From Apple’s perspective, allowing system files to be copied inherently introduces opportunities for attackers to modify system components. Since macOS 10.15 Catalina, the separate system volume is immutable, locked, and validated using cryptography—what Apple calls the “signed system volume.” Any method that allows it to be copied onto a bootable drive must preserve the same verification to ensure nothing has changed.
To mitigate this move away from easily making bootable backups, Apple has invested a lot of effort into macOS Recovery and Migration Assistant. It is now trivial and streamlined to boot a Mac into macOS Recovery, install macOS, and restore user files using Migration Assistant. With a separate system volume, a reinstallation just creates a new, secured, immutable volume and then copies your user files to the data volume. Because Apple controls every part of that process, there’s no worry about the security of the system being compromised.
Almost three years after “Severance” Season 1 premiered on Apple TV+, the first eight minutes of Season 2 are now available on the streaming service. Apple released the opening of Season 2, Episode 1 nearly a month before its scheduled premiere on January 17, 2025.
The latest update to the app adds improvements to health metrics, as well as the long-awaited Activity Recap 2024.
Lux, the developers behind celebrated iPhone camera app Halide, and the award-winning mobile video app Kino teased Halide Mark III today, previewing some of the features coming to Halide 3.0 next year (hopefully).
Of the returning series over at Apple TV+ that I am currently watching: Shrinking, Silo, and Bad Sisters, I find that two out of three doesn't have as good as a season as the first. Silo seemed to have lost the momentum that it built up previously, while Bad Sisters seemed to have lost its sharp focus.
I am looking forward to the new season of Severance, but I am, as they say, cautiously optimistic. Yes, I know all four shows are made by different teams. But still, cautious.
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Speaking of Apple and television: how did Apple fail to get the US broadcast rights for Fifa Women's World Cups to Netflix? Doesn't Apple want to expand its football (ie. soccer) empire?
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Merry Christmas! Thanks for reading.
It’s tricky to make the argument that any of this is inherently bad for music fans; in our anti-élitist times, all taste is regarded as relative. Maybe Johan Röhr does, indeed, lower your stress levels. Who’s to say that A.I. Oasis is that much better or worse than the real thing? If you harbor no dreams of making money off your music, it’s never been easier to put your art out into the world. And even if we are constructing our playlists for friends under “data-tuned, ultra-surveilled” circumstances, feeding a machine data to more effectively sell things back to us, it’s a trade that most users don’t mind making. We’ve been conditioned to want hyper-personalization from our digital surroundings, with convenience and customizable environments the spoils of our age. For Pelly, it’s a problem less of taste than of autonomy—the question she asks is if we’re making actual decisions or simply letting the platform shape our behaviors. Decades ago, when you were listening to the radio or watching MTV, you might encounter something different and unknown, prompting some judgment as to whether you liked or loathed it. The collection of so much personalized data—around what time of day we turn to Sade or how many seconds of a NewJeans song we play—suggests a future without risk, one in which we will never be exposed to anything we may not want to hear.
Balancing the holiday theme with a deeper message of inclusivity and accessibility was no small feat. “Our goal was never to create just a ‘Christmas ad. First and foremost, we wanted to tell a beautiful, human story that resonated emotionally, did justice to the power of the technology, and honored Apple’s longstanding commitment to inclusivity and accessibility.”
A new report published by the child safety groups Heat Initiative and ParentsTogether Action details the alarming presence of inappropriate apps that are rated as suitable for children as young as four years old on Apple’s App Store. The groups worked with a researcher to review as many apps as possible in the span of 24 hours, and say they ultimately identified over 200 apps that contained “concerning content or features” given the ages they were rated for — including stranger chat and AI girlfriend apps, gaming apps with sexual or violent prompts and imagery, and AI-powered appearance rating apps.
I spent about an hour deleting icons, arranging widgets, and adding controls to create my new homescreen. The camera control button on the iPhone 16 renders that icon unnecessary; the action button launches the oft-used daycare app, so that could go too. When I was done, my haphazardly maintained system of folders with cute emoji labels was whittled down to just four apps in the dock and a handful of widgets spread across two pages, which I’m affectionately calling “Windows Phone 2.0.”
Do you know what the Option key on your Mac keyboard does? It's actually one of the best little-known features in macOS, and hides countless extra settings and shortcuts. Let's take a closer look.
If you search “coloring book” on the App Store, you’ll see no shortage of options, so I’ve narrowed it down to the best apps for coloring on iPad that I’ve tested.
In January of 2017, Stiller called Scott and pitched him on the show. Scott read the script and loved it. “It felt too good to be true,” he told me recently. “I pretty much assumed it would disappear.” It nearly did. Stiller sold the show to Apple, which was preparing to launch a new streaming service, AppleTV+, and the same qualities that had made Erickson and Stiller want Scott—the sense that he could be anyone, that he could almost be overlooked—made him a harder sell to Apple. Executives were hesitant to cast him. Stiller refused to commit to an alternative, and a year of developmental stalemate ensued. Finally, Stiller sent Scott a late-night e-mail: Apple was open to considering him, but only if Scott agreed to tape an audition for the part he’d thought he already had. Stiller feared that Scott would consider this demeaning and walk. But Scott, who is now fifty-one, spent the first fifteen years of his career as a struggling actor, and even after the success of “Parks”—and a part on the popular HBO drama “Big Little Lies” (2017)—he’d maintained a swallow-your-pride mind-set. When Scott read Stiller’s e-mail, he was in a rental trailer in Atlanta, completing a shoot as the host of a short-lived ABC game show called “Don’t.” Scott said, “I remember sitting there thinking, Am I in any position to say ‘No, thanks’ to audition for probably the best pilot I’ve ever read?” He wrote back to Stiller “in, like, five seconds,” and after reading for the part he secured the job.
Gurman said the doorbell would wirelessly connect to a compatible deadbolt lock, allowing users to automatically unlock a door with Face ID. The doorbell would likely work with third-party HomeKit locks, but Apple could also partner with another brand to offer an all-in-one solution, he said.
The American Chamber of Commerce said in a November report that the rules can lead to lower production levels. Companies also are often forced to source costlier or lower-quality materials with advanced electronics components in limited supply locally.
“The gap between the government’s demand for local production and the actual infrastructure to support high-technology standards creates obstacles for foreign investors,” it said.
Sherlock Holmes is one of my favorite fictional detectives, and reading and re-reading the novels and short stories always bring me joy. (Except for that whole Utah and Mormon thing in that one novel, which bored me to tears.)
And Sherlock, the recent television re-imagination of the characters, was really interesting and inventive and wonderful.
But, somehow, I missed the even-more recent re-invention, bringing the characters yet again into today's London: Sherlock & Co, the radio plays. I am still a bit mad that I missed out on this all these months. Yes, I am now bingeing on all the adventures to make up for lost time.
(Okay, to be fair to me, radio plays were never that interesting to me. I may have to change my mind.)
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Thanks for reading.
Prof Jonathan Wilson, a professor of brand strategy and culture at Regent's University London, thinks there is an ulterior motive for people sharing these end-of-year-reviews - especially on apps that people use to track their virtuous activities, like fitness and education.
"It's like bragging but without the selfie," he explains. "Lots of people don't want to take selfies for various reasons but one of them is that people feel a bit cringe, that it's a bit narcissistic."
one sec aims to help people reduce mindless scrolling on social media, requiring users to make a conscious decision on whether or not they want to actually open that app every time. It’s very configurable, so you can customize one sec to meet your needs.
iOS 18.2.1 should be a minor update that fixes bugs and/or addresses security vulnerabilities, but it is unclear which specific issues might be resolved. The update will likely be released in late December or early January.
Okay, I am not going to brag or show you any selfies. (At least, I hope I am not.)
But looking back at the past year, I've made two major changes with my use of technology.
Hardware-wise, I upgraded from an iPhone 12 mini to an iPhone 16 Pro. My pocket is now heavier. (And my wallet lighter, so it balanced out.) I've gained a lot of new stuff: a 5x zoom camera, an always-on display, dynamic island, and copious of battery life. But then, an iPhone is an iPhone, and the everything is still familiar, and the way I use an iPhone has remained the same.
