legendary albums in a revolutionary new way.
If you only use Apple's Reminders app to add basic reminders, you're missing out on its full potential. While it has built a reputation for simplicity, you can also use Apple's Reminders as a fully-fledged task organizer.
Making such a foundational change to a long-established app is a huge risk, but that risk comes with an equally weighty purpose: to recreate Reeder into a one-stop digital inbox fit for the current web landscape. It’s a tall order, but the app hits the mark dead center. The work Silvio Rizzi has done on this new version is nothing short of excellent; I encourage readers to give it a try. It might not be what we’re used to, but new things can often surprise us, maybe even delight us. The new Reeder has certainly done that for me.
Productivity, after all, is flexible, and what works for one person might not work for everyone.
With that in mind, here's yet another Pomodoro timer: Pure Focus, a Mac app that pauses Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube when it’s time to take a break.
As someone who talks to many people outside my time zone, I often spend at least a few minutes on a video call explaining my location, time, and weather. That information became easier to convey with a Mac app called Boom, now available as a freemium product.
Boom is a bootstrapped company built by former Shopify employees Robleh Jama and Krishna Satya. The app works with all major video conferencing apps, including Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. Once installed, you can add customized themes to your video call appearances, including your name, designation, location, time, and weather.
We all misplace our keys or wallets from time to time, but how many times have you lost your laptop charger? If the answer is even just once, then Twelve South may have the wall charger for you.
Have a good weekend, as some of us get our wallets ready for Monday's event.
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But does this mean their brains are decayed? In scientific terms, no. Research on the impact of screens on young people’s development is mixed, and there’s an ongoing debate about whether smartphones and social media actually affect kids. So, as of now, there’s no hard evidence that being online is bad for young people’s mental health. And, of course, a phone or iPad cannot literally rot someone’s brain.
In talking with kids and experts, though, I’ve come away with the impression that young people also worry about the impact of technology on their lives. Their concerns, however, are more nuanced than some doomer headlines might suggest. And sometimes they have more perspective than adults do when it comes to what a healthy relationship with technology looks like — and how theirs will evolve in the future.
Leaks from the supply chain mean that we tend to know certain basic physical things about new Apple hardware: the shapes, the sizes, and the components with their accompanying specs. But it’s harder (not impossible, but harder) to get all the details of the software that Apple’s planning to take advantage of that new hardware.
[...]
The stories Apple tells around features like this tend to be quite informative about how Apple’s approach and philosophy. I find it interesting and helpful, a rare (albeit self-serving) peek behind the curtain.
Apple says the mood stations are personalized based on your Apple Music listening history, and they are always updating with new songs.
Apple has announced it will introduce its popular 'Find My' network to South Korea in the spring of 2025. The launch will bring the full range of Apple's location-based Find My services to South Korean customers for the first time, enabling them to keep track of devices, belongings, and loved ones.
Judges for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday rejected the Internet Archive (IA) argument that its controlled digital lending—which allows only one person to borrow each scanned e-book at a time—was a transformative fair use that worked like a traditional library and did not violate copyright law.
The last time Apple surprised us with prices -- and prices are one of the things that is so difficult to be leaked beforehand -- I believe it was the first iPad. Rumors were wild then that the tablet was priced just below $1,000, and everybody believed it, but Steve Jobs came out and declared $499 instead.
Will Apple surprise us with prices ever again? I doubt it. Not with how Apple is operating nowadays, with a constant need to maintain profit margins across all products, and an unwillingness (or perhaps inability) to do really low cost products like the iPod shuffle.
So, prices are seldom leaked before Apple events. But what Apple reveals are usually what we expect.
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Maybe we were all surprised by how expensive the Pro Display XDR was?
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Thanks for reading.
With its global rhythms, sci-fi visuals, and clever puzzles, the 2024 Apple Design Award winner for Interaction is both a challenge and an artistic achievement. To solve each level, players must create linear pathways on increasingly complex boards, dodging obstacles and triggering buttons along the way. It’s all set to a world-music backdrop; different levels feature genres as diverse as Ethiopian jazz, Hawaiian slack key guitar, and Gamelan from Indonesia, just to name a few.
And here’s the hook: Every time you clear a level, you add an instrument to an ever-growing song.
Microsoft claims that Apple’s guidelines “still represent an obstacle to Cloud Gaming native apps” because it apparently can’t comply with them, both technically and economically, if it incorporates third-party games into its Xbox Cloud Gaming service on iOS.
[...]
Apple argues that it supports cloud gaming via web apps, and even cites two Verge articles that cover Microsoft’s improvements to Xbox Cloud Gaming performance on iPhone and iPad and that more than 20 million people have used Xbox Cloud Gaming. [...] Apple also argues that developers “...generally are not having difficulty with the IPA requirement” and then cites Antstream, a small app developer that launched the first iPhone game streaming service in the App Store earlier this year with more than 1,300 retro titles from Atari, Amiga, and Nintendo consoles.
