Tag Archives: Software

Apple may face a mammoth fine after the EU said it violated competition rules

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Apple may be on the hook for a fine of up to 10 percent of its global annual revenue following a regulatory action from European Union officials. In the preliminary findings of its investigation, the bloc says the company breached Digital Markets Act (DMA) rules by failing to let App Store developers freely tell users about alternate payment options away from Apple’s ecosystem.  

If Apple is found guilty, it could face a fine of tens of billions of dollars under the DMA’s severe penalties. Should a DMA violation be repeated, fines can reach up to 20 percent of global annual revenue. 

The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, opened this investigation into Apple in March. From that start date, it has 12 months to finalize the preliminary findings. This also marks the first regulatory action under the DMA, as The Financial Times notes.

The EC preliminarily found that Apple has broken so-called anti-steering rules. Major tech companies that are subject to the DMA are required to let third-party developers inform users about alternative ways to make purchases without charging developers to do so.

In their preliminary findings, officials determined that none of Apple's updated terms let developers freely nudge customers toward alternative payment options. The EC notes that Apple doesn't let developers tell users how much less they could pay elsewhere.

Apple by and large only allows developers to use link-outs, the Commission said — in other words, they can include a link to a web page to carry out a payment. "The link-out process is subject to several restrictions imposed by Apple that prevent app developers from communicating, promoting offers and concluding contracts through the distribution channel of their choice," the EC said.

Regulators added that although Apple is entitled to receive a payment for helping developers find new customers through the App Store, "the fees charged by Apple go beyond what is strictly necessary for such remuneration." For example, they point out, developers have to pay Apple a fee for any purchase of digital services or goods that someone makes within seven days of an app link-out.

Developers have to fork over up to 30 percent of any purchases made via the App Store (Google charges similar fees for Play Store purchases). As such, developers are able to offer consumers cheaper prices if they make purchases away from the App Store.

In 2020, Epic Games informed Fortnite players through the game's mobile apps that they could pay less for V-Bucks by purchasing the in-game currency directly from the developer. Apple and Google swiftly booted the game off their app marketplaces, prompting legal battles that are still ongoing. However, thanks to the DMA, Epic plans to launch its own mobile app store in the EU and re-release a mobile version of Fortnite in the bloc later this year.

People visit an Apple store in Istanbul, Turkey August 15, 2018. REUTERS/Murad Sezer
Reuters / Reuters

“Throughout the past several months, Apple has made a number of changes to comply with the DMA in response to feedback from developers and the European Commission," Apple told Engadget in a statement. "We are confident our plan complies with the law, and estimate more than 99 percent of developers would pay the same or less in fees to Apple under the new business terms we created. All developers doing business in the EU on the App Store have the opportunity to utilize the capabilities that we have introduced, including the ability to direct app users to the web to complete purchases at a very competitive rate. As we have done routinely, we will continue to listen and engage with the European Commission.”

The company recently found itself in hot water with the EU on a similar front — the bloc fined it €1.8 billion ($1.95 billion) earlier this year over violations of anti-steering rules. The Commission claimed that Apple prohibited third-party developers of music streaming apps from telling iOS users that they could pay less for subscriptions if they sign up away from Apple's ecosystem. Apple has formally challenged the fine.

The EC has also opened a fresh investigation into Apple over another potential DMA violation. The bloc has taken issue with new fees Apple is charging developers “to access some of the new features enabled by the DMA,” such as the ability to offer a third-party app marketplace as well as app downloads through other means, such as the web. The EC notes that Apple still allows developers to keep operating under a previous agreement, which doesn’t let them make use of alternative distribution channels.

Devs who sign up for the new terms are subject to what Apple calls a core technology fee. This equates to a payment of €0.50 per user per year after the first million users. The fee, which Apple announced in January, applies even to downloads from third-party app marketplaces. Many of Apple's rivals slammed the company over the new terms (as well as over updated rules for third-party payments in the US). Last month, Apple granted non-commercial and small developers an exemption from the core technology fee. 

The EC is also looking into whether Apple is making it too complicated for users to install third-party app marketplaces and apps. The third part of the investigation concerns "the eligibility requirements for developers related to the ability to offer alternative app stores or directly distribute apps from the web on iPhones," such as needing to have a developer account that's in good standing. 

Meanwhile, Apple said on Friday that it was delaying the rollout of Apple Intelligence — the company's name for a suite of generative AI features that will debut in iOS 18 — and some other features in the EU. “We are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security,” the company told Bloomberg.

Update 6/24 10:19AM ET: Added Apple's statement and details about the core technology fee exemption.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-may-face-a-mammoth-fine-after-the-eu-said-it-violated-competition-rules-120019892.html?src=rss

The latest MacBook Pro beats my high-end PC for content creation

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I’ve always been a PC guy, even when other content creators were waving MacBooks around. I’ll state up front that I don’t game, so everything I do on a laptop revolves around video editing. To handle that, I use a high-end desktop Windows machine at home and up till recently had a Gigabyte Aero 15X laptop for video editing on the go.

