Apple has been steadily working to expand the world of the Apple TV+ series “Severance,” through online materials, e-books, podcasts, and other content – and so have its fans. Taking advantage of its platform power, the Cupertino tech giant has been able to easily distribute supplemental material that adds to the show’s storytelling abilities, offering viewers more clues about the mysterious employer at the heart of the series, Lumon Industries, and other characters.
And for fans of the production itself, a companion podcast with creator Ben Stiller and star Adam Scott delves into the nuts and bolts of how scenes were filmed and other behind-the-scenes content.
Currently the most popular Apple TV+ series ever, “Severance” has gained attention and awards for its cinematic techniques, direction, production design, and more, but is also resonating with viewers because it reflects a certain discontent with American society.
With its borderline absurdist takes on topics like the perils of capitalism, the lengths people will go to achieve work-life balance, corporate oppression, classism, and the evils of technology, “Severance” is reaching a broader group than those who normally watch sci-fi.
The marketing around the “puzzle box-style” TV series, where online content becomes a part of the show itself, is something that brings to mind the work that was done in previous years around the cult classic, “Lost,” where website tie-ins offered further clues about the show’s mysteries, like the Dharma Initiative.
Unlike “Lost,” however, “Severance’s” creators have promised that they know where the series is going and how it will end – which makes it more fun to go down the rabbit hole chasing online clues.
Below are some of the supplemental materials that expand “Severance’s” universe and offer hints at what’s to come.
“Severance” Season 2 is on Apple TV+, which recently arrived on Android mobile devices too. Season 2 began airing on Jan. 17, 2025, and will include 10 episodes, ending on March 21, 2025.
Do you have a favorite Severance fan-made experience? Let me know: [email protected].
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Apple on Friday released its first developer beta for iOS 18.4, which adds a new “Priority Notifications” feature, powered by Apple Intelligence. The addition aims to help users manage their notifications by prioritizing important alerts and minimizing distractions from less important ones.
These priority notifications are displayed in a separate section on the phone’s Lock Screen. Apple Intelligence will analyze which notifications it believes should be shown in this section, but you can still swipe up to view all of your notifications.
Currently, the iPhone will sort notifications chronologically, with the most recent alerts displayed on top. With the new feature, you’ll see important notifications first — even if you received them a while ago when compared to others.
According to 9to5Mac, Priority Notifications is off by default, but you can enable the feature by heading to your Settings app, selecting the “Notifications” option, and then opening the “Prioritize Notifications” section. Here, you can toggle the feature on.
Apple announced today that Apple Intelligence is heading to the Vision Pro as part of visionOS 2.4. A beta version of the software is currently available for developers, while the public version is set for an April release. The tech giant also revealed Apple News+ Food, an upcoming section that will allow users to search and save recipes from dozens of existing News+ publishing partners.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Recipe app developers just got new competition. On Friday, Apple introduced a soon-to-launch feature for Apple News+ subscribers called Apple News+ Food, a new section that will allow users to search, discover, save, and easily cook recipes from dozens of existing News+ publishing partners.
It’s set to roll out as part of iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 in April, but only in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia.
Instead of building a stand-alone recipe app that could import content from all over the web — like recipes from blogs or TikTok videos — Apple News+ Food will only focus on recipes offered by Apple News+ publishers.
At launch, Apple aims to have north of 30 publishers on board, up from the 20 it’s currently testing. Existing partners include well-known brands like Allrecipes, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Good Food, Serious Eats, Epicurious, Good Housekeeping, Better Homes & Gardens, Southern Living, Delish, Real Simple, Country Living, and others. Tens of thousands of recipes will be available through the Apple News+ Food service, the company notes.
The new experience lets Apple’s publishing partners get their content in front of more consumers at a time when Google’s ability to refer direct traffic to their websites continues to decline.
iPhone and iPad users will be able to find a new Food section by scrolling down in the Apple News app’s Today feed. Here, they’ll find a featured recipe, curated by Apple’s editorial team, followed by a collection of food and dining-related stories, a broader recipe collection, plus links to the Food+ recipe catalog and their own saved recipes.
