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Apple executives talk macOS Big Sur and Safari updates in interview on ‘Upgrade’ podcast

Following last week’s WWDC keynote and accompanying sessions, a pair of Apple executives have joined Relay FM’s Upgrade podcast with Myke Hurley and Jason Snell to talk about the latest features in macOS 11 Big Sur, Safari, and more.

In the interview, Apple marketing VP Bob Borchers and product manager Ronak Shah talk about the latest macOS updates coming with this year’s update to Big Sur. Apple’s Craig Federighi said during last week’s keynote that macOS Big Sur includes the “biggest update to Safari ever,” with enhancements to privacy, extensions, and more. On the Upgrade podcast, Borchers and Shah echoed that sentiment:

“We have a pioneering track record on protecting user privacy in Safari. This year, with the Privacy Report, we’re raising awareness around how Safari protects you and making it real easy for users with a click of a button to see what trackers are being blocked as they browse the web.

We’re also improving extensions. So now, we’re going to support the new Web Extension API. So this whole range of extensions that are out there, developers are going to be able to easily bring those to Safari. We’re even shipping tools in Xcode to make it easy for developers to do that.”

Apple’s Shah emphasized that the purpose of the new Privacy Report feature is to make users more aware of the tracking going on in the background as they browse the web:

“We’ve been doing this on the user’s behalf for a while now. We first introduced Intelligent Tracking Prevention in 2017, so we’ve been blocking this type of third-party tracking for a while now. We want to raise awareness and let users know that this is happening and give them information that makes them more aware of the tracking that’s being attempted as they browse the web. So with a click, they can see the trackers that are attempting to track them on the current website, or they can get even more information and see those trackers for the past 30 days.”

Other new features in Safari include the customizable start page, an all-new tab design, built-in translation, and much more. The full interview with Shah and Borchers is well worth a listen for more in-depth detail on all of these changes. You can listen to Upgrade on the Relay FM website, or subscribe to the show via Apple Podcasts.

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Avatar for Chance Miller Chance Miller

Chance is an editor for the entire 9to5 network and covers the latest Apple news for 9to5Mac.

Tips, questions, typos to chance@9to5mac.com