A hearing in Apple’s legal battle with the UK government over access to customer data was held behind closed doors on Friday after the press failed to gain entry to proceedings.

The US tech firm has launched an appeal with the investigatory powers tribunal after the Home Office demanded access to encrypted data stored remotely in Apple’s cloud servers.

UK media organisations including the Guardian, the BBC, the Financial Times and Computer Weekly made a submission to the tribunal asking for press access on public interest grounds but they failed to gain entry.

Sir James Eadie KC, who represents the government in high-profile cases, was seen entering the courtroom at the Royal Courts of Justice on Friday.

Apple’s ”Focus” feature is a powerful tool for cutting down on distractions and interruptions on a per-task basis, but setting up different Focus options takes some time investment and tinkering because there are a lot of features available. We’ve rounded up a handful of suggestions that may help you get more out of Focus.

Managing Focus Modes

You’ll find the Focus section in the Settings app. Apple has some pre-made Focus options, but you can create custom modes by tapping on the ”+” button in the upper right corner. Custom Focus modes are a blank slate, so you can choose your own name, icon, and capabilities.

When he got his first glimpse of a movie studio, Orson Welles excitedly proclaimed it “the biggest electric train set any boy ever had.” But with a reported budget of more than $300 million, Joe and Anthony Russo’s The Electric State makes Welles’ train set look like a busted caboose. The most expensive movie in Netflix’s history, it’s also among the costliest of all time, joining a list that includes the brothers’ own Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. If the Russos are the most profligate creators in history—their Amazon series Citadel is also one of the most expensive TV shows ever made—they’re among the most successful too. Endgame and Infinity War grossed nearly $5 billion in movie theaters alone. And yet for all the money they’re making, and all that they’re allowed to spend, they don’t seem to be enjoying themselves very much.

Apple TV+ just debuted a new series that is getting a lot of love from critics, and has a fantastic trailer too. Here are all the details on Dope Thief, the latest crime thriller from Apple TV+ that’s available now.

Dope Thief’s first two episodes now available on Apple TV+

As Apple prepares for Severance to wrap up next week, it has several big new shows lined up to entice subscribers to stick around.

The first such series is Dope Thief, which debuted today on Apple TV+ with its first two episodes. New episodes will be released weekly through April 25.

Dope Thief stars Brian Tyree Henry, Wagner Moura, and Ving Rhames. Ridley Scott executive produced the show and directed its first episode.

Apple has not confirmed if its delayed personalized Siri features were anything more than conceptual when they were announced during the WWDC 2024 keynote last year, but they reportedly exist internally in at least a semi-usable way by now.

Apple’s senior director of Siri, Robby Walker, demonstrated at least some of the personalized Siri features in a ”working” state during a recent all-hands meeting with the Siri team, according to a report yesterday from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman:

He showed examples during the meeting of the technology working: It was able to locate his driver’s license number on command and find specific photos of a child. He also demonstrated how the technology could precisely manipulate apps via voice control. It embedded content in an email, added recipients and made other changes.

The above paragraph in the report was highlighted by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber.