Indice dei contenuti per September 2021 in Macworld UK

According to a report from 9to5Mac, citing “sources familiar with the matter”, Apple is internally testing a new display that will have an Apple SoC inside. The report says Apple is currently using the A13, the same processor as you’ll find in the iPhone 11. Though the tech giant has long been rumoured to be working on a new lower-cost monitor, this particular project (codenamed J327) is said to be a high-end successor to the Pro Display XDR. Stuffing an A13 inside would give the monitor a six-core CPU (two high-performance and four high-efficiency cores), a four-core GPU and an eight-core Neural Engine, along with all the other stuff that goes into Apple’s modern SoCs like audio and video encoders, DSPs, and a secure enclave. It’s not yet clear what…

Over the past few months, Apple has seemingly taken a much harder stance against online leakers, sending out cease-and-desist letters to social media accounts that post assorted rumours that quickly spread around the web. Now Apple has a message to go along with it: you’re not harming us, you’re harming the cases. In a cease-and-desist letter obtained by Motherboard, Apple’s law firm in China went after a leaker who had ‘advertised stolen iPhone prototypes on social media’. In the letter, Apple said the leaker has “disclosed without authorization a large amount of information related to Apple’s unreleased and rumoured products, which has constituted a deliberate infringement of Apple’s trade secrets”. According to Motherboard, Apple wrote that leaks harm customers by taking away the element of surprise, but also have an…

The iPad Pro has frequently been an incubator for technology that Apple ultimately plans on rolling out to the rest of its product line. Last year, the iPad Pro got a LiDAR scanner months before it appeared in the iPhone 12. This year’s 12.9in model introduced the mini-LED screen technology that will probably be showing up very soon in a new line of MacBook Pro laptops. And this autumn’s iPhone Pro models are rumoured to come with high-refresh-rate displays, pioneered years ago on the iPad as ProMotion. But there’s another core Apple technology of the future that’s currently available only on the newest iPad Pro. And I’m confident that, in the next couple of years, you’ll see it spread across most (but not all) of Apple’s products: Centre Stage. Centre…

Apple’s Mac Pro was introduced in 2019, and updates usually come out in increments – new graphics options here, SSD module upgrades, there, etcetera. But the Mac Pro will undergo a major update when Apple releases its own System on a Chip (SoC) for the workstation. This article keeps track of the reported updates for the Mac Pro, so return to this page to keep up to date with what could be coming. DESIGN AND SIZES The current Mac Pro design was introduced in 2019 but we could see some changes when Apple unveils the Mac Pro with Apple silicon. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the Mac Pro that uses Apple’s own SoC will be “half the size” of the current Mac Pro, have an aluminium case, and could remind…

Apple’s Notes is one of my go-to apps in macOS. For me, it’s a repository of notes, links, images, excerpts, and anything else I think I’ll need for work or personal projects. And with macOS Monterey, Apple guaranteed that I’ll use Notes even more often with a new feature called Quick Note. Quick Note is a fast way to create a note file when you’re not using the Notes app. When you trigger it, the Notes app quickly opens to a new file that you can start using immediately. It’s a fantastic feature but might not be so obvious if you don’t know it’s there. Here’s how to find it. HOW TO SET UP QUICK NOTE Apple added Quick Note as a Hot Corner function in macOS Monterey. You can…

A shared calendar can be a big help in coordinating activities across a couple, a family or a group. Apple offers shared calendars via iCloud, but it doesn’t always make it easy to understand how to share or accept an invitation – particularly if you or those you’re sharing with don’t use only Apple calendar tools on a Mac, iPhone or iPad, or use other operating systems. People inside the Apple ecosystem or using iCloud-compatible third-party apps like BusyCal (fave.co/37vgfy5) or Fantastical (fave.co/3jtdgfj) can view and modify events on privately shared calendars. If you’re using calendar software that doesn’t integrate directly with iCloud, requiring a log in with your account, you won’t be able to accept invitations to private calendars, but can still view publicly shared ones. START BY SHARING…

With the Terminal in macOS, you can save lots of time and type less by using the command history functions built into the Terminal shell. The shell keeps a record of the commands you run, and you can access this history with a few simple keystrokes to run commands again or edit them so you don’t have to retype them. You can check to see what commands are in your history at any time by running the history command. When you type history and press Return, Terminal displays a list of the commands in the history list. For example: 1 ls 2 cd.. 3 ls 4 cd kirk Each line includes the number of the command (from the first to the last) and the command itself. Terminal includes all commands,…