Then, the Aero 15X died. The keyboard stopped working and the Thunderbolt 3 port failed. I didn’t even really mourn the loss — it was always noisy and hot. Battery life was never great, and to do any serious video work, I had to plug it in with a comically large and heavy power brick.

It was time for a new laptop, but I had no intention of reliving my Gigabyte experience. Instead, I wanted to find the best laptop for image and video editing — a lightweight, powerful and cool computer with long battery life. I needed to edit 4K video on DaVinci Resolve while doing color correction, as well as adding effects and titles. I also do RAW photo editing, so I’d be using Photoshop and Lightroom regularly, too.

I eyed a MacBook Pro M3, but figured it would be too expensive. After checking, I was surprised to find that the gap between the price of a new MacBook Pro and a Windows laptop with similar performance has been less since Apple started using its own Silicon.

So I made the leap and purchased a 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M3 Pro chip (12-core CPU and 18-core GPU), 36GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. From what I’d read, that would be enough to handle challenging edits. I paid $3,100 in Canada including taxes, with the same machine selling for about $200 less in the US.

I bought: A MacBook Pro M3 beats high-end PCs for content creation
Steve Dent for Engadget

I put my new MacBook to work right away when I created a video review of the Nikon Z8 while in Vancouver. Later, I edited a review of the Fujifilm X100 VI in London and did a hands-on video for Panasonic’s S9 camera from Japan. Those projects gave me a good feel for the MacBook’s performance, battery life and usability while on the road.

Back at home, I was curious to compare the MacBook to my desktop PC. While not state-of-the-art, the latter still has impressive specs with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-core CPU, NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti GPU and 64GB of RAM. To that end, I expected the two machines to be relatively competitive, performance-wise.

I use mirrorless cameras like the Canon EOS R6 II and Panasonic’s S5 II, which output up to 6K 10-bit 4:2:2 Log H.264 or H.265 Quicktime files. Those formats usually tax a computer’s processor and GPU, so I wasn’t expecting real-time playback.

However, I noticed that I could smoothly play those video files in DaVinci Resolve on my MacBook Pro with no rendering or conversion required. I can’t do that on my well-specced desktop PC, so what was going on?

It turns out that even recent NVIDIA and AMD GPUs can’t decode many of those commonly used formats in real time, as systems integrator and benchmark specialist Puget Systems revealed recently. It is doable with some of the formats (not H.264) on newer Intel CPUs with Quick Sync tech on DaVinci Resolve 18 Studio or later.

I bought: A MacBook Pro M3 beats high-end PCs for content creation
Real-time playback of 8K H.265 files with multiple color correction nodes? No problem.
Steve Dent for Engadget

The ability to edit these files straight out of the camera was a major quality-of-life improvement, as it eliminated a time- and storage-wasting step.

I also saw real-time playback on my Mac in most circumstances with no rendering. That includes sequences with 6K and 8K video, color correction on most clips, titles, multiple layers, optical-flow time-warping and stabilization.

In contrast, my high-end desktop PC not only requires me to convert my video files but also to enable timeline rendering, particularly with 6K or 8K video. Both of those things take up time and can consume hundreds of gigabytes of disc space.

While the MacBook felt fast, I also wanted to see how it compared to my Windows machine more objectively. I used the PugetBench Creator benchmark suite, which compares performance between machines on commonly used creator apps like Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Davinci Resolve.

Considering my PC didn’t perform as well for video-editing, the results surprised me. The MacBook Pro M3 did come out on top in Photoshop tests, garnering an overall score of 10,076 compared to 7,599 for my desktop PC. That’s largely due to the superior M3 processor.

I bought: A MacBook Pro M3 beats high-end PCs for content creation
Steve Dent for Engadget

However, my PC out-benchmarked the MacBook Pro for video-editing by a pretty wide margin, thanks to its faster GPU. The Apple machine saw an overall score of 4,754 on the Premiere Pro PugetBench tests in high power mode, while my PC hit 8,763.

There are no public PugetBench tests yet for DaVinci Resolve, but Puget Systems’ own scores show that high-end PCs handily outperform high-end MacBook Pro models on that app. The PC is generally better when working with RAW formats and easily beats the MacBook Pro for GPU effects, AI features and encoding to H.264 and H.265 formats.

These results show that benchmarks don't paint a full picture. The relative power of a computer depends on what you’re doing with it, and in my case, the ability to edit certain video formats without rendering outweighed pure speed. However, people who use more effects or work with ProRes or RAW formats may be better off with a powerful PC.

All that said, a lot of the stuff I hated about my Windows laptop had nothing to do with performance. I was often annoyed by my Aero 15X’s weight (if you include the power brick), heat, noise, build quality and relatively useless trackpad.

