Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most graphically demanding and visually impressive games in recent years, will soon get a Mac release, according to developer and publisher CD Projekt Red.
The announcement was published on CD Projekt Red’s blog and also appeared briefly during Apple’s pre-recorded MacBook Pro announcement video. The game will be sold on the Mac App Store, Steam, GOG, and the Epic Game Store when it launches, and it will be labeled the Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, which simply means it also includes Phantom Liberty, the expansion that was released a couple of years after the original game.
Cyberpunk 2027 launched in a rough state in 2020, especially on low-end hardware. Subsequent patches and a significant overhaul with Phantom Liberty largely redeemed it in critics’ eyes—the result of all that post-launch work is the version Mac users will get.
Apple has been working with AAA game publishers to try and get the games they made for consoles or Windows gaming PCs onto the Mac or iPhone, including Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Death Stranding, and Resident EvilVillage, among others. But the addition of Cyberpunk 2077 is notable because of its history of running poorly on low-end hardware, and because it uses new technologies like ray-traced illumination, reflections, and shadows. It also heavily relies on AI upscaling like DLSS or FSR to be playable even on high-end machines.
On Thursday, Apple released the first software updates for its devices since last month’s rollout of iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia.
Those who’ve been following along know that several key features that didn’t make it into the initial release of iOS 18 are expected in iOS 18.1, but that’s not the update we got on Thursday.
Rather, Apple pushed out a series of smaller updates that fixed several bugs but did not add new features. The updates are labeled iOS 18.0.1, iPadOS 18.0.1, visionOS 2.0.1, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1, and watchOS 11.0.1.
Arguably, the two most important fixes come in iPadOS 18.0.1 and iOS 18.0.1. The iPad update fixes an issue that bricked a small number of recently released iPads (those running Apple’s M4 chip). That problem caused Apple to quickly pull iPadOS 18 for those devices, so Thursday’s iPadOS 18.0.1 release is actually the first time most users of those devices will be able to run iPadOS 18.
On the iPhone side, Apple says it has addressed a bug that could sometimes cause the touchscreen to fail to register users’ fingers.
Enlarge/ Apple’s M3 Max-powered 16-inch MacBook Pro. New Pro laptops and some desktops could be on tap for later this fall.
Andrew Cunningham
Apple’s newest iPhones and Apple Watches don’t come out until later this week, but the rumor mill is already indicating that Apple is planning a product announcement for October to refresh some of the products that didn’t get a mention at the iPhone event. Apple scheduled its release calendar similarly last year, when it announced and released new iPhones in September and then launched the first wave of M3 Macs around Halloween.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman believes that the event will mainly focus on the first wave of Macs with M4 processors, following the standard M4’s introduction in the iPad Pro earlier this year. As he has reported previously, he expects new MacBook Pro models with the M4 and “pro-level M4 chip options,” presumably the M4 Pro and M4 Max. He also expects an M4 version of the 24-inch iMac.
But the most interesting of the new Macs will still be the redesigned Mac mini, which hasn’t gotten an M3 update at all and has been using the same basic external design since 2010. This Mac mini is said to be closer in size to the Apple TV than the current mini, but still uses an internal power supply so that owners won’t have to wrangle a power brick. At least some of the current device’s ports will be replaced by USB-C and/or Thunderbolt ports, something that MacRumors apparently confirmed earlier today when they found a reference to an “Apple silicon Mac mini (5 ports)” in an Apple software update (some of those ports are reportedly on the front of the device, a nice Mac Studio design upgrade that I’d like to see on a new Mac mini).
The “five port” descriptor does imply that there will be another model with either more or fewer ports—Apple used similar terminology to distinguish the two- and four-port versions of some MacBook Pro models in the Intel days. The current M2 Mac mini models have fewer ports than the models with the M2 Pro chip, because the more powerful processor also has more I/O capabilities—assuming we get one Mac mini with an M4 and an upgraded model with an M4 Pro, we’d expect the Pro version to have more ports.
Gurman says that other Mac models, including the Mac Studio, Mac Pro, and MacBook Air, will see M4-series updates throughout 2025. Of those, the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro have gone the longest without an update—they’re all still using M2-series chips.
