MacRumors' Mac Blog: Mac Apps, News and Rumors

Apple today announced the launch of a new LivePhotosKit JavaScript-based API that's designed to make it easy to embed Live Photos taken with Apple's latest iPhones into websites. This new JavaScript-based API makes it easy to embed Live Photos on your websites. In addition to enabling Live Photos on iOS and macOS, you can now let users display their Live Photos on the web.Introduced alongside...

OWC has announced that it will be debuting a range of new Thunderbolt 3 products at the 2017 NAB Show this weekend in Las Vegas. Envoy Pro EX with Thunderbolt 3 First up is the Envoy Pro EX, a pocket-sized, bus-powered SSD with Thunderbolt 3. Storage capacities will start at 240GB. As it remains a prototype, no release date was specified. OWC's existing Envoy Pro EX with USB 3.0 starts at...

Google is planning to introduce an ad-blocking feature in both the mobile and desktop versions of its Chrome web browser, according to sources who spoke to The Wall Street Journal. The feature could be turned on by default within Chrome and would be designed to filter out certain online ad types that result in poor user experiences on the web, as defined by industry group the Coalition for...

Apple today released a new update for Safari Technology Preview, the experimental browser Apple first introduced one year ago in March of 2016. Apple designed the Safari Technology Preview to test features that may be introduced into future release versions of Safari. Safari Technology Preview release 28 includes fixes and improvements for CSS, JavaScript, Web API, Web Inspector, WebDriver,...

Ahead of the NAB media trade show, which kicks off on April 22, Adobe today unveiled updates to several of its Creative Cloud apps, including Premiere Pro, After Effects, Character Animator, and Audition. Better integration between Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Audition is a key theme in today's updates, as are more powerful Dynamic Link collaborative tools to make group projects easier. ...

LG's UltraFine 5K Display has received a 2017 TIPA Award as the "best photo monitor," the company announced today. TIPA on its website said the display "brings professional photos and videos to life" with 5K resolution, while it also praised the display's single-cable Thunderbolt 3 connectivity and DCI-P3 wide color support. TIPA said the display reflects a "good demonstration of LG's...

LaCie today announced its next-generation 2big professional 2-bay RAID storage solution, debuting the LaCie 2big Dock with Thunderbolt 3 connectivity for use alongside the new 2016 MacBook Pro, which supports Thunderbolt 3. The LaCie 2big Dock is a docking station designed for media professionals, offering a wide range of ports for a streamlined creative workflow. There are front-facing SD and ...

This week the Internet Archive website announced it has curated a range of classic Macintosh software for interested users to download and emulate in their browser, allowing them to get a feel for Apple days of yesteryear. The selection spans the period 1984-1989 in Macintosh history, and features classic applications like MacPaint and MacDraft, System Software 6, and games including Dark...

Blizzard Entertainment today made wildly popular real-time strategy game StarCraft a free download for Mac and PC, nearly two decades after its original release. The RTS hit was universally acclaimed when it launched in 1998, and went on to become an e-sport phenomenon in South Korea, where big-prize tournaments and TV channels drew legions of fans to the game. The free download is the...

Apple CEO Tim Cook attended the Newseum's Free Expression Awards in Washington, D.C., last night to accept the institution's 2017 Free Expression Award. Cook was named in February as the recipient of the award in the Free Speech category, which recognized the Apple CEO for having a "profound impact" on communication and for using his position to "take a public stand" on issues like racial...

Apple has announced that former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and Apple's environmental chief Lisa Jackson will be hosting a "climate optimism" discussion at its Union Square retail store in San Francisco on Wednesday. The duo will also share their insight on Earth Day initiatives, Apple's ongoing commitment to the environment, and ways that people can have an impact on climate and the...

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has given his thoughts on what Apple might look like some 60 years in the future, stating in an interview that he believes his former employer, as well as Google and Facebook, will be even bigger in 2075. The comment comes from an interview Wozniak gave in preparation for the Silicon Valley Comic Con, which this year is themed as "The Future of Humanity: Where Will...

Google appears to be testing a Dark Mode feature for YouTube in the latest version of its Chrome 57 desktop browser. The built-in mode was discovered on Thursday and shared in a Reddit post, and while the setting doesn't appear by default, a quick command in the developer console is all that's required to enable it. YouTube Dark Mode in Chrome with black theme enabled Follow these steps...

Team chat platform Slack got a long-awaited feature on Thursday with the addition of status updates, finally allowing users to customize their status message beyond the default "away" setting. The new "set a status" feature includes five Suggested statuses including In a meeting, Commuting, Out sick, Vacationing, and Working remotely, as well as an input field for typing a custom message –...

Apple is purchasing so many trees for its upcoming Apple Park campus that it's becoming challenging for other companies to source trees, according to a report from the San Francisco Chronicle. "Buying trees is a surprisingly cutthroat business," reads the Chronicle in a piece about a rooftop City Park that's being built above the upcoming Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco. Adam...

Apple today updated its iMovie video editing app for the Mac to version 10.1.5, introducing a couple of important bug fixes to address issues that have popped up in previous updates. Today’s iMovie update fixes an issue that could add a red tint to video imported from some camcorders and it fixes a bug that prevented some videos shot on the iPhone from appearing in the import window....

Three additional Apple suppliers, including Compal Electronics, Sunwoda Electronic, and Biel Crystal Manufactory, have promised to use 100 percent renewable energy when manufacturing iPhone components, Apple VP of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson told Bloomberg in an interview. 96 percent of the energy Apple uses comes from renewable sources like wind and solar,...

Microsoft has begun inviting Mac users to try its new Google Calendar and Contacts support in Outlook 2016 by downloading and installing the application from its preview site. Up until now, many of Outlook's more advanced email features have only been available to users with an Outlook.com, Office 365 or Exchange email address. This week's global rollout means anyone with a Gmail account can...