Google has announced that it is rolling out the second beta for Android 12 to Pixel phones today. It adds a few more of the Android 12 features that were announced at Google I/O last month but weren’t included in the first beta. But it also has a couple of newer features, including a new way to manage your internet connection.
In Quick Settings, Android 12 now has a new button called “Internet” that replaces the old Wi-Fi button. Tap it and you’ll get a screen that will let you switch between Wi-Fi networks and also shows your current cellular connection (which you can also toggle).
The new Internet settings in Android 12.Image: Google
Google says the idea is to help users “switch between their Internet providers and troubleshoot network connectivity issues more easily.” Google’s post asks readers to “Let us know what you think,” a sign that maybe this UX might not be a sure thing. Google often introduces and then backtracks on new user interface ideas during Android betas.
Android 12 is also picking up a “Clipboard read notification,” which will appear any time an app reads the current clipboard. It shows up when one app reads the clipboard from something you’ve copied in another app. In other words, it won’t annoyingly pop up if you copy and paste within the same app. Unlike other notifications, this one will apparently appear from the bottom of the screen. It’s similar to a feature that arrived first on the iPhone, as more people realized that apps were asking for clipboard content when they really shouldn’t be.
Those are the two new features, but there are a few more that Google announced but didn’t include in the first beta. The first is the Privacy Dashboard, which lets a user see how often apps request to use a phone’s microphone, camera, and location. Apple, by the way, just announced a similar dashboard for iOS 15 — though it includes a few more data points than Android’s.
The Privacy Dashboard on Android 12.Image: Google
Google is also turning on previously announced privacy features related to the microphone and camera. When either is on, an indicator will be displayed in the upper right of the status bar. Android 12 will also now have toggles in Quick Settings to turn those sensors off.
It’s a neat system. If you disable either the mic or the camera in quick settings, the next time an app tries to access one, the system will ask if you want to turn them back on. If you decline, then the app will think it has camera or mic access, but all it actually sees is darkness and all it hears is silence. It is, as I noted in my original Android 12 preview, a mood.
With this release, Google is keeping pace with its roadmap to release Android 12 this fall. Expect a couple more betas to land before the final release. This beta is available on Pixel phones now, and when the final update is released, it’ll hit Pixel phones first. When other phones will get updated remains an open — and vexing — question. Since this version of Android has the biggest redesign in years, don’t be surprised if other smartphone makers need a little more time to figure out how to apply their own styles to the new “Material You” design system.
After some major hiccups and a delay, Apple Podcasts says it’s launching in-app subscriptions next week. The global launch of subscriptions and channels, which are groups of shows, will happen on June 15th, the company said today in an email to podcasters, which The Verge has viewed.
Apple first debuted in-app subscriptions in April with a launch planned for May. It then emailed creators to tell them the feature launch would be pushed to June to “ensure we are delivering the best experience for creators and listeners,” likely because of issues the company introduced with a recent backend update. Through the feature, listeners can subscribe to certain shows or networks for early access and ad-free content, among other perks.
Beyond this rollout being delayed, podcasters have complained that Apple’s latest Podcasts update, made in preparation for the subscription offerings, completely bonked the system. Podnews wrote two weeks ago that multiple creators experienced a range of issues, including their episodes being delayed, their analytics breaking, and artwork going missing. Hopefully Apple will have all that sorted prior to this rollout.
Meanwhile, Spotify announced and launched its plan for subscription podcasts in the time since Apple debuted its product and delayed the release. Spotify’s solution doesn’t allow people to subscribe in-app, thereby allowing the creators and the company to skirt around Apple’s App Store fees. Instead, listeners have to navigate to an external Anchor webpage. Though that also puts a big hurdle between creators and potential subscribers.
Apple’s big idea is that putting a subscribe button in the podcast app could draw more premium listeners to various services, like Luminary and Wondery Plus. Those groups have had to get over the hurdle of making people subscribe in an app separate from their usual listening platform. Starting this month, we’ll finally see how powerful a subscribe button might be.
Rummage around in beta software, and you’ll often pull out something interesting that you weren’t meant to find. That’s exactly what Twitter user Brendan Shanks has been doing, as spotted by MacRumors, to discover it contains mention of Ice Lake SP Xeon processors, and Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman was able to confirm there will be one last Intel Mac Pro before the cheesegrater-esque tower succumbs to the charms of Apple Silicon, but didn’t reveal his source. For now take the news with a pinch of salt.
