Table of contents for 204 in iPad & iPhone User

Apple on has announced its second quarter 2024 earnings, posting revenue of $90.8 billion for the quarter, a 4 percent decline year over year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.53, which is one cent higher than last year. The company reported $23.6 billion in profit. Apple beat the analysts’ predicted revenue of $90 billion and earnings per diluted share of $1.50. iPhone sales, which usually buoy Apple’s results, took a hit this quarter, posting $46 billion in revenue, which is a 10 percent decrease from the second quarter of 2023. Wearables, Home and Accessories revenue was also down 10 percent, while iPad sales fell by 17 percent. Apple’s Services set a record for the quarter and saw a jump in revenue YoY of 14 percent, while Mac sales…

Since the first iPhone launched with a 3.5-inch screen back in 2007, Apple has followed a path of slow but steady increase, from the 4-inch iPhone 5 in 2012 to the 6.7-inch 15 Pro Max last year. But one reliable analyst has predicted that next year, one iPhone’s screen will get smaller. Ross Young (fave.co/4bpw20z), an analyst who specializes in the displays supply chain and has an enviable track record, recently released a report in which he makes the startling claim that the iPhone 17 Plus will have a smaller screen than the 15 Plus (which is 6.7 inches) and 16 Plus (which is expected to be the same). He doesn’t name a specific measurement, but says the 17 Plus will “sit in between” the smaller handsets–the 17 and 17…

Apple’s new iPad Pro is powered by the M4 processor, skipping the M3 entirely. Apple has never debuted an M-series processor in a product other than the Mac, so the launch of this new processor in the iPad Pro is an unexpected surprise. The M4 is made on an enhanced 3nm process and contains over 28 billion transistors and has the following advanced features in the iPad Pro: 4 high-performance CPU cores with improved branch prediction and wider decode and execution engines. 6 high-efficiency CPU cores with improved branch prediction and a deeper execution engine. 10-core GPU built on the same architecture as M3, with dynamic caching, mesh shaders, and ray tracing acceleration. 16-core Neural Engine delivering over 38 trillion operations per second. Apple says the CPU is up to…

For some reason, Apple sells three accessories all named Apple Pencil, each with different features and compatibility. The solution? A fourth Apple Pencil! The new Apple Pencil Pro may seem like an unnecessary complication to a stylus line-up for an accessory that shouldn’t need a line-up, but there’s no arguing that it doesn’t deliver the features everyone wants. Apple Pencil Pro looks just like the 2nd generation Apple Pencil, and it supports all the same features including magnetic charging and pairing, double-tap, and tilt and pressure sensitivity. But it also adds four new features we’ve wanted in an Apple Pencil for a long time: • A gyroscope that lets you ‘roll’ the pencil to change the orientation of shaped brushes and tools. • A taptic engine for haptic feedback. •…

If Apple had its way, it would never open the App Store to competition, never offer web downloads of apps, never allow app developers to link to outside websites, and probably never reduce its cut of all App Store purchases from the original 30 percent tariff. For the past 15 years, Apple has had its way. That’s all changed, now, by the force of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), along with the results of a few legal matters in Japan, South Korea, and the Netherlands. This is a new era, where Apple can’t just have its way – instead, it has to abide by regulations specifically targeted at its own preferred business practices. The company’s reaction to this era has been occasionally combative and passive-aggressive. Some have called…

With news that iPadOS 18 might bring a calculator to the iPad we’ll refresh our memories as to why the iPad doesn’t have a calculator right now, and what the alternatives are if you want to do some maths and it’s the only device you have handy. Ever since the iPad first arrived, there’s been a curious omission in the apps that come preinstalled by Apple. Whereas the iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch and even the iPod touch feature a calculator as standard, there’s never been one on the iPad. Why is that? Of all the platforms, it’s probably the one most suited to the task, especially if it was one of the scientific variety with all the additional capabilities. We’re not ones to leave a stone unturned, so we set…

