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MORE PRIVACY WITH NEW APPLE UPDATE

Apple finally unleashed its big 14.5 update to IOS and ipad OS this week. This is the update that brings the ability to unlock your

Unlock your iphone with your

iphone with Apple Watch if you

Apple Watch

have one – useful when wearing a face-covering. It works with iphone X and later, and Apple Watch Series 3 and later.

Other features the update brings include more diversity to the Siri voices available – and Siri no longer defaults to a standard female voice, but will ask you to choose a voice whenever you set up a new phone.

Siri can also initiate group Facetime calls, and tell you who’s calling you if you’re wearing Airpods or Beats headphones.

This update also brings the muchtalked-about enhancements to privacy settings for apps. The big change is that allowing apps to track your usage and gather data about you is now opt-in rather than opt-out – you have to grant apps the ability to track you.

There are a lot of new features in the update, which comes just over a month before Apple’s Worldwide Developers conference, at which Apple is expected to reveal details of its next batch of OS upgrades for iphone and its other platforms. That online event runs from June 7 to 11.

In other IOS news this week, the Apple-made Clips video capture and editing app received an upgrade to allow augmented reality “Spaces” for devices that feature a LIDAR scanner, like the ipad Pro and iphone 12 Pro phones.

These AR Spaces can transform the look of the room you are in by adding effects to your video like confetti or disco lighting. It’s an impressive feature.

FACEBOOK’S AUDIO AMBITION

Facebook has already revealed its hand in trying to bring more audio features to its app, and it backed that up this week with even more audio news.

It’s teaming up with Spotify to offer a mini player that you can access without leaving the Facebook app.

While not offering full access to your Spotify account, it will let you play songs and podcasts in the Facebook app that others – either friends or creators themselves – have shared to your timeline.

This new initiative is separate from the podcast player Facebook is building – that should see the light of day some time later this year.

The new Spotify integration is rolling out to the apps now.