MacRumors

Apple has rolled out a new spatial audio feature for Apple Music subscribers that uses Dolby Atmos to create a richer, more immersive soundstage when listening to songs in the Apple Music catalog.

With Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos enabled, the subjective experience is that musical notes are coming from all around you. The steps below show you how to control the new audio feature on any iOS device with an Apple Music subscription.

1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap Music.
3. Under "Audio," tap Dolby Atmos.
4. Select from Automatic, Always On, and Off.

Now that you've enabled Dolby Atmos, you'll be able to enjoy a more immersive audio experience. Apple Music will play Dolby Atmos tracks on all AirPods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip, as will the built-in speakers of the newest iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Just make sure that you have Spatial Audio enabled on capable headphones.

You can check which tracks in Apple Music support the audio effect by looking for the logo in the app interface. Apple plans to add new Dolby Atmos tracks on a regular basis, and will offer up a curated selection of Dolby Atmos playlists. At launch, there are thousands of Dolby Atmos-enabled songs that are available to listen to.

As part of WWDC this week, Apple has released a draft specification of its Nearby Interaction Accessory Protocol, allowing third-party accessory manufacturers to review preliminary hardware and software requirements for developing accessories that interact with the U1 chip in supported Apple devices, like iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 models.

Third-party accessories that are designed to be interoperable with the U1 chip will be able to provide precise and directionally-aware experiences, just like Apple accessories can. For example, users can bring a U1-equipped iPhone close to a HomePod mini to hand off music playback, complete with visual, audible, and haptic effects, or access a Precision Finding feature when an AirTag is near a U1-equipped iPhone.

NXP Semiconductors and Qorvo are now offering development kits for designing third-party accessories that are interoperable with the U1 chip. However, it's unclear when the first U1-enabled third-party accessories will be released.

Apple first opened up the U1 chip to app developers with the release of the Nearby Interaction framework at WWDC 2020, allowing for precise, directionally aware app experiences, and now it is expanding this Ultra Wideband integration to hardware accessories. Apple has a WWDC 2021 session on the topic with more details.

Apple is planning to bring the new Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos feature to Android devices in the near future, according to a brief mention on the Spatial Audio intro page available in the Apple Music app.

All Apple Music subscribers using the latest version of Apple Music on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV can listen to thousands of Dolby Atmos Music tracks using any headphones. When listening with compatible Apple or Beats headphones, Dolby Atmos Music will play back automatically when available for a song. For other headphones, go to Settings > Music > Audio and set the Dolby Atmos switch to "Always On. " You can also hear Dolby Atmos Music using the built- in speakers on compatible iPhones, iPads, and MacBook Pros, or by connecting your Apple TV 4K to a compatible TV or AV receiver. Android is coming soon.

Since debuting ‌Apple Music‌ Spatial Audio, Apple has only mentioned availability on Apple devices and did not previously make it clear that the feature will also be available to Android users. TechCrunch first noticed the mention earlier today following the late night launch of the feature yesterday.

Apple did not provide word on which Android devices might be compatible, but a wide range of Apple devices can access the feature including the iPhone 7 and later, all iPad Pro models, the 6th-generation iPad or later, the iPad Air 3 and later, the fifth-generation iPad mini and later, the 2018 or later MacBook Pro/MacBook Air, and the 2020 or later iMac.

With iOS 15, Apple is introducing a new Digital Legacy program that designates people as Legacy Contacts to let them access your Apple ID account and personal information in the event of your death.

This feature does not appear to be live at the current time, but based on Apple's description, it will give your friends or family members access to your photos and other important data after your death. This is an important new addition to iOS because right now, if someone passes away with a locked iPhone, iPad, or Mac, it's difficult if not impossible to get access to the device, even with access to a death certificate.

Digital Legacy will let your loved ones manage your data to get access to key accounts and personal items like photos that would otherwise be lost.

Management of digital data after death is something that Apple has been lacking, and with so much data online, it's become an increasingly important topic. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook have tools for setting legacy contacts that can archive an account, and Google maintains an Inactive Account Manager that releases control of an account to a designated person after a set period of time.