Software-wise, I migrated from podcast player to podcast player to podcast player to podcast player. Yes, I've used quite a number of podcast players for my daily news and entertainment before settling down to iCatcher podcast player. I've started the year with the desire to move away from a podcast player that required a server component to be working perfectly day-in day-out, and of which I have no control over. (After I moved away, this podcast player was rewritten and relaunched with, seemingly, many many bugs, but that was a mere coincident and luck on my part.)
And then the CEO of the new podcast player did something really bad, and I lost confidence, and I moved again.
And then the new podcast player, which did have a server component, had server problems, and I moved again.
I only used iCatcher for a few months, but I really hope this will be the last software migration for a long time. (Yes, I've encountered bugs already, but nothing show-stopping, yet.)
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Thanks for reading.
In the last few years, Apple has been sending notifications to targets and victims of government spyware, alerting them that they may have been hacked, and directing them to get help. Crucially, Apple doesn’t tell the targets to get in touch with its own security engineers, but with the nonprofit Access Now, which runs a digital helpline for people in civil society who suspect they have been targets of government spyware.
[...]
While it may look like Apple is abdicating its responsibility to protect its users, cybersecurity experts who work with human rights defenders, journalists, and dissidents, generally agree that Apple’s approach in alerting victims to spyware attacks is the right one.
Apple Vision Pro users can watch a new episode of the "Adventure" series starting today, delving into a freezing underwater dive in the Arctic with athlete Ant Williams.
On an iPhone, you don’t have the option to have an AI assistant answer calls for you, as you can on Android — at least not yet. But there are ways to screen calls to some extent and cut down on the number of scammers, sellers, and robots you have to talk to.
Flying Meat has released version 8 of its Acorn image editor, a major update with several new powerful features and improvements. The AI-powered subject selection feature pinpoints and isolates subjects or backgrounds, while the Live Text tool can detect and highlight text for copying to the clipboard. The update also adds an intuitive on-canvas ruler, a Data Merge feature that imports a CSV file to populate text boxes and images, support for JPEG-XL import and export capabilities, and Look Up Table (LUT) support.
Daniel Alm has issued Timing 2024.6, enabling you to create rules based on the time of day (such as creating a filter that only shows overtime). The time and productivity tracking app also expands its AI capabilities, generating AI summaries when you select a range of time on the timeline and adding a new AI Summary button that summarizes your app usage.
Moment has excelled in making a very clever and intuitive filter system for the iPhones 15 and 16. They are small, light, inexpensive, and compact, and clearly, a lot of care has gone into the design. They are also extremely high quality in terms of the actual filter and something that I would happily use in front of any lens.
The Apple TV remote icon keeps popping up on my iPhone's control center. And by 'keeps popping up', I meant twice. Once after I upgraded the OS to 18.2, and once when I rebooted my iPhone.
Other than that, and besides the general non-usefulness of Apple Intelligence, I am enjoying iOS 18.2. I do like having the volume control on my lock screen, and I am keeping it.
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Thanks for reading.
One or more backup bugs in macOS 15.2 Sequoia is affecting Apple’s own Time Machine utility, as well as third-party apps SuperDuper and CarbonCopyCloner.
Initially the problem appeared to affect bootable backups only, but it now appears that it is either more general than this, or there is more than one bug affecting Mac backups.
It was a bit of a weird year for Apple’s subscription gaming service. 2024 saw very few notable exclusives launch on Apple Arcade; instead, the service was fleshed out with a number of big games that you can already play on other platforms. It hasn’t been great for showcasing what makes Apple Arcade unique, but on the other hand, it’s hard to complain too much when it means your subscription now includes Balatro and Vampire Survivors. Here’s the best of what came out this year.
Apple Watch enthusiasts and fitness lovers now have a powerful tool to celebrate and share their achievements with the release of the new Apple Fitness Wrapped app, avaialbe as a free download.
The Time Capsule is an Apple AirTag accessory that promises to extend battery life up to a full decade. To use it, simply remove your AirTag's back plate and the coin cell battery and place the entire unit on the contact points inside the Time Capsule. Then, install two AA batteries and screw the cover closed. Elevation Lab recommends Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries to maximize runtime, but any pair of AA batteries should suffice.
The global app economy continued to recover in 2024, after an earlier slowdown in 2022 — at least in terms of consumer spending. In 2024, global consumer spending in mobile apps and games reached $127 billion across the App Store and Google Play, up 15.7% from the prior year. However, those increases were driven by Apple’s App Store, as Google Play spending declined, according to new data from app intelligence firm Appfigures.
In a strong year-end book deal, Apple Studios has paid seven figures for the Elliot Ackerman novel Sheepdogs for Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman to develop as a series. The book will be published summer 2025 by Alfred K. Knopf/Penguin Random House. Eleven bidders were in the mix.
In a competitive situation, Apple TV+ has landed a high-profile drama series project for development, sources tell Deadline. Tentatively titled Bananas, it has Oscar Isaac and Ana de Armas set to star and executive produce, and David O. Russell attached to direct and executive produce, I hear. Fifth Season is the studio.
For parents, podcasts can be a welcome alternative to TV or TikTok, and a source of entertainment during long car trips. But for kids, the medium can be something more: a gateway to a love of learning, and a way to practice media literacy skills in a time when they are sorely needed.
If you are taking a break off work, may you have a wonderful holiday. And for the rest of us who are not taking a break off work, may we all have a peaceful week too.
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Thanks for reading.
Was this a money grab, a hope of latching onto a rapidly rising sector of the economy? Or, does this come from a genuine desire to exist as an antidote to the commodification and playlistification of our entire society, let alone music consumption? The answer exists somewhere in the middle, I suspect—but after two days of immersing myself in Apple’s Chill station, I can’t help but feel like it's a shelter from an increasingly violent storm.
Chill is hosted by singer and radio host Sabi, who, per Apple, “guides you through a full day of programming by introducing each new set of songs—meant to help you relax, unwind and unplug.” Sabi is also in charge of the station’s Mindful Moments, which are “brief breaks in programming that serve as reminders to be present and Chill.” Sabi is the day-to-day guide for the program, but Apple also enlisted Zane Lowe, Brian Eno, and Stephan Moccio to handle their own shows.
Perhaps Spotify understood the stakes—that when it removed real classical, jazz, and ambient artists from popular playlists and replaced them with low-budget stock muzak, it was steamrolling real music cultures, actual traditions within which artists were trying to make a living. Or perhaps the company was aware that this project to cheapen music contradicted so many of the ideals upon which its brand had been built. Spotify had long marketed itself as the ultimate platform for discovery—and who was going to get excited about “discovering” a bunch of stock music? Artists had been sold the idea that streaming was the ultimate meritocracy—that the best would rise to the top because users voted by listening. But the PFC program undermined all this. PFC was not the only way in which Spotify deliberately and covertly manipulated programming to favor content that improved its margins, but it was the most immediately galling. Nor was the problem simply a matter of “authenticity” in music. It was a matter of survival for actual artists, of musicians having the ability to earn a living on one of the largest platforms for music. PFC was irrefutable proof that Spotify rigged its system against musicians who knew their worth.
Reporters Without Borders, also known as RSF, said it was was "very concerned by the risks posed to media outlets" by AI tools.
The group said the BBC incident proves "generative AI services are still too immature to produce reliable information for the public".
[...]
"RSF calls on Apple to act responsibly by removing this feature. The automated production of false information attributed to a media outlet is a blow to the outlet's credibility and a danger to the public's right to reliable information on current affairs."
The EU’s proposed iOS interoperability measures cover interactivity features like automatic audio switching, background activity like maintaining Bluetooth and network connections, and notifications — which could address long-standing complaints from iPhone users who are unable to send quick replies from connected Garmin watches, for example. The EU also proposes several measures to improve iOS data transfer interoperability across Airdrop, Airplay, media casting, Wi-Fi sharing, and close-range file transfers, alongside device configuration measures covering proximity-triggered pairing and automatic Wi-Fi connectivity.
