Subaru is experiencing growing popularity in the U.S., developing a strong reputation based on emphasizing safety, all-wheel drive operation, and technology. The redesigned 2019 Subaru Forester is no exception, offering standard all-wheel drive, a roomier cabin, and new DriverFocus technology that uses facial recognition and monitoring to not only save your driver presets but alert you if it detects drowsy or distracted driving.

The 2019 Forester includes Subaru’s STARLINK infotainment system with standard CarPlay support, with lower-level models coming with a 6.5-inch screen while higher-level trims are upgraded to an 8-inch screen.

I’ve had a chance to spend some time with a top-of-the-line 2019 Forester Touring in Horizon Blue Pearl, so read on for details about how all of the technology comes together for iPhone users.

STARLINK Infotainment

Subaru’s STARLINK Infotainment systems offer all of the functionality you’d expect, starting with AM/FM radio with HD support, SiriusXM, USB and Bluetooth media device support, hands-free phone connectivity, and a CD player. All trims also include support for CarPlay, Android Auto, and app integration with Pandora and Aha. They also support cloud apps like Yelp, iHeartRadio, Magellan, TomTom, and more.

Subaru’s STARLINK home screen

The base, Premium, and Sport trims all come with a 6.5-inch display, although the Sport trim can be upgraded to the larger 8-inch display. The Limited trim gets the 8-inch display standard with an optional upgrade to embedded navigation from TomTom, while the Touring trim gets the 8-inch screen and navigation standard.

Embedded TomTom navigation

Subaru has gone all-in on displays in the Forester, with my Touring model featuring three separate screens. Aside from the spacious 8-inch main screen on the center stack, there’s also a 4.2-inch digital display as part of the instrument cluster directly in front of the driver, which is standard on all trims. This display is customizable and is capable of showing a wide array of information from a digital speedometer to speed limit signs to fuel level to audio information and more. These instrument cluster displays are becoming increasingly common, and it’s nice to see it included standard on the Forester.

Instrument cluster

What sets the Forester further apart from many other cars is the third display, located in a housing protruding from the dashboard at the top of the center stack. This housing also includes an array of sensors for features like DriverFocus that I’ll talk about a bit later, but the 6.3-inch display included here on higher trims is a fantastic addition.

Dual screens showing audio and navigation information

While the main infotainment display is taken over by CarPlay, built-in navigation, or other functions, the upper display can offer an always-on view of other systems with a dense array of information. By default it shows basic information like the time, outside temperature, and current climate control settings, but the main portion of the display can show one of several different screens based on user preference.

Vehicle safety systems status

This display can show an overview of what vehicle safety systems are active, the current weather forecast, navigation information, audio information, a larger version of your climate settings and more. It will also intelligently change what it’s showing based on what else is going on, such as temporarily showing navigation information when a turn is coming up.

Fuel economy screen

The color 6.3-inch display is standard on Sport and higher trims and an option on the Premium trim, but not available on the base trim. The base trim and the standard configuration of the Premium trim include a smaller display that offers more basic information about the vehicle.

Subaru has kept a full set of hardware climate controls, although the only visual feedback on the controls themselves are status lights for some of the buttons. Other visual indicators like temperature settings and fan speed are shown on the other screens higher on the center stack.

CarPlay

CarPlay, which requires a wired connection as in most vehicles, is a great experience on the large 8-inch display. It takes over the whole screen, but the extra multifunction display above still gives you access to other data from the vehicle. The screen is bright and colors are vivid, and touch responsiveness is great with no lag.

CarPlay home screen

Subaru thankfully includes a variety of hardware controls below the screen, so you’ll be able to make many adjustments largely by feel.

CarPlay “Now Playing” screen

Large volume and tune/scroll knobs let you easily make those adjustments, while dedicated hardware buttons for various infotainment functions like radio, built-in navigation and audio track skipping let you quickly jump between functions. A prominent home button gets you back to the main Subaru screen from wherever you are.

Apple Maps in CarPlay

I really like the way the dual-screen setup gives you command of everything going on in the vehicle at a glance, minimizing the amount of time you need to take your eyes off the road. Apple Maps or Google Maps running in CarPlay can take over the large main display, while all of your other information including CarPlay audio track and album names can be seen simultaneously on the upper display.

Voice control button is at bottom left of left cluster

As usual, there is a voice control button on the steering wheel that lets you talk to the vehicle or Siri. When CarPlay is active, the steering wheel button can only activate Siri. But when you’re out of CarPlay, you can activate Siri with a long press of the button or the Subaru system with a short press.

Ports and Connectivity

My Touring trim came with a number of USB-A ports for connectivity, including a pair up front adjacent to the smallish storage tray at the base of the center stack and two more on the rear of the center console for rear passengers. All four ports can deliver up to 2.1 amps, so they’ll be able to charge even power-hungry devices like iPads fairly quickly.

Front USB ports and phone storage tray

All Forester trims include the front USB ports, but the base and second-level Premium trims require a $178 option to add the rear ones. The remaining trims include the rear ports as standard equipment.

USB ports on rear of center console

All but the base Forester trim offer in-car Wi-Fi hotspot support via LTE, which requires a separate plan through AT&T. Subaru does not offer a wireless phone charger as either standard or optional equipment on the Forester.

DriverFocus

For the past couple of years, Subaru has been pushing its EyeSight package of driver assistance technology features, which includes adaptive cruise control, pre-collision braking, lane departure and sway warnings, and lane-keeping assist. Those features are becoming increasingly popular across car manufacturers, and it’s great that Subaru is now making its EyeSight package standard across all Forester trims.

Initial registration for DriverFocus

Subaru is also now taking things to the next level with DriverFocus, a feature currently available only on the highest-level Touring trim as a standard feature. DriverFocus uses facial recognition and monitoring to keep an eye on you while you’re driving. If it detects drowsy or distracted driving, it will warn you with a chime and a pop-up message on the driver’s display.

While some car manufacturers have focused on monitoring movements of the car to detect drowsy or distracted driving, whether it’s drifting from your lane or making repeated sharp steering corrections, Subaru is trying to be even more proactive by actually watching to see if your eyes are open and on the road. It might sound a little Big Brother-ish, but your car isn’t going to report you to the authorities or record your behavior, so it could prove to be a great safety feature and you can always turn it off.

Screen with green icon showing DriverFocus is active

Subaru acknowledges that the system isn’t perfect and it can generate some false positives, which I did find in my testing. One time the car warned me to take a break when it apparently thought my eyes were starting to droop, but I think I was just squinting a bit into a bright sun. A couple of other times it warned me to keep my eyes on the road, once when I had a hand up to my face rubbing one eye and once when I was on a sharply curving highway exit ramp when it apparently thought I was looking away from the road when I was in fact looking ahead along the curve. Quick glances down or to the side won’t trigger a warning, but if you have reason to look somewhere other than fairly straight ahead for more than a couple of seconds, you might get an alert.

Facial recognition lets the Forester greet you by name when you enter and remember your preferred settings

As a bonus, DriverFocus’s facial tracking technology can also recognize you when you get in the car, greeting you by name onscreen and automatically setting your preferred seat and mirror positions and climate control options. Some cars make similar adjustments by associating preferences with a specific key fob being used, but Subaru is leveraging its DriverFocus technology to make automatic memory settings even more seamless.

Wrap-up

Subaru offers a solid infotainment system of its own, and the Forester really takes it to the next level with the dual-screen setup in the center stack. Layer the convenience of CarPlay on top of that and you’ve got some great options for entertainment, navigation, and more, all highly customizable.

I appreciated the abundance of high-powered USB ports in the front and rear, although the phone storage tray up front was rather small for my iPhone XS Max. Wireless charging would be a nice option to have as long as it works well and the price premium isn’t too high, so hopefully that’s something Subaru will add in the future. Other manufacturers have been hit-or-miss on this feature, but when done well it’s a nice option to have.

The 2019 Subaru Forester starts at $24,295 plus destination, delivery, and other fees, with each successive trim level adding around $2,000 before the bigger jump to the top-of-the-line Touring model at $34,295. I do recommend bumping up to the 8-inch display if you can, as it’s a great size for the main screen, but that’ll push you up close to the $30,000 level on a Sport trim with option package.

Good news: Apple now allows you to download bigger apps over a cellular connection than it used to.

Bad news: there’s still a cap, and you still can’t bypass it.

As noticed by 9to5Mac, the iOS App Store now lets you download apps up to 200 MB in size while on a cell network; anything bigger than that, and you’ll need to connect to WiFi. Before this change, the cap was 150 MB.

And if you’ve got an unlimited (be it actually unlimited or cough-cough-‘unlimited’) plan, or if you know you’ve got enough monthly data left to cover a big download, or you just really, really need a certain big app and WiFi just isn’t available? You’re still out of luck. That 200 MB cap hits everyone. People have found tricky, fleeting workarounds to bypass the cap over the years, but there’s no official “Yeah, yeah, the app is huge, I know.” button to click or power user setting to toggle.

The App Store being cautious about file size isn’t inherently a bad thing; with many users only getting an allotment of a couple gigs a month, a few accidental downloads over the cell networks can eat up that data quick. But it really does suck to open up an app you need and find it’s requiring some update that exceeds the cap, only to realize you’re nowhere near a friendly WiFi network. At least give us the choice, you know?

On the upside, most developers seem to be pretty aware of the cap; they’ll hack and slash their app install package until it squeaks under the limit, even if it means downloading more stuff through the app itself post-install. Now, at least, they’ve got 50 more megabytes of wiggle room to start with.

The first WWDC 2019 events kick off in just two days with the early arrival of student scholars, and Apple is putting the finishing touches on decorations at and around the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose.

Decorations on the convention center, light poles, and public transit stops all carry the same neon theme on dark blue as seen on other WWDC materials, with the front entrance area of the convention center covered in a huge sheet displaying a robot emoji with all sorts of icons exploding out of the top of it and the “Dub Dub” nickname sometimes used for WWDC.

Photos from earlier in the assembly process hint at the possibility of some sort of lighting behind the sheet, so we’ll have to wait and see what it looks like at night.

The main event of WWDC 2019 kicks off on Monday at 10:00 am Pacific Time with the traditional keynote, and we’ll have full coverage here on MacRumors.com and through our MacRumorsLive Twitter account.

Mexico City, Mexico – Leonardo Lopez is one of the rare Mexico City taxi drivers who doesn’t consider himself an “Obradorista”, as the loyal followers of Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador call themselves.

“I did vote for him,” says Lopez. “But it was more about wanting a change than about Obrador.”

Lopez is one of more than 30 million voters in Mexico who gave the new president an historic landslide victory in July’s election, which he won with over 50 percent of the vote. But today, six months after the new leader took office on December 1st, things are not looking quite as expected.

“They’ve failed us on everything,” says Lopez. “He promised to bring down gas prices, and it hasn’t happened. Insecurity is even worse than it already was. Now I see even more people getting ripped off everywhere on the streets in broad daylight”.

Mexico’s president – often called by his initials, AMLO – vowed to tackle insecurity in a country where more than 70 percent of reported crimes go unpunished, and 90 percent of crimes are not reported due to mistrust of authorities.

But after he took office six months ago with an overwhelming house majority, some key issues seem unchanged.

Killings on the rise

Murder rates across Mexico are still on the rise, and reached their highest levels on record since 2011 with nearly 3,000 slayings in January alone. In Mexico City, the murder rate has increased by 100 percent.

Obrador’s lead strategy for addressing security was creating Mexico’s National Guard – a force combining military and federal police officers to ensure public safety.

The military has been on the front lines of public security ever since former President Feilpe Calderon declared a “war on drugs” in 2006. But the strategy hasn’t proven effective in stopping organised crime.

“The military didn’t have a legal framework to enforce public security, so legalising its presence might help them do a better job,” Lilian Chapa Koloffon, a security analyst, told Al Jazeera.

“But while the National Guard might help the government recover territory from the cartels, there’s no evidence to explain how exactly this strategy will help reduce house robberies and the most common crimes. We need a strategy for that,” says Chapa Koloffon.

Political analyst Carlos Bravo Regidor says the reason behind the lack of additional strategies is perhaps that Lopez Obrador wanted his social policy to be part of his security policy.

The president has repeatedly said that many of the key issues affecting Mexicans – including immigration – can be fixed by “addressing their causes”. Proposed solutions include achieving better wealth distribution and providing better education and working opportunities for people.

