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The best part about making predictions as a member of the press is that almost nobody has a long memory. You predict the future, but by the time the evidence against you has collected, everyone’s moved on to reading your new predictions for the next big thing. It’s quite a racket, or at least, it will be until someone invents Nostalgia. Not me, though. Every year around this time I make a combination of predictions and wishes for the next 12 months. But before I do that, I have to take stock and look back at the year just gone by – and how my predictions and hopes for 2019 fare in the cold light of a December morning. iPhone pricing, iPad advances The big news a year ago was…

As each new year begins, it is tradition to take some time to reflect on our lives and our habits. We take stock of our lives, our behaviour, and our habits, and we resolve to make some changes in the new year. There’s no reason you shouldn’t resolve to eat better, quit smoking or vaping, get more exercise, keep your house cleaner, or whatever else you have on your list, but don’t leave out your iPhone. We spend hours a day with these little glass rectangles. They contain a stunning amount of information about our lives, and are increasingly an integral part of them. It only makes sense to make New Year’s resolutions that centre around our iPhones. Here are a few suggestions for positive changes you can resolve to…

It has only been a few months since the release of Apple’s latest iPhone line-up and already the rumour mill is working overtime on what might arrive in the company’s smartphones this year and, believe it or not, the year after that. Even if the iPhone is making up a smaller percentage of Apple’s revenue these days, it hasn’t ceased being the product that defines Apple, meaning speculation remains at peak levels. And all the smartwatches, streaming services, and fancy wireless headphones aren’t going to be changing that calculus anytime soon. Certainly the next iPhone is still a way off, but it’s worth taking a moment to look at this latest round of rumours and think critically about what they might portend – even if they don’t end up coming…

Price: Free from fave.co/398WITN Months before the introduction of AirDrop in iOS 7 and macOS X Lion 10.7, a clever little mobile app debuted that allowed iPhone and iPad owners to transfer photos and videos between devices using what can only be described as magic. And it continues to be better than what Apple has done. PhotoSync 4.0 is a nifty little universal iOS app for transferring photos and videos between mobile devices, desktop computers (via web browser or free Mac/ Windows companion app), network-attached or cloud storage, and more. I’ve used this app for years when transferring iOS review screenshots to the Mac, because it has several advantages over AirDrop. Cross-platform sync For starters, PhotoSync offers an option to delete images once they’ve been successfully transferred to reduce unwanted…

Price: Free from fave.co/39RAkyL Following the App Store’s debut in 2008, a cottage industry for third-party iPhone camera apps began to flourish, a testament to how underwhelming Apple’s software was at the time. Over time, Apple started catching up, with the latest iOS releases proving the company now takes the Camera app as seriously as the hardware that drives it. Third-party developers responded by finding new ways to differentiate their camera apps from the one already built in. The latest to face this challenge head-on is FiLMiC, virtually a brand name when it comes to shooting mobile video. Can the makers of popular video app FiLMiC Pro conjure similar magic with photos as well? Advanced control FiLMiC Firstlight is an iPhone camera app tailored to shutterbugs who want more control…

Earlier this year, Brydge, the company that makes my favourite add-on keyboard for the iPad, announced a new iPad Pro accessory that includes both a keyboard and a trackpad. Adding external pointing devices to the iPad wasn’t possible until iOS 13 added support for Bluetooth mice as a part of the Assistive Touch suite of accessibility features. While some will consider the mere possibility of adding a mouse or trackpad to an iPad to be sacrilege, I prefer to see it as an additional option that can improve the iPad’s flexibility in certain circumstances. However, Apple’s support for external pointing devices is very much a first draft. It needs to continue pushing this feature forward in iPadOS 14 – and in doing so, the platform could reap some surprising rewards.…

The start of the year – and with it the decade – are here, and both have been busy for the company from Cupertino. There have been new products, the usual number of major and minor controversies, and oh so much rumour and speculation. But let’s stick to the facts. With the new year upon us, it’s time to cast our eyes back over the past 12 months in Apple and pick out the most significant moves and trends – the ones only visible with the benefit of hindsight. Turning pro It’s hard to deny that 2019 wasn’t the biggest year for professional Mac users since the company unveiled the Macintosh IIfx. (That joke’s for you, old timers.) Going into 2019, there was much eager anticipation around the Mac Pro,…

All told, 2019 was a relatively quiet year for the iPhone and iPad. Apple brought back some old favourites to round out the iPad product line, and a new batch of incrementally improved iPhones was released in the autumn, as anyone could have predicted. But quiet years aren’t really quiet. They generally mean that at Apple Park, there are projects coming to fruition, only to be sprung on an unsuspecting public the next year. And so, once again, I present one man’s attempt to guess what projects will finally become products in 2020. iPhone: More of the same? The iPhone 11 Plus is the third iteration of the iPhone X and the iPhone 11 is the second iteration of the iPhone XR. Unless Apple has a surprise iPhone redesign up…

