MacRumors

In the Phone section of the Settings app in iOS 13, there's an interesting new toggle called "Silence Unknown Callers," which appears to do exactly what the name suggests. With this feature enabled, calls received by people not in your contacts list seem to be sent straight to voicemail.

We tested out the Silence Unknown Callers feature this week, and it worked well. When an iPhone with the option enabled received a call from a number that wasn't a known number in contacts, the phone never rang - the call was sent directly to voicemail.

While we haven't done extensive testing, we did try introducing an unknown number by referencing it in an email because iOS can recognize phone numbers that way, but even when the number had been previously sent to us, phone calls from that number were still muted.

Silence Unknown Callers seems to be an effective way to limit incoming calls to numbers that you already know, blocking out the rest from causing your phone to ring.

It's a simple, useful solution to the deluge of spam calls that many of us in the United States receive on a daily basis. It's not identifying spam calls or risky numbers specifically so it's not the most elegant solution available, but it works for cutting down on unwanted calls.

This isn't a setting that you're going to want to enable if you're worried about missing some legitimate calls from numbers that you don't know, but all calls do go to voicemail, so when a legitimate call does come in, you can just call the person back.

Silence Unknown Callers will be available to everyone this fall when iOS 13 launches alongside new iPhones.

On the latest episode of the AppStories podcast, MacStories editor-in-chief Federico Viticci sat down with Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi to discuss WWDC 2019 announcements, including Project Catalyst, SwiftUI, and iPadOS.

Project Catalyst will make it much easier for developers to extend iPad apps to the Mac. In many cases, adding macOS support to an iPad app is as easy as opening an Xcode project and clicking the Mac checkbox, although Apple encourages developers to further optimize their apps to offer a true Mac experience.

Federighi believes Project Catalyst will allow many developers to bring their ‌iPad‌ apps to the Mac, as Apple has bridged the gap between its UIKit framework for iOS apps and its AppKit framework for Mac apps:

UIKit and AppKit always remained these two separate worlds, and depending on what a developer did, they could build an app that was sort of factored in a way that they shared a lot of cross-platform code, but they had to always take that extra step of having people on the team that knew AppKit, people on the team that knew UIKit, and make the decision to specialize for those two. And for many developers, they chose one or the other and not both, because that was a real effort to get the expertise and to make the investment.

Federighi expressed excitement about Project Catalyst, noting that he has seen many apps that look fantastic on the ‌iPad‌ that he has wanted on the Mac. With macOS Catalina and Xcode 11, that is now a possibility, with Twitter being one of several companies that plans to extend their ‌iPad‌ app to the Mac.

He added that Project Catalyst gives Apple the "same kind of benefits of being able to have a single team that can focus on making one thing the best and release it across all of our platforms," which makes "a ton of sense" to the company.

As for Apple's new SwiftUI framework, which enables developers to use easy-to-understand declarative code to create full-featured user interfaces, Federighi said giving developers a tool that is "that expressive and that interactive" is going to result in better ideas and thereby better apps moving forward:

SwiftUI will make development of UI more accessible to many people who maybe weren't approaching it before, and that's exciting, because we're already seeing some of that with Swift and Swift Playgrounds. But even for the most experienced of developers, giving them a tool that is that expressive and that interactive is going to mean they're going to build better things, they're going to try out better ideas, and that's going to result in better apps.

Turning to the new iPadOS platform, Federighi said that the ‌iPad‌ has "become something really distinct from the phone" over the years and, accordingly, was deserving of an operating system that provides a "distinct experience":

Things like Drag and Drop, Split View, Slide Over, Apple Pencil… these are things that really define a different way of working with the device. When I work on my iPad, I don't feel like I'm working on a big phone… or like I'm working on a Mac. I feel like I'm working on an iPad. What we mean when we say macOS, or when we say tvOS, which is an iOS-based platform, or when we say watchOS, which at its core is iOS, these things to us are definitions of experiences. There's a watchOS experience that's tailored for apps that make sense on your wrist. tvOS, a 10-foot UI that makes sense in that context. iPadOS has become a distinct experience. We've been working our way there steadily over time. With the work we did this year, we felt like we were at a place where this truly was a distinct thing.

