Indice dei contenuti per May 2022 in Macworld UK

A fter about a month of beta testing Apple has released macOS 12.3. Alongside the massive iOS 15.4 release (see page 6), it has a bunch of new features for your Mac. NEW FEATURES Universal Control The premier feature of macOS 12.3 is Universal Control (for details, see page 62), which was supposed to arrive in the initial iOS 12 release in the autumn. The feature lets you wirelessly connect your Mac to an iPad or another Mac and control them both using the same keyboard and mouse. It’s similar to Sidecar, but you’re not extending your Mac’s display with Universal Control; rather you’re able to use the same input devices on both machines and drag files freely between them. Spatial Audio Apple was slow to bring Spatial Audio to…

Negotiators in the European Union have agreed to sweeping new rules that could change the very fabric of Apple’s iMessage service. In a recent press release (fave.co/3qMkm37), the European Parliament announced that there is a provisional agreement between Parliament and Council negotiators on the Digital Markets Act that seeks to “ensure fair competition and more choice for users”. During a close to eight-hour long trilogue (three-way talks between Parliament, Council and Commission), EU lawmakers agreed that the largest messaging services (such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage) will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms, if they so request. Users of small or big platforms would then be able to exchange messages, send files or make video calls across messaging apps, thus giving them more choice. As…

The Mac Studio is Apple’s new desktop Mac. It sits between the Mac mini and iMac on the consumer side and the Mac Pro on the highend pro side. It offers a significant boost in multi-core and graphics performance and more connectivity options over the consumer Macs, but it will probably be a few performance notches below the upcoming Apple silicon-based Mac Pro, which could offer even more ports, expansions slots, and upgradeability. The Mac Studio is ideal for users who spend a lot of time waiting for their Macs to process data. If you work in video, graphics, audio, data computation, code compilation or anything else where you often sit and watch a progress bar, the Mac Studio will cut those times down significantly. If you have a lot…

Apple’s ProDisplay XDR is impressive, but with a starting price of £4,599 (plus another £949 for the stand), it’s way out of reach for most users, even high-end enthusiasts. At its recent ‘Peek Performance’ event, Apple unveiled a new Studio Display, its first consumer-level display since the Thunderbolt Display that was introduced in 2011 and retired in 2016. The Apple Studio Display is a 27in monitor with 5K resolution and P3 colour, much like that found in the 27in iMac. It also includes a 12Mp camera with Centre Stage support, six-speaker audio, three-microphone array and several USB-C ports. All these features are managed by a built-in A13 processor. Starting at £1,499, it’s far more affordable than the Pro Display XDR, though still clearly a premium high-end product for enthusiasts. 5K,…

When Apple released the M1 chip at the end of 2020, we were blown away by the speed improvements over its Intel predecessors. A year later Apple did it again with the M1 Pro and M1 Max, and then in March 2022, Apple revealed the M1 Ultra, filling out the M1 chip line-up and dramatically altering our expectations for Apple’s roadmap. Here’s how the Apple silicon transition has gone so far – and where it’s going. M1: DECEMBER 2020 Apple’s current M1 processor is based on the 5nm A14 chip that first arrived in the iPad Air (4th generation) and iPhone 12. It has four high-performance cores with 192KB of L1 instruction cache and 128KB of L1 data cache and shared 12MB L2 cache and four energy-efficient cores with 128KB…

At its ‘Peek Performance’ event, Apple unveiled a new 5th-generation iPad Air that leapfrogs the iPad mini and brings it closer than ever to the iPad Pro. While the new iPad Air looks identical to the previous version, there are some meaningful differences. Most notably, it now has a much faster processor, the M1 found in the iPad Pro and 24in iMac. The new iPad Air also has 5G cellular support for the first time. The faster connectivity comes with a slight £20 price hike for the Wi-Fi + Cellular models (£150 versus £130), which is in line with the other 5G tablets Apple sells. The entry level iPad is now the only LTE tablet Apple makes. Also new is the iPad Air’s front camera, which gets the same 12Mp…

Price: £419 from fave.co/3qLFnuB The iPhone SE is sort of a brilliant concept. Recognizing that there’s a huge market for people who can’t afford the typical price of a new iPhone (or just don’t want to spend that much), Apple takes a somewhat outdated model, replaces the processor with the latest one, and sells it at a greatly reduced price. In 2016, the original iPhone SE put the latest processor (A9) in the body of a two-generations-old iPhone 5S for just £379. It took four years for Apple to release a second-generation iPhone SE, which once again put the latest processor (A13) in a two-generations-old iPhone 8, still for just £399. Now two years later, Apple has abandoned this winning iPhone SE formula. It’s still the latest processor (A15), but…