Apple has raised concerns about the DMA’s interoperability mandates, as you’d expect. In a white paper published shortly after the EU’s announcement, Apple criticized “data-hungry companies” like Meta that have made numerous requests to access the iPhone maker’s software tools.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which Apple has always supported, set a strong set of privacy rules for all companies to comply with. The DMA was not intended to provide a way around the rules. But the end result could be that companies like Meta—which has been fined by regulators time and again for privacy violations—gains unfettered access to users' devices and their most personal data. If Apple is forced to allow access to sensitive technologies that it has no ability to protect, the security risks would be substantial and virtually impossible to mitigate.
(This is a PDF document.)
Meta has made 15 interoperability requests thus far, more than any other company, for potentially far-reaching access to Apple's technology stack, the latter said in a report.
"In many cases, Meta is seeking to alter functionality in a way that raises concerns about the privacy and security of users, and that appears to be completely unrelated to the actual use of Meta external devices, such as Meta smart glasses and Meta Quests," Apple said.
McCue’s best explanation of Surf’s big theory is this: in a decentralized social world, the internet will be less about websites and more about feeds. “You won’t put in, like, theverge.com and go to the website for The Verge, but you can put in ‘the verge’ and go to the ActivityPub feed for The Verge.” Your Threads timeline is a feed; every Bluesky Starter Pack is a feed; every creator you follow is just producing a feed of content.
Surf’s job, in that world, is to help you discover and explore all those feeds.
The need for something like what Flipboard is trying to build with Surf—an immersive, one-stop social experience curated by people rather than algorithms—seems manifestly obvious. I know the old system has failed me [...] It might take quite a while for Surf to reach its full potential, but at least it’s finally technically possible. That’s exciting in itself. And the fact that the Flipboard app is still alive, kicking, and evolving after almost a decade and a half—long after a flurry of knockoffs have come and gone—suggests the company could have the patience to keep at it.
While there are no new Apple Intelligence features for the iPhone or iPad, macOS Sequoia 15.3 brings Genmoji to the Mac for the first time, so Mac users are now able to create custom emoji characters that can be used in place of standard emoji.
Billie Eilish is Apple Music’s 2024 Artist of the Year, and to celebrate, the superstar and her brother Finneas performed a live acoustic set in their hometown of Los Angeles earlier this month.
This article started as an in-depth examination of my desk, the accessories I use, and the hardware I recommend. As I was writing it, however, I realized that it had turned into something bigger. It’s become the story of how, after more than a decade of working on the iPad, I was able to figure out how to accomplish the last remaining task in my workflow, but also how I fell in love with the 11” iPad Pro all over again thanks to its nano-texture display.
The move is part of a broader shift in how Apple approaches payment services. The subscription effort was overseen by the company’s Apple Pay group, which also shuttered a “buy now, pay later” program earlier this year. That service let shoppers pay off purchases over multiple installments, but Apple is now steering consumers toward third-party programs instead.
Apple is in talks with Tencent and TikTok owner ByteDance about integrating their artificial intelligence models into iPhones sold in China, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
While it’s true that the game does feature poker imagery and poker hands that a player could translate into an actual game of poker, it’s worth noting that Balatro doesn’t actually have any gambling as part of playing the game.
[...]
Games like EA Sports FC include in-game purchases with randomized content, which is what LocalThunk takes issue with. “I’m way more irked at the 3-plus for these games with actual gambling mechanics for children than I am about Balatro having an 18-plus rating,” he said on Sunday.
Dear Apple, even if you don't want to remove Apple Intelligence notification summarization feature, can you allow app developers to opt out?
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Thanks for reading.
As iOS 18.2 rolls out more widely, people are going to find themselves challenged by having to change their years-old or decades-old habits for an email client that thinks your package delivery for today is a non-time-sensitive transaction, and your newsletters are promotions. I’m not convinced people will have a ton of patience to try to calibrate this system, and adjust themselves to it.
The web version of Apple Maps that Apple first debuted in July has been upgraded with support for Look Around, the feature that is essentially equivalent to Google Street View.
Apple's next Apple Watch Activity Challenge is set to kick off on Wednesday, January 1, with Apple Watch users able to earn an award by closing all three rings for seven days in a row in January.
Apple today announced that the Apple Watch feature to help identify sleep apnea is now available in Brazil following the granting of a license from the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency.
According to the app’s developer, Riley Testut, Delta is the first app he’s aware of in the U.S. App Store to include an in-app link that allows users to make purchases outside the App Store using Apple’s External Purchase Link Entitlement that was introduced in January.
“Bad Monkey” has been renewed for Season 2 at Apple TV+, Variety has learned.
The series originally debuted on Apple’s streaming service back in August with the season finale airing in October. The first season was based on the novel of the same name by Carl Hiaasen. There is a sequel novel to “Bad Monkey” titled “Razor Girl,” but according to an individual with knowledge of the production, Season 2 will not be based on that book. Bill Lawrence developed “Bad Monkey” for television with Vince Vaughn starring in the lead role.
In a statement to Reuters, Apple said it told its suppliers their smelters and refiners must stop buying tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold from the two countries as conflict in the region has escalated.
Walz may have the soul of a hacker, rather than an artist, but his work exists in a lineage of prankster art that used the Internet both as a medium and as a venue.
Of the three Bill Lawrence shows on Apple TV+, I enjoy Shrinking the most. It seems to me this is the show that has most heart.
However, all three shows are great. (The other two are Bad Monkey and Ted Lasso.) If you have enjoyed any of these shows but haven't watch the others, I highly recommend all of them.
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Thanks for reading.
Apple today updated its free Sports app for the iPhone with several new features and changes, including a new Key Plays section within the Play-By-Play tab and pregame lineups for soccer and baseball games when available.
As 2024 comes to a close, Apple is excited to unveil the most downloaded apps and games of the year across iPhone, iPad, and Apple Arcade, with charts localized for users in more than 30 countries and regions.
ProjectWizards has released Merlin Project 9.0, a major upgrade to the powerful project management app that adds a new intelligent assistant and a dynamic baseline.
Apple today announced it has renewed the award-winning sci-fi series "Silo" for third and fourth seasons, allowing for the "complete story" to be told. Apple confirmed that the fourth season will be the final season of the show.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has filed criminal complaints against Apple subsidiaries in France and Belgium, accusing the tech firm of using conflict minerals in its supply chain, lawyers for the Congolese government told Reuters.
I am not sure how much patience Apple has to wait for Apple TV+ to be profitable, but I'm glad it is continuing to produce and renew good shows.
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Thanks for reading.
Architectural surrealism is Monument Valley’s signature. Austere, beautiful structures transform and rotate at the player’s touch, creating new paths and staircases for its minimalist characters to traverse. Doorways can lead anywhere. Switches cause columns to rise out of the ground, a perspective shift can reveal a cache of hidden pathways. Since 2014 these games have been smartphone must-plays, one of the best and most elegant examples of satisfying touch-screen puzzlers. But the third in the series, released last week, is a little different.
The Moroccan-inspired architecture that made the game famous is still present, but this time your geometric character Noor walks alongside blooming flowers and twisting vines, too. She sails a small boat. She gets lost in fields of bright yellow wheat. And there are many more people around her: she is a lighthouse-keeper’s apprentice, charged with the welfare of her community – which, a few scenes into the game, is ravaged by a flood. In some scenes she is accompanied by someone else, or there is someone there to rescue. It is a game about buildings still, but also a game about rebuilding, together.
Apple TV+ and Apple Music have dropped a surprise holiday edition of Carpool Karaoke featuring segments with Lady Gaga, Chappell Roan and Dua Lipa.
Disguised inside a thin, credit-card form factor, the SwitchBot Wallet Finder connects to the Find My app on your iPhone, so you can follow its location, and it even houses a speaker so you can make it beep to help you find your wallet when it inevitably gets lost somewhere in your home.