Apple is also said to be planning some new lower-end iPads for the October event—not the first time that Macs and iPads have shared billing for one of these late-fall product announcements. The $349 iPad 10 and the iPad mini have both gone over a year without any kind of hardware update; it seems likely that they’ll both get newer chips, if not significantly updated designs.
Today is the official release date for the public versions of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15 Sequoia, and a scad of other Apple software updates, the foundation that Apple will use for Apple Intelligence and whatever other features it wants to add between now and next year’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June. But for those who value stability and reliability over new features, you may not be excited to update to a new operating system with a version number ending in “0.”
For those of you who prefer to wait for a couple of bugfix updates before installing new stuff, Apple is also releasing security-only updates for a bunch of its (now) last-generation operating systems today. The iOS 17.7, iPadOS 17.7, and macOS 14.7 updates are either available now or should be shortly, along with a security update for 2022’s macOS 13 Ventura. An updated version of Safari 18 that runs on both macOS 13 and 14 should be available soon, though as of this writing is doesn’t appear to be available yet.
Apple has historically been pretty good about providing security updates to older macOS releases—you can expect them for about two years after the operating system is replaced by a newer version. But for iOS and iPadOS, the company used to stop updating older versions entirely after releasing a new one. This changed back in 2021, when Apple decided to start providing some security-only updates to older iOS versions to help people who were worried about installing an all-new potentially buggy OS upgrade.
Eventually, iOS and iPadOS users will need to install iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 to keep getting security updates. But for the handful of older iPads that can’t run iPadOS 18, Apple will usually keep supporting those specific devices with security updates for a year or two. Apple was still providing new security updates for 2022’s iOS 16 as recently as August, keeping older devices like the iPhone 8 and the first-generation iPad Pros reasonably secure even though they were incapable of running newer operating systems.
The macOS 15 Sequoia update will inevitably be known as “the AI one” in retrospect, introducing, as it does, the first wave of “Apple Intelligence” features.
That’s funny because none of that stuff is actually ready for the 15.0 release that’s coming out today. A lot of it is coming “later this fall” in the 15.1 update, which Apple has been testing entirely separately from the 15.0 betas for weeks now. Some of it won’t be ready until after that—rumors say image generation won’t be ready until the end of the year—but in any case, none of it is ready for public consumption yet.
But the AI-free 15.0 release does give us a chance to evaluate all of the non-AI additions to macOS this year. Apple Intelligence is sucking up a lot of the media oxygen, but in most other ways, this is a typical 2020s-era macOS release, with one or two headliners, several quality-of-life tweaks, and some sparsely documented under-the-hood stuff that will subtly change how you experience the operating system.
The AI-free version of the operating system is also the one that all users of the remaining Intel Macs will be using, since all of the Apple Intelligence features require Apple Silicon. Most of the Intel Macs that ran last year’s Sonoma release will run Sequoia this year—the first time this has happened since 2019—but the difference between the same macOS version running on different CPUs will be wider than it has been. It’s a clear indicator that the Intel Mac era is drawing to a close, even if support hasn’t totally ended just yet.
Enlarge/ Emojipedia sample images of the new Unicode 16.0 emoji.
The Unicode Consortium has finalized and released version 16.0 of the Unicode standard, the elaborate character set that ensures that our phones, tablets, PCs, and other devices can all communicate and interoperate with each other. The update adds 5,185 new characters to the standard, bringing the total up to a whopping 154,998.
Of those 5,185 characters, the ones that will get the most attention are the eight new emoji characters, including a shovel, a fingerprint, a leafless tree, a radish (formally classified as “root vegetable”), a harp, a purple splat that evokes the ’90s Nickelodeon logo, and a flag for the island of Sark. The standout, of course, is “face with bags under eyes,” whose long-suffering thousand-yard stare perfectly encapsulates the era it has been born into. Per usual, Emojipedia has sample images that give you some idea of what these will look like when they’re implemented by various operating systems, apps, and services.
We last got new emoji in 2023’s Unicode 15.1 update, though all of these designs were technically modifications of existing emoji rather than new characters—many emoji, most notably for skin and hair color variants, use a base emoji plus a modifier emoji, combined together with a “zero-width joiner” (ZWJ) character that makes them display as one character instead. The lime emoji in Unicode 15.1 was actually a lemon emoji combined with the color green; the phoenix was a regular bird joined to the fire emoji. This was likely because 15.1 was only intended as a minor update to 2022’s Unicode 15.0 standard.