It’s been over a year since Apple released the current 11- and 12.9in iPad Pros, so they’re due for an update – which means the rumour mill for these products is going to start churning more frequently. Triple-lens cameras for the iPad Pro OnLeaks (aka Steve H. McFly) believes that the next iPad Pros will come with a triple-lens camera. He says that the dimensions of the 11in iPad Pro could be the same as the current model. No information was provided about the dimensions of the 12.9in iPad Pro. But since the iPads will have the triple-lens camera, it’s possible that the tablets will be a bit thicker. Time-of-flight 3D We’ve heard plenty of rumours that suggest the 2020 iPhone will have time-of-flight 3D sensors for its rear camera,…

Price: £19.99 from fave.co/36DwvLC Whether building a new home or designing a makeover for your current property, it’s a good idea to visualize ideas before breaking out the sledgehammer and tearing down walls. But without an interior design background, that’s easier said than done. Thankfully, there’s a great app called Live Home 3D that makes the process easy and fun to do. You can make a design right from the comfort of the living room sofa (or most anywhere else) using a smartphone or tablet, complete with a virtual walkthrough of the new digs. Eye for design Live Home 3D Pro is a full-featured home design app for iPhone and iPad that makes it a snap to design a floor plan and build a virtual home or office onto it…

Mobile gaming is in an ugly spot, so a popular narrative goes, and that’s why Apple tried to tidy up the situation with its curated Apple Arcade subscription service. And we’re big fans of Apple Arcade. It’s a flawed narrative, though. Look beyond the chaff of flavour of the month, ad-riddled games and microtransaction-heavy ‘freemium’ titles, and you’ll find games that are every bit as good as what you’ll see on Apple Arcade. Some of them are even better. Read on to find our favourites of the past year. Ordia Price: £3.99 from fave.co/2Qxuwmk Ordia plays a lot like Angry Birds: pull back on your avatar with your finger, and it fires off in the direction you aimed in. But that’s about where the similarities end. Here you’re a gloopy…

Apple’s come a long way in the past decade. Ten years ago, the company had just released the third version of the iPhone and users of the smartphone had only recently been given the ability to cut, copy, and paste things. The iPad was waiting in the wings and the Mac Pro was still on its first cheese grater design. Fast forward to today and so much has changed. Smartphones are part of everyone’s daily lives, the iPad has been through an entire cycle of sales challenges, and the Mac Pro is, well, a cheese grater once again. As we look ahead to the coming 12 months, concrete details are, as always, few and far between. But there’s plenty of speculation about what’s coming down the road, and some of…

Technology has made its way into every nook and cranny of our lives over the past decade, and there’s no reason to think that trend’s about to stop now. As we roll into the ‘20s, Apple has positioned itself at the forefront of a bunch of different technological niches, but one place that it seems to be putting an especial amount of attention in the year ahead is smart home technology. Apple’s no newbie to the market, of course. HomeKit, the company’s smart home framework, has been around since 2014, and though it was slow to take off, a few key changes have helped it become more popular as the years have gone on. That said, there’s a lot of competition in the smart home arena, which can mean extra…

Price: Free from fave.co/2QA78Vs Although Apple Mail has improved over the years, weak spots remain where the app could use further refinement. Notifications are one such inadequacy – iCloud and Outlook accounts notwithstanding, Mail won’t automatically push incoming messages to devices as they arrive, instead fetching them at infrequent, less convenient intervals. Push notifications for every email account is just one of many reasons to install Spark on your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. This free email client app helps stay focused on what’s important with the Smart Inbox feature, which intelligently gathers incoming messages from multiple accounts into a single view, categorizing them as personal, newsletter or notification, so emails from real human beings are placed front and centre. Likewise, Smart Notifications limit distracting alerts every time a retailer…

The Photos app for macOS has improved substantially since its introduction, especially in the variety and sophistication of its image editing tools. On the iPhone and iPad, Photos lagged considerably. But with iOS 13 and iPadOS 13, Apple offers a catch up with its image-editing tools, even exceeding the Mac version in some areas. Let’s look at what’s new and how to best use these tools to crop, revise, and enhance images after capturing pictures. What’s new in Photos editing Apple changed and expanded the controls available while editing, while also improve the way in which each control is accessed and modified. Intensity slider. Nearly every tool now has an adjustment slider you can slide left and right or up and down, depending on your editing orientation. This allows fine…