Tag: Apple Watch

How to: secure your iPhone and iPad Lock screen

 

 

By Peter Can of 9to5Mac

One of the things Apple touts is its focus on user privacy, and that commitment shows throughout the company’s ecosystem, all the way down to what is visible and not visible on a user’s Lock screen.

Follow along as we walk you through how to make the most out of your iPhone or iPad’s Lock screen.

How to secure your iPhone and iPad Lock screen

1 Head to Settings > Face ID (or Touch ID) & Passcode. You’ll need to enter your device’s passcode.
2 From there, scroll down until you see Allow Access When Locked.
3 By default, everything will be on. Now choose which options you’d like to disable access to when your device is locked.

Personally, I like to disable everything other than Siri, especially with Face ID on the iPhone X. By doing so, nearly every action on the Lock screen is not possible without authenticating with a passcode or Face ID. I keep Siri on to allow for “Hey Siri” on the Lock screen.

One thing I would like to see is the ability to disable the camera on the lock screen or perhaps a way to disable actionable notifications unless the device is unlocked.

For more help getting the most out of your Apple devices, check out our how to guide as well as the following articles:

• How to turn off Airplane Mode and Do Not Disturb mirroring with iPhone and Apple Watch
• How to create custom vibration pattern ringtones for iPhone
• How to set up Apple Pay on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or Mac
• How to report phishing attempts and other suspicious messages to Apple
• How to back up your Apple Watch
• How to enable ‘Calls on Other Devices’ like iPad or Mac
• How to enable Wi-Fi calling on iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch
• How to clean your dirty AirPods and charging case

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Tales From the Orchard: Police use Apple Watch health data as evidence in murder case

 

 

By Johnny Lieu of Mashable

Your smartphone knows plenty about you, and it’s that health data that’s apparently been key to solving an Australian murder case.

In September 2016, 57-year-old Myrna Nilsson was found dead in the laundry of her Adelaide home. 

According to ABC News, her daughter-in-law Caroline Dela Rose Nilsson told police that a group of men had invaded the home and attacked her mother-in-law. 

Bound and gagged, Caroline Nilsson said she didn’t see the attack. But in March, police charged her with murder following an analysis of the victim’s Apple Watch, with accusations the story was fabricated.

According to the report, prosecutor Carmen Matteo told Adelaide Magistrates Court the watch’s activity and heart rate measurements indicated an attack occurred at 6:38 p.m. and that the wearer had “almost certainly” died by 6:45 p.m.  

“If that evidence is accepted, it tends to contradict the accused’s version of an argument occurring between the deceased and these men outside the laundry for a period of up to 20 minutes,” Matteo said.

Caroline Nilsson told police she emerged from the house straight after the attack at 10 p.m. to call for help. If the Apple Watch data is accepted as evidence, Matteo said this would be more than three hours after the attack occurred. Magistrate Oliver Koehn refused bail based on the prosecution’s case, and the matter will return to court in June. 

It’s another instance where fitness data has been crucial to criminal cases. Back in 2017, Connecticut man Richard Dabate was charged with murdering his wife, after Fitbit data on the victim showed inconsistencies with Dabate’s account of the crime. 

In a German case earlier this year, fitness data off an iPhone was used as evidence against a man accused of murder.

How do you feel about your smartwatch possibly testifying against you in court? Tell us about it in the comments below!!

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How to: use Apple Pencil with Pages for iPad

 

 

By Charlie Sorrel of Cult of Mac

In Pages 4.0 for iPad, you can use Apple Pencil for more than just tapping stuff. Now you can use two great new iOS-only features in Apple’s word processing software. Smart Annotations lets you mark up text just like a teacher would — scoring red lines through words, running a highlighter over a sentence, etc. And a new drawing mode means you can easily add a sketch to a page just by tapping it with the pencil.

The drawing feature is neat, and brings Pages into line with Apple’s Notes app. But Smart Annotations will be a game-changer for many people, because it replicates something many folks still prefer to do on paper. Here’s how to take advantage of the new Pages features.

