France’s antitrust regulator has fined Apple 150 million euros ($162 million) for abusing its dominant position in the distribution of mobile applications for iOS and iPad devices between April 2021 and July 2023.
The French Competition Authority said on Monday it found that the objective of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework requiring users to consent to data collection by third-party applications was not in itself open to criticism. But it ruled that the “way in which it was implemented was neither necessary nor proportionate to Apple’s stated objective of protecting personal data.”
The European Commission is expected to fine Apple and Meta this week for violating the EU’s digital competition rules, thrusting Big Tech into the escalating trade war between the United States and the European Union.
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However, while the threats from Washington are a factor, they are not the most important consideration when setting fines, according to a person familiar with the Commission's thinking. Other factors, particularly the novelty of the regulation, are more important, they said.
There are a growing number of services that give out disguised email addresses and relay any messages to your actual address. Experts say this can be a powerful tool to safeguard privacy and security.
You can recycle them through e-waste programs, donate them to someone still using an older device, or repurpose them creatively, allowing you to say goodbye to your old Lightning cables more responsibly without adding to the world's growing tech trash problem.
I’m just struggling to feel anything other than apathy at the prospect of watching Apple’s top brass either admit their failings or, more likely, act like nothing went wrong. One outcome is depressing and boring; the other depressing and infuriating. Neither sounds like a fun way to spend an evening (as it will be here in the U.K.).
Remember when Apple deemed that the MobileMe brand was so damaged that they had to change it to iCloud? Will we see a new branding for Apple Intelligence? Or will Apple keep Apple Intelligence to the features it can deliver, and create a new brand for the other hallucination-proned stuff instead?
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For tech analyst Avi Greengart, "The fact that Apple has advertised Apple Intelligence so heavily with the iPhone 16 is a bit of a black eye, because most of what was promised in Apple Intelligence is not in the iPhone 16."
But he cautions that even if Google's Gemini AI features in its Android line of phones are way ahead of anything Apple has delivered, customers may not have noticed much.
More specifically, WWDC 2025 affords Apple the opportunity to reset the discussion around what's coming to Siri and when. And it's an opportunity Apple really needs to take advantage of.
Yumbox is an easy to use app that allows you to keep track of your favorite restaurants in your area. You can easily log all of your favorites, categorize them as you see fit, and then once you’re done – you’ll easily be able to filter all of your top picks.
Just did a little spring cleaning of my (physical) stuff. When I decide whether to keep a thing or to remove from my possession, I have changed from thinking whether the thing sparks joy to thinking whether other people will hate me for leaving the thing for them to clear out after I die.
:-)
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When I recently spoke with Side Quest’s co-creators, Ashly Burch, John Howell Harris, and Katie McElhenney, they told me that the new show’s stylistic similarities to Mythic Quest’s forays into the past were entirely intentional. But after years of focusing on characters who see themselves as larger-than-life gods, the Side Quest team was much more interested in telling stories about the players who made Mythic Quest a hit.
When cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra heard about Rogen and Goldberg’s plan to use a lot of oners throughout the series, as well as shoot an entire episode in a continuous take, he was more than game for the challenge. “There were no shortcuts,” Newport-Berra says.
Rogue Amoeba has issued SoundSource 5.8 with a lengthy list of improvements and bug fixes for the audio control utility.
As mobile developers, we work within a minefield of constraints: limited system resources, unpredictable network conditions, long release cycles, and some of the strictest privacy requirements in tech. And yet, user expectations are sky high. Every app is compared—consciously or not—to the polish of Instagram, the speed of Slack, or the reliability of Google Maps.
This isn’t just “front-end development for smaller screens.” It’s software engineering under pressure—with less room for error, fewer safety nets, and all the responsibility to deliver a seamless experience. In this post, I’ll break down the unique challenges that make mobile development one of the most demanding, misunderstood corners of our industry.
The Irish subsidiary of Apple has reported a 60% increase in profits to $62.3 billion in 2024, while net sales reached $222.3 billion.
New accounts filed by Apple Operations International Limited, based in Cork, show the firm had a net sales increase of 1.6% at the end of its financial year.
Snow Leopard would receive 8 updates over the next 2 years before its successor (Lion) was released, and I think that Snow Leopard 10.6.8 is what most people have in their minds as what Snow Leopard was from the start. Imagine if Apple released an update and sent 2 years refining it over and over, instead of what feels like getting it out in the fall and then immediately shifting focus to the next year's update. On the other hand, do you want the Mac to lag behind iOS in terms of features?
It took me a while to realize the second episode of The Studio, which is about the shooting of an one-take scene, is shot in one-take. But once I realized it, I was so very delighted.
Once again, if you are an Apple TV+ subscriber, don't wait and start watching The Studio. And if you are not an Apple TV+ subscriber, maybe you should subscribe? There are enough quality shows on it already that your subscription will be worthwhile for quite some time.
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If it’s 100% accurate, it’s a fantastic time saver. If it is anything less than 100% accurate, it’s useless. Because even if there’s a 2% chance it’s wrong, there’s a 2% chance you’re stranding mom at the airport, and mom will be, rightly, very disappointed. Our moms deserve better!
Bottom line: Apple is not the laggard in AI. AI is the laggard in AI.
With Image Playground, video editors can use Apple Intelligence to create stylized images, and Magnetic Mask workflows have been streamlined with a new keyboard shortcut to show or hide the Magnetic Mask Organizer.
