In case you missed it, Apple revealed a new version of macOS dubbed Sequoia at WWDC 2024. The upcoming update for macOS comes loaded with new features like iPhone mirroring, a new and improved Siri, and of course, Apple Intelligence. Alongside all those exciting additions, however, macOS 15 also brings in some more minor tweaks, including new dynamic wallpapers – and one of them is a pleasant blast from the past.
Now, I’m not old enough to have used a Macintosh from way back in the day, so my appreciation of this new wallpaper may not be the same as some people who had the pleasure of working with the older computers themselves. But, it is really interesting to see Apple introduce a retro dynamic wallpaper with its newest and arguably most advanced version of macOS.
Mac Rumors further reports that there’s a second introduction on the dynamic wallpaper front called ‘Helios’ – as featured in Apple’s marketing materials already – but I couldn’t see that one, only the classic Mac wallpaper.
The dynamic wallpapers are somewhat iconic now, having been supplied with the last few versions of macOS – Monterey, Ventura, and Sonoma each have their own distinct look that changes throughout the day. If you're eager to take a peek at the new wallpapers yourself, you can install the beta version of macOS Sequoia on your Mac and try them out!
(Image credit: Basic Apple Guy )
I’ve done so myself just to access the retro wallpaper and it’s worth the effort, for me anyway – though keep in mind that beta versions of software can (and likely will) be unstable, and won’t immediately grant you access to all the new features. So, be sure to back up your device if you decide to take the plunge.
The Macintosh wallpapers are animated and shift between different graphics as you’re using your device, and can also be set as your lock screen when you’re on standby. You can also pick the accent color you want to use like blue, red, purple and so on.
Overall the juxtaposition between having an advanced, AI-powered operating system, and these super-cute retro graphics hits a certain sweet spot with me, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy the experience just as much!
If you don’t want to go through the process and hassle of downloading the macOS Sequoia beta, Apple enthusiast and blogger Basic Apple Guy has uploaded high-resolution screenshots in all the color options for you to check out and download for free.
I’m very excited for macOS Sequoia to be released in all its glory later this year, but until then, I’ll be enjoying the cute wallpapers!
Guess what: Yahoo Mail is alive and well in the year 2024, and has begun adding new AI capabilities to your inbox to to simplify your emails and improve your overall task management. It’s a big week for AI considering Apple also announced Apple Intelligence at WWDC 24 – and it looks like Yahoo Mail is diving right into the world of AI with the same focus of productivity and digital assistance.
You may be surprised to hear the words ‘Yahoo Mail’ and ‘artificial intelligence’ strung together in the same sentence – rightfully so. While there are probably still a lot of people who haven’t switched up since the earlier 2000s, or people who use it to filter out spam, I can’t say I’ve seen or been emailed by anyone with an @yahoo.com email address ever.
So, it’s safe to say that Yahoo’s push to include AI tech is likely aimed at trying to get more people to use the email client – and it might very well work. Whether you’re nostalgic for the good ol’ days or just looking to start fresh with a clean email hub that can offer you generative text assistance, personal context, and more, why wouldn’t you try Yahoo Mail?
I’ve already made my account
Unfortunately, the beta for Yahoo Mail AI is only available for US-based accounts, but I’m sure that will open up in the near future. In terms of some of the features to look forward to, you’ll have access to AI-generated summaries in a bullet point list, which you can find under a new tab called the ‘Priority Inbox’. So, Yahoo AI will highlight what it believes to be the most important information to you based on content and previous context from your general emailing habits.
You’ll also have access to a ‘Quick Action’ button so you can add an event to your calendar, check-in for flights, and even track packages on their way over to you.
However great these features are, there’s one big new change that’s cool enough to sway me over to Yahoo Mail. You’ll soon be able to link your Yahoo inbox to other email accounts like Gmail, and Microsoft Outlook so you can send and receive all your emails right from Yahoo Mail. So, if you want access to Gmail's sophisticated AI tools without having to pay, Yahoo Mail might be worth switching to!
When Apple introduced macOS Sequoia and its new iPhone Mirroring capability, I didn't get it. Now, though, after seeing it in action and considering some non-obvious use cases, I may be ready to reconsider.
Apple unveiled the latest AI-infused version of macOS during its WWDC 2024 keynote, which also saw major updates to iOS, iPadOS, visionOS, tvOS, and watchOS. It also served as the launch platform for Apple Intelligence, an Apple-built and branded version of artificial intelligence. I get that Apple's been building AI PCs for a while (ever since the M1 chip, they've included an on-board neural engine), and there are many features, including a better Siri, powerful photo editing features, and smart writing help, to look forward to but I found myself fixating elsewhere.
Apple was putting the iPhone on your Mac, or, rather, an iPhone screen floating in the middle of the lovely macOS Sequoia desktop. In a way, this is the most significant redesign of the new platform. It puts an entirely different OS – a mobile one, no less – on top of a laptop or desktop.
Wow. And also, why?
I admit that I had a hard time conceiving what utility you could gain from having a second, live interface on an already busy desktop. Apple has said in the past that they build features, in some cases, based on user requests. Who had ever asked for this?
After the keynote, I had the chance to take a deeper dive, which helped me better understand this seemingly unholy marriage and why, in some cases, it might make perfect sense.
Making it so
(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Apple built a new app to connect your iOS 18-running iPhone to your macOS Sequoia Mac. In a demo I saw, it took one click to make it happen. Behind the scenes, the two systems are building a secure Bluetooth and WiFi connection. On the iPhone, there is a message that mirroring is live. On the Mac, well, there's the iPhone screen, complete with the dynamic Island cutout (a strange choice if you ask me – why virtualize dead space?).
I was honestly shocked at the level of iPhone functionality Apple could bring to the Mac desktop.
You can use the Mac trackpad to swipe through iPhone apps.
You can click to launch apps and run them inside the iPhone screen on your Mac desktop.
Pinch and zoom on the Mac trackpad works as expected with the iPhone apps.
There's even full drag-and-drop capability between the two interfaces. So you could take a video from the Go Pro app on your mirrored iPhone screen and drag and drop it into another app, like Final Cut Pro on the Mac.
Essentially, you are reaching through one big screen to get to another smaller one – on a different platform – that is sitting locked beside your desktop. It's stange and cool, but is it necessary?
(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Not everything makes sense. You can search through your mirrored phone screen, but why not just search on your desktop?
You can use the mirrored iPhone screen in landscape mode and play games. However, there's no obvious way to tell someone trying to play a game that uses the iPhone gyroscope that this is a bad idea.
I like that there's enough awareness that while the iPhone screen can look exactly like the screen on the phone, you can click to access a slightly larger frame that allows you to control the mirrored screen.
It's not the kind of mirroring that locks you in. To end it, you just pick up and unlock the phone to end the connection.
Even seeing all this, though, I wondered how people might use iPhone Mirroring.
Even seeing all this, though, I wondered how people might use iPhone Mirroring. There's the opportunity to play some games that aren't available on Mac. Multi-player word game fans might like that if they get a notification, they can open the mirrored phone screen, make a move, and then return to work.
When macOS Sequoia ships later this fall, you'll even be able to resize the mirrored iPhone window, which I guess could be useful for landscape games.
Notifications from your phone sounds redundant, especially for those of us in the iCloud ecosystem where all our Apple products get the same iMessages. But the system is smart enough to know it shouldn't repeat notifications on both screens, and you'll have the option to decide which iPhone notifications appear on your Mac.
Some notifications only appear on your iPhone, and others appear in both places, but you can't always act on them on the Mac. This new feature might bridge that gap. A fellow journalist mentioned that iPhone mirroring would finally give him a way to jump from a notification he saw on his Mac for his baby cam app, where this is no cam app, to the live feed on the iPhone. This finally struck me as truly useful.
Is that enough of a reason to have your iPhone screen pasted on your Mac desktop? I don't know. It might take up too much real estate on my MacBook Air 13-inch, but it would be kind of cool on a 27-inch iMac, if I had one.
Windows 11 and 10 users, you can breathe a sigh of relief for a moment, as there’s news that’s not about sticking more AI into the heart of Windows 11, or about Windows 10’s seemingly unavoidable end – although I don’t know if this development will be a cause for joy. Microsoft is fully rolling out MSN lock screen widgets after testing the feature for the past four months.
Apparently, the feature is still in the process of being rolled out, so you may not see it quite yet, but these widgets should appear on your lock screen very soon (if they don’t already). Microsoft is implementing this change for Windows 11 and 10 via a server-side update, so the widgets will just suddenly appear – and so far, Windows Latest observes that users aren’t receiving them warmly.
Part of the problem is that the lock screen widgets displayed are pre-set by Microsoft, and they can’t be adjusted or modified to your preferences. The widgets appear if you switch them on, or already have the ‘Weather or more’ option turned on, in the Settings app.
To be precise, you’ll find this option in the following location:
Settings > Personalization > Lock Screen
(Image credit: Microsoft)
An all or nothing proposition – at least for now
The pre-configured MSN widgets include Microsoft Money, Sports, and Weather, but you can’t currently pick and choose which of these you’d like to keep and which to leave out. I imagine this is where a lot of the dissatisfaction with the feature comes from, as it feels that if you’d like widgets on your lock screen, but not all of them – well, it’s a case of tough luck. You’re forced to have them all, or none of them (if you switch them off).
Why can’t you adjust these widgets individually, turning off the ones you don’t like, as you can with other individual widgets such as Mail or Calendar? Well, the good news is that you’ll be able to do that before long, as Microsoft has promised this ability is inbound for Windows 11 and 10 users.
We don’t know when this important change is set to arrive, but hopefully, we’ll see this coming in sooner rather than later, as we can’t imagine it’s a huge task for Microsoft.
WWDC 2024 saw Apple unveil all of the changes coming to its various software platforms later in the year. The tech giant debuted iOS 18 and unveiled Apple Intelligence.
In between all of the major reveals, the company also made several smaller announcements during macOS Sequoia's debut that could be just as impactful as the system updates. And one of the features that caught our eye is a new app: Passwords.
Think of it as a first-party version of LastPass. It helps users manage account passwords, verification codes, passkeys and just about everything in between. Apple’s Passwords app gives you quick access to your credentials and organizes everything in a user-friendly interface.
On the left side of the window, you’ll see each of the six categories housing the logins. One shows you everything currently stored, one for passkeys, and one for information about Wi-Fi networks.
(Image credit: Apple)
You’ll also notice a section for security alerts. If you go to that tab, you might see notifications recommending you update some of your passwords as they might be too weak, be used elsewhere, or it’s been compromised. Everything is laid out neatly with an accompanying icon for the account's website.
Deleted is next to the Security tab, where you can presumably restore erased passwords. Below the different categories is the Shared Group section that holds logins for multiple apps under a specific name. The demonstration shows a group for an entire family and one for the office.
Notable features
Apple states that the Passwords app builds on top of their long-running Keychain system and is a major upgrade. When it ships later this year, it'll be available on macOS Sequoia, iOS 18, iPadOS18, Vision Pro, and PCs through the iCloud for Windows app. Autofill is supported throughout all the different versions, meaning that when you sign onto a site with a login stored for you, it'll automatically fill it in.
We would love to know how well Apple’s software stacks up to the likes of LastPass and other password managers. To get the most out of something like LastPass, you have to pay a monthly subscription to have all the features like “access across all devices.” If the Password app is totally free (and we think it will be), it’ll give all these managers a run for their money. Either way, we'll know for sure when the app rolls out with macOS Sequoia later this fall. Or you can wait until July for the public beta.
So yes, most of the new AI-infused or AI-powered features coming to iOS, iPadOS 18, and macOS 15 Sequoia are powered by Apple Intelligence using either on-device or in the Private Compute Cloud. And yes, that goes for the vast majority of Siri’s new intelligence and new powers, as well.
But Apple is giving users the option to pull from another LLM (large-language model) – OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4o may be called upon when Siri doesn’t quite know the answer or when you might want to mix up your writing style. You won’t be stuck with OpenAI’s latest LLM, though.
Speaking at a talk after the keynote wrapped, Craig Federighi – Apple’s SVP of Software Engineering – shared a bit more about Apple’s approach here: “We want to enable users, ultimately, to bring the model of their choice.”
(Image credit: Future / Jacob Krol)
It’s an approach similar to how Apple lets you select a default search engine on your iPhone; Federighi did say that LLM choice could potentially include Google Gemini but was quick to note Apple had “nothing to announce,” but it is “the direction.” On stage with Federighi during the conversation were John Giannandrea – Apple’s SVP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy – and Justine Ezarik (iJustine). Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, introduced the conversation.
As a whole, it is a win for users’ freedom of choice. If there is an LLM that better aligns with your needs or maybe internet privacy beliefs, you’ll one day be able to make that choice, assuming Apple’s idea with software functionality doesn’t change.
This means that any users, including Scarlett Johansson – if she uses an iPhone – won’t be forced into using ChatGPT-4o … at least for the long haul. When Apple Intelligence ships alongside the new Siri, the assistant will sometimes ask for certain requests or questions and use ChatGPT to provide an answer. With user-written text, really anywhere on the supported devices, you’ll also be able to highlight the response and send it off to ChatGPT for revision.
Of course, these are all opt-in. You’ll also need an iPad or Mac powered by an M-Series chip or iPhone 15 Pro or 15 Pro Max – thanks to the A17 Pro chip – to use any Apple Intelligence features or the new Siri when it arrives later this year.
The Apple WWDC 2024 keynote is always one of the highlights of the tech calendar, and this year's edition was bigger than most. That's because, as widely predicted, Tim Cook used the occasion to reveal Apple Intelligence – arguably the biggest development in Apple-land since… well, the reveal of the Vision Pro last year.
As well as the big AI-related news, the nearly two-hour Apple event was absolutely packed with detail on everything from iOS 18 to the latest macOS to iPadOS, watchOS and tvOS.
You can check out our WWDC 2024 live blog for full info on everything that was announced, but if you want the highlights then here are the 13 biggest announcements from WWDC 2024.
1. Apple Intelligence is coming soon…
(Image credit: Apple)
Let's start with the big one, then.
Apple Intelligence is Apple’s new family of AI features, which will thread its way through every Apple platform and even work with third-party apps. It'll be entirely free, and available on iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia via their respective betas, then fully rolled out later this year.
It approaches AI in a very Apple way, which means privacy first, and most features work on the device you're using, without sharing to the cloud. When you need more power, Apple has a Power Cloud Compute option for complex requests, but Apple’s cloud still focuses more on privacy than any AI we’ve seen so far.
Among the many features on offer you'll get access to generative writing, generative image creation, and third-party API tools, in addition to the massive upgrade coming to Siri (see below). Apple was a little late to the AI party, but it'll be fully up to speed soon.
Exciting though Apple Intelligence is, it will only be available on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPad and Mac models using the Apple M1 chip or later.
This is understandable, given that it needs powerful Apple silicon to work, but will be disappointing for anyone who owns a standard iPhone 15, any iPhone 14 or earlier model, or indeed an Intel-based MacBook. Expect sales of the rumored iPhone 16 range to benefit considerably…
3. Siri got a huge update – and now comes with added ChatGPT
(Image credit: Future)
Apple's voice assistant has been treading water for years, but Siri will finally get the makeover it so badly needs in iOS 18. That includes a visual refresh, with the assistant now a glowing light around the edges of your iPhone's screen.
But Siri has also been given a much-needed brain transplant. It'll have 'on-screen awareness' to make it work better with apps – and if it can't answer a question, you can plug it into ChatGPT-4o's model for free, cloud-based wisdom. The bad news? The new Siri is powered by Apple Intelligence, which means that as stated above, you'll only get it on the latest iPhone 15 Pro models, or iPads and Macs that have at least an M1 chip. Still, it'll be a nice perk when we do upgrade.
4. Custom emojis with generative AI will ruin communication
(Image credit: Apple)
Oh boy. If you thought emoji use was bad before, just wait for Apple’s new feature that enables you to just tell your iPhone/iPad/Mac what cool new emoji you want, and it’ll create it for you using generative AI – so there will truly be one for every occasion.
Some will be adorable, some will be surreal, some will be disturbing, obviously. Will we love this feature? Or, more likely, will it be the moment when… hmmm, how to describe this? 'Hey iPhone, make us an emoji of a man in a leather jacket jumping his jetski over a shark.'
5. iOS 18's new updates look pretty sweet
(Image credit: Apple)
As expected, Apple revealed its next major software update, iOS 18, confirming that big changes are headed to core iPhone apps including Mail, Messages, Maps and Photos.
Mail, for instance, will soon be capable of categorizing your emails and providing easy-to-read digests, while the Photos app is being unified into a single view comprising a photo grid and a dates grid.
iOS 18 will soon let you react to messages using any emoji in the Messages app, and you'll be able to schedule messages to send at a convenient time in the future. Significant customization improvements are also coming to the Home Screen and Control Center.
We also found out the name of macOS 15: Sequoia. Despite the big reveal at the keynote, it wasn’t too much of a shock that Apple went for this. For a start, modern macOS releases have all been named after Californian landmarks or places – previous editions have been called Big Sur, Ventura, Monterey and Sonoma. Sequoia, named after a national park in Sierra Nevada, continues this tradition.
Internet sleuths also spotted ahead of WWDC that Apple has trademarked a number of potential names: Redwood, Grizzly, Mammoth, Pacific, Rincon, Farallon, Miramar, Condor, Diablo, Shasta… and Sequoia. As well as its name, we also found out that it’ll be coming out ‘this Fall’ (so September or October 2024), with a developer preview available right now.
As our Vision Pro review makes clear, Apple's mixed-reality headset is a special piece of kit that really has to be experienced. Thus far, it's only been available in the US – but that's changing now.
As of Thursday, June 13, customers in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore will be able to pre-order the Vision Pro, with devices shipping from Friday, June 28. Those in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK will have to wait a little longer, but will be able to pre-order from June 28, with devices available from July 12.
How much will it cost? Well, we know that in the UK it will start at £3,499, and based on the US price – which is also $ 3,499 – we'd expect it to retail at around AU$ 6,349.
8. visionOS 2 will turn your 2D images into Spatial Photos
Alongside a global launch for the hardware, Apple announced visionOS 2 on the software side. The standout feature is that the headset can now turn your flat pictures into spatial photos, using machine learning.
Spatial images have depth that makes them feel more like you’re viewing a memory than looking at a regular photo does, and this is a huge win for those of you with overflowing iCloud libraries.
When the visionOS 2 update rolls out later this year, other features you’ll unlock include travel mode being able to work on trains (alongside planes), while your Mac virtual display will get a lot bigger, with the max size being like having two 4K displays sitting side by side. There will also be new hand-gesture controls, which should allow you to quickly navigate to the settings menu, home view, and other useful tools.
The biggest cheer of the night came not for the Vision Pro or iOS 18, but from… the Calculator app on iPadOS 18. Yes, really.
In fairness, the iPad has never had a native Calculator app, with users instead having to make do with third-party options, a fact which has inspired more than a few memes at Apple's expense over the years.
The new Calculator app is more than just a scaled-up version of the iOS app, though. Extra features include a resizable window and a sidebar that lists recent calculations. But better still is the new Math Notes integration.
This works with the Apple Pencil, allowing you to write equations that will be solved immediately once you write an equals sign. You can then make changes to various elements of the equation and see how the results change in real-time, plus turn equations immediately into charts and more. It looks pretty impressive.
