Technology news

The House Judiciary Committee is launching an investigation into giant tech companies like Facebook and Google to determine whether they are abusing their market dominance and violating antitrust law.
“The open internet has delivered enormous benefits to Americans, including a surge of economic opportunity, massive investment, and new pathways for education online,” Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said in a statement. “But there is growing evidence that a handful of g

I was a little surprised when Apple unveiled its redesigned Mac Pro earlier today without a flashy introduction video featuring the familiar voice of chief design officer Jony Ive. However, the company did produce one. It just wasn’t part of the keynote for some reason — presumably, it was either cut for time or because Apple thought hardware engineering VP John Ternus could handle the product reveal just fine on his own.But if you want to hear Ive go on at length about the new $5,9

Apple is making a huge change to its new iPadOS, introducing mouse support for both USB and Bluetooth devices. iOS developer Steve Troughton-Smith discovered the new mouse support in iPadOS today, and it reportedly works with USB mice, devices like Apple’s Magic Trackpad, and wireless Bluetooth mice.
Apple adding mouse support to iPadOS is significant, even though it’s an accessibility feature for now. Apple has implemented this support as an AssistiveTouch feature, and the cursor l

Modularity is the word of the day as far as Apple’s newly announced and redesigned Mac Pro is concerned. The computer features a return to the older “cheese-grater” look, but redesigned and with a strong eye toward flexibility and expansion.
The question for owners of the most recent desktop Mac powerhouse, the iMac Pro, will be: Should I abandon my current system for the new Mac Pro, which will start at $5,999? (The iMac Pro starts at $4,999, but includes a 27-inch 5K display

It was a long run for iTunes, the jukebox software that revolutionized the music industry after its launch in 2001. But now, in the year 2019, it’s finally being put out of its misery — and ours.With macOS 10.15 Catalina, the primary functions of iTunes will be spun out into separate Music, TV, and Podcasts apps, bringing an end to the program’s two decades of dominance within the Apple software and hardware ecosystem. Syncing your devices will now be handled by the Finder app

Apple just announced its latest pro-level monitor: the $4,999 6K Pro Display XDR. According to Apple’s official technical spec page for the Pro Display XDR, included in the box with the new $4,999 monitor will be a power cord, a Thunderbolt 3 Pro cable, and a polishing cloth. Conspicuously missing is any form of a stand.
While Apple announced onstage that the nifty magnetically attached Pro Stand — which allows the screen to tilt, angle, and even rotate from landscape to portrait mo

Apple is planning to support Xbox One and PS4 controllers across its range of devices. The controllers will be supported on Apple TV as part of a new tvOS update, finally bringing true controller support to the device. Meanwhile, the iPhone will also get support for both controllers as part of iOS 13, which was announced today. Previously, controller support for both iOS and Apple TV was relegated to select MFi Bluetooth controllers. If nothing else, this should make playing Fortnite on your iP

Apple’s CarPlay will get a significant update when iOS 13 drops later this year, including an updated visual design and new features like improved Siri support and a “light mode,” the company announced at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday. Apple called it the “biggest update ever” for CarPlay.
The most noticeable difference about the refresh, at least based on what was shown onstage, is that Apple is giving CarPlay an updated look. In iOS 13, Car

At WWDC 2019, Apple announced a slew of software updates headed toward the Apple family of devices, including the iPhone, iPad, Mac desktops and laptops, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. There’s also the announcement of the new Mac Pro, a powerful computing device that hasn’t been refreshed since 2013.
Here’s a quick summary of the biggest highlights from the two-hour keynote.
iOS 13 brings dark mode and updated apps
Dark mode for iOS is official. It was so welcome that there was an

Apple has just announced the latest versions of its mobile software: iOS 13 for the iPhone, and the newly renamed iPadOS for its iPad lineups. But unlike last year’s iOS 12, which ran on every device that ran iOS 11, not all iOS 12 devices will be getting the update to iOS 13 and iPadOS.iOS 13 is coming to the following devices:
iPhone XS
iPhone XS Max
iPhone XR
iPhone X
iPhone 8
iPhone 8 Plus
iPhone 7
iPhone 7 Plus
iPhone 6S
iPhone 6S Plus
iPhone SE
iPod Touch (seventh generation)Dropped

Microsoft unveiled its new Minecraft Earth game for iOS and Android last month, and now the company is appearing onstage at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) to demonstrate the new title. Minecraft Earth is a new augmented reality (AR) game that’s similar to Pokémon Go. Microsoft has spent months building the new game, and players will be able to collect materials and build giant Minecraft structures with friends. Microsoft’s ultimate goal is to cover the w

Apple is going to help people track their things and their loved ones with a new macOS and iOS app called Find My. At its annual Worldwide Developers Conference today, the company announced that the new app will combine Find My Friends and Find My iPhone. The idea is that Find My will be a single place to track everything, including people and iPhones and Macs. It’ll be available on both iOS and macOS.The tracking works even if a device isn’t connected to Wi-Fi or a network, the com

The iTunes era is over. During its annual developers conference today, Apple announced that it’s breaking iTunes up into three separate macOS apps: Podcasts, TV, and Music. The update will come with macOS 10.15. The shift makes sense, and has already taken place on iOS. Apple Podcasts, for example, has been on iPhones and iPads for years, but never made its way over to macOS devices. iTunes itself is a relic of a different era in which people bought all their music and movies in one place

The next version of macOS will be called Catalina. Apple officially unveiled the new update onstage at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) today. Apple is introducing new Apple Music, Podcasts, and Apple TV apps in macOS Catalina, replacing the aging iTunes app. These apps work mostly as you’d expect. Podcasts gains local indexing support, and Apple Music looks a lot like iTunes without all the extra features. The Apple TV app has no sidebar, and it supports 4K HDR playback with HD

At WWDC 2019 today, Apple announced its Pro Display XDR display, along with the redesigned Mac Pro. The 32-inch LCD display has a 6016 x 3384 Retina 6K display. The 32-inch display will cost $4,999 at launch and a Pro stand will sell separately for $999.
The Pro Display XDR, which stands for extreme dynamic range, has P3 and 10-bit color with reference modes built in. It’s 40 percent larger than the iMac 5K display and has an anti-reflective coating, and comes in a matte option called nan

Apple has announced that soon you’ll be able to plug thumb drives, external disk drives, and SD cards directly into your iPad. The functionality, which was announced onstage at WWDC 2019, will be particularly useful for photographs, allowing you to import photos into an app like Lightroom directly from your camera’s SD card without having to use a Siri Shortcut.
The functionality is coming with Apple’s new operating system for the iPad called iPadOS, which also includes an imp

Today at WWDC, Apple introduced a new single sign-on (or SSO) tool called “Sign In with Apple,” designed to authenticate users to apps while sharing a minimum of personal data with third parties. It’s a direct competitor to simpler services offered by Facebook and Google, which were called out by name on stage, and part of Apple’s broader effort to brand itself as a privacy-conscious alternative to those companies. The new system will be available across apps as well as

Having admitted that its glossy “trash can” Mac Pro of 2013 was a mistake, Apple has long promised that the next update to its most professional computer line would be a return to more modular, less thermally constrained computing. That is being realized today at WWDC 2019 with the official debut of an all-new redesigned Apple Mac Pro.
Although it’s a new design, the 2019 Mac Pro is also a throwback to Apple’s classic “cheese grater” look. The interior is str

Siri is getting a new voice in iOS 13, Apple announced onstage at WWDC 2019, with the company employing new “Neural text to speech” technology to make the virtual assistant sound much more natural.Unlike the old version of Siri, the iOS 13 voice is entirely generated by software, instead of using audio clips from voice actors. In a brief demo shown onstage, the new voice does seem to do a better job at actually pronouncing words, especially ones that are more complicated (like &ldqu

Time was, you’d let your best bud / crush / sibling listen to that awesome new single by handing them an earbud. You’d be joined at the hip! But now, Apple has a slightly more high-tech (and sanitary?) way of sharing music: AirPods Audio Sharing.Apple claims it’ll soon be this simple, if you’ve got a pair of its $159 AirPods:
Just bring your devices close together (a little bit like you how pair a set of AirPods to a phone right now), tap that button, and you can listen

The wild all-electric racecar Volkswagen built to compete in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb last year has smashed another record, this time at Germany’s world-famous Nürburgring. Early Monday morning, the company announced that the I.D. R completed the Nürburgring Nordschleife loop in just 6:05.336 minutes, which is more than 40 seconds faster than the previous record set by Chinese EV startup NIO’s EP9 supercar in 2017.Volkswagen originally built the I.D. R with

How fast do you want 5G to be? What kind of data speed do you need to see before you can justify upgrading to a 5G phone? Having spent time testing the 5G networks of Verizon and Sprint over the last few weeks, it’s clear to me that they’ve started down very different paths.On the one hand, you’ve got Verizon and its millimeter wave tech, which can deliver eye-popping download speeds of over 1 Gbps, letting you download a movie — several, even — or an entire season

OnePlus has released a statement on the “phantom touch” issues that have been reported on the OnePlus 7 Pro, claiming that it plans to release an update in the coming weeks to resolve the problem. The specific problem happens when the screen registers input when it hasn’t been touched, causing the phone to appear as if it’s being controlled by someone other than you. The issue has mostly occurred when using the CPU-Z app, though some reports have seen it happen elsewhere

A purple variant of the Xbox One S is official and will be available to purchase later this week. The news comes after leaked images emerged last month. As rumored and now confirmed, the console will be sold as a Fortnite bundle, which includes the special color Xbox One S with 1TB of storage, a copy of Fortnite Battle Royale, a wireless controller, 2,000 V-Bucks, and special in-game items. The set comes with a month-long trial of Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold. It goes on sale on June 7th f

President Trump took aim at AT&T on Monday morning, floating the idea that his supporters should boycott the company’s various services as retribution for what he views as unfair news coverage by CNN. “I believe that if people stoped using or subscribing to @ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at @CNN, which is dying in the ratings anyway,” Trump tweeted. “It is so unfair with such bad, Fake News! Why wouldn’t they act. When the World watches @CNN, it

YouTube will not stop recommending videos of young children, despite ongoing concerns that predators are being presented with these videos through the company’s recommendation algorithm.
A new report from The New York Times found that, despite evidence from independent researchers that YouTube’s algorithm helps videos of children spread among predatory circles, YouTube’s teams don’t want to turn off recommendations because it would hurt creators by reducing traffic drive