Drawing in Pages for iPad

 

To add a drawing to the body of a Pages document, you just long-press the Apple Pencil onto the screen and start drawing. This first tap brings up a resizable panel into which you can draw. If you prefer (or if you’re not using the Apple Pencil), you can tap the + icon at top right, then choose the symbols panel (the one that lets you add stencils of animals and cars), then tap the Drawing button at the bottom.
In drawing mode, you’ll see a familiar-but-different panel of tools at the bottom of the screen. These let you choose pencils, erasers and paint, and also to pick a color. But the panel’s options go beyond the usual Instant Markup tools found in other parts of iOS 11. For instance, there’s a proper color picker, so you’re not limited to just four colors plus black and white. You can also adjust the tools by tapping them a second time. In most cases, you can adjust the size and opacity of the pencil, crayon or pen.

Once you’ve completed your drawing, just tap Done. It then becomes a normal Pages object, which can be dragged different places and resized.
The super-intuitive new Pages drawing tools make it really easy to add quick illustrations to your work.

Smart Annotations in Pages

Smart Annotations may be Pages’ best new feature. It lets you mark up text using the Apple Pencil just by picking up the stylus and using it. You don’t have to launch a special mode, or tap a button (although there is a button if you insist on doing it this way). You just start writing, as if you were marking up text on real paper with a real pen.

For editors, this is a game-changer. It’s so much easier to mark things up like this than it is to use even well-designed PDF markup tools. In the book publishing business, editors still use paper galleys for final tweaks.

The big difference between Smart Annotations and paper, though, is the smart part. These annotations are tied to the text, not to the paper. That is, if you edit the text, the annotations stay with it. For instance, if you highlight a sentence, and then edit that sentence, the highlight stays.

The Smart Annotations feature is still in beta, so some things don’t work all the time. I’m sure I copied and pasted a paragraph, for example, and the highlight moved with it. But when I try it again, I can’t make it work.
Smart Annotations: A game-changer for editors

You can export the annotated document as a PDF, and the annotations stay with it. You can also share a document for collaboration via iCloud. People you share it with will be able to view your Smart Annotations and make some of their own if they like.

Imagine having a single manuscript, shared between author, editor and proof-readers, and you’ll see how powerful this feature is. You can also view and delete Smart Annotations on a Mac. I wonder if this feature will remain Pages-only, or if Apple will add it to the standard iOS text tools for other developers to use. It might be neat for coders, for example, and would be fantastic (and ironic) used with plain text notes apps.

The new Pages update brings several other nice additions. You can (finally) switch between portrait and landscape orientation for documents, you can add an image gallery, and you can view pages in double-page spreads. You can also use Pages to create iBooks, which is a huge new feature that we’ll cover in another post.

Price: Free

What is your favorite App to use with the Apple Pencil? Sound off in the comments below!

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How to: find a lost iPhone even when it’s set to vibrate/silent

 

By Michael Potuck of 9to5 Mac

It can be a frustrating experience to try and find a lost or misplaced iPhone, particularly when it’s set to vibrate/silent. Follow along for two easy ways to locate your iPhone.

Apple offers a couple of handy ways to find your misplaced iPhone (and other
Apple devices) even when it’s set to vibrate/silent. Whether you’ve never used these features before or it’s just been a little while, let’s dive in!
One last thing to keep in mind, your lost iPhone will need to be powered on for the best chance of success, although there may be some hope if not.

Option 1
Find My iPhone is a super handy app that will make your iPhone ring even when it’s set to vibrate/ring. Keep in mind you’ll need to have the feature turned on in settings under iCloud → Find My iPhone. If you happen to be reading this before you’ve lost or misplaced your device it’s also helpful to turn on Send Last Location which automatically uploads this data to Apple just before your battery is about to die.
1 Open Find My iPhone, or download it from the App Store here
2 Tap on the device you’ve lost from the list shown
3 Tap Play Sound

Option 2
If you have an Apple Watch, there is a slick iPhone ping feature built right in. You also don’t need Find My iPhone to be turned on in iCloud settings for this to work.
1 Swipe up from the bottom of your Apple Watch to open Control Center
2 Tap on the ping iPhone icon as seen below

If your lost iPhone or other device has a dead battery, make sure to try and use the Find My iPhone app to at least see its last location. Sometimes that may be enough to jog your memory or put you on the path to finding it.

Do you have any clever ways to track down your missing phone? Tell us about it in the comments below!

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Tales from the Orchard: With these patents, Apple could win the next major platform war

 

By Helen Edwards and Dave Edwards of Quartz

The next stage of the platform wars may be in health.

