Articles about Apple

There are many music streaming services these days, such as Spotify, Tidal, and YouTube Music. My favorite, however, is Apple Music. Why? Well, besides the excellent mobile interface, it has a very large library of music. Not to mention, the human-curated playlists are second to none. Plus, Apple Music finally has a web player now -- a much desired feature.

Another cool aspect of Apple Music is time-synced lyrics. When you are listening to some songs (not all), you can have the lyrics display on your device's screen -- timed to the music. It works great, and it is even an option on Apple TV, enabling you to have a karaoke-like sing-along with friends and family. Apple Music is no longer just an Apple-only affair though, as it is available on Android devices and some smart televisions too. Today, Samsung announces that the aforementioned Apple Music time-synced lyrics feature is finally available on its smart TVs.

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Want to know a little-discussed fact about Apple? Despite the company's historic excellence in design, it has never created a good mouse. It's true! Throughout the company's entire history, including today, all Apple mice have been terrible. With that said, its trackpads are absolutely brilliant, and they are still a class-leader. No Windows laptop has a better trackpad than a Mac.

If you like Mac computers but hate Apple mice, there is one excellent solution -- buy a third party mouse. You can never go wrong with a Logitech mouse, and today, the company launches an Apple variant of its popular MX Master 3. In addition, Logitech is launching two Apple-focused keyboards as well -- a Mac-optimized version of the MX Keys and the K380 for Mac Multi-Device Bluetooth Keyboard.

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The T2 chip included in more recent Macs helps to boost security in a number of ways. As well as preventing unsigned software from booting, the chip also secures the entire boot process and handles drive encryption.

But T2 chip can also cause headaches for owners of such machines. The security built into the chip forces users to perform some system repairs -- such as the Touch ID sensor -- with Apple rather than a third party. It can also cause huge problems when it comes to data recovery; that is, unless you're using EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac.

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Readers have been asking me to comment on Apple’s decision, announced at last week’s World Wide Developers’ Conference, to start switching to Apple-designed ARM processors for its Macintosh computers. I usually don’t like to do second-day (or, in the case, second-week) stories unless I can add something new to the discussion. Oddly, I usually can and that’s the case here, where Apple’s move to ARM has a big-picture strategy component that is absolutely vital to the company’s continued success. It also doesn’t seem to be covered yet anywhere but here.

Forget all the talk about Apple moving to ARM because the chips are better than Intel’s or consume less power. You can even forget the idea that using its own chips allows Apple to be more secretive. While these points are all true, Apple would still be moving to ARM even if they weren’t. The switch is all about money, which comes down to Apple’s cost of goods on one hand and Apple’s market capitalization on the other.

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Apple News is an interesting concept -- a news aggregation service that supplies a selection of human-curated articles to owners of Apple devices (such as iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro), for free. For a monthly fee, those same users can opt into Apple News+, which provides unlimited access to hundreds of publications, including newspapers and magazines.

While Apple News is obviously great for, well... Apple, it is also a big win for news readers, as they can discover interesting articles through the beautifully designed app. Unfortunately, Apple News isn't necessarily good for news publishers, as they lose the direct connection with readers. Nowadays, traditional newsrooms are struggling to compete with the internet, so providing their content to Apple for an online app doesn't really make sense.

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In addition to revealing iOS 14, iPadOS 14 and watchOS 7, at WWDC 2020 Apple also gave us a look at the future of macOS -- Big Sur.

This is a significant upgrade to the operating system, significant enough for Apple to move away from calling it macOS X, and jumping up to macOS 11. There has been a significant redesign to the interface, icons and apps, bringing macOS much more in line with iPadOS and owners of an upcoming ARM-based Mac will be able to run iOS apps natively). But Big Sur is about more than just aesthetics.

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Today at WWDC 2020, Apple confirmed the rumors -- the company is ditching Intel processors for future Mac computers. While there are technically still some future Intel-powered Macs in the pipeline, Apple intends to eventually switch to its own in-house chips exclusively. The company expects it will take two years for the transition to complete. The last time Mac made such a switch, it was PowerPC to Intel.

