Table of contents for 198 in iPad & iPhone User

When the iPhone 15 launched, millions of buyers had to update to iOS 17.0.2 before they could even start setting up their new handsets. It was an important update that brought important bug fixes and security updates, but it was also a pain for all of those people who just wanted to start using their shiny new device. That pain may soon become a thing of the past. According to a report by Mark Gurman in his latest Power On newsletter (fave. co/46EcX8H), Apple has developed a unique system that lets workers update the software of new devices prior to sale: “The company has developed a proprietary pad-like device that the store can place boxes of iPhones on top of. That system can then wirelessly turn on the iPhone, update…

While iPhone problems may be common, it’s much rarer for the Apple Watch to experience widespread issues. But the newest models are reportedly experiencing an issue with the display that has Apple working on a fix. According to an internal service memo shared with MacRumors (fave.co/3QpHIZq), Apple is investigating an issue where the display flickers or ‘pulses’ on some Apple Watch models when Always On mode is enabled. Sporadic reports around the web from both Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 users have complained about the issue, including some saying (fave. co/46I5MMT) their complications ‘flash pink’ when raising to wake. Apple has advised service providers to not repair the device as the issue appears to be tied to software rather than hardware. There are reports that the latest beta…

As we were waiting for new iPads last month, Apple instead dropped something of a surprise on us. Instead of a new tablet, we got a new cheaper stylus for the existing tablets. Well, most of them anyway. The new Apple Pencil, stylized ‘Apple Pencil (USB-C)’, is priced at £79, £30 less than the 1st-generation model and £60 less than the 2nd-generation model. It includes some of the same features as the prior models (including low latency and tilt sensitivity) but is also missing pressure sensitivity and wireless charging. And it’s not compatible with the 9th-generation iPad. To sum up: the brand-new Apple Pencil isn’t as good as the 2nd-generation Apple Pencil from 2018 and doesn’t even have all of the same features of the 1st-generation Apple Pencil from 2016.…

Only the lucky few are able to upgrade their iPhones on a yearly basis. For most of us, a more realistic ambition is to buy a new handset every two or three years; that way, aside from the more manageable cost, you get multiple sets of upgrades at once, and the improvements are far more noticeable. So this year’s announcement of the iPhone 15 refresh may be of more interest to those who own an iPhone 13 from 2021 than those with an iPhone 14. With that in mind, we’ve put together an easy-to-understand comparison of the standard iPhone 15 with its equivalent from the 13-series generation. We compare their tech specs and performance and examine the design changes that have been added since 2021, to help you decide which…

The Apple Watch is one of the most complete experiences you’ll find in the company’s range. Since its introduction in 2015, the electronic timepiece has become one of the dominant players in the wearable technology sector. Over different generations Apple has added features such as GPS, LTE and weatherproofing that make the Apple Watch ever more a standalone device in its own right – but is it possible to untether it from the iPhone entirely? In this article, we explain what exactly an Apple Watch can achieve without the assistance of an iPhone. CAN YOU USE AN APPLE WATCH WITHOUT AN iPHONE? Yes and no. When you first get an Apple Watch, it requires an iPhone to set it up. There’s no getting around that. The Watch app on the…

Price: £349 from fave.co/3PMCQfA The all-new Bose QuietComfort Headphones are sneaky little devils. They’re subtle in persona, but immensely capable and always good company. Building on Bose’s mainstream QuietComfort 45 over-ear noise-cancelling headphones, this new and simpler-named model does justice to any and everything musical and spoken, from your favourite artists’ albums to podcasts and mobile phone chat-ups that rival in-person conversations. If you’re more interested in stereo than the spatial audio experiences Bose promises to deliver with its pricier QuietComfort Ultra, you’ll want to consider these cheaper cans. DESIGN If not for a new colour option (Cypress Green) and a different tone and texture of brand embossing on the headphones and carry case), you might take the Bose QuietComfort Headphones for their predecessor, the QuietComfort 45, which were likewise…

One of the best features of iOS 17 is Live Voicemail. When someone leaves you a voicemail, you can see a live transcription as they’re leaving the message, so you can decide whether to pick up. It’s enabled by default, but of course you can turn it off. Here’s how Live Voicemail works, and how to turn it off if you don’t like it. 1. USE THE LOCK SCREEN OR DYNAMIC ISLAND When a call comes in, Live Voicemail will display on the Lock screen, but only if your iPhone is unlocked. In other words, if you don’t authenticate using Face ID, the words won’t display to protect your privacy. If you’re using your iPhone as a call comes in, you’ll see the voicemail icon up in the dynamic island…