Humorously, Federighi also poked fun at the ‌iPad‌'s newly added support for external storage such as USB drives and SD cards:

External drives. We're willing to acknowledge the 1990s and go all the way back. You know, people still use them sometimes. I'm an AirDrop fan myself, but I understand there are other uses… we know with photographers, the ability to import their photos directly into an app like Lightroom is so important.

The full interview can be listened to on the AppStories podcast over at MacStories.

Apple is introducing several accessibility-friendly features with iOS 13, iPadOS, and macOS Catalina, including Voice Control, Hover Text, and Mouse Pointer Support for iPhones and iPads.

After the company's WWDC keynote on Monday, TechCrunch's iOS accessibility expert Steven Aquino sat down with Apple's Sarah Herrlinger, director of Global Accessibility Policy & Initiatives, who offered further details on the thinking behind Apple's latest, and arguably greatest, accessibility push.

Voice Control

Herrlinger first opened up about Apple's new Voice Control feature, which earned its own slide space during Craig Federighi’s onstage presentation. Voice Control supports editing and menu navigation in both macOS Catalina and iOS 13, but it was the feature's advanced dictation capabilities that Herrlinger was most eager to highlight.

For example, Herrlinger explained how you can say "show numbers" in Safari's Favorites view and little numbers, corresponding to the number of favorites you have, show up beside a website's favicon. Say TechCrunch is No. 2 in your list of favorites. If the glyph is hard to make out visually, saying "open 2" will prompt Voice Control to launch TechCrunch's page. Likewise, you can say "show grid" and a grid will appear so you perform actions such as clicking, tapping or pinching-and-zooming.

Herrlinger said Apple has worked hard to improve Voice Control's speech detection system, so that it can more adeptly parse users with different types of speech, such as those who stutter.

On iOS, the feature also utilizes attention awareness to know when a user with physical motor limitations is interacting with their device. Allaying privacy concerns, Apple says that none of the audio processed by Voice Control can be accessed by anyone else, including Apple, thanks to built-in anonymity and encryption.

Hover Text for macOS

Another feature Herrlinger was keen to demo was something called Hover Text on macOS. Described as a subset of the existing Zoom functionality, Hover Text enables the user to place the mouse pointer over a selection of text to get a bubble with the text enlarged.

Herrlinger told me the feature works system-wide, even in places like the menu bar. And yes, Hover Text is indeed customizable; users have access to a wide variety of fonts and colors to make Hover Text's "bubbles" their own. Text size can be enlarged up to 128pt, Herrlinger said. What this means is users can play with different permutations of the feature to find which label(s) work best — say, a yellow background with dark blue text set in Helvetica for the highest contrast. The possibilities are virtually endless, a testament to how rich the feature is despite its simplicity.

According to Herrlinger, Apple could have brought iOS feature Dynamic Type to the Mac, but found Hover Text accomplished the same goal of enlarging text in a way that felt better suited to its desktop operating system.

Mouse Support for iPhone and iPad

iPadOS and iOS 13 introduces mouse support for the first time, allowing a USB mouse to be connected to an iPad and iPhone for the first time.

Mouse support is not a standard feature, but is instead available as an AssistiveTouch option, designed for users with physical motor delays who can’t easily interact with the touchscreen itself. Apple says it works with both USB and Bluetooth mice, although the company doesn’t yet have an official compatibility list. According to developer Steve Troughton-Smith, who first discovered the feature, it also works with the Apple Magic Trackpad.

When I asked why build pointer support into a touch-based operating system, Herrlinger was unequivocal in her answer: it serves a need in the accessibility community. "This is not your old desktop cursor as the primary input method," she said.

