Macworld UK February 2016

As is customary at this point in the year, this issue we are looking at what we think Apple has planned for 2016. With an event rumoured for March, we might just be seeing a new Apple Watch, the long awaited 4in iPhone 6c, and rumour has it, a new MacBook Air. We don’t think we’ll be seeing the mythical Apple iCar any time soon, though. Find out what to expect on page 95. We also have an overview of the biggest wins, fails and surprises of 2015 (page 7) including the arrival of the iPhone 6s, the new Apple TV, the Retina MacBook, the Apple Watch, Apple Music. It’s was actually quite a busy year for Apple, can the company maintain the momentum in 2016? If you have already…

Apple will hold its next event in March 2016, at which it will unveil the Apple Watch 2, alongside the rumoured iPhone 6c and the iPad Air 3, according to reports. Rumours suggest that the Apple Watch 2 will appear at that event but that it won’t ship until April, a year after the first Apple Watch went on sale. Apple has held events in March over the years, including the launch of the Apple Watch and MacBook in 2015 and the launch of the iPad 3 back in 2012. It seems likely that the Apple Watch 2 won’t be the only new product to launch at the March event. A number of Apple products are due an update around that time. We think we may see the following new…

As Apple makes more and more money by selling more and more iPhones, it seems like the company barely has to try to remain at the top of the heap. And yet 2015 was one of Cupertino’s biggest years ever in terms of innovation, with product refreshes almost across the board (sorry, Mac Pro), a new device category (hey, Apple Watch), and a streaming service to rival Spotify (Apple Music). But the shiny patina of new devices didn’t distract anyone when Apple missed the mark this year, as it sometimes does. From the weird staggered rollouts of the Apple Watch in spring and Apple Pencil in fall to Apple Music’s iCloud disaster, Apple wasn’t without its missteps in 2015. Then there were the head-scratching rumours, the indecipherable product decisions, and…

Sure, it’s just an iPhone battery case, but what marks this one out from the many others is the manufacturer: Apple. The £79 iPhone 6s Smart Battery Case is the first sign that Apple is ready to acknowledge that its phones are too thin to contain adequate batteries. The case adds 80 percent to the battery life – and about 100 percent to the thickness – of an iPhone 6 or 6s. Unlike most third-party battery add-ons, the back of the case isn’t flat, but has a bulge in the middle housing the battery. Apple claims the iPhone 6s allows you to surf the Internet on LTE for “up to” 10 hours, a figure that could reach up to 18 hours with the external battery. The battery could also boost…

Put simply, a Retina display is any display to which Apple has decided to apply the name. Retina is an Apple brand for which there’s no specific definition. There are however, features that set Retina displays apart from non-Retina screens. The first, and most important is pixel density. When Steve Jobs launched the iPhone 4, and with it the first Retina display, he described it as having a screen with so many pixels packed closely together that they were imperceptible to the human eye at a distance of twelve inches. He went to great lengths to explain that, because the iPhone 4’s screen packed in 300 pixels per inch, most people wouldn’t see them at all when the phone was a foot from their eyes. Since then, Apple has launched…

Macs were at the forefront of the desktop publishing revolution, bettering PC rivals when it came to colour accuracy and typography. The differences between OS X and Windows systems are less pronounced these days, and file compatibility is typically strong when using suites available on both systems, such as Adobe’s Creative Cloud. Nonetheless, the Mac still finds favour with the majority of designers. This is down to several factors: reliability; excellent niche apps only available for Mac (such as Sketch); and, frankly, Macs looking a lot nicer than PCs. (Designers aren’t shallow, but they do like style.) So you want a Mac, but is right for you? We’ve gone through Apple’s range and figured out the best machine for certain types of designers, but first want to cover some general…