Since I bought the MacBook Pro 16, I’ve never felt it get overly hot and the fans rarely kick in, even while editing video. By contrast, there’s not a single Windows creator PC I’ve heard of that doesn’t generate excessive heat and fan noise under intensive loads.

I bought: A MacBook Pro M3 beats high-end PCs for content creation
Add a second display like this Ricoh portable 150BW model
Steve Dent for Engadget

Another major bonus with the MacBook is that it offers the same performance whether plugged in or not, but the same can’t be said for most PCs. Many throttle down when unplugged, substantially reducing performance.

If you need to edit on the go and don’t have access to AC power, the MacBook wins here as well. While editing on DaVinci Resolve, it can go three to four hours on battery power alone, triple what my Gigabyte laptop could do. And it takes the MacBook Pro just 1.5 hours to get to a full charge, compared to around 2 hours minimum for Dell’s XPS 17 9730. It charges considerably faster, as well.

It’s also less of a grunt to lug than my Aero was, as it weighs a less and the charger is much lighter, too. Finally, the trackpad is much better, to the point that I can even edit videos without a mouse, something I could never say with the Aero or any other PC laptop I’ve owned.

While I have my quibbles — I dislike the webcam notch, for instance — I've otherwise found the MacBook Pro 16 M3 to be nearly perfect. As it stands now, Windows laptops using Intel and AMD silicon might be able to match it in performance, but they lag far behind in efficiency. That may change with the new Qualcomm laptops or NVIDIA’s upcoming 5000-series GPUs, but for now, Apple’s products are hard to beat for traveling content creators like me.

Update June 24, 2023: The article has been corrected to state that the Gigabyte Aero 15x has a Thunderbolt 3 port, not a Lightning port. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-latest-macbook-pro-beats-my-high-end-pc-for-content-creation-130053351.html?src=rss

The US will ban sales of Kaspersky antivirus software next month

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The Biden administration has taken a sweeping action to ban Kaspersky Labs from selling its antivirus products to US customers. The Russian software company will not be able to sell to new customers starting in July and cannot provide service to current customers after September.

Ahead of the official news, a source told Reuters that the company's connections to the Russian government made it a security risk with the potential to install malware, collect privileged information, or withhold software updates on American computers. US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced the ban at a briefing today.

"You have done nothing wrong, and you are not subject to any criminal or civil penalties," she said to current Kaspersky customers. "However, I would encourage you, in as strong as possible terms, to immediately stop using that software and switch to an alternative in order to protect yourself and your data and your family."

The Russian company has been the topic of cybersecurity questions many times over the years. The Federal Communications Commission put Kaspersky on its list of companies posing unacceptable security risks in 2022. In 2017, Kaspersky products were banned from use in US federal agencies, and the business also drew scrutiny from the UK's cybersecurity leadership.

This level of presidential order to block or limit access to tech and software from countries deemed foreign adversaries dates from the Trump administration. In 2020, he made an effort to ban TikTok and WeChat on the grounds that the Chinese-owned apps could be a security risk. That action was overturned in 2021, but it sparked a review of the apps that has culminated in legislation Biden signed in April that could force TikTok to find a new owner to continue operating in the States.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-us-will-ban-sales-of-kaspersky-antivirus-software-next-month-205106837.html?src=rss

The US will ban sales of Kaspersky antivirus software next month

Posted on by

The Biden administration has taken a sweeping action to ban Kaspersky Labs from selling its antivirus products to US customers. The Russian software company will not be able to sell to new customers starting in July and cannot provide service to current customers after September.

Ahead of the official news, a source told Reuters that the company's connections to the Russian government made it a security risk with the potential to install malware, collect privileged information, or withhold software updates on American computers. US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced the ban at a briefing today.

"You have done nothing wrong, and you are not subject to any criminal or civil penalties," she said to current Kaspersky customers. "However, I would encourage you, in as strong as possible terms, to immediately stop using that software and switch to an alternative in order to protect yourself and your data and your family."

The Russian company has been the topic of cybersecurity questions many times over the years. The Federal Communications Commission put Kaspersky on its list of companies posing unacceptable security risks in 2022. In 2017, Kaspersky products were banned from use in US federal agencies, and the business also drew scrutiny from the UK's cybersecurity leadership.

This level of presidential order to block or limit access to tech and software from countries deemed foreign adversaries dates from the Trump administration. In 2020, he made an effort to ban TikTok and WeChat on the grounds that the Chinese-owned apps could be a security risk. That action was overturned in 2021, but it sparked a review of the apps that has culminated in legislation Biden signed in April that could force TikTok to find a new owner to continue operating in the States.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-us-will-ban-sales-of-kaspersky-antivirus-software-next-month-205106837.html?src=rss

Meta makes the Threads API available to all developers

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Meta is finally making the Threads API available to developers. The company began testing the developers tools with a handful of companies back in March, but is now throwing the door open to more creators and app makers.

For now, the Threads API functionality is somewhat limited. It enables third-party apps to publish posts to Threads and view and manage replies and interactions with their posts. So far, this has enabled Threads integrations with social media management software like Hootsuite and Sprout Social. The Threads API has also enabled tech news aggregator Techmeme to automatically post to the platform.

These kinds of tools are widely used by brands, marketers and power users who rely on more advanced analytics and other specialized capabilities. Interestingly, Meta also suggests that creators could also be interested in using the new Threads API for their own “unique integrations” with the platform.

Meta hasn’t talked much about its future plans for the Threads API, or if it would ever support third-party client apps the way that Twitter did before Elon Musk’s take over of the service. The API could also play an eventual role in Meta’s plans to interoperate with the fediverse, though Meta has said it’s still early days for its plans to make Threads interoperable with decentralized platforms.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-makes-the-threads-api-available-to-all-developers-174946709.html?src=rss

Google Chrome on Android can now read webpages aloud

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Chrome on Android has a new feature called "Listen to this page" that lets you read a webpage aloud from within the app, Google said in a help document spotted by 9to5Google. That long-awaited feature should boost accessibility for the app and make it easier to listen to web pages when you're busy with something else.

The feature isn't supported by all web sites, but if so, you'll find "Listen to this page" in the three-dot menu at the top right on the Chrome app. The new function offers podcast-like controls, letting you play, pause, scrub, change playback speed and skip ahead or behind by 10 seconds. So far, it works in English, French, German, Arabic, Hindu and Spanish.

Also available are options for different voices in each language, including four in the US and two in the UK, along with text highlighting. The control bar stays docked when you open other tabs and playback will continue if you lock your screen with Chrome in the foreground.

The new feature is rolling out gradually as part of Chrome 125, so it may take awhile to arrive to your corner of the world. Google Assistant has been able read web pages aloud for quite some time now, but the new feature adds another way of doing this. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-chrome-on-android-can-now-read-webpages-aloud-123011073.html?src=rss

Yahoo News gets an AI-powered overhaul

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The Yahoo News app is now AI-assisted, thanks to the company’s purchase of Artifact. Yahoo rolled out an update to its news aggregation app on Thursday with AI-powered personal feeds, key takeaways and the ability to flag clickbait headlines.

In April, Yahoo (Engadget’s parent company) bought the remains of Artifact, the AI-fueled news and recommendation app from Instagram’s co-founders that shut down earlier this year. Today’s update showcases how the technology can improve Yahoo’s news feed, which brings in over 180 million unique visitors every month in the US.

The new Yahoo News, available now on mobile and later on desktop, starts by letting you pick topics and publishers of interest for its algorithms to customize your feed accordingly. One noteworthy feature is the ability to quickly glance at the “Key Takeaways” of a given story: a short bullet list of main ideas that (if you request it) appear at the top of an article to help save time. This is Yahoo’s version of Artifact’s “Summarize” feature.

You can further customize your feed by blocking keywords you want to avoid (like, say, “NFT”) or publishers whose content you don’t like. Maybe the most intriguing feature is its ability to flag clickbait, which prompts the AI to rewrite headlines that are misleading, overly sensational or withholding critical information in hopes that you’ll click. (Yes, please.)

In addition to the app, Yahoo is revamping its homepage layout. The updated UI “emphasizes top news, personalized recommendations, and real-time trending topics” and is designed to evolve over time. The company says you can opt in to receive access to new features (presumably, many AI-powered) as they’re introduced.

If you’re in the US, you can download the new Yahoo News app for iOS or Android today.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/yahoo-news-gets-an-ai-powered-overhaul-171507596.html?src=rss

My favorite iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and watchOS 11 features that flew under the radar at WWDC 2024

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There was so much Apple had to cram into its WWDC 2024 keynote that some features were left out of the spotlight. Here at the company's campus, I've had the chance to speak with various executives, as well as get deeper dives into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, Apple Intelligence, watchOS 11 and more. In these sessions, I've been able to learn more about how specific things work, like what steps exactly do you take to customize your iPhone's home screen and control center. I also got to see some other updates that weren't even briefly mentioned during the keynote, like new support for hiking routes in Apple Maps and what training load insights look like on watchOS 11. Of all the unmentioned features I've come to discover, here are my favorites.

I've always been a Google Maps girl, in part because that app had superior information compared to Apple Maps in its early years. These days, I stick to Google Maps because it has all my saved places and history. When I found out that iOS 18 would bring updates to Apple Maps, particularly to do with hiking and routes, I was intrigued. 

Basically, in iOS 18, when you go into search in Maps, you'll see a new option under "Find Nearby" called hikes. It'll show you recommended hikes, and you can filter by the type of hike (loop, for example) and specify a length. You'll find options in the vicinity and tapping into one will show you a topographical view with the elevation details, how challenging it should be as well as estimated duration. You can tap to save each route and store it for offline reference later and add notes too. There's a new Library view and you'll find it in your profile in Maps. 

