MacLife December 2020

Well, what a busy few months it’s been for Apple. At the beginning of September we saw the launch of the Apple Watch Series 6 (p38), Apple Watch SE (p42), and the iPad 8th generation (p44) — and Apple also announced the new iPad Air. We couldn’t get one of these to review in time for this issue (a shame, because it looks stunning), but we’ll have an in–depth review next month — so hold fire on spending your cash before you see what we think. Then, after what seemed like an eternity of non–stop leaks from every corner of the internet, Apple made a strong, if slightly later than usual, entry for the fall Apple Special Event with the announcement of the new iPhone 12 and HomePod mini. (There were…

APPLE GRACED US with not one but four different versions of its new 5G–compatible iPhone 12 at this year’s “Hi, Speed” event. The iPhone 12 has a 6.1–inch screen, and there’s also a smaller 5.4–inch iPhone 12 mini, as well as a 6.1–inch iPhone 12 Pro and finally the largest member of the family, a 6.7–inch iPhone 12 Pro Max. All versions of the iPhone 12 come with 5G connectivity, the super–fast A14 Bionic processor that debuted in last month’s new iPad Air, an edge–to–edge OLED screen with a Super Retina XDR display and a new toughened glass called Ceramic Shield, which is 4x more resistant to drops than the previous iPhone 11. While the Ceramic Shield is certainly a welcome addition for anybody who’s ever dropped their iPhone and been too…

It was no surprise that the new iPhone 12 would feature wireless charging, but Apple has innovated a unique way of implementing it with MagSafe. MagSafe features an array of magnets around the wireless charging coil on the back of all iPhone 12s, optimized for alignment and efficiency. So instead of sometimes getting your iPhone slightly out of alignment on a charging pad, the new MagSafe charger ($39) will now snap into place for a perfect connection every time. But the fun doesn’t stop there. The magnets can be used with other Apple accessories. For example, Apple has a variety of MagSafe cases that just snap onto the back of your iPhone 12, and a leather sleeve that provides complete protection from scratches. When sliding the phone into this sleeve MagSafe…

APPLE HAS ANNOUNCED A NEW HomePod mini, which is essentially a smaller, cheaper version of its HomePod smart speaker, priced at just $99. The HomePod mini is 3.3–inches tall and has a few neat new features up its sleeve. “HomePod mini has everything customers want in a smart speaker — amazing sound for listening to music, a world–class intelligent assistant that delivers a personal experience to each member of the household, and like every Apple product, it’s designed with privacy and security in mind,” said Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “There’s a lot of Apple innovation packed into such a small speaker, all at an affordable price.” One feature we like about the new HomePod mini is how it links together with all your other Apple devices, like…

These days, it’s not often that you ever need to restart your Mac. But, after installing macOS Big Sur, you might find yourself looking for reasons. Long ago, in much simpler times, booting up from cold would produce an unmistakable chime — the startup sound — thrillingly audible to your bookish intern across the boho Village loft in which you conducted both your high–end interior design business and your casual relationships with the bass players of next–to–be–discovered fusion bands. Those times are back. The Apple logo sitting above that monochrome progress bar may be too large, too unpixellated, to truly evoke the 128k heyday, but consider this a Tron: Legacy; a Blade Runner 2049–ing of the original Macintosh user experience, without the icky Jared Leto bits. Good news: your Mac just got…

THE MAC MENU bar was always white with black text, or grey with white text in Dark Mode. In Big Sur, the bar picks up the colors of your Desktop background, and the text is white in Light mode too, with a shadow to keep it legible. Your choice of Desktop background becomes a more visible feature in every app. The sidebar of the active Finder window is also transparent, while others remain solid. Sidebars in apps like Photos show the same effect, revealing a blurred version of underlying windows, but in full screen the whole sidebar shows a flat average of the colors in the background. Opt out at System Prefs > Accessibility > Display > Reduce transparency, which also reverts Light Mode menu text to black. Like iOS and iPadOS,…