Apple released lots of updates this week. For the iPhone and iPad, we now have iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4. It adds new emoji, the Apple News Food section in Apple News+, four different Ambient Music selections that you can trigger using the Control Center, priority notifications, EU support for Apple Intelligence, iPhone 15 Pro support for Visual Intelligence, a new Sketch style in the Image Playground app, support for robot vacuums in the Home app, and much more. For the Apple Watch, we now have WatchOS 11.4, which gives you the option for your wake up alarm to make a sound even if your watch is in silent mode assuming that you are using the Sleep focus mode to trigger the alarm. The Apple Vision Pro gets visionOS 2.4 which makes it much easier to share your Vision Pro with someone else thanks to a companion app for the iPhone/iPad, plus it adds the cool Spatial Gallery app and initial Apple Intelligence support. And there are updates for the Apple TV and the Mac. I suspect that these are the last significant operating system updates before we learn about major new features at WWDC in two months and those features are released this Fall, but we will see. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- I’m in Chicago right now at ABA TECHSHOW. Brett Burney is here as well, and our plan is to record this week’s episode of the In the News podcast on the Expo floor this morning. Hopefully, all will go well, but if there is any delay in the episode showing up in your podcast app or on YouTube, I’m sure it will be because we are switching up our normal routine.
- Chance Miller of 9to5Mac discusses the major new features of iOS 18.4.
- Malcolm Owen of AppleInsider discusses a few of the new features of iOS 18.4, including some minor improvements to CarPlay.
- Joe Rossignol of MacRumors discusses the new Ambient Music feature in iOS 18.4, which you can add to your Control Center. I’ve checked it out, and it is nicely done. I like the Chill and Productivity channels for having something in the background while I get work done. On the other hand, the Wellbeing channel doesn’t do it for me.
- Juli Clover of MacRumors discusses the new Apple News Food feature of Apple News+. Content comes from Allrecipes, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Good Food, and Serious Eats. And the layout is very nice. With this new section, Apple News+ now has sections for News, Sports, Food, Puzzles, and just about any other topic that you manually add. The service has turned into a very nice, modern newspaper, and I love that.
- In iOS 18.4, Safari works differently when you open a new tab: it shows your recent search terms. If this is a privacy concern for you (because you share your device), Tim Hardwick of MacRumors explains how to disable this feature.
- Of course, there are also security fixes in iOS 18.4, as noted by Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac.
- Malcolm Owen of AppleInsider notes that the Mail interface on the iPad has been updated in iPadOS 18.4 to match the recent update to the Mail interface on the iPhone. This includes the Inbox categorization feature, which I immediately turned off but perhaps others will find it useful.
- Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac discusses the new Apple TV interface changes in tvOS 18.4.
- As noted by Amber Neely of AppleInsider, on Monday, Apple very briefly released watchOS 11.4 for the Apple Watch, but before I could try to download it, it disappeared. Then it reappeared on Tuesday morning, then it disappeared again. Then it came back again on Tuesday afternoon. I took a risk and installed it on Tuesday afternoon, and nothing bad happened to my Apple Watch. Yet.
- Apple is releasing a new Immersive Video for the Apple Vision Pro today. VIP: Yankee Stadium features an all-encompassing look at how elite athletes, die-hard fans, dedicated staff, and epic moments make the Bronx ballpark legendary.
- As a reminder, I keep an updated list of all of Apple’s Immersive Video content on this page.
- Twenty Thousand Hertz is a great podcast about sound. The latest episode discusses sound aspects of Apple accessible technology and it is really interesting. It includes interviews with Apple employees who work to make Apple products more accessible.
- Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reports that five VPN apps in the App Store have been found to have links to the Chinese military, according to a report in the Financial Times.
- Since President Trump has allowed Elon Musk to control so much of the U.S. government at the same time that Musk owns Starlink, Musk has been able to convince federal regulators to make life more difficult for Globalstar, a competitor of Starlink, as reported by Drew FitzGerald, Mich Maidenberg, and Keach Hagey of the Wall Street Journal. This has important implications for the iPhone becuase Apple is investing heavily in satellite technologies through Starlink.
- The amazing show Severance on Apple TV+ may be over, but now we have a new great show to start watching on AppleTV+: The Studio. I really enjoyed the first two episodes, and I agree with almost everything that John Gruber of Daring Fireball says about the series in this post. If you haven’t checked out the show yet, you should do so.
- Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac shares a tip for creating a shortcut to trigger Noise Cancellation mode on the AirPods Pro 2.
- And finally, AirPods Pro 2 is now available in Australia, and Sarah Berry of The Sydney Morning Herald and Age flew to Cupertino to interview Kate Bergeron and Dr. Rajiv Kumar of Apple to discuss the product and the hearing aid feature in this video: