Macworld WWDC 2023 is creeping up, and with Apple fans starved of event hype since the iPhone 14 launch well over eight months ago, expectations are high. Of course the Reality Pro headset, if the company has managed to get it finished in time, will be the flagship announcement. But one of Apple’s less heralded products might be the sleeper hit of the show. Last month, the respected leaker-analyst Mark Gurman claimed watchOS 10 will be so good that no one will care about the (reportedly rather underwhelming) new Apple Watch hardware coming later in the year. What that means in practice seems to be an updated interface, and while the use of the word “updated” rather than “new” implies…

Mimestream, the Gmail client for macOS founded by former Apple Mail engineer Neil Jhaveri, this week ended more than two years of beta development with the official release of Mimestream 1.0. As a native app written in Swift and designed with AppKit and SwiftUI for a clean, stock appearance, Mimestream's UI will be familiar to many Apple Mail users, but the app is exclusively for accessing Gmail (support for other services is being considered). Mimestream uses the Gmail API rather than a standard IMAP connection to support features like categorized inboxes, aliases and signatures, server-side filters, templates, labels, vacation responses, mentions, undo send, archive, and more. Support for multiple Gmail accounts is included with a unified inbox, and the app…

Macworld Each year Apple releases a major update for iOS, the operating system on your iPhone. The current version, released last year, is iOS 16, and it doesn’t take a genius to predict that 2023 will see the launch of iOS 17. This free software update will bring a raft of interface tweaks, bug fixes, and new features. It’s like getting a new iPhone without paying a penny. In this article, we discuss everything you need to know about iOS 17. We cover its release schedule and when you can expect the beta and final versions to come out; how to get it when it does; the models of iPhone that are likely to be able to run iOS; and…

Tweetbot creator Tapbots this week released Ivory for Mac following months of beta testing, bringing its well-designed Mastodon app to the desktop. Mastodon is a social network that gained popularity following Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter last year. A new "Universal" subscription tier allows users to access Ivory across the Mac, iPhone, and iPad for $24.99 per year, or users can subscribe to the Mac app on its own for $14.99 per year. A free seven-day trial is available and provides access to all features, and the app can be used in read-only mode without a subscription at any time. Ivory has a similar design as Tweetbot, a third-party Twitter app that Tapbots was forced to abandon after Musk cut…

Macworld Officially Apple hasn’t told us what it will be announcing at WWDC 2023 on June 5, but there are clues if you know where to look. The latest and most blatant of these is the fact that a number of XR (or ‘extended reality’) publications have been invited to the keynote for the first time. On Tuesday, the industry news site Road To VR revealed that it had been invited to attend Apple’s summer event in person, and that fellow XR site UploadVR had too. Neither site has gone to WWDC previously, and the former notes that “Apple has historically not invited XR media to its events, let alone commented in any way on its XR R&D.” XR encompasses…

New research claims that Samsung is focusing on higher-end smartphones in Western Europe, aiming to challenge Apple's iPhone as the market shows early signs of recovery.Canalys most recently reported that global smartphone shipments fell by 13% in Q1 2023. Samsung remained the biggest vendor, but only Apple managed to grow its market share year over year.Now Canalys believes that Samsung is aiming to mimic Apple's focus on higher-end smartphones, at least by increasing advertising and carrier deals for its flagship models within Western Europe. It's increasing its investment in Market Development Funds (MDF), which supports partners' sales efforts. Read more...