As a novice guitar and piano player, I love to learn chords by playing popular music. The Ultimate Guitar app is easy to use, provides access to chords across multiple instruments, and even has background tracks included with a subscription.
Over a lifetime of programming that began with a ZX81 and hasn’t quite ended yet, I’ve found a few principles enduringly useful. Principles are more flexible than rules, and might be more widely applicable. So here are my five rules for CRISP code in Go: they’re not necessarily in order of importance, except for the first one, but it makes a nice backronym.
Carpool Karaoke? That's something we haven't hear about lately.
I hope no one is proposing Apple also brings back Planet of the Apps.
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Thanks for reading.
Cook is a natural optimist, telling me how pleased he was to be back in London and how the city did Christmas so well. He answers an attendee’s question about how difficult it will be to get a job in the industry with comforting words, saying that these things go in cycles, suggesting that if it isn’t great now, it will be again. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” he says, reassuringly.
I ask Cook what it meant to him to be at events like these. “It means something to be able to give back,” he says, “and to connect with kids that are going to run the companies and businesses and governments in the future, and see what's on their mind, to see what their dreams and aspirations are. It keeps me connected to youth, which is so important both from a personal point of view, but also from a business point of view.
What did surprise me is how a smaller iPhone transformed how I think of smartphones. The smaller screen is a bit less good for video and games. The battery is smaller and less suited to chewing through 5G when I’m away from a charger. This has naturally made me use the phone more deliberately.
Shortery allows you to trigger automations based on an extensive list of triggers and conditions on macOS. It's functionality that's curiously absent on the Mac, despite having its own tab in the iPhone version of the app. This lets you give Shortcuts the powers it should have (in my opinion) had from the outset.
TechniCalc is a fully featured calculator app, with all of the advanced features you’d need – but without a clunky or outdated UI.
I sure hope Mr Cook is also optimistic about the world for the next couple and couple of years.
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Thanks for reading.
This week, the AI-powered summary falsely made it appear BBC News had published an article claiming Luigi Mangione, the man arrested following the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York, had shot himself. He has not.
[...]
But the BBC does not appear to be the only news publisher which has had headlines misrepresented by Apple's new AI tech.
We wanted to humanise it, make it easy and fun to use every day. So that's what Apple Intelligence is. It takes this incredible new capability, and rather than making that a destination and putting it into an Apple Intelligence app, instead, we've integrated it into the features of the products you're already using.
If Apple Intelligence is going to improve Siri, it has to understand what’s being asked and do something sensible. In the past, Siri’s failure mode was mostly binary—it either did what you wanted or failed in a predictable way. With Apple Intelligence, Siri seems primed to fail in ever broader and more unpredictable ways, which could reduce our enthusiasm for using it for even simple tasks.
Although the AirPods Pro 2 worked well at home, its use when my grandmother went outside was more limited. When she went to her fitness center to work out, she was worried that they might get in the way or that she might lose them. There were also occasions when she felt awkward about wearing the earphones in the first place, like when she was having dinner with friends or attending a music recital.
Today, Apple was honored with a record 29 nominations across 10 programs for the 3rd Annual Children’s & Family Emmy Awards, with nods for series and specials including “Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock,” “The Velveteen Rabbit,” “Jane,” “Snoopy Presents: One-of-a-Kind Marcie,” “Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin,” “Frog and Toad,” “Lovely Little Farm,” “Interrupting Chicken,” “CURSES!” and the “Shape Island” episode “The Winter Blues.” The winners will be revealed on Saturday, March 15, 2025.
Streaming services like Netflix, Apple TV+ or Prime Video could be eager to beef up their services with arguably the best-known children’s show of all time.
Many people are going to be just fine with their current computers that take slightly longer to do heavy tasks and require a little waiting around. But if you’re the type that makes their living doing creative work, and saving time in your edits and workflows will noticeably benefit your business, your craft, or your sanity, then an M4 Pro or M4 Max laptop is worth it.
It’s the holiday season, and Apple TV+ has a variety of fitting titles for getting in the spirit. Here are three must-see holiday specials I highly recommend: one’s a movie, another’s a fun short based on a beloved property, and finally there’s a TV classic.
In the third entry of the Apple Immersive Video series called Wild Life, we’re treated to an in-depth and underwater dive with Epic Diving out of Florida to swim with tiger sharks.
Anker has released its thinnest MagSafe-compatible power bank, measuring about a third of an inch thick. It’s only got a 5,000mAh battery inside, so you probably won’t get two full iPhone charges with it, but Anker has updated it with 15W Qi2 wireless charging speeds so your phone can charge faster.
In 2020, the disaster foreshadowed literally one sentence ago struck. Beta versions of MacOS 11 broke ACE, our then-current audio capture technology, and the damage looked permanent. When we spoke briefly to Apple during WWDC 2020, our appeals for assistance were flatly rejected. We spent weeks attempting to get ACE working again, but eventually we had to admit defeat. ACE as we knew it was dead in the water, and all options for replacing it involved substantial reductions in functionality. Though we did not discuss it publicly at the time, things looked grim for the future of our products.
Thankfully, we had three things going for us. First, in the 18 years since our inception, we had built up quite a large user base. In addition, the massive shift to working from home caused by the COVID-19 pandemic had created a corresponding surge in usage of our products. More than any other time in our company’s history, users were relying on us to do their jobs. That made it an especially bad time for Apple to break our tools. Lastly, because we also had a licensing program for ACE, we weren’t the only ones affected. Over a dozen other companies, some quite large, would be harmed if ACE ceased to function.
Not only did Apple Intelligence made up a news summary, it put the forged summarization into the mouth of someone else. If you ask me, that's two strikes against Apple's AI.
And yes, there are multiple reports that Apple Intelligence is classifying phishing emails as valid and important.
Is this the butterfly-keyboard event for Apple's software team? Will Apple be able to eventually fix all these problems, or will generative AI proved to be fundamentally incapable for the jobs given?
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That’s my biggest problem with AI on phones right now. Often, it does what it’s supposed to do. But it’s rarely helpful and doesn’t feel like it’s solving any real problem I was having. That’s been my complaint about this year’s devices from Google and Samsung; now, Apple is at least in the conversation. But they’re all in the same position, with equal pressure to deliver something in 2025 that isn’t just a collection of funny tricks — the novelty is wearing off fast.
Apple today updated Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for Mac and iOS with support for Apple Intelligence features like ChatGPT Siri integration, Writing Tools, and Image Playground that were largely introduced in iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2.
ChronoSync may not have the name recognition of Apple’s Time Machine or some of its competitors, but what’s present here is excellent, and offers the potential for additional backup control for more casual Mac users, or the ability to utilize an amazing amount of customization and go entirely bananas for geekier Macheads.
The Kontor Head Strap was created to balance softness and support for extended wear time when using the Vision Pro. ResMed says that it uses "ultra-premium" materials that are gentle on the skin, with the device offering six modular counterweights to better balance the Vision Pro's weight on the head.
Apple last month announced a new Share Item Location feature for helping to track AirTags and Apple devices, and said at the time that it would be partnering with more than 15 airlines. Those airlines would accept links from passengers tracking mislaid baggage.
United Airlines has now shown how it will integrate the feature into its mobile app, enabling customers to easily add the links.
As reported by iGeneration, Apple will stop selling the iPhone SE and the iPhone 14 series at the end of the year, as the USB-C universal charging connector deadline comes into effect.
On Thursday, December 12, His Majesty King Charles III visited Apple’s Battersea office in London to meet Apple employees, members of the British creative community, and students who have learned vital new skills like coding from educational programs supported by Apple and U.K.-based nonprofit The King’s Trust.
I have update my iPhone. I've tried creating all sort of images in the playground. I've tried creating all sorts of emoji… sorry, generating all sorts of genmoji… So far, I've only one genmoji that I am not embarrassed to use in an actual text message.
On the other hand, after trying out for about twenty-four hours, I think I am keeping the always-on volume control on my lock screen. I find the presence of the volume control useful on the Now Playing thing in avoiding surprises, and I find it puzzling why Apple decided to junk it a couple of years back.