Most of the Unicode 16.0 emoji, by contrast, are their own unique characters. The one exception is the Sark flag emoji; flag sequences are created by placing two “regional indicator letters” directly next to each other and don’t require a ZWJ character between them.
Incorporation into the Unicode standard is only the first step that new emoji and other characters take on their journey from someone’s mind to your phone or computer; software makers like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and others need to design iterations that fit with their existing spin on the emoji characters, they need to release software updates that use the new characters, and people need to download and install them.
We’ve seen a few people share on social media that the Unicode 16.0 release includes a “greenwashing” emoji designed by Shepard Fairey, an artist best known for the 2008 Barack Obama “Hope” poster. This emoji, and an attempt to gin up controversy around it, is all an elaborate hoax: there’s a fake Unicode website announcing it, a fake lawsuit threat that purports to be from a real natural gas industry group, and a fake Cory Doctorow article about the entire “controversy” published in a fake version of Wired. These were all published to websites with convincing-looking but fake domains, all registered within a couple of weeks of each other in August 2024. The face-with-bags-under-eyes emoji feels like an appropriate response.
Apple plans to release the next versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS to the general public on September 16, the company announced via its website following its iPhone-centric product event earlier today. We should also see updates for tvOS and the HomePod operating system on the same date.
The new releases bring a number of new features and refinements to Apple’s platforms: better texting with Android devices thanks to support for the RCS standard, iPhone Mirroring that allows you to interact with your iPhone via your Mac, more UI customization options for iPhones and iPads, and other improvements besides.
What won’t be included in these initial releases is any hint of Apple Intelligence, the batch of generative AI and machine learning features that Apple announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Apple is testing some of the Apple Intelligence features in betas of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS 15.1, updates that will be released later this fall. When Apple Intelligence does arrive, compatibility will be limited: it will require an iPhone 15 Pro or one of the just-announced iPhone 16 or 16 Pro models; an iPad Air or Pro with an M1, M2, or M4 chip; or an Apple Silicon Mac. Apple will also be withholding Apple Intelligence from devices in the EU, at least for now.
The new operating systems will run on most of the same hardware that is currently compatible with iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma, including the last few generations of Intel Macs from 2018, 2019, and 2020. But there are a handful of exceptions, like the 2018 MacBook Air and a handful of older iPads. Phones as old as 2018’s iPhone XR and XS will be able to install and run the iOS 18 update.
Apple has released multiple beta versions of each operating system since WWDC in June, and release candidate builds will likely go out to users and developers today. These will enable developers to get final versions of their apps ready for launch day. Users who want to move over to the new operating systems early can also do so—you can be relatively confident that most of the biggest bugs have been worked out over the summer betas. However, as always when installing major updates, you should ensure you have good backups of your data beforehand.
Apple has some minor updates for all its operating systems, and the releases include iOS 17.6, iPadOS 17.6, tvOS 17.6, watchOS 10.6, and macOS Sonoma 14.6.
Apple’s notes for these updates simply say they include bug fixes, security updates, or optimizations. However, there are a few hidden features.
macOS 14.6 reportedly enables multi-display support in clamshell mode on the M3 MacBook Pro, allowing users of that device to use two external displays at once. That was already possible on the M3 Pro and M3 Max variations. Apple had previously released a similar update to bring that functionality to the M3 MacBook Air.
iOS 17.6 and iPadOS 17.6 have added a feature called Catch Up, which is targeted at sports fans who use Apple’s TV app.
The feature allows users to watch a quick sequence of highlights that have been produced so far from an in-progress Major League Soccer game before joining the live feed.
That’s about it, though. These are minor updates, and they are likely the final ones other than security hotfixes until Apple begins rolling out its annual updates, such as iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia 15, later this fall.
Those updates are expected to include several new features, though the biggest—Apple Intelligence, a suite of generative AI features—will not arrive until iOS 18.1, which was just released as a developer beta for the first time.
iOS 17.6, iPadOS 17.6, tvOS 17.6, watchOS 10.6, and macOS Sonoma 14.6 are available to download and install on all supported devices now.
