At the core of making an inclusive, easy-to-use software experience is recognizing that accessibility is not just code for “people with disabilities.” It’s just a set of tools to match people’s capabilities with the use of a product. We are all situationally disabled, and everyone needs different forms of help to interact with digital products.

Apple has made great strides in its accessibility features, and clearly recognizes the importance of making the iPhone or iPad easy for everyone to use, regardless of physical capabilities. But some of the coolest stuff, stuff everyone can and would want to use, is still frustratingly buried in the Accessibility section of the Settings app.

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We’ve told you about the many big changes and new features in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, including an awesome new redesign of the home screen with Widgets and the App Library. For the last several years, Apple has made its operating systems available in a public beta, so you can kick the tires and help find bugs before its release in the fall.

If you’re interested in running the iOS 14 or iPadOS 14 public beta, here’s how you get it.

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Apple is planting its own flag in the streaming wars with Apple TV+, its in-house streaming service that focuses almost entirely on original programming rather than an extensive library of existing TV shows or movies.

Though the service has been available less than a year and and doesn’t yet have a lot of shows or films available, there’s a lot in the works. This is a list of all the Apple TV+ content we know of so far, along with details about prominent stars, directors, producers, and release dates.

Updated 08/19/20: Apple has released the trailer for its dark comedy On the Rocks, starring Bill Murray and Rashida Jones. The film will debut on Apple TV+ in October.

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iCloud can effectively give you up to 2TB of additional storage to supplement your Mac’s drive capacity, particularly useful with 256GB and 512GB Macs. The trick is using the Optimize Mac Storage checkbox found in the iCloud preference pane when you click Options to the right of iCloud Drive (Mojave and earlier) or in the Apple ID preference pane’s iCloud section at the main level (Catalina and later).

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Raise your hand if this sounds familiar: It’s five minutes until your third-grader’s distance learning class, but just as you’re about to make sure she’s dialed into her Zoom call, something comes up with your own work.

Thirty minutes later, you finally head over to your daughter’s room, only to find her sprawled on the floor watching her iPad. Meanwhile, her Chromebook—the one she uses for Zoom calls—is securely shut. Yes, she just missed another class, and you (bad parent!) let it happen.

Keeping your kids on track while juggling your own obligations has to be one of the biggest challenges of distance learning, remote learning, virtual learning or whatever you want to call it. We’ve rounded up a few smart home solutions that can help your grade-schoolers—or at least, help you help them—to manage their schedules during what’s likely to be many more months of learning at home.

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Apple today announced that its longstanding Beats 1 radio station will change its name to the more brand-appropriate Apple Music 1 and added two new stations to its catalog: Apple Music Hits and Apple Music Country.

As their names suggest, Hits will focus on pop and country music, but they’re not just about hits from Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Carrie Underwood, and Blake Shelton. The stations will also include “exclusive shows” from popular artists that will “connect listeners with the stories behind the most popular songs in the world.” Apple has lined up an array of artists and producers as well as daily on-air hosts that will keep the music flowing.

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Step aside, unannounced iPhone 12! Even though we haven’t seen you yet, you’re not 2020’s new hotness. What’s hot is this other phone that won’t sell in nearly as high numbers.

Sorry, the Macalope doesn’t make the rules. Or even understand them.

Writing for the Forbes contributor network and home for wayward opinions, Ewan Spence says “Microsoft’s Exciting Surface Duo Will Fight Apple’s Boring iPhone 12.” (Tip o’ the antlers to Sam.)

Has there ever been a future product from Microsoft that didn’t win? How could a foldable Android phone from Redmond be any different?

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This could be it, you know. There’s a pretty good chance this is the last version of the iMac as we know it, with its iconic all-in-one design and Intel processors. Maybe there’s a chance that those Intel processors get a speed bump upgrade before switching over to Apple silicon, but regardless, they’re on their way out.

The iMac isn’t going out quietly, though. The 2020 27-inch iMac gets your attention by being a top performer with a CPU boost, SSD storage, and updated graphics. It has other features to take into consideration—namely, a new nano-texture glass front—but the emphasis is on speed. If you rely on software that takes advantage of multiple processing cores (video editors, graphics software, databases, etc.), the new iMac will satisfy your need for speed.

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Update 08/17/20: Epic Games has tweeted that Apple will terminate its developer accounts on August 28.

Fortnite may not be burning up the App Store charts like it used to be, but it’s still one of the most popular games of all time, with players in the tens of millions. We don’t know how many of them play on mobile devices, but Epic Games (Fortnite’s creator) is willing to gamble that entire market to defy Apple and Google’s app store rules in an escalation of an ongoing, industry-wide antitrust battle.

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Cord-cutters looking to save on premium TV channels will want to know about this: Apple just announced a heavily discounted bundle deal that includes both CBS All Access and Showtime for subscribers of its Apple TV+ streaming TV service.

The new CBS All Access and Showtime bundle costs $9.99 a month, which is essentially half off compared to signing up for each channel separately. There’s also a seven-day free trial available.

