Benjamin Mayo

Apple Music launched high-quality lossless audio streaming all the way back in May 2021, available to Apple Music subscribers at no extra charge.

Bloomberg today reports that Spotify is finally almost ready to compete. The company is readying a new higher-end subscription tier that will include “HiFi” lossless audio streaming. Unlike Apple Music, though, you’ll have to upgrade your plan to a higher tier and pay extra to get it.

Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger today published an interesting and expansive interview with Apple VPs Kevin Lynch and Deidre Caldbeck, discussing all the changes in the upcoming watchOS 10 update.

Asked about the possibility of third-party watch faces on Apple Watch, Lynch says that the watch face is the home screen of the watch and they want everything to work reliably and consistently.

As Apple controls all the faces the user can choose, Caldbeck adds that users “don’t have to worry about the watch face still working when there’s a major watchOS update. We’ll take care of that.”

A common complaint of late is that it’s hard to hear people in TV shows and movies these days, with character voices buried behind the cacophony of sound effects and background music found in modern productions.

One of the smaller changes coming in tvOS 17 is an audio enhancement option to help mitigate these cases, available for users of Apple TV 4K with paired HomePod speaker setups.

Tom Holland stars in a new thriller series The Crowded Room on Apple TV+, with the first three episodes streaming today. The show is based on the book The Minds of Billy Milligan.

iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma include even more privacy-preserving features while browsing the web.

Link Tracking Protection is a new feature automatically activated in Mail, Messages, and Safari in Private Browsing mode. It detects user-identifiable tracking parameters in link URLs, and automatically removes them.

The Apple Vision Pro announcement on Monday was impressive, but somewhat light on tech specs, partly because the device isn’t finalized yet and still at least six months out from going on sale.

In the marketing materials, Apple said each of the micro-OLED eye displays exceed 4K resolution, with a total of 23 million pixels. But it does not mention “ProMotion” or make any reference to the refresh rate of these panels, other than saying the latency of the overall system is about 12 milliseconds. But a WWDC developer session has the details here …

Apple Maps has improved leaps and bounds over the last decade, but one area it has always been lacking is offline use. Google Maps and others have let you download maps to be available offline for a long time.

That feature gap is now closed with iOS 17. Apple Maps now lets you download a maps region to store on your device, and use entirely offline for navigation and routing without an internet connection. Here’s how.

Apple unveiled the Apple Vision Pro headset today at WWDC in part to reinforce the developer story behind it; the company wants a vibrant app ecosystem to emerge for this new spatial computing platform, even if the first iteration of the headset will not be a mass consumer hit.

To help developers build and test their apps for visionOS, Apple has announced several initiatives. This includes hands-on labs and availability of Apple Vision Pro dev kits.

Apple Music has finally added a feature that has existed on the Android version of Apple Music for a while, has been a staple of iTunes on desktop, and in fact used to exist in the iOS Music app many moons ago.

That’s right — iOS 17 finally adds the option to cross-fade songs. That means when one track ends, rather than abruptly stopping and starting the next song in your playlist, there is a gradual fade transition instead, with the current track getting quieter as the next track gets louder.

Apple just announced the brand new 15-inch MacBook Air, a larger sibling to the 13-inch model. The 15-inch Air is priced at $1299 and up, and is available to order today from the Apple Store.

We went hands-on with the 15-inch MacBook Air at the demo area at Steve Jobs Theater in Apple Park. You can see the laptop in all its glory below with our photo gallery …

One of the biggest complaints we hear from iPhone users is that autocorrect never quite corrects their typing how they want. Well, Apple is promising big improvements to the keyboard autocorrect system with iOS 17 on iPhone.

The new autocorrect system is based on on-device machine learning models that are personalized to each user.

Apple announced a new biometrics system called Optic ID for Apple Vision Pro. It analyzes your iris to identify you, akin to how Face ID works for your whole face on iPhone.

This means the device can automatically unlock when you place the headset on your face.

The Apple Vision Pro headset runs on visionOS, built on the foundation of iOS. The UI is brand new, with a spatial 3D interface and a floating app grid home screen.

It also includes several brand new subsystems for real-time rendering of immersive 3D worlds.

tvOS 17 includes a redesigned Control Center interface, a way to find your Apple TV remote using your iPhone, as well some new photo screensaver options.

They are also bringing the FaceTime app to Apple TV, using Continuity Camera to take advantage of the cameras available on your iPhone or iPad.

Apple is increasing the utility of the always-on display on iPhone with a new feature called ‘StandBy’ that appears automatically when the iPhone is docked in landscape mode.

It recreates a smart display interface with a large time display, calendar and other alerts. It also intelligently integrates Siri suggestions and Live Activities. It’s like an Amazon Echo Show built in to your iPhone.

Apple announced a bunch of new features for iMessage in iOS 17. This includes emoji tapbacks and a new emoji stickers interface. The little-used iMessage apps have also been hidden away behind a sub-menu, for a cleaner and simpler overall design.

Other new features include automatic transcriptions for voice messages. You can also Check In for end-to-end encrypted location sharing notifications with friends.

Apple today announced the new Mac Pro with Apple Silicon, powered by the brand new M2 Ultra chip. The chassis design of the machine appears to be the same as the 2019 Intel Mac Pro.

The Mac Pro features eight Thunderbolt ports and six PCI slots for modular expansion. The base model config Mac Pro starts at $6999.

Apple stock (AAPL) hit an all-time high today, topping $183.49, ahead of today’s WWDC keynote where it is expected to announce iOS 17, new Macs, and its first mixed reality headset device.

Apple stock has rebounded significantly this year, up 46% off lows as investors digest easing inflation and recessionary fears, as well as general bullishness around the tech sector. The company’s market cap is once again approaching the $3 trillion level, a milestone never-before-seen for a public company.

The Apple Store is down — as is tradition — ahead of Apple hardware and software announcements coming later today as part of WWDC 2023.

We are expecting several new Macs to be announced, including a 15-inch M2 MacBook Air and maybe a M2 Apple Silicon update to the Mac Studio and a status update on the mysterious Mac Pro. But the big hardware announcement of the day is the final unveiling of the long-awaited and much-rumoured Apple XR (virtual and augmented reality) headset.

The Writers’ Guild of America is capitalizing on the media attention surrounding Apple today and its WWDC announcements by planning leafletting protests at several Apple Stores, including the Apple Park Visitor Center.

As the writers’ strike enters its second month without any sign of a deal, the group is now ramping up campaigns against individual studios. This includes Apple because of its Apple TV+ original content division.