At WWDC 2025, Apple announced a new dedicated Games app coming to Mac, iPhone, and iPad with features like leaderboards, matchmaking, and integration with Apple Arcade. Engadget's Jessica Conditt describes it as "a revamp of Game Center" that behaves "more like a modern gaming hub, a la Xbox or GOG Galaxy." From the report: You can see what your friends are playing and challenge them to specific feats in certain titles. The library tab will include every game you've ever downloaded from the App Store, allowing you to booth them up right there. On Mac, a Games app overlay makes communication tools, audio controls, Bluetooth connections and live battery levels accessible at any time.

Apple today introduced Liquid Glass, a new design language that brings transparency and glass shine effects across macOS, iPadOS, iOS, and its other software platforms. Alan Dye, Apple's VP of human interface, described the update as the company's "broadest design update, ever" and "the first time we're introducing a universal design across our platforms."

The design overhaul adds glass-like elements throughout iOS 26, including glass edges that appear when users swipe up on the lock screen and similar transparent effects across system interfaces. The changes represent Apple's most significant departure from the iOS 7 design philosophy that has shaped the mobile operating system for over a decade since 2013, when Apple moved away from skeuomorphism. App developers will need to adjust their applications to accommodate the new visual language.

Apple has urged Australia not to follow the European Union in mandating iPhone app sideloading, warning that such policies pose serious privacy and security risks. "This communication comes as the Australian federal government considers new rules that could force Apple to open up its iOS ecosystem, much like what happened in Europe with recent legislation," notes Neowin. Apple claims that allowing alternative app stores has led to increased exposure to malware, scams, and harmful content. From the report: Apple, in its response to this Australian paper (PDF), stated that Australia should not use the EU's Digital Markets Act "as a blueprint". The company's core argument is that the changes mandated by the EU's DMA, which came into full effect in March 2024, introduce serious security and privacy risks for users. Apple claims that allowing sideloading and alternative app stores effectively opens the door for malware, fraud, scams, and other harmful content. The tech company also highlighted specific concerns from its European experience, alleging that its compliance there has led to users being able to install pornography apps and apps that facilitate copyright infringement, things its curated App Store aims to prevent. Apple maintains that its current review process is vital for user protection, and that its often criticized 30% commission applies mainly to the highest earning apps, with most developers paying a lower 15% rate or nothing.

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 25 (WWDC) kicks off next week, June 9th, showcasing the company's latest software and new technologies. That includes the next version of iOS, which is rumored to have the most significant design overhaul since the introduction of iOS 7. Here's an overview of what to expect: Major Software Redesigns
Apple plans to shift its operating system naming to reflect the release year, moving from sequential numbers to year-based identifiers. Consequently, the upcoming releases will be labeled as iOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, etc., streamlining the versioning across platforms.

iOS 26 is anticipated to feature a glossy, glass-like interface inspired by visionOS, incorporating translucent elements and rounded buttons. This design language is expected to extend across iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS, promoting a cohesive user experience across devices. Core applications like Phone, Safari, and Camera are slated for significant redesigns, too. For instance, Safari may introduce a translucent, "glassy" address bar, aligning with the new visual aesthetics.

While AI is not expected to be the main focus due to Siri's current readiness, some AI-related updates are rumored. The Shortcuts app may gain "Apple Intelligence," enabling users to create shortcuts using natural language. It's also possible that Gemini will be offered as an option for AI functionalities on the iPhone, similar to ChatGPT.

Other App and Feature Updates
The lock screen might display charging estimates, indicating how long it will take for the phone to fully charge. There's a rumor about bringing live translation features to AirPods. The Messages app could receive automatic translations and call support; the Music app might introduce full-screen animated lock screen art; and Apple Notes may get markdown support. Users may also only need to log into a captive Wi-Fi portal once, and all their devices will automatically be logged in.

Significant updates are expected for Apple Home. There's speculation about the potential announcement of a "HomePad" with a screen, Apple's competitor to devices like the Nest Hub Mini. A new dedicated Apple gaming app is also anticipated to replace Game Center. If you're expecting new hardware, don't hold your breath. The event is expected to focus primarily on software developments. It may even see discontinued support for several older Intel-based Macs in macOS 26, including models like the 2018 MacBook Pro and the 2019 iMac, as Apple continues its transition towards exclusive support for Apple Silicon devices.

Sources:
Apple WWDC 2025 Rumors and Predictions! (Waveform)
WWDC 2025 Overview (MacRumors)
WWDC 2025: What to expect from this year's conference (TechCrunch)
What to expect from Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference next week (Ars Technica)
Apple's WWDC 2025: How to Watch and What to Expect (Wired)

Apple will lose the ability to collect commissions on external iOS purchases in Europe starting June 23, following a European Commission ruling that hinges on the grammatical interpretation of a single comma in the Digital Markets Act. The dispute centers on Article 5.4, which requires gatekeepers to allow business users "free of charge, to communicate and promote offers, including under different conditions [...], and to conclude contracts with those end users."

Apple contends that "free of charge" applies only to communication and promotion activities, not contract conclusion, allowing the company to maintain its commission structure on external transactions. The European Commission interprets the comma before "and to conclude contracts" as creating an enumeration where the free-of-charge requirement applies to all listed activities, including purchases made outside Apple's payment system.

Under the new ruling, Apple can collect commissions only on the first external transaction between users and developers, with all subsequent purchases and auto-renewed subscriptions exempt from fees. The company faces daily penalties of up to $53.5 million for non-compliance and has already been fined $570 million. Apple's internal forecasts estimate potential annual losses of "hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars" in the US alone, though Europe demands stricter changes than those projections assumed.

According to 9to5Mac, "Apple is working on supporting the ability to export notes in Markdown from Apple notes, which is something third-party apps have supported for years." Apple enthusiast and co-creator of the Markdown markup language, John Gruber, is not a fan. From a blog post: Some people find this surprising, but I personally don't want to use a Markdown notes app. I created Markdown two decades ago and have used it ever since for one thing and one thing only: writing for the web at Daring Fireball. My original description of what it is still stands: "Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers." Perhaps an even better description of Markdown is Matthew Butterick's, from the documentation for Pollen: "Markdown is a simplified notation system for HTML."

The other great use case for Markdown is in a context where you either need or just want to be saving to a plain text file or database field. That's not what Apple Notes is or should be. I can see why many technically-minded people want to use Markdown "everywhere." It's quite gratifying that Markdown has not only become so popular, but after 21 years, seemingly continues to grow in popularity, to the point now where there clearly are a lot of people who seemingly enjoy writing in Markdown more than even I do. But I think it would be a huge mistake for Apple to make Apple Notes a "Markdown editor," even as an option. It's trivial to create malformed Markdown syntax; it shouldn't be possible to have a malformed note in Apple Notes. I craft posts for Daring Fireball; I dash off notes in Apple Notes. [...]

But Markdown export from Notes? That sounds awesome. Frankly, perhaps the biggest problem with Apple Notes is that its export functionality is rather crude -- PDF and, of all formats, Pages. Exporting and/or copying the selected text as Markdown would be pretty cool. Very curious to see how they handle images though, if this rumor is true.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney anticipated his company's battle with Apple would create "fireworks," but he never expected Fortnite to disappear from the iOS App Store for nearly five years. When Epic deliberately violated App Store rules in 2020 by inserting its own payment system into Fortnite, Sweeney thought the resulting legal clash would be brief. "I had actually hoped that we would get an injunction against Apple blocking Fortnite and that we'd only be off for a few weeks," Sweeney told The Verge. "But the court process dragged out, and we were off for five years."

Fortnite returned to iOS last month and has quickly reclaimed its position as the top free game in the App Store, accumulating roughly 10 million downloads since May 20th. The game now offers players a choice between Epic's payment system, which provides 20% back in Epic Rewards, and Apple's traditional in-app purchase system. About 60% of users have chosen Apple's system while 40% have opted for Epic's alternative, according to Sweeney. He expects that ratio to shift toward Epic's system as more players associate payment methods with their Epic accounts.

Apple has filed an appeal with the European Union's General Court in Luxembourg challenging the bloc's order requiring greater iOS interoperability with rival companies' products under the Digital Markets Act. The EU executive in March directed Apple to make its mobile operating system more compatible with competitors' apps, headphones, and virtual reality headsets by granting developers and device makers access to system components typically reserved for Apple's own products.

