Zac Hall

Here’s a twist in the ongoing story of GM and CarPlay. General Motors has hired Mike Abbott to run its software team, the company announced today. That’s the same Mike Abbott who just left Apple after spending five years in charge of iCloud software.

Mic drop moment for pro apps team at Apple this morning. Apple just announced that Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are officially and finally coming to iPad. Final Cut Pro is Apple’s professional video editing software that has been exclusive to Mac before now. The same is true for Logic Pro, Apple’s professional audio editing software for Mac. Both apps will land on the iPad later this month.

Apple is entering its second year of offering its Learning Coach program. Apple Learning Coach is a free training opportunity for educators who want to discover the best ways to leverage Apple’s technology in the classroom.

Benjamin and Zac talk about this week in Apple, including a report on division inside the Siri group impacting feature development, a major rumored overhaul of watchOS coming at WWDC with a focus on widgets, and Apple and Google announce a new universal standard for unwanted tracking detection for Bluetooth trackers like AirTags.

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Snap has heard the feedback about its not-always-welcome My AI feature and found the solution: ads!

Pinning SnapchatGPT to the top of everyone’s chat list recently became a magnet for 1-star reviews in the App Store. In response, Snapchat is stuffing ads in My AI for the users who actually like the new feature.

Uber Eats customers will soon be able to track food deliveries on iPhone without launching the app or being bothered with notifications. Live Activity support already launched for Uber’s ride-sharing app, but Uber Eats has only tested support in limited markets.

Benjamin and Zac discuss the new iOS 17 rumors including Heath app coming to iPad, and a new Journals app. Some unidentified Mac model identifiers are revealed in Find My code, Bloomberg gives some more details on how the AR/VR headset is powered, and unsurprisingly Apple plans to restrict the upcoming iOS sideloading support to only markets where it is legally required to.

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Turns out John Ternus wasn’t kidding when he said “that leaves just one more product to go: Mac Pro, but that’s for another day”. Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, had just unveiled the Mac Studio, the most powerful Apple silicon machine at the time. The line served to reassure Mac Pro customers that the best was yet to come.

More than a year later, however, a Mac Pro running on Apple Silicon is still yet to come. The wait is compounded by the fact that the current Mac Pro running on Intel Xeon chips was introduced in 2019, and that machine was the long-awaited course correction for the 2013 Mac Pro.

Benjamin and Zac explore the latest WWDC rumors circling, including tech specs for the 15-inch MacBook Air and a report on exactly what Apple apps we can expect to see on the upcoming AR/VR headset at launch. Plus, HomePod Sound Recognition launches, Apple TV beta tests its new Multiview streaming feature and TV+ makes a landmark deal with Canal+ to expand awareness of its content.

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Indie developer Zach Simone from Sydney, Australia, has launched a new iPhone app that’s rather personal for him. Zach lives with Type 1 diabetes and uses a continuous glucose monitor with Apple Health support to manage it.

The challenge, though, is knowing how to make use of all the data as it builds up. That’s a challenge Zach wants to solve with his new app called Glucomate.

The newsiest part of this story may be that Netflix has continued to mail DVDs to customers as a subscription service. The development, however, is that the company is officially ending the red-envelope-in-the-mail part of its business.

Physical media from Netflix was such a relic in 2011 that company leadership proposed rebranding the DVD rentals to Qwikster. The Twitter handle @qwikster was occupied by a random dude at the time who had no intentions of letting it go. Qwikster lost a million subscribers over the weird name and a price increase, and the branding plan from another planet was canceled.

Still, the service that was the origin of Netflix lived on for another dozen years. Eventually “DVD.com, a Netflix company” was born.

To recap, Netflix killed Blockbuster with its no due dates or late fees DVD business, then Netflix killed its own movie rental business, and now the remnants of what kickstarted Netflix as we know it today have now gone.

Apple is maybe, just maybe, going to finally unveil its long-rumored entry into the AR/VR space. Apple’s virtual reality headset is expected to have at least some augmented reality features, making the thus unreleased product a mixed reality device. Why would anyone need such a thing – and from Apple? Mark Gurman at Bloomberg News has the latest.

Rogue Amoeba is releasing a major update to Farrago, the great soundboard app for Mac. Farrago 2.0 includes 50 new features ranging from fun emoji art to well-designed Stream Deck interactivity.

