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AirDrop is a convenient way to share files and photos with the people around you, but a team of security researchers is warning that a flaw could allow strangers to steal your personal information even if they’re locked out of the system. The ‘significant privacy leak’ was uncovered by researchers from the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, who claim they informed Apple about the leak nearly two years ago but it still exists. According to the report, the user doesn’t even need to share a file to be vulnerable: “As an attacker, it is possible to learn the phone numbers and email addresses of AirDrop users – even as a complete stranger. All they require is a Wi-Ficapable device and physical proximity to a target that initiates the discovery…

Apple released a new iPad Pro in 2020 – a year and a half after the prior update – but it wasn’t much of a change. A new camera module that included LiDAR and an ultra-wide lens was fine, but the iPad isn’t really the thing people reach for when they want to take great photos. The processor was updated to the A12Z, which was just the same as the A12X but with a single GPU core, disabled on the A12X, re-enabled. It had more storage, but that’s just a function of the inevitable march of time. So, the iPad Pro was overdue for a more significant update, and with the new 5th-generation iPad Pro, we finally have it. Here are the highlights that make this year’s iPad Pro special.…

We weren’t expecting any iPhone news at the Spring Loaded event, but Apple threw us a bit of a curveball. Instead of a new model, we got a new colour: purple. Apple previously introduced a purple colour with the iPhone 11 and now it’s bringing a similar shade to the iPhone 12 and 12 mini (sorry Pro fans). Like the other iPhone 12 colours, the aluminium sides match the back of the device. The rest of the iPhone is the same as the current model.…

With the podcasts market getting more competitive by the day, Apple revealed new features for its dedicated app to keep up. The key new feature is Podcasts Subscriptions, a new service available in 170 countries in May that will offer exclusive content, early access to new series, and ad-free shows. Unlike its other subscription services, Apple isn’t charging a monthly fee for Podcast Subscriptions. Instead, content creators will set their own pricing and terms and fans will be able to subscribe to the podcasts they choose through the app. Changes are also coming to the Podcasts app. To help solve that problem of discovery, Apple is introducing a new Channels feature, which groups shows curated by creators. The app also has new pages that feature artwork for each show, an…

Apple has finally released iOS 14.5 after a protracted beta testing period. This is one of the bigger point-release updates we’ve seen, adding the ability to unlock your iPhone with your Apple Watch, AirTags support, AirPlay support for Fitness+, and the long-awaited App Tracking Transparency feature. Apple released the first developer beta on 1 February, but the public beta did not follow immediately after, instead landing on 4 February after a second build for developers. The final release to the general public didn’t follow until 26 April. Here are all the major new features of the update. WHAT’S NEW IN IOS 14.5 1. Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch Face ID is great, but the constant mask-wearing of the pandemic has exposed an obvious flaw – it doesn’t work when…

Apple started testing iOS 14.6 before the big iOS 14.5 release even went out to the general public. With iOS 15 expected to begin testing at WWDC in June, many users thought iOS 14.5 would be the last release in the iOS 14 branch. It appears that Apple is not quite done iterating, and so we’ll get iOS 14.6 as well. HOW TO GET THE iOS 14.6 BETA If you’re feeling brave, you can try out iOS 14.6 before its general release. Apple suggests you do not run the beta on any critical device, and that’s good advice – you never know what can go wrong. Developers can go head to developer.apple.com/download on the device upon which they which to run the beta, and download a developer beta profile. Those…

Last year, we wrote about how Apple’s restrictive App Store rules would cause millions of gamers to miss out on Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming service (née xCloud). Microsoft later updated the Xbox app to stream games over your local network from your own Xbox, but that’s not the same thing as a cloud gaming service where you don’t need to download or install games at all. After months of hand-wringing and probably back-room negotiations, Microsoft finally announced that it would build a web-based solution for devices in which it can’t provide an app, like iPhone and iPad. (Oddly enough, this is also how the company plans to bring Game Streaming to Windows 10 PCs.) The company promised that we’d see Xbox Game Streaming through the browser as early as spring…

Price: Free (in-app purchases) from fave.co/3xwTlST We love the simplicity and convenience of iCloud Photo Library: Take a picture or shoot video on an iPhone or iPad, and that content magically appears on every device you own. But sometimes it’s preferable to make local backups instead, like when shooting storage-hungry 4K videos without access to reliable Wi-Fi. That scenario is exactly what OWC Copy That was made for. Brainchild of venerable storage guru Other World Computing, this free iOS app takes most of the friction out of backing up photos and videos from an iPhone or iPad to external or network-attached storage. Using an optional hardware adapter (more on that in a moment), simply connect the external disk to your mobile device, then select the type(s) of media you want…