Price: £2.60 per month from fave.co/4btxbnE LastPass was one of the pioneers of password managers, helping popularize the idea and show what a useful tool they can be for convenience and safety. Now, with so many quality alternatives available, how has the grandmaster stood the test of time? LastPass was a trailblazer and still has a legion of faithful users across the world. It’s not had an easy time over the past few years though, with high-profile data breaches, alongside the rise of several competitors that have set the standard for a modern‑style password manager. So, how does the current version stand up to its impressive legacy? SOFTWARE & FEATURES If you’ve never used a password manager before, then it can be something of a revelation. The principle is simple:…

People who rely on the iPhone’s alarm to wake up from sleeping may be in for a rude awakening. Or rather un-awakening. Social media is filled with reports claiming that the iPhone alarm isn’t working, causing users to oversleep and turn to TikTok to complain about the issue before eventually calling their employer to let them know they’ll be late. According to The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern, Apple is aware of the problem and is working on a fix. She has not encountered the problem, alerting her followers on X that her iPhone woke her up “right on time”. Today Show called me last night and said iPhone alarms aren’t working! I hadn’t heard that but Apple confirmed this AM that it is aware of an issue causing some…

Sometimes, you need to turn a piece of paper into a digital file. Maybe you need to include a receipt, registration, or other form of proof in an online form. Or, you want to keep copies of your important documents in the cloud, so they’re always accessible and safe from being lost or destroyed. Such documents are often digitized as Portable Document Format files (or PDFs). It used to be that you needed to use either dedicated hardware or a third-party iPhone app to take a photo of a document and convert it to PDF. That is no longer the case: Apple includes a very handy document scanner in the iPhone’s Notes and Files apps, and it does a surprisingly good job of capturing most documents and converting them to…

Following a brief sojourn at the top of the table, Apple has dropped down to the number-two spot (by units shipped) in the global smartphone market. According to IDC’s figures (fave.co/3UtxqZ3) for the first quarter of 2024, Samsung has moved back to the top position with 60.1 million shipments, a market share of 20.8 percent. Apple is in second place with 50.1 million (17.3 percent), while the Chinese firm Xiaomi sits in third place with 40.8 million units and a share of 14.1 percent. Samsung outperformed Apple across 2023 as a whole, but the Cupertino company did top the table at the end of the year. Apple traditionally performs especially well in the autumn/early winter period following its annual iPhone refresh in September. Nevertheless, Apple’s drop back to second spot…

Apple’s much-maligned range of FineWoven accessories, made of an imitation-leather material for environmental reasons, has now been completely killed off, according to a new report. The same source indicates that the company intends to replace FineWoven with another leather-replacement material, but hopefully one which suffers from fewer problems. Twitter/X user Kosutami (fave.co/44vBRHn), a tech leaker who has posted some accurate rumours in the past, posted recently: FineWoven has gone. Since its durability were bad. All the production line was stopped and removed. Apple would move to another material – Again, not the leather. So see ya’ll in leather hell. Kosutami (@Kosutami_Ito) April 21, 2024 If anything, Kosutami is underselling the difficulties Apple experienced with FineWoven’s durability. Despite being marketed and priced as premium accessories, the iPhone cases stained and scuffed…

Apple introduced a major update to the iPad Pro during its ‘Let Loose’ event. Promoting the new iPads as AI-capable tablets, the new 13-inch and 11-inch iPad Pro have several upgrades over the models they replace – with a higher starting price to go with them. At the heart of the iPad Pro is an M4 System on a Chip, a big leap in silicon from the M2 chips they replace. The M4 has a 10-core CPU, with 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores, and Apple claims that the M4 is 1.5 times faster than the M2 in CPU performance. The M4 has a new display engine that is 50 percent faster than the M2, and a 10-core GPU that is four times faster. The iPad Pro has 8GB…

