Essential Apple User Magazine July 2021

James Gale Managing Editor The iPad’s multitasking features are potentially powerful, but currently too awkward to be useful. I love the new-look multitasking in iPadOS 15. Martin Smith Group Senior Designer Can someone explain to me why Home screen widgets weren’t added last year, alongside the iPhone? I’m glad they’re coming soon, though. Alan Hulme Staff Writer The new Notes features, across all the Apple devices, is what I’m most looking forward to. I make a lot of notes, so I’ll enjoy the new app. David Hayward Staff Writer I worked remotely long before the pandemic. This calls for a lot of video conferencing, and I’m impressed with the new FaceTime features. Ian Osborne Editor Universal Control! Operate your iPad and even a second Mac using the keyboard and trackpad you use on your main Mac? Yes please! Alyssa Falcon Staff Writer I’m an Internet addict, and…

At last! I got my new iMac only months after it was first announced, but it seemed like forever. As I mentioned last issue I ordered the purple model, matching my first ever Macintosh, a purple (or grape) G3 iMac I bought in the year 2000. When you read the review over on Page 64, you’ll see I love it to bits. It’s amazingly powerful; a real step up from previous generations. I bought my new iMac to replace an ageing Mac Pro, which was still going strong despite being eleven years old, but couldn’t run the latest versions of macOS. This just goes to show how long Macs last. Can you imagine using an eleven-year-old PC as your go-to machine? If my iMac lasts half as long as my Mac…

The forthcoming update to the iPhone’s operating system, iOS 15, is a big one! We can look forward to some great new features and enhancements for FaceTime, Messages, Notifications, Weather, Maps and more. Let’s take a look at what to expect when the new iOS is released this September. FaceTime Enhanced Video chat services such as FaceTime became increasingly important as the world locked down due to the global pandemic and meeting face to face became impossible. We hope everything will be back to normal by the time iOS 15 is out in September, but either way, we’ll appreciate the great new features coming to FaceTime. Apple’s new FaceTime enhancements are designed to make the video chat experience ‘more natural, comfortable and lifelike’. Spacial Audio is a new Group Chats feature which creates…

As always, this autumn’s operating system refresh brings new versions of iOS and iPadOS, and as usual, most of the new iOS features also find their way into iPadOS. The tablet’s operating system also gets some brand-new exclusive features too. Home-Screen Widgets Home-screen Widgets have been improved in iPadOS 15. You can now place Widgets among the apps on your Home screen, just like you already can in iOS 14. Just open the Widgets Gallery and drag the Widget of your choice into place. Like Widgets on the iPhone, you can choose the size of your home screen Widgets, with larger ones showing more information than the smaller sizes, but take up more room. Exclusively for the iPad, there’s also an extra-large widget which is two app icons high and four icons…

As June 2021’s Worldwide Developers’ Conference keynote offered surprisingly little on the next version of macOS. It was introduced towards the end of the presentation, and it took up much less time than you’d expect. Perhaps this is due to the Mac team spending much of their time with the switch-over to the new Apple-made chips, and perhaps it’s because a lot of the new features, such as Quick Notes, SharePlay and Focus, had already been discussed during the iOS 15 presentation. There’s some interesting tidbits on offer, though some of them are only available on the very latest Macs that run Apple Silicon processors; if you’re still on an Intel Mac, you won’t get the full benefit of macOS 12. As always, the new operating system was named at the…

Like Apple’s other incoming operating systems, watchOS 8, for the Apple Watch, boasts a range of new features. For those who are into mindfulness, the Breathe app has a new animation, and a new Reflect feature that gives you nuggets of wisdom such as ‘Think about something you love to do and why it brings you joy.’ The Reflect and Breathe features are found in a new Mindfulness app, which debuts with watchOS 8. This should go down well with Californian hipsters, but we’re not sure how useful it will be to everyone else. With the eighth iteration of the watch’s operating system, the Sleep app tracks your respiratory rate, recording it as breaths per minute. If there’s a change in your rate, you get an alert. This should come in…