Table of contents for 202 in iPad & iPhone User

After a somewhat disappointing string of quarterly releases, Apple reported a 2 percent year-over-year revenue gain in the first fiscal quarter of 2024 on the back of $119.6 billion in revenue. And that’s with one fewer week than last year’s quarter – so all around a strong performance. The gains were due to strong iPhone sales, which posted a 6 percent increase, and Services, which posted a 14 percent gain for a record $23 billion in sales. Apple bumped the price of Apple TV+ to £8.99 during the quarter, a 40 percent increase. Mac sales also held their own with an extremely small increase but were mostly flat following a massive decline last year. Once again, iPad sales were down, dropping 25 percent over last year. Apple hasn’t introduced a…

Ever since mobile phones were a thing, we’ve been dropping them in water. And while today’s iPhones are resistant to splashes, dips and dunks, there are still times when they get too wet and the dreaded liquid-detection alert appears on your screen. For years, we’ve turned to a simple household staple when we need to save our iPhones from a liquid death: a bag of rice. The method is decidedly low-tech. Just pop your phone in a bag of rice, seal it up, and wait for a day or so. The idea is that the rice will draw the water out from inside the phone before it can fry any internal parts. People who have experienced waterlogged phones swear by it, and there’s tons of anecdotal evidence to show that…

Price: $3,499 (tbc) Apple’s Vision Pro spatial computer, a VR headset with pass-through video, hand tracking and eye tracking, is not just another VR headset. It’s not just an expensive Meta Quest 3 with higher-quality displays. It is those things, but it’s not just those things. There are moments when you feel, in your gut, that you’re doing things that are going to be the way it is at some point in the future. After a week of using Apple Vision Pro every day, one thought keeps passing through my head. “This is going to be great… one day.” But that’s the rub. That greatness of this product feels like it is always just off in the distance somewhere. Really trying to use the Vision Pro as anything more than…

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…

Whether you’ve recently bought your first iPhone or are a veteran of Apple’s smartphone world, you might not be aware of how many excellent accessories are available to make your experience even better. From iPhone cases and wireless battery chargers to Bluetooth trackers and cleaning kits, there’s something for everyone. But, with so much to choose from, where do you start? Here’s our guide to the best accessories for your iPhone. CASES If you don’t own an iPhone case, then your smartphone will be vulnerable to knocks, drops and scrapes. And if you already own one, slipping on a new case can transform an old iPhone into something that feels brand new again. Here are our favourites. 1. OtterBox Lumen Passport Case Price: £47 from fave.co/3uLww1g Pros: Iconic city choices;…

The iPad is a capable device for both art and productivity, but it becomes a stronger proposition in both areas if you have a good stylus to hand. Whether you’re sketching a new building design, taking notes during a work meeting or designing graphics, a stylus is a game-changer. But with so many to choose from in just about every shape and size, which is the best for your needs? Everyone has heard of the Apple Pencil, but there are plenty of great alternatives that cost a fraction of the price. Here are the best iPad styluses available right now. 1. APPLE PENCIL (2ND GEN) Price: £139 from fave.co/3TbUaNR The Apple Pencil is an obvious choice, what isn’t quite so obvious is which Apple Pencil you should choose. There are…

Price: £79 from fave.co/3H3FwBt It’s well known that headphone listening can cause irreversible damage to your hearing if the content is played too loudly. As an adult, you might chalk it up to aging, but imagine your child having difficulty hearing birds sing or the teacher giving classroom instruction because you let them wear your headphones while they watched YouTube or played games on the tablet you gave them. Puro Sound Labs has a solid reputation for building headphones that limit the volume of sound pumped into children’s ears, and their latest product – the BT2200-Plus Bluetooth headphone – is a superbly well-made product comparable to the best personal audio products designed for adults. Its key feature is that it delivers very good sound, with its output volume limited to…

Apple has announced the launch of Apple Sports, a new free app dedicated to supplying sports fans with their favourite teams’ latest scores and stats. The app covers the Premier League, Serie A, MLS, La Liga and the Bundesliga, as well as the NHL, MLB, and men’s and women’s basketball. When you first set up the app, you’ll be asked to tell it which leagues and teams you’re interested in from then on you can choose to tailor your view to show recent, current or upcoming matches involving either your favourite leagues or teams. At this stage there are a number of surprising limitations, suggesting that it’s still half-finished. The most obvious gaps are in the supported sports and leagues: the NFL isn’t covered yet, although Apple insists this will…

This year is shaping up to be a landmark one for Apple. The Apple Vision Pro has started shipping, and it’s not just a new product, it’s a whole new computing platform for the company. So, what else could happen that would solidify 2024 as a landmark year for Apple? It’s AI, based on comments from Apple CEO Tim Cook during recent first-quarter financial statement call. In his opening statements, Cook said Apple “will continue to invest in… technologies that will shape the future. That includes artificial intelligence, where we continue to spend a tremendous amount of time and effort, and we’re excited to share the details of our ongoing work in that space later this year”. ‘Later this year’ likely means Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, where the…

A distinguishing characteristic of Apple’s ‘mixed-reality headset with video passthrough’ is the external display. When in use, it shows swirls of light, but the main feature is something Apple calls EyeSight, which offers a way for others to connect with you by seeing your eyes, so you don’t seem to be isolated from the rest of the world when you wear your headset. With tremendous passthrough, Apple Vision Pro helps you remain connected to those around you. EyeSight reveals your eyes and lets those nearby know when you’re using apps or fully immersed in an experience. When someone approaches, Apple Vision Pro simultaneously lets you see the person and reveals your eyes to them. There’s just one problem. It doesn’t work well at all. The lenticular lenses that are meant…

