MacRumors

Apple's HomePod accounted for just 5 percent of the estimated 76 million smart speaker installed base in the United States in the second quarter of 2019, according to new data shared today by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP).

Amazon continues to be the number one smart speaker vendor in the U.S., followed by Google. Amazon Echo devices accounted for 70 percent of smart speakers in the United States during the quarter, while Google Home devices accounted for 25 percent.

The smart speaker market has seen strong growth, with the U.S. installed base of 76 million speakers up nine percent from 70 million units in the March 2019 quarter. Growth is also up significantly compared to last June, when there were an estimated 50 million smart speakers in the United States.

"While the biggest growth in the market for smart speakers is in the holiday fourth quarter, Amazon Echo and Google Home continues to grow their installed bases in the past couple of quarters," said Josh Lowitz, Partner and Co-Founder of CIRP. "The market grew by 9% in the second quarter, and more than 50% year over year. Including Apple HomePod, all three major producers have maintained steady shares of the market in the past year. Continued aggressive pricing of the entry-level models seems to continue to encourage new customers to try a smart speaker and existing owners to consider adding more devices to their home.

Most people who own smart speakers have less expensive models like the Echo Dot and the Google Home Mini, with these units accounting for more than 50 percent of smart speakers in the U.S. during the quarter.

Though Apple has dropped the price of the HomePod from $349 to $299, the smart speaker is still significantly more expensive than speaker options from Google and Amazon, which has left Apple struggling to gain a foothold in the market.

Amazon's Echo Dot, for example, is priced at $50, but it is often available at even lower prices during sales and promotions. The same goes for the Google Home Mini, which is also priced at $49.

Rumors have suggested that Apple is considering a more affordable version of the ‌HomePod‌ that could be priced as low as $150, but it's not clear if and when Apple might release such a speaker.

CIRP's data is estimated and is based on a survey of 500 U.S. owners of Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple ‌HomePod‌ devices surveyed from July 1 to July 10 who owned one of the devices as of June 30, 2019.

Apple's rumored 16-inch MacBook Pro will be released in the third quarter, aka early fall, according to Taiwanese research firm TrendForce.

An excerpt from TrendForce's press release on notebook market share:

According to the 3Q outlook for notebook shipments, demand for Chromebooks remains strong thanks to the back-to-school period; at the same time, we see new products hitting shelves, such as Apple's 16-inch MacBook, Dell's products with 16:10 aspect ratio, Asus's dual-screen laptop, as well as various gaming laptops in increasingly hot demand.

The report describes the notebook as a 16-inch MacBook, but this very likely refers to the 16-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌, as all other reports have indicated.

TrendForce is at least the fifth source to claim that a 16-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ is coming in the fall, alongside TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, IHS Markit analyst Jeff Lin, DigiTimes, and the Economic Daily News, but reports have been conflicting about a September or October release month.

In the fall, Apple typically unveils new Macs in October. The company has hosted Mac- or iPad-centric media events in October in five of the past seven years, including 2016 and 2018, allowing it to focus on the iPhone, Apple Watch, and sometimes the Apple TV and accessories at its September event.

The 16-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ will feature an all-new design, including a more reliable scissor mechanism keyboard, according to ‌Ming-Chi Kuo‌. The notebook is also rumored to feature narrower bezels, perhaps allowing the 16-inch display to fit in a notebook with a similar physical size as the current 15-inch model.

Meanwhile, Jeff Lin believes the 16-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ will feature a 3,072×1,920 resolution and be powered by Intel's 9th-generation Coffee Lake Refresh processors, suggesting the notebook will be configurable with up to an 8-core Core i9 processor in line with the latest 15-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌.

Last year, Apple hosted its Mac and iPad Pro event on October 30, so we could be two to three months away from the 16-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ reveal.

Samsung has spent years releasing ads that mock Apple's decision to remove the 3.5mm headphone jack from the iPhone, a move that began with the ‌iPhone‌ 7 in 2016. Now that Samsung has removed the headphone jack from the Galaxy A8 and Galaxy Note 10, the company has quietly deleted these mocking ads from some of its YouTube channels.

As discovered by Business Insider, the commercial "Growing Up" has now been removed from the main Samsung YouTube channel and the Samsung Mobile USA channel. The ad was released by Samsung in November 2017 as push back against the ‌iPhone‌ X and to promote the Galaxy Note 8, and similar anti-dongle ads released in 2018 have also disappeared this year. This can be seen in the dead links on our article for the "Ingenious" ads from July 2018.

The original "Growing Up" ad is still available on the Samsung Malaysia channel, however, and can be seen below. The ad depicts the life of a young man who finally decides to switch from Apple to Samsung, with one of the main points of contention being the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Samsung has historically used a mocking strategy when it comes to advertising its own products, taking to pointing out the downsides of its competition in an effort to sell Galaxy smartphones. The company has also made fun of iPhones for their speed, Apple's Genius Bar, the Apple Pencil, and much more.

Samsung just announced the Note 10 and Note 10+ yesterday, including an AMOLED Cinematic Infinity Display (the Galaxy Note 10+ features the largest display yet in a Note device). The Cinematic Infinity Displays are nearly bezel free and include a small chin at the bottom and a single hole punch camera cutout. There is also an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, face recognition, and -- of course -- no headphone jack.

Apple this week disclosed that 88 percent of active iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices are running iOS 12, as measured by the App Store on August 6, 2019. iOS 12 adoption continues to outpace iOS 11, which was installed on 85 percent of active devices as of September 3, 2018, according to Apple.

The updated stats, highlighted by Rene Ritchie, also reveal that seven percent of active devices continue to run iOS 11, with five percent using an earlier version. This includes older devices that are incompatible with the latest iOS versions.

iOS 12 outpacing iOS 11 in adoption is not much of a surprise, as iOS 11 was plagued by several problems last year, including at least three bugs that could crash the entire system, a HomeKit vulnerability, an iPhone camera autofocus issue, autocorrect bugs, the iPhone X glitching in cold weather, and more.

The high-profile iPhone performance management controversy also likely had an adverse impact on iOS 11 upgrade rates.

In January 2018, multiple reports claimed that Apple delayed several new features planned for iOS 12 to focus on performance, stability, and bug fixes, and the software update has indeed proven to be much more reliable.

Looking ahead, Apple is now in the latter stages of beta testing iOS 13, which will be publicly released in September.

Apple has activated a "dormant software lock" on its latest iPhones to discourage battery replacements that aren't undertaken by Apple, according to iFixit.

The teardown group has discovered that an iPhone XS, ‌iPhone‌ XR, or ‌iPhone‌ XS Max that has had its battery swapped by anyone other than Apple or an Apple authorized service provider will now display a message saying their battery needs servicing.

If you replace the battery in the newest iPhones, a message indicating you need to service your battery appears in Settings > Battery, next to Battery Health. The "Service" message is normally an indication that the battery is degraded and needs to be replaced. The message still shows up when you put in a brand new battery, however. Here's the bigger problem: our lab tests confirmed that even when you swap in a genuine Apple battery, the phone will still display the "Service" message.

[...]

Put simply, Apple is locking batteries to their iPhones at the factory, so whenever you replace the battery yourself—even if you're using a genuine Apple battery from another iPhone—it will still give you the “Service” message. The only way around this is—you guessed it—paying Apple money to replace your iPhone battery for you.

The message appears in both iOS 12 and iOS 13 beta, and prevents the user from accessing the Battery Health features. Instead they see an "Important Battery Message" which reads: "Unable to verify this ‌iPhone‌ has a genuine Apple battery. Health information not available for this battery."

iFixit notes that the message doesn't appear to affect the functionality of the battery, but makes it harder to know when a replacement battery installed by a third-party needs to be replaced.

