Benjamin Mayo

The Writers’ Guild of America is capitalizing on the media attention surrounding Apple today and its WWDC announcements by planning leafletting protests at several Apple Stores, including the Apple Park Visitor Center.

As the writers’ strike enters its second month without any sign of a deal, the group is now ramping up campaigns against individual studios. This includes Apple because of its Apple TV+ original content division.

Apple’s seasonal Back to School deals promotion is expected to start later this week, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

The Apple Store Back to School deal usually includes a bundling of a $50-$150 gift card with the purchase of an eligible Mac, iPad, or other Apple device.

Via Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, Apple has constructed a special hands-on area inside Apple Park in which to conduct hands-on demos of the Apple Reality Pro AR/VR headset to the press, following its unveiling at WWDC next week.

Gurman says that Apple plans to show off the headset to “some attendees and media” on June 5, as well as host future demos over the course of the summer. The headset will likely ship either at the end of the year, or early 2024.

MLS Season Pass on Apple TV is dropping its price to account for the fact that about half of the season is now over. The 2023 pass subscription is now available for $49 (down from $99), with an additional $10 discount for Apple TV+ subscribers. The monthly subscription price is unchanged.

Although Apple does not release viewership figures, Apple SVP of services Eddy Cue commented this week that MLS Season Pass had exceeded its own expectations and doing “much better than forecasted” in terms of both subscription and viewership numbers.

The Apple TV app services including Apple TV+ and Apple TV Channels are currently experiencing outages, according to Apple’s system status page.

Readers are reporting they are unable to view TV+ content, or the app simply deems them ‘signed out’ — a common symptom when Apple’s servers go down.

Apple TV+ has dropped its latest sizzle reel, showcasing its upcoming slate of content as we head into summer. The new one-minute includes sneak peeks at upcoming new series, such as Palm Royale, Sugar and Lessons in Chemistry, as well as teasing new seasons of popular Apple originals including The Morning Show and The Afterparty.

Hello Games’ founder Sean Murray yesterday tweeted two cryptic apple emojis, suggesting an announcement aimed at Apple users is imminent.

The tease comes almost a year after WWDC 2022, in which Apple announced on stage that Hello Game’s flagship title No Man’s Sky would launch on Mac and iPad by the end of 2022. That deadline came and went, but perhaps now the game is ready to release on Apple’s platforms. Naturally, speculation is also rife that Hello Games is working on a VR title for Apple’s upcoming headset.

Apple today officially launched the new Multiview feature for Apple TV 4K, after having previously been previewed in beta for about a month. To take advantage of the new feature, update to tvOS 16.5 on your Apple TV set-top box.

Multiview allows Apple TV users to watch up to four streams of MLS Season Pass or MLB Friday Night Baseball at the same time.

We’ve known for a while that Apple has been investing into research and development of micro-LED screen technology, which looks to be the best of both worlds of current-tech OLED and mini-LED displays.

Today, Nikkei says that Apple has even designed some of the production equipment itself, as well as partnering with LG Display for substrates and silicon wafers from TSMC. The eventual goal is to use micro-LED screens on the iPhone, reducing reliance on Samsung Display, which currently produces the majority of iPhone screens, with Samsung the industry leader in OLED production.

After a stint as an iOS exclusive, Photomator (nee Pixelmator Photo) is launching as a Mac app today. The app is aimed at streamlining common photographer workflows, with sophisticated color adjustments, batch editing abilities, and AI-enhanced editing tools.

Photomator is priced at $4.99 per month, $29.99 per year or a $99 lifetime unlock. Download Photomator from the Mac App Store. If you already pay for Photomator on iPad and iPhone, you can use the Mac app at no extra charge.

Apple today announced that the satellite connectivity features available on iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, are now available to customers in Australia and New Zealand.

When outside of normal cellular network or Wi-Fi signal, customers can use Emergency SOS via satellite to send short text messages to emergency services. They can also share their location with friends and family in the Find My app.

Apple TV+ secured its first above-the-line BAFTA wins tonight, led by the success of dark comedy drama Bad Sisters.

Bad Sisters was awarded Best Drama series, and Anne-Marie Duff won Best Supporting Actress award for her role as Grace in the show.

In the latest edition of his Power On Newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that he expects Apple to launch the first Macs with next-generation M3 Apple Silicon either at the end of this year, or early 2024.

Based on developer logs of apps running on prototype M3 Macs, Gurman also details what one variant of the M3 lineup is made up of. His source — which has correctly predicted previous Apple Silicon configurations — indicates that the base M3 Pro chip features 12 CPU cores, 18 GPU cores and 36 GB RAM.

Apple and the MLS have launched a 1-month free trial offer for MLS Season Pass for the first time. You can redeem the 1-month trial here, valid for new and returning monthly subscribers.

After the trial is up, the subscription automatically renews at the standard monthly MLS Season Pass price ($14.99 or $12.99 for TV+ members), unless cancelled.

A new critically-acclaimed documentary film ‘Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie‘ premieres today on Apple TV+. The film spans Fox’s career and examines his optimistic, upbeat attitude to Parkinson’s disease, having been diagnosed at just 29-years-old. Here’s how to watch the movie.

Update: Apple’s support page has acknowledged an issue with ‘iCloud Account & Sign In’, stating that the service may have been slow or unavailable for some users.

Many users right now are facing errors trying to log in to services that depend on the Apple ID system. On social media, Apple users report being unable to sign in, verify their device or process payments. Some people reported that their device told them their password is invalid, even though it has actually been typed in correctly.

9to5Mac has experienced the account login issue. Despite providing a valid email and password, the Apple ID backend simply reports an error that it cannot process the request at this time.

Apple today announced its new 2023 Pride band for Apple Watch. The new Pride Edition Sport Band features speckled rainbow-colored pills on a white background, and will be available to buy from Apple Stores starting May 24.

Alongside the band, a new Apple Watch Pride Celebration face and iPhone wallpaper will also be available next week, with a matching visual design.