“While this strategy is interesting and makes sense over the long term, it won’t solve the most pressing everyday security problems,” says Bravo Regidor.

Tackling corruption

Ending corruption was another key promise during Obrador Lopez’s campaign. Yet even before he took office, his administration used public referendums (which drew widespread criticism because of voter informality and low turnouts) to green light 10 hallmark projects, some of which already had investors and allocated lands.

According to the watchdog group Mexicanos Contra la Corrupcion y la Impunidad, rather than securing the lowest price for public projects, AMLO’s administration has directly awarded more than 70 percent of the contracts to select companies. It is not clear how or why they were chosen because there was no formal bidding process. This is nearly the same percentage seen in 2018 under President Enrique Pena Nieto, whose administration was plagued with corruption scandals.

Lopez Obrador said he would pardon corrupt government officials from previous administrations because “there’s so much corruption in Mexico that there aren’t enough prisons or courts to prosecute them all.” Making matters worse, his government has not yet announced any high-profile prosecutions.

However, he did scrap an ongoing multimillion-dollar airport construction project, first alleging corruption and later claiming it was too expensive. Government officials told local reporters the cost of canceling the entire airport construction project would not exceed $5.3bn.  

To avoid setting off alarms among investors, Lopez Obrador paid back bondholders – at a cost of $1.8bn to Mexican taxpayers. 

“But paying back the investors was a good move,” Juan Mendoza, an economic analyst, told Al Jazeera. “Otherwise, consequences would have been catastrophic.” Investors would have withdrawn their funding, causing the currency to plummet.

Economic perspective

Even so, investors are wary about Mexico’s economic future. In March, agencies lowered their credit outlook ratings on government debt and Mexico’s state-owned petroleum company, Pemex.

“Mexico will be making a serious mistake if it allows credit ratings for Mexican debt and Pemex to drop,” economic analyst Luis de la Calle told Al Jazeera. “It hasn’t happened yet, and Mexico should aim not only to maintain its current ratings, but to improve them.”

In a move to recover investors’ confidence, Lopex Obrador got JP Morgan, HSBC and Mizuho banks to refinance Pemex’s debt and open new credit lines for $8bn.

Yet Mendoza believes that there are few solid medium- and long-term economic strategies laid out in the National Development Plan, and that Mexico should be seeking more opportunities beyond oil and mining.

De la Calle considered it premature to assess the government’s performance so soon, but believes the president may not be fulfilling his campaign promises quickly enough.

“Mexico is missing out on the opportunity to step in and position itself within the international market as a diversifier of China’s market and make investing in Mexico attractive.”

He added that a successful trade agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada would be interpreted as a sign of competitiveness to investors with respect to Asia.

However, on Thursday US President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Mexico if Lopez Obrador doesn’t halt illegal immigration to the US by June 10 – a move that stressed the relationship between both countries.

Obrador Lopez sent Trump a letter calling for the avoidance of confrontation, and Friday morning, he said he would respond to Trump’s threats with “great prudence”, sending off his finance minister to negotiate with Washington.

In response, markets in both countries reacted, stocks tumbled and the Mexican peso lost value against the US dollar.

Even so, says Mendoza, “policymakers in Mexico are listening, and that’s important. There’s still hope that things can change because we are not yet seeing deceleration or crisis, and we’re right on time to correct course.”

Austerity policies

Bravo Regidor described Obrador Lopez’s first six months as “disruptive” because “he started out with the idea of changing everything, so he centralised and redirected government expenditure” and because “almost every day we hear about new and shut-down programmes”.

Science and technology, arts and culture, immigration and shelters for victims of domestic violence are just some of the government expenses that faced severe cuts in order to fund the president’s new – and sometimes unorthodox – programmes.

Most of the government’s funds will be directed to the oil, mining and construction sectors, as well as to social programmes.

But there will also be an institute devoted to returning stolen money to the common people – an organisation created to ensure that wealth confiscated from criminals returns to the government’s coffers.

Properties will have placards bearing the name of the drug lord or corrupt politician from which they were confiscated, AMLO announced.

There will be an office at the presidential palace to incentivize baseball, AMLO’s favourite sport – and it is scheduled to receive more than $110m during his administration.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s public health system is recovering from its biggest crisis in decades. There were large budget cuts, and the government froze $63m in cash flow to hospitals, creating staff and medicine shortages that left pediatric and adult patients across the country without options for surgery and chemotherapy.

“He calls it ‘austerity’, but it’s more like ‘cannibalism,’ since he’s eating up resources from programmes to finance the other ones he cares about,” says Bravo Regidor of Mexico’s president. “It’s the government eating its own organs in order to grow others, and this is coming at a great social cost.”

Hopes are still high

After six months in office, Lopez Obrador enjoys popularity that remains high, with local polls showing he has approval ratings of 60 percent.

“He’s been very successful in filling the authority gap left by his predecessor,” says Bravo Regidor. “He’s created a strong perception that someone is in charge, addressing important topics, and that he’s close to the people.”

Every morning at 7am, the president addresses the press to brief reporters on new programmes and answer their questions. It’s a stark contrast to the handful of such conferences that President Pena Nieto – or any other president – held during his six-year term.

Lopez Obrador capped high-level officials’ salaries and promised to raise lower-level ones in government. He ditched his bodyguards, sold the presidential plane, and flies coach to travel across Mexico. Instead of moving into the presidential residence, he turned it into a museum. It’s all part of what he calls a “republican austerity” policy, and people are responding positively to it.

Lopez Obrador’s key social programmes involve giving money directly to senior citizens, people with disabilities, students and other vulnerable groups. The direct-support strategy replaced dedicated programmes that aimed to cut down on corruption, though some believe it’s rather a populist move.

In a parallel strategy, AMLO scrapped his predecessor’s hallmark education bill and replaced it with a new one that would make education free from elementary school all the way through college.

Even so, in an attempt to make amends with powerful teachers’ unions, he removed the teachers’ mandatory performance evaluation system in a country that has consistently rated among the lowest in almost every international education test.

To crack down on rampant fuel theft – a practice called “huachicoleo” because it’s led by criminal gangs known as “huachicoleros” – Obrador Lopez cut off the fuel supply through major pipelines and diverted it through guarded tankers across the country.

While huachicoleo was causing billions in losses to Pemex, the improvised strategy led to fuel shortages throughout Mexico, and people had to queue for hours at gas stations during the weeks that the fuel was diverted.

But not even the fuel crisis had an impact on AMLO’s popularity. More than 50 percent of Mexicans approved of his strategy, according to leading pollsters.

“It was totally worth it, because it was to tackle huachicoleo,” says Lopez, the cab driver, who said he didn’t mind the sacrifice that the fuel crisis personally cost him even as he lost money queuing for hours at gas stations.

After six months, “it’s still too early to see results,” says Lopez, siding with his president. “Let us hope for the best.”

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is set to kick off on June 3 with a keynote event that will see Apple unveiling next-generation versions of iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

We’ve rounded up all of the rumors that we’re heard so far about the features we can expect in each of the new operating systems. Watch the video below and read on to get a glimpse of what’s coming.

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Many of these rumors have been sourced from Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman and 9to5Mac‘s Guilherme Rambo, both of whom have shared details on what’s coming in 2019.

iOS 13 is going to be a major update, introducing some features that iOS users have been hoping will come to the iPhone and the iPad for quite some time. Below, we’ll outline all of the major features that we’re expecting, with full details on iOS 13 available in our iOS 13 roundup.

iOS 13, like iOS 12, is expected to introduce speed improvements for devices, including older devices, and it will include bug fixes thanks to Apple’s 2018 plan to put more focus on quality.

Dark Mode

iOS 13 will introduce a dark mode for the first time, letting users choose between light and dark themes. There aren’t a lot of details on dark mode at this time, but it’s expected to be a system wide feature much like the dark mode that came in macOS Mojave.

Apps that are currently light mode only will have darker themes available when dark mode is set, much like Books or Maps, existing apps that have a darker night mode.

Leaked screenshots of iOS 13 suggest the Dark Mode option will be enabled via the Settings app or the Control Center. The Home screen will look similar to the Home screen in light mode, though the dock will be darker.

New Volume HUD

If you’re tired of the current volume interface that blocks the middle of the iPhone’s screen when you’re adjusting the volume, there’s good news — it’s expected to change in iOS 13.

We’re expecting a volume HUD that’s less obtrusive than the current version, with something that doesn’t take up quite as much room on the display. We’ve mocked up what it might look like below.

Sleep Mode

iOS 13 is expected to streamline sleep time behavior with a new sleep mode that’s available in the Control Center. According to rumors, sleep mode will toggle on Do Not Disturb, darken the Lock screen so it’s not so bright if you pick up your phone in the middle of the night, and mute all incoming notifications.

Unspecified improvements could also come to the Bedtime tab that’s available in the Clock app. Bedtime is a feature that was first introduced in iOS 12 and is designed to send you reminders when you should go to bed.

iPad Updates

Several iPad-specific features are going to be overhauled in iOS 13, so this should be a major update for those who use iPads. A new Home screen layout is expected, but few details have been provided.

Apple is introducing improved multitasking. iPad apps will support multiple windows through a tab view, and there may be stackable cards within apps that can be rearranged. Apps will have sheets that are initially attached to the screen, but that can be detached and dragged around so you can have multiple instances of the same app (or different apps) open.

These app cards can be stacked on top of one another, and a depth effect will indicate which cards are on the top or on the bottom. As with card-based interfaces in other parts of iOS, you can close out an app card by flinging a card to dismiss it.

There will be a new gesture for undoing text input on an iPad, letting users undo or redo an action using a three finger tap on the keyboard area along with a slide to the left or the right. Apple will also be adding a new gesture for selecting multiple items in table and collection views, letting users drag multiple fingers on the screen to draw a selection.

There have been rumors that mouse support could come to the iPad as an Accessibility option, and iOS 13 would be an ideal time to introduce that feature, though it has not been confirmed that it’s part of the update.

Updated Find My iPhone App

Apple is designing a new Find My iPhone app that also incorporates Find My Friends, so in iOS 13, we may no longer have two apps for these features. The new app is said to include a networking feature that will let Apple devices be tracked even when not connected to a Wi-Fi or cellular network by leveraging other iOS devices that are close by.

A mockup of the “Find My” app icon in iOS 13

The app, which is expected to just be called “Find My,” will include existing Find My iPhone features like Lost Mode and an option to remotely wipe a device. Location-based sharing options pulled from Find My Friends will also still be available.

Messages

Messages is said to be gaining a new WhatsApp-style feature that will let users add their own profile picture and display name, and then choose who sees that info. Apple is also adding a dedicated menu for Animoji and Memoji stickers.

Mail

In the Mail app, Apple may be planning to add new features that will organize messages into searchable categories like marketing, purchases, travel, “not important,” and more, plus there will be a read later queue, an option to mute incoming Mail notifications for specific email threads, and a tool for blocking people you don’t want to talk to.

Reminders

The Reminders app may get overhauled to make it a bit more useful with four default sections laid out in a grid, encompassing tasks to be finished today, all tasks, scheduled tasks, and flagged tasks.

A leaked iOS 13 screenshot of the new Reminders app on the iPad via 9to5Mac

Books

You might get rewarded for reading books in iOS 13 with Apple perhaps planning to introduce a progress tracker and a rewards system to encourage reading. There’s no word on how this might work, but it could be similar to the achievement system that rewards you with stickers when completing a fitness goal.

Health

The Health app may be getting a new feature related to the health of your ears. The app is said to include a “hearing health” section that will measure how loud you play music on your headphones and the volume of the ambient environment around you.

A better view of daily activity may also be included, and Apple may include better tools for tracking menstrual cycles.

macOS 10.15, like iOS 13, is going to be a major update for Mac users. We’ll highlight major features below, but full details on the new software can be found in our macOS 10.15 roundup.

We don’t know what Apple will call macOS 10.15, but it will have the name of another California landmark, following Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, and Mojave.

Cross-Platform Apps

macOS 10.15, paired with iOS 13, marks a major year in macOS app advancement. Apple started introducing universal apps in iOS 12 and macOS Mojave, and that project, known as “Marzipan,” is going to progress in macOS 10.15. Universal apps let iOS apps be ported over to the Mac with few changes, resulting in an app that can run on both platforms.

Apple started porting iOS apps to the Mac in macOS Mojave during the early stages of the project, and in macOS 10.15, Apple is going to give developers the tools to easily bring iPad apps to the Mac.

Apple’s aim with Marzipan is to let developers design a single app that works with either a touchscreen or a mouse and trackpad based on whether it’s running on iOS or macOS. This universal app feature would likely significantly increase the number of apps available on Macs while also cutting down on developer workload to create cross-platform apps.

iOS apps ported over to the Mac will be able to take advantage of Mac-specific features like the Touch Bar and keyboard shortcuts along with support for multiple windows. Adding Mac support to an existing iOS app will be as simple as checking a checkbox in Xcode.

New Apps Coming to Mac

As part of the Marzipan project, Apple is bringing several iOS only apps to the Mac and revamping some others.

There will be new Music, Podcasts, and TV apps, along with an updated Books app, some of which will be built using Apple’s Marzipan developer tools. Right now, all of these functions on Mac are done through the iTunes app, but Apple is retiring iTunes in favor of these new apps.

All of the current iTunes functions will be available, just through the aforementioned separate apps. The iOS Device management that’s done through iTunes at the current time will reportedly be done through the Music app instead.

Apple has already announced the TV app, but it’s expected to launch on Mac this fall. Music and Podcasts are new apps, and the Books app is rumored to be getting overhauled with an Apple News-style design and new tracking features and rewards that encourage reading.

The Reminders app, Screen Time, and iMessage Effects are also new features that are rumored to be coming to the Mac in macOS 10.15.

iPad as an External Display

macOS 10.15 will feature an option to send any app to an external display, including connected monitors and even an iPad. The feature is said to be available through a menu that can be opened by hovering over the maximize icon in any Mac app.

A mockup of an iPad as a second display for a Mac

Options will be available for opening the app on the external display, making windows full screen, and tiling windows. On an iPad that supports Apple Pencil, users will be able to draw with the Pencil while the iPad is serving as an external display, turning the iPad into a Wacom-style tablet.

32-Bit App Support Ending

Apple began issuing warnings about 32-bit apps in macOS Mojave, and has said that Mojave will be the last version of macOS to support them.

Apple is expected to phase out support for 32-bit apps in macOS 10.15, which means some older apps that haven’t been updated in a while will cease to work. Aperture, for example, Apple’s now-discontinued photo editing software, will not run on macOS after Mojave, nor will any other 32-bit app.

This change is still likely going to catch some people unaware and there could be some people who are upset when the new version of macOS is released and their favorite older apps no longer run.

New Find MyApp

The new Find My iPhone and Find My Friends hybrid app in the works for iOS is also expected to come to macOS.

It will be similar to the existing Find My iPhone feature on the web, but it will include Find My Friends functionality and it will perhaps have a “find network” feature that will let Apple devices be tracked even when WiFi and cellular connectivity is disabled by using other nearby iPhones. Apple is expected to name this app just “Find My.”

Apple Watch Authentication

Your Apple Watch can already unlock your Mac, but in macOS 10.15, the Apple Watch may be able to serve as an authentication method for other operations on the Mac.

Full details on what this might entail are not available, but it could allow the watch to be used instead of entering passwords or confirming payments, similar to Touch ID on Touch ID-enabled Macs.

watchOS 6

There are quite a few new features coming to the Apple Watch with the launch of watchOS 6. First of all, the Apple Watch is rumored to be getting its own App Store, which would let users download new Apple Watch apps right from their wrists.

A mockup of what the App Store could look like on Apple Watch

There’s no word on just how this will work, but the Apple Watch App Store is also likely to be available on the iPhone through the Apple Watch app to make it easier to see just what you’re downloading.

New health apps could come to the Apple Watch in watchOS 6, with Apple rumored to be working on a “Dose” app for pill reminders and a “Cycles” app for tracking menstrual cycles.

New apps including Calculator, Voice Memos, and Audio Books could come to the Apple Watch, and Apple is expected to add support for Animoji and Memoji stickers.

There will be new complications for hearing aid battery life, audio book status, rain data, and external noise information, which is another new health-related feature coming to Apple Watch. Going forward, the Apple Watch may be able to keep track of the ambient noise level, letting you know if you’re in danger of damaging your hearing.

Several new watch faces are said to be in the works, including a Gradient watch face that makes a gradient out of the color a user chooses, two new X-Large faces with jumbo numbers in different fonts and colors, and a California dial that’s similar to a classic watch face but with a mix of Roman and Arabic numerals.

The existing Solar Analog face may also be redesigned with a watch face that looks like a sundial.

tvOS 13

We don’t know what features are coming in tvOS 13 as it doesn’t often get the same major feature changes as other operating systems, but Apple could further refine the TV app and lay the groundwork for the upcoming Apple Arcade service that’s designed to let you access exclusive games for a monthly fee.

Games will be available on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV.

Other Possible Announcements

Mac Pro

Apple is working on a high-end high-throughput modular Mac Pro that’s set to debut in 2019, and we could see our first glimpse of it at the Worldwide Developers Conference.

There’s no guarantee that we’re going to see the new Mac Pro, but when Apple debuted the 2013 Mac Pro, it was shown off at WWDC before its December launch. Apple is also working on a 6K 31.6-inch high-end display to go along the Mac Pro.

New iPhone Cases and Apple Watch Bands

WWDC is one of the events where Apple typically unveils Apple Watch bands, iPhone cases, and iPad cases in refreshed summer colors.

This year should be no exception, and we may also see another rainbow-colored pride band, as Apple has done rainbow bands in June for the last couple of years.

MacRumors Coverage

Apple will have a livestream of the WWDC keynote available on its website and through the Events app of the Apple TV, but for those unable to watch, we’ll be covering the event on MacRumors.com and through our MacRumorsLive Twitter account. We’ll also have in-depth coverage of all of Apple’s announcements throughout the week.

There’s a whole lot of ocean on this planet, and we don’t have much of an idea what’s at the bottom of most of it. That could change with the craft and techniques created during the Ocean Discovery Xprize, which had teams competing to map the sea floor quickly, precisely and autonomously. The winner just took home $4 million.

A map of the ocean would be valuable in and of itself, of course, but any technology used to do so could be applied in many other ways, and who knows what potential biological or medical discoveries hide in some nook or cranny a few thousand fathoms below the surface?