This new study looks at how an Apple Watch can monitor a person's heartbeat, then tell them to take their medications when needed — instead of every day.
Today as part of its latest Nintendo Direct, the gaming giant announced the launch of a brand new iPhone and Android app: Nintendo Today! It’s available now on the App Store as a new way to follow updates from Nintendo every single day.
A total of 350 winners have been selected, and the winners are eligible to attend the WWDC 2025 special event that will take place at Apple Park on Monday, June 9.
Of the 350, 50 will be named Distinguished Winners, and will be invited to Cupertino, California for a multi-day Apple Park event that will include the keynote meetup and additional opportunities to meet with Apple engineers and employees.
It is, after all, nearly April, which means there are just two months until WWDC and the first semi-public builds of another new MacOS version. I am hesitant every year to upgrade. But it does not appear much effort is being put into the maintenance of any previous version. We all get the choice of many familiar bugs, or a blend of hopefully fewer old bugs plus some new ones.
I do hope there’s at least a tiny chance that the EC’s ruling leads Apple to make government-mandated lemons into lemonade. It could surprise us all by supporting other manufacturers’ smartwatches wholeheartedly—not just where it’s a legal requirement, and not in such a cumbersome fashion as to discourage anyone from taking advantage of it.
This much seems certain: If Apple doesn’t invent the next great wrist-worn gadget, somebody else will. It’s kind of fun to think about that somebody else creating something so compelling that Apple sees welcoming it onto the iPhone as being in its own self-interest—or at least a better option than giving iPhone fans any reason to even toy with the idea of switching allegiances.
Plus, the show consists entirely of “oners,” long, uninterrupted takes shot with a single camera. Scenes run more than 10 minutes long with no cuts, a far cry from Rogen and Goldberg’s usual comedic playground, where two cameras get cross-coverage, there’s tons of improvisation and they “find it in the edit.”
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In a sweet twist of irony, the series’ third episode harps on the loathsome concept of the studio note — and the oners allowed Rogen to dodge Apple’s feedback almost entirely. “Because of the way we shot it, essentially nothing could be done after the episode,” Rogen says. “Apple would give us notes, but the answer was always ‘We can’t do that.’ ‘Can you take out this line?’ ‘Nope.’ ‘Could you go from this line to this line?’ ‘Nope, we can’t do any of that.’”
The current situation Apple is facing with Apple Intelligence may be different from past problems such as Apple Maps and MobileMe. In those instance, we all know that if Apple invest enough effort and money, those issues can be solved.
However, what some of the stuff Apple had promised with Apple Intelligence may well be technically infeasible. The whole Siri understanding what you say and what you want it to do may well never be working properly beyond the rumored 60 to 80 percent of the time.
It may be a problem that you cannot solve and deploy within the next year, no matter how much effort and money Apple pours into it.
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Apple today announced new initiatives in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand that collaborate with communities to advance technology’s role in preserving culture and enhancing education. This includes rolling out representation of Indigenous lands in Australia and New Zealand in Apple Maps, unveiling new community grants for local partners, and expanding the Apple Foundation Program to help students pursue careers in the growing iOS app economy.
“We’ve had teams in Australia and New Zealand for over 40 years, and we’re thrilled to deepen our relationships here and bring new opportunities to communities across both countries,” said Alisha Johnson Wilder, Apple’s senior director of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives. “These efforts put community first by representing Indigenous land, expanding access to education, and protecting our shared environment.”
In the fictional world of Lumon Industries, the biotech titan that’s central to the Apple Original series Severance, it’s possible to separate a person’s work and personal selves through a surgical procedure. And yet, for some employees of the cutting-edge company, video editing proves particularly challenging. In episode four of season two, “Woe’s Hollow,” we got a glimpse at a lo-fi attempt in the video that welcomes the Macrodata Refinement Department to the Outdoor Retreat and Team Building Occurrence (ORTBO).
“It’s hilarious,” says Geoffrey Richman, one of the show’s real-life editors and a three-time Emmy Award nominee. “With the jumpcuts and glitchy edits in the ORTBO video, it feels like Milchick [played by Tramell Tillman] cut the video together quickly with Miss Huang [Sarah Bock] in the back room behind his office.”
Surrounded by the Lumon-like employees, Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, Tramell Tillman and Gwendoline Christie, Dichen Lachman and creator Dan Erickson struck various poses after walking up to the platform on which the big blue balloon sat, with Severance written on it.
With the short film, Apple shows the benefits of the Active Noise Cancellation feature in AirPods 4 in a fun and creative way. In the behind-the-scenes video, Pascal and Jonze detail that the movie is about someone on a breakup and how music combined with the ANC feature on AirPods can transform the world around you.
My favorite new section of MusicHarbor is News, which pulls articles about the artists you follow from a dozen sources. It’s an excellent set of publications that includes chorus.fm, NPR Music, Pitchfork, and others. If there are any feeds among those listed that you don’t like, though, you can turn individual publications off, so they won’t appear in the app.
Lost in all the Apple Intelligence hype last year was the somewhat astonishing fact that at its developer conference, Apple unveiled a load of AI features that offered almost no way for app developers to get in the game. The biggest story for developers at WWDC 2024 was App Intents, which would allow apps to better integrate with all the features that Apple has now admitted it can’t ship. So in hindsight, WWDC 2024 had almost nothing for developers at all.