If you’ve only recently downloaded iOS 17, you’re probably still discovering new features. Here’s a great one if you’re a fan of private browsing: in the Safari settings, you can now choose separate default search engines for standard and private browsing. While you’ve long been able to change the default search engine on your iPhone, there’s a new tab in the Safari settings for ‘Private Search Engine’. Like the standard search engine, you can select between Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, or pair it with the main default search engine like before. The feature was discovered when an Apple executive testified during the Google antitrust trial. Apple also redesigned private browsing in Safari, making it both easier and safer to access. A simple swipe on the tab bar at…

Just when we thought we were over iPhone problems for a while, a new one has seemingly cropped up. On Reddit (fave.co/40aHnxa) and other sites (fave.co/401fZSb), people are reporting that their iPhones are inexplicably powering down overnight, sometimes causing alarms to be missed. It’s not clear what’s causing the issue, as it seems to be affecting a wide array of iPhone models and even different iOS versions. However, while there appears to be a concentration of affected phones running iOS 17.0.3, there doesn’t seem to be a consensus as to when, why, or how the phones power down. The main similarity between the reports is that all of the shutdowns appear to happen overnight when phones are charging. Most people wouldn’t notice, except the iPhone will ask to enter a…

Apple’s big October announcement wasn’t a new iPad, it was a new stylus for the iPad. Rather than replacing either of the previous ones, this goes on sale alongside them, so there are now three Apple Pencils, and it’s going to be even more confusing for iPad owners looking to buy one for their tablet. Largely following the design of the 2018 Pencil (complete with matte finish and flat side with magnetic attachment), the new stylus differs in the inclusion of a sliding cap which reveals the USB-C port for charging. Interestingly, Apple is not referring to the new device as a 3rd-gen model, but rather “the new Apple Pencil” or “Apple Pencil (USB-C)”, perhaps because the company doesn’t want customers to think it’s more advanced than preceding models. This…

Price: £1,199 from fave.co/3S2WqH9 Apple’s latest, most expensive, best iPhone is better than last year’s model. It’s a little lighter, a little faster, a little better camera, a little more convenient. And yet, it’s hard not to feel decidedly underwhelmed. After days of use and a battery of tests, I can’t help but feel bored with it. All the improvements are welcome, but they’re largely uninspired. It’s as if Apple is out of ideas, or the iPhone is just too important to take any risks with, or all the company’s best efforts have been spent working on Apple Vision Pro. The best case one can make for the latest iPhone is that it’s an iPhone – it runs iOS, it runs iPhone apps, it’s fairly privacy-minded, and it works great…

One of the biggest imprints Steve Jobs and Jony Ive left on Apple’s design process is a certain kind of product idealism. At its best, Apple is striving to take ridiculously complex products, fusions of cutting-edge computer hardware design and enormous software code bases, and make them simple. It’s a philosophy that’s led Apple to build wildly successful products that its customers love. And there’s one new iPhone 15 feature that perfectly illustrates why Apple’s idealism can take it to very interesting places. KEEP IT SIMPLE When Apple introduced Portrait Mode to the iPhone in 2016, the goal was to get smartphone photos to look as pretty as images captured on expensive cameras with long lenses – and that meant analysing the photo and adding an artificial blur to the…

Among the many changes and new features in watchOS 10, you’ll find new and updated watch faces. One of those is not like the others. The new Snoopy watch face injects a level of personality and reactivity that I didn’t know I was missing until I had it. Despite obvious problems – would it kill Apple to put the date on the face – it’s quickly become my go- to watch face. And I’m not even particularly a fan of Peanuts or Snoopy. At first glance, you might assume the new Snoopy watch face is not much different from other ‘character’ faces like Mickey & Minnie or Toy Story. But enable it for a few days and you’ll realize that it’s so much more. The Snoopy watch face does something…

iOS 17 is here, but if you’re still undecided about upgrading here’s what you can expect from Apple’s latest mobile operating system. COMPATIBLE iPHONES Before you decide whether you should upgrade to iOS 17, you need to know whether you can upgrade to iOS 17. The main headline devices that don’t make the cut this year is the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X. The following iPhones get support for iOS 17, but some features are only for iOS 12 and later, including some FaceTime and autocorrect features: • iPhone 15; 15 Plus; 15 Pro; 15 Pro Max • iPhone 14; 14 Plus;14 Pro; 14 Pro Max • iPhone 13; 13 mini; 13 Pro; 13 Pro Max • iPhone 12; mini; 12 Pro; 12 Pro Max • iPhone 11;…

There are a few surprises in the public release of iOS 17, with a few tweaks and additions that didn’t first appear in the earlier beta releases. One of the most intriguing is the big list of new Ringtones and Text Tones. There are 24 new Ringtones: • Arpeggio • Breaking • Canopy • Chalet • Chirp • Daybreak • Departure • Dollop • Journey • Kettle • Mercury • Milky Way • Quad • Radial • Scavenger • Seedling • Shelter • Sprinkles • Steps • Storytime • Tease • Tilt • Unfold • Valley Your ringtone won’t automatically change when you update to iOS 17, though. Reflection is still the default, but you’ll find it (and all the other tones) down in the Classic category. If you want…

The iPhone makes it easy to connect to Bluetooth devices, such as AirTags or AirPods. However, a hacker has discovered a way to hijack your iPhone and flood it with prompts to connect to devices, making it difficult to use the iPhone. A security researcher called Techryptic wrote a blog post (fave. co/3rY7uL4) and made a video demonstration (fave.co/46Eykqu) on how a Flipper Zero (fave.co/494z2z9) can be used to flood an iPhone with the connection notifications that you usually see with Bluetooth devices. As Techryptic puts it, an attacker can “effectively launch a DDOS [distributed denial-of-service] notification attack on any iOS device”. The barrage of notifications would make it practically impossible for anyone to use the iPhone. According to the Flipper Zero website (fave.co/46WD2Qb), a Flipper Zero (£187 from fave.co/3S0oqLw)…

One of the biggest points of anticipation around this year’s iPhone models was the transition from Apple’s proprietary Lightning port to the USB-C standard. Some were worried about the transition requiring them to replace all their accessories, while others – yours truly included – looked forward to a future of being able to use a single cable for their iPad, MacBook and iPhone. Now that the new models are out in the wild, however, the USB-C transition has proved to be a rose bearing some thorns. It’s not as simple as having one port to rule them all; and, in some cases, the move away from Apple’s controlled ecosystem has introduced some challenges that its users haven’t had to deal with in the past. These bumps in the road may…

Price: £899 from fave.co/45Yo0t6 Of the quartet of new iPhones released this autumn, the iPhone 15 is the cheapest, the iPhone 15 Pro Max is the sexiest, and the iPhone 15 Pro – powerful and portable – is the connoisseur’s choice. But the iPhone 15 Plus might just be the most fascinating. After all, this is a form factor that didn’t exist at Cupertino until last year. Apple’s philosophy until then was that small things should be cheap and large ones expensive… which admittedly has some logic to it. But phone buyers don’t like being put in neat boxes, and some of them would quite like to get a large screen without having to pay for the very latest features and processing power. That’s where the Plus line comes in.…

Apple’s smallest iPad was given a substantial facelift at the end of 2021. The 6th-generation iPad mini sports a complete redesign with a bigger display, Touch ID on the power button, USB C instead of Lightning, and an upgraded front camera. This represented the first major change to the design since the iPad mini was first introduced back in 2012. The mini celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2022 without an update, but a new 7th-generation iPad mini is rumoured to be in the works and could be here before the end of the year. Here’s what we know. RELEASE DATE It’s been nearly two years since the 6th-generation iPad mini launched, and, based on the dates when other iPad mini models have launched, an autumn update for the iPad mini…

Price: £199 from fave.co/3LRbHqB Jabra’s latest set of earbuds dedicated to exercise have been dubbed by the company as “the world’s toughest buds”. On paper, they do live up to that claim. They have some of the best waterproofing you can get on a product of this type and are made from durable materials to withstand knocks and drops. For that, you’ll have to fork out £199. But are the Jabra Elite 8 Active headphones worth the steep price tag? I’ve tested these while travelling, exercising and chilling at home to help you make an informed decision. DESIGN The Jabra Elite 8 Active come in four different colours: Black, Caramel, Grey and Navy Blue. They have a round design with a closed-seal tip, and there are three different pairs of…

One of iOS 17’s coolest new features is the Contact Poster. It’s a large-screen visual you can customize – similar to your Lock Screen – that displays on other iPhone users’ screens when you call them or when they display your contact information. Apple’s making it easy to share it with others: you can swap Contact Posters just by holding the top of your iPhone next to someone else’s for a few seconds using Apple’s NameDrop feature. But first, you’ll need to get started by making your Contact Poster look just the way you want. Here’s how. 1. OPEN YOUR CONTACT CARD First, you need to open your Contact Card. There are several ways to do this – including tapping on the Contacts tab in the Phone app or opening…

With iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma, Apple News+ subscribers get a new perk: A daily crossword puzzle built right into the News app. In fact, there are two puzzles: the standard puzzle and a 5×5 ‘mini’ puzzle. It’s a nice addition, and a mainstay of traditional newspapers, but it’s not front-and-centre when you open the News app so you need to know where to look for it. Here’s how to find the Crosswords in the News app on iOS 17. 1. OPEN NEWS AND SELECT THE FOLLOWING TAB When you first open the News app, you’ll see no mention of Crossword or anything like it. Tap Following. 2. SELECT ‘PUZZLES’ At the top of the Following tab, select Puzzles. The only puzzles on offer are crosswords, but it’s interesting that…