The reality is, it's not your secondary choice, either. The bottom line is that, while Apple loves the idea of accessibility features being adopted by the mainstream, pointer support in iOS 13 and iPadOS really isn't the conventional PC input mechanism at all. In this case, it's a niche feature that should suit a niche use case; it's not supposed to represent the milestone of iPad's productivity growth that many think it could be. Maybe that changes over time, but for now, it's the new Mac Pro of software: not for everyone, not even for most people.

According to Herrlinger, Apple recognizes that people without disabilities will use this feature. "For example, many people find value in closed captions," she said. "Our goal is to engineer for specific use cases so that we continue to bring the power of our devices to more people."

That being said, Herrlinger was quick to emphasize that mouse support should be seen in context. In other words, Apple hasn't introduced it to drastically alter the primary user input landscape of iOS, although that being said, it's not going to stop anyone outside its intended use case from plugging a mouse into their iPad Pro.

iOS 13, iPadOS, and macOS Catalina are only available to registered developers at this time, but later in the summer, Apple plans to make public betas available, giving public beta testers a chance to try the software before it sees a public launch in the fall.

Apple at WWDC announced a new HomeKit feature called HomeKit Secure Video, which is designed to offer up a better, more secure way to manage the footage captured by in-home security cameras.

As Apple's Craig Federighi explained on stage when announcing the feature, many current home security cameras upload data to the cloud for analysis to enable features like motion detection.

Cameras that support ‌HomeKit Secure Video‌ will leverage the iPad, Apple TV, or HomePod (aka Home Hub devices) to analyze video right in your home. Video feeds will be encrypted end-to-end and uploaded to iCloud where you and you alone will be able to see the footage.

Like existing home security cameras, Apple will send you notifications if activity is detected so recordings can be reviewed; the entire process is just more secure.

Apple is providing 10 days of "free" ‌iCloud‌ storage for video content that will not count against your ‌iCloud‌ data plan limits, but as announced on Monday, a higher-end ‌iCloud‌ storage plan is required.

For one Secure Video camera, a 200GB ‌iCloud‌ storage plan is required, while you need the 2TB plan for up to 5 cameras. In the United States, 200GB of storage is priced at $2.99 per month, while 2TB of storage is priced at $9.99 per month.

Many camera companies that offer cloud storage do charge monthly fees for data access, so Apple's decision to require a $2.99 to $9.99 per month fee isn't a major surprise, and a lot more utility is provided with an Apple ‌iCloud‌ storage plan than one from Logitech or Eufy.

Apple says that Netatmo, Logitech, and Eufy will be among the first companies to provide cameras with ‌HomeKit Secure Video‌ support, suggesting new hardware is required to take advantage of the Secure Video capabilities.

Along with ‌HomeKit Secure Video‌, Apple also announced ‌HomeKit‌ for routers, which will provide further protection for your smart devices. ‌HomeKit‌ for routers will firewall off each device so if one is compromised, the others will remain safe. Linksys, Eero, and Charter Spectrum will be the first companies to offer HomeKit-compatible routers.

Apple made a few other changes to the Home app that are worth checking out for those invested in ‌HomeKit‌, which can be seen into our deep dive of the Home app in iOS 13.

Apple in macOS Catalina introduced a new feature called Sidecar, which is designed to turn an iPad into a second display for a Mac, either extending what's on the screen or mirroring the content.

Apple hasn't yet provided details on which devices will work with ‌Sidecar‌, but developer Steve Troughton-Smith was able to find some details by digging into macOS Catalina's code.

As it turns out, ‌Sidecar‌ is limited to many of Apple's newer Macs, and the devices listed below will be able to use it.

• Late 2015 27" iMac or newer
• 2017 ‌iMac‌ Pro
• Mid 2016 MacBook Pro or newer
• Late 2018 Mac mini or newer
• Late 2018 MacBook Air or newer
• Early 2016 MacBook or newer
• 2019 Mac Pro

It's not clear if this is a complete list, but Troughton-Smith says a long list of older machines are blacklisted from taking advantage of the feature. Some older Macs that are not greenlit for ‌Sidecar‌ can still use the feature via the Terminal command provided by Troughton-Smith, but there's no complete list on exactly which older Macs the Terminal command works with.

There's no word on whether all iPads will work with ‌Sidecar‌, or if there will be limitations on that end as well. iPadOS, required for ‌Sidecar‌, runs on The iPad Air 2 and later, the iPad mini 4 and later, the 5th-generation ‌iPad‌ and later, and all iPad Pro models.

The oldest of these iPads, the ‌iPad mini‌ 4 and the ‌iPad Air‌ 2, use A8 and A8X chips respectively, while the newer models all use more powerful chips.

Update: According to a MacRumors reader who has used the feature, ‌Sidecar‌ works well with the ‌iPad Air‌ 2, which means it should also work with all other iPads that are compatible with iOS 13.

Apple has announced that multi-platinum rock band Weezer will be headlining its annual WWDC Bash on Thursday evening.

The night of music, food, and drinks will take place at Discovery Meadow in San Jose tonight between 7-10 p.m. local time. The park is located just down the street from the McEnery Convention Center where WWDC 2019 is taking place. The event is free, but a WWDC 2019 badge must be presented for entry.

Attendees 21 years and older may drink alcohol and can pick up a wristband for drinks on the plaza outside McEnery between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., or at the bash tonight, by showing a valid government-issued photo ID. There is no bag check at the bash, so attendees are advised to leave their bags at their hotel.

WWDC officially ends on Friday evening, but the end-of-WWDC bash is hosted on Thursday evening since many people fly home on Friday morning. Last year, the event was headlined by rock band Panic! At The Disco.

Check out our WWDC 2019 news hub for coverage of all of Apple's announcements and software releases this week.

Apple is in the process of acquiring self-driving vehicle startup Drive.ai in order to boost its own development of a self-driving vehicle system, according to unnamed sources cited by The Information's Amir Efrati and Alex Heath.

The planned deal is described as an "acqui-hire," suggesting that Apple is interested in the company primarily for its employees rather than its technology. The acquisition could reportedly result in dozens of Drive.ai engineers ending up at Apple, where they would likely work on autonomous driving systems.

"We don't comment on speculation," an Apple spokesperson told The Information, suggesting that the acquisition may not be finalized.

Drive.ai was founded in 2015 by a group of Stanford University students. Based in Mountain View, California, the company launched a self-driving shuttle service in select cities in Texas, but the report claims it has been "struggling" recently and looking for a buyer. It looks like that buyer may be Apple.

(Thanks, Chris!)

Apple this week unveiled macOS Catalina, the newest version of the macOS software designed to run on Macs. macOS Catalina is launching this fall, but it is available now in a beta capacity for developers.

In our latest video, we went hands-on with macOS Catalina to explore all of the new features that are coming to the Mac later this year.

One of the most notable changes in Catalina is the elimination of the iTunes app, which has been a key Mac feature since 2001. In Catalina, iTunes has been replaced by three apps: Music, Podcasts, and TV (coming later in the year).

The new apps can do everything that iTunes can do, so Mac users aren't going to be losing any functionality. As for device management, that's now done using the Finder app. When you plug in an iPhone or an iPad, it'll show right up in Finder, with all of the same management and syncing features available.

The TV, Podcasts, and Music apps look similar to iTunes and have similar features, which should make the transition easy for most Mac users. On Macs with a 4K display, such as the iMac, the new TV app will support 4K HDR playback for the first time, along with Dolby Atmos sound.

macOS Catalina has a useful new Sidecar feature, designed to turn the ‌iPad‌ into a secondary display for the Mac. It can work as a traditional second display or with a mirroring feature. Apple Pencil support works with ‌Sidecar‌, so you can turn your ‌iPad‌ into a drawing tablet using apps like Photoshop.

