Table of contents for 170 in iPad & iPhone User

Got an iPhone 12 or 12 Pro and you always seem to be running out of battery? Apple has a new accessory to help you out: the MagSafe Battery Pack is on sale for £99 from fave. co/2UbHr21. As the name of the product implies, the battery connects to the iPhone 12 via MagSafe, the magnetic connector on the back of the phone. According to the product description on Apple’s website, the MagSafe Battery Pack “automatically charges, so there’s no need to turn it on or off”. However, you can’t use two MagSafe products at once, so if you’re using the wallet, you’ll need to swap it out Apple does not list the capacity of the battery in the specs – though the image says 1,460mAh with a 7.62 voltage…

One of the only things we don’t know about the next iPhone is what it will be called. Recent reports have suggested that Apple will go with ‘12s’ due to the relative lack of monumental new features, but now it looks like Apple has decided against that route. According to the Economic Daily News, Apple will be naming the new handset the iPhone 13, based on the publications supply chain sources. Previous reports have basically confirmed that there will be four models of iPhone again, so the new line-up should look very similar to the iPhone 12, with an iPhone 13, 13 mini, 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max. Apple hasn’t followed a predictable cadence for its iPhone names since the iPhone 6s, so it’s not surprising that it’s jumping…

It’s been over two years since the iPad mini had its last update, so the rumours of a new version are heating up. We look at the most credible reports of the upcoming model. DESIGN AND DISPLAY Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reported in June that the next iPad mini will have thinner bezels. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo also talked about the thinner bezels, which allows the iPad mini to increase its screen size from 7.9 inches to 8.4 inches. However, recent rumours suggest that Apple will completely redesign the iPad mini with a look that’s closer to the iPad Air. Apple has been transitioning the iPad line to reflect the design of the iPhone 12, with its flat edges. The mini is next to undergo the ‘flat’ change according to several…

Ever since it launched in 2015, the high-end iPad Pro has had one feature that’s been constant: its 12.9in display. According to a new report by analyst Mark Gurman, it might be in store for its first-ever change. And it could be a big one. In his Power On newsletter, Gurman reports that “Apple has engineers and designers exploring larger iPads” that he speculates could be in the 14-to 16in range. That would be significantly bigger than the 12.9in model and rival the largest MacBook Apple sells. It would also test the limits of ergonomics for comfortably using a tablet while holding it. The 12.9in iPad Pro is already tricky to use for long stretches of time, and a couple of extra inches would make it nearly impossible to use…

In iPadOS 15, Apple is making another round of changes to iPad multitasking. It would be easy to consider this yet another spin on the merry-go-round as Apple struggles to figure out how to break the iPad out of the iPhone’s fundamental one‑app-at-a-time interface. But I don’t. Instead, I think Apple is finally assembling all the pieces of the puzzle that will allow the iPad to become more Mac-like than ever before – all the while retaining its unique position in Apple’s ecosystem. Is Apple waiting for the right moment to unveil proper external-display support on the iPad, perhaps alongside the release of a new Apple display? I’m not saying it will definitely happen, but I want to believe. So let’s look at the evidence. A WINDOW INTO THE FUTURE…

Notification fatigue is a real thing. It seems every app is optimized to grab our attention as often as possible. Default notification settings are so aggressive that most people’s phones are flooded with dozens, even hundreds of notifications a day. You’ve always been able to go into Settings and silence or block notifications on a per‑app basis, but almost nobody actually does this. What if you miss something important? The result is that notifications are all but useless. With the exception of a couple of sounds we’ve learned to recognize (like our text message notification), our lock screens have become flooded with so many alerts that they just go ignored. When everything is an emergency, nothing is. With iOS 15, Apple’s trying a new approach. All the old notification settings…

When iOS 15 arrives on a billion or so iPhones in the autumn, it’ll bring a slew of changes you’ll instantly recognize. New notifications will make it easy to identify and ignore alerts as they arrive. Safari’s tab groups will help you browse faster and smarter. And Spotlight search will show richer and more relevant results from within apps and around the web. But far more interesting is the way iOS 15 sets up the iPhone to fade into the background. While Apple’s iconic handset likely still has many years of relevancy ahead, Apple is setting up the long game with iOS 15 – and that includes the inevitable time when the iPhone isn’t at the forefront of Apple’s universe. So while there are plenty of features in iOS 15…

When Apple released App Tracking Transparency as part of iOS 14.5, it posed a simple question to iPhone users: do you want this app to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites? Less than three months later, a new report says that so many chose no, advertisers are flocking to Android. According to the Wall Street Journal, prices for mobile ads directed at iOS users have fallen since iOS 14.5 arrived, while ad prices have risen for Android-targeted users. The publication estimates that some 70 per cent of users have opted out of ad tracking, causing the rates to plummet. The Journal reports that online advertisers “have lost much of the granular data that made mobile ads on iOS devices effective and justified their prices”. For example, Digitalad…

In 2020, after a four-year wait, Apple finally updated the iPhone SE to… the iPhone SE. Hanging on to the same name is a little confusing – Apple differentiates the new model when necessary by calling it the 2nd-generation iPhone SE, but most people either call it the iPhone SE (2020) or iPhone SE 2. Whatever you call it, it’s not very likely to be updated in 2021. It’s also not very likely that Apple will wait another four years to update its most affordable iPhone. We currently expect the new iPhone SE (which may be called the iPhone SE (2022), iPhone SE (3rd-generation), or iPhone SE 3) to be released in the first half of 2022. Here’s a summary of all the latest rumours, leaks and other information we’ve…

While we’re still waiting for a redesigned iPad mini to arrive later this year, rumours are already building for the next round of iPads in 2022. And it looks like Apple will be moving to OLED displays for the iPad Air. According to Korea-based The Elec, Apple is shoring up the development of an iPad with a 10.86in OLED screen, which just so happens to be the same size as the current iPad Air. The publication reports that Samsung will be the sole supplier of the display. Samsung already makes a Galaxy Tab S7 Plus with a 12.4in 2,800x1,752 120Hz OLED screen. The current Air has a 2,360x1,640 60Hz LED display. The Elec describes the display as “rigid OLED and thin-film encapsulation (TFE)” with “low-temperature polycrystalline silicon (LTPS) thin-film transistor…

Mark Gurman knows his stuff when it comes to Apple rumours. AppleTrack, which monitors analysts’ hits and misses, currently rates him as 89.1 percent accurate, so his recent claim that Apple is working on a giant iPad is probably sound. It’s worth stressing, however, that just because Cupertino’s engineers are working on something doesn’t mean it will actually ship – remember Apple’s AirPower wireless charging pad. And even if it does launch, that doesn’t mean it was a good idea – see Magic Mouse. It would certainly be bold for Apple to smash the 12.9in ceiling it has historically placed on its iPad screens. That form factor made its debut in 2015 on the very first iPad Pro model and has remained the same ever since, even as iPhones and…

After a decade, technology can often start to seem a bit boring, but the iPad experienced a bit of a resurgence in the last year, thanks in no small part to a pandemic that saw a lot more people working from home. But despite the iPad’s popularity and its amazing hardware, the general consensus seems to be that the tablet’s software just can’t keep pace. So all eyes are on Apple’s imminent Worldwide Developers Conference, where the company will likely take the wraps off the latest update to iPadOS and we’ll discover whether our wishes have been granted. Until then, our hopes and dreams for the iPad remain in a quantum state, like Schrödinger’s cat: simultaneously bestowed and rejected. And while we won’t know which will be which until Apple…

You certainly know the experience an app or your iPhone or iPad is or is not producing a sound or audio, and you can’t figure out how to get it to start or stop – even though Apple has system-wide volume and mute controls as well as a hardware mute switch (technically, the ‘Ring/Silent switch’). However, apps have their own relationship with producing audio. They often, but not always, err on the side of not making a peep depending on other settings until you take action. SYSTEM-WIDE AUDIO CONTROLS In Settings > Sounds & Haptics you can control the Ringer and Alerts volume and keep this level unaffected by the volume up/down buttons on your iPhone or iPad by disabling Change with Buttons. The physical Ring/Silent switch controls overall system…

Apple has announced that it is bringing its Today at Apple sessions to YouTube for all, starting with how to draw yourself as a Peanuts character. The 10-minute class features Mark Evestaff, showrunner of The Snoopy Show on Apple TV+, and storyboard artist Krista Porter. Viewers will need an iPad with the Pages app installed and an Apple Pencil or Pages installed in an iPhone to follow along with the class. Porter uses the crayon tool for the outlines and the ‘fill’ tool to add colour. It also utilizes the sharing and collaborations tools built into Pages. Apple has also posted a Drawing References guide (fave.co/2VEXHJ7) that shows key elements of the Peanuts characters to help guide people through the process. There’s no indication of how many YouTube Today at…

While we’re waiting for the iPhone 13 to make an appearance in September, plans for the iPhone 14 are already well underway. And if you’ve been wanting a cheaper iPhone 12 Pro Max, the phone of your dreams might be on the way. By now you’ve already heard that Apple will almost certainly offer its first iPhones with 120Hz ProMotion displays this year. All reports indicate that the faster displays will be exclusive to the iPhone 13 Pro models, however. That’s likely due to a variety of reasons – marketing, cost, and battery life – but also because the only supplier for the LTPO TFT OLED displays Apple needs to deliver ProMotion displays is Samsung and yields are reportedly low enough where it wouldn’t be able to supply enough orders…

The 12.9in iPad Pro may be Apple’s first device with a mini-LED display, but it won’t be the last. According to Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple will update several of its products with the next-gen screen tech as it moves away from LCD for all but a few entry-level products. First and foremost, Kuo says Apple will update the 11in iPad Pro next year, seemingly as part of a larger upgrade with an M1X or M2 processor. Previous reports indicate that Apple’s flagship iPad is in line for something of a redesign, with a glass back and wireless charging. Kuo doesn’t mention whether the 11in iPad Pro would receive a £100 price hike like the 12.9in one, but it’s possible Apple bumps the price to £849 to create some more separation between…

At WWDC20, when Apple showed off widgets and the App Library in iOS 14, my first reaction was, “This would be better on the iPad”. At WWDC21, when Apple showed off widgets and the App Library in iPadOS 15, my first reaction was, “This should be better on the iPad”. The concept is good. In iPadOS 15, Apple is giving iPad users the ability to remove Home Screen pages and organize their apps into ‘helpful categories’ that are only visible when you need them to be. It makes the iPad Home Screen feel a bit more like a desktop – especially when you hide the other Home Screens – and lets you find apps and locate icons much quicker and more easily. With a handy icon in the dock, it…

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 strongly recommend that 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:…

Spam calls are now out of hand. It used to be that you could simply ignore anything with a caller ID of ‘unknown caller’ or a distant or toll-free area code. Today, thanks to automated systems that spoof phone numbers, scammers and spammers can call you from numbers that look like they’re from right in your neighbourhood. Many people now get several spam calls every day, half of them about their car’s extended warranty. Fortunately, your iPhone has a couple features that can help combat this nuisance, and they’re really easy to use. 1. SILENCE UNKNOWN CALLERS First, open Settings. Then tap on Phone. Scroll down and tap on Silence Unknown Callers. On the next page you’ll see a description of the feature and a toggle to turn it on.…