Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge If you’ve got an active Google account — or especially if you’ve got one you haven’t used in a while — you’ve probably got more apps and services hooked up to your account than you realize. There are all those places where you’ve “signed in with Google,” all those browser extensions you’ve given permissions to, all those add-ons that you’ve installed on top of Gmail and Google Drive, and so on. While it’s always a good idea to be selective and cautious in choosing which apps and sites get these privileges, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with using your Google account instead of an email address and password combination or in giving another app…

In macOS Sonoma, Apple has changed the widgets landscape. No longer do widgets have to be hidden offscreen and largely forgotten in the Notifications Center panel. Now they live right on your desktop – and they're interactive, too. It's worth noting from the off that widgets can still be parked in Notification Center, but now they can also be dragged out onto the desktop. The first widget can be placed anywhere, then Apple provides placement guidance for subsequent widgets by displaying a widget-shaped outline, indicating where they can be snapped into position in relation to the others. Alternatively, if you right-click on an empty space on the desktop, the menu that appears includes a new "Edit Widgets..." option. Selecting this…

With new operating system updates released on Wednesday, Apple has fixed a pair of serious zero-day security bugs that the company says “may have been actively exploited.” Andrew Cunningham for Ars Technica: One of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2023-32434, is a kernel-level flaw that can allow apps to “execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges.” The other, a WebKit bug labeled CVE-2023-32439, can allow the execution of arbitrary code after processing “maliciously crafted web content.” The iOS and iPadOS 16.5.1 updates also fix a non-security bug “that prevents charging with the Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter.” The updates aren’t just coming to iPhones, iPads, and Macs running the latest operating systems. Updates fixing the same bugs have been released for iOS and…

Bob Clearmountain, the US recording engineer who mixed Bruce Springsteen’s album, says that he hopes Spatial Audio will bring back the days when people sat down and actively listened to music – instead of it simply being a background soundtrack to their lives. Artist Alicia Keys says that it should, as it completely transforms the experience of listening to an album … more… The post Spatial Audio transforms music, says Alicia Keys and Springsteen recording engineer appeared first on 9to5Mac.

Macworld All attention might be on iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma, but Apple hasn’t stopped working on its current crop of operating systems. And if you’re not running the betas, you need to know that Apple just shipped a slew of updates to fix some critical security holes. All told, Apple pushed eight updates on Wednesday: iOS 16.5.1 and iPadOS 16.5.1; iOS 15.7.7 and iPadOS 15.7.7; macOS Ventura 13.4.1, macOS Monterey 12.6.7, and macOS Big Sur 11.7.8; and watchOS 9.5.2 and watchOS 8.8.1. That covers more than a decade of devices going back to 2013 and includes the iPhone 6s, Apple Watch Series 3, and the original 12-inch MacBook. All of the updates fix the same vulnerability: Kernel Impact: An…

Don't hold off too long on updating to iOS 16.5.1 and the other new public releases, as Apple has patched multiple security issues that were actively exploited.iMessage vulnerability patchedApple released iOS 16.5.1, iPadOS 16.5.1, macOS Ventura 13.4.1, and watchOS 9.5.2 on Wednesday. These are small point updates but contain critical security patches. Read more...