The prize, sponsored by Shell, started back in 2015. The goal was, ultimately, to create a system that could map hundreds of square kilometers of the sea floor at a five-meter resolution in less than a day — oh, and everything has to fit in a shipping container. For reference, existing methods do nothing like this, and are tremendously costly.

But as is usually the case with this type of competition, the difficulty did not discourage the competitors — it only spurred them on. Since 2015, then, the teams have been working on their systems and traveling all over the world to test them.

Originally the teams were to test in Puerto Rico, but after the devastating hurricane season of 2017, the whole operation was moved to the Greek coast. Ultimately after the finalists were selected, they deployed their craft in the waters off Kalamata and told them to get mapping.

“It was a very arduous and audacious challenge,” said Jyotika Virmani, who led the program. “The test itself was 24 hours, so they had to stay up, then immediately following that was 48 hours of data processing after which they had to give us the data. It takes more trad companies about 2 weeks or so to process data for a map once they have the raw data — we’re pushing for real time.”

This wasn’t a test in a lab bath or pool. This was the ocean, and the ocean is a dangerous place. But amazingly there were no disasters.

“Nothing was damaged, nothing imploded,” she said. “We ran into weather issues, of course. And we did lose one piece of technology that was subsequently found by a Greek fisherman a few days later… but that’s another story.”

At the start of the competition, Virmani said, there was feedback from the entrants that the autonomous piece of the task was simply not going to be possible. But the last few years have proven it to be so, given that the winning team not only met but exceeded the requirements of the task.

“The winning team mapped more than 250 square kilometers in 24 hours, at the minimum of five meters resolution, but around 140 was more than five meters,” Virmani told me. “It was all unmanned: An unmanned surface vehicle that took the submersible out, then recovered it at sea, unmanned again, and brought it back to port. They had such great control over it — they were able to change its path and its programming throughout that 24 hours as they needed to.” (It should be noted that unmanned does not necessarily mean totally hands-off — the teams were permitted a certain amount of agency in adjusting or fixing the craft’s software or route.)

A five-meter resolution, if you can’t quite picture it, would produce a map of a city that showed buildings and streets clearly, but is too coarse to catch, say, cars or street signs. When you’re trying to map two-thirds of the globe, though, this resolution is more than enough — and infinitely better than the nothing we currently have. (Unsurprisingly, it’s also certainly enough for an oil company like Shell to prospect new deep-sea resources.)

The winning team was GEBCO, composed of veteran hydrographers — ocean mapping experts, you know. In addition to the highly successful unmanned craft (Sea-Kit, already cruising the English Channel for other purposes), the team did a lot of work on the data-processing side, creating a cloud-based solution that helped them turn the maps around quickly. (That may also prove to be a marketable service in the future.) They were awarded $4 million, in addition to their cash for being selected as a finalist.

The runner up was Kuroshio, which had great resolution but was unable to map the full 250 km2 due to weather problems. They snagged a million.

A bonus prize for having the submersible track a chemical signal to its source didn’t exactly have a winner, but the teams’ entries were so impressive that the judges decided to split the million between the Tampa Deep Sea Xplorers and Ocean Quest, which amazingly enough is made up mostly of middle-schoolers. The latter gets $800,000, which should help pay for a few new tools in the shop there.

Lastly, a $200,000 innovation prize was given to Team Tao out of the U.K., which had a very different style to its submersible that impressed the judges. While most of the competitors opted for a craft that went “lawnmower-style” above the sea floor at a given depth, Tao’s craft dropped down like a plumb bob, pinging the depths as it went down and back up before moving to a new spot. This provides a lot of other opportunities for important oceanographic testing, Virmani noted.

Having concluded the prize, the organization has just a couple more tricks up its sleeve. GEBCO, which stands for General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans, is partnering with The Nippon Foundation on Seabed 2030, an effort to map the entire sea floor over the next decade and provide that data to the world for free.

And the program is also — why not? — releasing an anthology of short sci-fi stories inspired by the idea of mapping the ocean. “A lot of our current technology is from the science fiction of the past,” said Virmani. “So we told the authors, imagine we now have a high-resolution map of the sea floor, what are the next steps in ocean tech and where do we go?” The resulting 19 stories, written from all 7 continents (yes, one from Antarctica), will be available June 7.

At first glance, Tibbits look like building blocks, but each one is a module or a connector that makes it easier to build connected devices and systems. Tibbits were created by Tibbo Technology, a Taipei-based startup that exhibited at Computex this week (it showed off a humanoid robot built from various Tibbits).

The heart of the Red Dot Award-winning Tibbo Project System (the company used bright colors to make its modules stand out from other hardware) is the Tibbo Project PCB, which includes a CPU, memory and Ethernet port. Then you pick Tibbits, with pre-programmed functionality (such as RS232/422/485 modules, DAC and ADC devices, power regulators, temperature, humidity or pressure sensors or PWM generators), to plug into your PCB. Once done, you can place your project in one of Tibbo’s three enclosure kits (custom enclosures are also available).

Tibbo also offers an online configurator that lets you preview your device to see if it will work the way you want before you begin building, and its own programming languages (Tibbo BASIC and Tibbo C) and app development platform.

For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with Satechi to offer MacRumors readers a chance to win an Aluminum Slim Wireless Keyboard and a newly released M1 Wireless Mouse.

The M1 Wireless Mouse, priced at $29.99, features an Apple-like aesthetic with an aluminum finish that’s available in silver, space gray, gold, or rose gold to match your Apple devices. Satechi designed the mouse to have an ergonomic design that fits well in the palm of the hand and works well for both left and right-handed users.

It connects to a Mac using a Bluetooth 4.0 connection, and conveniently recharges through an included USB-C port, which is handy if you have a USB-C Mac because you can use your existing cable for charging purposes.

Optical sensors offer up precise tracking and speedy scrolling, and there are soft touch buttons on the top that’s meant to make it comfortable to use. A matching aluminum scroll wheel at the top ties the whole design together.

Satechi’s Slim Aluminum Wireless Keyboard, priced at $74.99, is a simple, wire-free keyboard that can connect to a Mac or an iOS device like an iPhone or iPad using Bluetooth.

Made from aluminum, it’s available in silver with white keys or space gray with black keys to match Apple’s silver and space gray devices. It features diamond cut chamfered edges for a sleek, modern look.

The Aluminum Slim Wireless Keyboard was created with the Mac in mind with function hot keys, a full numeric keyboard, and a USB-C port for convenient recharging. It connects via Bluetooth 3.0 and has a range of 33 feet.

Up to four devices at once can connect to the keyboard, and you can switch between them using one of the four available Bluetooth keys. Compatible devices include iMac Pro, iMac, MacBook Air, MacBook, MacBook Pro, iPad, iPad Air, iPad Pro, and iPhone.

We have five Aluminum Slim Wireless Keyboard and M1 Wireless Mouse combos to give away to MacRumors readers. To enter to win our giveaway, use the Gleam.io widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winners and send the prizes. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, following us on Instagram, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page.

Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years or older and Canadian residents (excluding Quebec) who have reached the age of majority in their province or territory are eligible to enter. To offer feedback or get more information on the giveaway restrictions, please refer to our Site Feedback section, as that is where discussion of the rules will be redirected.

Luna Display Giveaway

The contest will run from today (May 31) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on June 7. The winners will be chosen randomly on June 7 and will be contacted by email. The winners will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen.

The light twinkle of an old-fashioned cylinder music box evokes many things: nostalgia, childhood memories, sometimes even horror (they are a trope in scary movie soundtracks). Most music boxes play one tune, but with the Muro Box, which exhibited at Computex this week, you can use an app to pick different songs or even compose your own. It even doubles as a smart alarm clock.

Created by Tevofy Technology, a Taiwanese startup, the Muro Box’s components are mounted on a wooden base and visible underneath a glass cover, so you can watch as a 20-note steel comb creates music by plucking pins on its cylinder. The key difference between Muro and traditional music boxes, however, is that Muro’s cylinder is programmable.

Instead of a fixed pattern of pins, Muro’s patented convertible cylinder features 20 stainless steel gears, to correspond with each tooth on the comb. Each gear is attached to an electronic magnet and commanded by an embedded microcontroller, which means Muro can play almost any melody.

A 2018 Golden Pin Design Award winner, the Muro Box is getting ready to launch its Indiegogo campaign, after completing a successful campaign on Taiwanese crowdfunding site Zec Zec last year.

After weeks of sporting “Coming Soon” screens, the New York City MTA’s OMNY pilot finally launched today. The system augments the city’s MetroCard swipes with new contactless screens that work with contactless prepaid credit and debit cards and a variety of different smart devices.

We’ve highlighted the latter already. For starters, the system will work with Apple, Google, Samsung and Fitbit Pay, which means it will be open to a large range of smartphones and wearables.

Contactless cards are those with NFC chips sporting a four-bar wave symbol that are already available from a number of big banks and credit card companies. Per the MTA’s site, the list of partners includes Chase, Visa, Mastercard and American Express, which should cover a majority of card holders, one way or another.

That’s a big no for Diners Club, Japan Credit Bureau and China UnionPay. Also, PIN-protected cards don’t currently work, nor do gift cards and non-reloadable cards. Another important restriction in all of this is the fact that the system is currently limited to single-ride. That means the large number of New Yorkers who currently use daily, weekly and monthly passes to save on the ever-increasing ride prices are SOL for now.

Ride plans will be coming before 2021. The MTA says it also plans to have the system implemented in all subway stations and buses before then. For now it’s currently limited to the 4, 5, 6 line between Grand Central Station in Manhattan and Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center, as well as Staten Island buses.

Having demoed the system recently, I attest that it works well on both the iPhone and Apple Watch. It remains to be seen, however, how much of a logjam this technology will create in its first weeks and months. Ultimately, however, it should go a ways toward speeding things up as riders no longer have to fumble for their MetroCard and deal with aging swipe readers.

Want to rock out together even when you’re apart? Spotify has prototyped an unreleased feature called “Social Listening” that lets multiple people add songs to a queue they can all listen to. You just all scan one friend’s QR-style Spotify Social Listening code, and then anyone can add songs to the real-time playlist. Spotify could potentially expand the feature to synchronize playback so you’d actually hear the same notes at the same time, but for now it’s a just a shared queue.

Social Listening could give Spotify a new viral growth channel, as users could urge friends to download the app to sync up. The intimate experience of co-listening might lead to longer sessions with Spotify, boosting ad plays or subscription retention. Plus it could differentiate Spotify from Apple Music, YouTube Music, Tidal, and other competing streaming services.

A Spotify spokesperson tells TechCrunch that “We’re always testing new products and experiences, but have no further news to share at this time.” Spotify already offers Collaborative Playlists friends can add to, but Social Listening is designed for real-time sharing. The company refused to provide further details on the prototype or when it might launch.

The feature is reminiscent of Turntable.fm, a 2011 startup that let people DJ in virtual rooms on their desktop that other people could join where they could chat, vote on the next song, and watch everyone’s avatars dance. But the company struggled to properly monetize through ad-free subscriptions and shut down in 2014. Facebook briefly offered its own version called “Listen With…” in 2012 that let Spotify or Rdio users synchronize music playback.

Spotify Social Listening was first spotted by reverse engineering sorceress and frequent TechCrunch tipster Jane Manchun Wong. She discovered code for the feature buried in Spotify’s Android app, but for now it’s only available to Spotify employees. Social Listening appears in the menu of connected devices you can open while playing a song beside nearby Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices. “Connect with friends: Your friends can add tracks by scanning this code – You can also scan a friend’s code” the feature explains.

A help screen describes Social Listening as “Listen to music together. 1. On your phone, play a song and select (Connected Devices). You’ll see a code at the bottom of the screen. 2. On your friend’s phone, select the same (Connected Devices) icon, tap SCAN CODE, and point the camera at your code. 3. Now you can control the music together.” You’ll then see friends who are part of your Social Listening session listed in the Connected Devices menu. Users can also copy and share a link to join their Social Listening session that starts with the URL prefix https://spoti.fi/2HOWshq Note that Spotify never explicitly says that playback will be synchronized.

With streaming apps largely having the same music catalog and similar $9.99 per month premium pricing, they have to compete on discovery and user experience. Spotify has long been in the lead here with its algorithmically personalized Discover Weekly playlists that were promptly copied by Apple and SoundCloud.