This needs to change, and WWDC 2025 is the place for it to happen. App developers should view Apple platforms as the best places to build AI-enhanced apps. That’s good for Apple. The company has invested a lot in creating hardware that’s pretty solid for running AI applications (thanks, Neural Engine). The next step should be offering developers access to Apple-blessed ML models on its devices, and easy systemwide integration with external models from Apple and third parties. Apple built Apple Intelligence for itself; it’s time to turn the tables and let the app developers start innovating.
Apple is preparing to sell new Beats-branded charging cables, according to placeholder product listings on a handful of reseller websites in Canada and Europe.
The company is promoting Vanessa Trigub to a new role as vice president of stores and retail operations globally, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the changes haven’t been announced. She previously managed locations in the Americas West region, in addition to handling retail operations. Now she’ll oversee the heads of retail for Europe and the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and the Americas East region.
Apple's iPhone 16 series will be available in Indonesia from April 11, it said on Wednesday, after Jakarta lifted a ban on its sale following the company's more than $300 million investment plan.
Apple will continue to invest in China "in a big way", as the country is a central part of the US tech company's critical supply chain, said Jeff Williams, Apple's chief operating officer, in an interview.
The senior executive made the comments during his trip to Apple's key suppliers such as Luxshare Precision Industry Co in China on Tuesday.
I am very much enjoying the first two episodes of the new Apple TV+ comedy, The Studio.
Although I am kicking myself for not immediately noticing the connection in the scene where Mr Martin Scorsese pitched his movie until about 2 seconds later.
But, on a more bottom-line note, why didn't Apple TV+ premiere this new series on the same day of the Severance finale? Why wait a week? A week where many Severance audience might have unsubscribed?
Okay, I am not sure how much overlap are there for the two target audience, but, hey, a good show is a good show.
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Apple has announced that its 2025 Worldwide Developer Conference will take place June 9 through June 13. It will again be free and entirely online, although Apple is also hosting a special event at Apple Park on the first day for some lucky developers who request to attend. Apple doesn’t say how attendees will be selected. Also on the schedule is the traditional Swift Student Challenge for budding developers.
If you are planning on travelling there and live outside the United States, there are some things you should know and precautions you should take, particularly if you are someone who is transgender or nonbinary. It is a good thing travel is not required, and hopefully Apple will once again run labs worldwide.
Apple Music Classical was updated today with time-synced listening guides, curated stations, and personalized recommendations on the Home tab of the app.
The popular DJing app djay by Algoriddim already offered Apple Music integration since last year, and additional platforms that are now supported include AlphaTheta, Serato, and inMusic's Engine DJ, Denon DJ, Numark, and RANE DJ. For example, you can now access the entire Apple Music catalog in AlphaTheta's rekordbox app for iPhone and iPad.
AirPods Pro 2 users in Australia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Colombia will soon have access to the hearing health feature set that Apple has been rolling out for the last several months.
Showbiz satire The Studio pulls off an anatomical feat, shoving its head so far up its own ass that it comes out the other side resembling something genuine and heartfelt. This is by design. [...] What distinguishes Apple TV+’s new half-hour comedy is its choice to marry farce with a palpable warmth toward the world it lampoons. There’s a real honesty to the resulting mixture: Yes, Hollywood is a silly, destructive business that deserves ridicule in so many ways, and yet there’s something about it that continues to inspire our deep, abiding love.
StopTheMadness Pro is a one-stop solution to reclaiming the internet. It has so many features that it's hard to list them all in one article, but I'll highlight the ones I like the most (for context, I primarily use it with Safari on Mac). If my brief rundown isn't enough for you, once you install the extension, you can also of course click its icon in the toolbar to see everything it can do. This can be a bit overwhelming, since the General tab itself lists over 50 features, but the extension enables a good set of defaults to get you started. If you don't have the time to immediately check out every feature, the defaults and my recommendations will still take care of a large number of annoyances for you.
You may have seen Apple Maps survey cars in your area before. As they drive around, the cars take photos and 3D scans to generate ground truth data that can be used to improve map accuracy and offer features like Look Around, Apple’s equivalent of Google Street View.
But now the data collected from these cars will also have another purpose. In an updated disclosure on the Apple Maps Image Collection website, Apple says that starting this month, imagery from its vehicle surveys will also be used to train generative AI models, like those used for Apple Intelligence features such as Image Playground and Clean Up.
Apple has suffered a blow in its efforts to salvage its lucrative search placement deal with Google. A new ruling from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals affirms that Apple cannot participate in Google's upcoming antitrust hearing, which could leave a multibillion-dollar hole in Apple's balance sheet. The judges in the case say Apple simply waited too long to get involved.
We now have Snoopy and Woodstock on Apple Watches and Apple TVs. Is it time for Snoopy to make an appearance on iPhone's lock screen? Maybe at WWDC?
I wish there are more customization options as well as new lock-screens offered in iOS. Different clocks and even different Now Playing widgets will be welcoming from me.
But given what's happening -- or rather, what is not happening over at Apple Watch and its selection of watch faces, I am not holding out hope.
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Apple will bring lossless audio and ulta-low latency audio to AirPods Max in its upcoming iOS 18.4 software update arriving in April, according to the company.
Today Apple announced a forthcoming firmware update for AirPods Max with USB-C that will enable lossless audio. As part of that news, the company has now started selling a new cable to enable wired playback on its newest AirPods Max with a standard headphone jack.
In the last couple of weeks I’ve been asked to help recover data lost when files have been accidentally deleted, and an internal SSD has been wiped remotely using Find My Mac. What we perhaps haven’t fully appreciated is how improved security protection in our Macs has made it far harder, if not impossible, to recover such lost data. Allow me to explain in three scenarios.
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For Intel Macs with T2 chips, and Apple silicon Macs, the chances of being able to recover files from their internal SSDs have become diminishingly small. This makes it all the more important that you make and keep good and comprehensive backups of everything in your Mac’s Data volume.
17 years is a long time, though. And developers long ago stopped seeing the App Store as something that makes them happy, or that reduces friction and hassle from their lives. Instead they view it as a major source of friction and hassle. Apple should have focused on keeping the App Store as a thing that makes developers (mostly) happy all along, not (as things stand today) mostly miserable.
Apple is set to stave off a possible fine and an EU order over its browser options on iPhones after it made changes to comply with landmark EU rules aimed at reining in Big Tech, people with direct knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.
According to a statement from Apple, the feature has been disabled for users in the EU due to “regulatory uncertainties” caused by the Digital Markets Act antitrust legislation. The company claims that the DMA’s “interoperability requirements” could force the company to “compromise the integrity of our products” in a way that puts users at risk.
The company doesn’t say why Apple Intelligence will be launched in the EU, but not iPhone Mirroring. SharePlay Screen Sharing, a new way to let users share their screen on FaceTime, is also unavailable in the EU.
Beijing pledged to expand market access and attract greater foreign investment as top executives from Apple, Pfizer, FedEx and other global firms gathered for the China Development Forum, a high-profile event taking place amid escalating trade tensions with the United States.
Vice Premier He Lifeng told visiting business leaders Sunday that China "remains committed to expanding high-level opening-up of market, improving the business environment and welcoming more multinational companies to deepen their investment in China," according to a statement from the Ministry of Commerce. He added that China's economy is "resilient, full of potential and vitality."
China's commerce minister told Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday that the company is welcome to expand investment in the country, a ministry statement showed.
Cook said he sees the importance of preserving the history and culture in a country with 5,000 years of history, and "there's so much in the past that can be learned from and used to make our lives better in the present moment".
Speaking of the current trend of artificial intelligence, Cook said technology, at its best, is for enriching people's lives, and for making people not only more productive but more creative as well.
"But it does not and it should not replace (human beings). It's a complement rather than a replacement,"Cook said.
SwitchBot has quietly built a solid lineup of smart home products, including curtain motors, door locks, and robot vacuums. Last week, the company announced plans to expand support for Home Assistant, with more than 45 devices gaining support in the first half of 2025. For Home Assistant users, that’s big news. But for HomeKit fans, the real benefit continues to be Matter support, which helps bring SwitchBot gear into HomeKit in a reliable and easy-to-manage way.
Apple didn’t make a big announcement about the new API. Instead, it was quietly revealed on a new documentation page on the Apple Developer website. Named “CPNowPlayingModeSports,” Apple describes the API as a “sports mode” for CarPlay, which adapts the layout of the Now Playing screen to “sporting events.”
The U-shaped office campus, designed by Gensler, would include two copper-colored buildings with floor-to-ceiling glass divided by wrap-around balconies and topped by broad eaves, with terrace decks lining the upper floors.
The project, expected to host up to 2,400 employees, would include production studios for small-format multimedia content.
One day soon, at a research lab near Santa Barbara or Seattle or a secret facility in the Chinese mountains, it will begin: the sudden unlocking of the world’s secrets. Your secrets.
Cybersecurity analysts call this Q-Day—the day someone builds a quantum computer that can crack the most widely used forms of encryption. These math problems have kept humanity’s intimate data safe for decades, but on Q-Day, everything could become vulnerable, for everyone: emails, text messages, anonymous posts, location histories, bitcoin wallets, police reports, hospital records, power stations, the entire global financial system.
So, why was the wired-connection and lossless playback for the AirPods Max not released together with the switch to USB-C version?
Is this yet another situation where Apple's hardware is running so much faster than the software that the latter need to play catch-up?
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One confounding factor: Apple’s approach to this stuff is likely not close to the norm. You'll need to be comfortable handing over large amount of data to make Alexa work its best, while OpenAI’s Sam Altman seems happy to destroy entire categories of jobs at the altar of progress. But Tim Cook and Apple? A cleaner, more positive image has for decades been part of the company’s appeal, and that includes a very clear focus on privacy.
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A privacy focus was also perceived for years as a reason Siri never felt as good to use as, for example, Google Assistant. It seemed less intelligent, less naturalistic, because it literally knew less about you. And regardless of quite how true that was, it’s part of the root of the problem in this new Siri too.
These events have shaken up the mix of new-in-box Macs that you can buy for less than $1,000 from official sources. (The aftermarket of used, refurbished, and other resold under-$1,000 Macs is a whole other, woolier story.) But it also raises several questions. Why did this new pricing dynamic come to pass? Which cheap Macs are still available? Can you still buy an M2 or M3 MacBook Air? And what happens next?
Apple Inc said on Monday it will set up a new clean energy fund in China worth 720 million yuan ($99.22 million), coinciding with a Beijing visit of its CEO Tim Cook.
Apple Inc announced on Sunday a new donation to the China Development Research Foundation to expand training programs for rural teachers, bringing its total support for causes across China to 350 million yuan ($48.3 million) since 2020.