Alongside the Digital Legacy program, Apple is also letting users set Account Recovery Contacts. People set as an Account Recovery Contact will be able to help you regain access to your ‌Apple ID‌ should you forget your password.

Both of these features will be available when iOS 15 launches this fall.

New Intel chips appropriate for a refreshed Mac Pro have been spotted in the Xcode 13 beta, and Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has confirmed that Apple is indeed preparing an updated version of the Intel-based ‌Mac Pro‌.

The chip data added to the beta is for Intel's third-generation Xeon Scalable processor, Ice Lake SP, which Intel announced back in April. According to Intel, the chip offers "advanced performance, security, efficiency, and built-in AI acceleration to handle IoT workloads and more powerful AI."

Bloomberg in January said that Apple is developing two versions of the new ‌Mac Pro‌, one that's a direct successor to the 2019 ‌Mac Pro‌ and one that offers a smaller form factor that's about half the size.

Apple is working to transition its entire Mac lineup to Apple silicon, and the smaller ‌Mac Pro‌ will feature Apple silicon chips, but it appears Apple is planning to keep at least one Intel ‌Mac Pro‌ available for the time being.

Some of the high-end Apple silicon chips that Apple is developing feature 20 or 40 computing cores with 64 or 128 core GPUs, but it is not clear if the earliest versions of ‌Mac Pro‌ chips will be able to compete with Intel's Xeon processors for heavy duty professional workloads.

This Intel-based ‌Mac Pro‌ may be one of the last Intel machines as Apple has already started transitioning the iMac, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and MacBook Air lines to Apple silicon. Apple this year plans to release 14 and 16-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ models with higher-end "M2" Apple silicon chips, and there's also a larger Apple silicon ‌iMac‌ in development.

To help new iPhone owners transition from an Android device, Apple uses the "Move to iOS" Android app for transferring content like contacts, message history, photos and videos, web bookmarks, mail account information, calendars, DRM-free songs, wallpapers, and more.

This app has been around since 2015, but with the release of iOS 15, Apple is improving the Move to iOS experience.

With iOS 15, Apple will also allow Android users to transfer photo albums, files, folders, and Accessibility settings from their Android devices to their iPhones to allow for a more personalized ‌iPhone‌ usage experience right from the start.

Apple is also making it easier to get the Move to iOS app by implementing a QR code that Android users can scan to be taken to the download link in the Google Play Store.

The new transfer options will be available when setting up a new device running iOS 15 from an Android phone, so the transfer process likely won't be available in full until iOS 15 launches to the public this fall. Apple may also need to release a new version of the Move to iOS app, which is not out as of yet.

iOS 15 has multiple significant privacy-focused improvements such as new protections in the Mail app to prevent tracking, an App Privacy section that shows you how often apps access sensitive information like location, and on-device Siri processing, but there are also some smaller but equally important changes.

One of these updates is a new Secure Paste function for developers, which can be built into apps. With this feature implemented, users can paste something from a different app, with the content of what's copied hidden unless it's pasted into the developer's own app.

If secure paste is implemented, users can copy and paste from one app to another without being alerted through the clipboard notification that was introduced in iOS 14, giving them peace of mind that what they've copied is secure.

This feature sounds complicated, but it stems from a major privacy issue that surfaced last year. Back in March 2020, it came to light that many iPhone and iPad apps were "snooping" on pasteboard data, as developers could access whatever was on the pasteboard without the user being aware.

Apps like TikTok, Hotels.com, Reddit, Zillow and others could see whatever a user copied from another app, which was a concern because sometimes sensitive information like a password is copied.

Apple addressed this issue in iOS 14 by implementing a small banner that notifies you whenever an app accesses the clipboard, which means apps can no longer see the clipboard without your knowledge. iOS 15 takes it further with the secure paste feature that prevents developers from seeing the clipboard entirely unless you opt to copy something from one app and paste it into the app you're actively using.

With secure paste, developers can let users paste from a different app without having access to what was copied until the user takes action to paste it into their app. When developers use secure paste, users will be able to paste without being alerted via the pasteboard transparency notification, helping give them peace of mind.

After Apple first implemented the iOS 14 feature to unveil when apps were accessing the clipboard, many apps were found to be copying the clipboard on a frequent basis, though some apps like TikTok claimed that this was a mistake.

Apple today released new 3E756 firmware designed for the AirPods Max, marking the third firmware update Apple has introduced for its high-end headphones since their December launch.

The new 3E756 firmware replaces the 3C39 firmware that was released to ‌AirPods Max‌ owners in March.

Apple does not provide details on what's included in new firmware updates, so we don't know what bug fixes or improvements the new firmware might offer. There may be improvements to battery life, or updated support for Spatial Audio, a feature that debuted for Apple Music yesterday.

There's no standard way to upgrade firmware on AirPods, AirPods Pro, or ‌AirPods Max‌, but connecting the ‌AirPods Max‌ to an iPhone or an iPad while connected to a power source may force the update.

You can check the firmware on your ‌AirPods Max‌ by following these steps:

• Connect your ‌AirPods Max‌‌ to your iOS device.
• Open the Settings app.
• Tap General.
• Tap About.
• Tap ‌‌‌‌AirPods‌‌‌‌.
• Look at the number next to "Firmware Version."

In the past, updates for the ‌AirPods Pro‌ and AirPods have included performance improvements, bug fixes, and feature tweaks. The prior update, for example, addressed a Smart Case battery drain issue.

If we find notable changes after installing the firmware updates, we'll update this article.

In tvOS 15, Apple has simplified the process of entering a login and password with a connected iPhone by allowing for Face ID and Touch ID to be used for authentication purposes.

Developers will be able to implement a new tvOS feature that enables ‌Face ID‌ or ‌Touch ID‌ integration for authenticating purchases and signing into apps.

You'll see a new "Sign in With Apple Device" option when signing into an app where you need a login for the first time, so long as the developers have implemented this feature.

Users who opt to authenticate with an ‌iPhone‌ or iPad will get a notification on their devices that will bring them to a ‌Face ID‌/‌Touch ID‌ authentication page that suggests a login credential from the Keychain.

‌Face ID‌ and ‌Touch ID‌ sign in for Apple TV apps will make the authentication process quicker and more streamlined, with the feature coming this fall in the tvOS 15 update.

Apple announced iOS 15 on Monday, and as usual, there is a long list of smaller features that went unmentioned during the WWDC keynote.

One of these small but helpful features is archived passes in the Wallet app. Starting with iOS 15, expired boarding passes and event tickets in the Wallet app are automatically moved to an expired list, helping to reduce clutter.

In the Settings app under Wallet & Apple Pay, there's a toggle switch for hiding expired passes that is enabled by default. Users who prefer to have expired passes shown alongside current passes can disable the setting.

Apple is making the Wallet app a lot more useful in iOS 15. In addition to digital boarding passes, tickets, and car keys, users can now add digital house keys, which can be tapped to unlock a compatible HomeKit door lock. Hotel room key cards can also be added to the Wallet app from a participating hotel provider's app. Hyatt Hotels will be rolling out the feature to over 1,000 of its properties worldwide in the fall.

Another interesting new feature is the ability to add a driver's license and/or ID from participating U.S. states to the Wallet app and present them securely at TSA checkpoints at airports. Apple says this feature will be available in late 2021, suggesting that it will be enabled at some point after the initial public release of iOS 15.

As spotted on Reddit, iPhone apps running on iPadOS 15 now run in landscape orientation rather than in portrait, as previously on iPadOS. This means that popular apps such as Instagram that have yet to release a native iPad app can run in landscape mode, with black bars on either side.

Users can continue to use the app in portrait mode if they wish, but the default has been switched to opening in landscape or whichever orientation the ‌iPad‌ is in when first opening the app.

Alongside this new change, iPadOS 15 also features the ability to place widgets anywhere on the Home Screen, improvements to multitasking, and more. iPadOS 15 is currently in beta testing and will ship to all users alongside iOS 15, watchOS 8, macOS Monterey, and tvOS 15 this fall.

Apple Music over the weekend highlighted a Spatial Audio-focused "special event," and it turns out that event is a discussion between Apple's Zane Lowe and music producers No I.D., Sylvia Massy, and Manny Marroquin.

The ‌Apple Music‌ event can be watched in the ‌Apple Music‌ app or on YouTube, and it features Lowe and the music producers discussing the evolution of music and the sound improvements for music fans.

Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio for ‌Apple Music‌ began rolling out last night, with special Spatial Audio tracks now available in the ‌Apple Music‌ app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos is a feature that artists need to implement when mixing music, so it is not available for all songs. Apple has, however, introduced thousands of Spatial Audio songs, including popular titles like Lady Gaga's "Rain on Me."

For those unfamiliar with Spatial Audio, it is a three-dimensional audio format that is designed to let musicians create songs where the instruments sound like they're coming from multiple places in the spaces around you.

In an interview shared earlier today, Apple's Eddy Cue likened Spatial Audio to watching high-definition TV for the first time.

Apple has announced that it is opening up Shazam, the audio recognition app purchased in 2017, to third-party apps, even on Android, enabling them to use Shazam's powerful technology to identify audio.

Over the years, Apple has been integrating Shazam more tightly into the core iOS experience. With iOS 14.2 earlier this year, Apple added a Shazam toggle to Control Center, allowing users to tap into Shazam's audio recognition technology from anywhere on the device. The new toggle also allowed users to identify a song playing locally from their device, a scenario that previously required users to locate a secondary device to activate Shazam.

ShazamKit allows developers to match "music to the millions of songs in Shazam’s vast catalog" or by creating prerecorded audio that's recognizable through an app's own custom catalog, consisting of content such as audio from a video, podcast, and more.

Develop features in your apps using music recognition and seamlessly connect users to Shazam’s catalog of music. ShazamKit lets you enrich your app experience by letting users find out a song’s name, who sang it, the genre, and more. Learn where in the song the match was found in order to synchronize content with user experiences.

ShazamKit can also be used to create a fully custom experience, such as having an app react to specific audio that is played from its custom audio library. Developers can learn more about ShazamKit here and by watching this WWDC session.

In an Apple Newsroom editorial today, Apple Music radio host Zane Lowe revealed that Apple is building tools directly into Logic Pro that will allow musicians to create and mix their songs in Spatial Audio for Apple Music.

"Apple is building immersive music-authoring tools directly into Logic Pro later this year," wrote Lowe. "So any musician will be able to create and mix their songs in Spatial Audio for Apple Music — whether they're in the studio, at home, or wherever."

Spatial Audio, based on Dolby Atmos, is an immersive surround sound audio format that enables musicians to mix music so it sounds like the instruments are all around you in space. Thousands of Apple Music songs are available in Spatial Audio starting today, such as Lady Gaga's "Rain on Me" and Kanye West's "Black Skinhead."

Logic Pro is Apple's professional music production software for the Mac, and is priced at $199.99 on the Mac App Store, with a free 90-day trial available.

While leaker Jon Prosser claimed that a new MacBook Pro was coming at WWDC, Apple's keynote did not include any new hardware announcements. Instead, it is looking increasingly likely that redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models powered by a faster iteration of the M1 chip will be released in the third or fourth quarter of the year.

A paywalled preview of a DigiTimes report today claims that Apple suppliers will begin shipments for new MacBook Pro models in the third quarter, which starts in July and runs through September. It's unclear if these shipments are referring to new MacBook Pro models as a whole or individual components for the notebooks.

"Apple is expected to roll out two new MacBook Pro models later in 2021, with shipments slated to kick off in the third quarter, according to industry sources," the paywalled blurb reads. The full report should be published by tomorrow.

It's worth noting that while there were hopes that Apple would announce new MacBook Pro models at WWDC, supply chain reports from outlets like Nikkei Asia and DigiTimes have repeatedly suggested that mass production of new MacBook Pro models would not begin until at least the third quarter of the year. This timeframe should provide Apple with an opportunity to announce the new MacBook Pro models before the end of the year.

The new MacBook Pro models are each expected to feature a brighter mini-LED display, an improved iteration of the M1 chip, and a new design with a flatter top and bottom. The notebooks are also expected to regain some ports that Apple removed from the MacBook Pro in 2016, including an HDMI port, SD card slot, and a magnetic charging port. Rumors also suggest the Touch Bar will be retired in favor of physical Fn keys.

