In a socially-distanced keynote address to open Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference yesterday, the company presented new features for the next versions of all of its operating systems. Apple announced new features for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS, and security and privacy features were prominent across the various operating systems. In this article, I’ll give you an overview of what’s coming in these new operating systems to help ensure your security and privacy on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
Portrait photography can seem awfully daunting if you’ve never done it. How many lights do you use? Which modifiers are the best? Do you need a studio? How much money should you spend to get started? Oh, and how do you relate to the person in front of your camera? We talk with pro portrait photographer Sandra Coan about shooting with just one light and one modifier—using film!—and her book Crafting the Natural Light Look.
Find out more, and subscribe to the podcast, at the PhotoActive website. You can follow The PhotoActive on Twitter at @PhotoActiveCast to keep up to date with new episodes, and join our Facebook group to chat with other listeners and participate in photo challenges and more.
Intego has discovered new malware that propagates through poisoned Google search results. Zoom does a couple more u-turns. An App Store controversy is causing people to question Apple’s policies. And spies can eavesdrop by watching the variations in light bulbs.
Subscribe to The Intego Mac Podcast, which I co-host with Josh Long. We talk about Macs and iOS devices, and how to keep them secure.
If you use apps on your iPhone or iPad, other than those included in iOS, you get them from Apple’s App Store. Since Apple’s App Store is the only way to install apps on iOS devices (unlike with macOS where you can obtain apps from the Mac App Store or from developers) you have to use Apple to provide these apps. The App Store has lots of advantages, but also some negatives, and has been controversial lately. In this article, I’ll look at what’s good about the App Store and what needs work.
In April 2018, Apple announced that it was discontinuing its AirPort home wi-fi products. The AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express, and Time Capsule were easy-to-use routers and wi-fi access points that fit perfectly into the Apple ecosystem. The AirPort Express was the first easy way to stream music to devices in your home using AirPlay (initially called AirTunes), because you could connect a stereo or powered speakers to the device. And the Time Capsule contained a hard drive, to use for Time Machine backups. Presumably, sales of these devices weren’t good enough to maintain the product line and its software.
Last year, when I got the new Meyer Lemon Leather Loop Band for my Apple Watch, I posted a review here on this website. I liked the band, and I still do. However, today I posted an update to that article, with this photo, saying:
I’ve had this band now for about nine months, and I don’t wear it all the time. It’s a bit problematic when you’re doing activities around water, such as cooking, where I wash my hands a lot, or even any form of exercise where you sweat. I’d say that I’ve worn it about 25% of the time in this period, because I have other bands and I like to switch, so the current condition is the equivalent of wearing it for a few months full time.
For $100 / £100, the wear this band shows after this amount of time is quite unacceptable. They way the yellow has worn off on the edges especially around the fold is disturbing, and, while other colors might not show the wear in the same way, on this band it looks unsightly. To be fair, the worn parts are on the underside of my wrist, but every time I put it on, I’m disappointed by the quality. I’ll contact Apple and see what they say.
I tweeted about this, mentioning @AppleSupport, and was a bit surprised by their reply:
Hey there, Kirk! The Meyer Lemon band is rather stunning. After reviewing the image, this would be considered normal wear. Check out the special notes for cleaning the leather: https://t.co/A8uSXGLhfn Connect with us in DM if you have any further questions. https://t.co/GDrqU22YpT
I don’t know, it seems to me that this much wear after what was no more than a few months use is a bit excessive, even surprising, but I guess they don’t feel the same way. I wouldn’t buy a leather Apple Watch band again from Apple. If the company doesn’t think they’re supposed to last, then you’re just throwing money away.
Batteries are essential to our portable devices. For many of us, in our everyday use of Macs and iOS devices, we don’t have to worry too much about this. Modern iPhones and iPads provide a full day‘s battery life, and if you use a portable Mac, you can probably get through the day unless you are using battery-intensive apps.
But sometimes you can’t. If you’re away from home or the office for a long time, you either need to take a portable battery pack with you, or carry a charger and go hunting for available plugs. And, as your devices get older, their batteries lose capacity. This means that instead of, say, a full day of power for your iPhone, you may need to charge it sometime in the afternoon.
In this article, I’m going to tell you how you can check on your battery to see what its capacity is, and how to find which apps use the most power so you can get rid of them to ensure that your devices’ batteries last as long as possible.
Apple has been making its own chips for iOS devices for a while now, and it seems likely that the company will announce a move to the same ARM-based processors for Macs at the coming WorldWide Developer Conference. We discuss how Apple has changed processor architecture twice in the past, and cover some news about Dropbox, Zoom, the Brave web browser, and smart home devices.
Subscribe to The Intego Mac Podcast, which I co-host with Josh Long. We talk about Macs and iOS devices, and how to keep them secure.
Plex is a great way to manage your media library. Doug and Kirk discuss how they use it. Note: we recorded this episode before the lockdown began, but held off publishing it because we had a number of interviews with musicians in lockdown.
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