We’ve asked Apple for comment.

If Dashboard goes away for good, it’d represent a sad but unsurprising end. Apple introduced the feature way back in 2005, with OS X Tiger. It was a convenient way to check the weather or track your packages, but the appearance of the sidebar (not to mention smartphone notifications) reduced its usefulness. The decision to disable it by default in Yosemite didn’t help matters. Simply speaking, its exit wouldn’t be mourned too loudly — it served its purpose, but Apple and many Mac users have moved on.

After Apple wrapped its WWDC keynote today, the developers went to coding sessions and the press, well, mostly showed themselves out. As it happens, we later had a chance to see most of the new software in action in private demos. First, an important caveat: These demos were guided and hands-off, meaning we haven’t yet had a chance to install the software on our own devices and use it as our daily driver. But, until these platforms launch in beta this summer, it’s helpful to have had a chance to see these OSes in use, outside of what turned out to be a packed, fast-moving keynote. When Apple is demoing software on stage, you can easily blink and miss a mention of a new feature, or totally miss how it actually works.

In the video above, we take a look at macOS Catalina and three of its more notable features: Sidecar (for using an iPad as a secondary display); Project Catalyst (allowing developers to easily port over iOS apps to the Mac); and Voice Control, allowing people with limited mobility to fully navigate the operating system with voice commands. Obviously, we’ll be back this summer with a preview of the beta, followed by a full review of the complete and final software in the fall. For now, enjoy the extra visuals and when you’re done, check out our similar treatment of iOS 13 and the “new” (i.e., renamed) iPadOS.

Rather than dig into every single feature that’s going into iPadOS — we’re still trying to sort through all of them ourselves — we cooked up a handy video primer to walk you through some of the update’s most important features. That new home screen is nice and all, but improved multitasking, a new approach to file management and a much-improved web browsing experience in Safari go a long way in making the iPad feel like a machine worth using for work and play. With last year’s iPad Pros, Apple proved that there’s still a place in this world for high-end tablets. Now, with iPadOS coming soon, the quality of Apple’s tablet software finally seems to be catching up the company’s first-rate hardware.

On the potential of Sign in with Apple

Ray Walsh, data privacy expert at ProPrivacy.com: “The concept of being able to sign in without using a real email address is a step in the right direction for consumers. Being able to sign in without sharing a real email address removes one crucial bit of data from those service’s hands. However, web services still get to collect other crucial data from users when they visit their sites — which can still be used to track them. When you visit a website, that service automatically receives your IP address; this is an extremely valuable tracking tool. Thus, Sign in with Apple is only removing one small piece of trackable data from the equation.”

Dana Simberkoff, chief risk, privacy and information security officer at AvePoint: “[Sign in with Apple] represents another opportunity for Apple to use its long-standing commitment to privacy to enter a new market and to take some market share from their competitors that have been less privacy forward-thinking. If it’s done right, not only [is it] a win for Apple but also a win for consumers that may be able to take advantage of a more privacy-centric sign-in option. Apple CEO Tim Cook has frequently spoken about the company’s position against the collection of personal data. In particular, Cook has singled out the assembly of profiles of consumers for the purpose of targeting advertisements — the heart of how Google and Facebook make money.”

Matthew Hudnall, PhD, associate director and assistant professor of management information systems at the University of Alabama: “‘Sign in with Apple is a much needed feature that fits in well with [Apple’s] evolving user-centric ecosystem. [It] represents the first shift away from the traditional keychain paradigm to one where hardware verified biometric identities coupled with dynamic credential generation, storage, and verification remove the need for traditional passwords. While Apple is certainly not the only game in town trying to kill off passwords, they are definitely doing so in the manner with which we have come to expect from Apple, all or nothing.”

Florian Schaub, assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Information: “The ability to easily generate random email addresses and Apple handling the management of those credentials will make it much easier for consumers to protect their personal information when interacting with mobile apps and online services. It’s interesting to see Apple take on the well-established single sign-on offerings by Google, Facebook and others but with a focus on making it easier for people to protect their privacy. It will of course require you to trust Apple to stay true to their promise and not track or analyze with which services you have accounts and how often you log in to those.”

On whether Sign in with Apple is a viable, safer alternative to Facebook or Google’s sign-in options

Walsh: “Signing into a service automatically using Google or Facebook is seen as problematic because it allows a connection to be made between those services. This leads to data being shared across the platforms and can cause varying levels of corporate tracking to take place from Facebook/Google to the service in question and vice versa. Allowing Apple to sign you into a service simply connects the service to Apple rather than Google or Facebook. However, it is still allowing a connection to be made between two services that could lead to data being accessed and shared across those platforms. Thus, it really depends how much you trust Apple over Facebook or Google as to how much better having them sign you in really is.

