The long-awaited Mac Pro is here. From a report: The new Intel Xeon processor inside the Mac Pro will have up to 28 cores, with up to 300W of power and heavy-duty cooling, "so it can run unconstrained at full power at all times." System memory can be maxed out at an eyebrow-raising 1.5TB, says Apple. There are eight internal PCI Express slots, with four of them being double-wide. Two USB-C and two USB-A ports will grace the front of the system, which is at least one more USB-C port than you'll find on a majority of desktop PC systems and cases today. With this Mac Pro, Apple is launching a custom expansion module it calls an MPX Module. This is a giant quad-wide PCIe card that fits two graphics cards, has its own dedicated heatsink, and also has a Thunderbolt 3 connector on the bottom for extra bandwidth / power / display connectivity. Apple says you can spec that out with AMD's Radeon Pro Vega 2 or Radeon Pro Vega 2 Duo, the latter of which would get you four GPUs in total. The power supply of the new Mac Pro maxes out at 1.4kW. Three large fans sit at the front, just behind the new aluminum grille, blowing air across the system at a rate of 300 cubic feet per minute. It starts at $5,999.

While it was initially reported that iTunes would live on in macOS 10.15, it now looks like the app will be retired, over 18 years after it was introduced by the late Steve Jobs at Macworld on January 9, 2001. MacRumors reports: Apple will be replacing iTunes with standalone Music, TV, and Podcasts apps in the next major version of macOS, expected to be unveiled at WWDC 2019 next week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman: "iTunes has been the way Apple users listen to music, watch movies and TV shows, hear podcasts, and manage their devices for almost two decades. This year, Apple is finally ready to move into a new era. The company is launching a trio of new apps for the Mac -- Music, TV, and Podcasts -- to replace iTunes. That matches Apple's media app strategy on iPhones and iPads. Without iTunes, customers can manage their Apple gadgets through the Music app."

This information lines up with a recent report from 9to5Mac's Guilherme Rambo, who claimed that iTunes will be renamed to "Music" on the Mac. In other words, iTunes is going away and will be replaced by the new Music app, which is expected to become the new utility for syncing and managing Apple devices.

It's pretty much a given that next week's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference will bring new versions of MacOS and iOS. The real question is just how much convergence there will be between the 2 operating systems. From a report: The Mac remains popular even as the bulk of Apple's business is now selling phones and tablets, both of which have been increasing in computing power. Apple has long said it doesn't plan to merge its mobile and computer operating systems, but the two have been moving closer together recently. Apple offered a "sneak peek" last year at its multiyear effort (known internally as Marzipan) to allow programs written for iOS devices like the iPad to run on Macs with minimal changes.

Last year, the company said it was testing the technology first with its own apps, like Stocks and Voice Memos, and would offer other developers a chance to adapt their apps over time. Developers are champing at the bit for their taste of Marzipan, and WWDC could offer them a way in. Apple is likely to preview upgrades to its TV and watch operating systems and perhaps give a few more details on some of its new services, such as Arcade, a subscription iOS game service due out this fall.

Apple, which has already introduced "dark mode" in macOS, is widely expected to replicate this in its mobile operating system iOS this year. The move comes as a number of technology companies introduce dark mode in their apps and operating systems. But is it something everyone wants?

TidBITS: When text is white on a black background as it would be in Dark Mode, the whiteness of the lines lightens the edges of each line broadly on both sides, blurring the edge. If the thin lines of the text are black and the background is white, however, white from both sides washes over the entire line, lightening it evenly, so the edges aren't blurred. Blur is a bad thing because of how the human eye relies primarily on contrast when extracting detail from an image. In "Reality and Digital Pictures" (12 December 2005), Charles wrote: The eye does not see light per se, it sees changes in light -- contrast. If two objects do not contrast with one another, to the eye they meld into one. This fact makes controlling the contrast of adjacent details to be paramount in importance. He was focused on issues revolving around photographs, but contrast has been shown to be paramount in numerous studies of textual legibility as well.

