D. Griffin Jones - page 2

How can you watch Apple’s WWDC event? You can stream the keynote on YouTube, on the apple.com website or on your smart TV. It starts at 10 a.m. Pacific time on Monday, June 9.

At WWDC, Apple announces all the upcoming software updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS and visionOS. This year, the headline change is a rumored visual redesign with translucent glass inspired by the Vision Pro. The iPad may be getting even more Mac-like, with Stage Manager 2 and a menu bar at the top of the screen. While Apple Intelligence may not headline the event, Apple has a few new features to unveil, like AI-generated Shortcuts, personal health recommendations and an API for developers.

Here’s how you can watch it all live, whether you’re watching at home, secretly at work or in-person at Apple Park.

Apple’s Image Playground is a free app for iPhone and other Apple devices that lets you generate unlimited AI images for free. You can generate images based on your friends, from a text prompt or totally from scratch, in a wide variety of themes and styles.

It’s part of Apple Intelligence, the growing set of AI features that work on the latest iPhones, Macs and iPads. Here’s how to use Image Playground.

WWDC25 is a mere days away. While the hottest news is that iOS, macOS, watchOS and other platforms will get a visual redesign borrowed from visionOS, the question left unasked is … what’s coming to visionOS?

Rumors say there will be new advanced eye tracking features and support for VR hand controllers. But with a full twelve months of development, Apple probably has much more in store for its premium spatial computer.

Here’s what Apple may announce on Monday for the Vision Pro.

If you’re traveling this summer, there’s a neat editing trick to get spectacular shots of landmarks or murals. On the iPhone, you can crop, skew and rotate a photo using the Photos app’s advanced editing tools to make adjustments you might not have thought were possible.

You can quickly fix the perspective or angle a picture was taken from, correct the fisheye distortion on an ultra-wide photo and more. You can also precisely rotate and skew the perspective, for those times when you don’t realize until it’s too late that your shot is slightly to the side or slightly off-center.

The best part is you can can fix it all directly in the Photos app. Here’s how.

Apple’s A20 chip, which likely will power the iPhone 18 Pro and folding iPhone, reportedly will use a new technology that integrates RAM inside the chip. Bringing the memory closer to the CPU, GPU and Neural Engine might provide significant boosts in performance, battery life and thermal efficiency.

The A20 also would be Apple’s first chip produced using the cutting-edge 2 nanometer process. Rumors that the die shrink would arrive this year now seem to be totally dead.

Apple’s Game Center service lets you compete with friends and unlock achievements in the games you play. You can see where you rank among your friends — and globally. Achievements will give you a list of missions to accomplish to prove your mastery of the game. You can even play live multiplayer games on all your separate devices using SharePlay.

Up until iOS 10, Game Center existed as a separate app on iPhone and iPad, which made this all easier to manage. And rumor has it that Apple will replace Game Center with the next major version of iOS, to be announced next week at WWDC25.

How do you manage your Game Center account now, on iOS 18? What options do you have? How do you add friends?

Apple doesn’t have as many Apple Intelligence features to announce at WWDC25 as it did during last year’s developer conference. However, a handful of new AI features should arrive, including Apple Intelligence-generated Shortcuts automations, an Apple Intelligence API for developers, and AI-powered health tips. Apple’s foundation language model itself will also be improved, with versions in four different sizes currently in testing.

Here’s what to expect on Apple Intelligence next Monday during the WWDC25 keynote.

Apple’s Freeform app for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro is a digital whiteboard you can use to brainstorm or gather ideas in one infinitely scrolling canvas.

You can use Freeform to throw together ideas with a colleague. You could build a presentation using Freeform’s scenes, kind of like using Prezi. Or, you can use Freeform as a drawing app with your iPad and Apple Pencil.

Freeform comes with all kinds of features for adding text boxes, rich links, drawings, clip art, sticky notes, files, photos, videos and more. It’s a great way to build a mood board or connect big ideas.

Keep reading below or watch our video guide to find out how to use Freeform.

You can use Google reverse image search to find a higher-resolution (and higher-quality) original version of an image online. If you’re putting together a presentation, making a YouTube video or writing a blog post, you want the highest quality versions of every image. You might feel stuck if you only have a low-quality picture and you need to fill a bigger space.