Apple has announced a minor expansion to its Fitness+ service with the addition of several new workouts and new instructor. The workouts target underrepresented groups in the current slate of Fitness+ workouts: those who are pregnant, older adults and beginners. In addition to these new workouts, a new Yoga and Mindful Cooldown instructor joins the cast: Jonelle Lewis. One of the existing instructors, Anja Garcia, is joining the HIIT team. For those taking advantage of the new Time to Walk feature on Apple Watch, you’ll find a new episode with Jane Fonda. All this stuff – the new workouts, instructor, and Time to Walk episode – are available to Fitness+ subscribers now.…

If you want an iPad, you have three basic choices: the basic 10.2in iPad, the more expensive iPad Air, or the even more expensive iPad Pro. But if you have a few pounds to spend, the choice is even simpler. The standard 10.2in iPad is the budget option, with an aging design (big bezels, home button, Lightning port) and older processor. And the brand new 12.9in iPad Pro starts at a whopping £999 and is geared toward only the most demanding of users. So if you want the most tablet without breaking the bank on a £999 12.9in iPad Pro, you have just two options: the £579 iPad Air and the £729 11in iPad Pro. We used to recommend the iPad Air unequivocally for bringing the best of the iPad…

The Spring Loaded event brought a fast and furious pace of announcements, including a new iPad (page 28), AirTags (page 30) and Podcasts Subscription service (page 33), even a new iPhone colour (page XX). But Apple still found time to fix one of the biggest gripes we have in any of Apple products: Apple TV’s Siri remote. The Apple TV 4K itself isn’t a huge upgrade over the prior model. It brings an A12 Bionic processor (versus the A10X), high-frame-rate HDR and Dolby Vision video to enable smooth 60fps viewing. iPhone users can also use their handset’s light sensor to compare the colour balance to compare colour balance to ‘industry-standard specifications used by cinematographers worldwide’ and automatically adjust your TV’s video output without needing to fiddle with menus and settings.…

There was a lot of new stuff announced at Apple’s Spring Loaded event. By now you’ve already read about the new iPad Pro, purple iPhone, AirTag and Siri Remote, but there are a bunch of smaller announcements you might have missed. 1. THE 12.9IN iPAD PRO IS A LOT MORE EXPENSIVE The iPad Pro has never been cheap, but the new model has some serious sticker shock. Where the previous iPad Pro topped out at £1,649 for the 12.9in model with LTE and a gigabyte of storage, the same model will now cost £1,999 and you can spend as much as £2,149 on the 2TB model. That’s because the base price has increased by £100, Apple is charging £200 more for the same 1TB storage, and the cellular costs…

With iOS 14.5, Apple is finally making good on a promise made at WWDC last summer to give iPhone and iPad users more control over the ways their data is tracked and collected by app developers. The feature, called App Tracking Transparency, was supposed to ship with iOS 14 last autumn, but Apple delayed the release to give developers more time to update their apps as required. Now that it’s available, let’s take a look at what it is, what it does, and why you want to opt-in. WHAT IS APP TRACKING TRANSPARENCY? App Tracking Transparency (ATT for short) is a new feature of iOS, iPadOS and tvOS 14.5 that requires applications to ask permission if they want to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites. Your Apple…

Last year’s iOS 14 release was one of the best iPhone updates yet. Apple didn’t necessarily deliver everything on our wish list from last spring, but it made big strides on a surprising number of them, with a massive home screen revamp, huge privacy advancements, and an overdue streamlining of Siri’s UI. And subsequent updates have kept up the momentum, with the upcoming release of iOS 14.5 slated to bring Apple Watch unlocking, app tracking transparency, and a slew of other tweaks and additions. Looking forward to iOS 15, we still want Apple to tackle some of our evergreen complaints (Siri), but the addition of big changes like the App Library and home screen Widgets have gone a long way toward making iOS a more modern and flexible mobile operating…

Apple has made several attempts to make a go of the game market over the years – anyone remember when Apple had Game Evangelists? Pippin? Game Sprockets? And each and every time, just like boss battles in classic Nintendo games, those efforts have largely been futile. Gaming has so often seemed like an afterthought for Apple, paid lip service while the company focused on other areas that it clearly felt more passionately about, like music. With iOS, it seemed as though Apple had finally struck gold, providing a platform for hundreds of games that millions of people obsess over. But while the company’s mobile platform has proved to be profitable for gaming, there’s only so much of that success that can be laid directly at Apple’s own feet. After all,…