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Apple today revealed the winners of the 2024 App Store Awards, honoring 17 apps and games that helped users ignite their creativity, achieve new milestones, and cherish everyday moments with family and friends. This year’s winning developers have created apps and games that improved users’ lives and impacted culture around the world. From solo entrepreneurs to multinational teams, these App Store Award winners were chosen from 45 finalists by App Store Editors for demonstrating the highest levels of user experience, design, and innovation.
I had the chance to spend time with three of this year’s winners and ask them about how they created their Apple award-winning apps.
Balatro+ takes home the prize for Apple Arcade Game of the Year after already capturing so many of our hearts. The roguelike game is a fantastic mix of poker, deck-building, solitaire and more that gets addictive quick. It's only been available on iOS through Apple Arcade or as a standalone purchase since September.
The new HomePod software adds support for Apple Music natural language search, which means you can describe what you want to hear in more casual language.
You can ask Siri for music using different combinations of genres, moods, activity, decades, and more. Examples include "songs about cats," "songs with a vibe," "relaxing songs," "artists similar to Taylor Swift," "sad 80s songs," and "songs about food."
Apple is bringing layered recordings to the Voice Memos app on the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. With the new feature, you can record vocals while listening to an instrumental track out loud in iOS 18.2.
These features are, on the whole, more ambitious than the initial batch released back in in October, and some of them build on those features: for example, the ability to now generate specific changes to text in Writing Tools. This also marks the first third-party integration of generative AI features into Apple’s own platforms, with the ability to connect to ChatGPT.
[...]
But does this latest round of AI features move the needle in Apple’s quest to improve its users lives? Let’s delve in and see.
The spot features a custom song called "Anything You Like" by The Dare, and it runs through a list of rhyming Genmoji creations like gnome, foam, pink comb, and skeleton made out of chrome, showing each Genmoji as it's mentioned in the song.
Today, someone tried to pull a scam on me, and it had some notable approaches I haven't seen or heard about before so I figure I'll write it up in case someone else someday is searching for a strange bunch of behaviors that hit their credit cards and their inboxes at the same time.
[...]
I believe someone had my working credit card number, then either used a quick spammy script or paid a service to sign me up to several hundred services at once, so that my inbox would be completely inundated with mail to the point that I'd miss a Best Buy email among all of them.
Beats describes today’s new additions as Special Edition with Sunrise Pink and Twilight Blue joining the line. Why special edition? The MagSafe outline on the back is replaced with the Beats b logo.
Now, it’s a gigantic, high-res curved display with perfect viewing angles, too. That makes the price feel a little closer to right.
The task management app’s enhanced Shortcuts include the new Complete Action, Complete Project, and Find Folders actions, the updated Today’s Forecast (with support for due, deferred, tagged, and flagged actions), and the beta Find Actions and Find Projects Shortcuts.
LinearMouse is a free app that lets you choose different settings for every mouse and touchpad you connect to. This can help you solve the acceleration problem I just mentioned and also lets you do things like use natural scrolling on one device and not others. It can also customize all the buttons on your mouse.
Businesses in Maryland can now use a state-developed app to check mobile driver’s licenses for age verification. The app, one official says, looks to innovate and streamline how residents interact with businesses and government organizations in the state.
[...]
Businesses using the mobile ID app for age verification will only see necessary information, meaning the app will only present data that confirms if the customer is 18 years old or 21 years old, for instance, and will not reveal other information such as the person’s birth date, she explained.
The leaked software references the "MacBook Air (13-inch, M4, 2025)" and the "MacBook Air (15-inch, M4, 2025)," confirming that new M4 MacBook Air models are in development and are likely not too far off from launching.
Apple this "past summer" canceled the development of a high-performance Mac chip that would have consisted of four smaller chips stitched together, in order to free up engineering resources for a planned AI server chip, according to The Information.
Based on the report's description of the chip, it sounds like Apple has canceled a previously-rumored "Extreme" chip for the Mac. It was previously reported that an "M2 Extreme" chip was scrapped a few years ago, but perhaps Apple had revisited the idea since then. In any case, it now sounds like an "M4 Extreme" chip is also unlikely.
Starmer and Cook are expected to discuss Apple's investment in Britain, where the company has pumped in 18 billion pounds ($23 billion) over the last five years, the spokesperson told reporters.
I have a bunch of classical music playlists, and I combine them all, and I shuffle up all the tracks, and listen to them all day.
I wonder how many classical music fans do I offend by this one simple act.
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Apple today announced the release of iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2, introducing a brand-new set of Apple Intelligence features that will elevate users’ experience with iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and builds on the first set of capabilities already introduced. Apple Intelligence is the easy-to-use personal intelligence system that delivers helpful and relevant intelligence while taking an extraordinary step forward for privacy in AI. Now users can explore creative new ways to express themselves visually with Image Playground, create the perfect emoji for any situation with Genmoji, and make their writing even more dynamic with new enhancements to Writing Tools.
The update includes major new Apple Intelligence features, upgrades to the Camera Control on iPhone 16, a redesign for the Mail app, and much more.
To put it more simply, I think empowering LLMs to be “creative” with the goal of displacing artists is a mistake, and also a distraction – a glossy facade largely amounting to a party trick that gets boring fast and misses the bigger picture of how these AI tools may practically help us in the workplace, healthcare, biology, and other industries.
“In the past we’ve been lucky to have the support of Zane [Lowe] and Ebro who’ve given us space in their shows, which aren’t necessarily Latin music shows, and that’s been great, but we need more spaces to tell the stories of many other Latin artists and for them to feel free to speak in Spanish or even Spanglish. Apple Música Uno is the place for that,” says Jerry Pulles, Latin music programmer at Apple Music. Over the past 10 years, Pulles has overseen the launch of several hosted shows, including the Apple Music 1 series La Fórmula Radio with El Guru, which is dedicated to Latin music.
Now, Música Uno will serve as a hub exclusively for all things Latin, covering every spectrum of the genre — from reggaetón to pop to Mexican music. “This radio station will allow us to continue building blocks with the artists we’ve supported since day one,” adds Marissa Lopez, Apple’s head of Latin music artist relations. “We’ve seen Latin music’s growth in real time, so this launch has been a long time coming.”
The new Apple Música Uno, Apple Music Club, and Apple Music Chill live-hosted radio stations offer listeners more exclusive shows from some of the world’s most vital artists, including Becky G, Rauw Alejandro, Grupo Frontera, Honey Dijon, Jamie xx, FKA twigs, Nia Archives, Brian Eno, Stephan Moccio, and more
The TCC in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS alerts the user when an app wants to access sensitive data; the user can then grant or deny access. In this instance, the vulnerability allows a malicious app to intercept and redirect the files when a user moves or copies files from the Files app, without alerting the user that the app is accessing the data. The files are then saved to an area defined by the malicious app and can be moved to a remote server.
We don't know what's included in the new firmware, and Apple does not typically provide information about Beats firmware updates.
The Passport Cover with Find My is made from a simple but attractive black vegan leather material. It has a book-like shape and it is sized to hold a passport on one side, with four card slots for IDs and credit cards on the other side. There's also a pocket that can be used for holding money or an airline ticket.
What’s present helped pull some critical data from an SD card I thought was dead, easily backed my data up to Google Drive, and put something worthwhile on the table worthy of my consideration, and yours too.
It’s a brand new app called Spatial Analogue. The company describes it as “the first collaborative 3D immersive experience platform on Apple Vision Pro” for professional 3D design workflows.
Plug your external camera into your iPad's USB-C port either before or during your Teams meeting, and the app will automatically select it for use on the call. To switch back to your iPad's built-in camera, simply disconnect the external one.
So, in the interest of having my cake and eating it, I've gathered a collection of gadgets that help me get the most out of my iPhone when traveling. With these accessories, I can use my iPhone as if it were a desktop PC, peripherals and all. See you later, laptop.
