Apple has joined the likes of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and HBO Max with its own exclusive streaming service, Apple TV+. The new service, which launched on November 1 last year, features a wide assortment of TV shows funded by Apple’s mountainous cash pile, and the Cupertino company is sparing no expense in its attempt to lure viewers with some of the best-known actors, writers, and directors.

Below, you’ll find a compendium of everything we know about the ambitious service, and we’ll keep it updated as we encounter credible rumors and get news from Apple itself.

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Another week, another iOS beta bugfix release. The staggered and piecemeal release of iOS 13 has been anything but smooth. When iOS 13.3 was released, we thought Apple might be done fixing bugs and adding features for awhile (at least until the new year). But lo and behold, the beta releases of iOS and iPadOS 13.3.1 have begun.

Update 01/22/20: Apple has released the third beta of iOS 13.3.1 and iPadOS 13.3.1 to developers.

What’s new in iOS 13.3.1 Networking & Wireless location

After some concerns that the new Ultra-wideband wireless chip allowed for tracking users' location, Apple has added a switch to disable location tracking for networking and wireless functions. Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services to find it.

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If you want to breathe new life into static photos with minimal effort, there’s no better method than FotoMagico 5 for macOS, which we hailed as “more impressive than pulling rabbits out of a magic hat” in our May, 2016 review. For nearly 15 years, this slideshow creation software has been the go-to solution for casual shutterbugs and professional photographers alike.

Fortunately, FotoMagico is now available for iPad, providing a way to assemble great slideshows from anywhere. Best of all, Mac project files are interchangeable with the iPad version, so you can start a project on one device and finish on another.

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Let’s face it: a lot of people may have created Apple IDs for their kids for convenience while skirting Apple’s rules about the age at which an account can be created. That’s 13 in the U.S. and many countries, unless you use the option within Apple’s Family Sharing to create a Child Account.

If you weren’t using Family Sharing, however, and—ahem—invented an earlier birthdate for one or more child, you can still rewind the clock and gain the advantages for age-based control within Family Sharing.

For our family, that includes not just using Screen Time to limit and monitor access to all their Apple devices, but—and the kids actually like this—remotely disabling Screen Time if they are on a sleepover or away on a school trip and we are willing to let them use their screens past our household limits. (That was a selling point to at least one kid, along with access to a much larger pool of shared iCloud storage.)

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Ready to cut the cord? You’ll need a quality antenna to pick up digital broadcasts. Here are our recommendations for best indoor and outdoor TV antennas.

Whether you suffer from allergies or asthma or just want to optimize your indoor environment, these devices will give you insight into the air you're breathing.

This inexpensive TV antenna does a good job pulling in strong signals, but you might be happier paying a little more for higher performance.

One of Apple Card’s most significant annoyances (at least compared to many other major credit cards) is that you can’t directly share transaction information with financial planning apps like Mint or YNAB. Apple provides lots of well-organized information about your spending in the Wallet app, but that doesn’t give you a complete picture of your finances as it doesn’t include your earning and other spending.

Fortunately, there’s now a workaround of sorts. Starting on January 21, Apple will allow you to export monthly transaction lists as a CSV (comma separated value) spreadsheet.

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You’ll still be able to keep using older Sonos devices, but they’ll gradually lose functionality once the software updates stop.

For iPhone and iPad users who still connect their devices to a Mac for syncing and backups (and there are a lot of people who still do this), there are changes in the latest version of the Mac operating system. In macOS 10.15 Catalina, the iTunes app is gone.

Now you use the Finder, similar to how you see a hard drive or a server. Here’s how to use your device in the Finder and how to back it up.

Your iOS device in the Finder

When you connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac using a Lightning cable, it will appear in a Finder window. In macOS Catalina, your device is in the left column in the “Locations” section. (If this is the first time you are connecting the Mac and iOS device, you will be asked to pair the two on the Mac, and you’ll have to trust the Mac on your iOS device.)