Despite being one of the most regulated sectors, where change is driven as much by law as by technological advances, the big tech giants are active. Amazon, JPMorgan, and Berkshire Hathaway are teaming up to form an independent healthcare company for their employees in the United States. Alphabet’s Verily is moving into health insurance. And to consolidate, traditional healthcare giant Cigna has announced (paywall) it is buying pharmacy benefits firm Express Scripts.

While the same rules for platform domination will likely apply—adoption that builds on network effects aided by the power of Big Data and increasingly sophisticated AI—only one company already has a popular health-tracking device on sale that is essentially a supercomputer that’s always on your body.

The Apple Watch continues to grow its sales, which it doesn’t disclose but are already presumed to be in the tens of millions annually; one report suggests that Apple sold more watches last quarter than Rolex, Omega, and Swatch combined.

And the pipeline suggests that Apple has even more plans for its smartwatch.

At the end of February, Apple was awarded a patent for an Airpod-style charging case that can hold a watch but also a number of bands. This isn’t just a fashion accessory; the bands in question are “smart bands,” electronic devices in their own right. The reason you’d want more than one band might be because Apple might think that the next generation of medical devices will be for conditions that need more than one physiological measure—such as blood pressure and blood glucose for managing diabetes or glucose intolerance—and that measuring these body signals will not be possible in a single wearable.

(These bands aren’t fantasy—a company called AliveCor already offers the first US FDA-approved electrocardiogram reader for Apple Watch called Kardiaband, which may also be able to detect high potassium levels in the blood.)

Last year, Apple was also awarded a patent for a very clever way of measuring blood pressure with a Watch, where you can hold the Watch against your chest and a controller is configured to process output signals from an accelerometer. It detects when your blood-pressure pulse is propagated from the left ventricle of your heart, detects when it arrives at your wrist, then calculates a pulse-transit time that is then used to calculate your blood pressure. The accelerometer is dead in the middle of the band, not in the body of the Watch. This makes us think that there’s not much else that can go in that band, except perhaps a battery and maybe some colored lights.

Another area to speculate on is what else Apple may be thinking of monitoring. In the US alone, there are 115 million people who suffer from some form of pre-diabetes, diabetes, or hypertension. Many people actively monitor their diabetes through physiological monitoring of blood glucose with a finger prick test. Blood-glucose measurement through non-invasive means is a significant challenge and no one has figured out a reliable way to do it accurately.

But rumor has it that Apple is on the case. This is a very tough technical challenge that people have been trying to solve for decades. We suspect that Apple’s case patent may be an indicator that it will not be possible or desirable to use one band for both blood pressure and blood glucose, or anything else for that matter, for at least the next decade. So you might not be monitoring everything all of the time but you may be easily able to switch out charged smart bands that are fashionable and conceal that you are being monitored.

Apple needs the Watch to win the health-platform wars. They know you’ll want to preserve your privacy by being able to disguise what you are monitoring. They know you’ll want to be able to effortlessly store and connect because you will be required to supply all the data to your doctor, insurer or employer. They know that anything less will feel like the monitoring—and hence the condition—has taken over your life.

We think that only Apple can make medical surveillance bearable, much less cool. Which makes an Apple Watch, smart bands, and a case that does it all, an essential purchase. At that point, the Watch system is a lot more than just a $400 watch and the market isn’t just consumers—it’s employers and insurers who figure out the new economics of health as a platform service. The overall market for watches is likely smaller than phones but Apple’s competitive advantages in design, technology, and data security could give it a significantly higher market share in watches.

This is especially true for insurance company buyers who will be focused on effectiveness and security much more than price. If Apple emerges as the safe purchase for corporate buyers, the Watch could be the next big thing that investors have been looking for since the iPhone.

 

What do think of Apple tackling the Health Industry? Tell us in the comments below!

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Tips & Tricks: 20 Rocking Apple Music Streaming Tips

Apple’s streaming music service is growing by leaps and bounds—here are a few tips to get the most out of it.

 

 

By Eric Griffith and Jeffery L Wilson of PC Mag.com

Few streaming music services explode onto the market and into the public consciousness like Apple Music. Backed by Cupertino’s marketing juggernaut and millions of existing iTunes users, Apple Music is now growing faster than its top rival, Spotify.

