Table of contents for April 2020 in Macworld UK

Momentous news from the US, where Apple has reportedly agreed to pay between $310m and $500m to millions of customers affected by the so-called Batterygate iPhone problem. Class-action lawsuits in the US accused Apple of deliberately slowing down older models of iPhone with iOS updates, in order to encourage them to upgrade to newer versions; Apple countered by saying that it was throttling processor performance to preserve battery life, although it did not originally disclose that it was doing so. (In fairness, the company is far more transparent about this now, and allows you to turn off the euphemistically named ‘performance management’ feature.) How will this affect you? If you’re from the US and have an affected iPhone, you stand to gain a small amount of money, even if you…

If there’s one good thing about the relative scarcity of games on the Mac, it’s that we often get the best games when we do get them. Sure, you’ll find a few stinkers, but the fact remains that many developers don’t even consider porting their creations – and they’re almost always ports – over to Apple’s desktop system unless they think they have a chance of surviving between brushed aluminium and a Retina display. In fact, there are enough quality games on Mac that I could easily rattle out a list with 30 more, but nobody has time for that. For our money (and yours), these are the best. A couple of quick notes: first, most links here go to Steam, but you can find many of the same titles…

Qualcomm’s latest 5G modem isn’t the leap that the X55 was last year, but it might be more important. While the Snapdragon X60 5G Modem-RF System touts a slew of technical and practical enhancements to take full advantage of the next-generation networks’ tremendous speeds, Qualcomm’s new modem isn’t built for phones like the Samsung Galaxy S20 that are already on board with 5G, it’s made for the one that isn’t: the iPhone. Let’s get the technical stuff out of the way first. The X60 is the first ‘to support spectrum aggregation across all key 5G bands and combinations’. That means X60 phones will be more future-proof than today’s X55 ones, supporting mmWave and sub-6 using frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duplex (TDD) at a wider range of deployment.…

If you have a Mac, you have Safari – it’s the built-in default. Apple’s browser is very fast, respects your privacy, and works seamlessly with Safari on iPhone or iPad through iCloud syncing features. But it’s not the only game in town. Unlike on iOS and iPadOS, Apple is quite permissive about running full web browsers on macOS. Mac browsers can use their own technologies to render web pages and set themselves to be the default web browser. On iPhone or iPad, they can’t do either of those things. There’s nothing wrong with sticking to Safari, but depending on your own particular needs, it might not be the best browser. Some services, like YouTube TV, won’t run on Safari at all. And some features, like YouTube’s support for 4K video,…

While last year’s annual spring Apple event was entirely devoted to services, this year’s show appears to be shaping up to bring a torrent of new hardware. We already knew about the new budget successor to the iPhone SE (which may be called the iPhone 9) and an iPad Pro refresh, but there have been a flurry of rumours that suggest Apple has much more hiding up its sleeve. There’s no denying that the AirPods and AirPods Pro are runaway hits, so it only makes sense that Apple would want to build on their success. We’ve heard rumours for a while that Apple is working on a pair of noise-cancelling over-ear headphones, but a cryptic Target listing spotted by Target employees suggests they might be on the way sooner than…

You’ll find dozens and dozens of games in Apple Arcade, and – wonder of wonders – almost none are bad. Some games are better than others, though, so here’s a list of the 10 games you should start with. These games weren’t necessarily made with the biggest budgets or by the biggest studios, but they’re games that are endlessly replayable and stick in your head. 1. What The Golf? What the Golf? is hilarious, weird, mildly challenging and stupid. It’s always about golf, but you can get idea of the zany directions in which it takes that foundation in by playing one of the first levels. You’ll find a house on a golf course, and so you pull back your finger to set the angle and force for the…

Apple’s big push into services this year was doomed for disaster – at least if you considered Apple News+ representative of what was to come back in March 2019. Many of the problems I hated back then remain central to the experience: the mishmash of PDFs with digital content, the hassle of searching for publications, and the lack of real reasons to give up many direct subscriptions to notable magazines. One year on, the best thing about it is that it’s a relatively cheap way to read The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker. With services, Apple News+ suggested last spring, Apple was biting off more than the famous hardware maker could chew. Today, Apple’s trouble with its paid news service looks like an anomaly. Apple TV+ may not…

Buckle up, because we’re poised for another battle on digital security. The FBI has reputedly asked for Apple’s help unlocking phones belonging of the alleged shooter from the Pensacola air base incident last year. Apple, for its part, claims it has already turned over to law enforcement all the information it has access to. If you feel like we’ve been here before, it’s because we have. Back in 2016, the FBI wanted Apple to unlock a phone belonging to the San Bernardino shooter; Apple declined to help, as doing so would have potentially compromised the security of all of its devices. Eventually, the bureau sought help from an Israeli-based cybersecurity firm who was able to hack into phone in question. Leaving aside the dangers inherent in the creation of back…

Apple has announced that it miss its forecasted revenue guidance for the second fiscal quarter of 2020 due to the coronavirus epidemic. The company had projected revenue for the quarter between $63 and $67 billion, and gross margin between 38 and 39 percent. Apple did not provide revised Q2 earnings estimates. In a released statement, Apple stated that it is, “experiencing a slower return to normal conditions than we had anticipated. As a result, we do not expect to meet the revenue guidance we provided for the March quarter due to two main factors.” In a statement, Apple said it expected the iPhone supply constraint to be temporary. Demand for Apple products in China has been affected as well, with Apple stores closed for a duration, and then reopening at…

Facebook, Microsoft and Google have now cancelled major conferences in the face of the spread of the coronavirus. Apple’s annual developer conference, WWDC, usually takes place in early June – and all eyes will now turn to Apple to see how it will respond. Apple has announced WWDC as late as mid-April in past years, so the company has some time to watch the spread of the virus and reach a final decision. But it’s becoming clear that we’re entering a period where international travel and large groups of people in small spaces is not advisable. The worldwide spread of a new virus isn’t generally something that burns out in a couple of months, which is why it’s likely that Apple is going to have to find an alternative from…

I‘ve spent the past week wearing Apple’s new AirPods Pro. Not a week straight, I mean, but pretty consistently in all the places where I would usually use one of my other myriad sets of headphones. In looking at the AirPods Pro as a product, I think there are important things to be gleaned from the choices Apple made in their design – the kind of design choices that may lend insight into the way Apple is thinking about the wearables market. Wearables, of course, was the market that was sharply up in the company’s most recent quarterly results, and thus is clearly a place that Apple is likely to be focusing some attention in the future. And with rumours of Apple’s AR goggles/glasses starting to coalesce around later this…