Technology news

At WWDC, Apple announced its latest software for all its devices: iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 7, and macOS Big Sur. But that new software won’t be coming to all of Apple’s currently supported hardware — as is the case every year, a few older devices didn’t make the cut. Here’s what will — and won’t — be getting software updates this year.
iOS and iPadOS are the easiest: if your device currently runs iOS and iPadOS 13, it’ll run iOS and iPadOS

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple plans to extend its Find My network for locating real-world devices to third-party companies, the iPhone maker announced this afternoon during its State of the Union developer address following today’s WWDC keynote. Soon, Apple says compatible devices— including those without internet connectivity — will be able to sync to the network and become locatable when you open the Find My app. The most obvious candidate here is Tile, the popular

Temperatures hit triple digits at a Russian town in the Arctic Circle on Saturday, either breaking or nearly breaking the hottest temperature on record in this polar realm.
Preliminary observations, spotted by French meteorologist Etienne Kapikian, show the heat reached 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit in the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk (which would eclipse an Arctic Circle record set over a century ago, in Alaska). That's over 30 degrees warmer than usual for Verkhoyansk in June.
In the relentlessly w

Following in the footsteps of Trolls World Tour and Scoob!, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run will skip its theatrical release and head straight to video-on-demand marketplaces before landing on CBS All Access.The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run was originally slated to hit theaters on August 7th, but is now delayed to 2021. The movie will premiere first on premium video-on-demand services (like Amazon, iTunes, and other marketplaces) for an undisclosed amount of time before it moves to

There was a lot to take in at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference this year, so you may have missed this important nugget of information: Apple will finally allow iOS users to change their default email and web browser apps with the arrival of the new iOS 14.
Currently, if you were to write a new email message or click on a link, your iPhone or iPad would automatically open the Apple Mail or Safari apps. Obviously, this isn’t optimal if you use a different app to surf the

Apple is finally allowing iPhone and iPad owners to alter default email and browser apps in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14. The company briefly revealed the major change during a slide in the WWDC keynote today, noting that the updates allow users to “set default email and browser apps.”Apple didn’t detail this change fully during its keynote, but a section of the iOS 14 preview page says you can “set a default web browser and email app that launch when you click a link or want to

Big Sur.
Yes, that's the name of the next version of Apple's macOS. Whether you love or hate the name, Apple showed off a bunch of the operating system's new features at WWDC 2020, and Mac users will almost certainly find something to like here.
At its core, Big Sur still retains the basic look of macOS, with an app dock lining the bottom of the screen, a toolbar at the top, and any open windows occupying the space in between. Things are spaced out a little further apart, though, letting whateve

Apple Maps is getting a new bike-route feature in iOS 14, and, if Monday's WWDC presentation is any indication, it still has a long way to go. 
That brutal truth was communicated loud and clear when Apple Maps Product Design Director Meg Frost demoed the "dedicated cycling feature." 
Unfortunately, the suggested routes were absolute hot trash. 
Specifically, Frost showed how Apple Maps would instruct a cyclist to ride from around 17th and Dolores Street in San Francisco's Mission

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge One of the biggest upgrades coming to tvOS 14 is one that Apple didn’t mention during today’s WWDC presentation. Buried on the preview page for the update (coming this fall) is news that YouTube content will finally be able to be viewed in 4K starting with tvOS 14.Currently, YouTube’s app has a maximum resolution of 1080p on Apple’s 4K streaming box — even for UHD videos. That’s because Apple has so far refused to support the

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge One of the biggest upgrades coming to tvOS 14 is one that Apple didn’t mention during today’s WWDC presentation. Buried on the preview page for the update (coming this fall) is news that YouTube content will finally be able to be viewed in 4K starting with tvOS 14.Currently, YouTube’s app has a maximum resolution of 1080p on Apple’s 4K streaming box — even for UHD videos. That’s because Apple has so far refused to support the

Based on my Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok feeds, practically everyone is streaming Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix — and based on those feeds, practically everyone is putting up with low-resolution quality. Thankfully on Sunday, Netflix announced that Avatar: The Last Airbender is now streaming in HD.“Avatar: The Last Airbender is now available in HD so if you want to see every glorious fiber of Appa’s fur, now is the time,” a tweet from one of Netflix’s offi