A fter iOS 15.3 was mainly bug fixes and security updates, iOS 15.4 and iPadOS 15.4 is Apple’s biggest iOS 15 update so far, with a slew of new features and updates for your iPhone and iPad. Here’s everything that’s in the update and how to install it on your device. NEW FEATURES Universal Control The only feature specific to iPadOS 15.4, you can finally try out Universal Control. It was supposed to release last autumn, but was delayed until spring 2022. The feature, which lets you drag and drop files between an iPad and Mac running macOS 12.3, as well as share keyboard and mouse wirelessly between them, can be found in the AirPlay & Handoff tab in the General Settings. There, you’ll see a new Cursor and Keyboard…

With the tag line ‘Peek Performance’, Apple’s first event of 2022 contained a surprisingly robust array of new stuff. The third-generation iPhone SE was expected, but we also were introduced to an allnew desktop Mac with that has a new M1 Ultra processor and the Mac Studio display which has a camera, speakers, and USB ports. Here’s a brief look at everything Apple announced at its spring event. APPLE TV+ FILMS AND FRIDAY NIGHT BASEBALL Apple began the event by highlighting the critical success it has had with Apple TV+, particularly its original acclaimed movies CODA and The Tragedy of MacBeth. Then it previewed some new films such as Spirited and Lucky. We maintain a list of all the upcoming shows, series and movies on Apple TV+. But the big…

Price: £1,999 from fave.co/3JI6PAW As the M1 roll-out continues in the Mac line-up, Apple is now in the part of the cycle where the computers aren’t for everyone. The Macs being introduced late in the transition are meant for users who think M1 fast isn’t fast enough and they need every ounce of processing power they can get. They’re also Macs that are an investment and are anything but affordable for general consumers. The Mac Studio is ideal for content creators of any level. But here’s the thing: the Mac Studio’s performance over the M1 in the Mac mini or 24in iMac isn’t just a marginal boost like we used to see with Intel-based Macs – it’s a serious speed improvement. Add to that an attractive mix of features, and…

Price: £1,499 from fave.co/3LljXMJ When Apple discontinued the Thunderbolt Display in June 2016 after a five-year run, it wasn’t pulled off the shelf right away; it stuck around for a few months until its stock ran out. Instead of issuing a new display to replace it, however, Apple worked with LG Electronics and by the end of 2016, the UltraFine 4K and 5K displays went on sale. So for nearly three years, Apple’s ‘official’ display offerings were the LG UltraFine displays. The LG displays were fine displays (pun intended) – despite an early hiccup with Wi-Fi interference – but the design was typical of any ordinary PC display. Apple’s partnership with LG seemed to focus on the technical aspects of the screen. I’m not downplaying it at all, but one…

MacOS 12.3 and iPadOS 15.4 have been released and at long last Apple added Universal Control, the much-anticipated feature that was revealed at WWDC 2021. Late last year, Apple announced that the release of Universal Control would be delayed to this spring, and now it’s finally here. For the uninitiated, Universal Control allows you to use an iPad as a companion display for a Mac that can be controlled with the same keyboard and mouse. During the demo in the WWDC keynote, Apple VP Craig Federighi merely placed the iPad next to his Mac, and it worked. No cables to connect, no restarting, no need to click anything or say “please”. After some brief set-up, it really does work like magic. CONNECTING THE iPAD AND MAC Before you can get…

Price: £569 from fave.co/3iLsht2 Oh iPad Air, how we have missed you. Ignored for the whole of 2021, the Air went from best in class – we called the previous model “the best iPad for most people” in our 2020 review – to runt of the litter, superseded by up-to-date versions of the 10.2in iPad, iPad mini and iPad Pro. The Air needed an update. Thankfully Apple announced precisely that at its ‘Peek Performance’ spring event earlier this month, the Air roaring back to relevancy with a 2022 upgrade that adds a Pro-level M1 processor, 5G support and a much-improved front‑facing camera. But is that enough to restore its status as the best iPad in Apple’s range? Short answer: Yes. For the long answer, read on. DESIGN We’ll get to…

