MacRumors

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Apple in iOS 13 introduced a new "Optimized Battery Charging" feature, which is designed to extend the total battery life of your iOS device.

Found in the Battery section of Settings under "Battery Health," the optional toggle learns from your personal habits and waits to finish charging all the way up until you need your iPhone.

For example, if you often charge your phone up at night while you sleep, Apple might charge it to 80 percent right away, but wait until an hour or so before you wake up to charge the remaining 20 percent.

That keeps your ‌iPhone‌ at an optimal capacity for battery health, rather than keeping it close to 100 percent on the charger.

Avoiding topping up the battery continually while it sits on the charger reduces the amount of time that your device spends at maximum capacity, and over time, this could extend the life of your battery.

Battery health has been a hot topic over the course of the last year, after Apple was found throttling the processor speeds of iOS devices with degraded batteries to prolong device life as long as possible.

That issue spurred Apple to be more forthcoming about overall battery health, providing details about capacity and performance in the Battery portion of Settings. Aside from the new toggle to optimize charging, there are no major changes to the Battery Health feature in the first iOS 13 beta.

Hey Siri, play Old Town Road on Spotify.

Ask that now and Siri will tell you that it cannot play songs from Spotify, but that could change soon. Apple is opening up its SiriKit framework to third-party music, podcasts, audiobooks, and radio apps in iOS 13 and iPadOS, enabling users to use Siri to control audio playback in supported apps.

Spotify recently accused Apple of anticompetitive business practices, and its inability to integrate with Siri was one of its complaints. "Apple won't allow us to be on HomePod and they definitely won't let us connect with Siri to play your jams," said Spotify. Going forward, the latter is no longer the case.

The first betas of iOS 13 and iPadOS were seeded to developers on Monday, with public betas to follow in July. The software updates will be widely released in the fall, likely alongside new iPhones in September as usual.