iOS

Apple has released the first public beta version of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 so that all users of compatible iPhones and iPads can now try out the new features of the biggest operating system updates of the year before the final version is officially released in the fall.

Apple and Google are allowing users to directly move photo libraries between Google Photos and iCloud Photos. This rollout utilizes the Data Transfer Project (DTP), an open-source initiative that simplifies data migration across online services. The collaboration is expected to be rolled out within a week and will offer users greater control over their online photo collections.

In a bid to yet again leverage AI to try and get ahead of the competition, Google is testing a new "Any way you like" feature that delivers AI-generated radio stations fine-tuned to the listener's personal tastes and preferences.

Apple will now likely wait until Q2 2025 to officially integrate Apple Intelligence with Siri on users' devices, as per a Bloomberg report. This upgrade will be pushed out with iOS 18.4 next year, with another update coming earlier that will focus on Siri's appearance.

Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, hits a bump again on its road to releasing the Epic Games Store in the EU. Recently, Epic Games submitted its Store and Fortnite to Apple for their required notarization process. But, Apple has just rejected Epic Games' proposal for the second time.

Opera GX has received solid improvements to its AI capabilities. The features that are now much better than before involve image generation, voice output, and image recognition. In addition to these, Aria now also provides links to its sources of information when carrying out a conversation.

While their accurate release dates remain unknown, the names are already in the wild, although they have not been confirmed by Apple yet. According to the rumors, iOS 19 goes by as "Luck,"  macOS 16 is nicknamed "Cheer,"  watchOS 12 is known as "Nepali," and visionOS 3 is labeled "Discovery" for now.

The Apple iPad Air 13 (2024) is a unique product, since it is the first time that Apple introduces a 13-inch tablet to the market that doesn't belong to the Pro series. With the Apple M2 inside, it leaves any Android tablet far behind and some of its equipment is slightly better than that of its 11-inch sibling model.

AAA games like Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Resident Evil 4/Village have struggled to gain a strong foothold in the iOS market as a recent report has claimed that the titles have not sold well. For instance, users have apparently bought Assassin’s Creed Mirage less than 3,000 times since the game’s launch.

The largest expansion so far brings no less than 110 new languages to Google Translate, from major ones with over 80 million speakers such as Cantonese and Punjabi (Shahmukhi) to nearly extinct dialects such as Manx, the Celtic language of the Isle of Man, with thousands of users.

If going to ChatGPT's website is too much trouble, you can now download the dedicated ChatGPT app for Mac. This ends the need for a subscription and marks the first time a dedicated ChatGPT app has come to personal computers, with a Windows client being conspicuously absent.

CheckMag Society is waking up to the notion that smartphones may not be the best thing for our mental health, or our time management. Governments are looking to ban phones in schools and a part of the population is beginning to ditch smartphones in an attempt to claw back some of the time lost to doom scrolling. Here are X phone solutions that can help curb your smartphone addiction.

US carriers just began flipping the Rich Communication Services switch for iPhone users running iOS 18 beta 2. This is a real game changer that will finally do away with those messaging limitations between iOS and Android that phone users all over the world have had to deal with for so many years.

Apple declined an AI partnership with Meta due to privacy concerns. Instead, Apple chose to integrate OpenAI's ChatGPT into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia and is negotiating with Google to include Gemini AI.

ESR has announced that the latest addition to its Geo Wallet series will be the first to be an actual wallet and not something for the back of a MagSafe-compatible mobile device. Nevertheless, it is touted to work with Apple's Find My app, and may, thus, be more theft- and loss-resistant. The OEM is currently taking reservations for the new smart everyday carry accessory crowdfunding campaign with a 10% discount offer.

Apple has formally introduced iOS 18 for multiple iPhone models. Among all the new features is something called Game Mode. As the name suggests, it aims to increase the system performance while gaming. It minimizes the background activity and allocates more resources to the running game. The mode also improves the responsiveness of connected devices such as AirPods and game controllers.

After the European Union, Japan is stepping in by promoting a law that forces both Apple and Google to stop keeping third-party app stores out of their ecosystems. For now, some details are still sketchy, but a fine of 20% of the domestic revenue for the initial violation for a specific service is certain.

Apple recently announced its intention to work with OpenAI and integrate ChatGPT into iOS. Elon Musk then expressed major security concerns and announced that he would ban all Apple devices from his companies in the event of such a collaboration.

Apple unveiled iOS 18 today. The new operating system brings updates to several of Apple's built-in apps, such as Mail, Messages, and Photos. These updates include text formatting, highlighting important images, and prioritizing emails based on context.

Apple has officially shown off the latest version of iOS at WWDC 2024. iOS 18 lets you customize your Control Center with third-party widgets and assign custom colours to app icons. It also adds a new hidden app folder and the ability to lock individual apps.

Finally, iPhone, iPad and Mac owners will soon also benefit from generative AI, for which Apple is about to coin a new marketing term. If you want to hear Tim Cook and his team repeatedly utter "Apple Intelligence", look no further. Apart from the AI hype, there should also be a lot of news regarding iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15 and watchOS 11.

Expected to arrive later today alongside macOS 15 and watchOS 11, as well as other pieces of code, iOS 18 will surely pack quite a few changes. The list includes the ability to add a biometric lock to built-in apps such as Notes or Safari alongside adding an automatic black tone to app icons when Dark Mode is on.

CheckMag The EU has a solid history of making decisions that actually benefit the consumer and the EU Right to Repair Directive (R2RD) may finally curb environmentally damaging and anti consumer practices employed by tech companies to keep their revenue streams flowing.