One of Apple’s best accessories is its keyboard case for iPad Air and Pro, called Magic Keyboard. To go along with the newly designed, thinner iPad Pro, Apple introduced a sleeker Magic Keyboard. It’s got almost everything we loved about the old model, including pass-through USB-C charging and quality backlit keys, but makes these improvements: The trackpad is larger and has haptic feedback. It’s thinner. There’s a half-height function row to control quick settings like brightness, volume, and media controls. Between the aluminium keyboard deck, larger trackpad with haptic feedback, function row, and all-around thinner package (together with a thinner iPad Pro), the whole thing feels more like a MacBook than ever before. Of course, the price is still sky high: The new 13-inch iPad Air starts at £1,299 and…

I don’t need to have a new iPhone every year, just the procedure of changing over with various authentications is sometimes a bit annoying. What’s more, the iPhone has matured to such an extent that there are only evolutionary changes from year to year, rarely an innovation that really knocks my socks off. A new device every three to four years, possibly a replacement battery in between – that’s quite enough. After three to four years, a new iPhone really does feel revolutionary compared to the old one. But now I’m in the situation of having to change every year for professional reasons. Because even if the innovations from generation to generation are rather sparse, I’ll need to be familiar with each annual upgrade to make sure I give readers…

Price: Free from fave.co/3Zku6Rv Password managers have become very popular recently, with the ability of an app to remember all your login details and fill them in automatically being an absolute godsend. But Apple products come with a password manager baked into the operating system – iCloud Keychain. So, how does it stand up to some of the competition and is it safe to stick with Apple’s free offering rather than shelling out for another subscription service? SOFTWARE & FEATURES iCloud Keychain is a bit different to other popular password managers like Dashlane and 1Password, as it doesn’t have a standalone app on the iPhone, iPad or a desktop app on Mac. Instead, it’s part of the operating system itself, and therefore can be found in the iCloud section of…

Last month, Mark Zuckerberg took to Instagram and declared that, after trying Vision Pro, Quest 3 is “better for the vast majority of things that people use mixed reality for”. Naturally, nobody should expect Zuck’s weird hotel hostage video to have glowing things to say about the competition’s headset. He’s CEO of Meta whose ‘Reality Labs’ division is losing many billions of dollars a year on R&D, sales, and marketing of Quest headsets. His opinion on this matter is the least trustworthy, most conflicted a person could ever find. But is he right? Does Quest 3 do for £479 what the Vision Pro can’t at seven times the price? Is it a better overall product for “most people?” After spending quite some time with both headsets, I think he has…

Photos can pop when one area is in sharp focus and the other blurry, providing the impression of depth in a two-dimensional image that matches how our eyes focus on objects, even though we don’t typically perceive this. This technique once required a lens of the sort found on an SLR or DSLR (analogue or digital single-lens reflex) or mirrorless camera. You adjust the f-stop, traditionally noted with an ƒ, which changes the depth of field or the range from the camera lens to a further point that can be in focus. Apple’s switch to an array of two or more back-facing camera lenses (starting with the iPhone 7 Plus) and a special Portrait mode built for it made this kind of sophisticated-looking feature available to hundreds of millions of…

Sending your iPhone in for repair was always a little nerve wracking. Not just because you no longer have access to what may be the most important gadget in your life, but because you never know if it’s safe. Apple’s recommended procedure (fave.co/3QBNJlr) for preparing your device for service is to back up your phone, turn off Apple Cash, remove all cards from Wallet, and then remove your iPhone from Find My. This also removes Activation Lock. The fine print says, “Apple might not be able to service your device if Find My isn’t turned off.” It’s all very worrying and not the smooth and seamless experience we’re used to from Apple. There’s a new feature in iOS 17.5 (currently in beta) that allows you to set your iPhone to…

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) just held its 2024 North America Technology Symposium, where it filled in attendees and investors on its technology road map for the future. You may rightly ask: okay but what does this have to do with me, a user of Apple products? Well, TSMC is a chip fabrication company, and likely the most advanced one in the world. They’ve been Apple’s partner for nearly all of its chips major chips – the A series for iPhones and iPads, the M series for Macs, and more. And Apple is often first in line for new manufacturing processes from TSMC, paying a premium to be the first customer to get to use 5nm or 3nm technologies, for example. Here’s a summary of the TSMC road map and…