Of course, contrast goes in both directions -- black on white and white on black both have high contrast. In the scientific literature, black on white is called "positive polarity," whereas white on black is called "negative polarity." Numerous studies over decades of research have found that positive polarity displays provide improved performance in a variety of areas. [...] Taptagaporn and Saito (1990, 1993) tracked changes in pupil size for different illumination levels as well as for the viewing of different visual targets, such as a cathode ray tube (CRT) display, script and keyboard. They found less visual fatigue as measured by the frequency of changes in pupil size when working was accomplished with a positive than with a negative polarity display. Likewise, Saito, Taptagaporn, and Salvendy (1993) found faster lens accommodation and thus faster focusing of the eye with positive than with negative polarity displays.

To summarize, a dark-on-light display like a Mac in Light Mode provides better performance in focusing of the eye, identifying letters, transcribing letters, text comprehension, reading speed, and proofreading performance, and it results in less visual fatigue and increased visual comfort. The benefits apply to both the young and the old, as that paper concludes: In an ageing society, age-related vision changes need to be considered when designing digital displays. Visual acuity testing and a proofreading task revealed a positive polarity advantage for younger and older adults. Dark characters on light background lead to better legibility and are strongly recommended independent of observer's age.

Today, Emtek pulls the plug on BlackBerry Messenger. From a report: The company announced last month that it would shut down the consumer service, which has been steadily losing users and failing to attract new ones. As a consolation for diehard fans, BlackBerry opened BBM Enterprise, its enterprise-grade encrypted Messenger (BBMe), for personal use. That's available on Android, iOS, Windows and Mac. Three years ago, the company set out to reinvigorate BBM consumer service, but those efforts fell flat. "We poured our hearts into making this a reality, and we are proud of what we have built to date," BlackBerry wrote on its blog. "The technology industry however, is very fluid, and in spite of our substantial efforts, users have moved on to other platforms, while new users proved difficult to sign on."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft has spent years pushing developers to create special apps for the company's Universal Windows Platform (UWP), and today, it's putting the final nail in the UWP coffin. Microsoft is finally allowing game developers to bring full native Win32 games to the Microsoft Store, meaning the many games that developers publish on popular stores like Steam don't have to be rebuilt for UWP.

This is a big shift for Microsoft's Windows app store, particularly because games are one of the most popular forms of apps that are downloaded from app stores. Previously, developers were forced to publish games for Windows 10 through the Universal Windows Platform, which simply doesn't have the same level of customization that game developers have come to expect from Windows over the years. The writing has been on the wall for UWP for months now. Microsoft recently revealed its effort to switch the company's Edge browser to Chromium and away from UWP to make it available on Windows 7, Windows 8, and macOS. Microsoft's Joe Belfiore admitted in an interview with The Verge earlier this month that UWP was a "headwind" for Edge. "It's not that UWP is bad, but UWP is not a 35-year-old mature platform that a ridiculously huge amount of apps have been written to," Belfiore said at the time. Microsoft even recently put its touch-friendly UWP versions of Office on hold, preferring to focus on the web, iOS, Android, and its desktop apps instead. Office was always the centerpiece for UWP and a good example of how to build a more demanding app on Microsoft's new platform. Microsoft is finally listening to app and game developers and not trying to force UWP on them anymore. "Ultimately, this is good news for both developers and Windows users," the report concludes. "We might now start to see more games in the Microsoft Store that work how PC gamers expect them to and hopefully more apps."