For those with an Apple Watch set up to unlock the Mac, there's now an option to approve security prompts in Catalina by tapping on the side button of the watch. Macs with a T2 chip in them also support Activation Lock, making them useless to thieves much as it does on the ‌iPhone‌.

There's a new Find My app that lets you track your lost devices, and previously, this functionality was only available via iCloud on the Mac. There's even a new option to find your devices even when they're offline by leveraging Bluetooth connections to other nearby devices, something that's particularly handy on the Mac because it doesn't have a cellular connection.

Apple is expanding Screen Time to the Mac in Catalina, letting Apple users track their device usage across Mac, iOS, and ‌iPad‌ for a better overall picture of time spent using electronics.

For developers, a "Project Catalyst" feature lets apps designed for the ‌iPad‌ be ported over to the Mac with just a few clicks in Xcode and some minor tweaks. Apple's ultimate goal with Project Catalyst is to bring more apps to the Mac.

Photos has an updated interface that better highlights your best pictures, Safari includes a new start page with Siri Suggestions, Mail has a new feature for blocking emails and another new option for muting threads, and the Reminders app has been overhauled and is now more useful.

Notably, macOS Catalina does away with 32-bit app support, so some of your older apps are going to stop working. The operating system will let you know which apps are now defunct once you upgrade.

macOS Catalina is available to developers, but it shouldn't be installed on a main machine and this time because it's not particularly stable and has quite a few bugs. Apple plans to make a Catalina beta available for public beta testers in July, and following a few months of testing to iron out bugs and refine features, macOS Catalina will launch in the fall.

Apple at WWDC unveiled a new "Find My" app, which is available across its Mac and iOS platforms. ‌Find My‌ on iOS replaces ‌Find My‌ Friends and ‌Find My‌ iPhone, and on Mac, it introduces a native "Find" app for the first time as an alternative to using iCloud on the web.

‌Find My‌ has a useful feature that's designed to let you locate your lost devices even when they're not connected to WiFi or a cellular network by leveraging nearby Bluetooth devices. Your lost ‌iPhone‌, iPad, or Mac will be able to communicate via Bluetooth with any nearby Apple device, relaying its location right back to you.

Apple described the feature on stage on Monday, but today provided additional details to WIRED for those interested in an overview of just how it works.

Apple designed the ‌Find My‌ feature with privacy in mind. It uses an encryption system that prevents people from abusing it for tracking purposes, making your personal location unavailable to people aiming to intercept your device's Bluetooth signal and from Apple itself.

Apple's encryption solution requires "‌Find My‌" users to have at least two Apple devices. As relayed by Apple to WIRED, each device emits a constantly changing public key that nearby Apple devices use to encrypt and upload your geolocation data. Only other Apple devices that you own (and that are linked to your Apple ID and protected with two-step authentication) are able to decrypt those locations.

Because only your own devices can decrypt the encrypted location signal that's being sent from a lost device, no one, not even Apple, can intercept it and locate you or your devices.

Apple says that "‌Find My‌" uses just tiny bits of data piggybacked on existing network traffic so there's no impact on device battery life, data usage, or privacy. WIRED has a specific set of steps on how ‌Find My‌ works, from setup to what happens when a device is lost, which is worth checking out for those interested.

Basically, when a device you own goes missing, it's going to broadcast the aforementioned public key, which can be picked up by any other Apple device owned by anyone.

Say someone steals your MacBook. Even if the thief carries it around closed and disconnected from the internet, your laptop will emit its rotating public key via Bluetooth. A nearby stranger's iPhone, with no interaction from its owner, will pick up the signal, check its own location, and encrypt that location data using the public key it picked up from the laptop. The public key doesn't contain any identifying information, and since it frequently rotates, the stranger's iPhone can't link the laptop to its prior locations either.

The stranger's iPhone then uploads two things to Apple's server: The encrypted location, and a hash of the laptop's public key, which will serve as an identifier. Since Apple doesn't have the private key, it can't decrypt the location.

