Category: Apple

Joe Rossignol at MacRumors:

Apple is planning to release a fifth-generation iPad Air with similar features as the sixth-generation iPad mini, including an A15 Bionic chip, 12-megapixel Ultra Wide front camera with Center Stage support, 5G for cellular models, and Quad-LED True Tone flash, according to Japanese blog Mac Otakara.

A weird side effect of Apple’s upgrade cycles on the iPad is that sometimes, one model falls out of step in a funny way. This rumored iPad Air update would bring it in line with the smaller iPad mini.

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If only Apple ran some sort of program to approve apps before they appeared on the store.

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I’m generally a fan of the Memories feature of Apple Photos, especially the inclusion of the widget starting in iOS 14.

However, there are drawbacks. The biggest of which is that Photos can surface painful past moments.¹ An extreme example is the attack on the Capitol last year. Here’s Jim Newell at Slate:

What was it like being inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021? Kind of a blur. My colleagues and I on the congressional beat first got word that a House office building was under lockdown. Then, a couple of minutes later, we heard that the Capitol itself was going into lockdown. On the way to what would become my hiding spot, I watched as some rioters tried to smash their way through the front door on the east side of the Capitol. It was time to get behind a heavy door and keep my mouth shut.

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Chipolo has announced a Find My-enabled card for slipping into a wallet. I do not like that the battery is non-replaceable, but I pre-ordered one anyway for keeping up my with my wallet. As Matt VanOrmer writes, this plugs a big hole in the Find My universe:

When I got the MagSafe Leather Wallet with Find My, I was hoping for a solution that would A. Hold my credit cards and B. Help me find my wallet if I lost it. While it succeeds at A, it fails spectacularly at B. Chipolo has created a product that would actually help me find my wallet if it were lost or stolen.

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Get vaccinated and stay safe out there.

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Apple’s VP of Product Marketing Stan Ng, and Evans Hankey, Apple’s VP of Industrial Design, have spoken with HYPEBEAST about the Apple Watch’s band system. It’s a fun look at what has turned into a whole world of products unto itself.

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Big news on the right to repair front:

Apple today announced Self Service Repair, which will allow customers who are comfortable with completing their own repairs access to Apple genuine parts and tools. Available first for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 lineups, and soon to be followed by Mac computers featuring M1 chips, Self Service Repair will be available early next year in the US and expand to additional countries throughout 2022. Customers join more than 5,000 Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASPs) and 2,800 Independent Repair Providers who have access to these parts, tools, and manuals.

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Today, Apple has announced a new beta service for small businesses that run on Apple products. Here’s a bit from the press release:

Apple Business Essentials is a complete solution that makes employee onboarding simple, allowing a small business to easily configure, deploy, and manage Apple products from anywhere.

Within Apple Business Essentials, Collections enable IT personnel to configure settings and apps for individual users, groups, or devices. When employees sign in to their corporate or personally owned device with their work credentials, Collections automatically push settings such as VPN configurations and Wi-Fi passwords. In addition, Collections will install the new Apple Business Essentials app on each employee’s home screen, where they can download corporate apps assigned to them, such as Cisco Webex or Microsoft Word.

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We’d all like to forget the 2016-era MacBook Pros, so in this review, I’m just going to pretend they didn’t happen.

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I’m typing this on a new 14-inch MacBook Pro, powered by Apple’s new M1 Pro system on a chip. This is a huge speed increase over my old MacBook Pro, an original Retina MacBook Pro from 2012.

For the nearly nine years between the two machines, the keyboard’s feel isn’t radically different. The new keys seem slightly larger, have less space between them and feel more stable, somehow. The sound is a little deeper, but I’ve gotten used to the new keyboard pretty quickly. Apple has shipped good keyboards on their Macs for a long time, and this one is a real winner. I even dig the black well it sits in.

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The folks at Vyncher have put together an amazing dynamic wallpaper for macOS Monterey.

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Jason Snell:

With the closing of the fourth quarter comes the closing of a fiscal year. And while none of us gathered around a HomePod and shouted “Happy New Year!” on midnight of Sept. 26 (the first day of the new fiscal year), as far as Apple is concerned it’s now fiscally 2022.

That means it’s time for the final totals, and an entirely new set of charts based entirely on Apple’s annual performance. This provides a fun opportunity to revisit some charts from about two years ago and look back at where the company has been, while considering where it might go next.

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I missed this in the hubbub of last week, but I’m not surprised to see it go.

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