Price: £75 from fave.co/2QuDiVb I’m a huge fan of the way the House of Marley does business, minimizing its environmental impact by using recycled/recyclable and sustainable materials to build its products. The Positive Vibration XL over-ear headphones are a prime example: leveraging reclaimed aluminium, steel, and plastic to deliver good sound with hardware that won’t add to a landfill at the end of its useful life. You can read more about the materials used at House of Marley’s website – see fave.co/3u4I7TI. DESIGN The Positive Vibration XL are available in three colour combos: all-black, blue and black, and copper and white, each of which costs £75. Okay, black-on-black isn’t really a combo unless you count the FSC-certified wood inserts in the cups with the House of Marley logo. Regardless of…

While music streaming services have long been the subject of artists’ and labels’ ire over low rates and onerous terms, Apple Music might be their biggest advocate. In a post on Apple Music’s artist dashboard obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Apple divulged that it pays out a penny per stream whenever subscribers play a song. That might not seem like much, but it’s actually significantly higher than other services, including Spotify, its biggest competitor and the largest streaming service. Spotify launched a website last month to defend its rates, boasting that it has paid “over $23 billion in royalties to rights holders” as of 2020. However, that works out to less than half a cent per stream. Unlike Apple Music, Spotify has an ad-supported free tier that contributes to…

Nobody needed to convince me that Apple’s at the top of its game when it comes to designing iPad hardware. The 2018 iPad Pro was so fast that more than two years later, it can handle more or less anything that you can throw at it. The 2020 iPad Pro was essentially the same speed – and it didn’t matter. So here comes the 2021 iPad Pro, which is an even more extreme dunk in terms of features. Adding an M1 processor isn’t going to add the same boost as it did on the Mac side, because the iPad Pro was always powered by an energy-efficient Apple processor. But it’s still an upgrade of two processor generations, and that matters. A new display on the larger model allows Apple to…

Apple recently opened up its Find My network to third-party device makers, but that’s not stopping the company from making its own item tracker. We’ve heard rumours about AirTags since around 2019, and the company has finally released them. They’re pretty simple, really: you add the AirTag to your account, attach it to some object, and then the Find My app will tell you where it is in the Items tab. Since nearly all modern Apple products can passively (and privately) use their Bluetooth radios to locate lost devices, you’ll have a pretty good chance of locating something that you accidentally leave somewhere. You can locate devices in real time, and also set a device to ‘Lost Mode’, which will notify you and display an optional phone number and message…

Apple’s Spring Loaded event absolutely lived up to its name, bringing a slew of new products, from the colourful 24in iMac to the 12.9in iPad Pro’s gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display. But now that it’s over, we can turn our attention to the rest of the year. Here are all the products we’re expecting Apple to announce before the calendar turns to 2022. MAY-JUNE AirPods (3rd generation) We initially thought that new AirPods were coming at the Spring Loaded event, but Apple opted to skip audio products entirely. But based on the leaks and the rumours, they could arrive at any time between now and the iPhone event in the autumn. Seemingly accurate images leaked months ago showing a pair of earbuds that look a lot like the AirPods Pro,…

With the release of iOS 14.5 and watchOS 7.4, Apple has solved one of the most vexing iPhone problems of the past year: the fact that Face ID doesn’t work when wearing a mask. Here’s how to set it up on your phone and watch. REQUIREMENTS First, you’ll need an iPhone that has Face ID and an Apple Watch. The iPhone must be updated to iOS 14.5 and the Apple Watch must be updated to watchOS 7.4. Furthermore, your Apple Watch must be secured with a passcode, worn on your wrist and unlocked. It must also be nearby to your iPhone. In other words, the requirements for unlocking your iPhone with your Apple Watch are basically the same as unlocking your Mac with it. HOW TO ENABLE APPLE WATCH UNLOCK…

If you have no plans for this weekend, Apple has something for you. The company has announced a major expansion of its Apple Arcade service, adding over 30 new and classic games, as well as a couple of new game categories to help you peruse the library that now includes over 180 titles. This is the first time Apple has allowed games to exist in both the App Store and Apple Arcade, and represents a major concession for the service. The games still don’t allow in-app purchases, but otherwise offer the same gameplay and experience despite having a separate entry in the store. Apple Arcade’s new Timeless Classics category features digital versions of all-time favourite, with some offering a new take on a game, such as Really Bad Chess, which…

Not all power banks are the same. As in all veins of consumer tech, there are cheap ones and pricey ones, and sometimes you’re paying simply for a name. But there’s so much more to choosing a portable charger than finding the cheapest version you can. We want the fastest charging speeds – for recharging the bank itself and for charging a connected phone – and to know at a glance that a portable charger is going to get us through the day with juice to spare, even share. But we don’t want it weighing down our pockets. We want multiple ports for charging additional gadgets, and more efficient use of power outlets to free up sockets. We don’t want to carry multiple charging cables – in fact we don’t…