APPLE’S MANY FACES

32 new chat limit

Get word to 31 of your closest pals.

Apple on Monday said an upcoming software update will allow up to 32 people to FaceTime at once — a huge expansion of the current limit of 2.

FaceTime will handle the on-screen crowd by tiling the participants — with the largest tile belonging to whoever is speaking at a given moment.

Apple will also integrate FaceTime into the iMessage app, allowing users to start a group call from a text thread, rather than needing to go to the FaceTime app, the Cupertino, Calif., company said as it opened its Worldwide Developers Conference.

The expanded FaceTime capabilities will be enabled as iOS12 is rolled out — expected to happen sometime in September, along with the updated iPhones.

For iPhone X owners, iOS12 will also allow folks to design their own custom emojis, called Memojis, that can be animated using the X’s facial recognition technology.

As the five-day WWDC opened in San Jose, Calif., the tech titan said its Apple Watch will get a slew of new exercise-oriented features, including an ability to recognize when its wearer is working out to more accurately track vitals.

Watch users are also getting a feature called Walkie-Talkie, which will let them send short voice clips to other users by simply speaking into their wrists.

Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software engineering, took time out to take a few digs at Facebook — which in the past few months has been embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Federighi used part of his talk to tell developers that Apple is taking privacy seriously. The company’s Safari browser will block sites like Facebook from being able to use “like” or “share” buttons on different Web sites to track user behavior.

Apple is also doubling down on the iPhone’s Augmented Reality (AR) capabilities, introducing a slew of new games, as well as tools such as an AR ruler, which lets users point their phone camera at objects in the real world and get accurate measurements of their dimensions.

The advance news about FaceTime and other software advances excited investors, who pushed Apple shares on Monday to an all-time high of $193.42 at just before 12:30 p.m. — giving the company a market cap of $950.7 billion, the first time it has crossed the $950 billion level.

Apple closed Monday $191.83, up $1.59 percent.