The satellite capability is slated to come to next year’s Apple Watch Ultra, the company’s top-of-the-line model, according to people familiar with the matter. The technology will let smartwatch users send off-the-grid text messages via Globalstar Inc.’s fleet of satellites when they don’t have a cellular or Wi-Fi connection.
A bipartisan group of members of Congress has sent letters to Google’s and Apple’s CEOs citing 404 Media’s reporting and asking what the giant tech companies are doing to address the rampant problem of nonconsensual AI-generated intimate media enabled on their platforms. The Congress members also sent a letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella given Microsoft Designer’s role in creating the infamous nonconsensual nude images of Taylor Swift that were viewed millions of times on Twitter, a story 404 Media broke as well.
Over the past five years, Apple has invested more than £18 billion in the United Kingdom, building on the company’s longstanding connection to the country.
Apple today announced its investment in the United Kingdom has grown to exceed £18 billion over the past five years — and its engineering teams in the country have also doubled during that time. This builds on Apple’s longstanding connection to the U.K., where the company now supports 550,000 jobs through direct employment, its supply chain, and the iOS app economy.
I sure hope Apple is not even thinking about having more Apple Music radio stations with A.I.-generated hosts. :-)
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“The first Monument Valley is a time capsule of 2013 / 2014 graphic design,” says lead artist Lili Ibrahim, referencing the clean lines of its perfectly crafted, impossible architecture and brain-massaging, soft-pastel color blends. Ibrahim wondered, “What can Monument Valley 3 be influenced by to create a time capsule of graphic design today?” She immersed herself in magazines, websites, and art exhibitions. Of particular resonance were “destructive” and “deconstructive” fashion editorials with paint splodges over the top of them and images butchered by gaping cut-out holes. Ibrahim attended a retrospective on the UK artist Cornelia Parker and saw the famous 1991 installation Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View — essentially a freeze-frame of a garden shed at the moment of its obliteration. “Seeing this was so freeing to me,” she says. “I could imagine the buildings in Monument Valley doing this.”
This is precisely what happens in some of Monument Valley 3’s more visually striking puzzles. One origami-inspired stage, which is textured to evoke Japanese washi paper, sees architecture unfurl and unfold like a deconstructed 3D net. Another sees you literally exploding architecture in slow motion so that it comes to resemble a kind of blooming cubic flowerhead.
We talk a lot these days about Big Data, those heaping stores of digitized information that, fueling search and recommendation engines, social media feeds, and, now, artificial intelligence models, govern so much of our lives today. But we don’t give much notice to what might be called little data—all those fleeting, discrete bits of information that swarm around us like gnats on a humid summer evening. Measurements and readings. Forecasts and estimates. Facts and statistics. Yet it’s the little data, at least as much as the big stuff, that shapes our sense of ourselves and the world around us as we click and scroll through our days. Our apps have recruited us all into the arcane fraternity of the logistics manager and the process-control engineer, the meteorologist and the lab tech, and what we’re monitoring and measuring, in such exquisite detail, is our own existence. “Software is eating the world,” the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen declared in a famous Wall Street Journal op-ed a decade ago. It’s also eating us.
Apple computer buyers are reporting that impostors have been using fake IDs and QR codes to steal their laptops before they can pick them up at several Apple stores across Southern California.
The crime, reported to several media outlets in Southern California, occurs when consumers order Apple laptops online but find that when they arrive at the Apple stores to pick up the computers, they have already been claimed and taken.
Apple today launched Tap to Pay on iPhone in the United Arab Emirates, empowering merchants to use iPhone to seamlessly and securely accept in-person, contactless payments.
Panic issued Transmit 5.10.5 to add support for browsing shared folders in OneDrive.
2024 was a big year for apps, but it was also different from most. More often than not, app innovation is driven by new Apple APIs; that wasn’t the case this year. Instead, it was other trends that shaped the apps we love.
Capcom's Resident Evil 2 remake has debuted on Apple devices, making it the fourth Resident Evil title to arrive on Apple's mobile platforms.
WhatsApp may have transformed Sabharwal’s business. But Meta’s goal isn’t to sell pottery. Rather, Shivika Pottery Gallery is a tiny element in the larger solar system of services, features, and connections that make up WhatsApp.
[...]
WhatsApp initially achieved that global dominance in large part by doing just one thing very well: enabling cheap, private, and reliable messaging on almost any phone, almost anywhere in the world. But in the decade since Meta acquired WhatsApp for an eye-watering $22 billion in 2014, the app has been transformed from a narrowly focused utilitarian tool into a sort of “everything app.” In countries like India, Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia, WhatsApp is now also a place for scheduling doctor’s appointments and conducting real estate deals — and buying Sabharwal’s ceramic ducks. In Brazil, the beauty juggernaut L’Oréal now makes an average of 25% of its online direct-to-consumer sales on WhatsApp.
The Apple I like is focused on making tools to empower users and making open platforms to empower developers (who in turn help empower users). I think of iLife, built-in scripting languages, RSS in Mail, and bundled developer tools that didn’t need a membership and permission to call certain APIs.
Using in-app charges to appear on the App Store’s free category, and thereby attract a wider audience, is hardly new. Mobile games have been taking advantage of this loophole for years — and what’s now happening with the creative AI market looks eerily familiar.
I still don't understand why Netflix get into the games business, and I still don't see how games can help Netflix's business, but you bet I will download and play the heck out of Monument Valley 3.
(Outside of the app store business, I don't see much to celebrate Apple's service business these days. Losing this sequel to Netflix when it is already on both the App Store and Apple Arcade is not good.)
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Norwegian payment service Vipps has become the world's first company to launch a competing tap-to-pay solution to Apple Pay on iPhone, following Apple's agreement with European regulators to open up its NFC technology to third parties.
Starting December 9, Vipps users in Norway can make contactless payments in stores using their iPhones. The service initially supports customers of SpareBank 1, DNB, and over 40 other Norwegian banks, representing approximately 70% of Norwegian bank customers.
Apple today announced plans to expand in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, starting with the launch of the Apple Store online in summer 2025. [...]
Starting in 2026, Apple will begin opening the first of several flagship Apple Store locations in Saudi Arabia. These retail stores will offer customers in the country even more ways to connect with Apple’s knowledgable team members and find the perfect products and services. As part of this expansion, Apple is in the initial stages of planning an iconic retail store coming to Diriyah, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Our biometric data is freely available to anybody with an AI model and a camera. Facial recognition software is such a pervasive technology that we submit our data whenever we go through airport security or walk into a drug store. You start to wonder if it’s possible to hide our facial features or—on the extreme end—change our appearance to such an extent that it fools the AI algorithm.
If the Vision Pro taught me anything, it’s that on a device designed for immersive experiences the Safari browser feels like an afterthought. In a world where AR, VR, and voice-controlled systems are becoming more integrated into daily life, the browser’s limitations become glaringly obvious. At this point, there is no way the Vision Pro is leaving my life, but I wouldn’t mind at all if my browser did.
The dictionary defines it as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging”. But few people are aware of how literally technology is rotting our brains, and how decisively compulsive internet use is destroying our grey matter.
On the one hand, when the next pandemic arrives, contact tracing in many public spaces may well be so much easier, and we don't have to scan QR codes or install privacy-invading apps on our smartphones anymore.
On the other hand, we can no longer be anonymous anywhere we go. Cookies? Bluetooth beacons? How quaint.
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Christmas season is here, and there are lots of ways to get into the spirit of the season. One way is to watch a Christmas special on TV, and one of the best is A Charlie Brown Christmas. For decades, it aired on broadcast TV, but that’s no longer the case–it’s now an Apple TV+ exclusive.
Now, the fact that this institution is on a streaming service may cause you to exclaim, “Bah! Humbug!” and send Apple a stocking full of coal, but stop, sip some egg nog, and relax–yes, I’m talking about you, Uncle Fred. Apple is making A Charlie Brown Christmas available to anyone to watch for free, for a limited time. If you are an Apple TV+ subscriber, however, you can watch it anytime.
Between goal tracking, habit tracking, and task management – Griply has a lot to offer for users trying to get things done. Underneath each goal you can create an action plan – and track progress by setting subgoals, tasks, and habits needed to reach your goal.