You'll also be able to create new routes in Maps by tapping anywhere to start defining your route. You can keep tapping to add waypoints, which will cause the trail to continue to connect them, then hit a "Close loop" button to finish your trail. These routes can be shared, though it's not yet clear if you can share it to, say, your friend or driver to have them take your preferred path to your destination. 

Two iPhones separated by the iOS 18 logo, showing the Map app and Notes app respectively.
Apple

The hikes that Apple will serve up in Maps are created by its own team, which is working with US National Parks, so they'll only be available for the 63 national parks in the country to begin with. In other words, it's not porting information from AllTrails, for example. In a press release, Apple said thousands of hikes will be available to browse at launch.

As a city dweller who only sometimes hikes, my excitement is less about hiking and more about the potential of sharing my custom routes to show people how they should walk to my building or favorite restaurant from the train station. It's a compelling feature, and arguably a reason I'd choose Apple Maps versus Google's.

Frankly, the Maps update might be my favorite out of everything that wasn't shown off during the WWDC 2024 keynote by a huge margin. But some of the new tools coming to Calendar tickle my fancy too. Specifically, the new integration with reminders makes it easier to not just schedule your tasks right into your daybook, but also check them off from the Calendar app. You can soon move reminders around by long pressing and dragging them, so that note to call your mom can be placed on a slot at 5pm on Wednesday, instead of sitting in your Reminders app. In addition, Calendar is getting new views that better detail your level of activity each day in a month, similar to how the Fitness app shows your daily rings progress quickly in the monthly view.

This isn't one that wasn't mentioned at all during the keynote, but there are details about how Tapback works that weren't described at yesterday's show. If you're like me, you might not even have remembered that Tapback refers to those reactions you can send in Messages by double tapping on a blue or gray bubble. With iOS 18, you'll get more options than the limited selection of heart, thumbs up, thumbs down, "Haha," exclamation points and question mark. They're also going to show up in full color with the update, instead of the existing (boring) gray. 

What I found out later on, though, is that when you double tap a message that already has reactions attached, a new balloon appears at the top of your screen showing who has responded with which emoji. This should make it easier to lurk in a group chat, but also could double as an unofficial polling tool by asking your friends to react with specific emojis to indicate different answers. That should make Messages a bit more like Slack, and I wish Whatsapp and Telegram would take note.

There are quite a lot of features coming to iOS 18 that didn't get much love on the WWDC stage, like the Journal app's new widget for the home screen, which shows prompts for reflection and lets you create new entries. Journal also has a new insights view that displays your writing streaks and other historical data, plus a new tool that lets you add your state of mind to each entry from within the app.

Meanwhile, Safari is getting a new "Highlights" button in the search (or URL) bar, and tapping it will show a machine-learning-generated summary of the webpage you're on. Tapping into this brings up a panel with more information like navigation directions to a restaurant mentioned on the page, for example, or a phone number to call up a business. You can also quickly launch the reader view from this pane.

I wasn't super enthusiastic about either of those, largely because I don't use the Journal app much and I don't need Safari summarizing a webpage for me. But there are some other buried updates that I really wanted to shout out. For example, Math Notes for iPad and with Apple Pencil certainly got a lot of time, but it wasn't till I looked at Apple's iOS 18 press release that I found out the iPhone's Notes app is also getting a version of it. According to the screenshot Apple included, it looks like you can tally up and split expenses between a group of friends by writing a list of expenses and how much each item cost, then add the names of each expense to a formula with plus and equal signs, then get that divided by the number of people in your group. Not quite Splitwise, but I could see this becoming more powerful over time.

I was also intrigued by some of the Smart Script features on iPadOS 18, especially when I realized that you can just move your handwritten words around by dragging your handwritten words further away from each other, and the rest of your scrawled text moves in tandem. This is hard to describe, and I'll have to wait till I can try it for myself to show you an animated example. But it was impressive, even if it's not extremely useful.

Finally, the Passwords app and other privacy updates got a shout out during the keynote, but I learned more about how things like accessory setup and contacts sharing with apps work. Apple is releasing a new accessory setup kit so that device makers can adopt a pairing interface similar to how you'd connect your AirPods or Apple Watch to your iPhone. If developers don't use this approach, the new Bluetooth connection interface will be clearer about what other devices are on your network and what you're actually granting access to when you let an app see other devices on your network. Though it wasn't entirely skipped during the keynote, the Passwords app is something that makes me happy, since I'm absolutely sick of having to dig through settings to get codes for apps which I use my iPhone's authenticator to unlock. 

There are plenty of features that were talked about that I'm excited by and learned more about the workings of, including the new dynamic clock style in the Photos face in watchOS 11, pinned collections in the redesigned Photos app and iPadOS mirroring for easier remote tech support. Oh, and that Airplay feature that'll let you send money to friends by holding your phones together? Yes! Being able to pause and adjust your Activity rings in watchOS and that Training Load insight? Hallelujah!

