WhatsApp today introduced Channels, a feed-style one-way broadcast service coming to the popular chat platform where admins can send text, photos, videos, stickers, and polls to followers. WhatsApp calls Channels "a simple, reliable, and private way to receive important updates from people and organizations," and cites hobbies, sports teams, and updates from local authorities as examples. The personal information of admins is kept hidden from followers, so things like phone number and photo profile aren't shown. Likewise, following a channel won't reveal your phone number to the admin or other followers. Admins will also have the option to block screenshots and forwards from their channel. WhatsApp says it is building a directory where channels can be discovered, and you can…

Macworld Apple holds a Back to School promotion (now known as the Higher Education Offer to avoid confusion because it’s not open to students before they enter higher education, only the institutions and teachers) every year and offers an incentive with purchases of qualifying Apple products. Apple has, for a long time, given away a pair of AirPods with qualifying sales, but this summer, like the summer of 2022, Apple isn’t giving away AirPods to students. Instead, Apple is offering gift cards with qualifying purchases. This change means those taking advantage of the deal get more choice about what they spent their money on, rather than being limited to headphones. However, Apple’s decision to revert to vouchers again in the…

You might have noticed that Apple on Monday unveiled Apple Vision Pro, a revolutionary spatial computer that seamlessly blends digital content with the physical world, while allowing users to stay present and connected to others. Tony Fadell, former senior vice president of the iPod division at Apple, says that the company has “jumped the shark” with the Vision Pro. Apple’s Vision Pro Vision Pro creates an infinite canvas for apps that scales beyond the boundaries of a traditional display and introduces a fully three-dimensional user interface controlled by the most natural and intuitive inputs possible — a user’s eyes, hands, and voice. Featuring visionOS, the world’s first spatial operating system, Vision Pro lets users interact with digital content in a…

You might have noticed that Apple on Monday unveiled Apple Vision Pro, a revolutionary spatial computer that seamlessly blends digital content with the physical world, while allowing users to stay present and connected to others. Tony Fadell, former senior vice president of the iPod division at Apple, says that the company has “jumped the shark” with the Vision Pro. Apple’s Vision Pro Vision Pro creates an infinite canvas for apps that scales beyond the boundaries of a traditional display and introduces a fully three-dimensional user interface controlled by the most natural and intuitive inputs possible — a user’s eyes, hands, and voice. Featuring visionOS, the world’s first spatial operating system, Vision Pro lets users interact with digital content in a…

iOS 17 might alleviate a little bit of the pain of cross-platform group chats. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge A change to messaging in iOS 17 might be on the way to alleviate some of the pain involved in group chats between iPhone and Android owners. The folks at XDA Developers spotted some new messaging behaviors in the iOS 17 developer beta released yesterday that means iOS users will retain some of the benefits of iMessage chats even in mixed company. If the new features make it to the full iOS 17 release, it would be a win for iPhone owners — and a bit of a mixed bag for those on Android. Right now, a…

Apple has been improving password management over the last several years to encourage people to use separate, hard-to-guess passwords for each site, and the latest improvement adds password sharing. In iOS 17, Family Passwords is designed to let you share your passwords and passkeys with friends and family members. Using the Passwords section of the Settings app, you can create a group of people to share passwords with. Using a setup process, you can select trusted contacts to share information with. Each person who is in the group can select passwords and passkeys to share with others. You can, for example, share passwords to streaming services and online bill paying sites without having to share the password for your bank.…