On iOS 14, Smart Stacks for widgets allow users to stack different widgets on top of each other and then allow iOS to display the most relevant widget depending on the time of day, location, and more. On iOS 15, Apple is taking Smart Stacks even further with Widget Suggestions, which automatically add and remove widgets in a Smart Stack depending on context.

For example, if a user has an existing Smart Stack which includes the Weather and Reminders widget, iOS 15 may add a Calendar widget to the stack if the user has an upcoming meeting. Then, after the meeting, iOS 15 will remove the widget from the Smart Stack, reverting it to the stack that the user had set up with Weather and Reminders. Apple says it hopes this new feature, which can be disabled on a per Smart Stack basis, will allow users to discover new and helpful widgets.

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 introduces new widgets for Find My, Game Center, App Store Today, Sleep, Mail, and more. Developers interested in learning more about widget suggestions and how they can be implemented into their app can check out this WWDC session.

Apple Music's new Spatial Audio feature started rolling out on Monday evening and officially launches today, and to mark the occasion, Apple's services chief Eddy Cue and Apple Music radio host Zane Lowe shared some thoughts.

Spatial Audio, based on Dolby Atmos, is an immersive three-dimensional audio format that enables musicians to mix music so it sounds like the instruments are all around you in space. Thousands of Apple Music songs are available in Spatial Audio at launch, such as Lady Gaga's "Rain on Me" and Kanye West's "Black Skinhead."

Speaking with Billboard's Micah Singleton, Cue described Spatial Audio as a "real game-changer," adding that the Dolby Atmos-based feature is essentially the audio equivalent of "the first time you ever saw HD on television":

I've been waiting for something in music that was a real game-changer. The quality of audio has not been able to really rise because there hasn't been anything out there that when you listen to it, it truly is differentiated to everybody. It doesn't matter whether you're eight years old or 80 years old, everyone can tell the difference and everyone knows this one sounds better than the other one.

And the analogy to that is obviously the first time you ever saw HD on television: you knew which one was better because it was obvious. And we've been missing that in audio for a long time. There really hasn’t been anything that's been substantial. We'll talk about lossless and other things, but ultimately, there's not enough difference.
But when you listen for the first time and you see what's possible with Dolby Atmos with music, it's a true game-changer. And so, when we listened to it for the first time, we realized this is a big, big deal. It makes you feel like you're onstage, standing right next to the singer, it makes you feel like you might be to the left of the drummer, to the right of the guitarist. It creates this experience that, almost in some ways, you've never really had, unless you're lucky enough to be really close to somebody playing music.

Cue talked up Spatial Audio as a bigger deal than lossless audio, another new Apple Music feature that can be enabled starting today. Lossless audio refers to audio recordings that have been compressed without any reduction in the overall quality of the audio, which can result in an improved listening experience, although the difference between compressed audio and lossless audio is not always obvious:

Because the reality of lossless is: if you take a 100 people and you take a stereo song in lossless and you take a song that's been in Apple Music that's compressed, I don't know if it’s 99 or 98 can't tell the difference.

For the difference of lossless, our ears aren't that good. Yeah, there are a set of people who have these incredible ears, and that's one piece of it. There's the other piece of it, which is do you have the level of equipment that can really tell the difference? It requires very, very high-quality stereo equipment. What you find is, for somebody who's a true, for example classical connoisseur, they may be able to tell the difference in lossless. I can't tell personally -- I do the blind tests all the time with the team -- I can't tell.

Apple Music radio host Zane Lowe also spoke about Spatial Audio in an Apple Newsroom editorial, expressing that the feature is all about the emotion and feeling of music:

I'm fascinated to know how I might be emotionally moved by my favorite songs in a different way with Spatial Audio. Because it's all going through my ears and triggering something, right? That's what dawned on me when I was listening to these songs in Spatial: I was listening to these songs that I knew really well, but I was feeling something different. So, it's not even just about the way it's going to end up sounding, it's very much how songs are going to feel.

Spatial Audio on Apple Music will get even more immersive in iOS 15 with the addition of dynamic head tracking when wearing AirPods Pro and AirPods Max.