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It’s been over a year since Apple released the current 11- and 12.9 inch iPad Pros, so they’re due for an update—which means the rumor mill for these products is going to start churning more frequently. We’ll keep track of the latest rumors here, until the eventual release of the new iPads.

The latest rumor: iPad Smart Keyboard with scissor switches

According to the Taiwanese publication DigiTimes (which has an uneven reputation for rumors), Apple might release a Smart Keyboard with a scissor-switch design for the upcoming iPad Pro. As reported by MacRumors, this conflicts with an earlier report from reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who claimed last July that the keys for the next iPad would still have a rubber dome design.

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Among the TV shows, magazines, and games services unveiled at Apple’s “Show time” event was a surprise entry into a category that couldn’t be further outside Apple’s wheelhouse: a credit card. Dubbed Apple Card, it’s not a traditional plastic credit card that gives you points on things you buy. Rather, it’s a whole new way to shop online and offline. Here’s everything you need to know about it.

Updated 01/21/20: Apple Card users can now export transaction data as a spreadsheet that can be imported into a finance app. 

What is the Apple Card?

The Apple Card is an Apple-branded credit card from MasterCard. Unlike the current Barclaycard Visa with Apple Rewards, which is a partner card, the Apple Card is owned and operated by Apple.

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The ability to create scenes using your room’s lighting is positively magical.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the non-binary gendered and the otherwise non-binary gendered, it’s time again for another episode of the new game show The Macalope just made up: Here’s What’s Hilarious!

If you’ve followed this column at all over the years… well, The Macalope would just like to formally apologize to you. It’s mostly a thinly-disguised series of butt jokes sold as somehow Apple-related. That’s what we here at Macalope Industries call “the special sauce”.

Not to be confused with the actual “special sauce” we put on the alfalfa burgers in the cafeteria. Which is really just Thousand Island dressing.

Sorry, chef Terry. Your secret is out.

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Apple buys a lot of companies throughout the course of a year, with only a couple of them rising to the level of intriguing news. Last year’s purchase of Intel’s smartphone modem business certainly qualifies, as does the 2018 acquisition of Shazam, but for the most part, Apple scopes out companies that we’ve never heard of for reasons we’ll never know.

Its most recent acquisition might be different. The company, Xnor.ai, might not be one you’ve ever heard of, but they’re hardly unknown. Since last summer, the Seattle-based startup’s tech has been the brains behind the popular Wyze cam’s marquee feature: people detection. Simply put, it allowed the $20 camera to distinguish between faces, pets, and dust, and vastly improved its abilities, putting it a somewhat level playing field with the far-more-expensive Ring and Nest cams of the world.

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Kwikset’s smart lock gains in connectivity, but loses out in the looks department.

If Apple really wanted its fledgling streaming service to nab more awards last year, it probably should have worked Little America into its launch lineup. This little "anthology" of eight unrelated half-hour episodes—each following immigrants from different countries—is the best thing we've seen from Apple TV+ to date. It's smart, both in content and how it handles casting. It's relevant, especially in an age when immigration dominates frightful headlines and lies at the heart of some of our country's worst contemporary sins. Little America has big things to say.

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Team Nighthawk

Nighthawk’s so-called “Smart Feed” offers a cleaner view of your Twitter timeline in chronological order without ads or sponsored posts.

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Vacuuming is one of the most hated household chores. Here are your best choices for outsourcing it to some automated help.

This inexpensive mapping robot vacuum is a fantastic option for animal owners.

Space prang rose temperatures, melted glaciers, influenced climate, next thing we know: we're sharing AI-filtered selfies on Insta

Pic Scientists studying minerals in the Yarrabubba crater in Western Australia have confirmed the giant pit was formed when an asteroid struck Earth 2.229 billion years ago, making it the oldest impact site yet found on our planet.…

We say take off and nuke the entire codebase from orbit. It's the only way to be sure

To mark the arrival of the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser, Microsoft software engineer Eric Lawrence, who helped shift Edge to its Google-driven open source foundation, issued a plea to Windows users to let go of Internet Explorer.…

Talk about high tech: Software maker exposes cloud silo of personal info in tale of security gone bong

A tech biz specializing in software for marijuana dispensaries inadvertently exposed to the public internet a database containing tens of thousands of mellow Americans' personal information.…

Rapporteurs call for investigation, technical security report leaks

The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad bin Salman, has been officially fingered as the man responsible for hacking Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s iPhone X, causing a massive stir in diplomatic circles.…

Chocolate Factory boffins doubt Apple can fix it, either

Google security researchers have published details about the flaws they identified last year in Intelligent Tracking Protection (ITP), a privacy scheme developed by Apple's WebKit team for the company's Safari browser.…

Bad-a-Bing, badda-boom: Netizens complain of browser hijacking

Users who install or update Office 365 Pro Plus, part of the Office 365 subscription for larger businesses, will find their browser search engine automatically set to Bing, according to Microsoft documentation.…

Homeland Security memo not an abuse of power, court decides

An effort by tech companies to put the Trump Administration's tough new visa requirements on hold has been thrown out by a US federal judge in Arizona.…

High flying exec joins 'leccy car-driver co-boss in Switzerland

Only one half of SAP’s joint CEOs managed to travel to the World Economic Forum 2020 in Davos by relatively environmentally friendly means, the other opted to jump on a jet plane.…

'Two down, four to go,' quips John Cleese as another member of comedy crew kicks bucket

Obit Actor, writer and Python Terry Jones has died at the age of 77.…

Report suggests public interest defences for infosec professionals, academics and journalists

Britain's main anti-hacker law, the Computer Misuse Act 1990, is "confused", "outdated" and "ambiguous", according to a group of pro-reform academics.…

What happens when big tech ventures completely fail? A High Court trial!

In a long-running spat, British insurer Co-Op Insurance is suing IBM for £155m over what it claims is Big Blue's "deliberate" failure to deliver a new IT platform for the British financial services provider.…

Quickly shuttered partially redacted leaky DB included 'internal notes marked as confidential'

Five identical Elasticsearch databases containing 250 million records of Microsoft customer support incidents were exposed on the internet for all to see for at least two days right at the end of 2019.…

If yours won't support a merger, we'll install some who will

Xerox is preparing to nominate up to 11 directors to HP's board to push through a $33.5bn takeover bid, according to the Wall Street Journal.…

Total Inability To Secure Upgrade Programme in Berlin

German authorities are waking up to a Windows 7 headache, with approximately €800,000 required in order to keep the elderly software supported a little longer.…

Canonical goes playing in the streams

Ubuntu daddy Canonical is aiming at the likes of Huawei and Google with its take on app streaming with Anbox Cloud.…

Destined to die a lonely Martian death? How about Doomed Buggy?

NASA has announced the finalists for its Mars 2020 Rover naming and the options are as worthy as one might expect.…

CloudEndure DR gets cheaper, new host-level backup for VMs as AWS looks to lock 'em in

AWS has lopped 80 per cent off the price of its CloudEndure disaster recovery service and 50 per cent off Kubernetes (K8s) clusters.…

Emailing stuff is hard, m'kay?

Updated Capita Education Services had a bit of an oopsie yesterday as a new helpdesk system spurted potentially thousands of email addresses at unsuspecting users.…

Not for surveillance, honest

Drug dealers and dodgy pharmacies illegally touting opioids online – think heroin, fentanyl, codeine, morphine, and so on – may have their collars felt by an AI cop soon. Ish. Maybe.…

Old? Windows-only? Community struggles with '40-year-old male' problem

Microsoft senior software engineer Michal Strehovský has run a small .NET Core application on Windows 3.11, a version of the OS released in 1993.…