Table of contents for August 2020 in Macworld UK

Apple has announced that the 16in MacBook Pro now has an option available where you can upgrade the discrete graphics to an AMD Radeon Pro 5600M GPU that uses 8GB of HBM2 memory and is equipped with 40 compute units. This is 75 per cent faster than the Radeon Pro 5500M with 4GB of GDDR6 memory. The memory for the 5600M is integrated into the 7nm 5600M and has 394GB/s of bandwidth. This option is an extra £800 for the £2,399 model, and £700 for the £2,799 laptop.…

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference was completely online this year, but that doesn’t mean the company held back on its announcements. Since there was no live audience to interrupt the keynote with applause, hoots and hollers, Apple covered a lot of ground at a brisk pace during its two-hour presentation. You can watch the keynote in its entirety online (see fave.co/2Z1gtcY), but if you don’t have the time, you can find out what happened in our summary right here. Macs switch to Apple ARM CPUs It had been rumoured for a while, but Apple’s announcement that it will switch from Intel processors to its own silicon was the final segment of the keynote, saving the biggest news for last. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Apple has planned for a two-year…

As expected, Apple announced the next major revision to its phone operating system at its WWDC 2020 virtual developer conference. And as usual, the new iOS is full of features big and small. A new home screen with the App Library Apple is finally changing the iOS home screen. With iOS 14, you’ll be able to actually remove apps from your home screens, and even eliminate entire screens. Your apps will all remain in a new App Library, a page that is one swipe beyond your final home screen. The App Library automatically groups all your apps together into big folders that show the most recently used apps within. You can search for apps with a search box at the top, see automated suggestions in the upper-left box, and recently…

Apple’s tvOS isn’t Apple’s most popular operating system, but if you have an Apple TV, you definitely care about what each major new version brings. With tvOS 13 (and subsequent point releases) we got a lot of big features like interface changes, Xbox and PlayStation controller support, multiple users and Control Centre. By comparison, the features coming in tvOS 14 are minor, but sometimes the little things makes all the difference. Here’s what you can expect when tvOS 14 launches this autumn. 4K YouTube videos It is amazing that it has taken this long. No matter what video you watch on the YouTube app on your Apple TV 4K, it will only play back at a maximum of 1080p with no HDR. With tvOS 14, the latest YouTube videos will…

It was the most important WWDC keynote for the Mac since the arrival of OS X two decades ago. Apple’s announcement of the Mac’s third-ever processor transition was big enough, but it was only the beginning. Apple also announced a new version of macOS, Big Sur, that is full of new features and design elements that paint the clearest picture yet about where Apple is taking the Mac in the future. It’s no coincidence that Apple chose this moment to leave version 10 behind after twenty years, replacing it with macOS 11.0. 2020 is the beginning of the Mac’s next (and, depending on how you read the tea leaves, last) era. The Mac and iPad collide While Apple has gone to great lengths to suggest that the Mac and the…

According to a new report from Bloomberg (fave.co/2NWh9tZ), Apple is shifting its Apple Arcade strategy and recently cancelled a number of game development contracts for the service. The report cites “people familiar with the matter” in claiming that an Apple Arcade producer informed developers of their cancelled contracts and change in direction in April. Reached for comment, Apple said, “We are proud to have launched the first-ever mobile game subscription service that now features more than 120 games, many of which are award-winning and widely celebrated for their artistry and gameplay. The vision has always been to grow and evolve the Apple Arcade catalogue, and we can’t wait for our users to try the games developers are working on now.” It seems, some of the deeper and move involved games…

The rumours are true – Apple is beginning its next major Mac transformation, kicking Intel processors to the curb in favour of its own silicon. At the WWDC virtual conference, Apple announced the start of its two-year transition to produce all new Macs with its own Apple silicon rather than CPUs provided by Intel and GPUs provided by AMD. What does that mean for you? Here’s a look at the timeline and technologies Apple announced. Why Apple is doing this Apple began its announcement by trumpeting its prowess in making its own silicon, including ten years of iPhone chips (with a total 100-fold increase in CPU power) and specialized versions for the iPad Pro (with a 1,000-fold increase in graphics power). Apple even went smaller, customizing its processors for the…

Later this autumn, Apple will launch a brand new version of iPadOS that brings a bunch of new changes to its iconic tablet. Here’s everything that you’re getting, how to get it, and whether your iPad will be able to get it. What are the new features? App design The biggest change you’re going to see on your iPad is with apps. Apple is bringing a refined design language to the iPad, with sidebars, pull-down menus and toolbars that look more like Mac apps than ever before. Many of Apple’s own apps, including Photos, Music, Shortcuts, Voice Memos, Calendar, Notes, Files, Mail and Contacts have new drag-and-drop sidebars that make navigation and organization easier, and streamlined toolbars in Files, Calendar and other apps keep things simple. Also, you’ll see Mac-like…

The keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference may be one of the biggest events of the company’s year, but it only ever scratches the surface. Not every change or update makes it into the presentation – even when it’s pushing two hours, as it was this year. As people begin to dig into the betas and watch all of the attendant technical sessions, there’s a lot more that’s coming to light. And while much of that information is about things happening in the here and now, or perhaps about the products that will be released in the near future, this is Apple we’re talking about. The company plays the long game. That, in turn, has encouraged those in the Apple community to start digging into the details and, of course,…

There’s never been a more exciting time to be a Mac user. And I say that as someone who’s been one for nearly 30 years now, ever since my dad brought home a Macintosh LC in 1991. I lived through the transition to PowerPC, the dark years of the nineties and the move to both Mac OS X and Intel processors. Through all that time, the Mac has remained my workhorse. But in recent years, it often seemed as though the old stalwart had been overshadowed by the flashier iPhone and iPad lines, relegated to an afterthought in Apple’s mind. After this year’s WWDC, however, the Mac is looking more like the Apple product that’s poised to have a huge impact. As we consider the calendar of the next couple…

AirPower is a curious product. It is one of the only products Apple has ever publicly announced and then never released. After announcing it on stage during its September Special Event in 2017, and showing it off on its website, Apple was never able to solve the technical problems with its production and ultimately killed the project, unreleased, early in 2019. Now, recent tweets from noted Apple leaker Jon Prosser show new AirPower (code name ‘C68’) prototypes still in development. According to the leaks, Apple has apparently fixed the significant problem it was having with the pad not charging Apple Watch properly. In addition, the power connector seems to have evolved from Lightning to USB-C. Back in April, Prosser noted that C68 was going through a revision to give it…

At the WWDC20 keynote, Apple took the wraps off of macOS Big Sur, the next version of the Macintosh operating system. It will replace macOS 10.15 Catalina this autumn. Big Sur is a major upgrade with several features that users can take advantage of. Here are the features that Apple highlighted during its WWDC20 keynote presentation. What version of macOS is this? Apple revealed that macOS Big Sur is officially version 11 of the operating system. This marks the end of version 10, which was introduced in 2001. What are the new features? Refined user interface The user interface inconsistencies between Apple’s mobile and desktop operating systems are notable, and compared to iOS, macOS looks a little dated. With Big Sur, Apple finally addresses the macOS UI, implementing the first…

It’s not just the iPhone and the Mac that are getting sweet new features in the autumn. Apple also unveiled the newest watchOS features that are coming to the Apple Watch, and there are some major changes in store. Here’s everything we know so far. What are the new features? Complications Apple hasn’t unveiled any new watch faces just yet – we assume those are coming with the Series 6 update likely due later this year – but there are major changes coming to the existing faces. You’ll be able to set more than one complication per app, so developers will be able to offer more than just a single option. For example, a weather app could offer complications for temperature, conditions, UV index and wind speed, which would all…

Apple might not have released any new hardware at WWDC, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t on display. The software updates it showed off all point to big changes on the horizon for Apple as it revs up for a huge slate of releases. And there are quite a few things we can learn from what Apple showed us. 1. The Apple Pencil is more important than the Magic Keyboard Perhaps most surprising about iPadOS 14 is what it doesn’t have: new trackpad gestures or multitasking improvements. When the Magic Keyboard arrived for the iPad Pro earlier this year, we thought for sure that a large part of iPadOS 14 would build on the new cursor and trackpad. But from what we’ve seen so far, iPadOS 14 does no…