Apple notes that select food stories and recipes will also be available for users who do not subscribe to Apple News+.
The Apple News+ Food subscription service can be accessed in multiple ways.
You can either tap on the “More food” link from the Food section in the app’s Today tab or you can tap on the link to “Food” from the Following tab. (The latter is a more direct method if you want to bypass reading the news articles and go straight to the recipes.)
In the Food+ section, users will see the featured recipe, which is updated daily, alongside an expanded set of recommended stories related to their interests. That personalization improves the more users engage with the app.
Other curated sections include those that link to your saved recipes or other types of recipe collections, like those from certain publishers, a selection of popular recipes, or those focused on some type of theme — like healthy eating or weeknight chicken dinners, for example.
As users browse the recipes, they can choose to save a recipe directly to the News app for later reference.
If users are searching for something specific, they can look through Apple’s News+ Food’s recipe catalog, tapping on buttons to narrow searches by various filters like “dinner,” “easy,” “vegetarian,” “under 30 minutes,” and more. Filters are also available for searching across your saved recipes.
The recipes themselves are formatted to be clutter and ad-free, as well as easy to read — an experience that’s far less common on today’s web.
Key information — including the ingredients, steps, description, cooking time, servings, and more — is pulled out and featured in a clear format that highlights a photo of the dish and links back to the publisher’s website.
Other features Apple added also come in handy. One lets you tap on an ingredient to see the amount needed without having to scroll back to the ingredients list. Another lets you tap on the cooking time in the recipe’s instructions to automatically start a timer on your iPhone or iPad.
A dedicated cooking mode is available, too, which displays the recipe in full screen with larger text so you can follow instructions with minimal tapping and scrolling. In this mode, the screen will stay on, even if your device is normally set to turn off the screen after a period of time.
One thing Apple News+ Food is missing, however, is the ability to add your own recipes or those saved from elsewhere on the web, as well as any tools to import or export recipes to and from other apps. You also can’t save recipes directly from social media, though many home chefs today find recipes on places like TikTok and Instagram Reels.
With the launch of Apple News+ Food, the tech giant continues to inch its way into the mobile app ecosystem where it competes with third-party developers who help the company generate revenue through App Store purchases. Recent additions to the Apple app lineup over the past year or so include the party-planning app Invites, iOS 18’s new Passwords app, the Sports app, and the mobile Journal, for example.
Unlike independent developers, Apple can afford to launch new apps that don’t have to be supported by a business model other than continued iPhone sales. This puts smaller and indie developers at a distinct disadvantage.
In the case of Apple News+ Food, publishers weren’t additionally compensated for their recipes, TechCrunch understands. Instead, the experience is an extension of Apple’s existing relationship with its partners, where the iPhone maker generates revenue by selling ads within the publishers’ articles for a 30% cut of sales.
The new service requires an Apple News+ subscription, which is $12.99 per month in the U.S., £12.99 in the U.K., $16.99 in Canada, and $19.99 in Australia. That includes access to over 400 magazines, newspapers, and digital publishers.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Apple Intelligence is heading to the Vision Pro as part of an upcoming operating system update. Apple confirmed on Friday that its generative AI platform will arrive on the extended reality headset as part of visionOS 2.4. A beta version of the software is currently available for developers. The public version is set for an April release.
Like the iPhone and Mac before it, the Vision Pro will receive Apple Intelligence updates in waves. The first set includes several familiar offerings, focused primarily on generating text and images. The company sees the addition of features like Rewrite, Proofread, and Summarize as key components for on-device workflow.
It’s worth keeping in mind that Apple has framed Vision Pro as a “spatial computing” device since the outset. For all the video, gaming, and other entertainment features, the company has sought to set the system apart from its extended reality predecessors by positioning it as an extension of desktop computing — or, as TechCrunch framed it in our review, “The infinite desktop.”
As it stands, composing text is a mixed bag on the headset. The default typing method requires the wearer to look at a letter, before pinching two fingers together to select. While well implemented, it’s cumbersome when faced with writing more than a word or two at a time. Voice addresses this bottleneck to a degree, and Apple’s recent AI-powered Siri supercharge bodes well for the smart assistant’s Vision Pro future.
