Macworld Ever since Apple set the ball rolling with its first iPhone, the smartphone industry has been overflowing with clever lifestyle ideas and new milestones. Apple itself is often at the forefront of innovation: the iPhone can now contact emergency services via satellite, unlock a car or find an escaped pet. iOS and the iPhone make it all possible. If the iPhone can do all this already, how much more will it be capable of five years from now? The key, when extrapolating the developments of the past into the future, is to bear something important in mind: the progress that lies ahead is always much faster than the progress we have already made. This is especially true for the…

An independent study conducted by economists at Analysis Group found that small developers on Apple’s App Store grew their businesses and reached more customers around the world, even outpacing larger developers. With the support of a wide range of App Store tools and initiatives, small developers globally — defined as those earning up to $1 million a year and with fewer than 1 million annual downloads — grew revenue 71 percent between 2020 and 2022. In the U.S., those developers saw an above-average increase of 83 percent in earnings during the same period. Entrepreneurs Find New Possibilities and Global Growth In a new study titled “Small Business Developers and App Creators on the App Store in 2022,” Analysis Group economists…

In Southern California’s Downey Unified School District, the Apple Learning Coach program is helping teachers supercharge their lesson plans with technology. Lewis Elementary School teacher Lindsay Barnes works with students in her first-grade classroom. Something transformative is happening in the Downey Unified School District in Southern California. “There’s a buzz,” says Allison Box, principal at Lewis Elementary School. “It’s exciting — there’s never a boring day here, and that’s because our kids are immersed in learning environments that are truly dynamic.” Across the district, students are using Apple technology to create projects as varied as podcasts with GarageBand, animations with Keynote, and movies with Clips — and these changes are reshaping classrooms. At the center of this transformation is a…

"Peridot," the latest game from augmented reality company Niantic, is now available for download from the App Store. A Tamagotchi-style game, Peridot allows users to choose a virtual pet to raise. As with Niantic's other games, Peridot is an augmented reality title that encourages players to take their pets for walks in the real world. During walks, users can collect items, discover new places, and capture photos. The game syncs with the Health app to allow players to earn walking distance even when the app is closed, and the augmented reality interface is quick and responsive, letting users tap a spot on the screen to direct their pet. The Peridot or "Dot" is raised from birth, and players can pet,…

Macworld Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too. ‘The back of this thing looks better than the front of the other guys’ The iMac celebrated its 25th birthday this weekend, and it was hard not to compare that joyous launch with the state of the Mac today. The very first iMac felt like a cultural event, and its appearance in colleges and home offices across the world was…

As of today, there's just a month to go until the keynote event for Apple's 2023 WWDC event, which is set to take place on Monday, June 5. WWDC 2023 is going to be exciting, because in addition to iOS 17 and the usual software updates, we're also expecting to see Apple's AR/VR headset. We thought we'd do a quick rundown of everything that's rumored now that we're at the 31-day countdown mark. iOS 17 ‌iOS 17‌ won't be an update where we get a major feature overhaul like iOS 16's Lock Screen, but according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, it will have some of the "most requested features" that iPhone users have been hoping for. Dedicated journaling app for tracking…