Enlarge/ Apple Intelligence was unveiled at WWDC 2024.
Apple
As was just rumored, the iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1 developer betas are rolling out today, and they include the first opportunity to try out Apple Intelligence, the company’s suite of generative AI features.
Initially announced for iOS 18, Apple Intelligence is expected to launch for the public this fall. Typically, Apple also releases a public beta (the developer one requires a developer account) for new OS updates, but it hasn’t announced any specifics about that just yet.
Not all the Apple Intelligence features will be part of this beta. It will include writing tools, like the ability to rewrite, proofread, or summarize text throughout the OS in first-party and most third-party apps. It will also include new Siri improvements, such as moving seamlessly between voice and typing, the ability to follow when you stumble over your words, and maintaining context from one request to the next. (It will not, however, include ChatGPT integration; Apple says that’s coming later.)
New natural language search features, support for creating memory movies, transcription summaries, and several new Mail features will also be available.
Developers who download the beta will be able to request access to Apple Intelligence features by navigating to the Settings app, tapping Apple Intelligence & Siri, and then tapping “Join the Apple Intelligence waitlist.” The waitlist is in place because some features are demanding on Apple’s servers, and staggering access is meant to stave off any server issues when developers are first trying it out.
Enlarge/ The app lets you invoke ChatGPT from anywhere in the system with a keyboard shortcut, Spotlight-style.
Samuel Axon
OpenAI announced its Mac desktop app for ChatGPT with a lot of fanfare a few weeks ago, but it turns out it had a rather serious security issue: user chats were stored in plain text, where any bad actor could find them if they gained access to your machine.
As Threads user Pedro José Pereira Vieito noted earlier this week, “the OpenAI ChatGPT app on macOS is not sandboxed and stores all the conversations in plain-text in a non-protected location,” meaning “any other running app / process / malware can read all your ChatGPT conversations without any permission prompt.”
He added:
macOS has blocked access to any user private data since macOS Mojave 10.14 (6 years ago!). Any app accessing private user data (Calendar, Contacts, Mail, Photos, any third-party app sandbox, etc.) now requires explicit user access.
OpenAI chose to opt-out of the sandbox and store the conversations in plain text in a non-protected location, disabling all of these built-in defenses.
OpenAI has now updated the app, and the local chats are now encrypted, though they are still not sandboxed. (The app is only available as a direct download from OpenAI’s website and is not available through Apple’s App Store where more stringent security is required.)
Many people now use ChatGPT like they might use Google: to ask important questions, sort through issues, and so on. Often, sensitive personal data could be shared in those conversations.
It’s not a great look for OpenAI, which recently entered into a partnership with Apple to offer chat bot services built into Siri queries in Apple operating systems. Apple detailed some of the security around those queries at WWDC last month, though, and they’re more stringent than what OpenAI did (or to be more precise, didn’t do) with its Mac app, which is a separate initiative from the partnership.
If you’ve been using the app recently, be sure to update it as soon as possible.
On Monday, Apple announced it would be integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI assistant into upcoming versions of its iPhone, iPad, and Mac operating systems. It paves the way for future third-party AI model integrations, but given Google’s multi-billion-dollar deal with Apple for preferential web search, the OpenAI announcement inspired speculation about who is paying whom. According to a Bloomberg report published Wednesday, Apple considers ChatGPT’s placement on its devices as compensation enough.
“Apple isn’t paying OpenAI as part of the partnership,” writes Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, citing people familiar with the matter who wish to remain anonymous. “Instead, Apple believes pushing OpenAI’s brand and technology to hundreds of millions of its devices is of equal or greater value than monetary payments.”
The Bloomberg report states that neither company expects the agreement to generate meaningful revenue in the short term, and in fact, the partnership could burn extra money for OpenAI, because it pays Microsoft to host ChatGPT’s capabilities on its Azure cloud. However, OpenAI could benefit by converting free users to paid subscriptions, and Apple potentially benefits by providing easy, built-in access to ChatGPT during a time when its own in-house LLMs are still catching up.
And there’s another angle at play. Currently, OpenAI offers subscriptions (ChatGPT Plus, Enterprise, Team) that unlock additional features. If users subscribe to OpenAI through the ChatGPT app on an Apple device, the process will reportedly use Apple’s payment platform, which may give Apple a significant cut of the revenue. According to the report, Apple hopes to negotiate additional revenue-sharing deals with AI vendors in the future.