No matter what you think of its future prospects, we can all agree that the Apple Vision Pro is weird, right? One of the world’s most powerful companies has spent a decade preparing to ship a new product and platform that’s embodied in a $3,500 VR headset that lets you use apps in 3D space. After a decade of steady and boring iteration, Vision Pro is… not that. And I love it. Apple is so disciplined and conservative with its product choices and has largely benefited from that tendency. Pretty much every hardware product Apple ships sells in such great numbers that it makes it awfully hard to experiment in public. (The Sony-made displays in the Vision Pro are available in such limited supply that Apple won’t even be able…

Water and technology are not usually happy bedfellows, so suddenly seeing your precious iPhone plummet into the sink, bath, toilet, or any other body of water can be a heart-stopping moment. But, don’t panic, all may not be lost as modern phones are far more robust than those of yesteryear. In this article, we explain the best strategies for dealing with a wet or water-damaged iPhone. IS MY iPHONE WATERPROOF? While no iPhone is completely waterproof, if you purchased your iPhone at any time since late 2016, then there’s a very good chance that it will have some level of water resistance. Just how waterproof your iPhone is will be indicated by its IP Rating (fave.co/3UUaLXD). This rating lets you know how water-resistant the product is. There are multiple types…

In recent years, Apple has become quite secretive about the success of the Apple Watch. If it’s supplying figures for that product, they’re more likely to be processor specs or serial numbers than unit sales, or vague proclamations, like a record number of new users bought one during the recent quarter. Instead, we have had to fall back on third-party sources of data. Back in 2016, it was claimed that the Apple Watch had leapfrogged Rolex as the most popular watch, backed up by an analysis of social mentions; this was later confirmed by official figures from the Swiss watch industry. However, this feat was less impressive than you might think. According to data from the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, the country as a whole exported between seven…

We already know that iOS 17.4 will be a game-changing update for the iPhone, with support for alternative app stores and payments in the EU, a handful of new emoji, and virtual numbers for Apple Cash cards, but Apple has one more feature in store when it launches sometime in the next few weeks. In a post on its Security Research blog (fave.co/3OOjneL), Apple has outlined a state-of-the-art security upgrade for iMessage that “has the strongest security properties of any at-scale messaging protocol in the world”. It’s all very technical, but Apple will be deploying post-quantum cryptography Level 3 (PQ3), which “is used to secure both the initial key establishment and the ongoing message exchange, with the ability to rapidly and automatically restore the cryptographic security of a conversation even…

Just weeks after a judge found Apple at fault in its patent case with Masimo, forcing the company to disable the blood-oxygen sensor on new units, Apple got some good news in a separate Apple Watch case over heart monitoring. A US District Court judge ruled that Apple will not have to face a trial over third-party access to Apple Watch heart rate data following an antitrust suit filed by AliveCor. AliveCor, which claims to have developed the world’s first personal ECG with KardiaBand, accused Apple of using “tactics in the heart rate analysis market [that] have injured competition, reduced consumer choice, and potentially damaged public health”. However, the judge didn’t agree, ruling that Apple’s watchOS 5 upgrade to the Apple Watch’s heart rate algorithm, which impacted KardiaBand’s functionality, was…

Apple goes to great lengths to avoid calling the Apple Vision Pro a virtual reality headset. Or augmented reality, or mixed reality, or any other ‘Reality’ thing. We wrote a bit about what all these terms mean last year and they all apply to Apple Vision Pro, but it’s also different than other headsets. Instead, the Vision Pro is usually referred to as a spatial computer and the act of using one as spatial computing. Is this verbiage a cynical marketing ploy to justify the high price and late entry into this growing technology field? Or is spatial computing something other than virtual, augmented or mixed reality? The answer is: it’s a little of both. By any normal human measure, Apple Vision Pro is a mixed-reality headset, with a dial…

One of the greatest strengths of Apple’s product line is its ability for interplay. Not only do its devices work closely with each other, but features that begin life on one platform often make their way to others. Touch ID, for example, started on the iPhone before jumping to iPad and Mac models. The same goes for Retina and True Tone displays. Apple silicon began as part of Apple’s mobile efforts and now powers its entire line-up. As demonstrated by the proceeding, this shift tends to happen especially with devices at the more cutting-edge end of Apple’s portfolio. No surprise, really, given that those tend to be the places that the company is investing the most time, money, and resources in pushing the technological envelope. Of course, the latest in…

In October 2023, Apple unveiled the latest generation of its Pencil stylus for iPad. Coming in a little cheaper than previous models, the newest Apple Pencil brings the addition of USB-C at the expense of some other features. As all three models remain available on the Apple Store, we compare the Apple Pencil generations to see how they are different and why that will matter to you. SPECIFICATIONS Before we look at the differences between the Apple Pencil models, here’s a breakdown of their specs: Apple Pencil (1st gen) Low Latency: Yes Tilt Sensitivity: Yes Pressure Sensitivity: Yes Attaches Magnetically to iPad: No Charging and Pairing: Lightning Hover on iPad Pro: No Double-tap feature: No Dimensions: 176x8.9mm Apple Pencil (2nd gen) Low Latency: Yes Tilt Sensitivity: Yes Pressure Sensitivity: Yes…

Price: £379 from fave.co/3vhOqZz Bowers & Wilkins describes its all-new Px7 S2e headphone as an “evolved” form of the Px7 S2 I heaped praise on in my June 2022 review. Indeed, any changes in industrial design are quite subtle. The evolution comes in the form of a new digital signal processing engine that gave B&W’s audio engineers an opportunity to retune the 40mm drivers in this new headphone. Oh, the Px7 S2e are also available in a new colour, Forest Green. The review sample B&W sent for this review is the very pretty Ocean Blue. Both shades are a nice departure from the black headphones I typically get in for review, but you’re not considering £379 headphones based on their colour scheme. I described the previous model as possessing more…