(Image credit: Apple)
Bloomberg has previously reported that there are two versions of the Mac Pro in development, one with Intel chips, and another, half the size, using Apple Silicon. Ice Lake SP is Intel’s third generation Xeon Scalable Processor, and offers an average 1.46x performance improvement over the previous generation, with up to 28 cores per socket, PCIE 4.0, and support for up to 6TB of RAM per socket. Apple has a history of using multiple sockets in its top-end machines, though this hasn’t been seen since mid-2012 and the dual Westmere EP Xeon option.
We’re reminded of when Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system contained support for Atom chips, which definitely meant Apple netbooks were coming, only for it to be patched out in a point release. It’s entirely possible there will be another Intel Mac Pro, especially as the new case design hasn’t been out for long, but with M1 giving an i9 a hard time in Geekbench scores, and rumors of M1X or M2 swirling, it does seem a touch odd and will need a clear target market. Apple always keeps its thoughts to itself, however, so we’ll have to wait for an announcement, maybe at the September 2021 iPhone event, or maybe sooner.
People with smartphones and wearable devices regularly show up to the doctor’s office with readouts from apps detailing everything from their heart rate to sleep patterns. Now, with the new iOS 15 update this fall, some iPhone users will be able to send data directly from their Health app to their doctors’ electronic medical records systems.
That type of integration could make it easier for patients to share information with their doctors, said Libo Wang, a cardiology fellow at the University of Utah School of Medicine who studies wearables. “The current workflow is mildly laborious, and requires the patient to email the pdf, and a clinician manually uploading that file to create a permanent record in the official electronic medical record,” he said in an email to The Verge.
Users could already pull in data from the other direction: since 2018, Apple has allowed people to add records from dozens of clinics and hospitals to their Health app.
The new integration will work with six electronic medical records companies in the United States. That includes Cerner, which controls around a quarter of the market, and five smaller groups. Apple says it could continue to add more. Doctors who use the records from those companies would be able to open any shared data within a patient’s health record. The dashboard opens as a web view directly inside the record; it doesn’t take providers to another outside app. The design is similar within the records for each of the six companies, Apple says.
The Health app data isn’t directly transferred into the electronic health record. Doctors can see a window with the data, but the information isn’t permanently added to the record. If an iPhone user decides to stop sharing their health data, none remains within the health record. The system is built using a framework called SMART on FHIR, an open interface for third-party applications that can work within electronic health records. Any group can create an app using the platform.
For physicians — and particularly cardiologists — direct access to iPhone data within health records could help them make more meaningful use of the information, Wang said. One 2020 study found that when physicians directly reviewed the strip generated by the Apple Watch that visually shows a user’s heart rate, they were able to flag more cases of abnormal heart rhythms than the Watch’s algorithm flagged. If the rhythm strips are shared directly to someone’s doctor, the doctor might be able to identify any concerning patterns.
The downside, though, is the potential for information overload, Wang said. More data isn’t necessarily better, particularly if doctors don’t trust its accuracy. While the data collected by wearables and smartphones may seem helpful to patients, it’s still not entirely clear if it actually helps people feel better or gives them better care, he said.
Cerner, one of the electronic health record companies participating in the initial rollout, was able to test the new Apple feature at its onsite clinic for employees. “Having secure ways to view and share this information in a clinical context has been helpful,” said Sam Lambson, vice president of interoperability at the company.
It’s more and more common for patients to bring health data from their personal devices to health visits, and Lambson said Cerner is focused on efforts to incorporate that into its systems even outside of the new Apple program. One advantage of the Apple system is that it’s easy for doctors to use, said Jessica Oveys, director of product management at Cerner.
“I think the key to it is certainly empowering and making the patient feel at the center and secure, and making it easy for them to share. But also, it’s really presenting the data in a way that’s actionable and relevant to the clinician,” she said.
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Late on Monday night, Apple flipped the switch on two new features for its Apple Music subscription service: immersive Dolby Atmos spatial audio and lossless-quality streaming. It feels like the company is really only excited about one of them, though, and it’s not the latter.