This isn’t too surprising. It’s a default app on iOS devices, and there’s even an Android version for people who don’t own an iPhone or iPad. That’s potentially millions upon millions of customers who may give the app a try for their streaming music needs.
Plus, Apple Music is a fine music service. You get lots of tunes, music-related television and film content, and the Connect social network that keeps you on top of music happenings. And Apple Music offers a family plan ($14.99 per month for six people who share over iCloud) and a discount for college students ($4.99 per month).

Apple Music isn’t flawless. It doesn’t have a free, ad-supported option like Spotify, but it does let iOS users listen free to Beats 1 radio and other stations. That’s the big picture Apple Music, but the music service has lots of goodies beneath the hood. We’ve got a list of 20 tips and tricks here that will help you get the most out of Apple Music, or at least prevent it from getting the better of you.

 

1. Get Your Connect Name

When you post comments or playlists in Apple Music, it’ll show your name. You can claim a special nickname for Apple’s somewhat-revamped Connect social network, if you’re quick about it. (No one wants to be told they should be egriffith646985.) In the Music app, enter a handle and add a photo.


2. Skip Connecting

By default, any artist you add to your library is going to be one you follow using Connect. In fact, any artist you’ve ever bought music from in iTunes is auto-followed, even that one hit wonder from years ago. To change that, tap Account > Following. There, you can not only unfollow individual artists—who might, in fact, use the service to try and stay in touch with you about new releases—you can also tell Connect to stop auto-following artists you’ve added to your music library. Any artist you don’t follow on Connect won’t appear in the Connect Section of Apple Music, naturally.

 

3. Kill Connect Entirely

Want to do away with Connect? On iOS, go into Settings > General > Restrictions. Turn them on if they’re off. Scroll down to Apple Music Connect and turn on the restriction. After that, go back to the Music app—you’ll see the Connect tab has been replaced with “Playlists.”

4. Turn off the Auto-Renew
After your three-month trial of Apple Music, Apple is just going to assume you love it and want to subscribe. Prevent that charge from automatically appearing on your credit card. While in the Music app, tap the head icon in the upper left > View Apple ID > log in > Manage (under Subscriptions at the bottom). Turn off Automatic Renewal. A pop-up will tell you how long you have left in your trial. Remember, after your trial ends, any music you’ve added via Apple Music to playlists and the like will go buh-bye.


5. Tap to Like, Double-Tap to Love.
Services such as Spotify and Apple Music live by mining what you like musically, so it can recommend more. In Apple Music, you’re asked from the get-go for suggestions of favorite artists and styles when you tap “For You.” To make changes later, tap the head icon > Choose Artists for You. Pink bubbles with musical genres and then specific artists will appear. Tap to tell Apple you like it. But if you double-tap, it indicates a deep, abiding love and that singer or band or genre is going to weigh heavily into future suggestions. If there’s a genre in a bubble you don’t like at all, tap and hold it to get rid of it.

 

6. Like from Lock
Listening to Apple Music with your phone locked is a god-send. If you hear a new song stream you like, but don’t want to go back into the app to indicate you like it, just click the heart outline on the iOS lock screen. It’ll turn solid red, to indicate your devotion. (This does NOT add the music to your phone or playlists. It just lets Apple know you like it/them, so future recommendations can reflect your refined tastes. You’ll find those recommendations on the For You tab.)

 

7). Siri into Apple Music
The ties between Apple’s audio AI and Apple Music are pretty good. You can use Siri to search for music (“Find ‘White Christmas’ by Bing Crosby on Apple Music” brought it right up), but also to do things like shuffle songs (hold down the home button while in a playlist and say “Shuffle Songs.”) Remember Siri also has built-in Shazam, so ask Siri to ID a song playing around you, and when she does, you can then immediately click the arrow button to start playback.

 

 

8. Hide Apple Music Suggestions
Hate that For You tab because you already know what you like, and hell, you already have all the music you want? You can stay subscribed to Apple Music while hiding it from view. On the iPhone, go to Settings > Music and turn off Show Apple Music. Next time you open the Music App, the For You and New tabs will be gone, and it will show My Music, Playlists, Radio, and Connect (assuming you didn’t kill it in restrictions).

 

 

9. See Recent Searches
If you can’t remember the last thing you looked for, or just don’t want to type it again, look for the clock icon in the search bar on iOS. It’ll show you a full list of the most recent searches.