My advice to consumers is for them to log in to all services directly each time; without connecting them to any third-party services. This will require an email address, but the consumer can simply use a burner email – or an alias provided by a secure email provider. This removes the privacy and security concerns associated with sharing their email address but also removes the bigger problem of giving cross-platform access to information across distinct platforms and services.”

Simberkoff: “The answer depends in part on the website and service for which you are registering. Arguably, a company like Apple may be better positioned to protect your identity and privacy than a number of smaller organizations and services that you might join and provide credentials to individually. Additionally, because consumers are often sloppy when it comes to creating accounts and passwords, they often use the same username and password in multiple locations. If this is the case, trusting that ‘identity’ to a smaller business may increase the likelihood of it being compromised in a breach or through a security issue.

By using a single sign-on with privacy protections, consumers may be better protected. With that being said, if Apple were to have a failure it would create a significant impact. However, at least we know that they are unlikely to monetize this personal information in the same way that Facebook and Google have historically done.”

Hudnall: “It is very viable, and due to Apple’s tight control over its entire ecosystem, it is very likely that this will be rapidly adopted. The ‘who has the fastest/best hot rod’ competition that currently exists between Apple/Google/Facebook/Microsoft is excellent for consumers as technology is evolving rapidly. It is great to see that privacy and security will now be one of those contested battlegrounds and this announcement will pour fuel on that fire.

There is no one technology or company that has significantly better enterprise stack, personnel, or resources. Apple does though have far greater control over its products and services than any of its competitors. Unlike Facebook who is solely reliant on host system hardware devices and Google who has limited input/control on the majority of devices running its software, Apple has complete control over the hardware and software verification processes. This certainly better positions Apple to implement a system that better ensures user privacy.”

Schaub: In terms of viability, I have little concern. Apple is using its Apple ID accounts for authentication with a large number of Apple services already so it’s now just making some of that functionality available for use with third parties. The big difference is that Apple is positioning Sign in with Apple as a privacy feature, whereas Facebook and Google present their single sign-on services as a convenience feature. Apple is and has been using privacy as a differentiating factor given that their business model centers around selling devices and now service subscriptions to its customers, as well as profiting from content provided through their platforms.

Facebook and Google’s business models, on the other hand, are largely based on being very good at targeting ads to people, which requires tracking people’s online and app behavior. Having their single sign-on buttons on more webpages gives Facebook and Google more data points about which apps and services you use and how often. At least so far, Apple doesn’t.”

During Apple’s WWDC 2019 keynote the company showed off so many things even our cut-down version of the event lasts nearly half an hour. One of the reveals was that tvOS 13 will be compatible with PlayStation 4 and Bluetooth-equipped Xbox One controllers — convenient for both Apple’s own Arcade gaming plans and any others with cloud aspirations — but in case it’s unclear, it also extends to iPad and iPhone.

Once iOS 13 rolls out, you’ll be able to use these console controllers easily with your device, no workarounds needed. With Apple reportedly spending “hundreds of millions” to get games to be a part of its subscription package, it’s good to know that controllers we already generally like and probably have laying around will be able to keep doing their job.

Craig Federighi, Apple’s SVP of software engineering, spent some time on stage extolling the virtues of a download manager for Safari, but little has been said so far about this revamped approach to file management. Not everyone will find it immediately useful, but the change should certainly come in handy for people tempted to use a device like the iPad Pro as their primary machine.

In iOS 11 and onward, iPad users could also use the Files app to manage their digital belongings in iCloud Drive and certain other cloud storage services, and they could also root around in folders created by apps like Apple’s Keynote and Numbers. Apple’s rationale made some sense at the time: By largely limiting file management on iPads to the cloud, they ensured that all of those files were easily accessible to other iOS devices.

All of that still works the way it always did, but devices like the recent iPad Pros were made available with lots of on-board storage space — up to 1TB, if you’re willing to shell out the cash. It always seemed odd that you couldn’t use that space to easily store your other files, but thankfully, Apple has fixed that problem.

Now you can create your folders on-device to better organize your files, and now that iPads have more fleshed-out support for external storage devices like USB thumb drives, you can easily migrate files onto the iPad for storage and later use. That change can also come in handy when you’re surfing the web on Safari. Starting with iPadOS, you can use the browser to actually download files; by default, they’re set to save in iCloud Drive, but you can set downloaded files to live in an easily accessible folder directly in the iPad’s storage. These are relatively basic computing tasks, but by adding them to iPadOS, Apple is tacitly acknowledging that iPads needed to take a few cues from traditional computers to make them more valuable work machines.

This might all sound like much ado about nothing, and that might be the case for many iPad users. Still, this relatively low-key change is just one of a handful of updates to the way iPadOS handles files; there’s also a macOS-like column view that makes digging into file trees easier, plus newly added support for zipping and unzipping files directly on iPads. Taken as a whole, these seemingly subtle updates have the potential to make iPads more viable laptop replacements — especially when you also consider that iPadOS also has native mouse support.

To say Apple’s WWDC 2019 keynote was jam-packed would be an understatement. Apple offered its usual previews of the next versions of iOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS, but it also broke some new ground. The iPad now has its own operating system, for starters. There were also meaningful updates to the HomePod and a new privacy-focused sign-in. And of course, there’s the not-so-small matter of the redesigned Mac Pro — Apple has finally shown its long-in-the-making workstation. It’s a lot to take in. Never fear, though, as we’ve boiled things down to a short video that gives you the gist of Apple’s many, many announcements.

Even Apple knew it. The intro to the iTunes portion of today’s keynote was a tongue-in-cheek bit about adding Calendar, Mail and Safari inside the desktop app. “One thing we hear over and over: Can iTunes do even more?” quipped vice president of software Craig Federighi.

The current version of iTunes (Nathan Ingraham/Engadget)

Once all kidding was put aside though, Apple announced its solution: iTunes will be split up into three apps in macOS Catalina for Music, Podcasts and TV. Sure, this makes a lot of sense on the surface, but it doesn’t really address the main problem of iTunes. In fact, I’d argue more apps might not be better. You will know exactly where everything is immediately — no more dealing with that godawful drop down menu that plagues the current version. However, this will mean firing up another app when you want to switch content libraries. It’s not really better, just in a different place.

Thankfully, you won’t have to use a different app to sync things to your phone or tablet. Apple already lets you download your music, movies and more directly to your device via the cloud. Of course, if you really want to use a cable, you can. But in that case, you will have to open up each app individually, according to Apple’s macOS Catalina announcement.

Please, Apple: just give us something that feels like a player, and less like a file management system.

Basically, instead of a nearly organized and slimmed-down iTunes, Apple is giving us separate apps, each with a single focus. I think I could accept this if they were each redesigned. The TV app is, mostly because the company is gearing up to launch its streaming service, Apple TV+. But it resembles its tvOS counterpart. Music and Podcasts, however, look pretty much identical to iTunes. Sure, they’re focused on their specific niche, but the overall look is the same.

Please, Apple: just give us something that feels like a player, and less like a file management system. When you compare the design to Spotify, Pandora or PocketCasts (on desktop), the gap is glaring. iTunes looks dated compared to other services, and that spills over into other desktop interfaces. Apple Music looks like the iTunes store, and less like a streaming service. And it seems like that will continue, at least for the immediate future.

How iPhone management will appear in Finder (Chris Velazco/Engadget)

I’m fully aware this situation could’ve been a lot worse. Apple could’ve gone the News route, and lazily ported over an iOS app to the desktop. And that would’ve likely meant losing some key functionality along the way. So at the end of the day, what we’re left with is neither better nor worse than what we had before really — just different. And only ever so slightly.

We’re getting separate audio apps, but each is so similar to iTunes, you won’t know the difference. Except when you have to click a separate icon in the dock to access music or podcasts, or use Finder to sync and monitor the rest of the stuff on your iPhone. Which, let’s be honest, that’s were those device management features should’ve been all along.

Nobody is arguing that iTunes isn’t a jumbled mess, but it didn’t need to be broken up. It just needed some love and attention (and maybe a major redesign). So don’t believe the headlines: iTunes isn’t dead, it’s multiplying.

The move leaves the iPhone SE, 6S and 6S Plus as the oldest handsets to support iOS 13. In truth, it was somewhat surprising that Apple supported iOS 12 on the 5S in particular, given the device’s age, though that version of the OS was more of a performance upgrade. Still, the 5S, 6 and 6 Plus will miss out on the likes of a system-wide dark mode and Apple’s own swipeable keyboard, among other iOS 13 features.

Apple is making the iPad more powerful with the new iPadOS, and a lot of these fresh features are all about productivity. The Files app is getting a huge upgrade, complete with zip and unzip features, local storage, a new Column View, folder-sharing through iCloud Drive and support for SMB file sharing.

Plus, for the first time on iPad, plug in a thumb drive or pop in an SD card and read files directly from either. You’ll be able to import files directly into apps like Lightroom, as well.