Apple Arcade is a subscription service that lets users play premium iPad, iPhone, Mac and Apple TV games as often as they like for a set monthly fee. But which ones are worth your time? We test primarily on iPhone. We also recommend you get a hardware controller, given how many of the games benefit from one: we test with an Xbox controller and a Rotor Riot wired controller to see if this works and how well it suits the gameplay. Many games support Bluetooth controllers despite not mentioning this fact in their App Store description. 1. SP!NG A puzzler that’s original, clever, sadistic, fun and frustrating in that ‘let me keep trying until I crack this’ way that’s always a sign of quality. There’s essentially one control: tap the…

We may have seen the last ‘Be Right Back”. message on the Apple Store. After inexplicably going down for about an hour late last month, the online Apple Store returned with a new tab, a new look, and a whole lot of new puns. While Apple has been selling products online for years, it hasn’t had a true storefront that encouraged browsing since the last redesign in 2015. With this new look, products still have to buy links that go to dedicated sections of the store, but you no longer need to jump through hoops or search for a specific product to browse the digital shelves. The leftmost tab next to the Apple logo now says ‘Store’ as it did six years ago, and clicking it brings you to what…

Apple and AMD have started offering new graphics options for the Mac Pro desktop and there’s no shortage of power. The Radeon Pro W6800X, W6800X Duo, and W6900X are new workstation-class variants of AMD’s very popular consumer RDNA2 graphics cards, the Radeon 6800 and 6900XT. The X6800X Duo is sort of unique in that it puts two Radeon Pro 6800 GPUs on a single card. The cards can now be selected – alone or in pairs – when configuring your Mac Pro. The Radeon Pro W6800X is similar to the consumer Radeon 6800: it features 60 compute units and a 256-bit memory bus, but it doubles the amount of GDDR6 memory from 16GB to 32GB. Configuring your Mac Pro with one of these cards is a £2,400 upgrade, or you…

When Apple released the M1 chip at the end of last year, two things were clear: Macs were a whole lot faster and the future was incredibly bright. What we didn’t know was how Apple would handle updates now that the entry-level models were as fast as some of the Pro machines. At the time, Apple said it was developing “a family of chips” that would be unveiled as the transition continued over the next couple of years, and now that it seems the M1 Macs have all been released, we’re anxiously awaiting the next step. The timeline is a little clearer now. Now that Apple has updated its entire line-up of consumer-level Macs with the M1 chip in the MacBook Air, 13in MacBook Pro, Mac mini and 24in iMac…

With macOS Monterey, Apple bolstered its Full Keyboard Access features so that you can rely less on the mouse or trackpad to navigate the user interface. You’ll find these settings in System Preferences > Accessibility > Keyboard in macOS Monterey. In macOS Big Sur, the Keyboard settings in Accessibility have two sections: Hardware and Accessibility Keyboard. In macOS Monterey, Apple added a third section: Navigation (the Hardware section is still there, and Accessibility Keyboard has been renamed as Viewer). Let’s go over the settings in each section. NAVIGATION The Navigation section of Keyboard provides settings that let you navigate the Mac UI without using a mouse or trackpad. The setting here is called Full Keyboard Access and when it’s turned on, you can do the following: Use the spacebar to…

Live Text is a new feature in macOS Monterey that allows you to use the text in an image. It’s a feature that’s quite helpful – for example, if you’ve ever been in a meeting or lecture, and took a picture of a whiteboard filled with written information, you can now select the text in the photo, copy it, and then paste it into a document. There are a lots of ways you can use the Live Text feature, and it’s a huge time-saving production tool. Live Text is also in iOS 15 and iPad OS 15, and because you probably use the cameras on those devices often, you might use Live Text on your iPhone and iPad more than you would your Mac. But it’s coming to macOS Monterey…

Waves of extreme heat have already passed across the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world so far this mid-2021. While people are at the greatest risk from high temperatures, your Mac may be more fragile. People can be water cooled and no current Mac offers that option – though some have tried. An iPhone or iPad will warn you when it detects it’s too hot and shut down, while a Mac may simply suddenly power off. If it doesn’t power down, you may be running it to close to its maximum capability and putting a lot of additional wear in the process on components that might fail later during other seasons. Knowing the temperature is one thing. The other is how hot should your internal components run?…

Many people stay away from macOS’s Terminal because of the tedium of typing in long, precise commands. But you can save lots of time and type less by using the command history functions built into the Terminal shell. The shell keeps a record of the commands you run, and you can access this history with a few simple keystrokes to run commands again or edit them, so you don’t have to retype them. Terminal saves the command history in last-in, first-out order, which means that the first command in the history list is the last command issued. If you want to run a command that you’ve already typed – say you want to rerun the last command you just typed – all you have to do is press the up…

With just weeks to go before iOS 15 arrives, Google is finally getting on board with some of the best features of iOS 13 and iOS 14. The company has announced that it is bringing dark mode and home screen widgets to the Google Maps app. Dark mode is basically what you expect it to be: dressing the entire app in an optional black wrapper. You can choose whether to turn dark mode on in the settings and it will presumably follow the system-wide options as well. Also new are a pair of widgets that can be added to the home screen. The Nearby Traffic widget is a small two-by-two widget that shows an updated view of the traffic conditions around your current location. The second is a large four-by-four…

It’s been a long three months since Apple unveiled the new Magic Keyboard with Touch ID for the 24in iMac, but if you’ve been itching to get your hands on one, the wait is over. Unveiled with little fanfare in its online shop, Apple is now selling the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID (£149 from fave.co/2VqoQ2S) and the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keyboard (£179 from fave.co/37m7Ahz). The models are the same that Apple offers with the 24in iMac, which Apple offers as an upgrade for £50 and £80, but only come in a single colour: silver. The keyboard is the same as the standard version with a Touch ID sensor in place of the eject button at the right end of the function row. However, if you…

Apple’s fixation on control is legendary. From the earliest days, the company prided itself on building the whole widget, hardware, and software, in an age where those two were becoming increasingly decoupled. Even today, it remains arguably the defining characteristic of the company. Just compare it to its main rivals in the smartphone or PC market. As Apple has become larger and more successful, that focus on control over the whole widget has gotten even broader. The company’s been building its own processors for mobile devices for more than a decade, and those advancements have finally jumped to the Mac. On the other end, Apple has introduced more and more services that help provide the glue between those traditional hardware and software components. This trend isn’t about to stop any…

Have you recently seen the message ‘The file “%@” could not be backed up’ after Time Machine warned you of a failure? You’re not alone: many people who have installed the macOS 12 Monterey Public Beta have also received the same error. There’s no fix for it; it’s likely an error in how Time Machine scans for files. This may mean your files are not properly being back up, however. I entered Time Machine on a Mac that’s running this public beta and looked around through older backups even where Time Machine claims it hasn’t been updated. The files all appear to be there, but I can’t check comprehensively. If you’re concerned about losing data during this test period before Apple squashes this bug in a future beta or production…

It’s a good idea to check on the health of your Mac’s internal storage on a regular basis. You can do this using Disk Utility, an app that comes with every Mac. To run the check, you need to boot the Mac into Recovery Mode. On Intel-based Macs, restart your Mac and hold down Command-R on the keyboard. On M1 Macs, shut down the Mac, then press and hold down the power button as it boots. When your Mac is in Recovery Mode, it will display a window with the available recovery utilities. Click on the bottom option, Disk Utility, and this will launch the Disk Utility app. Follow the steps below to check your storage device for errors and to fix them. (The rest of these instructions are performed…

If you’ve ever wondered about which programs are using your Internet connection at any point in time, here’s one way to find out using Terminal. Open Terminal, in Applications > Utilities, and run this command: lsof -P -i -n | cut -f 1 -d " " | uniq When you press return, you’ll see a list of processes that are using the Internet connection. At the time I wrote this, my output looked like this: COMMANDAppleVNCSPTHPastebSystemUISaosnotifyiTunesGrowlHelpTransmitiChatAgenfirefox-bVPNClientMail The first row, COMMAND, is just the column header. Below that are the processes that are using the Internet connection. Most of the time, they are self-explanatory, or can be figured out with relative ease. On my list, most of the entries are pretty clear, but perhaps not aosnotify. A bit of work with…

Website designers have particular feelings about how their work should look on your display. The rise of responsive design over the last several years has led to most sites automatically resizing their type and graphics and reshaping their layout to fit the size of your browser window or the device you’re using. You should be able to read, navigate, and interact with a web page without making your own adjustments. (Responsive design means the site uses style sheets and sometimes JavaScript to respond to the dimensions of the view within the browser window.) Unfortunately, designers may have better eyesight than many of us who use the sites they produce, leading to sites that are perfectly responsive in showing type that’s too small to read. I’m sure you’ve had the experience…