 

 

10. Download for Offline Listening
You’re an Apple Music paying customer, or soon will be… so enjoy the fruits of that by making music you wouldn’t necessarily buy otherwise available to listen to, anytime, anywhere, even when you’re offline. All you do is click the three-dot menu next to a song (or an entire album) and on the menu that pops up, click Make Available Offline. (To buy it, click Show in iTunes Store.) This also works from within Beats 1 Radio.

 

11. Download Over Cellular
The default setting is that you only get to download music to the phone using Wi-Fi. You can change that by going into Settings > iTunes & App Store. Turn on the Use Cellular Data option. It’s up to you to make sure you don’t hit your data cap, if you have one.

 

 

12. Call in Your Requests
Want to make a request of Beats 1 radio? You can, by calling the number for your geographic location, listed here (and shown above). To be clear, in the US, call 1-310-299-8756 or toll free to 1-877-720-6293.

 

 

13. View Downloaded Only
Let’s say you’ve got a huge library of music showing in your My Music tab—but most of it’s streaming. If you want to know what’s available when you’re offline (namely, the tracks you’ve downloaded), tap on the My Music tab, and at the top of the tracks, tap Songs or Albums or whatever shows just below the album covers. It brings up the menu where you change how to sort music. At the bottom of that menu, toggle Show Music Available Offline to only see what’s stored on the phone. (This doesn’t quite work for iTunes Match users; on my phone, I still saw all my Match titles, even though they’re not locally stored. Seems like more of a bug than a feature, Apple.)

 

 

14. Publish to Apple Music
Looks like Spotify isn’t the only place you can push your tunes! On iOS, music crafted with GarageBand can be shared direct to Apple Music Connect. (This doesn’t yet work on the Mac desktop.) Naturally, an Apple Music account is required, and chances are if you ever leave the service behind, the service will kick your music to the curb. And it’s not exactly going to replace SoundCloud for original music sharing anytime soon. But it’s an interesting start.

 

 

15. Wake to Apple Music
Any song in the Apple Music library of 30 million tracks can now be what you wake to in the morning. Save a favorite song to your library (click that ellipsis three-dot menu as a song plays and select Add to My Music)—after that, go into the iOS Clock app, create or edit an alarm, and under Sound, click Pick a Song. From there, find it in the lists by album, artist, song, or just search for the individual track. (If you let the subscription lapse, you won’t have that song to wake to, of course.)

 

 

16. Access Apple Music on the Desktop
You’ll need to make sure you’ve got the latest version of iTunes, 12.7.3, but when you do the software that has always held your Apple-based music collection (and is the focal point of Apple-based music sales, not to mention backup up your iPhone, etc.) becomes your streaming center. Along with the usual tabs for My Music and Playlists, you’ll see Apple Music-specific tabs at the top including For You (seen here on both mobile and desktop), Radio, and Connect. If you’re all thumbs, this is the best way to do some of the detail work, like adding things to playlists, creating Smart Playlists, etc.

 

 

17. Enjoy Music-Related TV and Films
Apple Music has more than just audio content. By visiting Browse > TV & Movies you can dive into video, too. The annoyingly popular Carpool Karaoke, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story, and Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives are just some of the music-focused television and film content available for streaming.

 

 

18. Apply Content Restrictions
Did you know that Apple Music lets you filter out naughty language and adult themes? By visiting Settings > Content Restrictions, you can toggle the Allow Explicit Content option on or off. This doesn’t only apply to music; you can also apply filters to music-related television and movie content.

In addition, you can create a restriction password to prevent someone else from adjusting the restriction parameters (a much welcomed feature for those who have children).

 

19. Automatically add Songs to Your Library
You like playlists, I like playlists, we all like playlists. Themed music collections are the way to go for those times when you need extra energy for a gym session or soft vibes for falling asleep. Music in your playlists are likely to be tunes you dig, so a handy Apple Music feature lets you automatically add playlist tracks to your Library. You can get it up and running by opening Settings and toggling on Add Playlist Songs.

 

20. Tweak EQ Settings
You don’t need to use Apple Music’s default audio settings. The app includes an equalizer that lets you boost various frequencies, as well as up the bass and adjust the surround sound.

What are your favorite Features of Apple Music? Tell us about it in the comments below.

