Table of contents for April 2024 in Macworld UK

After a somewhat disappointing string of quarterly releases, Apple reported a 2 percent year-over-year revenue gain in the first fiscal quarter of 2024 on the back of $119.6 billion in revenue. And that’s with one fewer week than last year’s quarter – so all around a strong performance. The gains were due to strong iPhone sales, which posted a 6 percent increase, and Services, which posted a 14 percent gain for a record $23 billion in sales. Apple bumped the price of Apple TV+ to £8.99 during the quarter, a 40 percent increase. Mac sales also held their own with an extremely small increase but were mostly flat following a massive decline last year. Once again, iPad sales were down, dropping 25 percent over last year. Apple hasn’t introduced a…

Just weeks after a judge found Apple at fault in its patent case with Masimo, forcing the company to disable the blood-oxygen sensor on new units, Apple got some good news in a separate Apple Watch case over heart monitoring. A US District Court judge ruled that Apple will not have to face a trial over third-party access to Apple Watch heart rate data following an antitrust suit filed by AliveCor. AliveCor, which claims to have developed the world’s first personal ECG with KardiaBand, accused Apple of using “tactics in the heart rate analysis market [that] have injured competition, reduced consumer choice, and potentially damaged public health”. However, the judge didn’t agree, ruling that Apple’s watchOS 5 upgrade to the Apple Watch’s heart rate algorithm, which impacted KardiaBand’s functionality, was…

Vision Pro is all about the future: if you think it’s too heavy or too expensive or hasn’t got enough apps, you’re just not thinking long term enough. Apple is aware that the smartphone won’t rule the tech roost forever, so it’s trying to build a platform for the next 20 years. The question isn’t whether it’s succeeded already – most reviewers agree that it hasn’t – but whether it can succeed before time runs out. With this in mind, I’ve been thinking about the ways in which Vision Pro, or a future iteration of that product, can ultimately expand in scope to take the place of all the Apple products we currently use. iPHONE Let’s start with the big one: the platform that currently dominates Apple’s revenues to an…

From 1999 until 2016, Apple released and continued to sell a series of external digitally connected displays optimized for Mac users. The displays started with DVI connectors, shifted to the Apple-made ADC connection, then back to DVI, expanded to dual-link DVI, pivoted to industry-standard Mini DisplayPort, and finally ended with Thunderbolt 2 connectors. After not making a display for a while, Apple returned to the market with its own Thunderbolt 3 display, the Pro Display XDR in December 2020; it costs a minimum of £4,599 (fave.co/3SJEJLn). It sells the more affordable Studio Display, which starts at £1,899 (fave.co/42PkBME). A lot of those older Apple monitors remain out in the field and in use. Apple never releases much in the way of unit sales, but it’s a fair guess that several…

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR PHOTOS AREN’T SYNCING ACROSS YOUR APPLE DEVICES iCloud Photos lets you see the same images and videos on all your devices connected to the same iCloud account and with syncing for Photos enabled. If you aren’t seeing synced media, or your media isn’t appearing at iCloud.com or on other devices, try the following. Check that syncing is enabled You should first ensure that a setting didn’t get turned off for some reason: iOS/iPadOS: Go to Settings > Account Name > iCloud > Photos and enable Sync this iPhone/iPad. (The text varies in older versions of iOS/iPadOS). macOS: Go to Photos > Settings/Preferences > iCloud and check that iCloud Photos is checked. If it’s checked in all the above, there are no additional options to configure…

After ChatGPT debuted in November of 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) made a big splash in 2023, with generative AI (the ability of AI to create content) functions and services popping up all over the place. Apple, however, has barely made a peep – the most we’ve heard from Apple so far are reassurances from CEO Tim Cook that Apple is working on …something (see page 8). We’re finally seeing evidence that Apple really is working on something–or possibly a few things. The latest comes from a report by BuyAiDomains.com that says that Apple has purchased the ‘iwork.ai’ web domain, which can be confirmed by checking the registration records in the Whois database of domain names. This leads BuyAiDomainscom to conclude that the iWork apps (Keynote, Numbers and Pages) are “on…

Sitting on a shelf in my garage is a 2012 13-inch MacBook Pro. I keep it around because it has an optical drive – it was the last Apple laptop with the feature. Since I’m the go-to tech support guy in the family, I’ve used that laptop more than I expected to get data from old discs. (For you youngsters, an optical drive is used to read data from things called CDs, DVDs and in some instances, though not this one, Bluray discs.) However, that 2012 MacBook Pro is now dead to Apple. The company officially put it on its obsolete list, which means that “all hardware service” has ceased and that “service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products” according to Apple’s support document about vintage and obsolete products…

A distinguishing characteristic of Apple’s ‘mixed-reality headset with video passthrough’ is the external display. When in use, it shows swirls of light, but the main feature is something Apple calls EyeSight, which offers a way for others to connect with you by seeing your eyes, so you don’t seem to be isolated from the rest of the world when you wear your headset. With tremendous passthrough, Apple Vision Pro helps you remain connected to those around you. EyeSight reveals your eyes and lets those nearby know when you’re using apps or fully immersed in an experience. When someone approaches, Apple Vision Pro simultaneously lets you see the person and reveals your eyes to them. There’s just one problem. It doesn’t work well at all. The lenticular lenses that are meant…

No matter what you think of its future prospects, we can all agree that the Apple Vision Pro is weird, right? One of the world’s most powerful companies has spent a decade preparing to ship a new product and platform that’s embodied in a $3,500 VR headset that lets you use apps in 3D space. After a decade of steady and boring iteration, Vision Pro is… not that. And I love it. Apple is so disciplined and conservative with its product choices and has largely benefited from that tendency. Pretty much every hardware product Apple ships sells in such great numbers that it makes it awfully hard to experiment in public. (The Sony-made displays in the Vision Pro are available in such limited supply that Apple won’t even be able…

While Windows users often close down their PCs at the end of the day, those with Macs tend to leave them on indefinitely. Many Mac users engage in this behaviour because they want to pick up from where they left off, but also because experience has shown them that Macs tend to cope with this kind of behaviour – probably because Apple has designed macOS and Macs to be very efficient in terms of energy use and performance. But is this really a good idea? Three options are open to every user when they’ve finished using the computer for the day: leave it on; put it to sleep or turn it off. But which one you should choose? Read on to find out. DO I NEED TO SHUT DOWN MY…

This year is shaping up to be a landmark one for Apple. The Apple Vision Pro has started shipping, and it’s not just a new product, it’s a whole new computing platform for the company. So, what else could happen that would solidify 2024 as a landmark year for Apple? It’s AI, based on comments from Apple CEO Tim Cook during recent first-quarter financial statement call. In his opening statements, Cook said Apple “will continue to invest in… technologies that will shape the future. That includes artificial intelligence, where we continue to spend a tremendous amount of time and effort, and we’re excited to share the details of our ongoing work in that space later this year.” ‘Later this year’ likely means Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, where the…

We here at Macworld used to complain that the MacBook line-up was too complicated, but Apple has now simplified it so it makes more sense. But what if Apple had gone even further – what if there was only one laptop line, the MacBook Pro, and nothing else? That’s what former Apple design guru Jony Ive wanted to do, according to journalist Walt Mossberg. In a recent episode of The Vergecast podcast (fave.co/3I5bn5j), Mossberg talks about one of the ideas that Ive had while working with Tim Cook at Apple. (It’s at the 26:30 mark of the show.) Ive wanted to whittle down the MacBook line-up to one model, the MacBook Pro. “He decided there didn’t need to be an Air and a Pro,” said Mossberg. “He decided he could…

Apple goes to great lengths to avoid calling the Apple Vision Pro a virtual reality headset. Or augmented reality, or mixed reality, or any other ‘Reality’ thing. We wrote a bit about what all these terms mean last year and they all apply to Apple Vision Pro, but it’s also different than other headsets. Instead, the Vision Pro is usually referred to as a spatial computer and the act of using one as spatial computing. Is this verbiage a cynical marketing ploy to justify the high price and late entry into this growing technology field? Or is spatial computing something other than virtual, augmented or mixed reality? The answer is: it’s a little of both. By any normal human measure, Apple Vision Pro is a mixed-reality headset, with a dial…

The Mac mini has an incredibly fast M2 or M2 Pro processor, and rivals even Apple’s most pro computers despite costing significantly less. However, as great as it is, there is a problem with the Mac mini – the upgrades are pricey and after you buy one, it’s impossible to upgrade its internal components. However, we’re here to help. Most of these tips work with the Apple Studio, too. Apple doesn’t let you upgrade the Mac mini with inexpensive third-party components such as RAM or internal storage, and it prices its custom-build options at the very high end of affordability. Like the rest of the Apple silicon Macs, the Mac mini, Apple has fixed the RAM to the processor and the SSDs to the logic board, so they can’t be…