Apple’s next product announcement event is happening on September 9 at 1 pm ET, the company announced today. While most of Apple’s products are updated irregularly, Apple has reliably launched next-generation iPhones every September since the iPhone 5 was announced in 2012. This year, we expect new iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro models.
The most reliable rumors about Apple’s next-gen iPhones (gathered here by MacRumors for your convenience) point to mostly iterative improvements to the current versions: marginally larger screens for the Pro phones, an Action Button and a rearranged camera bump for the non-Pro phones, and improved processors for each. Notably, both phones should be compatible with the first wave of Apple Intelligence AI features; as of this writing, the iPhone 15 Pro is the only iPhone that will support Apple Intelligence when it launches.
Apple also usually announces new Apple Watches at its September events. Updated Apple TV boxes are also occasionally unveiled, though Apple’s streaming box is updated more sporadically than most of its other products. We’re also due to get the first wave of M4 Macs at some point soon, including refreshed MacBook Pros and a newly redesigned Mac mini. But Apple often holds Mac launches for a separate event sometime in October or November, so don’t be surprised if the Mac goes unmentioned on September 9.
Whatever else Apple announces, the company is relatively unlikely to mention the iPad. Apple overhauled its entire iPad lineup in May, releasing new iPad Pro and iPad Air models, dropping the price of the 10th-generation iPad to $349 and totally discontinuing the aging 9th-gen iPad (also the last iPad to include a Lightning port, Home button, or headphone jack).
We’d also expect to get a release date for the public releases of all the new software versions Apple announces at WWDC in June: iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15 Sequoia, and new releases of watchOS, tvOS, and the HomePod operating system. But we already know that some of the Apple Intelligence features won’t launch until the iOS/iPadOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1 updates later in the year.
Enlarge/ The Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California.
Apple is comprehensively restructuring its long-standing App Store team, splitting the team into two separate divisions as the executive who has run it for more than a decade says goodbye to the company.
There will now be one team for the familiar, Apple-run App Store, and another one to handle alternative app stores in the European Union. Apple recently partially opened the platform to third-party app stores in response to the Digital Markets Act, a set of European regulations meant to break up what legislators and regulators deemed to be app store monopolies.
As noted, the restructuring comes with some notable personnel changes, too. App Store Vice President Matt Fischer, who has been at the helm of the platform since 2010, will leave the company.
In a social media post and email to employees, Fischer wrote the following:
After 21 years at Apple, I’ve made the decision to step away from our incredible company. This has been on my mind for some time, and as we are also reorganizing the team to better manage new challenges and opportunities, now is the right moment to pass the baton to two outstanding leaders on my team—Carson Oliver and Ann Thai—both of whom are more than ready for this next chapter.
You can visit his LinkedIn post to see the full statement. According to Bloomberg, Carson Oliver will lead the Apple App Store division, while Ann Thai will head up the alternative app store team. Up to this point, Oliver has been a senior director of business management at Apple, while Thai has had the title of worldwide product director for the App Store and Apple Arcade.
It’s worth noting that Fischer was the overall lead for Apple Arcade, so that service will now be under new leadership.
Apple Fellow and former marketing SVP Phil Schiller will continue to oversee both of the new divisions.
It’s unclear what further changes, if any, will result from this shakeup. Apple has already made significant changes in response to EU regulations, but some developers and competitors are still critical, saying it hasn’t gone far enough.
Enlarge/ Artist’s conception of Epic dodging harm from Apple’s decisions (and perhaps its own).
It’s been four years since Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular games, was pulled from the Apple App Store in a blaze of controversy and finger-pointing. Today, it’s returning to the iPhone—but only in the European Union.
Today marks the launch of the Epic Games Store on Android and iOS—iOS just in Europe, Android worldwide. Right now, it just has three games: Fortnite, Rocket League Sideswipe, and Fall Guys. And you’ll have to be in Europe to access it on your iPhone.