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Weekly Round up 1/26/18

 

Montana?! Hey, Roy Cooper! Are you seeing this?
Montana Becomes First State To Set Its Own Net Neutrality Rules.

I’m guessing they haven’t done the obvious and hired more women…
What has Tech done to fix its harrassment problem?


See above…
The tech industry needs one million workers now.

What, was he all out of Tide Pods?
iPhone battery explodes after Chinese man bites it.

You know, if she and Angela Merkel were to team up, Trump would sh*t himself.
Theresa May warns tech firms over terror content.

Why haven’t we patented this?!
Cancer could soon be spotted by technology ‘several months’ before it occurs.

Oh sure, NOW they’re paying attention. After the racist, Russian loving idiot is already planted in the White House. Good thinking, guys.
Tech Is Starting to Lose Its War on Journalism.

 

I find it hard to believe Retail has come to its senses about anything…
The Retail Industry Has Come To Its Senses On Technology.

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How to: switch between list view and honeycomb app grid on Apple Watch with watchOS 4

 

 

By Benjamin Mayo of 9to5 Mac


With watchOS 4, Apple is offering an alternative to the honeycomb screen used to display your Apple Watch apps. The honeycomb view lays out the circular watch app icons in a hexagonal grid with a focus on the middle of the display, and a miniature clock in the center.

The honeycomb design is not universally beloved but it has been the only option for Apple Watch users to date. With watchOS 4, Apple is adding list mode which sorts apps into an alphabetical scrolling view. Here’s how to enable it …
watchOS 4 has many improvements to core functionality including new Siri, Kaleidoscope and Toy Story watch face options, motivational Activity progress alerts, redesigned Workout and Music app, integration with gym equipment and more.

There are also minor enhancements across watchOS 4. List mode app screen is one such change for people that can’t stand the fluid honeycomb layout and prefer something a bit more ordered.

From your watch face, press the home button once to open the app screen. Then, press firmly on the display to open the new contextual Force Touch overlay.

This view offers a toggle between the two modes for app screen, grid view or list view. ‘Grid view’ is what Apple calls the honeycomb arrangement.


Press the List View icon to switch to the new mode. The app screen transforms into a plain list of all your Apple Watch apps in alphabetical order. Each row shows the app icon and its name, something that is generally not visible when in the Watch interface.

You can use the digital crown to scroll up and down the list; rows at the top and bottom of the screen scale down to prioritize apps in the center. Tap on a row to launch the respective app. It is not possible to rearrange apps in the list — they always go from A-Z.

When you return to the app screen, list view is preserved. If you want to change back to the (far prettier) honeycomb layout, Force Touch on the list and select Grid View.

Although it’s always nice to have the option, I personally will not be using the List View that much. It’s limiting that the apps cannot be re-arranged into a preferred ordering as my most used apps are not those that start with A, B, C. Moreover, the honeycomb shows more apps at once on the screen and it simply looks better aesthetically.

Do you prefer the List View and are grateful Apple added it to watchOS 4? Let us know in the comments below!

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Tales from the Orchard – THE 8 BIGGEST ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM APPLE WWDC 2017

 

 

by Natt Garun of The Verge

Apple’s WWDC 2017 keynote just wrapped, where key executives Craig Federighi, Phil Schiller, and, of course, Tim Cook, took the stage to announce updates headed to iPhones, MacBooks, Apple TV, and more.

The rumors for this year’s WWDC came in the final hours leading up to the event, with hints of new hardware and, of course, software news for developers to help prep the release of consumer updates in the fall. We were also anticipating the company to finally take Siri up against the likes of Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant on the hardware and smart home front — and it looks like it arrived in the form of the Apple HomePod.

Here are the highlights from today’s keynote.

 

APPLE ANNOUNCES HOMEPOD SPEAKER TO TAKE ON AMAZON ECHO AND SONOS

 

So let’s get the Siri speaker rumors out of the way: it turns out Apple wasn’t quite aiming its smart speaker to go against just Amazon Echo and Google Home, but also the Sonos home entertainment speakers. Called the HomePod, it uses spacial awareness to tune and better fill the room with sound based on the space it’s in. It also has a “Musicologist” feature that works with Apple Music to stream the music you ask the speaker’s built-in Siri to play. You can even ask more complex, music-related questions like “Who’s the drummer in this song?” or “What album came out on this day 20 years ago?”