From a fully customizable palette to new keyboard shortcut options to the ability to chain custom commands, Moom 4 offers a wide range of new features that make it an even more advanced utility that will appeal to anyone looking for more flexibility than Apple’s new window tiling feature, which is coming in macOS Sequoia.
Spotify is launching daylist globally. It’s a personalized playlist that evolves throughout the day depending on your listening habits. This rollout comes after the company introduced it first to English-speaking markets last year. The playlist will be available to both free and premium users.
It's such a hassle to hop on your browser to look up the recipe every single time, and filling your phone with screenshots of cocktail recipes isn't exactly practical. Instead, what you need is a mixology app that can serve as your go-to recipe book for cocktails. Here are six of the best apps to install for iPhone users.
Mobile phones are not linked to brain and head cancers, a comprehensive reviewof the highest quality evidence available commissioned by the World Health Organization has found.
Led by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (Arpansa), the systematic review examined more than 5,000 studies from which the most scientifically rigorous were identified and weak studies were excluded.
If mobile phones are found to be linked to brain cancer, how many of us are going to stop using them?
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A year later I feel much better saying that the 15 Pro line of iPhones is one of the greats. USB-C is a major win for consumers, nerd and normie alike, the materials and design changes are wins over a uncomfortable design we had for a few years previous, the camera upgrade to 24MP standard is very welcome, the action button lets people who want more control over their phone to get it, and battery life is notably improved over the very disappointing 14 Pro lineup.
Apple will use organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays in all iPhone models sold next year and afterward, switching its lower-priced iPhone SE models to OLED screens from liquid crystal displays (LCDs), Nikkei has learned.
[...]
According to multiple sources, Apple has begun placing orders for OLED displays for the upcoming iPhone SE from China's BOE Technology Group and South Korea's LG Display. This change marks the end of LCDs in iPhones, with the SE model scheduled for release in next year also featuring an OLED display, along with standard-priced iPhone models and premium Pro models.
Stellar Data Recovery’s chief strength is the breadth of its data recovery engine, and it does this well. The software offers support for hundreds of file formats, and a comprehensive set of filters allows you to search and recover by file type (such as documents, images, etc.) as well as file headers and attributes, which becomes useful for more complicated recoveries.
The time and productivity tracking app now applies project rules to calendar events so Timing more frequently suggests the correct project when you click a calendar event.
With Workout Summaries, Gentler Streak users can personalize their workout logs with custom titles and photos. This makes the experience of using the app even more personal and also makes it fun and easy to remember the moment of a specific workout.
Founder Erica Wright, who launched the app at the beginning of 2022, came up with the idea after years of working in communications for several luxury e-commerce companies. ‘Over the years, I noticed that stylists and editors were frequently looking for sold-out or past-season items that were no longer available,’ she says. ‘This made me realise that if industry insiders were struggling to access these items, how much harder must it be for the average customer?’
The price of some Canva subscriptions are set to skyrocket next year following the company’s aggressive rollout of generative AI features. Global customers for Canva Teams — a business-orientated subscription that supports adding multiple users — can expect prices to increase by just over 300 percent in some instances. Canva says the increase is justified due to the “expanded product experience” and value that generative AI tools have added to the platform.
SwitchBot has just made it easier to keep track of your wallet with its new Wallet Finder Card. It is fully integrated with Apple’s Find My network and can be used in smart homes with SwitchBot’s Matter-enabled lock.
This cycle of enthusiasm, struggle, and disappointment has become all too familiar. It’s the Hydra Project Effect: no matter how much progress I make, new challenges always seem to sprout in their place. But while this pattern may seem unbreakable, I’m determined to find a way to tame this beast.
The organization that runs National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) declared condemnation of AI “classist and ableist,” and participants in its annual writing challenge are pissed.
Apple has been refining the recent iPhone models over the years, starting from new design brought forth by iPhone 12. Unless Apple has suddenly learnt to keep secrets real well this year, the upcoming iPhone that will be announced next week will continue to be refinement rather than an abrupt change. So, if one is to want a really good iPhone that is well tested, it sure seems like this is the year to buy one. (Battery life will be great!)
(Of course, I can be wrong. Don't listen to random strangers on the internet, that's what I say.)
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As state legislators around the country seek to regulate teen smartphone use, Apple is gearing up for a battle with app makers and legislators over child safety. The question at the heart of the fight is whether regulation of teen social-media use should happen entirely within apps or whether smartphone makers and app stores also have a role to play.
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Social-media platforms and many youth-safety advocates argue that effective content restrictions will require some form of age verification from Apple and Google, the duopoly that oversees operating-system software for the world’s billions of smartphones. [...] An Apple spokesman said websites and social-media companies are best positioned to verify a user’s age and that user privacy expectations would be violated if the company was required to share the age of its users with third-party apps. Apple provides tools that allow parents to control the devices of their children, the spokesman said.
The U.S. technology giant, working to boost revenue globally from services including apps, payments and media, is set to offer free music and video streaming to many of Bharti Airtel's 281 million customers.