Four years after 3D Touch debuted on the iPhone 6s, the pressure-sensitive feature appears to be on the chopping block. From a report: Last week, in a research note shared with MacRumors, a team of Barclays analysts "confirmed" that 3D Touch "will be eliminated" in all 2019 iPhones, as they predicted back in August 2018. The analysts gathered this information from Apple suppliers following a trip to Asia earlier this month. This isn't the first time we've heard this rumor. The Wall Street Journal said the same thing back in January. Apple already replaced 3D Touch with Haptic Touch on the iPhone XR in order to achieve a nearly edge-to-edge LCD on the device, and it is likely the feature will be expanded to all 2019 iPhones. Haptic Touch is simply a marketing name for a long press combined with haptic feedback from the Taptic Engine. Apple commentator John Gruber adds: 3D Touch is a great idea but Apple never rolled it out well, and it was never discoverable. I wouldn't be surprised if most people with 3D Touch-enabled iPhones have no idea it exists. In and of itself, the lack of discoverability isn't necessarily a problem. That's how power user features often work. Right-clicking on the Mac, for example, is in the same boat. What 3D Touch never got right is that power-user shortcuts should be just thatâ-- shortcuts for tasks with more obvious ways to do them. Now imagine if right-clicking only worked on certain high-end Macs, but didn't work on others. That's what happened with 3D Touch.

I think it should have always been a shortcut for a long-press, pure and simple. Just a faster way to long-press. But because 3D Touch is not just a shortcut for a long-press, but is not available on any iPad nor many iPhones, developers could never count on it, so they never really did anything with it. It doesn't get used much because there's not much you can do with it.

As it faces both an antitrust lawsuit with huge implications and a formal EU investigation over its App Store tactics, Apple today defended itself against Spotify and other critics of the company's massively successful software storefront. From a report: "Today, the App Store is more vibrant and innovative than ever, offering equal opportunities to developers to deliver their apps and services across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch," reads a new page at Apple's website titled "App Store -- Principles and Practices." "We're proud of the store we've built and the way we've built it." Apple says it has paid out $120 billion to App Store developers worldwide since the platform launched, and the company again touts the quick approval process and efficient work of its app review team, which now "represents 81 languages across three time zones." Sixty percent of the approximately 100,000 apps and app updates reviewed each week are approved, with rejections mostly stemming from "minor bugs, followed by privacy concerns." Apple notes that anyone who feels that they were unjustly rejected can have their situation looked at by the App Store Review Board.

But the most interesting parts of this new site relate to competition. In one section, Apple goes over the core, built-in apps on iOS and lists the many popular third-party options that are available from the App Store in each category as alternatives. The company fails to mention that none of these apps can be chosen as the default messaging app, maps service, email client, web browser, or music player. That limitation isn't always a deal-breaker -- just ask WhatsApp, which is more popular than iMessage in many countries -- but it still gives Apple's services an advantage. [...] The message here seems to be that if companies don't like Apple's policies, they've got other options. Go find your riches on Android or make a Roku app.

Amidst an escalating trade war and political tensions with the US, Beijing officials have decided to develop a custom operating system that will replace the Windows OS on computers used by the Chinese military. From a report: The decision, while not made official through the government's normal press channels, was reported earlier this month by Canada-based military magazine Kanwa Asian Defence. Per the magazine, Chinese military officials won't be jumping ship from Windows to Linux but will develop a custom OS. Thanks to the Snowden, Shadow Brokers, and Vault7 leaks, Beijing officials are well aware of the US' hefty arsenal of hacking tools, available for anything from smart TVs to Linux servers, and from routers to common desktop operating systems, such as Windows and Mac. Since these leaks have revealed that the US can hack into almost anything, the Chinese government's plan is to adopt a "security by obscurity" approach and run a custom operating system that will make it harder for foreign threat actors -- mainly the US -- to spy on Chinese military operations.

