MacRumors' Mac Blog: Mac Apps, News and Rumors

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...

Feral Interactive has announced that the first game in the Total War: Warhammer trilogy is set to come to the Mac next week. Originally developed by Creative Assembly in partnership with Games Workshop and published by SEGA, Feral has completed the work of converting the popular PC title to run via Apple's new graphics API, Metal, and will launch the Mac game on April 18. A fantasy...

As promised, Nvidia last night introduced beta macOS drivers for its latest GeForce 10-series graphics cards, enabling macOS support for cards ranging from the GeForce GTX 1050 to the newly announced Nvidia Titan Xp. macOS drivers for Nvidia's Pascal 10-series graphics cards will be of interest to those who build Hackintosh machines, use external GPUs, and those who own older Mac Pro machines...

Apple today provided public beta testers with the second beta of macOS Sierra 10.12.5, an update that comes two weeks after the first 10.12.5 public beta was seeded and one day after developers received the second beta. macOS Sierra 10.12.5 follows the macOS Sierra 10.12.4 update, which introduced Night Shift for the Mac. Beta testers who have signed up for Apple's beta testing program will...

LG's new 32UD99 display is now available to order for $999 from retailers such as Amazon and B&H Photo Video, as noted by AnandTech. The 31.5-inch IPS LED display features Ultra HD resolution of 3,840×2,160 pixels, which is often marketed as 4K, support for 95% of the DCI-P3 wide color gamut, and a USB-C input for single-cable connectivity with a 12-inch MacBook or 2016 MacBook Pro. It also ...

Facebook Messenger has allowed users to send money to one another since 2015, but as of today, the chat platform is being updated with a new group payments feature. With Facebook Messenger for the web and Android devices, users can now send and receive money between groups of people, useful for splitting a restaurant bill or pooling money for a group gift. Group payments can be sent in...

Note-taking app Evernote today announced that users on the 2016 MacBook Pro will now be able to use Touch Bar commands to browse, edit, and customize their notes within the app. Notably, the company said that the addition of Touch Bar support will give users quick access to key navigation features and note editing commands found within Evernote. To announce the update, Evernote has given...

Western Digital today announced the newest addition to its G-Technology brand "G-Drive," called the G-Drive USB-C. The company said that the new device was designed with power users and creative enthusiasts in mind, allowing them access to high-capacity storage and charging on the MacBook Pro through the USB-C port. The G-Drive USB-C is available in 4TB, 8TB, and 10TB capacities so users can...

Living Computers: Museum + Labs in Seattle, which is dedicated to showcasing the history of computing devices from around the world, is this Friday opening up a wing focused on all things Apple. Called the "Apple Computer Exhibit," visitors will be able to walk through the first two decades of Apple's products and advances in technology, ranging specifically from 1976 to 1999 (via GeekWire). Th ...

For this week's giveaway, Pad & Quill is generously offering a package of accessories with a total retail value of over $600 for one lucky winner. This prize package includes the company's Large Briefcase that can accommodate up to a 15-inch laptop and features full-grain American cowhide leather, parachute-grade nylon stitching, and a 25-year warranty. The Large Briefcase retails for $365...

Malware attacks on Macs were up 744 percent in 2016, according to the latest Threat Report shared by McAfee Labs [PDF]. Mac users don't need to be overly alarmed, though, because much of that huge jump can be attributed to adware bundling. macOS malware samples jumped up 245 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016 alone just from adware. Adware, while irritating, is less alarming than true...

Adobe today rolled out new updates for Illustrator CC and InDesign CC, introducing new features and improvements. For Illustrator CC, Adobe is introducing a new image crop tool for manipulating embedded images, which means Illustrator users no longer need to create clipping masks to hide image content or switch over to Photoshop to crop images. Adobe says the new feature will reduce the...

Earlier this week, several Apple executives, including marketing chief Phil Schiller, software head Craig Federighi, and hardware engineering VP John Ternus, invited several journalists to Apple's campus to discuss the future of the Mac Pro, among other topics. The information that was shared in that interview has been well-covered in recent days, but TechCrunch today published the entire...

Western Digital today announced the launch of its first portable SSD, bringing solid state storage to its popular "My Passport" lineup of storage devices. The new My Passport SSD is Western Digital's fastest portable drive yet, offering transfer speeds of up to 515 MB/s. Designed for USB-C devices like the MacBook and MacBook Pro, it features a USB Type-C port and ships with both a USB-C to...