The MacVoices Live! panel examines a class action lawsuit over Apple Photos facial recognition, debating whether on-device processing, user consent, and biometric privacy laws justify the legal action. The conversation moves to TV tracking alternatives after TV Time’s shutdown, then shifts to Bending Spoons’ acquisition of Airtable, exploring the company’s growing portfolio, its business strategy, and the future of database tools in an era of AI-assisted coding development.
From NAB in Las Vegas, Dan May, President of Blackmagic Design, talks about DaVinci Resolve 21, local AI tools, the new photo page, Blackmagic Cloud collaboration, Fairlight Live, and the free Blackmagic Camera app. The conversation highlights Blackmagic Design's focus on accessible professional tools and creator growth paths.
Photos library manager brings improved compatibility with the public beta version of macOS 27 Golden Gate. ($39.95 new, free update, 39.7 MB, macOS 14+)
Learn how to expand a photo by intelligently generating new content beyond its original boundaries using Apple AI in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 Golden Gate.
As part of the upgrade, the Home app uses AI to generate summaries of motion alerts from compatible HomeKit Secure Video cameras.
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Apple likely requires the 2TB iCloud+ tier because HomeKit Secure Video already relies on iCloud+ storage tiers. The 2TB plan supports a larger number of cameras, and AI-generated video descriptions would add to Apple’s cloud processing costs.
That makes sense, but it seems odd because the iCloud tiers are named based on storage amounts, yet the feature isn’t tied to how much space you’re actually using. A lower iCloud plan with tons of free space doesn’t get the features, yet a nearly full 2 TB plan does. There are already restrictions where supporting more cameras requires higher plans, but that is at least quasi related to storage.
I reluctantly upgraded to a 2 TB family plan within the last year or so. We don’t store many files in iCloud, messages are set to auto-delete after a year, and I manually offload photos older than a year (except for hearted favorites). It’s hard to believe given how I remember the original 5 GB free tier once being sufficient, but staying under 200 GB became untenable without a lot of extra work. It doesn’t help that Live Photos sometimes gets inadvertently turned on, so that we’re storing all these little videos without realizing it.
Photo editing is getting some of the most interesting Apple Intelligence features this fall. At WWDC, Tyler Stalman interviewed Jon McCormack, Apple’s Vice President of Camera and Photos Software Engineering, and Della Huff, the company’s Senior Manager of Camera and Photos Product Marketing, in a video that covers Spatial Reframing, Extend, and an improved Clean Up tool, along with demos of each:
The interview goes into depth on each feature and how they’re enhanced by the integration with Apple’s improved Private Cloud Compute models, sharing nuggets like the fact that Spatial Reframing of photos is possible even if an image is taken with a single-lens iPhone and the fact that Apple includes metadata in generatively edited photos identifying the use of AI and will add SynthID watermarking, a technology developed by Google, to AI-edited photos later this year.
I’m not a fan of wholesale image generation, which is why I appreciate the thoughtful approach Apple is taking with these photo editing features. The changes are at the margins of the photo and identified as edited using AI.
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