Veteran software developer firm Panic, which has made its name through high-end Mac software as well as titles such as Firewatch, is expanding its work in games and moving in a very unexpected direction. This week, Panic unveiled Playdate, a tiny, yellow Game Boy-like device with a black-and-white screen, a few chunky buttons, and... a hand crank for controlling quirky games. From a report: Playdate is adorable and exciting and fun and technically impressive. They're making their own hardware (in conjunction with Swedish device makers Teenage Engineering). They wrote their own OS (there's no Linux). It has a high resolution 400 x 240 black and white display with no backlighting. It has a crank. It's going to cost only $149 -- $149! -- and that includes a "season" of 12 games from an amazing roster of beloved video game creators, delivered every Monday for 12 weeks. The idea of a new upstart, a company the size of Panic -- with only software experience at that -- jumping into the hardware game with a brand new platform harkens back to the '80s and '90s. But even back then, a company like, say, General Magic or Palm, was VC-backed and aspired to be a titan. To be the next Atari or Commodore or Apple.

In today's world all the new computing devices and platforms come from huge companies. Apple of course. All the well-known Android handset makers building off an OS provided by Google. Sony. Nintendo. Panic is almost cheating in a way because they're tiny. The Playdate platform isn't competing with the state of the art. It's not a retro platform, per se, but while it has an obviously nostalgic charm it is competing only on its own terms. Its only goal is to be fun. And aspects of Playdate are utterly modern: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, apps and software updates delivered over-the-air. They're taking advantage of an aspect of today's world that is brand new -- the Asian supply chain, the cheapness of Asian manufacturing, the cheapness of CPU and GPU cycles that allows things like Raspberry Pi to cost just $35.

Apple is refreshing its top laptops again by announcing newly updated specs for its 15-inch and 13-inch MacBook Pro models. It's bringing faster Intel processors and some slight changes to the much-maligned keyboard that Apple says should reduce issues. From a report: The biggest changes are coming to the 15-inch model, which is getting Intel's 9th Gen Core processors. The base model now starts with a 2.6GHz, 6-core i7 processor, which can turbo boost up to 4.5GHz. The next-step-up model is getting a 2.3GHz, 8-core i9 processor -- the first ever on a MacBook -- which can turbo boost up to 4.8GHz.

And for those of you who want the most power possible, Apple will also offer a custom top configuration of an even more powerful 8-core i9 chip with a 2.4GHz base speed, which can boost all the way up to 5.0GHz for what Apple calls "the fastest Mac notebook ever." The 13-inch Touch Bar models are getting similar (albeit less exciting) processor refreshes: the base model now comes with a 2.4GHz 8th Gen quad-core i5 processor that can boost to 4.1GHz.

Mozilla today launched Firefox 67 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. From a report: The 10th release since Mozilla's big Firefox Quantum launch in November 2017 doubles down on performance and privacy. Firefox 67 includes deprioritizing least commonly used features, suspending unused tabs, faster startup, blocking of cryptomining and fingerprinting, Private Browsing improvements, voice input in the Android search widget, and more. [...] Firefox 67 is better at performing tasks at the optimal time, resulting in faster "painting" of the page. Specifically, the browser deprioritizes least commonly used features and delays set Timeout to prioritize scripts for things you need. Mozilla says Instagram, Amazon, and Google searches now execute between 40% and 80% faster. Firefox also now scans for alternative style sheets after page load and doesn't load the auto-fill module unless there is a form to complete. Next, Firefox 67 detects if your computer's memory is running low (under 400MB) and suspends unused tabs. If you do click on a tab that you haven't used or looked at in a while, it will reload where you left off. Finally, Firefox 67 promises faster startup for users that customized their browser with an add-on.

Microsoft today announced the launch of a preview or canary build of its Microsoft Edge browser designed for the macOS operating system. Microsoft Edge for macOS can be installed from the Microsoft Edge Insider site on compatible Macs. MacRumors reports: Microsoft says that the initial build available today includes several interface changes to meld the Microsoft design language with the design language of macOS: "Examples of this include a number of tweaks to match macOS conventions for fonts, menus, keyboard shortcuts, title casing, and other areas. You will continue to see the look and feel of the browser evolve in future releases as we continue to experiment, iterate and listen to customer feedback. We encourage you to share your feedback with us using the 'Send feedback' smiley."

Exclusive user experiences for macOS are also coming in the future, such as "useful and contextual actions" for the Touch Bar on Touch Bar-compatible Macs. Trackpad gestures will also be supported. To use the new macOS version of Microsoft Edge, a Mac running macOS 10.12 or later is required.

An anonymous reader writes: At its Build 2018 developer conference a year ago, Microsoft previewed Visual Studio IntelliCode, which uses AI to offer intelligent suggestions that improve code quality and productivity. In April, Microsoft launched Visual Studio 2019 for Windows and Mac. At that point, IntelliCode was still an optional extension that Microsoft was openly offering as a preview. But at Build 2019 earlier this month, Microsoft shared that IntelliCode's capabilities are now generally available for C# and XAML in Visual Studio 2019 and for Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Python in Visual Studio Code. Microsoft also now includes IntelliCode by default in Visual Studio 2019. IntelliCode has come a long way since May 2018, but Microsoft is only getting started. When it comes to using AI to aid developers, the company wants to help at every step of the way, according to Amanda Silver, a director of Microsoft's developer division.

"If you look at the entire application developer lifecycle, from code review to testing to continuous integration, and so on, there are opportunities at every single stage for machine learning to help," Silver told VentureBeat. "IntelliCode is, very broadly, the notion that we want to take artificial intelligence -- and really machine learning techniques -- and allow that to make developers and development teams more productive. "IntelliCode is really only at the early stages -- authoring and helping to focus code reviews. But over time, we really think that we can apply it to the entire application developer lifecycle."

Microsoft teased its Edge browser for macOS yesterday, but now, download links have appeared online a little early. From a report: Twitter user WalkingCat discovered official Microsoft download links to both the daily Chromium-powered Canary builds of Edge for Mac [warning: direct download link] and the weekly Dev builds [warning: direct download link]. Microsoft has been working to support Mac keyboard shortcuts, and it has been experimenting with button placement so its browser looks and feels like a Mac app. Microsoft is also adding in Touch Bar support, with options for media control sliders and the ability to switch tabs from the Touch Bar. Rounded corners for tabs are also available in the macOS Edge version, and Microsoft is planning to bring this same UI to Windows.

hooligun shares a report from Phys.Org: To kill bacteria in the blood, our immune system relies on nanomachines that can open deadly holes in their targets. UCL scientists have now filmed these nanomachines in action, discovering a key bottleneck in the process which helps to protect our own cells. [...] For this study, the researchers mimicked how these deadly holes are formed by the membrane attack complex (MAC) using a model bacterial surface. By tracking each step of the process, they found that shortly after each hole started to form, the process stalled, offering a reprieve for the body's own cells. The team say the process pauses as 18 copies of the same protein are needed to complete a hole. Initially, there's only one copy which inserts into the bacterial surface, after which the other copies of the protein slot into place much more rapidly.

To film the immune system in action at nanometer resolution and at a few seconds per frame, the scientists used atomic force microscopy. This type of microscopy uses an ultrafine needle to feel rather than see molecules on a surface, similar to a blind person reading Braille. The needle repeatedly scans the surface to produce an image that refreshes fast enough to track how immune proteins get together and cut into the bacterial surface. The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

New submitter Schnapple writes: Back in 2009, id Software put Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM on the App Store, but once iOS 11 started phasing out 32-bit apps, they stopped working. Since their source code was published under the GPL, I went in and fixed them up so they would run on modern devices, and also added game controller support and ported them to tvOS so they could run on Apple TV. Then over the last year I did the same for DOOM II and Final DOOM, Quake, Quake II, Quake III: Arena, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and finally DOOM 3. I've chronicled the adventures on my blog. I can't publish them to the App Store for obvious reasons and you'll need to provide your own copy of the game data, but if anyone's interested in trying them out on Apple devices I've posted the sources to GitHub.