The ‌Find My‌ app is available in iOS 13, iPadOS, and macOS Catalina right now, but it's not going to be a fully functional system until these software updates are installed on millions of devices around the world.

There are quite a few changes coming to the Maps app in iOS 13, which gives Apple Maps a feature set that more closely mirrors some of the tools and functionality available in more robust mapping apps like Google Maps.

The most interesting and notable change in Maps is the new Look Around feature, which is Apple's answer to Google's Street View function. Look Around lets you get a street level look at what's around you (or what you search for) in the Maps app.

Look Around leverages all of the Maps-related data collection that Apple has been doing, which has ranged from in-car data gathering for many months to data collecting on foot in select cities.

Look Around in the main ‌Apple Maps‌ view can be used wherever a pair of binoculars are shown. Tapping that delves into a close-up street level view of the location in a little card, which you can tap again to use the feature full screen.

Tapping around on the display lets you move through the Look Around area, and tapping on an area far in the distance does a neat zooming maneuver that's fun to watch. Notable points of interest, such as restaurants and businesses, are highlighted with identifying icons.

Look Around is limited to areas where a car can go because it's using data captured from a 360 degree camera on a vehicle. That means you can't zoom into areas like parks or beaches, for example, but Apple could add this function in the future since the company is collecting data on foot too.

As with Google Maps, personal information like license places and faces is blurred out to protect people's privacy.

Right now, Look Around is limited to select areas in the United States such as parts of California and Nevada, but Apple plans to expand availability after iOS 13 is released. It is expected to be available across the United States in 2019, and other countries in 2020.

Maps in iOS 13 has a "Favorites" option, which lets you search for specific locations and add them to a favorites list. Favorites are Home and Work by default, but you can add any location.

Tapping one of your favorite options brings up directions to that spot straight away, making the Favorites list the best place for the places that you travel to on a regular basis. Siri Suggestions is also used here to suggest places that you visit a lot that you might want to add.

There's also a new "Collections" feature where you can aggregate different locations, such as restaurants you want to try or places that you might want to visit.

All of your Collection lists can be shared, so you can make up lists of places for friends and family visiting you in your city and then share it with them, for example.

Apple on stage mentioned a revamped Maps interface in iOS 13, but this appears to have been largely referring to changes that the company already started implementing in iOS 12.

There are, however, some noticeable changes to the main Maps interface even in areas where updated iOS 12 maps have already rolled out, such as a view of road hazards and traffic conditions that are normally only visible when turn-by-turn directions have been inputted. Traffic in iOS 13 is visible on the main map.

Apple's iOS 13 website specifically mentions more realistic details for roads, beaches, parks, buildings, and more, but it's not entirely clear if all of this is new.

Both Collections and Favorites are nice additions to ‌Apple Maps‌ that make it more useful, and Look Around is a fantastic new tool for getting a close look at what's nearby.

macOS Catalina does away with the iTunes app, a longtime staple of the Mac operating system, which, unsurprisingly, has left many with questions on just how that's going to work.

To answer questions about the imminent sunsetting of iTunes, Apple has created a support document that explains all of the upcoming changes.

Apple is planning to split iTunes into three apps in macOS Catalina: Music, Podcasts, and TV, which, when combined, will replicate much of the functionality that's currently available through iTunes in macOS Mojave and earlier versions of macOS.

One of the most frequent questions concerns device management and syncing, which is currently done through iTunes. In Catalina, Apple is transitioning device management functionality to the Finder app, and when you plug an iOS device into your Mac, it will be listed as an available device on the left side of the window, with all of the same controls and information.

The Music app is going to feature all of the music that you've imported or purchased, and the iTunes Store is still going to be available in the Music app for making music purchases. Apple Music will also be available in the Music app right alongside your purchased music or music ripped from CDs and other sources. iTunes Music purchases will also continue to be available on iOS.

