For years, Mac users have wanted Apple to ship an external display that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
Filipe Espósito at 9to5 Mac has some good news on that front:
The new display is being developed under the codename J327, but at this point, details about technical specifications are unclear. According to sources, this display will have an Apple-made SoC, which right now is the A13 Bionic chip — the same one used in the iPhone 11 lineup.
macOS Big Sur 11.5 includes the following improvements for your Mac:
- Podcasts Library tab allows you to choose to see all shows or only followed shows
This release also fixes the following issues: - Music may not update play count and last played date in your library - Smart cards may not work when logging into Mac computers with the M1 chip
As always, Mr. Macintosh has more.
Apple has reworked much of Safari 15’s user interface as of today’s beta releases. Tabs have returned to their own row below the address bar, on the Mac at least:
The tabs look a little too much like touch targets on the Mac,1 but I can live with that given what we had in the first two betas, when Apple smashed together tabs and the address bar.
When MagSafe was introduced with the iPhone 12 line in the fall, there was a lot of chatter over if Apple would make an external battery pack that would work with the system. Now, many months later, we have the answer: the $99 MagSafe Battery Pack.
According to MacRumors, this battery accessories clocks in at just 1,460mAh, in line with the previous Smart Battery Case. As far as charging speed, this is what Apple says:
John Voorhees has discovered something amazing and terrible.
I’ve been using Monterey since the first developer beta was released during WWDC and switched to it full-time about a week ago when developer beta 2 was released. I’ll have a lot more to say about Monterey this fall when it’s officially released. However, having already spent a substantial amount of time using the OS for my everyday work, I wanted to share my first impressions with readers who are thinking about trying it too.
If you’re thinking about installing a beta this weekend, be sure to check out Federico’s take on them first.
While macOS is currently on version 11 (otherwise known as Big Sur) and macOS 12 Monterey is coming later this year, there are plenty of folks who use old versions of the Mac operating system. Some people are still using OS X 10.7 Lion and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, and until recently, you had to pay Apple $19.99 to get download codes for those OSes. But there’s good news: Apple is now offering Lion and Mountain Lion for free for anyone who wants them.
If you want to live on the wild side and check out this fall’s slew of OS releases early, today is your day. (If you’re looking for macOS Monterey, you’ll have to wait a little longer, as it is apparently “coming soon.”)
Varun Mishra, at Counterpoint Research:
The iPhone 12 series’ cumulative global sales crossed the 100 million units mark in April 2021, according to Counterpoint Research’s mobile handset Market Pulse Service. The series was able to achieve this feat in the seventh month after its launch, which is two months earlier than the iPhone 11 series and almost the same as the iPhone 6 series that helped Apple achieve its first volume super-cycle at the cusp of 4G transition. With the iPhone 12 series, Apple has achieved another volume super-cycle after six generations of iPhones and at the cusp of 5G transition.
As part of WWDC this week, Apple introduced a new MailKit framework for macOS Monterey that enables developers to create Mail app extensions that block content, perform message and composing actions, and help with security.
These new plug-ins have to fall into four categories:
Older mail plug-ins are still supported in macOS Monterey, but will stop being supported in a future release of macOS.
Joe Rossignol has spotted a list of macOS 12 features that will only work on M1 Macs. I’m a little surprised at this, but I suppose that the benefits of having new Macs and iOS devices using the same architecture are already in play when planning future OS features.