You might think your only options are to get a MacBook model with a larger screen or buy an external display. Both of those tactics would certainly help, but before you spend a bunch of money know that you can give yourself quite a bit more screen real estate by tweaking your software settings.
We already knew that the tensions and scares were going to ramp up in season 2 of Severance, and the latest trailer provides a deeper glimpse into what to expect — along with teasing answers to some important (and weird) questions.
Screen estate is at a premium on a laptop screen, especially with my eyes getting older, which forces text sizes to be bigger.
So, yes, I hide my dock on the MacBook Air. But, it never seems right to hide the menu bar. The menu bar! The ever-present ever-at-the-top menu bar is one of the permanent marker of what makes a Mac a Mac. I can't hide it at all.
Plus, that notch is going to look ugly with the menu bar hidden. :-)
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“Apple is laser focused on things that are going to make your day-to-day life better,” says Joswiak. That ultimately involves making use of personal information, whether it's knowing who your close contacts are when you search for a specific photo, recalling places you’ve visited when you use maps, or keeping track of what you’ve downloaded from Safari. To fully make use of AI, Apple would need to organize the personal information of its users in a comprehensive fashion—a scary proposition the company felt it was uniquely qualified to pitch to its customers because of its very public focus on privacy. Protecting that privacy, however, turned out to be a major technical challenge.
“We had to innovate at the data center level, at the system level, at the OS level, at the cryptographic and security protocol level, at the distributed AI inference level … at every level up the stack to do what no one had done before—extend an on-device processing level of security that you have on your phone, to advance processing in the cloud,” says Federighi. “I hope it is the future of how everyone does this kind of process.” His conviction is so strong that he says he hopes other companies mimic the achievement, even if it means Apple losing its competitive advantage. “There are lots of cases where we have very mixed feelings about people copying what we do, but when it comes to our privacy practices, we were happy to set an example and encourage,” Federighi says.
Launched last year and expanded to Asia in January 2024, Apple Music Classical was created to solve the problem of music streaming services not being designed to suit fans of the genre. While pop music fans usually listen to just the original version of a song, fans of classical composers from before the era of recorded music usually prefer to choose between renditions of pieces by contemporary(ish) performers.
As a result, the most listened to classical albums of 2024 include a range of contemporary works and new albums of contemporary performers playing pieces by classical composers.
Simply Piano works by listening to you playing notes and detecting if you’re playing the right or wrong ones. It’s very clever, but the Vision Pro version adds in the ability to overlay a virtual keyboard on your real one, so it can provide visual cues (in the form of glowing notes) when you’re not sure which key to play. It also annotates your fingers, so you can see which fingers are supposed to play which notes.
More than half a decade in the making, Apple’s in-house modem system will debut next spring, according to people familiar with the matter. The technology is slated to be part of the iPhone SE, the company’s entry-level smartphone, which will be updated next year for the first time since 2022.
[...]
For now, the modem won’t be used in Apple’s higher-end products. It’s set to come to a new mid-tier iPhone later next year, code-named D23, that features a far-thinner design than current models. The chip will also start rolling out as early as 2025 in Apple’s lower-end iPads.
In the ruling, three Ninth Circuit judges said the plaintiffs failed to establish that it is "virtually impossible" for them to reduce their storage, or that they will inevitably be forced to pay for iCloud storage. In fact, two named plaintiffs were still on the 5GB tier. The judges added that customers have the option to turn off iCloud at any time.
If every Apple customer has access to a private cloud compute to do on-demand AI processing for free, surely Apple can provide more than 5GB of free storage over at iCloud?
:-)
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In addition to the new Apple Intelligence features, iOS 18.2 also includes changes to the iPhone 16’s Camera control, a redesign for the Mail app, new features for the Find My app, and more.
macOS Sequoia 15.2 has been in beta since October, even before 15.1 was publicly released. That’s because it’s a sizeable update that includes a variety of powerful new Apple Intelligence features.
The upcoming iOS 18.2 update expands the hearing test feature on the AirPods Pro 2 to nine additional countries, including Cyprus, Czechia, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom, according to Apple. The feature first launched in the U.S. and select other countries in late October.
With the visionOS 2.2 update that's set to come out next week, Apple is introducing the promised Multiview feature that will let sports fans watch up to five games at once.
In addition to streaming on Apple TV+ in over 100 countries at no cost, Apple Stores in select countries will also run the game on the big screen. Apple Stores in these four countries will stream the match for visitors:
iPhone users from New Mexico are now able to add their driver's licenses and IDs to the Apple Wallet app on iPhone and Apple Watch, providing a digital version of the license that can be used in lieu of a physical card in some locations.
The aggregation drive continues apace around the world with Apple TV+ launching on Prime Video in the UK, Australia and Canada today.
"We have more subscribers than we and Apple thought we would have. We have more people watching our games," Garber said.
Apple has not released any subscriber numbers, leading some to speculate that the numbers might not be very strong.
"At some point there'll be more transparency," Garber said.
According to a new Valor Econômico report, a Brazilian Federal Court judge has ruled that the decision by Cade, the Brazilian regulator, is “disproportionate and unnecessary.” The judge understood that the measures imposed by the regulator “change, in a sensitive and structural way” Apple’s business operation.
While the future of the web may seem dark, we might take a cue from Pope’s response to the rise of print. For Pope, the proliferation of print genres and conventions entailed what McLuhan described as ‘the increasing separation of the visual faculty from the interplay with other senses’. Yet despite the uniformity and regularity that print seemed to demand, Pope found a way to capture the interplay of opposing voices in print in a manner that represented the cacophony of 18th-century London’s urban environment. The web may still change in ways that surprise us.
It's almost here, all the new AI stuff, and I am probably mostly excited getting back the volume bar on the lock screen.
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We’ve all heard the term the Walled Garden when talking about the Apple ecosystem. Apple’s biggest competitive advantage is the fact that they control everything from both a hardware and software perspective, allowing its customers to experience these little features I like to call Magic Moments. These are smaller utilities or features that are only possible because you have multiple Apple products that work off of each other giving us these wow moments. So here are some of my favorite Magic moments of the Apple Walled Garden.
Apple’s latest campaign filmed in Brazil not only promotes Action Mode, but also shows how important the feature has become for those living with hand tremors from Parkinson’s disease.
For those unfamiliar, Action Mode is a camera option available for iPhone 14 and later that significantly corrects shakes and vibrations when capturing video, making them super stable. While for some people Action Mode is just one of many camera features on the iPhone, for others it has become an important accessibility feature.
Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter are just a few of the artists who made a strong impact on Apple Music listeners in 2024 as the streaming service has revealed its year-end charts.
Apple now has a dedicated iCloud Passwords add-on designed for the Firefox browser, which means Firefox users can access passwords and logins stored in the Passwords app or iCloud Keychain when using Firefox on a Mac.
Peloton announced the launch of Strength Plus, a new standalone, audio-based strength training app. [...] The Strength Plus app allows users to generate custom workouts by choosing workout length, equipment, experience level, and which muscle groups they want to focus on. It also includes multi-week programs curated by Peloton’s strength coaches, though workouts can be done at a user’s own pace.
SmartRent today announced the launch of the Alloy Deadbolt+, a smart lock designed for the rental housing industry that integrates with Apple Wallet to enable access for residents using their iPhone or Apple Watch.
That’s it—that’s the app. It hangs holiday lights off your menu bar and on your Dock. (You can choose to have lights in both places or just one.) It’s a well executed app that’s got the flavor of the fun early Mac era.
China remains the manufacturing hub for Apple’s GSC, with 156 component suppliers in 2023. Foxconn’s facilities are concentrated in the northern Vietnam provinces of Bac Ninh, Bac Giang, Vinh Phuc and Quang Ninh, near the Chinese border. Other Apple suppliers in Vietnam also operate in these regions, creating an industrial ecosystem supporting Apple’s global supply chain.
