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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Thanks for reading.