Zac Hall

Update: Public beta versions are starting to roll in. Have fun!

Miss living on beta? All aboard the iOS 17.5 beta train. After a few too many weeks with no developer beta, Apple has released the first iOS 17.5 beta for testing. The full list of beta releases today includes Apple’s other platforms as well:

• iOS 17.5
• macOS Sonoma 14.5
• visionOS 1.1
• watchOS 10.5
• tvOS 17.5
• HomePod 17.5

Enjoy the fresh beta bits, and let us know what you find!

Apple CarPlay is the safest way to interact with your iPhone in the car. You never need to touch your iPhone while driving – something you should never ever do anyway. Instead, you control navigation, communication, and entertainment with voice control and a simplified interface on your car’s screen.

What if your car doesn’t have a built-in display? What if it has one that doesn’t work with Apple CarPlay? The good news is you don’t have to go out and buy a brand new car. In most cases, you can have a really good in-dash system installed for anywhere from $200 to $1,000. Picking the right solution before you make the investment is important.

Apple turned Jetsons-style video calling into reality with FaceTime. Now the company sees personal robotics as an area worth exploration, reports Mark Gurman for Bloomberg. Is Rosey the Robot the next Jetsonian technology to become a reality?

Don’t throw your phone out of the window. Whatsapp, Instagram, and other Meta services are facing an outage of some kind for lots of users.

Four years ago, I was wowed by the experience that Pocket Rocket provided on the iPhone and iPad. The ARKit-powered rocket visualizer app excelled at bringing augmented reality rockets to life in your environment. Fast-forward to now and Pocket Rocket has officially taken off on Apple Vision Pro.

iPhone 16 Pro rumors continue to fly by, and the latest involves a change to the back glass. According to a Weibo post (via ShrimpApplePro), Apple may be bringing the custom dual ion-exchange glass process to this fall’s premium model.

Spotify is cranking up the volume, err, subscription price, for the second time in a year. Whether it’s to cover the increased cost of licensing music or to fund future complaints against Apple, Spotify will start charging subscribers $1 to $2 more per month, depending on their plan.

Update: We’re told May 2 is the release date for Beats Solo4 headphones. Early May sounds busy. No word on when this guy makes a come back.

It’s been a few days since Apple announced new Beats Solo headphones. 2,764 days and counting to be exact. The day counter is clearly about to reset, however, as more and more signs point to Beats Solo4 hardware launching soon.

The clearest sign yet? 9to5Mac has exclusively received the full rundown on Beats Solo4 specs from trusted sources. The TL;DR is this: Beats is about to deliver a big upgrade to the on-ear headphones for the same price as their predecessors from 2016. That translates to a great value in 2024 dollars, plus they’re USB-C. Here’s what we’re told to expect from Beats Solo4 headphones…

It feels like just yesterday when Apple continued to sell 2017’s Apple Watch Series 3 despite it not receiving an already announced watchOS update. Fortunately, Apple hasn’t repeated that mistake again. Instead, we’re merely looking at the successor to that Apple Watch potentially missing support for the next major watchOS release.

Nothing makes me feel more like Zion Williamson than shooting hoops at the arcade. And while I’d love to take arcade basketball home with me, I’m not sure that’s the best investment. Fortunately, Apple Vision Pro has quickly become the best way to turn any space into an arcade basketball arena.

Update: MacRumors has updated its piece with this: “We’ve received information from several sources indicating that the image is fake.”

Apple Vision Pro’s greatest contribution to humankind in year one may just be inspiring the iOS 18 redesign everyone wants. Our friends at MacRumors have published what they describe as an “iPhone frame template from an anonymous source who claims they obtained it from an iOS engineer.” It could be nothing, or it could be the first glimpse at a return to realism in iPhone software design.

Want to be featured on the App Store? Develop a new feature that uses Apple’s latest technologies. Looking for a similar featured spot on Apple Podcasts? Consider charging listeners for your podcast.

Siri has recently been attempting to describe images received in Messages when using CarPlay or the announce notifications feature. In typical Siri fashion, the feature is inconsistent and with mixed results.

Nevertheless, Apple forges ahead with the promise of AI. In a newly published research paper, Apple’s AI gurus describe a system in which Siri can do much more than try to recognize what’s in an image. The best part? It thinks one of its models for doing this benchmarks better than ChatGPT 4.0.

CarPlay is Apple’s feature that brings communication and entertainment functions to the built-in screen in your car using iPhone apps. The feature appears on a lot of aftermarket displays and new cars that you can buy today.

As CarPlay support is now available from most manufacturers, we’re also seeing more CarPlay apps. Once you install these apps on your iPhone, they appear on your CarPlay-enabled display when you connect your iPhone. Read on for the growing list of iPhone apps that support CarPlay.

Siri launched with the iPhone 4S in October 2011, replacing Voice Control with a more capable virtual assistant. A dozen years later, Siri has evolved into the primary way we interact with our Apple products.

Wait, no, I’m being told Siri sounds more natural but the core technology is roughly the same. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence now means generative AI and chat bots are based on large language models.

Siri and the rest of iOS 18 will join the AI revolution in June, ending our long national nightmare of Siri being somewhere between hot garbage and kinda useful sometimes. At least that’s what’s being reported, but we don’t really have a great sense of what to expect yet.

In this episode of Visioneers, Zac Hall of 9to5Mac sits down with Geert Bevin, the Director of Software Development at Moog Music, for an insightful conversation. Together, they delve into the fascinating world of music technology, focusing on Moog Music’s latest creation, Animoog Galaxy for Apple Vision Pro. Additionally, Bevin sheds light on his innovative app, MIDI Widgets; his history with computers and music creation; and how Apple Vision Pro is meshing with work life and leisure so far.

Sponsored by Things 3: Zac’s all-time favorite task manager for iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro! Try it today!

Update, March 27: In an email, Apple confirmed that these three games will launch on Apple Arcade on March 28.

Apple Arcade brings high quality games to Apple Vision Pro on day one. Apple highlights that over 250 titles are available with 12 specifically designed for a spatial experience on visionOS. Apple Vision Pro will soon gain three more games through Arcade including Spire Blast in spatial.

Apple changed the charging port from Lightning to USB-C with the iPhone 15. A USB-C charging cable comes in the box, but upgraders may need to purchase a separate cable to continue using CarPlay.

A pair of iPhone 16 Pro rumors have surfaced overnight, giving us a possible preview of what’s to come this fall. The first is a new look at what may be the iPhone 16 Pro color lineup.

Spring cleaning continues at Apple. Per Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, Apple no longer plans to design and produce its own displays for the Apple Watch. Apple has reportedly been investigating moving from OLED to custom microLED screens dates since at least 2016.

Apple has responded to the Department of Justice lawsuit that has been expected for some time now. In the statement, Apple says the lawsuit threatens its identity and it will vigorously defend itself from it: