Apple today released a new update for Safari Technology Preview, the experimental browser Apple first introduced three years ago in March 2016. Apple designed the Safari Technology Preview to test features that may be introduced into future release versions of Safari.
Safari Technology Preview release 97 includes bug fixes and performance improvements for Resize Observer, WebAuthn, Web Animations, Web Inspector, Rendering, Back-Forward Cache, SVG, Clipboard API, CSS, Remote Playback API, Media, JavaScript, Picture-in-Picture Web API, WebAssembly, and Web API.
The new Safari Technology Preview update is available for both macOS Mojave and MacOS Catalina, the newest version of the Mac operating system that was released in October.
Apple’s aim with Safari Technology Preview is to gather feedback from developers and users on its browser development process. Safari Technology Preview can run side-by-side with the existing Safari browser and while designed for developers, it does not require a developer account to download.
Best Buy’s 12 Days of Deals shopping event is still going on as we get closer to Christmas. Today, that includes solid discounts on the Ultimate Ears Wonderboom speaker and the Philips Hue Play Starter Kit.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
Regarding the latter accessory, you can get this starter kit for $119.99, which is a $30 discount on its usual $149.99 price. But, Best Buy is also throwing in a free $50 Best Buy e-gift card, making the Hue Play starter kit a solid chance to get some extra credit to put towards your other holiday purchases at the retailer.
Like other days in the Best Buy event, all of the deals listed in this article will expire later tonight at 11:59 p.m. CT, and some have limited quantities. Head to our full Deals Roundup for more sales and bargains.
Amazon has the AirPods Pro in stock and is discounting the earphones to $236.55, down from an original price of $249.00. You won’t see the sale price until you add the AirPods Pro to your cart and head to the checkout screen, but the discount will be applied automatically.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Amazon. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
Amazon’s sales on the AirPods Pro typically result in the earphones selling out fast, so if you’re interested be sure to head to Amazon soon to make your purchase. With Amazon Prime delivery, you’ll also get the AirPods Pro in time for Christmas.
AirPods Pro have been discounted to around $235 in the past, so while this sale isn’t quite as good, it’s still a nice opportunity to save some money on the brand-new earphones.
For more holiday shopping ideas, check out our full Deals Roundup.
Apple is seeking additional office spaces in Pittsburgh and New York City, according to a pair of reports this week.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Apple is in talks about taking up to 90,000 square feet of space in the 111-year-old Pittsburgh Athletic Association building in the city’s Oakland neighborhood, across the street from the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning.
Bloomberg meanwhile reported that Apple has also recently looked at Essex Crossing, a mixed-use development in Manhattan’s Lower East Side that will have 350,000 square feet of office space upon completion.
In a December 2018 press release, Apple revealed plans to grow its employee base in regions across the United States over the following three years, expanding to over 1,000 employees in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City each, and adding hundreds of new jobs in Pittsburgh, New York, Boulder, Boston, and Portland.
Anker this week kicked off a big accessory sale on Amazon, with discounts on everything from Soundcore earphones to Lightning cables, PowerWave wireless charging mats, and PowerCore portable batteries.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Amazon. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
We’ve listed all of the devices in Anker’s new sale below, along with the dates when the discounts expire. Most of the sales will end on December 22, which makes this one of Anker’s last big discount events of 2019.
Nine months ago, Apple unveiled its Apple News+ service, designed to let Apple News users access over 200 magazines and some paywalled news content for a $9.99 per month fee. Apple keeps 50 percent of this fee and the remaining revenue is split among publishers based on the amount of time readers spend with each publisher’s content.
However, a new report by Digiday looking at the popularity of Apple News+ suggests that most publishers remain underwhelmed by the paid subscription service and so far aren’t seeing the results they’d hoped for.
According to the report, the news service is having little impact on publishers’ bottom lines, and although it has generated some additional revenue and enabled them to reach more international audiences, overall publisher revenues generated from Apple News+ are modest.
One publisher told Digiday that revenue was less than $20,000 a month, but the desire to keep the subscription numbers up meant it was worth renewing the contract with Apple next year.
“We’re happy to be on there because it’s another way to increase subscription revenue, but it’s not like it’s a huge boon for our business or anything like that,” one magazine exec said. “It’s not really relevant.”
Another publisher said they were “encouraged” by the results since joining Apple News+ and that it had helped them grow their audience outside of the U.S., but declined to say how many subscriptions they’d added because of the platform.
“I think the jury is out,” said Roger Lynch, Condé Nast CEO said at Code Media in November, about Apple News+. “I think that … the paid side of it has had some adoption and I think Apple will continue to focus on that. Whether it’s good for publishers like us or not is to be determined.”
Two days after the service’s launch in March, Apple reported 200,000 new subscriptions for Apple News+, but hasn’t offered any more subscription numbers. One report last month suggested that Apple has struggled to attract subscribers to its news service, although the company isn’t expected to dramatically change its Apple News+ strategy.
That said, Bloomberg reported in November that Apple is considering bundling Apple News+ with Apple TV+ and Apple Music, which could mean users see perceive it as offering better value for money. Have you signed up for Apple News+ and do you plan to keep the subscription? Let us know in the comments.
The case has a cutout for the Lightning port on the AirPods Pro, but it also supports wireless charging on compatible Qi mats. The accessory comes with a nylon wristlet that can be used to hold your AirPods Pro on walks or runs, as well as an included S-clip that can be used to attach the AirSnap Pro to a backpack or purse.
