Zac Hall

Ever want to look up or tag a song you discovered in another app? Apple just dropped an update to Shazam that makes this possible.

Starting today, Shazam can now identify music playing in other apps including TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

Threads by Instagram has arrived just in time to save humanity, but the app might be a little crashy for some iPhone users. Fortunately for humankind, there’s a workaround to the problem.

There are a lot of little tweaks in macOS that I rely on to make a Mac feel like my own. Placing frequently accessed folders on the right side of the Dock, turning off auto-correct, and turning up mouse and trackpad tracking speed are all in this category for me.

A rather hidden but critical example is Hot Corners. My Mac honestly feels broken with Hot Corners disabled, and my workflow is severely slowed. Here’s how it works:

Have a Meta Quest sitting around? You can now experience a rough estimation of what using visionOS on an actual headset will be like. No need to spend $3,500 on Vision Pro or whatever the going rate for a time machine to next year costs these days.

Here we go, folks. iOS 17 beta 3 is out and we’re digging in to see what’s new. New betas for macOS Sonoma, watchOS 10, iPadOS 17, HomePod OS 17, tvOS 17, and the Apple Studio Display are also out now.

For the record, Apple didn’t do anything wrong. It simply named macOS after Sonoma which I’m sure is a lovely place. One month after the keynote, however, and I’m thinking macOS Death Valley may be a better fit.

While there isn’t much insight into how the streaming music wars are playing out, a new report from Music Business Worldwide hopes to share some perspective.

The great Apple Store knowledge base app Facades is out with a nice update just in time for the holiday weekend in the US. Version 1.2 introduces a range of enhancements, including new ways to browse locations and discover information.

Nokia has announced a new patent cross-license agreement with Apple that replaces the prior deal reached in 2017. The arrangement was set to expire later this year.

Speaking of the good ol’ pivot to video, Spotify may be taking a page out of the Apple Music playbook and investing in a music video catalog.

Twitter is testing new ways to kneecap itself this week while simultaneously attempting the pull off the classic pivot to video meme. This is apparently an emergency measure…

Speaking of unfathomable numbers, Ted Lasso has been blazing through the charts at Nielsen. During the week of the season 3 finale, more than a billion minutes were spent watching the Apple TV+ comedy.

6/30: Apple has made history, becoming the first publicly traded company to close with a $3 trillion valuation based on market cap – $3.051 trillion to be precise. This was achieved with a closing stock value of $193.97 per share after reaching an intraday trading high of $194.48 per share. Apple previously became the first company to touch $3 trillion in 2022, and today marks the first time it has closed at $3 trillion. Coverage of the run-up to today’s milestone below:

Apple stock (AAPL) recently bucked a year-long trend and set a new record-high closing price. Now investors are looking at a new intraday trading high as well as the highest closing price to date.

The company closed at $189.59 per share today after opening at $189.08 and reaching $190.07 during trading. That puts Apple at a $2.982 trillion valuation based on market cap.

Speaking of tech industry layoffs, the makers of Pokémon GO are proving that they’re not immune to growing too fast either. Niantic announced today that it is closing its LA studio and cancelling new and upcoming AR game titles.

It’s been a tough week at Plex where the company has decided to let go of 20% of its workforce. Plex CEO Keith Valory blamed an unpredictable advertising market for the need to downsize.

After launching a premium version of its platform, Snapchat reported a cool one million subscribers in just six weeks last summer. A year later, Snap is sharing a new milestone.

Despite site-stopping protests by mods and users, Reddit leadership chose to brute force its way through any reasonable way of continuing third-party app support. Instead, the company hopes its luxury-priced API will be its secret shortcut to an overvalued IPO. As a result, Reddit’s official iOS app is being torpedo’d in the App Store.

I’ve long considered Lutron Caseta the most elegant and user-friendly HomeKit lighting solution. Lutron makes the wall switch smart and works with standard dimmable bulbs; other solutions put the smarts in the bulbs then require remotes on the walls and never turning off the wall switch.

Lutron’s Fan Speed Control is the perfect complement to the existing line of dimmer light switches. Fan Speed Control works with the same Lutron bridge which supports Apple HomeKit smart home control, making the new wall switches the best way to retrofit existing ceiling fans with Home app and Siri control.

As Apple prepares to launch the iPhone 15 this fall, its key manufacturing partner Foxconn is cranking up hiring across its factories in China.

6/28: Public beta versions of each release are now available as well.

While all the action is happening around iOS 17 beta, Apple is continuing to prepare a more imminent iPhone software update for release. Apple has released the fourth iOS 16.6 beta for developer testing.

Palmer Luckey hasn’t been shy about his enthusiasm for Apple Vision Pro. In a new podcast interview, the cofounder of Oculus has nothing but good things to say about Apple’s $3,500 mixed reality headset and what it means for the future of virtual reality.