MacRumors

Apps designed for the Mac often don't receive as much attention as apps designed for iPhones and iPads, so we have a series here at MacRumors that highlights useful and interesting Macs worth checking out.

This month's picks include apps for optimizing your Mac, learning keyboard shortcuts, searching cloud services, and watching streaming video.

• Sensei - ($29/Year) - Sensei is a new Mac app designed for Mac optimization, offering a clean interface and a range of tools for disk cleaning, battery health monitoring, GPU, CPU, and RAM monitoring, temperature monitoring, SSD Trim enabling, uninstalling apps, fan control, file deleting, and more. Sensei costs $29 per year or $59 for a lifetime license, but there is a free trial to test it out.
• Mouseless ($15) - Mouseless is an app that helps you learn all of the keyboard shortcuts in your favorite apps, offering up short interactive training sessions that teach shortcuts and then reinforce the learning right away. It's a nifty little tool for anyone who wants to become more accustomed to app shortcuts.
• Clew (Free) - Clew is a search app designed to let you search through all of your connected cloud accounts so you can find exactly what you're looking for and then share it quickly using drag and drop. Clew supports Dropbox, Google Drive, Github, and more.
• Gooba (Free) - Gooba is a writing app and task manager that combines note taking, writing, and task management, so you can do things like write a document and then set a reminder for when to send it. It offers Markdown support, keyboard shortcuts, and cross platform compatibility so you can use it on a Mac, iPad, or iPhone.
• Clicker ($5) - Clicker is a set of apps designed for streaming video services that include Netflix, Disney+, YouTube TV, and Hulu, which is the newest app of the bunch. Clicker lets you launch right from the dock and it offers picture-in-picture support, quick video pausing, full screen browsing, touch bar controls, and more. It's a useful app for accessing video services that are normally restricted to the browser on the Mac. All of the apps cost $5, but the Disney+ version is free.

If you have a favorite must-have Mac app that we haven't highlighted yet, let us know in the comments below and we might feature it in a future video. For more of our Mac app picks, make sure to check out our Mac app archives.

NBC today announced that its upcoming Peacock streaming video service is set to launch in the United States on July 15.

The service, which will offer upwards 7,500 hours of programming including NBC shows and Universal movies, will features three subscription tiers.

NBC will offer an ad-supported tier that people can watch for free, and there will be two premium paid tiers that include live sports and early access to NBC's late night shows.

The $4.99 per month premium tier will include ads, while a $9.99 per month version will be available ad-free. Providing access to live sports will allow NBC to differentiate the Peacock service from Disney+, Netflix, and Apple TV+.

In addition to on-demand content and live sports, Peacock will include live breaking news coverage, same-day rebroadcasts, curated shorts, and access to "Dateline" and "NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt." Premium subscribers will get exclusive access to additional TV shows and movies, for a total of 15,000 hours of content.

Peacock will also include original TV shows and films, such as Tina Fey's upcoming "Girls5Eva" and an adaptation of the classic Aldous Huxley novel "Brave New World."

Customers who already subscribe to Comcast and Cox can get free access to the premium with ads version of Peacock, or pay $5 per month for the ad-free version. Comcast X1 and Flex customers will get access to Peacock on April 15, months ahead of the July 15 launch date.

More details on Peacock are available through the investor webcast that NBC shared today and accompanying PDFs that list all of the movies and TV shows that will be accessible with Peacock.

In a news story about an Apple employee who has started a barbershop for at-risk youth, Apple today said that between its own donations and employee donations, it donated more than $100 million to charitable causes in 2019.

Apple says that 21,000 Apple employees donated their time and donated $42 million to causes they care about. Combined with Apple's 1-for-1 donation match and $25 match per volunteer hour, the total amount donated climbed to over $100 million.

Apple's vice president of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson said the company has a mission to "change the world for the better, and give back to the communities in which we live and work."

"Apple employees like Jaz embody this culture of giving every day, volunteering over a quarter of a million hours last year. We share a deep commitment to our local communities and doing what we can to cause more good."

Much of Apple's story focuses on Jaz Limos, an Apple Park Visitor Center manager in Cupertino who launched Saints of Steel, a nonprofit pop-up barber shop for at-risk youth and people looking for employment and housing.

Saints of Steel was largely funded by Apple. 80 percent of the donations for the first year came from Benevity, a corporate giving program used by Apple, and 74 percent of that donation was made by Apple.

In its first year, the organization was almost fully funded by volunteers and donations from Apple. "Our board, when we first started, was primarily made up of Apple employees who just jumped in and rolled up their sleeves," Limos says. "We saw the power of Benevity and the company match program, because it funded the majority of our ability to run this program."

More info on Saints of Steel and Apple's donations can be found in the full Apple Newsroom article on the topic.

iPhone 12 models will feature a "refreshed" front-facing TrueDepth system that benefits Apple supplier Lumentum, according to Barclays analysts Blayne Curtis, Thomas O'Malley, and Baylie Harri. This suggests that Face ID could be improved on iPhone 12 models, but no specific details were provided.

In a research note provided to MacRumors, the analysts added that the rear-facing camera system on iPhone 12 Pro models will feature 3D sensing based on a time-of-flight solution, as widely rumored. They also expect iPhone 12 Pro models to be equipped with 6GB of RAM, up from 4GB in iPhone 11 Pro models.

The biggest change of all could come next year, as the analysts said they see potential for Apple to remove the Lightning connector from at least one iPhone model in 2021, echoing a prediction shared by fellow analyst Ming-Chi Kuo last month. This could result in wired EarPods being removed from the box, they said.

Kuo has said that Apple plans to release five new iPhone models in 2020, including a lower-end "iPhone SE 2" or "iPhone 9" by the end of March and four higher-end, 5G-enabled models in the fall.

Correction: A previous version of this article listed Apple supplier Lite-On Semiconductor in the first paragraph. The supplier mentioned in the research note was actually Lumentum.

New questions have been raised about the FBI's latest request that Apple break its iPhone encryption, after Forbes uncovered a search warrant strongly indicating that federal agents already have tools that can access data on Apple's latest iPhone models.

The report says that FBI investigators in Ohio recently used the GrayKey hardware box to unlock an iPhone 11 Pro Max. The iPhone belonged to Baris Ali Koch, who was accused of helping his convicted brother flee the country by providing him with his own ID documents and lying to the police. He has now entered a plea agreement and is awaiting sentencing.

Koch's lawyer confirmed to Forbes that the iPhone was locked with a passcode when it got in the hands of the FBI and that the code was never revealed to law enforcement, nor was the defendant forced to use his face to unlock the phone via Face ID.

Created by a company named Grayshift, GrayKey is a portable gray box that has previously been used by law enforcement to crack the passcode on iPhones. Complete details on how the latest GrayKey works are not known, although Apple continually works to fix the kinds of exploits used by such devices.

President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr have also weighed in on the latest iPhone encryption stalemate between Apple and the FBI, with both urging the tech giant to assist in unlocking the iPhones used by the Pensacola shooter.

Justice department officials claim to need access to the iPhones to see messages from encrypted apps like Signal or WhatsApp to find out if the shooter discussed his plans or had help. Apple says it has already provided law enforcement officials with information from the shooter's iCloud account, which amounts to all the data in its possession.

Statements by Apple suggest it is gearing up for a battle similar to the one it faced in 2016 in the San Bernardino shooter case, indicating the company has no plans to create a backdoor in its software, regardless of the U.S. government's motives. Apple has previously said that doing so would create "new and dangerous weaknesses" and that weakening security "makes no sense."

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Apple has retained Lisa Ellman, a lawyer specializing in drone and aviation law, as a Washington lobbyist, reports Bloomberg.

Ellman, a partner at law firm Hogan Lovells, leads her firm's Unmanned Aircraft Systems practice and also co-founded the Commercial Drone Alliance. She has been doing lobbying work for Apple since December.

Apple in 2018 was also a participant in a pilot program that allows the company to operate drones in ways restricted by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. Apple partnered with the North Carolina Department of Transportation to use drones to capture aerial mapping data.

Bloomberg suggests that Apple's new lobbying efforts indicate a new push into the growing drone field. Apple also has a team working on satellites that Ellman could potentially assist with when it comes to regulations.

In addition to employing drones for mapping purposes, Apple also sells popular drones from DJI in its Apple retail stores and on its website.