In contrast, Indonesia has minimal integration into Apple’s supply chain. Of the 188 companies across 451 locations in 25 countries on Apple’s 2023 supplier list, only one, Yageo Corporation, operates in Indonesia.
Yes, every time I copy and paste between my Mac and my iPhone, I feel like I am living in a magical wonderland.
Sometimes though, the destination device throws up an alert telling me to wait while the devices are trying hard to push my data through whatever bandwidth they can find, the magic sort-of stopped.
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Cook also contends that Apple has been preparing for the AI revolution all along. As far back as 2018, he poached Google’s top AI manager, John Giannandrea, for a rare expansion of the company’s senior vice president ranks. Then he pulled the plug on a long-running smart-car program (an open secret never publicly acknowledged by Apple) and marshaled the company’s machine-learning talent to build AI into its software products.
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The ultimate assessments, of course, will come from users. But if 40 years of covering Apple has taught me anything, it is this: Should this first iteration of AI fall short, an unrepentant Cook will show up at a future pretaped keynote hailing a new version as “the best Apple Intelligence we’ve ever built.” Despite all the pressure, Tim Cook never lets you see him sweat.
"I think you need to be really honest about what your voice is. If somebody thinks what I’m working on is funny, it’s just because that’s the way I approach conversations with people."
So what’s better, the single-Mac life or being a Mac vagabond? As someone who’s been there, and back, and there again, I can tell you that it’s never been easier to live the two-Mac lifestyle–but it’s also never been a better time to just give the desktop up and learn to love a Mac laptop.
Yes, there’s a bit of trial and error in getting to use it, and some tutorial videos would go a long way, but there’s still an excellent selection of tools and customization options to be had. This was fun to play with, and it presents a nice array of options beyond what Apple’s free Time Machine utility offers. It may not be for everyone, but there’s something excellent here and it’s worth a gander.
Released today for its iOS app, the new feature allows people to set their cookie preferences once at the browser level rather than responding to prompts on every website.
Hixson criticized Apple in his order on Monday for stretching its privilege arguments too far.
“Privilege does not descend like a giant fog bank over every document that is in some way connected with an effort to achieve legal compliance,” Hixson wrote.
Three and a half years ago, Gelsinger announced an ambitious plan to turn around the troubled chipmaker within four years — now, he’s reportedly been kicked out of the company before he could see it through. It happened so abruptly that Intel doesn’t have a planned successor in mind, and so completely that Gelsinger won’t even stick around as an adviser. He’s gone.
Intel has been in a tailspin for years. It missed the smartphone revolution, has been plagued by quality control issues with its chips, lost customers like Apple to alternative processors, and now is at risk of missing out on AI, too.
I did listened to the first couple of episodes of Hysterical podcast, but I gave up on it. Not my cup of tea, if I recall correctly. Don't take my word for it, since I didn't finish the entire series, but it seems there were quite a bit of stretching out of stuff to fill time.
But, like I say, it's not my cup of tea, but it might be yours.
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Thanks for reading.
That summer, the Pokémon Go craze was in full bloom. Every day, tens of millions of Americans took to the streets, phones held aloft, impelled by the urge to “catch ’em all.” Hundreds of millions of users were playing the game worldwide.
The game’s rise dovetailed with a new era of digital spying. The information users were freely surrendering to private companies to play digital games, or to use cool new apps or other online platforms, was making intelligence services drool. Spy services dove headlong into stealing, hacking, or buying data from the private sector that they could not somehow procure elsewhere—even if they didn’t really yet understand the value of that information.
Accessible through music.apple.com/replay, the feature provides users with detailed insights into their music preferences and listening habits over the last 12 months. Apple has been offering monthly replays since February, but now users can view their stats for the full year.
Apple today announced that its Vision Pro headset will be launching in Taiwan on Tuesday, December 17, with pre-orders beginning this Thursday, December 5, at 9:00 a.m.
Even in its 10th year, Apple Pay is still reaching new markets. The latest, per Apple server sleuth @aaronp, is Uruguay.
Nintendo has released a new game for iPhone today, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete. The title brings back much of the experience in its predecessor, but with new content and perhaps most interestingly, a pricing experiment.
Given the trajectory of this market over the past 20 years in the US, it’s possible that the global ringtone market will stagnate in the near future and leave these companies to turn to other unexpected ventures. For now, they represent a small, strange corner of the music business, where the dream of the early aughts remains alive.
The plaintiff in the case, Amar Bhakta, has worked in advertising technology for Apple since 2020. According to the suit, Apple used its privacy policies to harm his employment prospects. For instance, it forbade Bhakta from participating in public speaking about digital advertising and forced him to remove information from his LinkedIn page about his job at Apple.
“For Apple employees, the Apple ecosystem is not a walled garden. It is a prison yard. A panopticon where employees, both on and off duty, are subject to Apple’s all-seeing eye,” the lawsuit says.
Indonesia is expecting to get a $1 billion investment commitment from tech firm Apple Inc in a week, its investment minister said on Tuesday, after the government banned iPhone 16 sales for failing to meet local content rules.
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"Whoever benefits from the sales must invest here, create jobs here. What's important is how the global value chain moves here, because once it does, suppliers follow," Rosan said, adding the investment commitment is part of a first phase.
A phone -- that goes with you everywhere you go, can see what you see, can hear what you hear -- is not just like the computer that sits on my desk day-in day-out. Different rules need to be applied.
I am glad Apple, even though it is not always succeeding, is taking control of the iPhone's security and privacy seriously. I am sad that there are people who think we are better off not allowing anyone to buy a phone that a private company like Apple controls.
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Thanks for reading.
But many doctors – and tech experts – remain cautious about using health data captured by wearables.
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Dr Salisbury says there can be a large number of reasons why we might temporarily get abnormal data such as an increased heart rate, whether it’s a blip in our bodies or a device malfunction - and many of them do not require further investigation.
“I’m concerned that we will be encouraging people to monitor everything all the time, and see their doctor every time the machine thinks they’re ill, rather than when they think they’re ill.”
This app uses psychology and behavioral science to help you create healthy habits that stick. It does this by transferring control of behavior from willpower to your environment. In effect, Fabulous automates behavior by planning where, when, and how an action will happen.
Apple has quietly tweaked its Home app webpage to indicate that its upcoming robot vacuum control feature will now arrive in early 2025 rather than later this year, as previously advertised.
When support is added, Apple device users will be able to start a robot vacuum via HomeKit automations and scenes, or ask Siri to clean a specific room. Apple says the Home app will support the "core functionality" of robot vacuum cleaners, such as vacuuming, mopping, power control, cleaning mode, and charge status.
I have the impression that machines can tell me when I am ill when I don't even know that I am ill. Maybe, I guess, the difference is in how good the machines -- in hospitals versus on our wrists -- are.
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Thanks for reading.
Many people talk of how their work and personal documents are ‘backed up’ to the cloud. What this means is those things are stored there. That’s great for convenience: sign in and access all the things. But unless you make periodic local saves of such items, you might one day visit to find that particular cloud has evaporated – or has a massive padlock in front of it.
Minizones is a sweet and simple Mac app that allows you to glance at varying timezones across the globe, right from your Mac’s menu bar. It’s a nice tool if you work remotely and have to communicate with coworkers across the globe, or regularly need to communicate with people in varying places.
Plash is a free macOS app that allows you to take any web page and use it as your wallpaper, effectively pinning it behind all other open windows and applications.
But I can also see the appeal, especially on nights out, when people might not be checking their phone. And, look, you’re never going to go missing if you cannot, by definition, go missing. So in that way, I can see why it helps my friends feel safe.
The cloud is, basically, a computer that you have no control over. True, many companies including Apple have good track records in keeping your data safe. After all, they also make backups and probably do restoration tests from tiem to time. But, make no mistakes: you have no control over that computer.
Actually, even for hard disk sitting on your desk in your home, you don't have full control. Disaster can happen, both natural and man-made. And time is one of the enemy against preservation of memories.
So, do backups. And do check from time to time that your backups are okay. Don't just rely on your hard disk, or 'the cloud'.
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Thanks for reading.