YouTube channel The Art of Repair has discovered the source of the message to be a Texas Instruments microcontroller installed on the battery itself, which authenticates the battery as an Apple one and provides the ‌iPhone‌ with information about battery capacity and temperature.

Apple and other authorized service providers likely use Apple's own RepairCal diagnostics software to reset the "Service" status when it undertakes an ‌iPhone‌ battery replacement – an in-house procedure that's obviously not available to a third-party.

iFixit says the message appears designed to deter battery replacements using third-party repair kits, like the one sold by iFixit, and to discourage customers from getting a third-party repair shop to swap out their ‌iPhone‌ battery.

Apple would probably argue it is doing it out of safety concerns surrounding the replacement of swollen or damaged batteries. Nonetheless, it places further restrictions on the options available to ‌iPhone‌ users looking to get their battery replaced by anyone except Apple.

The practice harks back to a more damaging third-party ‌iPhone‌ repair controversy: Error 53, widely publicized in 2016, caused some ‌iPhone‌ 6 users who had the Home buttons on their iPhones fixed by a non-Apple technician using non-original parts to see their iPhones bricked following a software update.

When the error code first surfaced, Apple said that error 53 was a protective security feature meant to prevent "malicious" third-party components from potentially compromising a user's ‌iPhone‌.

However, after public outcry, Apple released a software update restoring functionality to bricked iPhones. Following the software update to unbrick iPhones, Apple claimed that the error 53 issue was meant to be a factory test and never should have impacted consumer devices.

Update: According to an Apple service document obtained by MacRumors, Battery Health info is unavailable for any ‌iPhone‌ XS, XS Max, and XR that has a non-genuine battery and is running iOS 12.1 or later.

Apple has partnered with pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and health startup Evidation to determine whether data collected from the iPhone and Apple Watch can be used to detect early signs of dementia.

A research paper published this week and shared by CNBC lists researchers from Eli Lilly, Apple, and Evidation Health. The paper, called "Developing Measures of Cognitive Impairment in the Real World from Consumer-Grade Multimodal Sensor Streams," explores whether sensor data and activity info from smart watch devices can be mined for "physiological and behavior signatures of cognitive impairment."

The ubiquity and remarkable technological progress of wearable consumer devices and mobile-computing platforms (smart phone, smart watch, tablet), along with the multitude of sensor modalities available, have enabled continuous monitoring of patients and their daily activities. Such rich, longitudinal information can be mined for physiological and behavioral signatures of cognitive impairment and provide new avenues for detecting MCI in a timely and cost-effective manner.

In this work, we present a platform for remote and unobtrusive monitoring of symptoms related to cognitive impairment using several consumer-grade smart devices. We demonstrate how the platform has been used to collect a total of 16TB of data during the Lilly Exploratory Digital Assessment Study, a 12-week feasibility study which monitored 31 people with cognitive impairment and 82 without cognitive impairment in free living conditions. We describe how careful data unification, time-alignment, and imputation techniques can handle missing data rates inherent in real-world settings and ultimately show utility of these disparate data in differentiating symptomatics from healthy controls based on features computed purely from device data.

According to the abstract, 31 people with cognitive impairment and 82 without cognitive impairment were monitored over a 12-week period, with 16TB of data collected. The study claims that the data was able to be used to differentiate people with early signs of cognitive impairment from those who were healthy.

People who had symptoms of cognitive decline typed more slowly, typed less regularly, relied more heavily on support apps, and sent fewer text messages. The study did not reach long-term conclusions as more analysis is needed.

In a statement to CNBC, Evidation co-founder Christine Lemke said that data collected from the ‌iPhone‌, Apple Watch, and Beddit sleep monitors was used for the study. Apple acquired the company behind the Beddit sleep monitor back in 2017.

"With this research, we looked at how everyday behavior data, such as those captured by iPhones, Apple Watches, and Beddit sleep monitors, may be effective in differentiating between individuals with mild cognitive impairment and early Alzheimer's disease, and those without symptoms."

Early detection of dementia is important because an early diagnosis can allow for better management of symptoms and quality of life improvements even though the progression of the disease can't be stopped. According to the World Health Organization, 50 million people around the world have dementia, with close to 10 million new cases surfacing every year.

Apple is facing a class action lawsuit [PDF] for employing contractors to listen to and grade some anonymized Siri conversations for the purpose of quality control and product improvement.

Apple's ‌Siri‌ practices were highlighted in a recent report where one of the contractors claimed that Apple employees evaluating ‌Siri‌ recordings often hear confidential medical information, drug deals, and other private information when ‌Siri‌ is activated accidentally.

The lawsuit, filed in a Northern California court today (and shared by CNBC's Kif Leswing), accuses Apple of "unlawful and intentional recording of individuals' confidential communications without their consent," violating California privacy laws when accidental ‌Siri‌ activations are recorded and evaluated by humans.

Siri Devices are only supposed to record conversations preceded by the utterance of "Hey Siri" (a "wake phrase") or through a specific gesture, such as pressing the home button on a device for a specified amount of time. California law prohibits the recording of oral communications without the consent of all parties to the communication.

Individuals who have purchased or used Siri Devices and interacted with Siri have not consented to Apple recording conversations where "Hey Siri" was not uttered or where they did not otherwise perform a gesture intending to activate Siri, such as pressing and holding down the home button on a device for a certain period of time.

As outlined in its privacy policies, Apple collects some anonymized ‌Siri‌ recordings for the purpose of improving ‌Siri‌ and, presumably, cutting down on accidental ‌Siri‌ activations. These recordings are analyzed by humans and can include details recorded when ‌Siri‌ mishears a "Hey ‌Siri‌" trigger word.

The lawsuit claims that Apple has not informed consumers that they are "regularly being recorded without consent," though it also highlights Apple's privacy policy where Apple does state that such data can be used for improving its services.

The plaintiffs in the case, one of whom is a minor, claim to own an iPhone XR and an ‌iPhone‌ 6 that they would not have purchased had they known that their ‌Siri‌ recordings were stored for evaluation. The plaintiffs are seeking class action status for all individuals who were recorded by a ‌Siri‌ device without their consent from October 12, 2011 to the present.

The lawsuit asks for Apple to obtain consent before recording a minor's ‌Siri‌ interactions, to delete all existing recordings, and to prevent unauthorized recordings in the future. It also asks for $5,000 in damages per violation.

Apple has suspended its Siri evaluation program right now as it reviews the processes that are in place in light of the contractor's claims. Prior to the suspension of the program, Apple said that a small, random subset (less than 1%) of daily ‌Siri‌ requests are analyzed for improving ‌Siri‌ and dictation, with requests not associated with a user's Apple ID.

Apple in the future plans to release a software update that will let ‌Siri‌ users opt out of having their ‌Siri‌ queries included in the evaluation process, something that's not possible at the current time. All collected ‌Siri‌ data can be cleared from an iOS device by turning ‌Siri‌ off and then on again, while accidental recordings can be stopped by disabling "Hey ‌Siri‌."

Update: We were able to go hands-on with the new Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Note 10+, so make sure to check out our video for a closer look at Samsung's newest flagship devices.

Samsung this afternoon unveiled its newest flagship smartphones, which are in the Galaxy Note family. The Galaxy Note 10, for the first time in a Note device, is available in two sizes: 6.3 (Galaxy Note 10) and 6.8 inches (Galaxy Note 10+).

Both of the smartphones feature an AMOLED Cinematic Infinity Display (2280x1080 for Note 10 and 3040x1440 for Note 10+), with the Galaxy Note 10+ featuring the largest display yet in a Note device. The Cinematic Infinity Displays are close to bezel free, with a small chin and the bottom and a single hole punch camera cutout. There is an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor for biometric authentication, plus Samsung's face recognition, and no headphone jack.

The Samsung DeX feature that makes it easier for Samsung users to swap between a phone and a PC or Mac now allows for files to be dragged and dropped between devices when connected via USB. Mobile apps can be used with a mouse and keyboard through DeX, and the Galaxy Note 10 also has a feature for a one click connection to a Windows 10 PC.

The Galaxy Note 10 features new S Pen technologies, including a redesigned, streamlined look for the pen itself. A new handwriting to text feature lets users write notes that can be converted to digital text in the Samsung Notes app, and Air actions are supported, allowing for customizable gesture-based controls with the S Pen.

Samsung added a triple-lens camera to the Note 10 and a quad camera to the Note 10+. The Note 10 features a 16-megapixel ultra wide-angle camera, a 12-megapixel wide-angle camera, and a 12-megapixel telephoto camera. The Note 10+ has the same lenses but also adds a new DepthVision Camera.

There are new photo and video capabilities in the Galaxy Note 10, including a Live Focus Video option that adds depth-of-field adjustments to video and a Zoom-In Mic for amplifying audio. An improved super steady mode better stabilizes footage to cut down on shakiness.

A Screen Recorder feature captures what's on the screen for gamers, and a picture-in-picture feature can be used to add reactions while the S Pen can be used for annotations. Night mode, which brightens up dark photos, now works with the 10-megapixel front-facing camera.

An AR Doodle feature lets Note 10 users customize their photos with dynamic drawings, effects, and animations, while the new 3D Scanner (Note 10+) can take a scan of an object and turn it into a movable 3D rendering.

The smartphones are equipped with 7-nanometer 64-bit Octa-core processors, with the Note 10 offering 8GB RAM and 256GB of internal storage. The Note 10+ features 12GB RAM and up to 512GB internal storage. Samsung says the Note 10 devices are equipped with "the world's slimmest vapor chamber cooling system" for better gameplay performance.

There's a 3,500mAh battery in the Galaxy Note 10, and a 4,300mAh battery in the Galaxy Note 10+.

Other features include super fast charging with 45W wired charging capability for the Note 10+, Wireless PowerShare for charging other Qi-based wireless chargers with the Galaxy Note 10, and 5G options for fast speeds. The Galaxy Note 10+ is available in a 5G variant for those who want 5G speeds, and the LTE models offer up to 2Gb/s download speeds and 150Mb/s upload speeds.

Samsung is offering the Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10+ in Aura Glow, Aura White and Aura Black. The Galaxy Note 10 is priced starting at $949.99, while Galaxy Note 10+ pricing starts at $1099.99. Samsung will begin selling the Galaxy Note 10 and 10+ on August 23, with pre-orders set to kick off on August 8. The Galaxy Note 10+ 5G, priced at $1,299.99, will be a Verizon exclusive at launch. Samsung's livestream showing off the features of the new devices is available below.

Samsung's Galaxy Note 10 will compete with Apple's upcoming 2019 iPhones, which are set to offer triple-lens camera setups, bilateral wireless charging, faster processors, and more.

Apple today released the sixth beta of iOS 13 to developers, introducing new bug fixes and adding and refining various iOS 13 and iPadOS features.

In the sixth beta, changes and updates are getting more minor than changes made in earlier betas, but beta 6 still has some notable additions that are worth highlighting.

- Dark Mode Control Center Toggle - There's a new Control Center toggle that lets you enable and disable Dark Mode with a tap.

- Folder Transparency - Apple has changed folder transparency in iOS 13 beta 6, making folder backgrounds better match the color of your background. Comparison image via the MR forums.

- Hide Link Previews - There's a new option when 3D Touching on a link on a webpage to Hide Link Previews, which disables link previews on a per site basis.

- Announce Messages - The Setting for allowing Siri to announce incoming text messages when connected to second-generation AirPods and some Beats headphones has been removed in iOS 13 beta 6.

- Three Finger Tap - You're now able to three finger tap anywhere in iOS to bring up undo, redo, cut, copy and paste icons, which may be a bug.

- Background Location Warnings - Apple warns iOS 13 users when apps are using their location in the background. In beta 6, the warning text has been tweaked slightly, and now reads "Do you want to continue to allow background location use?" instead of "Do you want to continue to allow this?"

- Bluetooth Permission Updates - When installing an and syncing a device over Bluetooth, Apple will warn that the app "may also use Bluetooth to know when you're nearby."

- Photos Splash Screen - There's now a splash screen highlighting the new features available in the Photos app in iOS 13.

- App Store Splash Screen - There's a new splash screen in the App Store app detailing Apple Arcade and the App Update changes in iOS 13.

- Analytics Privacy Policy - There's a new paragraph in Apple's analytics privacy policy: "If you agree to send Analytics information to Apple from multiple devices that use the same iCloud account, we may correlate some usage data about Apple apps across those devices by syncing using end-to-end encryption. We do this in a manner that does not identify you to Apple.

- Apple Pay Privacy Policy - Apple has slightly tweaked its Apple Pay privacy policy to mention location data collection for Apple Card: "‌Apple Pay‌ Merchant Identification: Your iPhone will use your current location to help provide more accurate merchant names when you use your physical ‌Apple Card‌."

- Location Privacy Policy - There's also a new addition to the location privacy policy: "System Customization: Your ‌iPhone‌ will customize system appearance, behaviors, and settings using your current location, for example by automatically enabling Smart Charging when you are at home. This customization data does not leave your device."

- Volume Tweaks - There are once again 16 volume increments instead of the 34 from the previous beta.

- LTE Icon - The LTE/4G icon is back to its regular size and is no longer larger to match the height of the LTE bars.

Know of a feature that's new in iOS 13 beta 6 that we left out? Make sure to let us know in the comments and we'll update this article. For more on what's new in iOS 13, make sure to check out our iOS 13 roundup.

Apple may have purchased image recognition startup Fashwell, a company that designed an engine able to recognize products in images to make photos shoppable.

Fashwell CEO Matthias Dantone, CSO Lukas Bossard, and CTO Michael Emmersberger all list Apple as an employer as of January 2019, suggesting an acquisition in late 2018.

Dantone's LinkedIn profile says that he works on Apple's machine learning team, while Bossard and Emmersberger are listed as machine learning managers at Apple.

Five of six other former Fashwell employees also now list Apple as an employer on their LinkedIn profiles, with many of those also on Apple's machine learning team. Fashwell's website is still up and running, but hasn't been updated since late 2018, and the same goes for the company's Twitter account.

Based on information shared on the Fashwell website, Fashwell developed a Visual Search tool to allow shoppers to search for products using an image.

FASHWELL's Visual Search is a search by image solution that we distribute through a flexible API. Add a camera icon to every search bar & allow your customers to shop with any image on your mobile applications and website.

Visual Search improves search success and prevents shop drop-offs, and it's 2x faster than text-based searches - leading to 35% m-o-m growth in usage, higher than any other user channel.

Fashwell's API also supported image tagging to make any image shoppable using its Virtual Search technology, making it easy for companies to auto-tag images with "speed, precision, and at scale." A product tagging API could be used to tag images with different attributes, such as category and design.

Fashwell also offered a visual recommendation tool, allowing image recognition to power product recommendations for product detail pages. Companies could use the feature to embed visually similar products on websites to recommend additional products to customers.

Apple could perhaps adopt Fashwell's technology for its Apple Store website and its ‌Apple Store‌ app in the future, improving the ‌Apple Store‌ shopping experience. We've emailed Apple for comment and will update this article if we hear back.

Apple has acquired several similar AI and machine learning companies over the course of the last few years, including Silk Labs, Laserlike, Perceptio, and more.

Update: Apple gained possession of the Fashwell.com domain name on May 1, 2020.

Apple today seeded the sixth betas of iOS 13 and iPadOS to developers for testing purposes, a little over a week after releasing the fifth betas and two months after unveiling the new operating system at the Worldwide Developers Conference.

Registered developers will need to download the profile for the iOS 13 and iPadOS betas from Apple's Developer Center. This beta, like earlier betas, can be downloaded over-the-air once the proper profile has been installed.

Apple split iOS 13 and iPadOS into separate updates in 2019, one designed for iPhone and one designed for iPad. iPadOS is identical to iOS 13 in almost every way, though there are some iPad-specific features such as new multitasking capabilities. For the most part, the two operating systems share the same features.

iOS 13 is a huge update with a long list of new features. Perhaps the most noticeable outward-facing change is a systemwide Dark Mode that changes the entire look of the operating system from light to dark, darkening everything from system elements to apps.

Apple overhauled the Photos app, introducing a new ‌Photos‌ tab that curates your entire ‌Photos‌ library and shows you a selection of highlights organized by day, month, or year, and there are revamped Photo editing tools.

For the first time, you can edit video right in the ‌Photos‌ app, cropping, rotating, applying filters, and adjusting lighting and color. There's a new High-Key Mono lighting effect, and for Portrait Lighting in general, intensity can be adjusted.

There's a less obtrusive volume HUD, a new Find My app that combines ‌Find My‌ ‌iPhone‌ and ‌Find My‌ Friends and lets you track your devices even with they don't have an LTE or WiFi connection.

A Sign In with Apple feature (not yet active) gives you a convenient and data safe way to sign into apps and websites, providing an alternative to Facebook and Google sign in options. Apple's even able to generate single-use randomized email addresses so you don't have to give your real info to apps and websites.

Maps features a new street-level "Look Around" mode and a Collections feature for making lists of places, Reminders has been entirely overhauled to make it more functional, there's a profile option in Messages along with new Memoji and Animoji stickers, and Siri has a new voice.

CarPlay in iOS 13 has been overhauled with a new look, multiple sets of AirPods (or Powerbeats Pro) can be connected to the same phone so you can share music with a friend, ‌Siri‌ on HomePod can detect multiple voices for multi-user support, and ‌HomePod‌ also supports Handoff.

There are a ton of additional new features and changes coming in iOS 13, and for a full rundown of what you can expect, you should check out our iOS 13 roundup. Each new beta brings new features and changes to iOS 13, and the fifth beta added a new option for adjusting the number of apps on the ‌iPad‌ Home screen, made adjustments to the volume, updated the look of the Share Sheet, and more.

The beta testing period will allow Apple to work out bugs ahead of the release of iOS 13 and iPadOS, and it will let developers build iOS 13 and iPadOS features into their apps ahead of a public release coming in the fall.

Apple today continued on with its "Shot on iPhone" series, uploading several new videos, but this time with a twist -- the videos are focused on ASMR, a popular YouTube trend that uses sound to evoke an "autonomous sensory meridian response."

Apple shared four videos in the series, all of which are between six and 10 minutes in length. The first, "Whispers from Ghost Forest," features a woman whispering about the legend of Ghost Forest.

The second video focuses on wood shop sounds, featuring a man turning a piece of wood into a work of art, while the third video features a man walking on a trail and crunching leaves and brush underfoot.

The fourth video, "A calm rain at camp," features the sound of rain pounding on various items at a campsite in the woods.

Apple has these videos labeled as ASMR Season 1 on its YouTube channel, which means more ASMR videos could potentially be coming. Apple also uses the tagline "Apple SMR" when introducing each video, and recommends people use headphones when watching.

These are the oddest of the "Shot on ‌iPhone‌" videos that Apple has shared, but each one was created using an ‌iPhone‌ (with additional hardware and equipment for the sound) and features impressive visuals to go along with the sound.