Zac Hall

Five years ago, Apple unveiled what I unequivocally consider the best smart speaker of 2022. It was late to the party, panned by tech press, and discontinued before its time. It was the original HomePod, and there’s still nothing else like it.

The US Federal Trade Commission just hit the App Store critics at Epic Games with the “largest penalty ever” for children’s privacy violations and targeting kids with unwanted charges. The makers of Fortnite settled with the FTC for over half a billion dollars, according to the FTC statement.

iOS 16.2 RC for iPhone and iPad is now available for testing through Apple’s developer beta program. Today’s release introduces a number of enhancements to end-to-end encryption across various services including Messages in iCloud. The release candidate also introduces the new Apple Music Sing feature announced yesterday.

The excellent Mac desktop blogging app MarsEdit has landed with version 5.0 and some timely new features. MarsEdit 5 comes almost exactly five years after the last major version dropped, and it includes a modernized icon to match the rest of your Mac dock.

Apple is expected to unveil its mixed reality handset project as soon as spring. Now Bloomberg is reporting that Apple has settled on a name for the operating system that will power the product: xrOS.

How much truth is there to Elon Musk’s claim that Apple has “nearly stopped” buying ads on Twitter? New numbers may help put the actual story in context.

Apple has announced its 2022 App Store Award recipients today, and this year’s list of winners all stand out for demonstrating “abundant possibilities” through the App Store and across Apple devices. The trendy social app BeReal takes the top prize on the iPhone for 2022. Apple also features the best iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch apps of the year alongside game winners.

Whether you’re scuba diving below the surface or shredding snow down the hillside, Apple Watch Ultra just got even more capable for adventurers today.

Apple’s iPhone 14 has spent two months on the market, so naturally, we’re racking up on rumors about next year’s iPhone 15. The latest detail describes how the next-generation of iPhone cameras will improve photography performance.

Longtime Disney CEO Bob Iger recently returned to Disney after two years of retirement, and he’s already saying nope about a potential takeover by Apple.

Continuity Camera is easily one of the best new features in macOS Ventura. Starting with macOS 13 and iOS 16, you can instantly turn your iPhone into a super high quality webcam for video calls and more. We’ll tell you how and why you should below.

Brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle fully integrates five different applications on a single Apple-only platform. Businesses can automatically deploy, manage, and protect all their Apple devices. Request a FREE account to learn how to put your Apple fleet on auto-pilot at a price point that is hard to believe.

Apple showed off the next generation of CarPlay during WWDC 2022, and wow does it look stunning. The complete CarPlay takeover of the infotainment display, dash controls, and more tease us with Apple Car vibes.

While Project Titan remains an R&D project, Apple says the first cars that will work with next-gen CarPlay won’t be announced until the end of 2023. There’s a high chance that drivers will have to wait until 2024 or 2025 to get behind the wheel of next generation CarPlay.

iOS 16 does include a few updates to CarPlay, however, and these features are available to everyone with the software update.

Update November 21, 2022: I’m re-upping my review from August 2021 while AirPods Max are on sale for $450 on Amazon and Best Buy.

While I’m here, I’ll add that AirPods Max are still a great purchase in November 2022. They’re that good and the only rumored change has been new colors, but we no longer expect that to happen this year. I recommend AirPods Max at $549, and the price is even more palatable for $100 less.

AirPods Max weren’t an instant purchase for me when they showed up online last December, but I talked myself into giving them a shot when they showed up in stores a week later. Eight months later, I can’t stop recommending them to anyone who can stomach the $549 price tag (or find a deal).

My validation for the purchase was heavily weighted by my role as a writer and podcast host for 9to5Mac, yet it was my appreciation for music that convinced me to close my eyes and click the buy button.

Apple senior vice president of marketing turned Apple fellow Phil Schiller voted with his feet over the weekend and deleted his Twitter account. Apple, on the other hand, has not — despite how it may appear.

It’s hardly a secret that Apple is negotiating with the National Football League for streaming rights to NFL Sunday Ticket. What seems impossible to know yet is if Apple will actually replace DirecTV as the new home of the valuable pro football package.

Yoel Roth briefly worked alongside Elon Musk as Twitter’s head of trust and safety. Roth resigned for reasons he explains in the New York Times today. In the piece, Roth argues that Apple and Google app stores ultimately govern what Twitter allows on its site. That poses a challenge for Musk and his goal of turning Twitter into a hardcore free speech platform void of moderation.

While Twitter is going through an elongated period of growing pains, the new regime – or at least someone with access to the Twitter Blue FAQ – is brainstorming ways to prevent paid verification abuse.

Since shifting leadership a few years back, Sonos has steadily expanded its connected speaker portfolio to include new categories like portable audio. That’s a pattern we should expect to see continue next year, according to the company. This could mean that Sonos will soon compete with Apple and Beats in the headphone space.

Update: We can confirm that this is indeed a test and not an actual security fix.

Apple has released a software update to iOS 16.2 beta 3 and iPadOS 16.2 beta 3 today that claims to include an important security fix. Details of the problem are not currently available, but the update is marked clearly as a security-specific fix.

It’s also possible that there is no actual security fix. The update could be a test to demonstrate Apple’s Rapid Security Response system. This new feature allows security updates that do not affect the device firmware to optionally be installed automatically.

From Apple Watch Ultra to watchOS 9, this fall has been full of smart watch innovation. Apple isn’t quite finished, however, as there’s still more to come when it comes to new Apple Watch features.