Is the privacy problem with Apple Intelligence something that Apple can solve just by throwing money at it? I am thinking along the lines of Private Cloud Compute, but probably at a greater scale…
Or is it a problem of not getting the user data from all the different apps, just like Apple TV app knows nothing about what you watch on Netflix?
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But when asked whether there are steps being taken to make sure the next season of the sci-fi hit will arrive sooner than the last (three years passed between Seasons 1 and 2), Erickson says, “There are.”
“We’re hoping that there are no massive strikes or pandemics or fissures opening up in the crest of the Earth that end up delaying us. Barring that, I’d certainly hope that we’d get this one out a bit sooner,” he adds. “But, ‘Severance’ has always been a show that takes a long time to make, and we’re proud of what we came up with, even though it took quite a long time.
(Spoilers, of course, in this article.)
First, despite Apple's "it just works" ethos, it doesn't always work; Macs are computers like any other, their software filled with spaghetti code and poorly defined variables. Errors creep in. This one was a bit surprising, however, in that it has already persisted across three point releases of the operating system even though the fix is in Apple's own forums and appears to be as simple as storing a file in the correct spot. I am tempted to draw grandiose lessons from the incident about whether Apple's attention to iOS is leading to sloppiness in macOS—but I won't.
Apple has released Configurator 2.18 with new Shortcut actions for the Mac utility that schools and businesses can use to manage and deploy software to multiple iOS and tvOS devices.
Now the HomePod mini box matches the HomePod 2 box, which is also white regardless of which color you choose.
Queue aims to be the simplest podcasts app out there. It offers a clean interface, and all of your podcasts are kept in one neat vertical list. From that list, you can play, archive, and reorder from all of your subscribed podcasts. Despite the simple design, Queue is also rich in features.
It’s clear that the company grossly underestimated the amount of work needed to deliver on what it promised for Siri last June. If it had stuck to the Jobs playbook, the time to have launched the enhancement would have been June 2025 at the earliest. The company had clearly forgotten Hofstadter’s Law: Everything takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.
I really enjoyed the second season of Severance, and the season finale is great and satisfying. I can't wait to see what the creators will bring to us in the third season.
I too hope we don't have to wait another three years for the next season.
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If Apple sees its developer tooling and policies as neatly-paved sidewalks, new desire paths are forming—paths increasingly designed to minimize touchpoints with Apple. Alarm bells should be ringing for those concerned with what remains of Apple’s developer goodwill, and consequently, its market position.
Regent is the same company that snapped up Foundry, the firm behind outlets like PCWorld, Macworld, and TechAdvisor on Thursday. Founded in 2005, TechCrunch has experienced many shakeups in ownership after AOL acquired the site in 2010.
There’s no reason a grizzled marathoner who prizes in-depth training metrics, free coaching plans, and monthlong battery life should have to get an Apple Watch Ultra over a Garmin just because they also want to have quick replies. I’ll admit that it is mind-numbingly convenient and pleasant to stay in one ecosystem. But if the Apple Watch is truly the best smartwatch out there, it should be able to defend that title even if third parties have access to iOS notifications.
Rockwell doesn't have the clout needed to recruit (and retain) the top AI talent that Apple will need here, but JG still does. The mistake seemed to be putting him in charge of the entire org, including the AI user-facing products, when he should have probably been more behind-the-scenes, managing the more technical aspects. He'll apparently now be able to do that.
Apple isn’t a move fast and break things company. They’re a measure twice, cut once company. When they commit to something, they tend to stay committed. And they’re very, very good at playing long games that require patience, especially when entering new markets.
We've already lost Macworld Expo for quite a while. Now, I am guessing we may be saying goodbye to Macworld soon?
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Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has lost confidence in the ability of AI head John Giannandrea to execute on product development, so he’s moving over another top executive to help: Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell. In a new role, Rockwell will be in charge of the Siri virtual assistant, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the moves haven’t been announced.
Rockwell will report to software chief Craig Federighi, removing Siri completely from Giannandrea’s command. Apple announced the changes to employees on Thursday following Bloomberg News’ initial report.
The suit is the latest fallout from the company's acknowledgment that key features, including an enhanced Siri, won't ship until far later than originally planned.
I can only guess that Gurman hinted at his sourcing in the passage above: Tim Cook must have announced these changes at the Top 100 retreat this week, and at least two of those attendees leaked the news to Gurman. Unprecedented.
Since they were first enabled last year, I have frequently found Apple Intelligence’s notification summaries for emails to be something less than helpful. Here are some I spotted in just the past few days.
Writing on scripts for season three has already been underway for some time. Executive producer and director Ben Stiller has promised fans that there won’t be a three year wait this time between seasons, although filming on season three has not yet commenced.
Apple announced the renewal news today with a Twitter collaboration between Ben Stiller and CEO Tim Cook, who tweeted that Season 3 of Severance is available upon request.
Are you watching blurry YouTube videos? You're not alone. YouTube has acknowledged that some users are experiencing issues with videos playing back at unexpectedly low quality.
But after spending time on these other platforms, it’s clear that tvOS desperately needs an update. There needs to be a single interface for everything, including launching apps. Apple needs to be more aggressive about generating “For You” lists that are based on real on-device behavior and aren’t laughably weighted toward Apple TV+ originals.
More broadly, there just needs to be more content from third-party apps. Yes, we get it, you have your own content—but you’re also the platform owner and it’s your job to showcase content across all of the apps on your platform.
From the outside, we of course will not know what are the problems with getting the new Siri out of the door. It may be technology; or it may be setting expectations, or prioritizations, or it may well be any other little thing you get to learn about in Project Management 101.
Perhaps Apple will come out and explain why in the upcoming WWDC. Perhaps no words will be said.
Nevertheless, I think we may have some inkling between now and what is finally released in the upcoming year.
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Today’s announcement details exactly what third-party integrations the EU commission expects Apple to implement. This includes giving third-party devices access to iOS notifications, as well as way for companies to make like-for-like competitors to AirDrop file sharing, AirPlay streaming, and much more.
The list of features that the EU commission has ordered Apple to implement is vast, as well as signalling that any future Apple features with first-party hardware integrations must also be made available to third-party companies.
Apple said “Today’s decisions wrap us in red tape, slowing down Apple’s ability to innovate for users in Europe and forcing us to give away our new features for free to companies who don’t have to play by the same rules. It’s bad for our products and for our European users. We will continue to work with the European Commission to help them understand our concerns on behalf of our users”.
In regards to customer privacy, Apple is especially concerned with the requirements surrounding opening up access to the iOS notification system. The company indicated these measures would allow companies to suck up all user notifications in an unencrypted form to their servers, sidestepping all privacy protections Apple typically enforces.
The core method of the attack is nothing new: a website popup window masquerading as a security alert. But what enables this particular attack to fool so many people is that it uses malicious code to cause the webpage you are viewing to freeze. That lends credibility to the popup claim that the computer has been locked.
The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) and the North County Transit District (NCTD) are now accepting Apple Pay with Express Transit Mode, according to local transport agencies.
Every time I travel, I vow to figure out exactly how time zone support works in calendar apps, and every time, I get caught up in whatever I’m doing and forget. Now it’s time to buckle down and see if I can wrap my head around the topic.
Upon entering the recipe catalog on my iPad for the first time, I was immediately struck by its user interface. The tab features gigantic buttons with noticeably large touch targets not seen in other native iPad apps. It feels like an experimental sneak peek of the HomePad’s interface rather than software specifically designed for the iPad.
Out of all the defences Apple has to make regarding its business model, the weakest arguments, I feel, are third-party integration with non-phone devices (such as watches and earphones) and first-party competing apps (such as Apple Music and Apple Books).
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Security researchers at Mysk first discovered the flaw after noticing that their iPhone’s App Privacy Report showed Passwords had contacted a staggering 130 different websites over insecure HTTP traffic. This prompted the duo to investigate further, finding that not only was the app fetching account logos and icons over HTTP—it also defaulted to opening password reset pages using the unencrypted protocol. “This left the user vulnerable: an attacker with privileged network access could intercept the HTTP request and redirect the user to a phishing website,” Mysk told 9to5Mac.
The visually stunning, cinematic long-form ad reunites Apple with Oscar-winning filmmaker Spike Jonze, who directed the brand’s lauded “Welcome Home” in 2018 with FKA Twigs. Like its predecessor, the new work—called “Someday”—leans heavily on inventive choreography, catchy music, and lavish sets.
Apple Pay today expanded to Puerto Rico, which means iPhone, iPad, and Mac users living in the territory are now able to use Apple Pay for purchases in retail stores and online, even without a mainland credit or debit card.
Top highlights include non-destructive editing when using the most common filters, improved support for PSD files, and enhanced text tools.
I've tried all kinds of time-tracking apps over the years and they can be helpful, but it's easy to get bogged down in the numbers. Sometimes all you need is a little self-awareness about how long you've been on the computer, either all day or during the current session, without the burden of long-term metrics.
Pandan is a totally free Mac app from indie app developer Sindre Sorhus that that does exactly that. The application mostly lives in the menu bar, telling you how long your current computing session has been. You can click the menu bar icon to see how long the previous session was and how long you've been on your computer today.
It certainly seems like the company acted out of fear to try and not look like it was irrelevant, but from this vantage it seems like that decision may have backfired. Now, instead of simply looking out of touch, Apple looks, worse, like it can’t get the job done.
However, it was my understanding that the Common Charger Directive only said that if a device has a wired charging port then it must be USB-C – that’s not the same as saying a USB-C port is mandatory.
I’ve now confirmed this with European Commission press officer Federica Miccoli, whose remit covers the internal market and industrial strategy, asking whether a portless phone would be compliant with the law.
Not only will it be interesting to see how Apple will handle the upcoming WWDC keynote, it will also be interesting to see how Apple will handle John Gruber's annual (so far) live talk show.
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By focusing on the positive outcomes I felt much more balanced in my reaction and think I am now better able to look towards a summer of potentially challenging work with a more hopeful, growth based perspective. I’m not saying in all of this that anyone shouldn’t feel negatively towards Apple or its announcements right now, but this is just a practice/approach I’m cultivating to preserve my mental health and allow me to continue to do my best work in my chosen area of expertise.
If you're frustrated by some of your favorite apps pestering you to sign up for a subscription, some new data may help you empathize with their developers more. According to revenue data from "over 75,000" mobile apps, the vast majority have a hard time making $1,000 per month.
[...]
RevenueCat's report doesn't cover every single mobile app available, but it paints a picture of the challenges related to monetizing mobile apps across different types of categories, as well as how uneven the distribution of app revenue is.
Apple shared that it plans to support end-to-end encryption in a future software update, meaning that the company would be supporting RCS Universal Profile 3.0.
As a result, Apple will be taking the leap from RCS version 2.4 to RCS version 3.0, bringing along all of the great upgrades introduced in version 2.7, as well as the now confirmed end-to-end-encryption upgrade.
Affected users say that despite having the correct settings enabled, new iCloud emails are not showing up in their inboxes until a manual refresh.
Apple today announced that Tap to Pay on iPhone is available in Poland, Bulgaria, Finland, Liechtenstein, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Hungary, providing a way for independent sellers, small businesses, and larger merchants in these countries to use an iPhone as a contactless payment terminal.
Capcom's Resident Evil 3 has debuted on Apple devices, making it the fifth Resident Evil title to arrive on Apple's mobile platforms.
Apple lost an appeal on Tuesday against a regulatory assessment that opens the iPhone maker up to stricter controls in Germany, the Federal Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday, following years of debate over the company's market position.
Federal judges backed the German cartel office's 2023 designation of Apple as a "company of paramount cross-market significance for competition".
What Apple showed regarding the upcoming “personalized Siri” at WWDC was not a demo. It was a concept video. Concept videos are bullshit, and a sign of a company in disarray, if not crisis. The Apple that commissioned the futuristic “Knowledge Navigator” concept video in 1987 was the Apple that was on a course to near-bankruptcy a decade later. Modern Apple — the post-NeXT-reunification Apple of the last quarter century — does not publish concept videos. They only demonstrate actual working products and features.
Until WWDC last year, that is.
The Macalope places the blame for this on the venture capital machine, which loves nothing more than to pump a technology as a must-have in order to make itself even more filthy rich. After years of shrugging off people saying “Apple must” do a particular thing, it is disappointing to see it fall into the trap now.
It is entirely possible, I think, that some Apple Intelligence features may never be available anytime in the near future, not because Apple's software developers are not smart enough, nor because Apple's investment in technologies is not sufficient enough. But, rather, Gen AI and LLMs may never be able to reliabily power what Apple promised.
This reminded me of the rumors that Apple -- or in fact, many other companies -- will get self-driving cars ready within five years, just in time for the year 2020. Well, at least Apple didn't publicly announce self-driving cars, nor did they created a bunch of advertisments back then.
Maybe Apple should firstly focus on getting Shortcuts working great.
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By putting Apple in the name Apple Intelligence, Apple has a higher bar to meet when compared to other companies who are 'only' doing Artificial Intelligence.
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Hello there! You're still around! Thanks for reading!
This little website will be on break for a couple of weeks, from March 5 to 19. See you soon.
This a not-so-subtle hint that Apple will announce a new MacBook Air this week. The new MacBook Air is expected to be powered by an M4 chip and will be available in the same 13-inch and 15-inch designs as the current model.
From next month, iPhones eligible to receive Apple’s iOS 18.4 update will support Bangla, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. These languages would be applicable across every nook and cranny of the iPhone’s software interface, just the way it already supports languages such as French, Latin or Mandarin Chinese.
A senior company executive told Mint that the introduction of the new languages involved “crucial contributions from Apple’s India teams, which work cross-functionally across various aspects of the company’s software development, with their global counterparts."
Apple today announced a bevy of new content for baseball fans. This includes the return of Friday Night Baseball on Apple TV+, a new Apple Immersive film and the launch of the TV+ documentary covering the 2024 World Series.
Apple published a new iPhone 16 Pro ad this weekend, and this one is quite special. To show the Audio Mix feature in action, the company recorded a music video using the latest iPhone – but that’s not all, as the clip also celebrates the Brazilian Carnival.
iFixit was not impressed with some of the design decisions that Apple made, due to the repair difficulty. To get to the USB-C port, for example, all of the internal components of the device need to be removed. Still, iFixit said that the iPhone 16e makes some progress toward repairability thanks to the rollback of parts pairing in iOS and small changes like a metal bracket that protects a flex cable from being sliced when opening up the device.
Vision Pro owners should see the app if they install the visionOS 2.4 developer beta today. Last month, Apple described Spatial Gallery as containing a curated selection of spatial videos, photos, and panoramas, including things like behind-the-scenes clips from Apple TV Plus shows like Severance and Shrinking.
For my next presentation, I plan to use a free and open-source keystroke visualizer called KeyCastr. In my testing so far, it seems to provide the core features I need, displaying keystrokes in a customizable lozenge and indicating mouse clicks with a circle around the pointer.
The Apple experience was once defined by the joy of using products that "just worked." Today, that promise feels increasingly hollow as software struggles to keep pace with hardware capabilities. As users and customers, we need to vocally advocate for the quality-focused Apple we once knew.
Apple has responded to a lawsuit filed at the end of February accusing the company of making false claims about the carbon neutrality of its products. In a statement to the US website Appleinsider, the tech company said it was "proud of its carbon-neutral products" and emphasized that they were "the result of industry-leading innovation". Apple has reduced emissions for the Apple Watch by over 75 percent and is investing significantly in nature-based projects to remove hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon from the air.
Guess what? I’m constantly missing good stuff and I’m fine with that.
I am taking a break from this little website for a couple of weeks. I'll be back on March 20th. Or maybe sooner, if I feel like it.
(Fun fact: whenever I see 'a couple' in a sentence, my brain always visualizes it as a few. Two or more. Somehow, my brain doesn't associate 'a couple' as simply 'two'.)
