We’re recovering from the WWDC 2018 keynote and yesterday’s podcast with a much shorter podcast today. Today we’re thanking our sponsor Digiarty and their free macXvideo 4K video processing and sharing app before jumping into the podcast. Be sure to check out macXvideo here.
- We’ll be live tonight for AWT TV Episode 41, discussing the keynote announcements and perhaps even taking a first look at iOS 12
- Apple provided some fascinating statistics about podcasts, noting that it now hosts more than 550,000 active shows
- A hacked emergency alert system appears to be the source of an odd alert sent out to people in Virginia this morning
- Apple is retiring its use of OpenGL after Mojave, and that has some game developers steaming mad
The text version of the podcast can be read below. To listen to the podcast here, click the play button on the player below. Apple News readers need to visit Apple World Today in order to listen to the podcast.
Text Version
This is Steve Sande for Apple World Today, and you’re listening to the AWT News Update podcast for Tuesday, June 5th, 2018. This week’s podcast is sponsored by Digiarty’s new macXvideo 4K video processing and sharing app. It’s free, and you can get more information about macXvideo here.
If you didn’t get a chance to listen to yesterday’s podcast, be sure to queue it up and get an idea of everything that’s that will become available with iOS 12, macOS Mojave, watchOS 5 and tvOS 12. We’ll also be discussing the WWDC 2018 keynote and other announcements live tonight on AWT TV, so be sure to join us as we go live at 6:30 PM PT / 9:30 PM ET on Tuesday night, all on the Apple World Today YouTube page. By the way, today’s podcast is a lot shorter than yesterday’s!
One of yesterday’s announcements noted that Apple’s Podcast app will be moving to the Apple Watch, but we didn’t really hear anything more about podcasts. However, the company announced that iTunes currently hosts more than 550,000 active shows, up from 525,000 just two months ago and many more than the 3,000 podcasts hosted back in 2005. There are 18.5 million episodes representing 155 countries and more than 100 languages. Since the launch of podcast hosting in 2005, fifty billion episodes have been streamed or downloaded.
Whoops! If you’re an iPhone user in some parts of Virginia, you may have received a very odd emergency alert this morning. It looks like the system may have been hacked, since the emergency alert referred to something out of science fiction, not reality. The message, sent at 9:23 AM ET this morning, said that “Your area has been chosen for uplifting procedure (code number 48670a) Spherical devices will be launched from an aircraft above your general location. In case of technological failure, please remain indoors while procedure occurs. While this isn’t as panic-inducing as the Hawaiian nuclear attack warning that was sent out in January, it’s still weird.
Not everybody is happy with one announcement made at WWDC 2018. Apple has said it will cut support for OpenGL after macOS 10.14 Mojave, which it hopes will bolster support for its own Metal graphics technology in the future. However, some game developers are quite unhappy with that announcement, with one developer in particular — Thomas Altenburger of Flying Oak Games — spouting off on Twitter saying “we will stop publishing games on Mac if it (meaning OpenGL) stops shipping with the OS” Other game developers are unhappy that they’ll not only have to make their apps 64-bit compatible to run on Mojave, but are also complaining about the loss of OpenGL. Former BioShock 2 developer David Lindsey Pittman said that older apps could fail to run, saying “That’s awful for older games, and no-one is going to rebuild games from a decade ago for 64-bit and Metal”
That’s all the news for today – join me tomorrow afternoon for the next edition of the AWT News Update.
Like this article? Consider supporting Apple World Today with a $5 monthly Team AWT membership.