Why OpenAI
The rise of ChatGPT in the public eye over the past 18 months has made OpenAI a power player in the tech industry, allowing it to strike deals with publishers for AI training content—and ensure continued support from Microsoft in the form of investments that trade vital funding and compute for access to OpenAI’s large language model (LLM) technology like GPT-4.
Still, Apple’s choice of ChatGPT as Apple’s first external AI integration has led to widespread misunderstanding, especially since Apple buried the lede about its own in-house LLM technology that powers its new “Apple Intelligence” platform.
On Apple’s part, CEO Tim Cook told The Washington Post that it chose OpenAI as its first third-party AI partner because he thinks the company controls the leading LLM technology at the moment: “I think they’re a pioneer in the area, and today they have the best model,” he said. “We’re integrating with other people as well. But they’re first, and I think today it’s because they’re best.”
Apple’s choice also brings risk. OpenAI’s record isn’t spotless, racking up a string of public controversies over the past month that include an accusation from actress Scarlett Johansson that the company intentionally imitated her voice, resignations from a key scientist and safety personnel, the revelation of a restrictive NDA for ex-employees that prevented public criticism, and accusations against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman of “psychological abuse” related by a former member of the OpenAI board.
Meanwhile, critics of privacy issues related to gathering data for training AI models—including OpenAI foe Elon Musk, who took to X on Monday to spread misconceptions about how the ChatGPT integration might work—also worried that the Apple-OpenAI deal might expose personal data to the AI company, although both companies strongly deny that will be the case.
Looking ahead, Apple’s deal with OpenAI is not exclusive, and the company is already in talks to offer Google’s Gemini chatbot as an additional option later this year. Apple has also reportedly held talks with Anthropic (maker of Claude 3) as a potential chatbot partner, signaling its intention to provide users with a range of AI services, much like how the company offers various search engine options in Safari.
Enlarge/ The classic Mac OS wallpaper in macOS 15 Sequoia mimics the monochrome user interfaces used in System 1 through 6.
Apple
I’m still in the very early stages of poking at macOS 15 Sequoia ahead of our customary review later this fall, and there are quite a few things that aren’t working in this first developer beta. Some of those, like the AI features, aren’t working on purpose; I am sure some of the iCloud sync issues I’m having are broken by accident.
I’ve already encountered a few functional upgrades I like, like iCloud support inside of virtual machines, automated window snapping (at long last), and a redesigned AirDrop interface in the Finder. But so far the change that I like the most is actually a new combo wallpaper and screen saver that’s done in the style of Apple’s Mac operating system circa the original monochrome Mac from 1984. It’s probably the best retro Mac Easter egg since Clarus the Dogcow showed up in a print preview menu a couple of years ago.
The Macintosh wallpaper and screen saver—it uses the animated/dynamic wallpaper feature that Apple introduced in Sonoma last year—cycles through enlarged, pixelated versions of classic Mac apps, icons, and menus, a faithful replica of the first version of the Mac interface. Though they’re always monochrome, the default settings will cycle through multiple background colors that match the ones that Apple uses for accent colors.
If you’re too young to be familiar (or if you were using MS-DOS in the mid-’80s instead of a Mac), this Mac theme hearkens back to the days before Mac OS (then Mac OS X, then OS X, then macOS) was called Mac OS. The first seven versions of the software were simply called System or System Software, all the way up through 1991’s System 7. The Mac OS name didn’t appear until the System 7.5.1 update in 1995, and the name was formally changed in the 7.6 update in 1997 (OS updates were obviously released at a more leisurely pace back then).
If you want to poke at a live, interactive version of the monochrome System Software, developer Mihai Parparita’s Infinite Mac project hosts classic System, Mac OS, and NeXTStep versions that will all run in a browser window using ports of various emulators.
My only complaint is that now I want more of these screen savers. As a millennial, my exposure to Systems 1 through 6 was fairly minimal, but I’d definitely take a color version of the screen saver modeled on Mac OS 9, or an early Mac OS X version with shiny candy-colored Aqua-themed buttons and scroll bars.
