Opinion pieces & commentary

Apple officially announced its 2021 Back to School promotion today in the US. Like last year, students, teachers, and faculty can get a free pair of AirPods along with the standard education discount on Mac and iPad but there’s more complexity this time around. Here’s why you might want to wait on Apple’s Back to School promotion – at least for a bit.

iPadOS 15 is a huge leap forward for the iPad. The best features of iOS 14 like Home Screen widgets and App Library are coming to iPads. That means you can put the Weather widget directly on your Home Screen just like on the iPhone. Widgets update with new information like temperature and forecast, and tapping a widget launches the app just like tapping an icon…

The path to getting a UK contact tracing app was a rather tortuous one. The country initially decided to ignore the joint Apple/Google API and develop its own app. Having wasted literally millions of pounds doing so, it then reversed course and decided to build the COVID-19 API into an NHS app.

Unfortunately, my experience suggests that even the API-powered app doesn’t work too well in practice …

I’ve argued for years that moving beyond passwords is something that urgently needs to happen from both a security and usability perspective.

The technical framework to make it possible to abandon passwords – WebAuthn – was agreed back in 2018, and Apple added support for it in Safari last year. Adoption is as yet close to zero, but all that looks set to change, thanks to the latest move by Apple …

We know very little about what we’re going to see at WWDC on Monday, but there have been plenty of hints dropped along the way about some of the potential announcements. The first and most obvious thing we expect and hope to see is a major update to iPadOS that takes advantage of the M1 chip in the new iPad Pro. The second, a new brand name for the software on Apple’s home products called “homeOS,” leaked through a job listing posted the other day. Apple now has 5 core platforms plus the HomePod. They’ll have 6 if homeOS becomes a reality. That leaves iOS, just for the iPhone. If that’s the case it should probably be renamed ‘”iPhoneOS” again.

With the new iPad Pro models out, there has been another flurry of comments about the urgent need for an iPadOS update to allow the software to catch up with the hardware.

I absolutely agree – but for me, none of the rumored improvements expected from iPadOS 15 address the single biggest difference between an iPad and a Mac…

With all the arguments completed, we’re now waiting for the judge’s Epic Games ruling in the antitrust trial against Apple. The consensus view among lawyers is that Apple did the better job overall in presenting its arguments – but the iPhone maker did come in for some close questioning by the judge, so the result is certainly not a foregone conclusion.

There are three possible outcomes in the case, and one of them might just be a better result for Apple than an outright win …

Android smartwatches have so far very much been also-rans compared to the market-leading Apple Watch, but all that looks set to change. Google has announced big plans for Wear OS 3, and looks like it may finally turn Android wearables into something that could seriously compete with the Apple Watch.

Android watches are getting a dramatically improved UI, better apps, and health and fitness features that rival those pioneered by Apple …

A day after the Apple Music Lossless Audio announcement, there’s still a great deal of confusion. A few things have become clear in the meantime, but other elements remain murky.

Apple spent most of its press release talking about Spatial Audio, and very little talking about Lossless Audio. That wasn’t a surprise: Anyone with the right kit will be able to hear the benefit of the former, while rather few will be able to hear the lossless difference…

We’ve known since 2019 that AirTag was coming, but there was still one big surprise yesterday: AirTag pricing.

With the Tile Pro coming in at over $30, pretty much everyone assumed that the combination of added smarts and Apple branding would see AirTag come in at a significantly higher price, likely in the order of $50 …

Apple yesterday announced that for the second year running its Worldwide Developers Conference will be a virtual event – and I think this has implications for the future of WWDC.

While the Cupertino company is a great fan of in-person interactions, the online event definitely offers significant benefits …

Rumors have been swirling for a long time about the next-generation iPad Pro. Just a few weeks ago, Bloomberg reported that the 2021 iPad Pros will maintain the same design but gain new technologies, like an A14X chip and a Thunderbolt port. It’s slated to be a much more significant upgrade than last year’s 2020 iPad Pro was over the 2018 model. Many users, including me, couldn’t find a reason to upgrade last year, and I’m struggling with the idea that this year’s model won’t yield the same situation.

Google has copied Apple’s 15% commission level for smaller developers in the App Store, offering almost exactly the same deal in the Play Store.

However, the way Google has done it is actually fairer, and is how Apple should have implemented the program in the first place …

Farewell HomePod. It was probably Apple’s most misunderstood product, so it’s mostly unsurprising that Apple made the decision to discontinue it.

There was a huge chasm between what it really was, and what most people thought it was – and Apple’s marketing didn’t help …

Apple’s failure to deliver on its App Store promise could well end up costing it dearly in its defense of antitrust investigations all around the world.

Regulators are trying to answer two questions. First, does Apple’s approach to the App Store harm developers? Second, does it harm consumers?

If the App Store lived up to the promises Apple makes, then the company would have a solid defense against the second charge. Unfortunately for the iPhone maker, that’s not really the case …

Yesterday’s report that we’ll see an iPhone punch-hole display next year raised quite a few eyebrows. Three main objections have been voiced.

First, that a punch-hole is uglier and more distracting than a notch…

Based on recent supply-chain reports, the 2021 MacBook Pro ports could turn out to be either an IO dream or nightmare.

We today got a more detailed report about what to expect in terms of 2021 MacBook Pro ports, with noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo saying we should expect both an HDMI port and an SD card slot. Coupled to his earlier report of a new MagSafe power port, that’s a pretty dramatic change to the current models, which have just USB-C ports and a headphone socket.

But whether that’s an IO dream or nightmare depends on how Apple plans to implement the change…

Apple debuted its standalone Magic Keyboard for Mac back in 2015, which wasn’t drastically different from the aluminum Apple Wireless Keyboard that launched all the way back in 2007. While we’ve had a few updates to color options over the past years, a new Mac Magic Keyboard is definitely due – here’s what we want in refreshed versions and when we might see them.

Over the last week, we’ve gained a very clear picture of what to expect from the 2021 MacBook Pro update: a slight redesign, more IO ports, the end of the Touch Bar, and the return of MagSafe. Essentially, Apple is undoing the changes it introduced with the 2016 MacBook Pro, an update that proved to be controversial for multiple reasons.

With the Apple Silicon transition moving along swiftly and rumors of updates across the entire Mac lineup, it’s a good time to be a Mac fan. It’s also worth stepping back and questioning how we ended up here in the first place.

We’ve had a couple of reports today, each from solid sources, suggesting that we’ll see significant changes when the 2021 MacBook Pro models appear.

The two reports agree on most things, though there are some differences between them. Notably, Ming-Chi Kuo indicates that removal of the Touch Bar is a done deal, while Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman thinks it is merely being considered at this stage …

Alongside the Apple Watch Series 6, Apple announced a ton of new watch faces. One of those faces just so happened to be a collaboration with artist Geoff McFetridge. Apple had previously made a few watch faces in collaboration with Disney in the form of the Mickey and Mini Mouse face and the Toy Story face. But the Artist face is the first one that truly breaks the mold.