You can get the AirSnap Pro for $39.99 in Cognac, Black, or Slate Blue, and pre-orders are up today on Twelve South’s website. The company says that the new product won’t begin shipping until the week of December 30, 2019.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Twelve South. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
Apple, Amazon, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance today announced a new working group that plans to develop and promote the adoption of a new IP-based connectivity standard for smart home products, with a focus on increased compatibility, security, and simplified development for manufacturers.
Zigbee Alliance board member companies such as IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify, Silicon Labs, Somfy, and Wulian will also contribute to the project.
The so-called “Project Connected Home over IP” aims to make it easier for device manufacturers to build devices that are compatible with smart home and voice services such as Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and others by defining a specific set of IP-based networking technologies for device certification.
The new standard will incorporate existing smart home technologies, such as Apple’s HomeKit and Google’s Weave and Thread:
We’re contributing two of our market-tested and open-source smart home technologies, Weave and Thread. Both are built on IP and have been integrated into millions of homes around the world. Weave, an application protocol, works over many networks like Thread, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, and even cellular. Even when devices are on different networks, Weave allows them all to securely work with each other.
The new connectivity standard will be open source and royalty free, with code to be maintained on GitHub. The working group has a goal to release a draft specification and a preliminary reference implementation in late 2020.
For consumers, this should ultimately lead to more smart home accessories that support multiple platforms like HomeKit and Alexa.
A new Twitter client for iPhone and iPad launched today that aims to make it easier for users to manage their timeline and make the relentless stream of content on the social platform less overwhelming.
Nighthawk for iOS comes with several Smart Filter features that go beyond the ability to mute certain words and phrases, offering hundreds of human-curated filters for hiding tweets related to everything from politics to movie spoilers.
Your timeline should reflect what you care about, not the opaque agenda of a black-box algorithm. By default, Nighthawk displays tweets in the timeline chronologically, the way nature intended.
You’re bound to come across some tweets that might rub you the wrong way, which is why Nighthawk provides tons of human-curated filters. Looking to take a break from election chatter? Add the U.S. Politics filter. Excited to see The Rise of Skywalker? Add the Star Wars filter and hide tweets with potential spoilers.
In addition to the topic filters, Nighthawk features a Close Friends timeline that surfaces tweets from users that you’re likely to be most interested in seeing and hides everything else.
In that sense, the Close Friends feature is a bit like a Twitter list, but Nighthawk’s developers say they’ve built the interface from the ground up with speed and accessibility in mind, so it should be a more enjoyable experience.
Nighthawk’s developers say they’re not trying to compete with or replace popular third-party apps like Tweetbot and Twitterrific. Rather, they see Nighthawk as a companion to these clients in offering users a more personal, streamlined Twitter experience when they want it.
Other Nighthawk features include rich link previews, haptic feedback, custom home screen icons, and dark and light modes that can switch dynamically with the system. The app costs $3.99 upfront, doesn’t include ads and doesn’t harvest user data. Nighthawk is available on the App Store today. [Direct Link]
Apple last week finally launched its long awaited 2019 Mac Pro, providing its professional user base with the high-end high-throughput modular machine they’ve always hoped for.
We picked up a base model Mac Pro and in our latest YouTube video, we unbox it and share some initial first impressions.
The Mac Pro arrives in an absolutely massive box weighing over 85 pounds, so getting it out of the packaging is no simple task. There are tabs, lids, velcro straps, and more to contend with, ensuring the machine is secure in its packaging.
Even out of the packaging, the Mac Pro is a heavy duty machine made from quality components, and that “cheese grater” design looks great in person. In reality, the lattice look is functional and meant to maximize airflow for quiet performance.
We have the base model Mac Pro, priced at $5,999, with an 8-core 3.5GHz Xeon W processor from Intel, 32GB RAM, a Radeon Pro 580X GPU, and 256GB of SSD storage. We didn’t opt for upgrades, but you can add everything from a 28-core processor to 1.5TB of RAM to 4TB of storage (soon to be 8TB), with a maxed out machine costing upwards of $52,000.
Luckily, this is a machine designed to be highly upgradeable, so most of the components can be swapped out later. iFixit gave the Mac Pro a repairability score of 9/10, and said it was a “masterclass in repairability,” which is definitely a first for an Apple product.
We can swap out the GPU, add RAM, and take advantage of the eight PCIe slots, though upgrading the SSD will require Apple’s assistance because they’re tied to the machine’s T2 security chip. We’re going to be upgrading the RAM in our machine quite soon, so make sure to keep an eye out for that video.
Taking the casing off of the Mac Pro is a bit difficult because it’s a tight fit and again, it’s heavy, but once the casing has been removed, all of the internal components are easily accessible.
There are both single wide and double wide PCIe slots, with the half-length slot preconfigured with Apple’s I/O card. The I/O card features a 3.5mm headphone jack, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, and two USB-A ports. There are also two HDMI ports, a spot for the power supply, and two 10GB Ethernet ports. You’ll find two additional Thunderbolt 3 ports at the top of the tower near the power button.
Going back to that lattice design, the Mac Pro is indeed as quiet as Apple promised. There are three fans on one side to optimize airflow, and the housing has been designed to act as a tight seal with internal ducts to maximize the thermal capacity.
The Mac Pro comes with a nice braided power cable, a Lightning to USB cable with the same braided design, nifty black Apple stickers, and a high-quality instruction manual. It also ships with a silver and space gray aluminum Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard, which is a design unique to the new Mac Pro.
The Mac Pro is an impressively built machine, and we’re excited to put it through its paces and see what it can do. Stay tuned to MacRumors for more Mac Pro coverage, and let us know what you think of Apple’s new machine.