And though I can see the appeal of locked and hidden apps, I'm not sure I'd find much use for that and it would probably exacerbate my already prone-to-suspicion nature.

I'm also a little wary of things like Genmoji and Image Playground, which are both Apple Intelligence features that won't hit all iOS 18 devices. There will be metadata information indicating when images were generated by Apple's AI, and guardrails in place to prevent the creation of abusive and exploitative content. 

Clearly, there are plenty of updates coming to Apple's phones, tablets, laptops and wearables later this year, and I can't wait to try them out. The public beta should be ready around the end of summer this year, which is when most people (who are willing to risk an unstable platform) can check them out. 

Catch up here for all the news out of Apple's WWDC 2024.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/my-favorite-ios-18-ipados-18-and-watchos-11-features-that-flew-under-the-radar-at-wwdc-2024-113044069.html?src=rss

My favorite iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and watchOS 11 features that flew under the radar at WWDC 2024

Posted on by

There was so much Apple had to cram into its WWDC 2024 keynote that some features were left out of the spotlight. Here at the company's campus, I've had the chance to speak with various executives, as well as get deeper dives into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, Apple Intelligence, watchOS 11 and more. In these sessions, I've been able to learn more about how specific things work, like what steps exactly do you take to customize your iPhone's home screen and control center. I also got to see some other updates that weren't even briefly mentioned during the keynote, like new support for hiking routes in Apple Maps and what training load insights look like on watchOS 11. Of all the unmentioned features I've come to discover, here are my favorites.

I've always been a Google Maps girl, in part because that app had superior information compared to Apple Maps in its early years. These days, I stick to Google Maps because it has all my saved places and history. When I found out that iOS 18 would bring updates to Apple Maps, particularly to do with hiking and routes, I was intrigued. 

Basically, in iOS 18, when you go into search in Maps, you'll see a new option under "Find Nearby" called hikes. It'll show you recommended hikes, and you can filter by the type of hike (loop, for example) and specify a length. You'll find options in the vicinity and tapping into one will show you a topographical view with the elevation details, how challenging it should be as well as estimated duration. You can tap to save each route and store it for offline reference later and add notes too. There's a new Library view and you'll find it in your profile in Maps. 

You'll also be able to create new routes in Maps by tapping anywhere to start defining your route. You can keep tapping to add waypoints, which will cause the trail to continue to connect them, then hit a "Close loop" button to finish your trail. These routes can be shared, though it's not yet clear if you can share it to, say, your friend or driver to have them take your preferred path to your destination. 

Two iPhones separated by the iOS 18 logo, showing the Map app and Notes app respectively.
Apple

The hikes that Apple will serve up in Maps are created by its own team, which is working with US National Parks, so they'll only be available for the 63 national parks in the country to begin with. In other words, it's not porting information from AllTrails, for example. In a press release, Apple said thousands of hikes will be available to browse at launch.

As a city dweller who only sometimes hikes, my excitement is less about hiking and more about the potential of sharing my custom routes to show people how they should walk to my building or favorite restaurant from the train station. It's a compelling feature, and arguably a reason I'd choose Apple Maps versus Google's.

Frankly, the Maps update might be my favorite out of everything that wasn't shown off during the WWDC 2024 keynote by a huge margin. But some of the new tools coming to Calendar tickle my fancy too. Specifically, the new integration with reminders makes it easier to not just schedule your tasks right into your daybook, but also check them off from the Calendar app. You can soon move reminders around by long pressing and dragging them, so that note to call your mom can be placed on a slot at 5pm on Wednesday, instead of sitting in your Reminders app. In addition, Calendar is getting new views that better detail your level of activity each day in a month, similar to how the Fitness app shows your daily rings progress quickly in the monthly view.

This isn't one that wasn't mentioned at all during the keynote, but there are details about how Tapback works that weren't described at yesterday's show. If you're like me, you might not even have remembered that Tapback refers to those reactions you can send in Messages by double tapping on a blue or gray bubble. With iOS 18, you'll get more options than the limited selection of heart, thumbs up, thumbs down, "Haha," exclamation points and question mark. They're also going to show up in full color with the update, instead of the existing (boring) gray. 

What I found out later on, though, is that when you double tap a message that already has reactions attached, a new balloon appears at the top of your screen showing who has responded with which emoji. This should make it easier to lurk in a group chat, but also could double as an unofficial polling tool by asking your friends to react with specific emojis to indicate different answers. That should make Messages a bit more like Slack, and I wish Whatsapp and Telegram would take note.

There are quite a lot of features coming to iOS 18 that didn't get much love on the WWDC stage, like the Journal app's new widget for the home screen, which shows prompts for reflection and lets you create new entries. Journal also has a new insights view that displays your writing streaks and other historical data, plus a new tool that lets you add your state of mind to each entry from within the app.

