Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2020 i Macworld UK

After the credits rolled on Apple’s short but sweet ‘One more thing’ event, we knew two things for sure: Apple isn’t hiding any more events in 2020 and the new Macs are very different than the old ones. We look into all the news in more detail later, but here’s a summary for you. As expected, Apple rolled out the first Macs with Apple silicon processors, and Craig Federighi and crew spent a lot of time playing up the difference between them and similar Windows machines. According to the somewhat vague charts and claims, the new M1 chip delivers ‘a giant leap in performance per watt’ with ‘the world’s fastest’ CPU core and the highest performance CPU Apple has ever created. Apple says the M1 chip delivers a 3x improvement…

Apple announced a new MacBook Air – the second of the year – at its One More Thing event. But this isn’t a cosmetic update: there are significant upgrades under the hood. Most notably the Intel processor has been replaced. This is one of the first Mac to get access to the company’s new ARM-based Apple Silicon processors – specifically the M1 chip. AVAILABILITY The new MacBook Air is available to pre-order now from Apple’s website. It will start shipping mid-November. PRICE Two models are currently available: 256GB: £999 512GB: £1,249 HARDWARE The most obvious change is the processor, but there are significant upgrades throughout the specs list. Let’s look at these one at a time. Apple Silicon M1 processor Apple calls the Air’s processor “stunningly capable”, and with apparently…

In September, Apple revealed the Apple One bundles, a set of plans that package Apple’s services together at prices that are lower than if you signed up for each service individually. There are three options: Individual: (£14.95 per month): includes Apple Arcade, Apple Music, Apple TV+ and 50GB of iCloud storage for one user. It offers £6 savings per month. Family: (£19.95 per month): includes Apple Arcade, Apple Music, Apple TV+ and 200GB of iCloud storage. It can be shared with up to six family members (yourself and five others). This plan offers an £8 monthly savings over à la carte. Premier: (£29.95 per month): includes Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+, Apple Music, Apple News+, Apple TV+, and 2TB of iCloud storage. Can be shared with up to six family members…

Price: £579 (inc VAT) from fave.co/35ODQc4 Visually, you have to look very carefully to notice that the new iPad Air isn’t an iPad Pro: the angular, nearly all-screen case design was previously reserved for the more expensive tablets, but Apple has found room for an Air in that exclusive club. This isn’t the only area where this release sees the Pro and Air lines come closer together – in terms of CPU, the Air model is technically two generations ahead. But let’s take things one step at a time. Over the following pages, we test and evaluate the new tablet’s design, new features, performance, battery life and tech specs, and help you decide if this is the iPad for you. PRICE The new Air starts at £579. It’s more expensive…

With more models, new screen sizes, and a whole lot of new camera tricks, upgrading or switching to the iPhone 12 is a no-brainer. Deciding which phone to buy, well, that’s another story. Luckily, we’re here to help. DESIGN While Apple didn’t completely reinvent the iPhone as it did with the iPhone X, the iPhone 12 definitely has its own style. It features flat edges and a uniform construction not unlike the iPhones 4 and 5. The antenna lines are more of a design element this year as well, and the camera array on the back has been slimmed down a bit for a more seamless flow. Like last year, the Pro models feature stainless still versus the iPhone 12’s aluminium, as well as a frosted glass finish instead of…

There was big news out of Cupertino last month. Apple announced a new, smaller version of one of its products at a cheaper price point, potentially opening it up to a whole new class of customers. I speak, of course, of the HomePod mini. Yes, yes, there were iPhones as well, but I found myself more drawn to the new, smaller, and 100 per cent more globular smart speaker. Part of that may have been intrigue, yes, but a more substantial reason is that I’m trying to figure out exactly what Apple’s strategy for this product line is. Which, coincidentally, is exactly what Apple seems to be doing. THE PRICE IS THE THING If there’s a bold move for the HomePod mini, it’s all about that price point. To get…

As a rule, Apple is a company that is judicious about what opportunities it takes, and which ones it leaves to others. The company is famous for saying “no” to way more ideas than it says “yes” to, with the understanding that this process makes the products it does choose to build that much better. But that doesn’t mean that the company never misses a trick. On the contrary, there are more than a few markets where an Apple presence would be a welcome one, especially in places where the company can lend its considerable heft to providing either a strong example, or meaningful competition. And, as Tim Cook pointed out during last month’s financial results call, the current world situation has opened the door to new challenges and new…

Apple has unveiled its first Macs with Apple silicon, and they’re powered by an all new Mac-specific chip: the M1. It’s based on the same fundamental design of the A14 (found in the iPhone 12), but scaled up to laptop-grade performance levels with more cores, more memory and higher thermal limits. The result, Apple says, is a shocking increase in performance and power efficiency. Here’s what you need to know about the M1 system on a chip. EIGHT CORE CPU AND GPU Where the A14 has a six-core CPU – four high-efficiency cores and two high-performance cores – the M1 expands that by adding another pair of high-performance cores for a total of eight. We’ve already seen how fast these cores are in A14 performance benchmarks, and with the higher…

Apple already had a Mac mini powered by an Apple processor – after WWDC in June it seeded some Mac mini’s with A12 processors to developers so they could use them to work on the apps they were transitioning to Apple’s silicon. But now Apple has released a new Mac mini powered by Apple’s M1 chip – the first Apple silicon processor made for Macs. HARDWARE There are two new Mac mini models. Both offer the same 8-core CPU combined with an 8-core GPU, Apple’s 16-core Neural Engine and 6GB RAM – upgradable to 16GB. The cheapest Mac mini model is now £100 less than it was, starting at £699. It’s a good price, but not quite as good as many years ago when the Mac mini cost just £499.…

Ever since the first iPhone launched with just a dozen apps, Google has had a central role in Apple’s handset. But according to the Financial Times, Apple is preparing for a world where that isn’t the case. While the paper has no direct information about Apple’s post-Google strategy, it has pieced together several clues that could add up to big changes for how we search on our iPhones. In iOS 14’s new spotlight search, for example, Apple has “begun to show its own search results and link directly to websites when users type queries from its home screen”. That’s a subtle change and one most of us are unlikely to notice, but as the FT notes, it “marks an important advance in Apple’s in-house development and could form the foundation…

Price: £1,099 from fave.co/3l1Oi68 Delayed thanks to the ravages of 2020, Apple’s new iPhones are here at last – and there are four of them. In the first leg of what’s shaping up to be a Sisyphean ordeal, I’ve reviewed the iPhone 12 Pro. It’s got the same screen size (6.1in) and tech (OLED) as the standard iPhone 12, but costs considerably more. Do the powerful camera set-up and other upgraded features offer enough to justify the price? I’ve tested the 12 Pro’s photographic capabilities, as well as its battery, graphics and processing performance, to help you decide if this is the phone for you. PRICE The 12 Pro, which is available right now, starts at £999 for the lowest-capacity version. Here’s the full list: 128GB: £999 256GB: £1,099 512GB:…

As it revealed the new iPad Air during its Time Flies event, Apple took the wraps off its latest mobile system on a chip (SoC), the A14 Bionic. Built with a bleeding-edge 5nm manufacturing process, it is Apple’s most advanced SoC ever and likely the fastest mobile chip on the planet. Earlier this year, we took some educated guesses about what we might expect from the A14. Now that Apple has revealed a few details, this FAQ can tell you what this fantastic SoC is going to do for the Apple products in which it appears. THE FIRST 5NM CHIP As expected, Apple claims to be the “first in the industry” to make use of the 5nm process technology to manufacture chips. That means smaller chip features and more transistors…

Price: £344 (inc VAT) from fave.co/3kWQzj6 Presonus Studio One Professional is a top-tier digtal-audio workstation (think Logic X) with some unique and time-saving features. My favourite feature, a module for organizing and mastering albums, has been joined in the new version 5 by a clever take on organizing and managing a live performance. Presonus has also unveiled Sphere: an online service that delivers the entirety of the company’s music software portfolio as well as storage and collaborative feature for a highly affordable £11.81 a month. Even if you’re a diehard user of another DAW, that warrants a serious look at a very powerful suite of music tools. DESIGN AND FEATURES By today’s standards, there’s nothing startling about Studio One’s design. However, at its inception in 2009, it was the first…

HOW TO BYPASS APPLE’S MULTI-DEVICE TWO-FACTOR SYSTEM WITH MESSAGES AUTO-FILL Apple has increasingly required that Apple ID accounts (used for iCloud, purchases, and other purposes) are protected by two-factor authentication (2FA). This two-part system has you enter a password and then enter a code that’s available from all devices associated with the same iCloud account. You know the drill. A pop-up appears on all devices showing a rough map of where Apple believes the request originated. Tap or click Allow on any device and that pop-up disappears from all the others. On the device from which you approved the map, a six-digit code now appears in a special dialog box. Enter that code as your device, service or browser second factor. But there’s an easier way. Apple lets you set…

Apple’s first MacBook Pro using its own processor was announced at the company’s One More Thing online event. The 13in MacBook Pro was one of three models to receive the new Apple M1 chip – the second time the 13in MacBook Pro has been upgraded this year. No Apple Silicon-based 16in MacBook Pro was announced, as the new Macs were focused on the lower-end of Apple’s line – including the MacBook Air and Mac mini, but not the iMac or Mac Pro. Apple highlighted the 13in MacBook Pro’s performance and extremely long battery life – plus some new microphones that should improve how you sound on your next Zoom call. While the company is boasting about the new model’s performance, it’s an entry-level model – and Apple is continuing to…

It’s tough to keep track of time in the middle of a global pandemic, but apparently three months has passed since Apple’s last quarterly earnings report. So here we are again, with Apple executives reporting record revenues almost sheepishly while going to great lengths to praise their co-workers and customers for their resilience during trying times. As usual, in Apple’s conference call with financial analysts, there are a few interesting things that stick out of the talk of OpEx and OI&E and other financial industry buzzwords. Here are some of them. GOOD TIMES FOR THE MAC The Mac has been around for 36 years, and yet Apple has never had a quarter like the most recent one. The Mac generated $9 billion in revenue, up a staggering 29 per cent…

If you were disappointed with the lack of AirPods announcements at the iPhone 12 event, you might not have to wait much longer. A new report from Bloomberg says Apple is working on two new AirPods models, including a cheaper AirPods Pro, as well as a third-gen AirPods and the long-rumoured over-ear studio headphones. According to Mark Gurman and Debby Wu, the new earbuds will feature a new H2 wireless chip and reportedly won’t arrive until 2021. The cheapest model, which looks to be a slight revamp of the existing AirPods, will have “a shorter stem and replaceable ear tips”. Despite a similar look, they would not, however, include the higher-end features of the AirPods Pro such as noise-cancelling. It’s not clear whether Apple would keep the £159 (with wired…

Congratulations! You’re now the proud owner of a new iPhone 12 Pro or 12. You probably want to dive right into the phone the moment you get the box in your hands, but try to contain your excitement and do a little prep first. We have a little set-up advice you’re going to want to pay attention to. This stuff is going to really save you a lot of time and frustration later. 1. BACK UP AND RESTORE That’s right, you’re going to want to back up your old iPhone after you have your new iPhone 12 in hand, so the backup is as up to date as it can possibly be. You can back up via iCloud, in iTunes or the Finder. For a Mac backup (macOS Catalina):…

The future is here. Yes, last month marked the release of the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Air. But we also got to meet Apple’s latest processor design. The A14 is here, and it’s going to be playing a major part in the entire Apple universe for the next year. WHY IT’S IMPORTANT The iPhone would probably continue to be a popular product even if its speeds were comparable to top-end Android phones. But we haven’t had to test that theory in a while, because ever since Apple began designing its own processors, it has accelerated away from the competition. For the past few years, by the time the new iPhones and Apple-designed A-series processors have arrived, the fastest smartphones available on the Android side have yet to…

Price: £69 (inc VAT) from fave.co/3jUsDM4 It’s not that common to find full-featured security suites for the Mac. Quite often major antivirus makers provide a stripped-down version of their Windows product with notable bells and whistles missing. Not so with Intego’s Mac Premium Bundle X9, a security solution purpose-built for Apple users. This top-tier suite has a variety of solid tools that any Mac user would be happy to use. But is that enough to recommend this product? The last time we looked at Intego’s security offerings, we felt there were a few weaknesses that just didn’t address modern security needs well enough. Nearly two years later, some of those weaknesses are still there, and a number are gone. Intego Mac Premium Bundle X9 comes as a collection of security-focused…