The Epic Games Store is run by Epic Games, the same company that develops and publishes Fortnite. Most folks who have been paying attention to either Epic or Apple in recent years knows the story at this point, but here’s the quick summary and analysis.
Opinion: Users are still the losers after four years
At the direction of CEO Tim Sweeney, Epic knowingly made changes to Fortnite related to digital payments that violated Apple’s terms for developers on the platform. Apple removed Fortnite accordingly, and a long, ugly PR and legal battle ensued between the two companies in multiple countries and regions.
In the US, a judge’s decision granted some small wins to Epic and other developers seeking to loosen Apple’s grip on the platform, but it kept the status quo for the most part.
Things went a little differently in Europe. EU legislators and regulators enacted the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which had far-reaching implications for how Apple and Google run their app stores. Among other things, the new law required Apple to allow third-party, alternative app stores (basically, sideloading) on the iPhone.
Apple’s compliance was far from enthusiastic (the company cited security and privacy concerns for users, which is valid, but the elephant in the room is, of course, its confident grip on app revenues on its platforms), and it was criticized for trying to put up barriers. Additionally, Apple rejected Epic’s attempts to launch its app store multiple times for a few arcane reasons amid a flurry of almost comically over-the-top tweets from Sweeney criticizing the company.
Despite Apple’s foot-dragging, Epic has finally reached the point where it could launch its app store. Epic had already launched a relatively successful App Store on PC, where Valve’s Steam holds a strong grip on users. The new iPhone app store doesn’t offer nearly as many options or perks as the PC version, but Epic says it’s working on wrangling developers onto its store.
It also says it will release its games on other alternative app stores on iOS and Android, such as AltStore PAL.
It’s been a long, winding, angry path to get to this point. In the battle between Epic and Apple, there remains some debate about who really has won up to this point. But there isn’t much dispute that, whether you want to blame Apple or Epic or both, users sure haven’t been the winners.
After a 14-year journey of various states of availability and usefulness amid the shifting policies of Apple’s App Store approval process, MS-DOS game emulator iDOS is back on the iPhone and iPad. It’s hopefully here to stay this time.
iDOS allows you to run applications made for MS-DOS via DOSBox, with a nice retro-styled interface. Its main use case is definitely playing DOS games, but it has seen a rocky road to get to this point. Initially released over a decade ago, it existed quietly for its niche audience, though it saw some changes that made it more or less useful in the developer’s quest to avoid removal from the App Store after it violated Apple’s rules. That culminated in it being removed altogether in 2021 after some tweets and articles brought attention to it.
But earlier this year, Apple made big changes to its App Store rules, officially allowing “retro game emulators” for the first time. That cleared the way for a wave of working console game emulators like Delta and RetroArch, which mostly work as you might expect them to on any other platform now. But when iDOS developer Chaoji Li and other purveyors of classic PC emulator software attempted to do the same for old PC games for MS-DOS and other non-console computing platforms, they were stymied. Apple told them that it didn’t consider their apps to be retro game console emulators and that they violated rules intended to prevent people from circumventing the App Store by running applications from other sources.
PC emulator UTM released a version of its software that worked around Apple’s rules, but it was a subpar experience. But on August 2, Apple amended its App Store rules to explicitly allow emulators of classic PC games. That opened the door for iDOS, which has made its triumphant return and works quite well.
Developer Chaoji Li’s announcement of iDOS 3’s availability didn’t have a tone of triumph to it, though—more like exhaustion, given the app’s struggles over the years:
It has been a long wait for common sense to prevail within Apple. As much as I want to celebrate, I still can’t help being a little bit cautious about the future. Are we good from now on?
I hope iDOS can now enjoy its turn to stay and grow.
P.S. Even though words feel inadequate at times, I would like to say thank you to the supporters of iDOS. In many ways, you keep iDOS alive.
Given that Apple’s policy changes were driven by regulatory concerns, it seems likely it’ll stick this time, but after everything that’s happened, you can’t blame Li for putting a question mark on this.
In any case, if you’re among the dozens (or maybe several hundred) of people looking to play Commander Keen, Might and Magic: The World of Xeen, Wolfenstein 3D, or Jill of the Jungle on your iPhone, today is your day.
Apple hasn’t updated its Mac mini desktop lineup since the beginning of 2023, when it added M2 and M2 Pro chips and discontinued the last of the Intel models. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that the update drought will end later this year, when the mini will skip right from the M2 to the M4, something he originally reported back in April.
But the mini will reportedly come with more than just new chips: it will also get a new, smaller design, which Gurman says will be closer in size to an Apple TV box (specifically, he says it may be a bit taller, but will have a substantially smaller footprint). The new mini could have “at least three USB-C ports,” as well as a power connector and an HDMI port.
This would be Apple’s first overhaul of the Mac mini’s design since the original aluminum unibody version was released back in June of 2010. That model did include a slot for a built-in SuperDrive DVD burner, something Apple dropped from later models as optical drives became less necessary, but the M2 Mac mini has the same basic design and the same footprint as that Core 2 Duo Mac mini introduced over a decade ago.
Intel and other PC makers have been releasing computers smaller than the Mac mini for years now, starting with Intel’s (discontinued, then handed off) NUC desktops and proliferating from there. Often, these systems would save space by including an external power brick, while the mini has always used an integrated power supply. But the Apple TV, also powered by Apple Silicon chips and also with an internal power supply, suggested that it was possible to design a physically smaller system without making that particular design compromise.
Though the design is changing, Apple’s general approach to the Mac mini is staying the same as it is now. There will be a base model with a regular Apple M4 processor in it, and an upgraded model with the yet-to-be-released M4 Pro in it to help bridge the gap between the low-end mini and the more powerful Mac Studio. If the new mini has dramatically fewer ports than current models, that would also be a point of differentiation, though hopefully it would continue to include enough USB-C ports to support multiple external monitors along with other accessories.
Gurman doesn’t know whether Apple will change the pricing of the Mac mini to go with the new design, though he does think the new mini “may be cheaper to make.”
The new Mac minis will reportedly be available later in the year, though the M4 Pro models could be announced or released later than the standard M4 models. Gurman says that new iMac and MacBook Pro models with M4-series chips could release “as early as this year,” while M4 MacBook Airs would wait for the spring of 2025, and Mac Studio and Mac Pro desktops wouldn’t be updated until “the middle of next year.”
The M4 chip was introduced in this year’s iPad Pro refresh, just a few months after the launch of the M3; this was the first time one of Apple’s M-series processors debuted in anything other than a Mac.
After US District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google has a monopoly in two markets—general search services and general text advertising—everybody is wondering how Google might be forced to change its search business.
Specifically, the judge ruled that Google’s exclusive deals with browser and device developers secured Google’s monopoly. These so-called default agreements funneled the majority of online searches to Google search engine result pages (SERPs), where results could be found among text ads that have long generated the bulk of Google’s revenue.
At trial, Mehta’s ruling noted, it was estimated that if Google lost its most important default deal with Apple, Google “would lose around 65 percent of its revenue, even assuming that it could retain some users without the Safari default.”
Experts told Ars that disrupting these default deals is the most obvious remedy that the US Department of Justice will seek to restore competition in online search. Other remedies that may be sought range from least painful for Google (mandating choice screens in browsers and devices) to most painful (requiring Google to divest from either Chrome or Android, where it was found to be self-preferencing).
But the remedies phase of litigation may have to wait until after Google’s appeal, which experts said could take years to litigate before any remedies are ever proposed in court. Whether Google could be successful in appealing the ruling is currently being debated, with anti-monopoly advocates backing Mehta’s ruling as “rock solid” and critics suggesting that the ruling’s fresh takes on antitrust law are open to attack.
Google declined Ars’ request to comment on appropriate remedies or its plan to appeal.