Eddy Cue is Apple’s senior vice president of services and the person who oversees Apple Music. He didn’t mince words when he told Billboard that the sudden proliferation of lossless audio isn’t going to significantly evolve or change how we listen to music. “There’s no question it’s not going to be lossless,” he said when asked about what technologies will bring about the “next-gen” of music streaming. Cue firmly stands on the side of the crowd that argues most people can’t hear any difference between CD-quality or hi-res tracks and the AAC or MP3 files that’ve been filling their ears for so long now. He did acknowledge that the higher-bit rate tracks might matter to music lovers with particularly sharp hearing or premium audio equipment, but he was also direct about how niche that group is.
“The reality of lossless is: if you take 100 people and you take a stereo song in lossless and you take a song that’s been in Apple Music that’s compressed, I don’t know if it’s 99 or 98 can’t tell the difference.” Cue revealed that he has regularly done blind tests with the Apple Music team, and they confirm how rare it is for anyone to be able to consistently recognize lossless audio. “You can tell somebody, ‘Oh, you’re listening to a lossless [song],’ and they tell you, ‘Oh, wow. That sounds incredible.’ They’re just saying it because you told them it’s lossless and it sounds like the right thing to say, but you just can’t tell.”
If you go by the message that Cue and Apple are pushing, the Dolby Atmos-powered spatial audio feature is where the true breakthrough is. “When I look at Dolby Atmos, I think it’s going to do for music what HD did for television,” Cue said in the Billboard interview. And then he really went in:
“I think this is going to take over everything. It’s the way I want to listen to music when I’m in my car. It’s going to be the way I listen to music immediately with my AirPods. It’s going to be the way I listen to music in my house. In a way, it won’t feel very good when I’m listening to something that’s not Dolby Atmos because it’s so good. It’s like when I’m watching HD, it’s hard to go back.”
“This requires somebody who’s a sound engineer, and the artist to sit back and listen, and really make the right calls and what the right things to do are,” Cue told Billboard about mixing for spatial audio. “It’s a process that takes time, but it’s worth it.”
Problem is, with much of the Dolby Atmos content on Apple Music I’ve sampled so far, it doesn’t seem like everyone is making those right calls. It’s a hit-or-miss game of exploration, and songs that truly showcase the immersive potential of Atmos are more often the exception than the rule. In many cases, spatial audio tracks have an artificial wideness to them, unfamiliar placement of vocals and instrumentation, and just sound… off. Distant? Too reverb-y? Pick your preferred interpretation. Yet, Apple is so confident in Apple Music’s spatial audio that essentially overnight it became the default for millions of customers listening with AirPods.
But let’s back up a bit.
What is spatial audio supposed to do for music?
In a word, it’s all about immersion. Here’s how Cue hyped it: “it makes you feel like you’re onstage, standing right next to the singer, it makes you feel like you might be to the left of the drummer, to the right of the guitarist.” On its website, Apple says “music created in Dolby Atmos is freed from channels, allowing artists to place individual sounds all around you.”
Whoa there. Like all of Apple’s senior executives, Eddy Cue knows how to pitch something. But if you slap on your AirPods and expect to feel like an invisible person standing in the middle of a recording session, you’ll probably be underwhelmed.
When it’s done well, spatial audio does indeed give music a unique feeling of breadth. And it’s in a different way than a high-end pair of headphones might bring the most out of a stereo track’s soundstage. In particular, vocals often have a very distinct placement in the mix and cut through better than on traditional stereo tracks. That’s the most consistent advantage I’ve noticed with spatial audio music. But because of the different mix, you’ll very likely also pick up on details or sounds that ordinarily don’t stand out in the regular version of a song. And on the best Atmos tracks, everything has a lot more room to breathe.
But when engineers don’t put much care into an Atmos mix, it really shows. Sometimes giving everything so much space can take the impact or crunch out of guitars. Or other aspects of a track fall flat. I’ve included just a few samples below where the spatial audio version of a song is an obvious downgrade from the original. But there are many, and when you hit a few in a row where the vocals sound weird or something’s amiss, it can detract from the listening experience.
How many songs are available in Dolby Atmos spatial audio?
Apple currently isn’t providing a hard number, and is instead only saying that “thousands” of tracks are available with spatial audio at launch, with many more on the way.
How do I know when I’m hearing spatial audio on Apple Music?