Meanwhile, Safari is getting a new "Highlights" button in the search (or URL) bar, and tapping it will show a machine-learning-generated summary of the webpage you're on. Tapping into this brings up a panel with more information like navigation directions to a restaurant mentioned on the page, for example, or a phone number to call up a business. You can also quickly launch the reader view from this pane.

I wasn't super enthusiastic about either of those, largely because I don't use the Journal app much and I don't need Safari summarizing a webpage for me. But there are some other buried updates that I really wanted to shout out. For example, Math Notes for iPad and with Apple Pencil certainly got a lot of time, but it wasn't till I looked at Apple's iOS 18 press release that I found out the iPhone's Notes app is also getting a version of it. According to the screenshot Apple included, it looks like you can tally up and split expenses between a group of friends by writing a list of expenses and how much each item cost, then add the names of each expense to a formula with plus and equal signs, then get that divided by the number of people in your group. Not quite Splitwise, but I could see this becoming more powerful over time.

I was also intrigued by some of the Smart Script features on iPadOS 18, especially when I realized that you can just move your handwritten words around by dragging your handwritten words further away from each other, and the rest of your scrawled text moves in tandem. This is hard to describe, and I'll have to wait till I can try it for myself to show you an animated example. But it was impressive, even if it's not extremely useful.

Finally, the Passwords app and other privacy updates got a shout out during the keynote, but I learned more about how things like accessory setup and contacts sharing with apps work. Apple is releasing a new accessory setup kit so that device makers can adopt a pairing interface similar to how you'd connect your AirPods or Apple Watch to your iPhone. If developers don't use this approach, the new Bluetooth connection interface will be clearer about what other devices are on your network and what you're actually granting access to when you let an app see other devices on your network. Though it wasn't entirely skipped during the keynote, the Passwords app is something that makes me happy, since I'm absolutely sick of having to dig through settings to get codes for apps which I use my iPhone's authenticator to unlock. 

There are plenty of features that were talked about that I'm excited by and learned more about the workings of, including the new dynamic clock style in the Photos face in watchOS 11, pinned collections in the redesigned Photos app and iPadOS mirroring for easier remote tech support. Oh, and that Airplay feature that'll let you send money to friends by holding your phones together? Yes! Being able to pause and adjust your Activity rings in watchOS and that Training Load insight? Hallelujah!

And though I can see the appeal of locked and hidden apps, I'm not sure I'd find much use for that and it would probably exacerbate my already prone-to-suspicion nature.

I'm also a little wary of things like Genmoji and Image Playground, which are both Apple Intelligence features that won't hit all iOS 18 devices. There will be metadata information indicating when images were generated by Apple's AI, and guardrails in place to prevent the creation of abusive and exploitative content. 

Clearly, there are plenty of updates coming to Apple's phones, tablets, laptops and wearables later this year, and I can't wait to try them out. The public beta should be ready around the end of summer this year, which is when most people (who are willing to risk an unstable platform) can check them out. 

Catch up here for all the news out of Apple's WWDC 2024.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/my-favorite-ios-18-ipados-18-and-watchos-11-features-that-flew-under-the-radar-at-wwdc-2024-113044069.html?src=rss

What Apple’s WWDC got right… and what Google’s I/O got wrong

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Exactly ten years ago, Google co-founder Sergey Brin jumped out of an airplane and parachuted down into a live event to present Google I/O. Cut to 2024, and Google arguably had one of the most yawn-inducing I/O events ever… but Apple, on the other hand, hat-tipped Brin by having senior VP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi jump out of a plane and parachute down into the Apple headquarters, kicking off the Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) event. If you were fortunate enough to sit through both Google’s I/O event for developers, and yesterday’s WWDC, chances are you probably thought the same thing as me – How did Google become so boring and Apple so interesting?

Google’s Sergey Brin skydiving into the I/O event wearing the radical new Google Glass in 2014

The Tale of Two Keynotes

Practically a month apart, Google and Apple both had their developer conferences, introducing new software features, integrations, and developer tools for the Android and Apple OS communities respectively. The objective was the same, yet presented rather differently. Ten years ago, Google’s I/O was an adrenaline-filled event that saw a massive community rally around to witness exciting stuff. Apple’s WWDC, on the other hand, was a developer-focused keynote that didn’t really see much involvement from the Apple consumer base. Google popularized the Glass, and unveiled Material Design for the first time, Apple, on the other hand, revealed OSX Yosemite and iOS 8. Just go back and watch the keynotes and you’ll notice how vibrant one felt versus the other. Both pretty much announced the same things – developer tools, new software versions, feature upgrades within first-party apps, and a LOT of AI… but Google’s I/O got 1.8 million views on YouTube over 3 weeks, and Apple’s WWDC sits at 8.6 million views in just one day. (As of writing this piece)

How Apple held the attention

Broadly, having seen both events, I couldn’t help but describe them differently. Google’s keynote seemed like a corporate presentation. Apple’s keynote felt like an exciting showcase. The language was different, the visuals were different, but most importantly, the scenes were different too. Google’s entire I/O was held in person, while Apple did have an in-person event, but the keynote was televised, showing different environments, dynamic angles, and great cinematography. Both events were virtually the same length, with Google’s keynote being 1 hour and 52 minutes long, while Apple’s was 1 hour and 43 minutes. Honestly, after the 80-minute mark, anyone’s mind will begin drifting off, but Apple did a much better job retaining my focus than Google. How? Well, it boiled down to three things – A. a consumer-first approach, B. simplified language, and C. a constant change of scenery.

Notice Apple’s language throughout the presentation, and you’ll see how the entire WWDC rhetoric was user-functionality first, developer-feature second. Whether it was VisionOS, MacOS, iOS, WatchOS, iPadOS, or even TV and Music, Apple’s team highlighted new features that benefit all Apple users first, then mentioned the availability of SDKs and APIs to help developers implement those features in their apps too. One could argue that a Worldwide Developer Conference should inherently be developer-first, but hey, developers are going to watch the keynote regardless. The fact that 8.6 million people (mostly Apple users) watched the WWDC keynote on YouTube shows that Apple wanted to make sure users know about new features first, then developers get their briefing. The fact that a majority of viewers were users also boils down to Apple’s language. There was hardly any technical jargon used in the Keynote. No mention of how many teraflops are used by Apple’s GPUs while making genmojis, what version number Sequoia is going to be, or what Apple Intelligence’s context window is, or whether it’s multimodal. Simple language benefits everyone, whether it’s a teenager excited about new iMessage features, a filmmaker gearing to make spatial content using iPhones or Canon cameras, or a developer looking forward to building Apple Intelligence into their apps. Even Apple Intelligence’s user-first privacy features were explained in ways everyone could understand. Finally, Apple’s production quality helped visually divide the keynote into parts so the brain didn’t feel exhausted. All the different OS segments were hosted by different people in different locations. Craig Federighi and Tim Cook made multiple appearances, but shifted locations throughout, bringing a change of scenery. This helped the mind feel refreshed between segments… something that Google’s in-person keynote couldn’t benefit from.

Where Google dropped the ball

A keynote that’s nearly 2 hours long can be exhausting, not just for the people presenting but also for the people watching. Having the entire keynote on one stage with people presenting in person can feel exactly like an office presentation. Your mind gets exhausted faster, seeing the same things and the same faces. Google didn’t announce any hardware (like they’ve done in past years) to break the monotony either. Instead, they uttered the word AI more than 120 times, while being pretty self-aware about it. The lack of a change of scenery was just one of the factors that made Google’s event gather significantly fewer eyeballs.

Unlike Apple’s presentation, which had a very systematic flow of covering each OS from the more premium VisionOS down to the WatchOS, Google’s presentation felt like an unplanned amalgamation of announcements. The event was broadly about three things – Google’s advancements in AI, new features for users, and new tools for developers – but look at the event’s flow and it feels confusing. I/O started with an introduction where Pichai spoke about multimodality and context windows, then progressed to Deep Mind, then to Search (a user feature), then Workspace (an enterprise feature), then Gemini (a user feature again), then Android (which arguably was supposed to be the most important part of the event), and then to developer tools. An Android enthusiast wouldn’t be concerned with DeepMind or Google Workplace. They might find Search interesting, given how core it is to the Google experience, but then they’d have to wait through 2 more segments before the event even GOT to Android. Search and Gemini are highly intertwined, but they weren’t connected in the keynote – instead, there was an entire 13-minute segment on Workplace in between.

If all that wasn’t fatiguing enough, Google’s I/O tended to lean into technical jargon describing tokens, context windows, and how the multimodal AI could segment data like speech and videos, grabbing frames, finding context, eliminating junk data, and providing value. There was also a conscious attempt at showing how all this translated into real-world usage, and how users could benefit from this technology too, but not without flexing terms that developers and industrial-folk would understand.

Although it’s natural to read through this article and conclude that one company did ‘a better job’ than another company, that isn’t really the case. Both Apple and Google showcased the best they had to offer on a digital/software level. However, the approach to these keynotes has changed a lot over the last 10 years. While Google’s I/O in 2014 had a lot of joie de vivre, their 2024 I/O did lack a certain glamor. Conversely, Apple’s WWDC had everyone at the edge of their seat, enjoying the entire ride. Maybe you got tired towards the end (I definitely did mid-way through the Apple Intelligence showcase), but ultimately Apple managed to deliver a knockout performance… and that’s not me saying so – just look at the YouTube numbers.

The post What Apple’s WWDC got right… and what Google’s I/O got wrong first appeared on Yanko Design.