Macworld UK June 2020

Anew MacBook Pro is said to be coming in May and there are even rumours that a MacBook with an ARM chip could arrive as soon as June. But Apple apparently also plans to redesign its iMac desktop. If you find the 27in iMac a little too bulky and the 21.5in model a bit too small you will be glad to hear (via the China Times) that Apple could be planning to launch a 23in iMac in the second half of 2020. This is not a new intermediate size to sit between the 27in and 21.5in models – Apple will make the screen of the smaller iMac bigger by reducing the size of the panels around the display – just as it did with the MacBook Pro and the iPad…

Apple has removed the beta label from Apple Music’s web browser player. You can now officially access Apple Music through your browser. This could come in handy if, for example, you’re sitting at a Windows computer without iTunes or borrowing someone’s device and just want to log in temporarily. Apple released a beta version of the web app as early as September 2019. Last month the feature finally left the beta stage. You reach it at music.apple.com. The web app interface is similar to the Music application in macOS Catalina, with the tabs For You, Browse and Radio. If you log in, you can access your playlists, favourites and so on.…

Price: £999 (inc VAT) from fave.co/2VLOew8 The MacBook Air is Apple’s best-loved and best-selling laptop. It’s thin, light, powerful enough for most people, and it’s the least expensive option in Apple’s laptop line-up. Apple finally brought the MacBook Air into the modern Mac era in 2018 with the addition of USB-C, Touch ID, a Retina display, and the removal of MagSafe and USB-A. But that laptop also ditched the old scissor-switch keyboard for the much-maligned butterfly keyboard and boosted the starting price to £1,199 without giving you more storage. In 2019, Apple knocked £100 off the price and added True Tone to the display, but that was it. It’s a fine laptop, but not a particularly good deal. This year, with faster processors, double the starting storage, the new Magic…

Price: £969 (inc VAT) from fave.co/3bAbp3k Apple released the 2020 iPad Pro at a strange time. With the coronavirus pandemic in full swing around the world, the new tablet was announced with a simple press release rather than a big event. What we got appeared to be little more than a minor upgrade, gaining an extra camera and a LiDAR sensor, some more RAM (according to reports), a new(ish) chip and not a lot else. The 2020 iPad Pro is the best iPad ever. It’s just that it was released at a time where there are more important things in life to worry about. Now that I’ve acknowledged this, let’s jump into a self-aware escapist review, shall we? If it ain’t broke Apple barely changed the design of the new…

When Apple announced the new Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro – which features a trackpad that users can use to drive a cursor around on the iPad screen – some pundits pointed out that at long last, Apple was admitting Microsoft was right after all when it designed the Surface with a keyboard and trackpad. Except that’s not what happened. With iPad and Surface, Apple and Microsoft are both headed for the same destination – a new kind of computer that is just as at home as a touch tablet, with a stylus, or with a traditional keyboard and mouse. They’re just converging on it from opposite directions. Go with your strengths Both Microsoft and Apple are victims of their own success. They both start from very strong positions,…

When Apple announced the new Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, it decided to play coy about how much it weighed. The result is that, despite some accurate speculation, none of us found out for sure until last month when the first keyboards arrived in the hands of reviewers and customers. And so, during the midst of our global isolation event, we were all spared a couple of weeks of bad takes from tech pundits. Alas, those days are now over. But I’ve got good news. While the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro does indeed make an iPad Pro weigh as much as a laptop, you only have to buy one if you want to use your iPad that way. It’s your choice – and that says it all about the…