Faraggo debuted on the Mac in January 2018, and Paul Kafasis at Rogue Amoeba says today’s big update has been cooking for more than two years. Faraggo lets you easily store and play audio clips on-demand for things like podcasting, theater production, and other creative audio tasks.

Benjamin and Zac discuss CarPlay troubles, both literally and figuratively with GM announcing they will no longer support the feature in their new EVs. We also discuss the rumors — that are very much in flux — surrounding the iPhone 15 solid state buttons and a possible second-generation Apple Studio Display. Apple finally launches its first retail presence in India, and The Steve Jobs Make Something Wonderful  book is available to read now.

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Who could have guessed that volume buttons would be the biggest rumor to track for the iPhone 15 Pro cycle? A new set of volume button renderings shared by MacRumors and made by Unknownz21 is the latest in the iPhone 15 Pro volume button chapter.

To recap, the iPhone 15 Pro was rumored to switch from a mechanical click mute switch and volume rocker to a solid-state version with haptic feedback simulating the click. Apple uses haptic feedback to simulate clicking buttons without moving parts on its current products with Home buttons as well as its trackpads.

What do you get when you mix HBO Max and parts of Discovery+? Max. That’s the name of the new streaming video service from Warner Bros. Discovery launching next month. The totally original, utterly distinctive, completely creative name has been rumored since December. The marketing department either couldn’t conjure a better name or, more likely, couldn’t convince their bosses that something including HBO, you know, signaled that this is the HBO stuff.

The top brass at the merged media companies certainly aren’t married to the HBO brand, despite those three letters being synonymous with prestige television. The Apple TV+ approach of having fewer shows with a higher value (than, say, Netflix) is regularly described as the HBO strategy. (Apple also inked an exclusive deal with the HBO guy.) It could be that the Discovery brand is just boring or too closely associated with reality shows and ex-HGTV talent, and the bros from WBD are showing max hubris.

Researchers at the Citizen Lab from the University of Toronto’s Munk School have published a new report explaining how a zero-click exploit of iPhone software was possible and who was targeted. We first learned about the exploit and the mysterious company behind it last year. QuaDream, which sells spyware, remains in business.

Readers may be familiar with the Israeli company “NSO Group” and its Pegasus spyware. Apple is suing NSO Group for “abuse and harm” to its users. Companies like NSO Group sell spyware to clients, including governments that exploit security holes in iPhone and Android software.

QuaDream, which is responsible for targeting the iOS 14 zero-click exploit, is similar to NSO Group but maintains a much smaller public presence. As Citizen Lab puts it, QuaDream does not have extensive media exposure, nor does it have a website or social media accounts.

Apple TV+ is becoming a must-have subscription for fans of new and original comedy series. Just as the new fan favorite “Shrinking” wrapped up, “Ted Lasso” returned for round three. Mark your calendars once more because last year’s hit, “The Afterparty,” will present a new murder mystery to solve not long after we say goodbye to AFC Richmond’s beloved Coach Lasso.

“The Afterparty” debuted on Apple TV+ in January 2022 with a three-episode drop. The comedy from Chris Miller and Phil Lord presented different perspectives from each attendee of an afterparty following a high school reunion. Viewers (and the internet) used the weekly episode release to put together clues and figure out who committed the murder at the center of the show’s plot.

Eddy Cue teased “iOS in the Car” in 2013, and Apple released CarPlay as an update to iOS 8 a year later. CarPlay was slow to be adopted by automakers in the first few years. Pioneer brought CarPlay to existing cars first in 2014, then Hyundai released the first new vehicle with CarPlay integration in 2015.

Now, a decade since its first public appearance, it has become harder* to buy a new car without CarPlay. Yet General Motors is positioning itself as a new adversary for Apple and CarPlay. Greedy and nefarious reasons for dropping Apple CarPlay from GM EVs are most likely to blame, but I do wonder if a certain preview from Apple is a factor too.

Oh, Apple 27″ Mini-LED ProMotion display, the world has lost you far too soon.

You started life as an oddly timed rumor last year following the long-overdue release of the Apple Studio Display. They said you would launch soon after the $1600 display with features worth the money. After all, you would be the first standalone display with variable refresh rate. Quite understandably, you would cost more than the 60Hz Studio Display. Even with refresh rates up to 120Hz, however, you would manage to be more affordable than the $5000 60Hz Studio Display XDR. You might even include a stand for no extra charge!

In short, you were dreamy. But not all dreams come true.