Likewise, TV shows and Movies that you've purchased or rented from iTunes will be listed in the upcoming Apple TV app, and it will also be used for future purchases and rentals.

All of your subscribed podcasts will be transitioned over to the Podcasts app, while audiobooks can be purchased and accessed in the Apple Books app for Mac.

iTunes Gift Cards and iTunes credits will be usable in the new TV and Music apps and in the App Store, so there's no significant change there.

Though iTunes is gone in macOS Catalina, all of the iTunes functionality is available through the Music, Podcasts, Books, and upcoming TV apps, so in practice, there are few changes for end users. In many ways, the split makes a lot more sense than having all of those features in one spot, and most users should be able to adjust to the changes quickly.

In iOS 13, the Home app has received a few notable updates that will make it easier than ever to control and identify your HomeKit devices.

The main Home app screens are the same in iOS 13, but the control options for specific ‌HomeKit‌ devices have been revamped and streamlined. Available controls vary by device, but in general, the change makes options you check or use frequently (such as various light colors) easier to access.

With ‌HomeKit‌ lights, for example, there's a main display with brightness controls front and center (as it was before), but now, if lights have multiple colors, you'll see a selection of favorites at the bottom rather than having to tap on the color button at the bottom. Settings have also been hidden away a bit and are now accessible from the corner.

Small changes like these have been made for all device types, putting the information that you need at the forefront. There are also several new icons for different ‌HomeKit‌ types such as water sensors, motion sensors, and air quality sensors, making it easier to identify what's what at a glance.

Certain devices, such as the Hue Motion Sensor, will display more information in one place rather than splitting up information. In iOS 12, for example, there are separate ‌HomeKit‌ entries for the motion sensing portion of the Hue sensor, the light measurement, and the temperature measurement, which is confusing and clutters up your Home app. In iOS 13, these are all combined into one.

Controls for your ‌HomeKit‌ devices are also now shown in a card-style view so you can swipe them away to get back to the main Home app screen, which is an improvement over the full screen view in iOS 12.

Notably, your AirPlay 2 devices can be used in ‌HomeKit‌ Scenes and Automations for the first time in iOS 13, a major change from what's possible in iOS 12.

With automations support, your ‌AirPlay‌ 2 devices like the HomePod can be set to do things like play music when you arrive home, or turn off when you leave. You can also have music come on when a ‌HomeKit‌ sensor detects something like motion, or at a specific time of day.

In scenes, ‌HomePod‌ and other ‌AirPlay‌ 2 devices can be paired with other ‌HomeKit‌ devices, so you can do something like have your ‌HomePod‌ and lights come on all with one button press or Siri command.

Controls for speakers in Scenes and Automations include Play Audio, Pause Audio, Resume Audio, Don't Change What's Playing, Use Current Volume, and Set Custom Volume.

These new controls for ‌AirPlay‌ 2 devices will apply to everything from ‌HomePod‌ and Apple TV to HomeKit-enabled third-party TV sets and speakers, providing new ways to integrate audio devices into your home.

Apple also announced other HomeKit-related changes that are worth noting. In-home security cameras are becoming increasingly important, but these introduce privacy concerns related to unauthorized access. Apple has a solution -- a new Secure Video feature.

Secure Video is a new ‌HomeKit‌ API that offers on-device video analysis, sending an encrypted stream to iCloud, so you can be sure that no one is spying on your in-home security cameras. Companies like Logitech and Arlo plan to release cameras that use this technology.

Apple is also adding ‌HomeKit‌ support to routers from companies like Linksys, Eero, and Charter/Spectrum for the first time in iOS 13. With ‌HomeKit‌ controls, users will be able to prevent accessories from accessing their entire home networks.

All of these ‌HomeKit‌ and Home app features will be available in iOS 13, which is limited to developers right now. Apple plans to release a public beta in July, and the software will see an official launch in the fall.