It also introduces a new Vitals app that can help users understand how well one’s body responds to and recover from stress. Meanwhile, the new Training Load score uses an algorithm to generate a score based on how well a person is responding to training, by harnessing metrics such as average heart rates and resting, combined with one’s age and weight data.
Apple hasn’t revamped watchOS that much, but the 11th iteration leans on evolution and should make wearing one of the best Apple Watches even better.
11. People will hear you way more clearly when calling from AirPods Pro 2
AirPods Pro 2 are getting a Voice Isolation feature, which promises to massively reduce wind noise and other loud sounds from the mic when you call someone using them. Given how good the noise cancellation on AirPods Pro 2 is, we’re looking forward to seeing how well this works. Other AirPods miss, sadly – it needs the mighty power of the Apple H2 chip, currently unique to AirPods Pro 2.
Unsurprisingly, tvOS wasn't exactly the main focus of the WWDC 2024 keynote, but it did get a few new features to enhance your Apple TV experience.
The most interesting of the tvOS 18 updates looks like InSight, the company’s own take on the X-Ray feature used by Amazon Prime Video, which displays onscreen info about actors, characters, and background music in movies and shows.
The Apple TV 4K’s Enhance Dialogue feature, meanwhile, is getting an AI boost to make voices sound clear across a range of devices, and subtitles will get a similar treatment to generate onscreen text when muting or scanning back through programs.
Last but not least, the Apple TV 4K will now be able to output images in the ultra-wide 21:9 aspect ratio format for better compatibility with 4K projectors.
Safe to say that iPhone owners have been jealous of Magic Eraser on the the Google Pixel range, and fortunately Apple is finally fixing this – and it's not just on iOS, but will be within Photos on iPadOS and macOS as well.
With a new Clean Up feature you'll be able to circle to intelligently remove an object or even a person from the background. Furthermore, search is getting much smarter within the Photos app, making it easier for you to find photos that you care about.
Apple has unveiled its own spin of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – and it's called Apple Intelligence. As expected, it was unveiled at WWDC 2024 (you can follow all the announcements as they happen at our WWDC 2024 live blog).
Here's everything we know so far about Apple Intelligence, and how it integrates with Siri and other Apple products.
Apple Intelligence will be free for users with iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS 15 Sequoia – all operating updates announced at WWDC 2024.
This story is breaking. We'll continue to update this article – and check out our WWDC 2024 live blog for all the breaking news
Apple has officially announced macOS 15 Sequoia at this year's WWDC 2024 event (you can follow all the announcements as they happen at our WWDC 2024 live blog), giving us an early view of the upcoming operating system for Macs and MacBooks.
Following on from macOS Sonoma, which was revealed at last year's WWDC, macOS 15 comes with a range of new features, many of which make use of Apple's artificial intelligence (AI) tools, which were also announced at WWDC 2024.
What we know so far
These are the new features of macOS 15:
Your iPhone screen can now be mirrored in macOS 15
iPhone notifications are coming to Macs
Improved windows layouts – drag a window to a side of your screen and macOS 15 will give you options for arranging windows
You can replace backgrounds when using FaceTime
Password app replaces Keychain, making it easier to arrange and sync your passwords – and this is also coming to iPhone, Vision Pro, iPads and even Windows PCs!
This story is breaking. We'll continue to update this article – and check out our WWDC 2024 live blog for all the breaking news
As part of WWDC 2024 Apple has announced a slew of updates for its hardware – with the Apple Vision Pro kicking things off with not only new features, but a release date for non-US markets (finally).
The big news is obviously that latter one. On June 28 the Apple Vision Pro is rolling out to China, Japan, and Singapore; and then two weeks later on July 12 it’ll launch in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK.
We don’t have the precise prices for the Vision Pro in these regions yet, but as soon as WWDC is over the online Apple Store should be updated with all of these details. Just be warned; you should expect this VR headset to be pricey given that its US launch price was $ 3,499 – which is around £2,788, AU$ 6349.
This is a developing story, as we learn more we'll be updating this page with the details
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