Obviously, these ARM-based chips will not be able to run current versions of macOS, so Apple has also announced the next version of the OS that will be compatible. Called "Big Sur," this upcoming version of macOS will also be able to run legacy third-party x86_64 programs through its Rosetta compatibility layer. All Apple programs will be designed for the ARM chips directly.

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Apple's WWDC 2020 event was held virtually, open to everyone around the world to view for free. Among the many announcements to come from the event was iOS 14 -- and there's a lot to look forward to for iPhone owners.

What can you expect? Major improvements and changes are being introduced to the home screen and the way app pages work, and widgets are getting a serious overhaul. Siri sees a number of improvements, as does messaging. There's also an entire new type of apps called App Clips. Let's take a closer look.

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Later today, Apple will host its first virtual Worldwide Developers Conference. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, WWDC 2020 is an online-only event, and you can tune in to see all of the new announcements.

Things kick off at 10:00 AM PDT with a special event keynote speech from company CEO Tim Cook. As ever, we don't know for sure what will be revealed at the event, but we can expect to learn about iOS 14, WatchOS 7 and macOS 10.16, as well a new hardware including Arm-based Macs.

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Apple has launched a new open source project designed to promote collaboration between the  developers of password management software to help improve security for users.

The Password Manager Resources project has been created to make it easier for the developers of password managers to work together to ensure interoperability with websites, and to create a better experience for users. The aim is to integrate the strong password generating capabilities of the iCloud Keychain platform into password management apps.

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Imagine being a fancy lad — a sophisticated man about town that draws attention and respect from everyone around you. Women want to be with you. Men want to be you. You have style, class, and a bank account that holds much money. Your car is foreign and your clothes are expensive. You of course use an iPhone, because that’s what high-class people own. Android is for peasants!

When you need to charge your iPhone, you don’t use the cable it came with, do you? Oh, of course not — that would be so pedestrian. If you are truly a fancy man, you will instead use Anker’s new 24K gold USB-C to Lightning cable. After all, it's probably what Queen Elizabeth II uses to top off her Apple devices. Best of all, it only costs a mere $100 — peanuts.

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When a book goes out of print the publishers don't pop round and remove old copies from your shelves. Similarly, when an app is discontinued it can be taken off the app stores but continues to linger on users' devices.

Mobile security company Wandera has been taking a look at what happens to these with an analysis of six-months' worth of apps that were removed from the app stores, along with apps that were installed on customer devices prior to the six-month period and, subsequently, removed.

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Apple has released macOS Catalina 10.15.5 which includes a new battery health management feature to help improve the battery life of MacBooks.

Much like the feature that has been available in iOS for a little while now, battery health management helps to improve longevity by reducing the peak capacity of a battery. In addition to this, the latest update to Catalina also improves the appearance of Pro Display XDR monitors, and fixes various problems including issues in FaceTime and Reminders.

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Jailbreaking your Apple device opens up a whole new world of life outside the walled garden. The iPhone-maker has long played a game of catchup with developers producing jailbreak tools, and now the renowned Unc0ver team have come up with a tool that can unlock just about every iPhone and iPad.

Unc0ver 5.0 goes far further than other jailbreaking tools. The team behind it says that it offers "full-fledged support for all devices on iOS 11.0-13.5 with Cydia and tweak injection".

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Apple’s HomeKit was supposed to simplify the smart home, putting the controls for all internet-connected devices in one place. The iPhone-maker’s solution largely delivered what it promised, but not all developers got onboard. And so, many homeowners found themselves unable to use HomeKit exclusively, as not all of their devices were compatible. Thankfully, Apple hasn’t yet given up on it.

Today, Logitech launches a new smart home security camera called “Circle View” that isn’t just compatible with Apple HomeKit — it is exclusive to it. In other words, if you aren’t an Apple hardware user, you shouldn’t even bother, as it requires the HomeKit Secure Video platform.

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