Apple is banking on the combination of voice dictation and generative AI writing tools to deliver a smoother experience to convince more Vision Pro users to incorporate the headset into more of their existing workflows. At the very least, features like Message Summaries and email Smart Reply streamline interaction with different apps, without taking the user away from a given task.
Image Playground is the other big piece of the puzzle, bringing image generation to the wearable display as part of the visionOS 2.4 update. The feature is integrated directly into the visionOS Photos app, allowing users to create images through verbal prompts.
All of the above features have previously been rolled out on iOS, macOS, and iPadOS. There are no new Apple Intelligence features specific to Vision Pro arriving in this update.
Along with visionOS 2.4, Apple has also launched a Vision Pro iPhone app arriving with iOS 18.4, which is also now in beta. The app serves a few different purposes. Foremost is the ability to browse visionOS content, like TV shows and movies, which can then be transferred onto the headset. This feature appears to be, in part, a response to the limitations of wearing the headset, both in terms of personal comfort and battery life. If you’re going to be scrolling through content, you might as well do it from the comfort of your iPhone.
When an iPhone is unlocked and within proximity of the headset, the new app can also be used to manage guest accounts. The Vision Pro will prompt its owner when someone is attempting to sign in as a guest. A streaming image of the guest’s in-headset view is accessible through the new app, as well.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
A backdoor into iCloud end-to-end encryption would defeat the purpose of the feature, so Apple is pulling it from the UK altogether.
Apple confirmed Friday that it “can no longer” offer a security feature that allows users in the United Kingdom to encrypt their iCloud data.
In a statement provided to TechCrunch, Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz said the company’s Advanced Data Protection feature will no longer be available to new users and current U.K. users “will eventually need to disable this security feature.”
“We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP will not be available to our customers in the U.K. given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy,” the company said.
“Enhancing the security of cloud storage with end-to-end encryption is more urgent than ever before,” the statement said.
The announcement comes after the U.K. government reportedly ordered Apple earlier this year to build a backdoor that would allow British authorities “blanket” access to users’ data stored on Apple’s cloud servers, even if it is end-to-end encrypted. This request, seen as unprecedented in a modern democracy, alarmed privacy and security experts, who argued that if the British government prevailed, the demand would set a precedent for authoritarian countries to follow.
Apple offers users the option to turn on end-to-end encrypted iCloud backups through Advanced Data Protection. This feature effectively makes it impossible for anyone, including Apple and government authorities, to view data stored in iCloud by users’ who have opted-in.
A spokesperson for the U.K. Home Office did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Apple did not immediately say how the process of disabling ADP will work for users who had already turned it on before Friday.
Apple said that some types of data, including health data, messages stored in iCloud, and payment information, which are end-to-end encrypted by default for all users, will not be affected by this change, and will remain encrypted for everyone. But U.K. users will not be able to opt-in to use end-to-end encryption for the other types of data, such as photos, notes, backups, and other data, which were encrypted under ADP.
For those who already have ADP enabled, Apple said it will give customers more guidance soon, as well as a period of time to disable the feature to keep using iCloud.
ADP is unaffected for users outside of the United Kingdom, Apple said, and end-to-end encrypted communication services like FaceTime and iMessage are not affected, either.
“As we have said many times before, we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will,” Apple said, linking to its prior statements.
BBC News reported that ADP stopped being an option for new users starting at 3 p.m. U.K. time on Friday. TechCrunch has also confirmed that ADP is no longer an option for new users in the United Kingdom.
Since the rise of encryption in the mid-1990s, governments worldwide have argued that this data-scrambling technology would allow criminals and terrorists to break the law while evading law enforcement. Over the years, authorities have always found a way, from accessing unencrypted backups to using spyware, to access data directly on people’s devices.
“If you are not in the U.K., you should turn on ADP now,” said Matthew Green, a cryptography expert and teacher at Johns Hopkins University, wrote on X in response to the news.
“The more people who use it, the harder it will be to shut off this way,” said Green.
Clarified the forms of data protected under Advanced Data Protection in the ninth paragraph.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch