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The latest Mac operating system arrives, Amazon faces a lawsuit over PPE and Disney+ turns one. This is your Daily Crunch for November 12, 2020. The big story: Apple releases macOS Big Sur This update, which was first announced five months ago at WWDC, includes a number of design changes that continue to blur the line between macOS and iOS. One of the big additions is the Control Center, an iOS/iPadOS feature that presents a translucent pane down the right side of the screen. Meanwhile, Safari added features like built-in translation. And app icons and sounds have been updated throughout. Brian Heater has been using the beta since June , and he concluded that Big Sur “boasts some key upgrades to apps and the system at large, but more importantly from Apple’s perspective, it lays the groundwork for the first round of Arm-powered Macs and continues its march toward a uniformity between the company’s two primary operating systems.” The tech giants Facebook’s Snapchat-like ‘Vanish ...

It’s hard to shake the sense that the smart speaker market would look considerably different had the HomePod Mini arrived several years back. It’s not so much that the device is transformative on the face of it, but it’s impossible to deny that it marks a dramatically different approach to the category than the one Apple took almost three years ago with the launch of the original model. Apple has never been a particular budget-conscious company when it comes to hardware — terms like “Apple tax” don’t spring out of nothing. But the last few years have seen the company soften that approach in an effort to appeal to users outside its traditional core of creative professionals. The iPhone and Apple Watch have both seen the company more aggressively pushing to appeal to entry-level users. It only follows that it would follow suit with its smart speaker. The smart speaker market is expected to grow 21% next year Couple that with the fact that the Echo Dot and Google/Nest Home minis...

In the past several weeks we’ve seen refreshes and product expansions from about every facet of the smart home virtual assistant world. Apple launched the HomePod Mini, Google offered a long-overdue refresh of the Google Home, and Amazon found even more speaker shapes to shove Alexa into. Today, we’re getting an addition from a startup competitor. Josh.ai has aimed to build out a niche in the space by building a smart assistant product that’s designed to be professionally installed alongside other smart home wares and they announced a new product this afternoon. The device, Josh Nano, fully buys into a more luxury home-focused niche with a low-profile device that appears to be a little bit bigger than a half-dollar, though the bulk of the device is embedded into the wall itself and wired back to a central unit via power-over-ethernet. The device bundles a set of four microphones eschewing any onboard speaker, instead opting to integrate directly with a user’s at-home sound system....

Apple announces “One More Thing” before the holiday season, Uber lets you reserve rides 30 days in advance and Spotify makes another podcast acquisition. This is your Daily Crunch for November 10, 2020. The big story: Apple unveils new Macs During an unusually brief and focused “One More Thing” event, Apple announced three new Macs that will all use the M1 chip, its first chip for Macs. This is the beginning of a previously announced shift of the Mac lineup to Apple silicon. What about the actual Macs? Well, there’s a new MacBook Air , which still costs $999 but is supposed to be 3.5x faster than the previous generation — and it doesn’t include a fan! There’s also a new Mac Mini with a base price of $699, and a 13-inch MacBook Pro that starts at $1,299. Oh, and Big Sur, the latest version of the Mac operating system, will be released this Thursday , November 12. The tech giants Uber will now let users book rides 30 days in advance and pick a favorite driver — The new op...

Apple is organizing its third event in three months today. The company is holding a (virtual) keynote at 10 AM PT (1 PM in New York, 6 PM in London, 7 PM in Paris) . And you’ll be able to watch the event right here as the company is streaming it live. Apple has already announced at its developer conference that there would be a new Mac with an ARM-based processor this year. So today’s event seems like the perfect opportunity to introduce a new computer with Apple’s own processor. Similarly, we’ll likely find out when macOS Big Sur is going to be released. The new major update is likely to ship with the new Apple computer. Apple could also use this opportunity for other, smaller announcements. Let’s see if the company has some new accessories to show off. You can watch the live stream directly on this page, as Apple is streaming its conference on YouTube. If you have an Apple TV, you don’t need to download a new app. You can open the Apple TV app and find the Apple Events sectio...

Reviewing the iPhone 12 mini and the iPhone 12 Pro Max at the same time has been an exercise in extremes. I noted in my earlier reviews of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro that it was difficult to evaluate the middle of the lineup without having the extreme ends of the scale available to contrast them.  Now that I have had a chance to examine those extremes, I have come away incredibly impressed with the job that Apple has done on the whole lineup this year. These phones are extremely well sized, highly crisp from a design perspective and generously appointed with features. Aside from a handful of small items, there are no glaring examples here of artificial cliffs on the feature side or price side that attempt to push people upwards in the lineup. Something that has been the case in some years.  The most impressive of all of the iPhones 12 this year should be, by all rights, the iPhone 12 Pro Max. It’s big screen and beautiful casing make it very attractive and it has the be...

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is as hot as ever, with  a record  204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now  spending  three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a  combined  $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. Top Stories Apps and the Elections The tight, nail-biting U.S. elections this week had a number of impacts on the app market. Image Credits: Sensor Tower The apps Americans chose to watch the elections on their iPhone were reflective of the nation’s divisions. Instead of a more neutral news source, like a broadcast network, the top 2 apps were CNN and Fox News — cable news channels that lean l...

Macs. Okay, great. We’re done here. Okay, fine. Yes, Apple has all but loudly declared that, five months after making a big silicon Mac reveal back at WWDC, the first models will finally be arriving at this week’s big event. Which models and precisely what kind of upgrades are coming is still up in the air, after months of rumors. It’s also worth noting here that, in spite of the fact that Apple has had a LOT of smaller events in recent months, this is the company’s last event before the holiday season is in full force — as the name implies. That means we may finally be seeing some long-awaited products arriving in time to make their way into stockings and under trees. Apple’s next big event is November 10 But let’s start with the obvious: new Macs. Apple confirmed back in June that the first models sporting the ARM-based chips would arrive this year, so this event is do or die on that front. There have been a number of a rumors floating around on this front, well ahead of ...