Apple’s iPhones are excellent at video recording. But the camera app hasn’t been always user friendly. A lot of times, you have to go to the settings menu and change something trivial — that’s annoying when you’re shooting an important moment. Well, thankfully with iOS 14, Apple will let you change video resolution and frame rate quickly. And this feature will be available for all iPhones: All iPhone models now feature quick toggles to change video resolution and f

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge iOS 14 will finally let you search for emoji right from the emoji keyboard, according to Apple’s site listing all of the new iOS 14 features.
Right now, finding the exact emoji you want across the hundreds of emoji available on the iOS keyboard can be a frustrating experience. If I don’t already know where to find a specific emoji, I often default to “searching” by typing a word and hoping that iOS’ keyboard will auto-suggest

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge iOS 14 will finally let you search for emoji right from the emoji keyboard, according to Apple’s site listing all of the new iOS 14 features.
Right now, finding the exact emoji you want across the hundreds of emoji available on the iOS keyboard can be a frustrating experience. If I don’t already know where to find a specific emoji, I often default to “searching” by typing a word and hoping that iOS’ keyboard will auto-suggest

Mystery surrounds billions of euros missing from embattled German fintech firm Wirecard, a scandal that’s not only rocked its share price, but caused its billionaire CEO Markus Braun to resign. Stock in Wirecard, which serves as a middle-man for international ecommerce, has crashed almost 90% since the company admitted EY auditors had failed to trace 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) last Thursday — cash that represents roughly two-third’s of the company‘s

Michael Keaton is reportedly in talks to pick up the cowl again and reprise his role as the Dark Knight in Warner Bros. and DC Comics’ upcoming Flash movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter.Keaton famously played Gotham’s vigilante in Tim Burton’s Batman movies from the ‘90s. Currently Keaton is just in talks for The Flash, which will see Justice League’s Ezra Miller reprise his role as the super speedy Barry Allen. But Keaton could also reprise the role in &ldqu

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple’s WWDC 2020 was unique before it even began. It’s the first time Apple’s developer conference has been streamed exclusively online with no in-person event. Regardless, there were some big announcements, including some you might have been expecting and others that might catch you by surprise.
We walked through each moment in our liveblog, featuring commentary by Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and none other than Walt Mossberg, and I sugg

Apple today announced a big and important transition from Intel to its own ARM-based Apple Silicon chips for Macs. Now, the company plans to release its first ARM-based Mac by the end of the year, and the complete transition will take a few years. However, it wants developers to get started on the platform, so they can port their apps quickly. So, the company is relating a developer transition kit (DTK) in the form of a refurbished Mac Mini. This Mac Mini will run a special A12Z bionic chip wit

At the Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple announced a range of new privacy features that will be bundled into iOS 14, including new protections against user tracking on apps and websites, as well as incremental updates to a range of pre-existing systems.
One of the most significant changes is in how iOS 14 will handle location tracking. iOS already lets you block specific apps from collecting data about where you are, but the new version will also allow you to share approximate loc

Image: Apple After it confirmed that future Macs will be powered by Apple Silicon, the company also announced that developers will soon have access to a Developer Transition Kit that will take the form of a Mac mini.The mini will run on Apple’s A12Z chip — the same one found in the 2020 iPad Pro — and includes 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. It will come preloaded with a beta versions of macOS Big Sur and Xcode to help developers ready their apps for consumer Macs when they launc

Apple has announced that its new Macs that are powered by the company’s newly-announced Apple-built chips will be able to natively run iPhone and iPad apps, thanks to the shared architecture.
The new apps will be installed directly from the Mac App Store, with multiple iOS apps able to run side-by-side alongside macOS apps. Apple says that the new feature will be available at launch alongside the new Macs with Apple chips, which are set to launch as early as the end of the year.Apple demoe

At WWDC, Apple announced that the next macOS will be called — drumroll please — Big Sur! This is obviously interesting news in itself, but the biggest update all revolves around the design of the new macOS. Having watched the keynote, there’s no doubt that with Big Sur, Apple is bringing macOS ever closer to iOS and iPadOS. One of the most obvious updates has been the redesign of many of Apple‘s famous icons, including things like Finder and Garageband. Another change is

Apple today announced several new features for Scribble on iPad including a drawing assistance and handwriting-to-text tool. These features aren’t necessarily aimed at the disabled community, but I think they could be revolutionary. Scribble’s being touted as a time-saver. In the demo during WWDC, Apple demonstrated how the feature works in any text field. If you’re working in Illustrator and decide you want to search for a reference picture, for example, you won’t have

Here’s a preview of what the new hover action looks like in Safari on macOS Big Sur | Apple Apple unveiled macOS Big Sur, its next major desktop software update, and its Safari browser is getting a long-awaited, much-needed improvement: tab management. When things get crowded, as they usually do whether you’re a power user or just got a little carried away, you’ll be able to hover over a tab in the new Safari and it will show a live preview of that tab so you don’t have

It’s been rumored for years, but now it’s finally real: Apple is bringing its ARM processor technology to desktops. Your iPhone and Mac processors will soon be cut from the same cloth. Apple mobile processors have been the fastest on the market for years, sometimes a generation ahead of their Android counterparts in terms of raw performance. But on desktop, Apple has relied on Intel processors since 2006. That changes starting this year as Macs transition to Apple silicon. Apple&lsq

Today, at its WWDC developer conference, Apple announced a slew of new features for iPhone and iPad. One of the things the company didn’t announce, but was a part of the feature slide was the ability to set default main and browser app. The block mentioning this feature was available on both iOS and iPad OS slides. While there’s not much information available on the feature, it means that you’ll be able to set Chrome, Firefox, or Brave as your default browser, and you can set

Apple is officially moving to its own silicon chips for some of its Mac hardware. Calling it a “historic day for the Mac,” Apple CEO Tim Cook detailed the transitions to PowerPC, OS X 10, and a move to Intel chips before unveiling its plans to use Apple’s own ARM-powered silicon in Macs in the future. It’s a big move that means macOS will support native iOS apps and macOS apps side-by-side on these new machines in the future.
Apple will release the first Mac with Apple si

Apple is officially moving to its own silicon chips for some of its Mac hardware. Calling it a “historic day for the Mac,” Apple CEO Tim Cook detailed the transitions to PowerPC, OS X 10, and a move to Intel chips before unveiling its plans to use Apple’s own silicon in Macs in the future.
Apple is promising new levels of performance and far less power consumption with its move to in-house processors. Apple is designing its own range of SoC for Macs, with unique features to Mac

Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images Microsoft is shutting down Mixer and moving most of its streamers to Facebook Gaming as part of a strategic partnership it’s entering with the social media giant. The major streamers locked into exclusivity deals with Mixer — including stars like Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, Cory “King Gothalion” Michael, and Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek — will be released from their contracts, and Microsoft says it’s up to t

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is closing its Mixer service on July 22nd and plans to move existing partners over to Facebook Gaming. The surprise announcement means Mixer partners and streamers will be transitioned to Facebook Gaming starting today, and Microsoft will no longer operate Mixer as a service in a month’s time.
Microsoft has struggled to reach the scale needed for Mixer to compete with Twitch, YouTube, and even Facebook Gaming which has led to today’s

Apple has announced a variety of new features for its tvOS platform, adding better support for Apple’s HomeKit accessories, a new picture-in-picture mode, and support for Microsoft’sElite 2 and Adaptive Xbox One controllers.tvOS will also allow for direct control of HomeKit accessories through a new Control Center UI, which looks similar to the menu found on iOS and iPadOS. As part of that new UI, Apple is also offering multi-user support for the Apple TV, although the company has on

It’s been a big day for Apple so far, with the announcements of iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 7, and tvOS 14. But for MacBook users, the exciting part of the day is just beginning. Apple has unveiled the next version of macOS: macOS 10.16, officially known as Big Sur.
The new operating system brings the biggest redesign since the introduction of macOS 10, according to Apple. Big Sur borrows a number of elements from Apple’s iOS, including Control Center, where you can change brightness

Apple used part of its Worldwide Developers Conference today to show a brief look at Foundation, its new sci-fi series coming to Apple TV Plus in 2021.
Based on Isaac Asimov’s popular book series of the same name, Foundation follows a “band of exiles who discover that the only way to save the Galactic Empire from destruction is to defy it,” according to Deadline. The show was announced by Apple in 2018 and was forced to pause production earlier this year because of COVID-19 res