“APPLE PRICED THE HOMEPOD AT $349”

The HomePod will be available in two colors — black or white — and will integrate Siri in an Amazon Echo / Google Home-like use case. You can ask it to control smart home devices and check the day’s weather and news briefings. Apple priced the HomePod at $349, with plans to ship it in December first to customers in the US, UK, and Australia. It will enter more international markets next year. Check out our hands-on with the HomePod for a first look.

IMAC PRO INTRODUCED, ALONGSIDE UPDATED DESKTOP SPECS

 

Apple’s introducing updated iMac desktops with improved Retina displays, graphics boosts, Kaby Lake processors, and USB-C. They will also support graphics for VR content creation. During the keynote, Apple demoed this by showing off a VR game featuring Darth Vader, a lightsaber, and TIE fighter.

There’s a new iMac Pro as well, with a 5K display with improved cooling capacity, and 8-core Xeon processor (upgradeable up to 18-core,) up to 4TB of SSD, up to 128GB of ECC memory, four Thunderbolt 3 ports, and built-in 10GB Ethernet.

 

The new iMac starts at $1,099 for the 21.5-inch model, and $1,299 for the 4K model. MacBooks will get upgraded, too; the MacBook Pro starting at $1,299, which includes the updated Kaby Lake processor. The iMac Pro starts at $4,999, and ships in December.

IOS 11 COMES WITH IMPROVED SIRI, AUTOMATIC DO NOT DISTURB DRIVING MODE, IMESSAGE FEATURES

The new version of iOS software has some pretty social updates, such as an update to Siri that has improved speech, the ability to help translate sentences into different languages, and on-device learnings that suggest actions based on what you do on your iPhone or iPad. iMessages now live in the iCloud, with synchronized conversations that you can delete from any device you own that are under the same account. You can also pay and receive payments from contacts through iMessage — so no more Venmo or Square Cash if you don’t want to download extra apps.

“SIRI NOW HAS IMPROVED SPEECH”

Photo capture is also improved, with better low-light performance, and the ability to edit Live Photos so you can change the key still image or trim the video. There’s a new control center as well, which relies a lot on 3D Touch and condenses most controls on the lower half of the screen without looking cluttered.

 

There’s also a new safety feature that recognizes when a user is driving and automatically turns on Do Not Disturb to prevent distractions. When you’re available to be more social, you can now head to Apple Music to see what your friends are listening to and check out shared playlists.

Lastly, the App Store has been redesigned for better discovery and a How To section for tips on how to use various popular apps. Apple’s also bringing back the “App of the Day” section to promote users to open the App Store more frequently.

IOS 11 FOR IPAD BRINGS WINDOWS-ESQUE MULTITASKING ABILITIES

On the iPad, iOS 11 improves multitasking that lets users pull up an app from the dock and drag it onto the screen to split the screen. Similar to what you can do on a MacBook, you can use touch to hold and drag folders, files, or photos and drop them in a different app such as Mail or iMessage. Handwritten text from an Apple Pencil will also be searchable from the Notes app. Apple claims it uses “deep learning” to recognize penmanship.

Apple also talked briefly about the Files app that leaked a few hours before the keynote kicked off, which is just a management system that you can use to sort files by size and date, similar to how you’d go through your files on a desktop or laptop.

APPLE LETS DEVELOPERS MAKE MORE IMMERSIVE APPS WITH AR KIT

 

Just as Lauren Goode predicted, Apple introduced a new ARKit to let developers build augmented reality apps for the iPhone. The kit can help find planes, track motion, and estimate scale and ambient lighting. Popular apps like Pokémon Go will also use ARKit for improved real-time renders.

Rather than requiring external hardware like Microsoft’s HoloLens, Apple seems to be betting on ARKit to provide impressive quality imaging through a device most people already own. We’ll know more on how the quality actually compares when we get to try it out ourselves.

 

10.5 INCH iPAD PRO INTRODUCED

The iPad Pro will now be available in three different sizes, with a new 10.5-inch model introduced today. There’s a 12-megapixel camera, just like the iPhone 7, with a 7MP selfie cam. It supports USB 3.0 and has 10 hours of battery life.

There’s a new feature called ProMotion which reduces the Apple Pencil’s latency to 20 milliseconds. It can automatically adjust the refresh rate based on what you’re watching (fast-moving video versus still image). ProMotion also doubles the refresh rate to up to 120Hz.

