Seven tech giants, including Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, have said they meet the European Union’s new criteria for “gatekeepers,” which means they will be subject to stricter regulations. Reuters: Samsung and TikTok owner ByteDance also unexpectedly said they would meet the criteria, although TikTok disputed whether it should be included on the list. Booking.com said it expected to fall into the gatekeeper category next year. Under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) which came into force in November, companies with more than 45 million monthly active users and a 75-billion-euro ($82 billion) market capitalisation are considered gatekeepers providing a core platform service. Companies labelled as such will be required to make their messaging apps interoperate with rivals…

Macworld For a product that isn’t debuting until 2024, Apple has said a lot about the Vision Pro, its mixed reality headset. Apple spent nearly an hour in the WWDC keynote discussing it. It has rolled out developer tools for visionOS, which has given us even more clarity about what visionOS can and can’t do. And yet I remain firmly convinced that Apple hasn’t told us the whole story. The WWDC keynote was the time to make a first impression–but there’s half a year to go before the final story is told. As a result, Apple emphasized the features of the device that it felt would best represent the device. It emphasized the fact that it’s an augmented-reality product that…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge An important deadline just passed for the biggest tech platform companies in the world to notify the European Union (EU) that they are gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Seven companies have officially acknowledged they meet the criteria: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (TikTok), Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp), Microsoft, and Samsung. Companies on the list have a market capitalization of over €75 billion ($82 billion) and own a social platform or app that has at least 45 million monthly users or 10,000 active business users. The statement published by EU commissioner Thierry Breton says it “will now check their submissions and designate the gatekeepers for specific platform services by 6 September,” and after…

Macworld If you’re looking for an iPhone but don’t want to spend a fortune, the third-gen iPhone SE, Apple’s cheapest current handset, is the phone for you. It features a powerful processor (the A15, which also appeared in the flagship iPhone 13 Pro from 2021) at an affordable price, starting at $429 in the U.S. or £449 in the U.K. For a phone that’s even cheaper, however, you may want to consider the second-gen iPhone SE from 2020. Apple no longer sells this device itself, but other vendors may still sell you one for a bargain price. In this article we round up the best deals and discounts currently available on each iPhone SE model, as well as cheap bundle…

The share price of Apple, by far the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalization over $3 trillion, has surged 49% so far this year, increasing its weight in stock indexes to record levels. The company’s weighting in the S&P 500 has swelled to 7.6%, the biggest of any one stock in the history of the benchmark index, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. Lewis Krauskopf for Reuters: That hefty weighting means moves in Apple’s shares have an outsized influence on index performance. If shares of Apple keep rallying, that could hurt the results of active fund managers, who strive to beat indexes such as the S&P 500 or Russell 1000. The issue has taken on additional urgency this…

Macworld Apple’s two-factor authentication system deflects access to your Apple ID account by requiring that in addition to your password you also have to provide a code that arrives either through a trusted device (an iPhone, iPad, or Mac) or a trusted phone number—one that’s been verified after having been added. Trusted devices are an easier set to manage, because they represent all devices logged into the same Apple ID for use with iCloud. Trusted numbers are a different matter. I’ve long recommended adding not just your own cellular or other phone numbers as trusted numbers, but also that of someone trustworthy who is close to you, like a life partner or family member. That gives you a backup in…