Oddly, Spotify has stripped out some of its own social features over the years, eliminating the in-app messing inbox and instead pushing users to share songs over third-party messaging apps. The deemphasis in discovery through friends conveniently puts the focus on Spotify’s owned playlists. That gives it leverage over the record labels during their rate negotations since it’s who influences which songs will become hits, so if labels don’t play nice their artists might not get promoted via playlists.

That’s why it’s good to see Spotify remembering that music is an inherently social experience. Music physically touches us through its vibrations, and when people listen to the same songs and are literally moved by it at the same time, it creates a sense of togetherness we’re too often deprived of on the Internet.

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.

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.

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.

Steve Jobs quote from Apple’s press release about iTunes in 2001:

Apple has done what Apple does best — make complex applications easy, and make them even more powerful in the process. iTunes is miles ahead of every other jukebox application, and we hope its dramatically simpler user interface will bring even more people into the digital music revolution.

Here’s what iTunes looked like in 2001:

iTunes has attracted its fair share of criticism over the years for being bloated software, so its split into dedicated Music, TV, and Podcasts apps will be much welcomed. Earlier this week, leaked screenshots provided us with our first glimpse at what the Music and TV apps should look like on macOS 10.15.

Apple is widely expected to announce iOS 13, macOS 10.15, watchOS 6, and tvOS 13 at its WWDC 2019 opening keynote on Monday at 10 a.m. Pacific Time. MacRumors will have live coverage of the event on our website and through MacRumorsLive on Twitter, so be sure to follow along for the latest updates.

Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud will host the 14th summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Friday in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

The meeting is expected to address “current issues in the Muslim world” and “recent developments in a number of OIC member states”, according to the official agenda.

Topping the summit discussions will be regional security issues amid soaring tension between Iran and the United States and its Gulf allies. 

What is the OIC?

The OIC was established by 24 member states in 1969.

With 57 member states and covering four continents, the OIC is the second largest intergovernmental organisation in the world after the United Nations with a collective population reaching over 1.8 billion.

The majority of its member states are Muslim-majority countries, while others have significant Muslim populations, including several African and South American countries.

While 22 members of the Arab League are also part of the OIC, the organisation has several significant non-Arab member states, including Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. 

It also has five observer members, including Russia and Thailand.

The organisation has permanent delegations to the UN and the European Union and its official languages are Arabic, English and French.

Why was the OIC established?

The OIC first met in Morocco in September 1969, a month after an arson attack inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque that destroyed part of the roof and the 800-year-old pulpit of Salahuddin, best known for recapturing Jerusalem from the crusaders in the 12th century. 

Reacting to the incident, representatives from 24 Muslim countries met in the capital Rabat to establish a body that would promote cooperation across the Muslim world.

In March 1970, the first Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers was held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and plans for setting up a permanent secretariat for the OIC were established.  

Issues relating to Palestine have been central to the OIC’s agenda and summit discussions. The organisation has continuously condemned what member states consider Israeli aggressions against the Palestinians.

Other issues that have also taken centre stage in OIC summits include the wars in Bosnia and Iraq, a rise in the number of refugees from Muslim-majority countries such as Syria, as well as Islamophobia in the West.

Objectives and role

According to its charter, the OIC aims to preserve Islamic values, safeguard and defend the national sovereignty and independence of member states and to contribute to international peace and security. 

While the organisation has been known for its cultural and social projects, its political influence has been relatively limited.

“Typically, in the past, the OIC has been effective in promoting cultural and educational projects across the Muslim world,” Sami Hamdi, a Middle East expert, told Al Jazeera. “However, its political capabilities remain severely limited.”

According to Mamoon Alabbasi, a political analyst focusing on the Middle East and North Africa region, while the OIC has relative political weight, its rhetoric does not always translate into action on the ground. 

“With 57 member states… the OIC carries a [relatively] heavy political weight… [and] impact. But how much change that makes on the ground, is not always clear,” said Alabbasi.

Adding to its political limitations is its inability to unify its stance on issues, say experts. 

“Like other international organisations, such as the UN General Assembly, the OIC is supposed to have a unified voice but it does not because policies of the individual countries greatly differ,” said Alabbasi.

“Most importantly, the OIC doesn’t have a unified voice because most of its member countries are not democracies. So, while their populations may be in agreement [over an issue] they do not always represent the views of their populations.”

Hamdi agrees: “The OIC has a broad spectrum of different cultures. This means that on the political front, even if there is a united stance, it means very little practically.” 

Is the OIC relevant and effective?

Like other intergovernmental organisations, although resolutions issued by the OIC are not usually followed by action, statements usually point towards member states’ “red lines” that they cannot cross, say experts.

“If you want to know what position member states can take in the eyes of their own public, statements by the OIC are reflective of that. They [statements] show their [member states’] limits,” explained Alabbasi. 

Because the OIC includes a significant number of Arab states among its membership, it has often been compared with the Arab League.

While the two organisations share many similarities, the main difference lies in the OIC’s limited politicisation compared with the Arab League, say analysts. 

“The Arab League is more of a political entity than the OIC given the close proximity of its members, and the often, joint threat that the countries have had to face in the past,” according to Hamdi. 

According to Alabbasi, because of its wider scope of membership, a lack of consensus within the OIC sets it farther apart from the Arab League.

“The OIC is very different in the sense that member states cannot get a consensus across,” said Alabbasi

“But in other organisations such as the GCC, and to a lesser extent the Arab League, there tends to be an agreement on issues in broad terms, as opinions are similar, even if there is some disagreement,” added Alabbasi. 

How does the OIC operate?

The OIC holds an Islamic Summit once every three years. At the summit, heads of states discuss ways to achieve the charter’s objectives and make policy decisions that concern its member states. 

According to Talha Abdulrazaq, a Middle East expert at the University of Exeter’s Strategy and Security Institute, decisions and resolutions are made much like they are at UN General Assembly. 

“Member states each get a vote. Each member state can table a resolution and then others can vote on it or suggest tweaks.

“But much like the GA, OIC resolutions aren’t binding. They are just a declaration of the general feeling of the leaders of the Islamic world,” said Abdulrazaq.

Meeting on a more regular basis, the council of foreign ministers convenes annually to evaluate the implementation of the organisation’s policies and objectives. 

The general secretariat, the OIC’s executive body, is responsible for implementing those decisions.