Google reverse image search will let you upload a photo and find matches all around the web. You can find out where it’s from to cite the source and save the uncompressed original image. Let me show you how Google reverse image search works.

Collecting old video game consoles and vintage computers is a fun hobby, but keeping all that hardware working can quickly become an expensive, never-ending task — not to mention all the space you need just to store the gear. You might instead (wisely) opt to play your favorite games and software using emulators for your Mac.

In this guide to Mac emulation, I’ll walk you through the best apps you can use to accomplish the two most common scenarios: playing old video games, and taking Classic Mac OS for a test drive on a modern Mac. Plus, I’ll wrap up with the easiest way to virtualize modern operating systems like Windows and Linux on your Mac. (This handy virtualization software also works for old and obscure computer operating systems.)

Best of all, each of these Mac emulation methods is free and open source.

Adopting a few smart habits can preserve your iPhone battery health, greatly extending the device’s useful lifespan.

By simply tweaking how you use and charge your device, you can keep your battery from going bad, which is often cited as a reason to upgrade to a new iPhone. Just make these easy lifestyle changes, and your iPhone should last longer in the long term.

Keep reading or watch our video to find out how to boost your iPhone battery health.

If you forgot your new iPhone passcode, you can reset it with your old one for up to three days later. This can save you hours of trying to remember the new passcode, or worse, resetting your phone from a backup.

You just have to tap Forgot Passcode? on the Lock Screen after you enter it several incorrect times.

Keep reading for a detailed walkthrough. And don’t worry — if you change your passcode intentionally to keep someone out, you can instantly expire your old one.

There are a bunch of not-great apps like Spotify and Slack that suck battery life, because they basically run a full copy of Google Chrome inside each window. Chrome is a notorious energy hog, and running multiple copies of its Blink engine inside four different apps can take unnecessary memory and resources.

But you can create your own, much better versions using web apps based on Safari. Web apps are easily made in Safari and live in your Mac’s Dock.

For apps that you use every day, like Spotify, Discord and Slack, it’s easier to launch them from the Dock and move them around separately from your browser tabs. Let me show you how they work.

You can easily hide photos and videos on your iPhone to keep secret and/or illicit images out of your main Photos library library. Hiding items from the camera roll makes sure nobody except you can see your embarrassing pictures, salacious nudes or old selfies with your ex.

Apple introduced the Hidden photo album years ago in iOS 8. But after Apple redesigned the Photos app in iOS 18, you can no longer find it at the bottom of the Albums tab — because the tab bar is gone.

Here’s what hiding photos does to your iPhone, how you can do stash those incriminating or mortifying pix, and where to find them.

What does the orange dot on your iPhone mean — and while we’re at it, how about the green dot? These mysterious dots can appear in the Dynamic Island of newer iPhones, or in the upper right corner of older models, near the battery icon.

The dots are part of Apple’s vast system of privacy and security features built into the iPhone. Of course, these privacy features only work if you know what they mean and how to use them — so keep reading for the answer below.

The next major update to visionOS could include eye scrolling, for navigating long lists and webpages entirely hands-free. The Vision Pro already uses eye- and hand-tracking for navigating its interface; if true, this would take it to the next level.

Scrolling is one of the most fundamental interactions with a smartphone. But it hasn’t translated as well to the Vision Pro, where you need to pinch two fingers together and move your hand.

If visionOS 3 lets you scroll simply by looking at the bottom of a window, that could be a powerful new feature of the headset.

If you want both a grip on the back of your phone for ergonomics and MagSafe charging for convenience, you might think there are no good options. Well, finally, there is — the Snap Grip Luxe combines both in an incredibly slim and clever design.

It’s truly the best of both worlds — you have a better grasp on your phone, so you won’t drop it; you have a built-in stand for watching videos anywhere you go; and you can still use your MagSafe chargers or even battery packs. You can freely detach it and put it on a different phone case if you want.

Cleverest of all, it’s only 2.5mm thin, so it doesn’t add any more bulk to the back than the camera bump your phone already has.

Keep reading below for the full review.

The Apple Watch Translate app can help you quickly speak in a different language while you’re abroad, right from your wrist. Translate between 20 different languages by speaking out loud, play translations out of your Apple Watch speaker and build a list of favorite phrases you can play instantly.

Apple Translate doesn’t support as many languages as the more popular Google Translate — but Google doesn’t have an app for the Apple Watch. The fastest and most convenient way to speak another language from your wrist is with Apple’s app.

Keep reading or watch our video here.

You can save time — and make sure your messages always go out when they’re supposed to — when you schedule email from the Apple Mail app. You can set your mail to deliver at any date or time in the future, whether it’s next Monday at 9 a.m. sharp, in two weeks’ time or even years from now.

If you work with someone in a different time zone, you can schedule messages to arrive just when they start their workday, which is especially helpful if the allotted time is in the middle of the night for you. You can schedule a series of reminders for that one irritatingly forgetful client of yours. Or, if you work remotely, you can try (and risk) prewriting messages to your boss to maintain the illusion of regular work. You can even schedule emails to remind you of an important anniversary, years down the line.

It’s easy to set up. Keep reading or watch our short video.

With the new automatic mail categorization in Apple Mail, you can organize your emails and keep your personal inbox less cluttered. It’ll intelligently put all your newsletters, receipts and promotions into separate folders.

If you struggle keeping up with your inbox, this feature is a great way to make your email easier to understand at a glance.

Keep reading below or watch our quick video.

Using Apple’s Genmoji, you can create custom emoji when you can’t find the exact right one to express yourself nonverbally. The Apple Intelligence feature generates emoji on the fly based on your descriptions.

Finally, you can enhance your conversations about ostriches or shovels or tissue boxes with your own custom emoji. Or make an emoji that matches your pet, like a white cat or a Pomeranian dog. You can even make emoji versions of people you know.

Here’s how to use the fun new feature.

Managing passwords is and always has been a giant pain. It isn’t the best system, but it’s the system we’ve got. Well, not if Apple can do anything about it. Passkeys are a new system that automatically signs you in to online services using your phone’s Face ID (or Touch ID) or your computer’s password. It’s one less thing to remember; it works without fiddling around with a password manager.

Passkeys aren’t an Apple-exclusive feature. You can bet the technology will be supported no matter what devices you have because all of these companies are part of the FIDO Alliance that created the system … eventually.

Apple fully supports it in iOS 16 and Safari 16 for Mac, as does Google’s Chrome browser on multiple platforms. Android 9 and above supports passkeys via Credential Manager, and Google added passkey support to user accounts on “all major platforms.” Microsoft added support to Windows 11 in the 22H2 update.

Follow along as I show you how passkeys work.

The new Apple Passwords app makes it easier than ever to save login details for your apps, start using passkeys and create shared groups.

iCloud Keychain has been around for years, saving your passwords for you. But if you’ve ever had to copy a password out of the system to enter on a different computer, you had to dig through Settings — if you could even figure out how. The functionality discouraged a lot of people from using Apple’s password manager. It’s easy to find in iOS 18, thanks to a dedicated Passwords app you can put on your Home Screen.

The time of using the same password on all your internet accounts is over. Apple’s password manager is free, syncs everywhere (even with Windows PCs) and is incredibly easy to use. It creates strong passwords and automatically fills them in so you never need to.

Here’s how it works.

Apple’s new Visual Intelligence feature provides a quick way to find information just by pointing an iPhone 16’s camera at an object in the real world. Then you can ask ChatGPT to explain what you’re looking at, do a reverse image search to find products and look things up visually, get information on a business as you walk down the street, quickly add events to your calendar and identify plants and animals.

With the release of iOS 18.4, Apple added the capability to use Visual Intelligence on iPhone 15 Pro models. Here’s how it works.

The new Camera Control button on the iPhone 16 lineup opens the Camera app, takes pictures and adjusts camera settings on the fly. It offers a quick shortcut to using one of the most popular and important iPhone features.

Apple baked a lot of controls and interactivity into this innovative button. But while Cupertino’s designers are usually restrained, some people find this new user interface a little fiddly. The physically clicking button also accepts touch input when you swipe your finger along it. And it utilizes pressure sensitivity and haptic feedback as you maneuver through the iPhone’s camera settings.

Learn how to master the iPhone 16’s new Camera Control button in our guide below.