HOW TO USE MACOS’S CHARACTER VIEWER TO TYPE EMOJI AND OTHER SYMBOLS Unicode incorporates nearly 150,000 symbols, and our keyboards let us directly enter no more than several dozen – even with Shift and Option. Many of the remaining characters can be found in Character Viewer, a part of macOS that’s hidden by default. This viewer lets you find symbols, drag them or double-click them to insert symbols into text, and mark them as favourites for later access. You can bring up the Character Viewer (also called Emoji & Symbols) through several methods: • On a keyboard with a 🌐, you can press that key to bring up the viewer. (See the Keyboard preference pane’s Keyboard tab if that doesn’t work – an option has to be checked for the…

If you subscribe to Apple One or Apple TV+, Apple may soon have a new iPhone to sell you. According to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, Apple has been working on a new subscription service for the iPhone and other hardware products that will let customers subscribe to Apple hardware with a monthly recurring payment. According to Gurman’s sources, Apple has been working on the subscription programme for several months and is expected to launch it at the end of 2022. Unfortunately, that’s all the detail we have right now. We don’t know anything about pricing, bundles, which Apple hardware would be offered (other than the iPhone), or terms for trade-ins and upgrades. Apple already offers the iPhone Upgrade Programme in the UK, US and China, which lets users pay for…

A pple’s ‘Peek Performance’ event was loaded with new stuff – a new iPhone SE and iPad Air, the Mac Studio and Studio Display, even a new iPhone 13 colour – but not everything can fit into a condensed keynote. As always, there were a few little things that we noticed while digging around after the event. Here are 10 details that caught our eye. 1. THE INTEL MAC MINI IS STILL FOR SALE Apple might have announced the Mac Studio with an insane 20-core CPU to replace the high-end Mac mini, but it can’t quit the Intel model just yet. Despite declaring the Mac Pro is the last model left to transition to Apple silicon, you can still buy a Space Gray 3GHz Intel Core i5 Mac mini for…

There’s always been a desire by long-time Mac users for a mid-range desktop Mac (besides the iMac) that fits in the spot between the Mac mini and Mac Pro – Macworld has even posted articles over the years, wishing for a Mac Pro ‘minitower’. That mid-range Mac is finally here in the Mac Studio, unveiled at the ‘Peek Performance’ event. The new Mac Studio has a blocky design that conjures up memories of the Power Mac G4 Cube. The Cube, released 22 years ago, was a mid-range Mac – in fact, not including any iMac models, it was Apple’s last mid-range desktop Mac. It lasted only a year, and its failure seemed to set the tone for the Mac line-up – while Apple said at the time there was “a…

At its ‘Peek Performance’, Apple had a lot more in store for us than a new iPhone SE and an extra thick Mac mini otherwise known as Mac Studio. But Apple’s newest desktop Mac is bigger than a Mac mini for a good reason: it’s meant to house and cool the M1 Ultra, a surprise new high-performance chip. Or rather higher performance, as the M1 Max already turned heads. As with the rest of the M1 line, it’s not just the claimed performance of Apple’s new multi-chip package that impresses. It’s that Apple is doing it all at a fraction of the power of its competitors. With the M1 Ultra, Apple will trade blows with performance PC hardware that uses hundreds of watts of power while consuming way less than…

Sidecar and Universal Control are two important tools that can help improve your workflow. Their core premise – the ability to easily connect devices to each other – is similar, but Sidecar and Universal Control provide very different functions. WHAT IS UNIVERSAL CONTROL? We’ve already looked at Universal Control (see page 62), so we won’t go over it again here. WHAT DEVICES CAN USE UNIVERSAL CONTROL? Universal Control is currently available in iPadOS 15.4 and macOS 12.3. Here are the Macs and iPads that can run Universal Control. Universal Control: Macs • MacBook 2016 or later• MacBook Air 2018 or later• MacBook Pro 2016 or later• Mac mini 2018 or later• 21.5in iMac 2017 or later• 24in iMac 2021 or later• 27in iMac late 2015 or later• iMac Pro 2019…

The iPhone SE is one of Apple’s most popular models. It’s easy to see why: it’s by far the least expensive, but it’s still ‘new’. With the first two iPhone SE models, introduced in 2016 and 2020, Apple took a somewhat old iPhone body and simply swapped out the internal components for its latest-and-greatest system-on-chip. The concept is a hit–many users don’t feel the need for all the latest ‘bells and whistles’ they just want an affordable, fast iPhone that will be supported and updated for years. It is no surprise, then, that the third-generation iPhone SE follows the same pattern. In fact, if anything is odd about it, it’s that Apple still hasn’t updated the design, sticking with the same large bezels, home button, and Touch ID of the…