Apple contends the requirements threaten its seamless user experience while creating security risks, noting that companies have already requested access to sensitive user data including notification content and complete WiFi network histories. The company faces potential fines of up to 10% of its worldwide annual revenue if found in violation of the DMA's interoperability rules designed to curb Big Tech market power.

Apple's end-to-end iCloud encryption product ("Advanced Data Protection") was famously removed in the U.K. after a government order demanded backdoors for accessing user data.

So now a Google software engineer wants to build an open source version of Advanced Data Protection for everyone. "We need to take action now to protect users..." they write (as long-time Slashdot reader WaywardGeek). "The whole world would be able to use it for free, protecting backups, passwords, message history, and more, if we can get existing applications to talk to the new data protection service." "I helped build Google's Advanced Data Protection (Google Cloud Key VaultService) in 2018, and Google is way ahead of Apple in this area. I know exactly how to build it and can have it done in spare time in a few weeks, at least server-side... This would be a distributed trust based system, so I need folks willing to run the protection service. I'll run mine on a Raspberry PI...

The scheme splits a secret among N protection servers, and when it is time to recover the secret, which is basically an encryption key, they must be able to get key shares from T of the original N servers. This uses a distributed oblivious pseudo random function algorithm, which is very simple.

In plain English, it provides nation-state resistance to secret back doors, and eliminates secret mass surveillance, at least when it comes to data backed up to the cloud... The UK and similarly confused governments will need to negotiate with operators in multiple countries to get access to any given users's keys. There are cases where rational folks would agree to hand over that data, and I hope we can end the encryption wars and develop sane policies that protect user data while offering a compromise where lives can be saved.
"I've got the algorithms and server-side covered," according to their original submission. "However, I need help." Specifically...

• Running protection servers. "This is a T-of-N scheme, where users will need say 9 of 15 nodes to be available to recover their backups."
• Android client app. "And preferably tight integration with the platform as an alternate backup service."
• An iOS client app. (With the same tight integration with the platform as an alternate backup service.)
• Authentication. "Users should register and login before they can use any of their limited guesses to their phone-unlock secret."

"Are you up for this challenge? Are you ready to plunge into this with me?"


In the comments he says anyone interested can ask to join the "OpenADP" project on GitHub — which is promising "Open source Advanced Data Protection for everyone."

Google has begun automatically generating AI-powered email summaries for Gmail Workspace users, eliminating the need to manually trigger the feature that has been available since last year. The company's Gemini AI will now independently determine when longer email threads or messages with multiple replies would benefit from summarization, displaying these summaries above the email content itself. The automatic summaries currently appear only on mobile devices for English-language emails and may take up to two weeks to roll out to individual accounts, with Google providing no timeline for desktop expansion or availability to non-Workspace Gmail users.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled), this year's iOS update won't be called iOS 19. "Instead, Apple is planning to call it 'iOS 26' as part of a new year-based naming strategy," reports 9to5Mac. The new naming scheme will apply to all of Apple's software platforms. From the report: Bloomberg explains that Apple is making this change to "bring consistency to its branding and move away from an approach that can be confusing to customers and developers." The branding alignment comes as Apple is also reportedly planning dramatic redesigns for all of its platforms. The goal seems to be to unify everything both in terms of naming and design.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Google Photos was announced at I/O 2015 and the company is now celebrating the app's 10th birthday with a redesign of the photo editor. Google is redesigning the Photos editor so that it "provides helpful suggestions and puts all our powerful editing tools in one place." It starts with a new fullscreen viewer that places the date, time, and location at the top of your screen. Meanwhile, it's now Share, Edit, Add to (instead of Lens), and Trash at the bottom.

Once editing, Google Photos has moved controls for aspect ratio, flip, and rotate to be above the image. In the top-left corner, we have Auto Frame, which debuted in Magic Editor on the Pixel 9, to fill-in backgrounds and is now coming to more devices. Underneath, we get options for Enhance, Dynamic, and "AI Enhance" in the Auto tab. That's followed by Lighting, Color, and Composition, as well as a search shortcut: "You can use AI-powered suggestions that combine multiple effects for quick edits in a variety of tailored options, or you can tap specific parts of an image to get suggested tools for editing that area."

