MacRumors

In macOS Catalina, the Preview app has a new feature that makes it easier to sign PDFs and other documents by leveraging an iPhone or an iPad running the iOS 13/iPadOS operating system.

Rather than using the Trackpad to create a signature, or scanning a piece of paper, you can connect to your ‌iPhone‌ or ‌iPad‌ to sign there using either a finger or an Apple Pencil.

In the Preview app, under Tools > Annotate > Signature > Manage Signatures > Create Signatures, there is a new option to choose to create a signature with an iOS device. Clicking on this option lets you select an available ‌iPhone‌ or ‌iPad‌ to use.

Devices running iOS 12 will show up in this list, but creating a signature only works on a device running iOS 13. Selecting an ‌iPhone‌ or ‌iPad‌ with iOS 13 will pop up a simple signature interface on the device in question, where you can sign with a finger on the ‌iPhone‌ or a finger or ‌Apple Pencil‌ on ‌iPad‌.

After you've signed, tap the done button, and your signature is instantly made available in the Preview app as an option to be inserted into your documents.

We needed to have the devices unlocked to get the signature interface to pop up, but this may be a bug that will be addressed in a later beta.

You can already sign PDFs right on the ‌iPhone‌ or ‌iPad‌ using Markup features, but the new Preview option is a useful, streamlined way to get a signature on a document if you start the process using a Mac.

macOS Catalina introduces Sidecar, a native feature that turns the iPad into a secondary display for the Mac. It's a useful function that works well, but it's also something that third-party companies have been doing for several years now.

One of those companies makes the Luna Display, a hardware-based dongle that plugs into the Mac to turn the ‌iPad‌ into a secondary display. According to Luna Display's founders, though ‌Sidecar‌ offers similar connected technology, the Luna Display is sticking around.

"We're not going anywhere," wrote CEO Matt Ronge and Head of Product Giovanni Donelli in a blog post shared this afternoon. The two go on to explain that while they're disappointed in Apple's decision, they plan to continue to cater to creative professionals.

We've spent the last five years building innovative products like Astropad and Luna Display that cater to true creative professionals. Our team has always doubled-down on delivering deep customization and low-latency input. Why? Because that's user-driven and that's what we do.

If you have basic needs, Apple's Sidecar may do the trick. But if you're a pro, we've built Luna Display to fit around your creative workflow.

We know that creative pros have highly-individualized and unique ways of working productively. Whether you need to collaborate with multiple users, or take advantage of the Mac mini's portability by setting your iPad as the main display -- Luna offers the freedom and flexibility to build a connected workspace around your needs, so you can be productive anywhere.

Luna Display's founders are also planning to expand to new platforms and see a "bright future" in Windows.

The Luna Display adapter has been around since it launched as a Kickstarter project in 2017, and before that, Astropad, an iOS and Mac app that offers Sidecar-like functionality, was available for using an ‌iPad‌ or iPhone as a secondary display for a Mac.

‌Sidecar‌ is available in macOS Catalina and it takes just a few clicks to turn an ‌iPad‌ into a secondary display. ‌Sidecar‌ does have its limitations, though, and is only available on newer Macs from 2015/2016 and later.

Apple's upcoming iPadOS is designed to bring more desktop-class functionality to iPads with bigger screens, and as part of that aim, Safari is receiving a major overhaul that will enable it to display desktop versions of websites.

In the first instance, Apple is going about this by adapting Safari's mobile "user agent" – that aspect of the software which retrieves and renders interaction with web content – to enable the iOS browser to retrieve the desktop variety of a website by default, rather than its mobile counterpart.

In addition to that, Apple appears to be custom-optimizing the iPadOS Safari user agent to include touch- and keyboard-based interaction with at least some popular websites. As highlighted by The Verge's Dieter Bohn in his brief testing of Google Docs, Apple has made it possible to use touch to hit the menu buttons.

Google Docs has long been a huge problem on the iPad, for two reasons. First, Google’s own iPad app is god-awful and the company seems hell-bent on not updating it to work better. Second, Google Docs in Safari on the iPad right now redirects you to that app even if you “Request Desktop Site.”

On iPadOS, however, Google Docs in Safari seems great.

Admittedly, I only spent about five minutes poking around, but I went straight for the stuff I didn’t expect to work at all — and it worked. Keyboard shortcuts for formatting and header styling, comments, cursor placement, and even watching real-time edits from another person in the doc all worked.

For the productivity suite, Safari for iPadOS seems to be re-rendering the web-based interface to align it more with the site's desktop functionality. Granted, we don't know yet how far this optimization extends – is it only available for a handful of commonly used desktop sites, for example, or will Apple's implementation be more extensible? – but it's at least a sign that Apple is doing a lot under the hood to make Safari on iPad more of a desktop-class user experience.

iPadOS will incorporate several features that recognize the tablet's function as a potential computer replacement, including a new Home screen, an updated Split View to enhance multitasking, improved Apple Pencil support, and additional keyboard shortcuts for use with physical keyboards. iPadOS is due to get its public release in the fall.

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.