Enlarge / A woman uses AutoCAD on a MacBook Pro in this promotional image from Autodesk. (credit: Autodesk )

It has been two years and four months since the first Apple Silicon Mac hit the market, and now Autodesk has finally updated some of its massively popular professional applications (AutoCAD and Maya) to run natively on M1 and M2 chips.

The availability of AutoCAD for Mac 2024 was announced in a blog post on Autodesk's website on March 28. Like other major AutoCAD updates, it adds new features like expanded automation tools and easier workflows, but the announcement that "for the first time, AutoCAD for Mac 2024 and AutoCAD LT for Mac 2024 now run natively on both Intel and Apple Silicon architectures, including M1 and M2 chips in the M-series chips" is clearly the headlining feature.

Autodesk claims that Apple Silicon support "can increase overall performance by up to two times" compared to the 2023 version of AutoCAD.

Enlarge / Apple's first promotional image for WWDC 2023. (credit: Apple)

Apple will host its 34th annual Worldwide Developers Conference at its Cupertino, California, headquarters from Monday, June 5 through Friday, June 9, the company announced on Wednesday.

The conference will kick off with "a special all-day event," inclusive of the customary keynote presentation and the platform State of the Union talks. The language on Apple's website suggests that like last year, some or all of those will be presented in prerecorded video form rather than as a live on-stage presentation.

After that first day, Apple will likely host various panels on how developers can work with the company's developer toolkits and APIs to support new and old features across the various Apple platforms.

• 

  This is the main view for the Pay Later feature in Apple's Wallet app for the iPhone. [credit: Apple ]

With the limited launch today of a new service called Apple Pay Later , Apple will now lend money directly to users through the Wallet app on devices like the iPhone.

We first  heard about the service in 2021, and it was officially announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2022. It faced several delays, though, as iOS 16 began to roll out last September.

Now Apple is "inviting select users to access a prerelease version of Apple Pay Later." The service will roll out to everyone "in the coming months."

Enlarge / The 2021, 24-inch iMac with Apple's M1. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple released new updates for most of its software platforms today, including macOS Ventura 13.3, iOS 16.4, iPadOS 16.4, tvOS 16.4, and watchOS 9.4.

These are all feature updates, meaning they actually add new functionality in addition to fixing bugs or addressing security vulnerabilities.

iOS and iPadOS 16.4 add a number of minor features. The headliner is (of course) 21 new emojis, like new heart colors, additional animals, and a shaking head. Beyond that, though, Apple says you'll see improved voice isolation on phone calls, support for notifications from web apps that have been added to your phone's home screen, new ways to weed out duplicates in your Photos library, and a number of bug fixes.

Enlarge / I mostly recognize this early laptop from its resemblance to a similar-looking computer in the film 2010 . It's up for auction along with hundreds of other old Apple computers. (credit: Julien's Auctions)

If you've been thinking your home or workspace is perhaps deficient when it comes to old Apple hardware, then I have some good news for you. Next week, a massive trove of classic Apple computing history goes under the hammer when the auction house Julien's Auctions auctions off the Hanspeter Luzi collection of more than 500 Apple computers, parts, software, and the occasional bit of ephemera.

Ars reported on the auction in February , but Julien's Auctions has posted the full catalog ahead of the March 30 event, and for Apple nerds of a certain age, there will surely be much to catch your eye.

The earliest computers in the collection are a pair of Commodore PET 2001s; anyone looking for a bargain on an Apple 1 will have to keep waiting, unfortunately.

Enlarge / The 8BitDo SN30 Pro is now supported on Apple platforms. (credit: 8BitDo )

The 8BitDo SN30 Pro has repeatedly been called one of the best controllers for playing retro console games, particularly those originally made for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)—which makes sense, since its design is based on the SNES controller.

Now that controller works much better on Apple platforms like the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV thanks to new firmware updates from 8BitDo. That's great news for folks who want to play 16-bit classics on their Macs, but the lack of retro console emulators on the iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV makes it a bit of a waste on those platforms.

Granted, the firmware update applies to more than just the SN30 Pro. 8BitDo's Ultimate Controller 2.4g, Pro 2, and Lite SE also got the firmware update—as well as the SN30 Pro variants, the SN30 Pro Plus and the SN30 Pro for Android. The Ultimate Controller, Pro 2, and Lite SE aren't so much meant as retro controllers as just good all-arounders, and so that's welcome for folks who enjoy games on Apple Arcade and the like.

Enlarge

If you've been eyeing some specific Apple devices but either missed your chance to snag record-low prices during the holidays, or in the case of the newest Mac Mini, haven't seen a substantial discount yet, today's Apple deals might be what you've been waiting for.

The M2-powered 512GB Mac Mini is at its lowest price of $700 , typically $800, while the Apple Watch Series 8 and second-gen SE are matching their lowest recorded prices of $329 and $220 , respectively. Those looking for a pair of AirPods can get the latest noise-canceling AirPods Pro for $200 ( $250 ) or forego noise cancellation and add about 90 minutes of battery life with the third-generation AirPods for $150 ( $170 ), both of which are discounted to prices we haven't seen since Black Friday. You can also nab a four-pack of Apple AirTags for $90 , which is $10 off their usual price.

Apple's 2023 Mac mini. If you've seen one, you've seen them all, but it's what's on the inside that counts. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Apple Mac Mini (2023) M2, 8GB RAM, 512GB storage for $700 ( $800 )

Apple's 512GB Mac Mini desktop computer, released January 2023, is seeing its biggest discount, down from $800 to $700. Equipped with Apple's M2 processor and 8GB of RAM, we found the Mac Mini to be cool, quiet, energy-efficient and packing enough power for anything short of serious gaming and heavy-duty rich media content creation. Gamers who want a Mac Mini (for the few games that run on them) and folks working in professional edit bays or the like should look to the M2 Pro-equipped Minis. Otherwise, this model is plenty capable of editing photos and videos from your phone, creating documents, and general browsing.

Enlarge / Apple CEO Tim Cook. (credit: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images )

A new report in the Financial Times claims that Apple CEO Tim Cook and COO Jeff Williams overrode design team objections to move forward with a new mixed-reality headset before designers believed the technology was ready. That said, the report isn't detailed enough to provide a nuanced picture of what's going on inside the company.

Here's the picture it does paint: A once-influential industrial design team is losing agency as executive departures and other factors have led to the team reporting to the company's operations chief instead of a top-level design executive.

We've written quite a bit about the gradual departure of famed design chief Jony Ive, who was a close collaborator with former CEO Steve Jobs. In addition to Ive, though, Apple also lost Ive's successor, Evans Hankey .