MacRumors' Mac Blog: Mac Apps, News and Rumors

Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming macOS Catalina update to its public beta testing group, two weeks after seeding the second public beta and a day after seeding the fourth developer beta. Beta testers who have signed up for Apple's beta testing program will be able to download the macOS Catalina beta through the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences after installing...

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, visited Apple headquarters on Tuesday to give a talk to employees, according to a report by Bloomberg. The billionaire's address at Apple is said to be one of several speakers talking to select Apple staff as part of an ongoing series. Dorsey reportedly spoke with employees from the marketing department, and while the address may highlight shared...

DuckDuckGo has been using Apple Maps to power map-related searches on both desktop and mobile since January, and today the privacy-focused search engine announced further improvements to that integration. First, when switching to DuckDuckGo's dark theme, Apple Maps now also automatically switches to a dark appearance. DuckDuckGo has also added a dedicated Maps tab at the top of every...

Apple today seeded the fifth beta of an upcoming macOS Mojave 10.14.6 update to developers, one week after seeding the fourth macOS Mojave 10.14.6 beta and two months after the release of macOS Mojave 10.14.5, which brought AirPlay 2 support for third-party TVs. The new macOS Mojave 10.14.6 beta can be downloaded through the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences after the proper...

An interesting piece of technology history was highlighted by The Verge over the weekend that may be of interest to Apple users both young and old. Amateur computer historian Kevin Savetz recently scanned the Fall 1989 issue of the NeXT catalog and uploaded the files to Archive.org. That makes the entire 138-page book available for perusal online, offering an intriguing glimpse into NeXT's...

It was another big week for Apple news this week, with Apple launching its annual Back to School promotion and taking the opportunity to update some of its lower-end Mac notebook lineup. The refresh saw a lower price and a minor update for the MacBook Air, an updated entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the discontinuation of the 12-inch MacBook. The moves help streamline Apple's notebook lineup...

Apple today announced that transcripts of all of its WWDC 2019 session videos are now available through the WWDC video page. Individual transcripts can be searched by keyword or phrase, and clicking on search results will jump you straight to the corresponding timestamps in the video, making it easy to find just what you're looking for and share those specific sections with timestamped...

Apple today released a new update for Safari Technology Preview, the experimental browser Apple first introduced three years ago in March 2016. Apple designed the ‌Safari Technology Preview‌ to test features that may be introduced into future release versions of Safari. ‌Safari Technology Preview‌ release 87 includes bug fixes and performance improvements in areas including Web API, Web...

Apple today updated the MacBook Air with a True Tone display. The notebook also received a $100 price drop, with prices now starting at $1,099 in the United States, or $999 for qualifying students through Apple's education store. While this news means that 2018 MacBook Air models are no longer available to purchase through Apple's online store, a retail source informed MacRumors that Apple...

Apple today seeded the fourth beta of an upcoming macOS Mojave 10.14.6 update to developers, two weeks after seeding the third macOS Mojave 10.14.6 beta and nearly two months after the release of macOS Mojave 10.14.5, which brought AirPlay 2 support for third-party TVs. The new macOS Mojave 10.14.6 beta can be downloaded through the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences after the...

With the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro being refreshed with a Touch Bar and other new features today, Apple no longer sells a MacBook Pro without a Touch Bar in its current lineup. In other words, it is no longer possible to buy a new ‌MacBook Pro‌ with a physical escape key directly from Apple. The Touch Bar has been a controversial feature since its debut on the 15-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ in...

A serious zero-day vulnerability in the Zoom video conferencing app for Mac was publicly disclosed today by security researcher Jonathan Leitschuh. In a Medium post, Leitschuh demonstrated that simply visiting a webpage allows the site to forcibly initiate a video call on a Mac with the Zoom app installed. The flaw is said to be partly due to a web server the Zoom app installs on Macs...

Following last week's big news that Jony Ive will be departing Apple, this week saw a slew of Mac-related rumors including evidence of an upcoming MacBook Pro model, word that Apple is abandoning the troublesome butterfly keyboard used on its notebooks for the past several years, and logic board problems with a "very small number" of MacBook Air units. Read on for all of the biggest news of...

Apple today seeded the second beta of an upcoming macOS Catalina update to its public beta testing group, one week after seeding the first public beta and a day after seeding the third developer beta. Beta testers who have signed up for Apple's beta testing program will be able to download the macOS Catalina beta through the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences after installing the...

Microsoft is facing an issue with Windows 10 updates for Mac devices that came out prior to 2012, as well as newer Macs with older versions of Boot Camp. When users attempt to update to the May 2019 Feature Update for Windows 10, version 1903, there is a driver incompatibility error. On its support page for the issue, Microsoft reported: Mac devices prior to 2012 or newer Mac devices with...

Apple today updated its website to announce that it will share its earnings results for the third fiscal quarter (second calendar quarter) of 2019 on Tuesday, July 30. Apple's third quarter earnings results will give us a look at how well the iPhone and other products are doing mid-year following some price drops and promotions in various countries around the world. Apple's guidance for...

The big news of this week was obviously the announcement that Jony Ive will be leaving Apple to start his own design firm, but there was plenty of other news including a surprise early launch of public betas of iOS 13, macOS Catalina, and tvOS 13. Read on below for a summary of all our top stories from this week. Apple's Longtime Design Chief Jony Ive Leaving to Start New Design Company...

Amazon and Best Buy are closing out the week with a variety of sales on the 15-inch MacBook Pro, 11-inch iPad Pro, and the Apple Pencil. In most cases, the prices listed below offer the lowest prices ever seen on each model, and reach up to $300 off the MacBook Pro and up to $250 off the iPad Pro. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with these vendors. When you click a link and make a...