The deal is likely to greatly expand the user base for Apple TV+ and Apple Music in a country where Apple has long emphasised the manufacturing side of business to diversify its supply chain beyond China.
He and other Apple executives are promoting "Disclaimer," an Apple TV+ limited series that will premiere at the festival and then debut worldwide in October.
What is a operating system? It is messy…
On paper, getting Apple and Google -- the operating system providers -- do the age verification first before allowing children onto social media apps sound simple. (If you agree children should be restricted from social media, that is. But that's a different kettle of fish.)
But then, we will need to confront the question: what is a operating system? How about Mozilla's Firefox on, say, macOS? Must it also do age verification before allowing its customer to log in to a social media? Perhaps Firefox must also get age verification details from macOS first as well as getting the list of social media URLs that may be prohibited from showing to the user?
Now, how about Firefox on Windows or Ubuntu where, perhaps, the operating system does not provide age verification? Does it still need to get the list of social media URLs and block them from all users?
How about the web browser on your Samsung fridge? Or that webview in your RSS reader? Can I (someday) ask ChatGPT to log in to a social media platform for me and summarize my social media feed?
Next, if I create a website. Can my website pretend to be a social media website, and ask the operating system for the age of my visitor? Can all websites ask for the age of visitors? Pretty soon, each time I visit a web site, I have to click to accept all cookies, click to reject notifications, and click to reject sharing of age information.
I think I am going back to Gopher.
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Most modern laptops now come with some kind of smart charging technology built in, to limit the number of full charges that happen. How this is implemented varies between laptops — I’ll talk about this, as well as other ways to ensure the battery on your MacBook or Windows laptop stays as healthy as possible for as long as possible.
Apple says this is an intended change. The company says that each update requires writing data to disk, causing excess wear on your devices NAND (aka storage). Excessive updates are particularly problematic this year, now that Live Activities will sync to your Apple Watch with iOS 18 and watchOS 11.
According to a reliable source familiar with the matter, Apple will release new Mac models in November 2024. While new Macs are usually released toward the end of the year, this is the first time a launch month has been singled out for the upcoming M4 Macs.
With the Major League Soccer ending in October, Apple has dropped the price of the season pass one last time to reflect the remaining time. For the rest of 2024, MLS Season Pass is now $9.99, its lowest price ever.
The app transforms your study lists into a puzzle game, by breaking the vocabulary words into smaller pieces. Your challenge is to put the words back together, by matching it with a paired word.
The logic puzzles teach and challenge children, forcing them to think and plan ahead of time.
The popular Docker-OSX project has been removed from Docker Hub after Apple filed a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown request, alleging that it violated its copyright.
Docker-OSX is an open-source project created by security researcher Sick.Codes that allows for the virtualization of macOS on non-Apple hardware. It can be hosted on any system that supports Docker, including Linux and Windows.
Companies often struggle with the departure of key executives, but Apple has a time-tested way to deal with it: make sure that the person quitting doesn’t actually leave.
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Besides the need to placate employees and shareholders, there’s likely another reason for wanting to keep longtime executives in the fold. Cook’s track record of hiring top executives from outside Apple is mixed.
These efforts—designed to avoid the liabilities of selling a project that offered a Y2K fix, because what if Y2K wasn’t “fixable”?—were part of a floating corporate-compliance rubric referred to only as the Process. Proprietary, capitalized, and always prefaced with that exclusive definite article, the Process could only be implemented by Arthur Andersen LLP. When a business engaged Andersen in a consultancy project, they purchased the Process. The Process seemed to have no printed home. To the extent that it existed, it passed between the minds and speech of Cindy and Dick. It was both accessible enough to be constantly appealed to—“the Process says,” “How would we apply the Process here?” “I’m not sure this syncs with the Process”—and inaccessible enough never to be grasped with Play-Doh–like tangibility. In keeping with the Process, the quality assurance team scoured hundreds of thousands, millions even, of Excel spreadsheet lines. My day began and ended with comparing database entry to inventory spreadsheet and writing in my own script s This was dissociative, diminutive work, and time passed vertiginously, minutes and seconds overlapping on my teammates’ unsynchronized doomsday clocks until the day concluded with a final collective effort at preservation. All quality assurance analysts—not Cindy, for hierarchical reasons—would convene in the photocopy room to ensure that, come what may on December 31, 1999, the deliverables from our day’s labor would be archived, in print, in perpetuity. The only times we really spoke to each other in an uncurated fashion were over the blinding flashes and tray clicks of the Minolta copy machine. There we would discuss our commuting woes, roommate dramas, awkward dates, student loan repayment plans, as well as a rather unarticulated feeling of: What?
I just checked: I am not using any of the USB-A ports on my Intel-based Mac mini anymore. So, Mr Mark Gurman's latest report that USB-A ports are rumored to be gone from the new upcoming Mac mini did not alarm me.
I'm ready, Apple. Give me a mini mini, please.
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