Innehållsförteckning för May 2021 från Macworld UK

After cutting some configurations of the 21.5in 4K iMac (see page 6), Apple has now discontinued production of the iMac Pro, adding a note to its site that the high-end all-in-one is only available ‘while supplies last’ and removing all configuration options from its online store. As if there was any doubt, Apple has confirmed that the iMac Pro is indeed being discontinued, suggesting that an M1 version won’t be made. Once hailed as the fastest Mac available, the iMac Pro arrived in December 2017 as a high-end iMac for professionals. At the time, it was faster than the Mac Pro with a built-in 5K display, 32GB of RAM and an 8-core Xeon processor. It was also the first and only iMac with a Space Grey enclosure. It was updated…

If you have a new Mac, you probably think it’s going to last for years, but some new troubling data suggests that might not be the case. More than a few users are reporting that SSDs on new M1 and Intel Macs are possibly being overused by the system, which could cause them to wear out earlier than usual. Twitter user @never_released started a thread that shows a report of an M1 Mac with very high write counts for a computer that’s only two months old. That led other M1 owners to run the same report, and many have also found excessive usage, including Macworld columnist Dan Moren (see opposite). In Moren’s comparison, his 2017 iMac records about 2.15 terabytes of data written each month for 14 per cent of…

As we’ve already seem (page 8), Apple has announced it is to discontinue the full-sized version of its HomePod smart speaker. This came a couple of days after the Space Grey model had already been listed as out of stock, prompting theories about a possible refresh to the product. Perhaps more surprising than the demise of the HomePod, however, is that this does not actually mark the end of Apple’s smart speaker ambitions. The three-year-old HomePod is survived by its smaller and less-costly sibling, the £99 HomePod mini, introduced last autumn. There are myriad reasons why the HomePod failed, chief amongst which were a late start in the category, mistaking what exactly the market wanted out of such a device and a high asking price. But what makes this change…

There’s something of a misconception when it comes to the Mac: that Mac apps cost more, just like the computer itself. While powerful tools like Photoshop or Final Cut Pro certainly have price tags commensurate with their robust feature sets, many of the greatest Mac apps won’t cost you anything more than the time they take to download them. A quick note before we begin. Apple has changed its security settings in macOS, so you’ll need to allow your system to open a couple of these apps. A dialog box may pop up telling you a certain app ‘is an application downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to open it?’ Click Open to proceed with the installation. 1. THE UNARCHIVER Available from fave.co/2XnVnEs ZIPs and RARs…

Typically, Apple stays quiet about its future processors, preferring to announce them along with a new product. For example, we didn’t get specifics about the M1 until Apple unveiled the new MacBooks powered by it and we knew very little about the A14 before it showed up in the iPad Air. So, we probably won’t hear about the A15, the first of a new generation of Apple system-on-chips (SoCs), until Apple unveils the iPhone 13 later this year. However, we can still piece together a picture of our possible future. By studying the trend for past A-series processors and what we know about cutting-edge silicon manufacturing, along with a few educated guesses, we can get a pretty good idea of what to expect from the A15. STILL 5NM, BUT ENHANCED…

Anew iPad Pro might be mere weeks away, and we already know a lot about it. While it probably won’t getting a new design, Apple could be bringing a slew of important changes, including a mini LED display for OLED-like colours and power efficiency, better cameras and 5G support. But the most important change might be a surprising one: the processor. Of course, we fully expect the iPad Pro is in line for a faster processor. Even though it’s only been less than a year since it was updated, the iPad Pro is currently the second-fastest tablet Apple makes behind the iPad Air, putting Apple’s flagship tablet in the odd position of being slower and more expensive. A new processor will give the iPad Pro its rightful position at the…