PPSSPP, the PSP emulator, is back on the App Store after it was removed last week. While the standard version of PPSSPP was removed, the Gold version remained, despite the fact that it is entirely the same as the base version of the app.

As a direct consequence of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), the Google Play alternative Aptoide is now ready to take on iOS as well. The closed launch will take place tomorrow, and new users will need an invitation to join. Between 500 and 1,000 daily invites will be issued in the first stage.

The iPad Air 11 (2024) is a slim and lightweight tablet which—thanks to its Apple M2 chip—delivers astounding performance. However, Apple has failed to improve one key feature of its iPad Air 6. You can read about the Apple tablet's missed potential here.

Images of the cases for the upcoming iPhone 16 Pro have recently surfaced. The huge cut-out for the camera unit confirms the speculation that the new Pro model could receive the 5x telephoto lens previously used in the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

CheckMag The notch is a contentious issue. For some it becomes unobtrusive after time, for others it seriously messes with the feng shui of an otherwise gorgeous screen. While some form of notch might be required for a phone, Apple devices over two generations of both MacBook Air and Pro laptops still ship with a notch. Tolerate it or hate it, what will become of the notch?

According to a new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is expected to introduce several new AI features embedded into its upcoming iOS 18 update, including AI-assisted photo retouching, smart recaps, and a revamped Siri with a natural sounding voice. It will be interesting to see how Apple manages to retain its commitment towards user privacy, while attempting to catch up with OpenAI and Google in the AI-assisted features space.

Updated yesterday to version 1.5.1 for Android, which only comes with a few minor fixes, foobar2000 Mobile 1.5 arrived earlier this week with a new skin file format, OGG chapter support, a built-in picture viewer, as well as many under-the-hood improvements and tweaks. The new skins can be edited using common tools.

(Update: Fortunately, Apple reacted quickly and has already released a patch to fix the problem.) Since the update to IOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5, there have been an increasing number of complaints from users whose deleted images have suddenly reappeared. In terms of data protection, this is particularly worrying if the iPhone or iPad has already been sold.

Apple's iPad Air 5, which is powered by the M1 chip, is on sale at Amazon for 33% off. This drops the price of the highly-rated tablet to $399, which is a $200 price cut and the lowest price at which Amazon has sold it.

Retroarch, a massive multi-system emulator, is now available in Apple's App Store for iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs. Retroarch has 78 cores that can emulate a plethora of video game consoles and handhelds, ranging from popular options like the Nintendo Entertainment System to more obscure consoles like the Fairchild Channel F.

The most popular PSP emulator, PPSSPP, is finally available on iOS and iPadOS through Apple's official App Store. The emulator is free and available on devices running iOS 12.0, iPadOS 12.0, or visionOS 1.0 or later.

Apple announced several new accessibility features coming to iOS and iPadOS. Among them are Eye Tracking, which will allow users to interact with an iPhone or iPad with only their eyes; Vocal Shortcuts, which lets users customize voice commands; and Vehicle Motion Cues, which may help reduce motion sickness.

Apple has released a series of feature updates for the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac, including new anti-stalking features designed to protect users from trackers that use Google's "Find My Device" network.

Gamma, a PlayStation 1 (PSX) emulator, has officially launched on the iOS store. The emulator can play games originally designed for Sony's first home console and features save states, cloud backups, and controller skins. However, initial reviews highlight some bugs in this first release.

Apple is rolling out new versions of Final Cut Pro for Macs and Final Cut Pro for iPad, which include a bevy of new features. Primary among them is support for up to 4 live camera feeds on the iPad version, which can turn an iPad into a director's hub to manage multiple camera angles at once.

CheckMag Whether its questionable privacy practices, incorrectly categorising images as child pornography, or using your data for its AI training models, storing your photos with Google continues to be a privacy nightmare. Thankfully a self hosted solution is making waves in the community, and for good reason.

A rumour says Baldur's Gate 3 will be the next AAA game to launch on Apple devices. It may debut on iPadOS and likely iOS sometime in early 2025.

Anthropic finally makes its mobile debut with the release of the Claude iOS app. This comes after competing AI apps have already firmly established their position on mobile platforms, leaving the San Francisco company rather late to the party.

iMazing 3 for Windows and MacOS is now ready. It allows users to back up iPhones and iPads to a computer and to browse the backups without needing access to the backed-up device.

CheckMag If you have a gaming PC, it’s never been easier to stream games to any device in your house. Steam streaming is probably one of the most accessible solutions to stream games from your gaming PC, Valve even released their own hardware (the Steam Link), which is sadly no longer available. However, combined with Steam, Parsec or Sunshine / Moonlight, pretty much anything that has a screen can be turned into a client for game streaming.

The XAV-AX3700 is a relatively compact, wallet-friendly addition to Sony's line of in-car AV receivers. Nevertheless, it integrates features such as FLAC, LDAC and Apple CarPlay support, not to mention the ability to hook rear-facing parking cameras to its matte display, which is found above large physical buttons to control its more customizable interface.

Apple is reportedly developing a completely revamped app that not only allows users to scan documents, save photos and text and synchronize them across all Apple devices, but will also include voice memos and a calculator.

Provenance, another multi-system emulator built for iOS, is supposedly coming to the official App Store soon. It follows on the heels of the Delta emulator, which has already topped the App Store's Entertainment category.

Razer touts its latest accessory as having reached the "God Tier" of mobile gaming controllers, conferring a "pro-grade console" experience on a wide range of devices with USB-C, such as the iPhone 15 as well as Android smartphones or tablets. The Kishi Ultra also upgrades to Razer Chroma RGB and Sensa HD Haptics.