Thank you for reading. I appreciate you.
I'll be back.
It’s not the end of the world, then, and I don’t expect the lack of MagSafe to guarantee the iPhone 16e a devastating hatchet job of a review. (You’ll have to wait and see if other factors lead to that.) But you’d have to say that it’s an odd strategy, reminding customers how good a feature is by removing it from a new product. Good job, Apple: You’ve taught me not to take MagSafe for granted. But can we please have it back now?
“The Dutch are, just like many others, highly dependent on the infrastructure provided by extremely dominant tech companies, mostly from the U.S.,” Zenger told TechCrunch. “What this means, and the risks that come from this, have been nicely demonstrated in the past few weeks. As a result, the public debate in the Netherlands has been relatively sharp. Where in the past this problem was only discussed on the level of ‘which instant messenger should I use,’ I feel now we are having the debate on higher levels as well: ‘we should get rid of this dependency.’”
The upgrades coming to Siri will include on-screen awareness, understanding of a user's personal context, and deeper per-app controls.
Today, Apple opened Indonesia’s fourth Apple Developer Academy in Tuban, Bali. The new Academy will welcome more than 100 students to its inaugural class as Apple deepens its effort to help developers, students, and entrepreneurs gain the skills they need to embark on careers in the growing iOS app industry in Indonesia and around the world.
“Coding is a great way to make your mark on the world, and the Apple Developer Academy will help even more people in Indonesia bring their ideas to life,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. “Indonesia’s developer community has created so many incredible apps, and we can’t wait to welcome these students and help even more aspiring developers advance their skills, build businesses, and make a positive impact on their communities.”
I hope that Apple will update the iPhone 16e regularly so that when it is finally time for me to upgrade my iPhone, this iPhone line will look attractive for me.
:-)
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With the lack of MagSafe, does the new iPhone 16e deserve to belong in the iPhone 16 family?
(The answer is: if Apple says it does, of course it does.)
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Thanks for reading.
To recap, nearly every single other messaging product that people use in large numbers (at least here in the US) has some kind of disappearing messages feature. Apple’s omission is starting to be very unique.
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In a monument to misaligned priorities, Apple even spent time adding post-quantum encryption to its iMessage protocol — this means Apple users are now safe from quantum computers that don’t exist. And yet users’ most intensely private secrets can still be read off their phone or from a backup by anyone who can guess their passcode and use a search box. This is not a good place to be in 2025, and Apple needs to do better.
The basic idea of disappearing messages is pretty trivial and easily understood. A good design for implementing them in Messages is not trivial. Solving these hard design problems is what makes Apple Apple, though.
Fluro provides a delightful recap of everything you’d need to know in a day, all in a neat Mac interface with a special LED scroller. It delivers the weather, your calendar events, reminders, the news, and more – all with a pinch of nostalgia.
In late 2022, initial payments for the Small Developer Assistance Fund started going out, with each eligible US developer receiving at least $1000 – up to 4x the projected minimum payout. A second round of payouts begun toward the end of 2023, and now the third and final round of payments started going out this week.
What I don’t understand is why Apple bothered supporting this in the first place for hardware-accelerated video (which is all video on iOS platforms — there is no workaround like using Chrome with hardware acceleration disabled on iPhone or iPad). No one is going to create bootleg copies of DRM-protected video one screenshotted still frame at a time — and even if they tried, they’d be capturing only the images, not the sound. And it’s not like this “feature” in MacOS and iOS has put an end to bootlegging DRM-protected video content.
There are so many things that, if we are able to restart from scratch, will be designed so differently than what we have today. Messaging is a prime example.
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The British government’s refusal to either confirm or deny any details about a legal notice targeting Apple’s cryptographic protections for iCloud accounts risks undermining domestic and international confidence in Westminster, experts have warned.
Apple has updated its support document for the recently introduced purchase migration tool, removing the EU and UK from the availability exclusion. India is the only remaining region listed where the Apple Account purchase migration tool isn’t offered.
Today is the iPhone 16e's launch day, and Apple has shared a new ad promoting its most affordable iPhone. The short spot features an inflatable air dancer holding an iPhone 16e.
MacWhisper offers the best accuracy, syncs text and audio, and is focused on transcribing audio. While the free version works well enough with audio recorded elsewhere (such as Notes), if you’re serious about transcription, you’ll want the €49 Pro version (with discounts for students, journalists, and non-profits). It can record app audio, offers multiple models for speed and accuracy, can combine segments into sentences, supports batch transcription, transcribes YouTube videos, and much more.
Parallels has released version 20.2.2 of its Parallels Desktop for Mac virtualization software with a fix for a critical security issue that affects only Intel-based Macs.
It’s the end of an era. Microsoft is shutting down Skype in May and replacing it with the free version of Microsoft Teams for consumers. Existing Skype users will be able to log in to the Microsoft Teams app and have their message history, group chats, and contacts all automatically available without having to create another account, or they can choose to export their data instead. Microsoft is also phasing out support for calling domestic or international numbers.
I have never been to Canada. And I have never eaten in Tim Hortons, in Canada.
But I've just had my first taste of donuts from Tim Hortons the other day, on the other side of the globe. It wasn't bad, but I wasn't impressed. And I supposed it is probably not the same in Singapore than in Canada.
Maybe I should have tried the kaya filled donut. I like kaya. And I like donuts. Maybe this would work for me.
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