APPLE PHOTOS, iCLOUD PHOTOS AND MY PHOTO STREAM: FIGURING OUT WHAT TO USE When online and local storage were scarcer, Apple added an interesting option to let you have access to recent photos captured or imported across all your mobile and desktop devices. What’s now called My Photo Stream, when enabled, would feed newly taken photos (but not videos) to all other connected devices, so you could view them on your iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple TV. The service at introduction and today keeps up to 1,000 images for up to 30 days. It only starts removing the oldest images when the set of photos from the 30 days exceeds 1,000 or when an image is more than 30 days old. The space occupied by My Photo Stream doesn’t count…

The strange unavailability of multiple configurations of the 21.5in iMac has sparked rumours that a new model will soon be here. Sources from the supply chain have told AppleInsider that Apple has entirely stopped production of the 512GB and 1TB SSD versions of the iMac 4K. (The 256GB version and 1TB Fusion Drive models are still being produced.) This claim is borne out by these models’ availability – or lack of it – on the Apple website. On the UK store, for example, if you select the 512GB or 1TB SSD from the build-to-order options on the 4K 21.5in iMac, the Apple Store reports that this configuration is not available – see opposite image. This is also the case on the German and US stores. Apple has not updated the…

Apple has been ordered by a federal jury in Texas to pay $308.5m (about £223m) in lost royalties for infringing on a DRM patent owned by Personalized Media Communications (PMC), Bloomberg reports. PMC originally sued Apple in 2015, accusing the company of infringing on seven of its patents. This included FairPlay, which is used to distribute encrypted content via iTunes, the App Store and Apple Music. Apple secured an initial victory at the US Patent Office, but an appeal in March 2020 took the dispute to court. In a comment to Bloomberg, Apple says it is disappointed with the decision and will appeal in turn.…

Maybe someday there will be a tell-all book written by someone inside Apple during the 2010s. Maybe we will eventually know exactly what happened that led to a bit of a lost decade for the Mac, one that will be remembered for a failed attempt to rethink the Mac Pro and a series of questionable hardware decisions that hobbled Mac laptops for years. But until then, we’re mostly left to speculate about what happened – and how Apple turned it around, ushering in a new decade that’s got the potential to reinvigorate the Mac in a way not seen since the early days of Steve Jobs’s return to Apple. But in my opinion, there’s a single Mac model that tells a good portion of the story all on its own.…

It was just a few short years ago when we told you about a then-upcoming wireless technology called Wi-Fi 6. At the time, what was once known as 802.11ax was henceforth given a much more consumer-friendly name and previous convoluted Wi-Fi standards got similar names: 802.11ac became Wi-Fi 5, 802.11n became Wi-Fi 4, and so on. And now we’re getting an even newer name, Wi-Fi 6E. In short, it’s an updated version of Wi-Fi 6 that includes access to the new 6GHz frequency band. But while it doesn’t bring new technology over Wi-Fi 6, this new frequency could be a huge deal and will make a major impact on the future of wireless networking. WHAT’S UP WITH THAT E? It’s hard to believe, but the Wi-Fi standard has been using…

You’ve decided that it’s finally time to switch to an iPhone. Maybe it’s the value you get in the £399 iPhone SE. Maybe you’re more concerned about privacy, or you’re tired of buying phones that only get operating system updates a year or two. Maybe you have a Mac, and want a phone that works seamlessly with it. Whatever the reason, we’re here to help make your transition from Android to iPhone as smooth as possible. Grab your old Android phone and your new iPhone and let’s make the switch. TRANSFER DATA FROM ANDROID USING THE MOVE TO iOS APP Apple’s got a fancy marketing page all about why you should switch from Android to iPhone (fave.co/3vPvugp). It’s more hype than usable advice, but the Apple does make a great…

It’s officially spring now, which is when the Internet’s fancy turns to rumours of 2021’s first Apple announcements. Over the last few years, Apple has generally released at least some new products in early spring, and there’s no reason to think that this year will diverge substantially from this point. Most of the attention in recent weeks has focused on updates to the iPad. That’s not terribly surprising: though Apple updated both the iPad Air and base-level iPad last autumn, the iPad Pro received only a minor speed bump last spring, with the addition of the A12Z processor – far overshadowed by the addition of cursor support and the release of the Magic Keyboard. But that modest update has created a strange state of affairs where the current top-of-the-line Pro…

In a surprise late night news dump, Apple has killed the original HomePod, marking an ignominious end to the high-priced Siripowered speaker that struggled to find an audience. Like the iMac Pro, which has also been discontinued (see page 4), the speaker is available ‘while supplies last’. Apple announced HomePod at WWDC in June 2017 with much fanfare and a very high price. Dubbed ‘a breakthrough speaker’ with ‘custom Apple-engineered audio technology’, HomePod was introduced as a high-end audiophile product with spatial awareness for room-filling sound. However, with an initial price tag of £349, a delayed roll-out that missed the holiday shopping season, and a weird issue that left rings on some surfaces, HomePod wasn’t a success. Apple never updated it, opting instead to launch a new HomePod mini last…

Recent reports have shown that some users of M1 Macs are experiencing what they feel is unreasonable, excessive usage of the SSD. One in particular showed 15TB written in two months. That’s quite a bit, and almost certainly due to swapping main memory to the SSD. The reports became a cause for alarm for M1 Mac owners, but is it really a problem? While it’s true that SSDs have a limited lifespan, how long that SSD lasts comes down to how you use your Mac. SSD LONGEVITY A common misconception about SSDs is that they don’t last very long. That’s due partially to the early days of SSDs, when the lifespan of NAND flash storage used on an SSD was severely underestimated, and drives often quit after a relatively small…

It’s been a few months now since Apple released macOS 11 Big Sur, and hopefully by now you’ve adjusted to its revamped user interface and the major new features, like the enhanced Messages and Maps apps. But operating systems are huge and there are always a few new features that aren’t obvious and you may have missed. Here are 11 tips, tricks and hidden features in Big Sur that you need to check out. 1. OPTIMIZE YOUR CHARGING MacBook users probably know by now that it’s not a good idea to charge a MacBook’s battery to 100 per cent all the time. It’s better to charge it to about 80 per cent in order to prolong the battery’s life. Learn more about charging and how it affects your battery.…

f you have a newer Mac, it likely uses a speedy solid-state drive to store files, apps, music, videos, and a lot of other important stuff. But there’s one thing you may not know about SSDs: they wear out over time. Since the SSD is such a vital part of your Mac, it’s a good idea to keeps tabs on its health. While it usually takes a really long time to wear out an SSD – likely far longer than you’ll keep your Mac – problems can arise. Most recently, users started noticing that new M1 Macs and some Intel-based ones are showing advanced wear after just a few months of use (see page 14), a troubling sign that could cause drives to burn out years before expected. So even…

We all know how easy it is to share photos with friends and family who also use Apple Photos. But when you throw an Android or PC user into the mix, things get a little more complicated. Since they won’t be able to view an iCloud Shared Album, you’ll need to take a few extra steps to be sure they can see your photos. There are a couple of issues at play here. First, of course, is that they don’t have an iPhone so they can’t use Apple Photos. The other issue stems from the format Apple uses on newer iPhones. Since iOS 11, Apple has used HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format) for photos and HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) for videos since they take up less space. It’s…

Price: €49 (around £42) per year from fave.co/3nvhwfG AirVPN is a popular service among privacy-conscious users. The VPN is well known for transparency about its network, reasonable costs, and attention to privacy. It’s not a perfect service, but it’s well worth considering for anyone who wants a good amount of anonymity. AirVPN started life in 2010 as a free project by privacy-conscious ‘activists, hacktivists and hackers’, according to the VPN’s about page. It then became its own entity with a dedicated company around 2012. Currently, AirVPN offers connections in 21 countries, with 240 servers. Anyone who wants to see the status of all of AirVPN’s servers can head to the Status page on the company’s website. Here you’ll see each server location to the city level, current load, and even…