Benjamin Mayo

Apple TV+ has dropped its latest sizzle reel, showcasing its upcoming slate of content as we head into summer. The new one-minute includes sneak peeks at upcoming new series, such as Palm Royale, Sugar and Lessons in Chemistry, as well as teasing new seasons of popular Apple originals including The Morning Show and The Afterparty.

Hello Games’ founder Sean Murray yesterday tweeted two cryptic apple emojis, suggesting an announcement aimed at Apple users is imminent.

The tease comes almost a year after WWDC 2022, in which Apple announced on stage that Hello Game’s flagship title No Man’s Sky would launch on Mac and iPad by the end of 2022. That deadline came and went, but perhaps now the game is ready to release on Apple’s platforms. Naturally, speculation is also rife that Hello Games is working on a VR title for Apple’s upcoming headset.

Apple today officially launched the new Multiview feature for Apple TV 4K, after having previously been previewed in beta for about a month. To take advantage of the new feature, update to tvOS 16.5 on your Apple TV set-top box.

Multiview allows Apple TV users to watch up to four streams of MLS Season Pass or MLB Friday Night Baseball at the same time.

We’ve known for a while that Apple has been investing into research and development of micro-LED screen technology, which looks to be the best of both worlds of current-tech OLED and mini-LED displays.

Today, Nikkei says that Apple has even designed some of the production equipment itself, as well as partnering with LG Display for substrates and silicon wafers from TSMC. The eventual goal is to use micro-LED screens on the iPhone, reducing reliance on Samsung Display, which currently produces the majority of iPhone screens, with Samsung the industry leader in OLED production.

After a stint as an iOS exclusive, Photomator (nee Pixelmator Photo) is launching as a Mac app today. The app is aimed at streamlining common photographer workflows, with sophisticated color adjustments, batch editing abilities, and AI-enhanced editing tools.

Photomator is priced at $4.99 per month, $29.99 per year or a $99 lifetime unlock. Download Photomator from the Mac App Store. If you already pay for Photomator on iPad and iPhone, you can use the Mac app at no extra charge.

Apple today announced that the satellite connectivity features available on iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, are now available to customers in Australia and New Zealand.

When outside of normal cellular network or Wi-Fi signal, customers can use Emergency SOS via satellite to send short text messages to emergency services. They can also share their location with friends and family in the Find My app.

Apple TV+ secured its first above-the-line BAFTA wins tonight, led by the success of dark comedy drama Bad Sisters.

Bad Sisters was awarded Best Drama series, and Anne-Marie Duff won Best Supporting Actress award for her role as Grace in the show.

In the latest edition of his Power On Newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that he expects Apple to launch the first Macs with next-generation M3 Apple Silicon either at the end of this year, or early 2024.

Based on developer logs of apps running on prototype M3 Macs, Gurman also details what one variant of the M3 lineup is made up of. His source — which has correctly predicted previous Apple Silicon configurations — indicates that the base M3 Pro chip features 12 CPU cores, 18 GPU cores and 36 GB RAM.

Apple and the MLS have launched a 1-month free trial offer for MLS Season Pass for the first time. You can redeem the 1-month trial here, valid for new and returning monthly subscribers.

After the trial is up, the subscription automatically renews at the standard monthly MLS Season Pass price ($14.99 or $12.99 for TV+ members), unless cancelled.

A new critically-acclaimed documentary film ‘Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie‘ premieres today on Apple TV+. The film spans Fox’s career and examines his optimistic, upbeat attitude to Parkinson’s disease, having been diagnosed at just 29-years-old. Here’s how to watch the movie.

Update: Apple’s support page has acknowledged an issue with ‘iCloud Account & Sign In’, stating that the service may have been slow or unavailable for some users.

Many users right now are facing errors trying to log in to services that depend on the Apple ID system. On social media, Apple users report being unable to sign in, verify their device or process payments. Some people reported that their device told them their password is invalid, even though it has actually been typed in correctly.

9to5Mac has experienced the account login issue. Despite providing a valid email and password, the Apple ID backend simply reports an error that it cannot process the request at this time.

Apple today announced its new 2023 Pride band for Apple Watch. The new Pride Edition Sport Band features speckled rainbow-colored pills on a white background, and will be available to buy from Apple Stores starting May 24.

Alongside the band, a new Apple Watch Pride Celebration face and iPhone wallpaper will also be available next week, with a matching visual design.

Silo is a new sci-fi TV series based on the popular book series by Hugh Howey, starring Rebecca Ferguson. The first season of the show covers the story told in the first book ‘Wool’. Watch now on Apple TV+.

The latest Apple Card promo has launched, this time partnering with Nike. New Apple Card accounts can get $75 cashback when they spend $75 or more at Nike.

New and existing Apple Card members can get a boosted 6% cashback on Nike purchases. Both offers run through the end of May.

The Writers Guild of America failed to reach a new deal with Hollywood studios before the May 1 deadline, and the previous union contract has now expired. As a result, all union writers are officially on strike as of today.

Industry sources indicate the studios and the guild are still very far apart on agreeing terms, which suggests the strike could go on for many months. This poses a downstream problem for the content pipeline of streaming services like Apple TV+ …

Apple has quietly withdrawn its lawsuit against former executive Gerard Williams III in a filing posted on Friday (via Bloomberg).

Williams was described as critical to the development of the high-performance A-series and M-series Apple Silicon chips. He left Apple to start a server chip start-up Nuvia. Apple accused him of poaching colleagues for the start-up whilst he was still under Apple’s employ. Lawsuit proceedings began in 2019.

In order to comply with the European Digital Services Act, Apple has been forced to reveal the number of monthly active users for the App Store in Europe, across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS.

The company said the iOS App Store has 101 million users in Europe, whereas iPadOS has 23 million. The Mac App Store has 6 million, the tvOS App Store has 1 million, and the watchOS App Store has under 1 million. The disclosure was first spotted by iGeneration.

Having recently moved into a new home, I wanted to set up HomeKit lights in the kitchen that would turn on and off automatically. Ideally. So I got some Philips Hue bulbs, an Eve motion sensor, and did the obvious thing with automations in HomeKit.

The result was unsatisfactory. Here’s why, and how I eventually got my smart home vision to become a reality, with the help of Homebridge …

As a cheaper option in the smart light bulbs space, Wiz products are relatively popular. However, they have not supported HomeKit (only Siri Shortcuts) and have been a less-than-ideal option for Apple Home ecosystem users. Unofficial support was previously made possible via Homebridge.

However, this week, Wiz is rolling out Matter support for many of its newer bulb models (via The Verge). This brings official support for these accessories to Apple Home for the first time.