The editor allows you to circle or "tap specific parts of an image to get suggested tools for editing that area." This includes the subject, background, or some other aspect. You then see the Blur background, Add portrait light, Sharpen, Move and Reimagine appear in the example below. We also see the redesigned sliders throughout this updated interface. This Google Photos editor redesign "will begin rolling out globally to Android devices next month, with iOS following later this year." We already know the app is set for a Material 3 Expressive redesign. Meanwhile, Google Photos is starting to roll out the ability to share albums with a QR code. This method makes for easy viewing and adding with people nearby. Google even suggests printing it out when in (physical) group settings. Google shared a few tips, tricks and tools for the new editor in a blog post.

Earlier this month app developer Guilherme Rambo had a warning for iPhone users: If you try to send an audio message using the Messages app to someone who's also using the Messages app, and that message happens to include the name "Dave and Buster's", the message will never be received.

In case you're wondering, "Dave and Buster's" is the name of a sports bar and restaurant in the United States... [T]he recipient will only see the "dot dot dot" animation for several seconds, and it will then eventually disappear. They will never get the audio message.
"The issue was first spotted on the podcast Search Engine..." according to an article in Fortune: Rambo's explanation of the curiosity goes like this.

"When you send an audio message using the Messages app, the message includes a transcription of the audio. If you happen to pronounce the name 'Dave and Buster's' as someone would normally pronounce it, almost like it's a single word, the transcription engine on iOS will recognize the brand name and correctly write it as 'Dave & Buster's' (with an ampersand)," he begins. So far, so good." [But ampersands have special meaning in HTML/XHTML...] And, as MacRumors puts it: "The parsing error triggers Apple's BlastDoor Messages feature that protects users from malicious messages that might rely on problematic parsing, so ultimately, the audio message fails to send."
To solve the mystery, Rambo "plugged the recipient device into my Mac and captured the logs right after the device received the problematic message." Their final thoughts... Since BlastDoor was designed to thwart hacking attempts, which frequently rely on faulty data parsing, it immediately stops what it's doing and just fails. That's what causes the message to get stuck in the "dot dot dot" state, which eventually times out, and the message just disappears. On the surface, this does sound like it could be used to "hack" someone's iPhone via a bad audio message transcription, but in reality what this bug demonstrates is that Apple's BlastDoor mechanism is working as designed.

Many bad parsers would probably accept the incorrectly-formatted XHTML, but that sort of leniency when parsing data formats is often what ends up causing security issues. By being pedantic about the formatting, BlastDoor is protecting the recipient from an exploit that would abuse that type of issue.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled), Apple has big plans to turn Siri into a true ChatGPT competitor. "A next-generation, chatbot version of Siri has reportedly made significant progress during testing over the past six months; some executives allegedly now see it as 'on par' with recent versions of ChatGPT," reports MacRumors. "Apple is also apparently discussing giving Siri the ability to access the internet to gather and synthesize data from multiple sources, just like ChatGPT." From the report: The report added that Apple now has artificial intelligence offices in Zurich, where employees are working on an all-new software architecture for Siri. This "monolithic model" is entirely built on an LLM engine that will eventually replace Siri's current "hybrid" architecture that has been incoherently layered up with different functionality over many years. The new model will make Siri more conversational and better at synthesizing information.

Google's Gemini is expected to be added to iOS 19 as an alternative to ChatGPT in Siri, but Apple is also apparently in talks with Perplexity to add their AI service as another option in the future, for both Siri and Safari search.

Google has launched the NotebookLM app for Android and iOS, offering a native mobile experience with offline support, audio overviews, and integration into the system share sheet for adding sources like PDFs and YouTube videos. 9to5Google reports: This native experience starts on a homepage of your notebooks with filters at the top for Recent, Shared, Title, and Downloaded. The app features a light and dark mode based on your device's system theme with no manual toggle. Each colorful card features the notebook name, emoji, number of sources, and date, as well as a play button for Audio Overviews. There's background playback and offline support for the podcast-style experience (the fullscreen player has a nice glow), while you can "Join" the AI hosts (in beta) to ask follow-up questions.

You get a "Create new" button at the bottom of the list to add PDFs, websites, YouTube videos, and text. Notably, the NotebookLM app will appear in the Android and iOS share sheet to quickly add sources. When you open a notebook, there's a bottom bar for the list of Sources, Chat Q&A, and Studio. It's similar to the current mobile website, with the native client letting users ditch the Progressive Web App. Out of the gate, there are phone and (straightforward) tablet interfaces. You can download the app for iOS and Android using their respective links.

Apple and Epic Games sparred over whether the iPhone maker was obstructing access to the hit game Fortnite, the latest tussle in a long-running feud over Apple's control of game distribution revenue. From a report: The game developer said that Apple "blocked" its latest Fortnite app submission so that it can't be released in the US or on the third-party Epic Games Store in the EU.

"Now, sadly, Fortnite on iOS will be offline worldwide until Apple unblocks it," the company wrote on its X account. An Apple spokesperson responded later on Friday, saying that the company "did not take any action to remove the live version of Fortnite from alternative distribution marketplaces" in the EU. Apple said that it asked the game company's European division, Epic Sweden, to "resubmit the app update without including the US storefront of the App Store so as not to impact Fortnite in other geographies."

An anonymous reader shares a report: During the Android Show leading up to Google I/O, Google on Tuesday offered a brief update on the adoption of the RCS (Rich Communication Services) protocol, an upgrade to SMS that offers high-resolution photos and videos, typing indicators, read receipts, improved group chat, and more. The company shared that the messaging standard now supports over a billion messages per day in the U.S.

This metric is based on an average of the last 28 days, Google noted. The stat is notable because Google fought for years to get Apple to adopt support for RCS on iOS, allowing for better communication between Android and Apple devices. Previously, iPhone users who received texts from friends on Android had to deal with blurry videos and images, and couldn't as easily manage group chats when their green-bubbled friends joined. Unlike with iMessage, group chats with Android users couldn't be renamed, nor could people be added or removed, and you couldn't exit when you wanted. Emoji reactions also didn't work properly, leading to annoying texts to let you know how an Android user reacted, instead of just displaying their emoji reaction directly.

Google is updating its iconic 'G' logo for the first time in 10 years, replacing the four solid color sections with a smooth gradient transition from red to yellow to green to blue. "This modernization feels inline with the Gemini gradient, while AI Mode in Search uses something similar for a shortcut," notes 9to5Google. The update has already rolled out to the Google Search app on iOS and is in beta for Android. From the report: It's a subtle change that you might not immediately notice, especially if the main place you see it is on your homescreen. It will be even less noticeable as a tiny browser favicon. It does not appear that Google is refreshing its main six-letter logo today, while it's unclear whether any other product logos are changing. In theory, some of the company's four-color logos, like Chrome or Maps, could pretty easily start bleeding in their sections.

Apple is planning to use AI technology to address a frequent source of customer frustration: the iPhone's battery life. From a report: The company is planning an AI-powered battery management mode for iOS 19, an iPhone software update due in September, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The enhancement will analyze how a person uses their device and make adjustments to conserve energy, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the service hasn't been announced.

To create the technology -- part of the Apple Intelligence platform -- the company is using battery data it has collected from users' devices to understand trends and make predictions for when it should lower the power draw of certain applications or features. There also will be a lock-screen indicator showing how long it will take to charge up the device, said the people.

Long-time Slashdot reader mbessey (a Mac/iOS developer) writes: As we're coming up on the 50th anniversary of the first release of UCSD Pascal, I thought it would be interesting to poke around in it a bit, and work on some tools to bring this "portable operating system" back to life on modern hardware, in a modern language (Rust).
Wikipedia describes UCSD Pascal as "a version that ran on a custom operating system that could be ported to different platforms. A key platform was the Apple II, where it saw widespread use as Apple Pascal. This led to Pascal becoming the primary high-level language used for development in the Apple Lisa, and later, the Macintosh. Parts of the original Macintosh operating system were hand-translated into Motorola 68000 assembly language from the Pascal source code."

mbessey is chronicling their new project in a series of blog posts which begins here: The p-System was not the first portable byte-code interpreter and compiler system — that idea goes very far back, at least to the origins of the Pascal language itself. But it was arguably one of the most-successful early versions of the idea and served as an inspiration for future portable software systems (including Java's bytecode, and Infocom's Z-machine).
And they've already gotten UCSD Pascal running in an emulator and built some tools (in Rust) to transfer files to disk images. Now they're working towards writing a p-machine emulator in Rust, which they can they port to "something other than the Mac. Ideally, something small â" like an Arduino or Raspberry Pi Pico."