Previously, Google’s president of global affairs, Kent Walker, confirmed in a statement that the tech giant would be appealing the ruling because the court found that “Google is ‘the industry’s highest quality search engine, which has earned Google the trust of hundreds of millions of daily users,’ that Google ‘has long been the best search engine, particularly on mobile devices,’ ‘has continued to innovate in search,’ and that ‘Apple and Mozilla occasionally assess Google’s search quality relative to its rivals and find Google’s to be superior.'”
“Given this, and that people are increasingly looking for information in more and more ways, we plan to appeal,” Walker said. “As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.”
But Mehta found that Google was wielding its outsize influence in the search industry to block rivals from competing by locking browsers and devices into agreements ensuring that all searches went to Google SERPs. None of the pro-competitive benefits that Google claimed justified the exclusive deals persuaded Mehta, who ruled that “importantly,” Google “exercised its monopoly power by charging supra-competitive prices for general search text ads”—and thus earned “monopoly profits.”
While experts think the appeal process will delay litigation on remedies, Google seems to think that Mehta may rule on potential remedies before Google can proceed with its appeal. Walker told Google employees that a ruling on remedies may arrive in the next few months, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ars will continue monitoring for updates on this timeline.
As the DOJ’s case against Google’s search business has dragged on, reports have long suggested that a loss for Google could change the way that nearly the entire world searches the Internet.
Adam Epstein—the president and co-CEO of adMarketplace, which bills itself as “the largest consumer search technology company outside of Google and Bing”—told Ars that innovations in search could result in a broader landscape of more dynamic search experiences that draw from sources beyond Google and allow searchers to skip Google’s SERPs entirely. If that happens, the coming years could make Google’s ubiquitous search experience today a distant memory.
“By the end of this decade, going to a search engine results page will seem quaint,” Epstein predicted. “The court’s decision sets the stage for a remedy that will dramatically improve the search experience for everyone connected to the web. The era of innovation in search is just around the corner.”
The DOJ has not meaningfully discussed potential remedies it will seek, but Jonathan Kanter, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, celebrated the ruling.
“This landmark decision holds Google accountable,” Kanter said. “It paves the path for innovation for generations to come and protects access to information for all Americans.”
Enlarge/ The Mac’s Gatekeeper feature has been pushing developers to digitally sign their apps since it was introduced in 2012.
Apple/Andrew Cunningham
It has always been easier to run third-party software on a Mac than on an iPhone or iPad. Despite the introduction of the Mac App Store a couple of years after the iPhone’s App Store opened, it has always been possible to download and run third-party scripts and software on your Mac from anywhere. It’s one reason why the iPhone and iPad are subject to new European Union regulations about software sideloading and third-party app stores, while the Mac isn’t.
That’s not changing in macOS 15 Sequoia, the new version of macOS that’s due to be released to the public this fall. But it is about to get more annoying for some apps, according to a note added to Apple’s developer site yesterday.
“In macOS Sequoia, users will no longer be able to Control-click to override Gatekeeper when opening software that isn’t signed correctly or notarized,” the brief note reads. “They’ll need to visit System Settings > Privacy & Security to review security information for software before allowing it to run.”
Users (including me) had noticed this behavior in early macOS Sequoia betas, but this note confirms that the change was made on purpose and that the software is working as intended.
What’s changing and what isn’t
To understand what’s changing, it’s helpful to understand how macOS handles third-party apps. Though software can be downloaded and run in macOS from everywhere, Apple encourages developers to digitally sign their software and send it to Apple for notarization, which Apple describes as “an automated system that scans your software for malicious content, checks for code-signing issues, and returns the results to you quickly.” Notably, it is not the same as the app review process in Apple’s App Stores, where humans check submitted apps and can refuse to distribute them if they run afoul of Apple’s rules.
Notarization does come with benefits for users—users can be sure that the apps haven’t been tampered with and can run them with minimal hassle from Gatekeeper, macOS’ app-screening security feature. But it creates an extra step for developers and requires the use of a $100-a-year paid Apple Developer account, something that may not be worth the cost for hobby projects or open source projects that don’t generate much (or any) income for their contributors.
Unsigned, non-notarized software will refuse to run in current macOS versions, but it has always been possible to right-click or control-click the app or script you want to run and then click Open, which exposes an “open anyway” option in a dialog box that lets you launch the software. Once you’ve made an exception for an app, you can run it like you would any other app unless the software is updated or changed in some way.
Enlarge/ The section of the Settings app where you’ll need to go in macOS Sequoia to allow unsigned apps to run.
Andrew Cunningham
Which gets us to what Sequoia changes. The right-click/control-click option for easily opening unsigned apps is no longer available. Users who want to open unsigned software will now need to go the long way around to do it: first, try to launch the app and dismiss the dialog box telling you that it can’t be opened. Then, open Settings, go to the Privacy & Security screen, scroll all the way to the bottom to get to the Security section, and click the Open Anyway button that appears for the last unsigned app you tried to run.
This has always been an option for skirting around Gatekeeper, going all the way back to the days when Settings was still System Preferences (and when Apple would let you disable Gatekeeper’s checks entirely, something it removed in 2016). But it takes so much more time that I never actually did it that way once I discovered the right-click trick. Now, doing it the long way is mandatory.
I don’t want to oversell how disruptive this is—generally once you allow an app to run the first time, you don’t have to think about it again unless the app is updated or otherwise modified or tampered with. Apple isn’t allowing or disallowing any new behavior in macOS. Popular apps from major developers do tend to be notarized, rendering this change irrelevant. And if this change pushes more developers to sign and notarize their apps, that is arguably a win for user security and convenience.
But for most people most of the time, it’s just going to make a minor annoyance into a medium-size annoyance. And among the conspiratorially minded, it’s going to reignite 12-year-old anxieties about Apple locking macOS down to the same degree that it already locks down iOS and iPadOS.
The macOS 15 Sequoia update is currently available to developers and the general public as a beta if you’ve signed up for either of Apple’s beta programs. An early iteration of the 15.1 update with some Apple Intelligence generative AI features enabled is also available to developers with Apple Silicon Macs.
Enlarge/ Apple’s external DVD-burning SuperDrive may be fading away.
Apple
Apple has always been eager to dump technologies when the company feels they have outlived their usefulness. The original iMac came without a floppy drive. The iPhone 7 came without a headphone jack. Mid-2010s MacBooks and MacBook Pros came with USB-A ports. And the original 2008 MacBook Air came without a built-in optical drive for CDs and DVDs. By the time 2012 and 2013 Macs rolled around, products from the iMac to the MacBook Pro followed suit.
These exclusions have often made Apple’s devices thinner, lighter, sleeker, or some combination of all three. But they’ve also meant that people who still needed those technologies also needed to deal with dongles, adapters, or clunky external accessories hanging off their devices. For the MacBook Air and other modern Macs that needed to read or burn optical discs, that clunky accessory was Apple’s SuperDrive, an external DVD burner that connected via USB.
After 16 years of availability, it looks like the SuperDrive’s run could be coming to an end. As noticed by MacRumors, the drive’s status has shifted to “sold out” in Apple’s online store, a more definitive and permanent-sounding label than the “currently unavailable” status assigned to some other out-of-stock products.
Though it’s been more than a decade since Apple introduced a new Mac with an optical drive built in, modern versions of macOS still have roughly the same level of support for CD and DVD drives that they did back when optical drives were standard-issue equipment. Plug an optical drive into a modern Mac—whether it’s a SuperDrive or a third-party model—and you’ll still be able to burn and rip audio CDs with the Music app, rip or burn CD and DVD image files with Finder or Disk Utility, or burn files to a disc for archiving with the Finder. Even the venerable DVD Player app is still included, though macOS relies mostly on third-party software to handle Blu-ray discs.
Third-party external DVD drives can be had for as little as $20, and external Blu-ray drives start around $50, making the $79 DVD-only SuperDrive an iffy financial proposition. It was also never updated with a USB-C connector, so connecting it to any modern MacBook requires yet another dongle. But Apple’s drive was unique, as it was a metal, slot-loading optical drive from a major manufacturer; SuperDrive clones on Amazon go for $30 or $40 but come from no-name companies and have mixed customer reviews. For now, if the news of its potential demise suddenly makes you want one, the genuine SuperDrive is still in stock at Amazon and Best Buy, among a few other third-party retailers.
We’ve contacted Apple to check on the status of the SuperDrive and will update this article if we receive a definitive response.
The landmark antitrust ruling against Google on Monday is shaking up one of the longest-standing partnerships in tech.
At the heart of the case are billions of dollars’ worth of exclusive agreements Google has inked over the years to become the default search engine on browsers and devices across the world. No company benefited more than fellow Big Tech giant Apple—which US District Judge Amit Mehta called a “crucial partner” to Google.
During a weekslong trial, Apple executives showed up to explain and defend the partnership. Under a deal that first took shape in 2002, Google paid a cut of search advertising revenue to Apple to direct its users to Google Search as default, with payments reaching $20 billion for 2022, according to the court’s findings. In exchange, Google got access to Apple’s valuable user base—more than half of all search queries in the US currently flow through Apple devices.
Since Monday’s ruling, Apple has been quiet. But it is likely to be deeply involved in the next phase of the case, which will address the proposed fix to Google’s legal breaches. Remedies in the case could be targeted or wide-ranging. The Department of Justice, which brought the case, has not said what it will seek.
“The most profound impact of the judgment is liable to be felt by Apple,” said Eric Seufert, an independent analyst.
JPMorgan analysts wrote that the ruling left Apple with a range of “inconvenient alternatives,” including the possibility of a new revenue-sharing agreement with Google that does not grant it exclusive rights as the default search engine, thereby reducing its value.
Reaching revenue-sharing deals with alternative search engines like Microsoft’s Bing, they wrote, would “offer lower economic benefits for Apple, given Google’s superior advertising monetisation.”
Mehta noted in his ruling that the idea of replacing the Google agreement with one involving Microsoft and Bing had come up previously. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice-president of services, “concluded that a Microsoft-Apple deal would only make sense if Apple ‘view[ed] Google as somebody [they] don’t want to be in business with and therefore are willing to jeopardize revenue to get out. Otherwise it [was a] no brainer to stay with Google as it is as close to a sure thing as can be,’” Mehta wrote.
Apple could build its own search engine. It has not yet done so, and the judge in the case stopped short of agreeing with the DoJ that the Google deal amounted to a “pay-off” to Apple to keep it out of the search engine market. An internal Apple study in 2018, cited in the judge’s opinion, found that even if it did so and maintained 80 percent of queries, it would still lose $12 billion in revenue in the first five years after separating from Google.
Mehta cited an email from John Giannandrea, a former Google executive who now works for Apple, saying, “There is considerable risk that [Apple] could end up with an unprofitable search engine that [is] also not better for users.”
Google has vowed to appeal against the ruling. Nicholas Rodelli, an analyst at CRFA Research, said it was a “long shot,” given the “meticulous” ruling.
Rodelli said he believed the judge “isn’t likely to issue a game-changing injunction,” such as a full ban on revenue-sharing with Apple. Depending on the remedy the judge decides for Google’s antitrust violations, Seufert said Apple could “either be forced to accept a much less lucrative arrangement with Microsoft [over Bing] or may be prevented from selling search defaults at all.”
“It’s certainly going to adjust the relationship between Google and Apple,” said Bill Kovacic, a former Federal Trade Commission chair and professor of competition law and policy at George Washington University Law School.
Mozilla’s funding may be at risk
Apple is not the only company potentially affected by Monday’s ruling. According to the court, Google’s 2021 payment to Mozilla for the default position on its browser was more than $400 million, about 80 percent of Mozilla’s operating budget. A spokesperson for Mozilla said it was “closely reviewing” the decision and “how we can positively influence the next steps.”
Meanwhile, the search market is undergoing a transformation, as companies such as Google and Microsoft explore how generative AI chatbots can transform traditional search features.
Apple’s partnership with OpenAI, announced in June, will allow users to direct their queries to its chatbot ChatGPT. A smarter Siri voice assistant powered by Apple’s own proprietary AI models will also create a new outlet for user queries that might otherwise go to Google. Apple’s models are trained using Applebot, a web crawler that, much like the technology behind a search engine, compiles public information from across the Internet.
Traditional search is showing no signs of slowing. Research from Emarketer finds that, in the US alone, spend on search advertising will grow at an average of about 10 percent each year, hitting $184 billion in 2028. Google, the dominant player by a long shot, captures about half of that spend. Apple’s current deal with Google would have allowed it to unilaterally extend the partnership into 2028.
The Cupertino, California-based iPhone maker has its own antitrust battle to wage. The DoJ’s antitrust division, led by Jonathan Kanter, filed a sweeping lawsuit against Apple in March, making it the latest Big Tech giant to be targeted by the Biden administration’s enforcers.
The legal troubles reflect an ongoing decline in Apple’s relationship with policymakers in Washington, despite an effort by chief executive Tim Cook to step up the company’s lobbying of the Biden White House, according to research by the Tech Transparency Project. TTP found that Apple spent $9.9 million on lobbying the federal government in 2023—its highest in 25 years, though still much lower than the likes of Google, Amazon, and Meta.
Enlarge/ Apple Intelligence was unveiled at WWDC 2024.
Apple
As the parent of a younger child, I can tell you that getting a kid to respond the way you want can require careful expectation-setting. Especially when we’re trying something new for the first time, I find that the more detail I can provide, the better he is able to anticipate events and roll with the punches.
I bring this up because testers of the new Apple Intelligence AI features in the recently released macOS Sequoia beta have discovered plaintext JSON files that list a whole bunch of conditions meant to keep the generative AI tech from being unhelpful or inaccurate. I don’t mean to humanize generative AI algorithms, because they don’t deserve to be, but the carefully phrased lists of instructions remind me of what it’s like to try to give basic instructions to (or explain morality to) an entity that isn’t quite prepared to understand it.
The files in question are stored in the /System/Library/AssetsV2/com_apple_MobileAsset_UAF_FM_GenerativeModels/purpose_auto folder on Macs running the macOS Sequoia 15.1 beta that have also opted into the Apple Intelligence beta. That folder contains 29 metadata.json files, several of which include a few sentences of what appear to be plain-English system prompts to set behavior for an AI chatbot powered by a large-language model (LLM).
Many of these prompts are utilitarian. “You are a helpful mail assistant which can help identify relevant questions from a given mail and a short reply snippet,” reads one prompt that seems to describe the behavior of the Apple Mail Smart Reply feature. “Please limit the reply to 50 words,” reads one that could write slightly longer draft responses to messages. “Summarize the provided text within 3 sentences, fewer than 60 words. Do not answer any question from the text,” says one that looks like it would summarize texts from Messages or Mail without interjecting any of its own information.
Some of the prompts also have minor grammatical issues that highlight what a work-in-progress all of the Apple Intelligence features still are. “In order to make the draft response nicer and complete, a set of question [sic] and its answer are provided,” reads one prompt. “Please write a concise and natural reply by modify [sic] the draft response,” it continues.
“Do not make up factual information.”
And still other prompts seem designed specifically to try to prevent the kinds of confabulations that generative AI chatbots are so prone to (hallucinations, lies, factual inaccuracies; pick the term you prefer). Phrases meant to keep Apple Intelligence on-task and factual include things like:
“Do not hallucinate.”
“Do not make up factual information.”
“You are an expert at summarizing posts.”
“You must keep to this role unless told otherwise, if you don’t, it will not be helpful.”
“Only output valid json and nothing else.”
Earlier forays into generative AI have demonstrated why it’s so important to have detailed, specific prompts to guide the responses of language models. When it launched as “Bing Chat” in early 2023, Microsoft’s ChatGPT-based chatbot could get belligerent, threatening, or existential based on what users asked of it. Prompt injection attacks could also put security and user data at risk. Microsoft incorporated different “personalities” into the chatbot to try to rein in its responses to make them more predictable, and Microsoft’s current Copilot assistant still uses a version of the same solution.
What makes the Apple Intelligence prompts interesting is less that they exist and more that we can actually look at the specific things Apple is attempting so that its generative AI products remain narrowly focused. If these files stay easily user-accessible in future macOS builds, it will be possible to keep an eye on exactly what Apple is doing to tweak the responses that Apple Intelligence is giving.
The Apple Intelligence features are going to launch to the public in beta this fall, but they’re going to miss the launch of iOS 18.0, iPadOS 18.0, and macOS 15.0, which is why Apple is testing them in entirely separate developer betas. Some features, like the ones that transcribe phone calls and voicemails or summarize text, will be available early on. Others, like the new Siri, may not be generally available until next year. Regardless of when it arrives, Apple Intelligence requires fairly recent hardware to work: either an iPhone 15 Pro, or an iPad or Mac with at least an Apple M1 chip installed.
Apple has some minor updates for all its operating systems, and the releases include iOS 17.6, iPadOS 17.6, tvOS 17.6, watchOS 10.6, and macOS Sonoma 14.6.
Apple’s notes for these updates simply say they include bug fixes, security updates, or optimizations. However, there are a few hidden features.
macOS 14.6 reportedly enables multi-display support in clamshell mode on the M3 MacBook Pro, allowing users of that device to use two external displays at once. That was already possible on the M3 Pro and M3 Max variations. Apple had previously released a similar update to bring that functionality to the M3 MacBook Air.
iOS 17.6 and iPadOS 17.6 have added a feature called Catch Up, which is targeted at sports fans who use Apple’s TV app.
The feature allows users to watch a quick sequence of highlights that have been produced so far from an in-progress Major League Soccer game before joining the live feed.
That’s about it, though. These are minor updates, and they are likely the final ones other than security hotfixes until Apple begins rolling out its annual updates, such as iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia 15, later this fall.
Those updates are expected to include several new features, though the biggest—Apple Intelligence, a suite of generative AI features—will not arrive until iOS 18.1, which was just released as a developer beta for the first time.
iOS 17.6, iPadOS 17.6, tvOS 17.6, watchOS 10.6, and macOS Sonoma 14.6 are available to download and install on all supported devices now.
Enlarge/ Apple Intelligence was unveiled at WWDC 2024.
Apple
As was just rumored, the iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1 developer betas are rolling out today, and they include the first opportunity to try out Apple Intelligence, the company’s suite of generative AI features.
Initially announced for iOS 18, Apple Intelligence is expected to launch for the public this fall. Typically, Apple also releases a public beta (the developer one requires a developer account) for new OS updates, but it hasn’t announced any specifics about that just yet.
Not all the Apple Intelligence features will be part of this beta. It will include writing tools, like the ability to rewrite, proofread, or summarize text throughout the OS in first-party and most third-party apps. It will also include new Siri improvements, such as moving seamlessly between voice and typing, the ability to follow when you stumble over your words, and maintaining context from one request to the next. (It will not, however, include ChatGPT integration; Apple says that’s coming later.)
New natural language search features, support for creating memory movies, transcription summaries, and several new Mail features will also be available.
Developers who download the beta will be able to request access to Apple Intelligence features by navigating to the Settings app, tapping Apple Intelligence & Siri, and then tapping “Join the Apple Intelligence waitlist.” The waitlist is in place because some features are demanding on Apple’s servers, and staggering access is meant to stave off any server issues when developers are first trying it out.