At its Let Loose event, Apple announced an all-new version of the iPad Air. As expected, the update includes a larger-screen model and an upgrade from the M1 to the M2 processor. The new Air comes in four similar colours: blue, purple, Starlight, and Space Grey. But there’s a lot more to this upgrade than appearances. UPGRADED SCREEN The eye-catching change for the 2024 generation is the new larger screen option. Ahead of the event, pundits predicted that the iPad Air would match the Pro and offer a mid-size (11-inch) and large (12.9-inch) display spec. But Apple went a little further than expected and bumped the Air to a full 13 inches, matching the M4 iPad Pro. Tech-wise, this is essentially the same screen as we got last time (there’s…

At its Let Loose event, Apple announced new versions of its professional media creation apps, Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. The iPad versions are updated to version 2, while the Mac versions get AI enhancements. FINAL CUT PRO Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 now has a new Live Multicam feature that allows users to connect and preview up to four cameras at once. Apple also announced Final Cut Camera, a new iPhone and iPad app that works with Live Multicam and provides adjustable settings such as manual focus, ISO, shutter speed, and zebra monitors and audio meters. Final Cut for iPad 2 can now work on projects saved to an external drive, and those projects can be brought into Final Cut Pro on the Mac. Other features include…

The iPhone 16 line-up will bring in more money for Apple than anything else this year. As many other parts of the company (namely services) are growing, the overall fortunes of Apple still rise and fall on iPhone sales. You would think that would make the iPhone 16 Apple’s most important product this year, but no. That distinction belongs to iOS 18; or more specifically, the on-device AI features it is expected to bring to our pockets this autumn. For better or worse, it’s all about AI these days. Every tech company has to have a ‘leader in AI’ story to satisfy investors, even if users are starting to get bored with AI chatbots already. And Apple, though the company has used lots of AI and ML (machine learning) in…

Price: £1.19 per month from fave.co/3JQXZm1 You may be familiar with the NordVPN brand, as it’s one of the most popular VPNs around and features at the top of our best VPN chart (see iPad & iPhone User 203). But, that’s not the only string to the company’s bow, as a little while back it introduced a password manager called NordPass. So, does the expertise in one field translate to another? Here’s how NordPass shapes up compared to the other Password Managers we have looked at. SOFTWARE & FEATURES NordPass may well be one of the newest password managers around, but it already feels like a mature product, with all the features you’d expect in a modern service. Once installed, you can import your existing passwords from Chrome or Firefox…

Vision Pro is all about the future: if you think it’s too heavy or too expensive or hasn’t got enough apps, you’re just not thinking long term enough. Apple is aware that the smartphone won’t rule the tech roost forever, so it’s trying to build a platform for the next 20 years. The question isn’t whether it’s succeeded already – most reviewers agree that it hasn’t – but whether it can succeed before time runs out. With this in mind, I’ve been thinking about the ways in which Vision Pro, or a future iteration of that product, can ultimately expand in scope to take the place of all the Apple products we currently use. iPHONE Let’s start with the big one: the platform that currently dominates Apple’s revenues to an…

i Phones are remarkable devices, but they lose their lustre once the battery runs dry. That’s why it’s important to look after the cell inside and ensure that you always charge it properly. In this article, we explain the steps you need to take if you want your iPhone to last till the late hours each day and keep doing so for as many years as possible. HOW TO CHARGE AN iPHONE WITH A CABLE The fastest way to charge an iPhone is using a cable. Until the iPhone 15, this meant using a USB to Lightning cable. From the iPhone 15 on, you need a USB-C to USB-C cable. USB-C offers much faster charging than the older USB-A did, but that doesn’t mean that older phones with Lightning ports…