Filipe Espósito

WhatsApp on Wednesday announced an update to its Channels feature, which lets someone broadcast messages to a large number of users who follow that channel. With the update, WhatsApp Channels now support audio messages, polls, and more. Read on as we detail what changes with the update.

After a long legal dispute, the US Supreme Court ruled today that Apple will have to relax some of its App Store policies. More specifically, the company now has to let developers offer alternative payment methods. Still, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney isn’t happy with the final terms and says the company will contest Apple’s “bad-faith compliance plan.”

iMessage is certainly one of the most popular messaging platforms in the US, which has resulted in long-standing discussion about its interoperability with non-Apple devices. While some users are waiting for the iPhone to get RCS support later this year, it seems that Meta has been taking advantage of this situation as WhatsApp’s daily active user base has grown in the U.S. But will it ever overtake iMessage?

A few months ago, developers with access to an Apple Vision Pro Developer Kit were given access to the App Store to download compatible iPhone and iPad apps. As Vision Pro arrives in stores in February, Apple has made it possible for developers to submit their apps to the App Store. Starting today, these visionOS apps are now rolling out to users.

Apple Vision Pro will arrive in stores in a few weeks, and more details about the product have been revealed over the last few days. We know, for example, how Apple plans to demo the device in its stores and that some apps won’t be available at launch. But there’s one feature that Apple may have cut from the final version of Vision Pro.

The EU’s Digital Markets Act antitrust legislation passed last year will force Apple to allow users to install third-party apps from outside the iOS App Store, a process known as sideloading. Apple is yet to reveal how exactly it will comply with the legislation, but the company reportedly plans to do so very soon.

We’re just a few weeks away from the official launch of the Apple Vision Pro, which was announced last year but won’t hit stores until February 2. Apple shared some details and images about the product at WWDC 2023, but not much else has been revealed since then. Now we have screenshots that show what the Keynote app for visionOS looks like.

Apple Vision Pro will hit stores in the US in a few weeks, but Apple is yet to reveal details about the purchasing process, available models, and customization options. However, a new report has revealed that customers will be able to use the Apple Store app to scan their face to determine the best size of Vision Pro.

Yes, the iMessage App Store is still a thing, although many iOS users have no idea that they can download iMessage mini-apps. YouTube was one of the apps that integrated with Apple’s messaging app, but now it seems that the company has decided to discontinue its iMessage mini-app.

Apple on Thursday confirmed that it will hold its annual investor meeting on February 28, 2024. While in the past these annual meetings were held with an in-person event at Apple Park, the company has once again opted for a virtual conference to share the news with investors.

BBEdit, a popular text and code editor for macOS, received a huge update this week to version 15. With BBEdit 15, users will find a new Minimap to get an overview of the document, but the main highlight of the update is the ChatGPT integration built into the app.

We recently reported that App Store Review rejected HEY Calendar, a new app from Basecamp, for the same reason that led to HEY Email being rejected from the App Store in 2020. This time, to get HEY Calendar approved by Apple, Basecamp has added an unexpected new feature to the app rather than changing how it works.

The international Wi-Fi Alliance consortium officially launched the new Wi-Fi 7 standard this week. The next generation of Wi-Fi brings significantly lower latency and much higher transfer speeds, making it perfect for mixed reality devices and 8K streaming. Read on as we detail what changes with Wi-Fi 7 and how it will impact future Apple devices.

It’s been a while since Meta’s microblogging platform, Threads, released its keyword search feature to users around the world. However, one huge downside is that Threads search doesn’t let users see search results in reverse chronological order. But that’s changing now, as the latest Threads update adds an option to show the latest search results.

Update: A Meta spokesperson told 9to5Mac that the feature is an “internal prototype” that was “accidentally made available for a small number of people.”

When Apple released the first beta of the visionOS SDK, there was a disclaimer on the Apple Developer website about it requiring an Apple Silicon Mac. It was unclear at the time whether this was a temporary limitation, but now we have the definitive answer. The company has confirmed that developers need an Apple Silicon Mac to develop apps for Apple Vision Pro.

After being announced in June last year at WWDC 2023, Apple Vision Pro will hit stores next month. At first, the name chosen by Apple puzzled some people since a non-Pro Apple Vision has never been announced. But it seems that the company wants to be ready for when that happens someday, as it has been removing the “Pro” label from Apple Vision mentions in the latest beta of iOS 17.

Apple on Monday confirmed that Vision Pro will arrive in stores early next month. Following this announcement, the company also released an Xcode update that lets developers submit visionOS apps to the App Store. Interestingly, new guidelines from Apple ask developers not to refer to their new apps with terms like “AR” and “VR.”

Dropshare is a popular macOS and iOS app that lets users easily share files to cloud platforms. On macOS, the app is very useful as it runs in the Menu Bar, so users can simply drag files there to upload them to the cloud. However, Dropshare’s own cloud service is about to be shut down.

Ever since chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT became popular, there have been discussions about how these platforms use third-party content to train their AI models without paying any kind of license fee. Following the report that Apple has been negotiating with publishers to train its yet-to-be-released AI with news articles, it seems that OpenAI finally wants to do the same – but without paying as much as Apple.

Apple this week agreed to settle a lawsuit over its gift cards that was filed in 2020. More specifically, the company had been accused of not helping victims of a scam involving its prepaid gift cards – and even of benefiting from these scams. Now Apple has reached an agreement with the plaintiffs after working with a mediator.

Apple on Wednesday began rolling out the second betas of iOS 17.3, macOS Sonoma 14.3 and other software updates to developers. The first betas of these versions were released on December 14, before the holiday break. The company is now resuming the beta program – and we’re about to find out what’s new in today’s updates.