In a blog post detailing new features coming to Edge, Microsoft has started teasing what Edge will look like on macOS. The Verge reports: During the company's Build 2019 developer conference, Microsoft is announcing new features for Edge on Windows and teasing the upcoming macOS release. We understand that the release will be available very soon, and Mac users should be able to access both the Canary and Dev builds of Edge just like Windows. Microsoft's implementation of Chromium on Edge has so far seen good performance improvements and reliability on Windows. It's not clear if we'll see similar improvements on the macOS side versus Chrome, but at least it gives Mac users another Chromium option with some Microsoft services and sync integration. MacRumors notes that Edge "will be Microsoft's first web browser on the Mac since Internet Explorer received its last feature update nearly 16 years ago."

Krystalo writes: At its developer conference Build today, Microsoft previewed new Visual Studio features for remote work, the .NET roadmap, and launched ML.NET 1.0. In April, Microsoft launched Visual Studio 2019 for Windows and Mac. Two notable features were Visual Studio Live Share, a real-time collaboration tool included with Visual Studio 2019, and Visual Studio IntelliCode, an extension offering AI-assisted code completion. At Build 2019, Microsoft shared that IntelliCode's capabilities are now generally available for C# and XAML in Visual Studio 2019 and for Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Python in Visual Studio Code. And IntelliCode is now included by default in Visual Studio 2019, starting in version 16.1 Preview 2. The company also previewed an algorithm that can locally track your edits -- repeated edit detection -- and suggest other places where you need that same change. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft is experimenting with features that let developers work from anywhere, on any device. The company today announced a private preview for three such new capabilities: Remote-powered developer tools, cloud-hosted developer environments, and a browser-based web companion tool. If the future of work is remote, Microsoft wants to be ready.

[...] Microsoft also announced that it is skipping .NET 4 to avoid confusion with the .NET Framework, which has been on version 4 for years. Going forward, developers will be able to use .NET to target Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, tvOS, watchOS, WebAssembly, and more. .NET Core 3 will be succeeded by .NET 5, featuring new .NET APIs, runtime capabilities, and language features. Calling it .NET 5 makes it the highest version Microsoft has ever shipped and indicates that the company hopes it is the future for the .NET platform. .NET Core 3 closes much of the remaining capability gap with .NET Framework 4.8, enabling Windows Forms, WPF, and Entity Framework 6. .NET 5 will build on this work, Microsoft says, combining .NET Core, .NET Framework, Xamarin, and Mono (the original cross-platform implementation of .NET) into a single platform. .NET 5 will provide both Just-in-Time (JIT) and Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compilation models. JIT has better performance for desktop/server workloads and development environments. AOT has a faster startup and a small footprint, which is required for mobile and IoT devices. .NET 5 will offer one unified toolchain supported by new SDK project types and a flexible deployment model (side-by-side and self-contained EXEs).

Microsoft is unveiling a number of new features for its upcoming Edge Chromium browser today. From a report: The first big addition is a new "IE Mode" for Edge that will allow businesses to load old sites directly in the new Edge Chromium browser, using the Internet Explorer rendering engine. Microsoft is building IE directly into Edge for this purpose, so businesses aren't forced to directly use IE for ancient internal sites. "What we're going to do is make this totally seamless," explains Microsoft's Joe Belfiore, in an interview with The Verge. Currently, the existing version of Edge will open Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 10, which has a separate interface, favorites, and doesn't work well on modern websites. This new IE mode literally loads the content within Edge, so you'd never be able to tell the difference, apart from a small IE logo on the tab that indicates that this mode has been enabled.

This new IE mode is designed exclusively for businesses, and Belfiore admits it's a big pitch to get them to use Edge Chromium instead of a combination of Chrome and Internet Explorer. "We've got a browser for you that updates regularly that will go on Windows 7 and the Mac that handles things like IT customization of the New Tab page and Microsoft Search, and IE built-in," says Belfiore. Microsoft is also allowing businesses to customize the New Tab page for Edge Chromium. This will involve a custom company logo, the option to load some sites into the top tabs, and integration with Microsoft Search and Office 365.