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After months of rumours, Apple has announced AirPods Max, the latest member of its headphone line that brings the technology of its popular AirPods earbuds to a new over-ear design to rival high-fidelity offerings from Sony, Bose and Beats. And in a nod to Apple’s other ubiquitous wearable, the Apple Watch, the AirPods Max have a Digital Crown to control your music. The new headphones, which come in five colours to match the iPad Air 4 and cost a whopping £549, include all of the features Apple has brought to the AirPods and AirPods Pro, including active noise cancellation, Transparency mode and spatial audio. The somewhat large cups are wrapped in a ‘breathable knit mesh canopy’ that spans the stainless-steel headband and is designed ‘to distribute weight and reduce on-head…

It’s as regular as the turning of the seasons. Apple announces a new product and then the complaints that it’s overpriced start rolling in. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that selling a pair of headphones for £549 does seem a bit much. Will it succeed? That remains to be seen – and Apple sometimes does misjudge its prices, as happened with the original HomePod. But in general, you should not be surprised about Apple selling a product for a high price. Its pricing strategy shifts from product to product and from year to year, but it’s worth keeping in mind some basic rules of Apple pricing. SEEK BARGAINS ELSEWHERE Rule 1: Apple will never be the low-price leader in a category. While the company’s critics will claim its…

2020 was a wild and unpredictable year for smartphones. Samsung started the year by shipping its most expensive phone ever in the S20 Ultra and finished with one of its best bargains in the Galaxy S20 FE. Google dropped its flagship Pixel 5 to the midrange and delivered its best design ever, while a OnePlus phone topped a grand for the first time. Plus Apple shipped its smallest iPhone since the iPhone 5. And everything came with 5G on board. But amid all that, which phone emerged from the chaos as the champion of 2020? THE PHONES Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra: The Galaxy Note20 Ultra is Samsung’s best phone to date even if it has a slightly inferior camera and a smaller battery than the S20 Ultra. OnePlus 8 Pro:…

The Apple Watch is great right out of the box, but you’ll want to add a few apps to really make it sing. Apple’s wearable is a true marvel and the Series 6 is the best yet, but you’ll never know just how useful it can be if you don’t expand your horizons a bit. When we think about the Apple Watch apps we just can’t live without, these are at the top of the list. Some are free, some are not, but every single one is worth your while. AUTOSLEEP Price: £3.99 from fave.co/3pnTBi3 Apple finally added sleep tracking to watchOS 7, but it's a little lacklustre. It only works during specific designated Sleep Mode hours, and it doesn't give you much insight into the quality of your sleep.…

Text messages have a reputation for being informal and inconsequential, but you can sometimes have some really critical information in there. If you deleted some texts to clear up space on your iPhone and accidentally got rid of one that’s important, all hope is not lost. There are three potential avenues for recovering a deleted text message. You can restore your iPhone to a time before the message was deleted, you might be able to contact your phone provider and you may be able to use a third-party app. Here’s a brief explanation of all three options. RECOVER DELETED TEXTS USING AN iCLOUD BACKUP This is the simplest and fastest way to restore missing texts. If you have an iCloud backup from the time before you deleted the text, you…

Apple is starting to build its own modems to be used inside future iPhones. Chief technology officer Johny Srouji has revealed that the firm is working to build its own 5G modem has now begun, following last year’s acquisition of Intel’s modem business. Back in 2019 Intel gave up and stopped trying to compete with Qualcomm in the 5G modem market. At the same time Apple entered into a settlement with Qualcomm and established a multi-year contract for Qualcomm to supply modems to it for the next six years. But Apple’s long-term ambition is to design these chips itself. It bought Intel’s modem business for $1 billion in 2019 and has since built up a working group with the expertise required to design modems. That development has now begun. Srouji…

Price: £749 from fave.co/2WzknYB Size matters, and for the past four years Apple fans with small hands have been crying out for the company to make an iPhone they can hold comfortably. The SE (2016) was the last 4in iPhone – most likely last in the sense of ‘final ever’, rather than just ‘most recent’ – and nothing since has come close to that device’s combination of portability and ease of use. But this is the year of plenty, as far as iPhones go, and there’s now something for everyone: like a 20th-century rugby union team, Apple’s smartphone department welcomes all shapes and sizes. And the prop-forward iPhone 12 Pro Max has a scrum-half scurrying along behind it. The 12 mini certainly isn’t a 4in phone – its screen measures…