There is a catch, however. To sign up for the CBS All Access/Showtime bundle at the discounted price, you must be an Apple TV+ subscriber. An Apple TV+ membership goes for $4.99 a month, although Apple will give you a year’s worth of Apple TV+ if you buy a new iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV. Macworld maintains a complete list of all of Apple's original TV shows here.

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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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When Apple released iOS 12.3, it refreshed the TV app and added a feature called Apple TV Channels. Channels lets you subscribe to third-party streaming services like CBS All Access or HBO, right from within the TV app. You can watch that content in the TV app, served directly from Apple, without the need to install other apps.

Here’s everything you need to know about which services are available as Apple TV Channels, what they cost, and how they work.

Updated 08/17/20: Apple has started offering a bundle of CBS All Access and Showtime Channels for $9.99 per month, if you already subscribe to Apple TV+.

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Though it might still only be mid-August, fall is rapidly approaching. That’s not only significant because it will hopefully mean the end of the heat that’s been barraging my home for the last several weeks, but also because it’s traditionally Apple’s busiest time of the year.

I say “traditionally” because this year, well, everything’s a little bit off-kilter. Still, it does seem as though the Cupertino-based company is getting its ducks in a row for its usual deluge of product releases, even if the actual event might look more like this year’s WWDC keynote than fall Apple events of years past.

So, in advance of everything kicking off, let's take a moment to go over what might be the most exciting announcements to come out of Apple Park in the next few months, and what we all might have to look forward to. (Because, in this day and age, we all need something to look forward to, don't we?)

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Ted Lasso is an college football coach from Kansas who is hired to coach an English Premiere League team. He knows next to nothing about soccer, and has never been to the U.K. But he sure loves being a coach!

That setup fuels a formulaic fish-out-of-water comedy filled to the brim with sports tropes. But Jason Sudeikis’ performance as Lasso, and the small witty subversions of some usual routines, are more than enough to keep you watching.

The show is low-stakes, quick-witted, and almost impossibly positive. It’s unlikely to win any major awards and presents no big ideas to get you talking about the latest episode with your friends and coworkers. But it’s also by far the easiest Apple TV+ show to get into, and the one any random viewer is seems most likely to like.

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Apple Arcade is here, and you can play some of the subscription service’s many games with select models of Xbox One and PlayStation 4 controllers as well as Mfi (Made for iOS) controllers like the SteelSeries Nimbus+.

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I used to dream that QR Codes would be the magical glue that would allow the easy passage of content among digital and analog devices. Want to read a web page on your phone that you’re viewing in your desktop browser? Just snap a picture of a QR Code on the page, and voila! it appears on your mobile device.

The reason for this hope was that it once was hard to move URLs around, unless you used URL shorteners, and even then it often involved careful retyping. Apple got on top of this years ago with Handoff, a set of features that rely on Apple’s Continuity framework—which pulls together Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and proximity—to let you hand the state of an app off among Macs, iPhones, and iPads, including a web page in Safari while Safari is the active app.

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Trend Micro hasn't changed much since we last reviewed it, which doesn't always work to its benefit. There's no doubt, however, that Trend Micro Antivirus offers good protection. AV-Test's latest look at it gave Trend Micro Antivirus for Mac a 100 percent protection score against 83 samples.

AV-Comparatives' tests are a little more in-depth since it tests the antivirus against Mac and Windows malware, as well as against potentially unwanted applications (PUA) for Mac. Using 207 samples, Trend Micro stopped 99.5% of threats, which is good but not fantastic considering Avast, AVG, Avira, Bitdefender, FireEye, and Kaspersky all scored 100 percent on this test.

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Just when you thought Apple had no more services to give, there might be a new one on the way. According to a report in Bloomberg, Apple is looking to launch a new subscription for virtual fitness classes to rival Peloton, Nike, and others.

Mark Gurman reports the new service will be used “via an app for the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV,” though there will almost certainly be an Apple Watch tie-in as well. Fitbit, for example, offers guided workouts on its Versa and Ionic watches, as well as a Premium service that brings workouts, insights, guidance, and recipes. Apple would at least tie in metrics through its Fitness app and could offer audio classes and live feedback as well.

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When Apple launched its slate of services last year, there was one thing missing: bundles. According to a new report from Bloomberg that's going to change this year, as Apple is preparing to launch “a series of bundles” that will package its services into lower monthly prices.

As Mark Gurman reports, the bundles are dubbed Apple One and are planned to launch alongside the iPhone 12 “as early as October.” Details are sparse, but he says, “A basic package will include Apple Music and Apple TV+, while a more expensive variation will have those two services and the Apple Arcade gaming service. The next tier will add Apple News+, followed by a pricier bundle with extra iCloud storage for files and photos.”

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Apple’s protectionist policies prevent you from enjoying services such as Project xCloud. A ban on TikTok and WeChat could affect Apple’s bottom line. We talk about this and more on this episode of the Macworld Podcast.

This is episode 709 with Jason Cross, Michael Simon, and Roman Loyola.

Listen to episode 709

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