Dennis Sellers

<p>Apple may show little love to the external SuperDrive -- an external optical drive that allows you to install software, play, and burn both CDs and DVDs -- since the company wants you to go completely with digital media, but Waterfield Designs brings the love with the $25 <a target="_blank" href="https://www.sfbags.com/products/apple-superdrive-sleeve" rel="noopener noreferrer">SuperDrive Sleeve</a>.</p>

<p>In the webpage touting the upcoming iMac Pro, Apple says it has “all new speakers” and adds: </p>

<p>On a regular basis, <em>Apple World Today</em> posts a list of notable new apps or app updates that have been released. They may not necessarily be new, but they're popular and deserve mention. Here are today's picks.</p>

<p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.bitsighttech.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">BitSight</a>, which specializes in security ratings, has released a new report titled, "A Growing Risk Ignored: Critical Updates," analyzing more than 35,000 companies from industries across the globe over the last year, to better understand the usage of outdated computer operating systems and Internet browsers, the time to it took to update operating systems once a new release was made available, and how these practices correlate to data breaches. </p>

<p>This should be great news for the Mac (and perhaps the Pad Pro) after this week’s WWDC announcements): the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.DanielResearchGroup.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">Daniel Research Group</a>, a market research firm specializing in forecasting technology markets, predicts that the personal computer market (in which the firm includes tablets) will grow 2.3% annually over the next five years.</p>

<p>Apple wants its iPhone to work better with hearing aids. The company has been granted a patent (number 9,672,804) for a “hearing aid compatible audio device with acoustic noise cancellation.”</p>

<p>Yesterday, the gang at iFixIt (they tear down tech gadgets and look at their innards so you don't have to) disassembled one of the new 21.5-inch iMacs and found (to everyone's surprise) that the memory was upgradeable. It’ the first time Apple has included removable RAM in a 21.5-inch iMac since 2013. </p>

<p>Apple has been granted a patent (number 20170163589) for “sharing of activity metadata via messaging systems” that hints at increased functionality of the Messages app on iOS and macOS devices. However, it also adds the potential for ads appearing in the utility.</p>

<p>Feral Interactive has announced that Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III, the latest episode in Relic Entertainment’s real-time strategy series, <a target="_blank" href="https://store.feralinteractive.com/en/mac-linux-games/dawnofwar3/" rel="noopener noreferrer">has been released</a> for macOS and Linux.</p>

<p>Apple’s upcoming “iPhone 8” might lag behind the competition in data speed because only one modem manufacturer will have a high-speed product available in time for the phones, claims <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-09/apple-s-new-iphones-said-to-miss-out-on-higher-speed-data-links" rel="noopener noreferrer">Bloomberg</a>.</p>

<p>Apple has hired Dr. Sumbul Desai, the executive director of Stanford Medicine's center for digital health, who led a telemedicine project there and has been overseeing a project to promote health uses for the Apple Watch, reports <a target="_blank" href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/08/apple-hires-sumbul-desai-stanford-digital-health-executive-director.html" rel="noopener noreferrer">CNBC</a>.</p>

<p>If you're a comic book fan, you’ll want to download the free <a target="_blank" href="http://valiantentertainment.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=602a5e9c5c907c97823068aa9&id=ed40fa39d4&e=6721c454ed" rel="noopener noreferrer"><strong>Valiant Comics mobile app</strong></a><strong> </strong>for iOS. It’s an all-inclusive, one-stop destination for the complete Valiant library.</p>

<p>Apple adding support for Near Field Communication (NFC) tags in iOS 11 means that all iPhone 7 and newer will be able to read NFC tags just like Android.  This means most people owning a smartphone (over two billion in the world) now have an NFC reader available in their pocket to interact with NFC tags anywhere and at any time. </p>

<p>Sonnet Technologies will ship the <a href="http://www.sonnettech.com/product/egfx-breakaway-box.html">eGFX Breakaway Box</a> in late June. It’s a Thunderbolt 3-to-PCI Express (PCIe) expansion chassis with a single slot for connecting any size Thunderbolt-compatible PCIe card, including high-performance graphics (GPU) cards to a Thunderbolt 3-equipped computer. </p>

<p>The gang at iFixIt, which tears apart new products and looks at their innards so you don't have to, got their hands on the refreshed Retina MacBook 2017 and the MacBook Pro 13" Touch Bar 2017, and found that not too much has changed, hardware-wise. </p>