If you’re thinking of buying an iPhone on contract, you’ve got a SIM-free iPhone and want to sign up to a contract, or are nearing the end of a contract and want to go with a different provider, you’ll be wanting to know which network is best for you. This article is the right place to find out. We go through the various network providers available in the UK and discuss their pros, cons and general performance – you should be able to find the right choice for you in no time. We also go into more detail about the research and reports we use to determine our verdict for each network further into this article. WHAT NETWORKS ARE THERE? In the UK we have four big networks: • EE…

Online fitness services such as Peloton have become very popular, and now Apple wants in on the business. The firm has launched Apple Fitness+, the latest service for Apple users. Fitness+ combines your Apple devices, videos, and collected exercise data to allow you to have satisfying workouts. HOW DO I SIGN UP? Apple Fitness+ launched on 14 December. You’ll need to install iOS 14.3 on your iPhone, iPadOS 14.3 on your iPhone and tvOS 14.3 on your Apple TV hardware to sign up and use Apple Fitness+. You’ll also need to update your Apple Watch to watchOS 7.2. Once the updates are installed, launch the Fitness app on your iPhone or iPad (iPad users need to get the Fitness app from the App Store). A new Fitness+ button appears at…

I‘m sure this sounds familiar: you’re trying to download and install the latest iOS release, or take some photos, or download that cool app your friend told you about, and your iPhone says the storage is full. You’ve already deleted every app you don’t think you need, and there’s still not enough space. So you look at your iPhone storage in Settings page and, sure enough, your iPhone’s storage is full. Worst of all, a huge chunk of it is just listed as Other. What’s that supposed to mean? How do you get rid of it? The Other storage section is mysterious and confusing, and there’s no one answer that works for everyone, but hopefully this guide will help you deal with this problem. HOW TO VIEW YOUR iPHONE STORAGE…

At has been over two years since Apple purchased Shazam, and it’s long overdue for an interface overhaul. Last month, the Shazam app got its biggest update since the acquisition, completely overhauling the interface and improving sync. In addition, the Shazam website has the ability to identify songs, once you give it permission to use the microphone on your computer, phone, or tablet. It’s a good way to quickly identify a song on a device you may not have downloaded the app onto yet. The app now has a slide-up card on the main screen to more quickly access your past Shazams, and get back to the big Shazam button when browsing around. The search tap now has a card to access country and city charts, so you can what’s…

Price: £129 from fave.co/37C096S The best thing I can say about the MagSafe Duo charger is that it does what it’s supported to do: charge your iPhone 12 and Apple Watch at the same time. But if you’re looking for a revolutionary MagSafe charging experience – or quite frankly, even a good one – you should probably wait for something better and cheaper to come along. At £129, you should expect the MagSafe Duo to bring a level of charging akin to the fabled AirPower charger, which promised a new charging solution that, according to Phil Schiller, would “actually help the entire industry move forward”. The MagSafe Duo doesn’t do that. If anything, it’s a step backwards. The MagSafe Duo charger is very pocketable and clearly made with travel in…

Whether you buy the mini, Max, Pro, or simple iPhone 12, one thing is for sure: you’re going to want to slap a case on it. Even with a new stronger ceramic coating on the screen and a thinner, more grippable design, the iPhone 12 is still dressed all in glass, so you’ll need to protect it from slips, scratches, and of course, fingerprints. Here are our favourite cases so far. OTTERBOX COMMUTER Price: £40 from fave.co/3mE0yKk Colour: Black, green, blue, pink. MagSafe charging: No. Why we love it: Otterbox is one of the most well-known names in phone cases for good reason: its cases are stylish, sturdy and will keep your phone safe from all kinds of falls. The Commuter case is a classic one that strikes a balance…

When it comes to Apple differentiating itself from its Big Tech rivals, there’s one area in which the company has spent a lot of time touting its record: security and privacy. From the App Store to HomeKit, Apple talks a lot about making sure that your data stays yours. This might seem like a no-brainer. After all, we trust our devices with the most intimate details of our lives and we live those lives increasingly online. But while we might think about very obvious places that security is important (like making strong passwords or using two-factor authentication), there are plenty of other ways that our private data can leak out. Sometimes that means making smaller changes, ones that may not be as understandable or as easily explainable to the average…