On the latest episode of the Mac Power Users podcast, hosts David Sparks and Stephen Hackett had the opportunity to speak with Apple product manager Doug Brooks about the all-new Mac Pro, unveiled at WWDC 2019 earlier this week.

The new Mac Pro is an absolute powerhouse with up to 28-core Intel Xeon processors, up to 1.5TB of RAM, up to 4TB of SSD storage, and the option for the "world's most powerful graphics card" in the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II. Brooks said this performance will ensure the ‌Mac Pro‌ remains capable well into the future:

When we look at things like 8K workflows, that's not the norm today. There's definitely people doing it at the high end. But we want to make sure we're ready for it and have the performance throughout the system to deliver on that.

To manage the heat that comes with this performance, Brooks said the new ‌Mac Pro‌ has a so-called "low-impedance airflow system" that moves a lot of air through the system and cools the machine "very effectively":

The past Mac Pro tower had nine fans. We wanted to kind of simplify and make the thermal system a lot more elegant. It's what we call a low-impedance airflow system. If you look through the heatsink… the fin spacing is pretty wide. We're able to move a lot of air through the system, get a lot of heat exchange with these big fans… they tend to move a little slower so they don't create a lot of noise, but can move quite a bit of air through the system to cool the system very effectively.

Brooks said that sound from the new ‌Mac Pro‌ under a desk measures around 10 decibels, making it quieter than an iMac Pro or the current ‌Mac Pro‌ on a desk, which he said are both already "virtually silent" at around 12 decibels.

Brooks also reflected on the new ‌Mac Pro‌'s optional wheels:

You realize you have this thing next to you and there's a handle there. It's perfect to just grab… what if I just wanted to slide it out a bit to get access to the top boards or spin it around for the back. The feet have material on the bottom… it's really easy to slide around. It's like, what if this thing had wheels?

Apple supposedly used G-sensors to ensure that the new ‌Mac Pro‌ would be able to withstand reasonable amounts of shock and vibrations while being wheeled around in production trucks and other professional environments.

Another notable tidbit was that, like many other Apple products, the new ‌Mac Pro‌ was kept in a "stealth enclosure" during testing in Apple's labs to ensure that its design remained a secret until it was announced. This was certainly effective, as the new ‌Mac Pro‌'s design was a complete surprise.

The entire interview can be listened to on the Mac Power Users podcast at Relay.FM.

At its WWDC keynote on Monday, Apple unveiled its new login feature that will allow users to sign into apps and websites using their Apple ID. As part of iOS 13, Apple will require all apps that use third-party sign-in options to include its Sign In With Apple button.

The feature has been largely welcomed as a more secure alternative to similar sign-in services offered by Facebook, Google, and Twitter, since it authenticates the user with Face ID or Touch ID, and doesn't send personal information to app and website developers.

However, one detail in Apple's updated Human Interface Guidelines is raising eyebrows – Apple is asking developers to position its Sign In with Apple button more prominently by putting it above all other rival sign-in options.

The guidelines are regarded as suggestions about how developers should build their apps, rather than mandatory requirements. Even so, many developers believe that following the guidelines gives their apps the best chance of passing Apple's approval process. Curiously, Apple is also asking developers to place its Sign In with Apple button above other options on websites, an area over which it wields no review power.

The suggestions come at a time when developers and rivals have claimed some of Apple's business practices, such as taking up to a 30 percent commission on apps sold through its App Store, are unfair and anticompetitive, and amount to operating the platform as a monopoly.

In the EU, antitrust regulators are looking into claims by Spotify that it is using the ‌App Store‌ to deliberately disadvantage other app developers. Meanwhile in the U.S., the Department of Justice was recently given the go ahead by the Federal Trade Commission to launch a probe into Apple's business practices, as part of a broader review of antitrust concerns in relation to large technology companies.

In an interview yesterday with CBSNews, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that scrutiny of Apple's business practices was "fair" and a good thing for large companies, but claimed the company is not a monopoly in any of the markets it operates in.