The 10.5-inch iPad Pro will be available starting with a 64GB configuration at $649; it’s available to order now and shipping next week.

 

THE NEW MACOS IS NAMED HIGH SIERRA. YEP.

The upcoming version of macOS will be called High Sierra, and it comes with updates to Safari that help block site trackers and autoplaying videos. Apple’s also added new photo-editing tools like curves (helpful for those who don’t have Adobe Photoshop), and it has better filtering tools to sort images by keywords or faces.
An updated file management system will be a part of the update as well, which speeds up directory cloning with native encryption. On the graphics end, there’s a second version of Metal, support for VR, and a Metal 2 developer kit that you can order with an AMD GPU to tune apps for external graphics.

WATCHOS 4 BRINGS NEW SIRI WATCHFACE, FITNESS COACHING, AND A NEW APP-BROWSING UI

An update for the Apple Watch is coming which introduces new faces that display different types of informations, such as Siri reminders or more visual ones that feature Toy Story characters a la Mickey Mouse. There’s also a fitness-focused update, which includes monthly challenges to encourage the wearer to get more active and NFC-enabled data sharing where the user can tap their Apple Watch on gym equipment to pair the two, sharing the most accurate calorie burn and activity information.

There’s also a new Music app to make finding and playing music via the Apple Watch more visual — you can now use a new dock layout to scroll through recently opened apps.

Catch up on the latest news from WWDC 2017 right here.

What’s your opinion on Apple’s Announcements? Tell us in the Comments below!

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App of the Week – Things 3

Things 3 task manager launches with beautiful new design and all-new features

By Zac Hall of 9to5Mac

Cultured Code is launching all new versions of its Things task management software for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac. Things 3 includes a beautiful new design with charming interactions across each version and powerful new features for organizing tasks and scheduling assignments.

Cultured Code highlights several tent pole changes in the new version including a totally redesigned interface and new interactions across each version, a new Today and This Evening feature for planning your day, support for headings and checklists on entries, time-based reminders for the first time, and both slim-mode and multiple window support on the Mac.

There’s even what Cultured Code calls the Magic Plus Button which lets you intuitively insert created tasks inline with your existing task lists in a very realistic way. Cultured Code also highlights desktop class list editing from iOS with the ability to manipulate and sort text entries as if they were physical objects. Check out the video at the bottom to see it all in action.

HERE’S HOW THINGS WORKS
If you’re new to Things, this is the basic workflow:

1. Collect Your Thoughts Get things off your mind quickly with Things’ action extension – it lets you create to-dos from other apps. Or just talk to Siri on any device! “Remind me to…”

2. Get Organized Create a project for each of your goals, then add the steps to reach them. For clarity, add structure with headings. Then group your projects by areas of responsibility, such as “Family”, “Work”, or “Health”. Review these regularly to stay on top of things.

3. Plan Your Time See your calendar events alongside your to-dos and plan your time effectively. Create repeating to-dos for things you do every few days, weeks, or months – Things will remind you on the right day.

4. Make the Most of Your Day Every morning, grab a coffee and prepare your list for “Today”: review previously planned to-dos and make quick decisions on what to tackle. Pick some more steps from your projects and then get going. The Today list is the only place you’ll need to look for the rest of the day.

5. Customize Your Workflow Use tags to categorize your to-dos or add context. For example, tag places like “Office” or “Home”, or tag all your “Errands”, or everything you’re working on with “Kate”. You can easily find everything you’ve tagged via filtering or search.

Things 3 is the first paid update to the task manager since Things 2 launched in 2012 and carries the same price of $49.99 for Mac (free trial at culturedcode.com/things), $19.99 for iPad, and $9.99 for iPhone + Apple Watch for all customers. To mark the launch and help existing customers upgrade for less, Cultured Code is discounting Things 3 for each platform by 20% through May 25.

If you’re looking for a powerful task manager with fine-tuned design, Things 3 is an easy recommendation. As a Things 2 customer for years, I’ve used the platform as a Reminders and Notes upgrade (and Reminders integration works with Siri) and I love the new look, interactions, and features of Things 3.

 

Check out Things 3 in action below:

Download Things 3 foriPhone & Apple Watch
Download Things 3 for iPad
Download Things 3 for Mac

What is your favorite Task Management App? Let us know in the comments below!

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