You’ll see either a Dolby Atmos or Dolby Audio logo appear on the Now Playing screen beneath the album artwork.
A few random, good examples of Apple Music spatial audio:
“Don’t Know Why” by Norah Jones— This is one where I nearly buy into Cue’s description. Close your eyes, and you could almost transport yourself to a small club where the spread of this mix feels like a live version of Jones’ career-making hit. Stereo doesn’t take you to the same place.
“Paparazzi” by Lady Gaga — With a very surround sound-esque mix (skip to the second verse at 1:23 for the best examples), this is a great example of an old pop hit with an excellent spatial audio treatment.
“Boom” by Tiësto and Sevenn — A fun, lively track that does give off a nice surround sound effect.
“Black Skinhead” by Kanye West — This one is another good example of the “beyond two-channel” openness that spatial audio can provide.
A whole lot of jazz and classical — If there are two genres that naturally lend themselves to spatial audio and Dolby Atmos, it’s jazz and classical. Orchestras can sound truly massive, and it’s a captivating way to listen to jazz ensembles where it’s easy to hear even the quietest notes.
Other examples where it just sounds wrong
“Buddy Holly” by Weezer — The guitars basically lose all life in this mix and vocals dominate the entire thing in a way that just sounds strange and bad. And yet this song is on Apple’s own playlist meant to showcase Atmos.
“Follow Your Arrow” by Kacey Musgraves— Apple mentioned Musgraves as an artist to check out with Atmos. And while her most recent album Golden Hour sounds… fine… her breakthrough Same Trailer Different Park is pretty rough in spatial audio format. “Follow Your Arrow” seems to lose most of its background vocals, and even the main guitar melody is way quieter here than in the regular mix. It almost comes off like a demo recording.
“What’s My Age Again?” by Blink 182 — This is another song that Apple seems to think makes spatial audio sound good, but I’d strongly argue it does the opposite. Mark Hoppus’ muffled vocals legitimately sound like they were recorded through a phone.
“Alex Chilton” by The Replacements — Is that enough cowbell for you during the chorus? It overpowers everything else and makes me feel like I’m in the old Christopher Walken SNL skit, only with a different band.
I’m curious to hear some of your examples that sound great, and others you’ve found that are a disappointment with Atmos.
Do I need AirPods or Beats headphones for Apple Music spatial audio?
No. Apple Music’s spatial audio works on:
All headphones and earbuds
The loudspeakers on supported iPhones, iPads, and Macs
Apple TV 4K
If you set Dolby Atmos to “always on” in settings for the Music app, you’ll see a pop-up advising that it probably won’t sound right on all speakers, but Apple Music will still play the spatial audio mix if that’s your preference. In fact, Apple clearly states that you can “listen on any headphones” to Apple Music’s spatial audio.
How do I turn off Apple Music spatial audio if I don’t like it?
iOS and iPadOS: Go to Settings > Music > Dolby Atmos (under “audio”), and there you can pick between automatic, always on, and off.
If you’d prefer to leave Atmos on by default but want to quickly switch to a regular stereo version of any song that’s playing, just pull down Control Center, press and hold on the volume slider, and toggle off spatial audio. Apple Music will switch over to stereo. If you turn spatial audio back on, you’ll return to the Atmos track.
macOS: In the Music app, open preferences and select the “playback” tab. Halfway down you’ll see an “audio quality” section and Atmos is in there. You get the same three automatic / always on / off choices as on Apple’s mobile devices.
Head tracking is coming to Apple Music spatial audio this fall
Apple Music’s spatial audio is currently much different than the spatial audio experience you get when watching movies and TV shows on an iPhone or iPad. For videos, Apple includes a head-tracking feature that adjusts the sound placement as you turn your head to keep it anchored to the source device. This trick is exclusive to the AirPods lineup, but it’s a very impressive effect.
Apple has said it plans to bring this sound-changes-as-you-turn-your-head feature to Apple Music in the fall — likely with iOS 15.
Is this just a gimmick?
That’s really the question that remains to be answered. But Apple isn’t alone in hyping multidimensional music (nor is it the first to do so). Amazon, Tidal, and others are also increasingly pushing the experience. I recently reviewed an extravagant Sony speaker that positions 360-degree audio as its main selling point.
Are people like Eddy Cue and Zane Lowe right in their insistence that spatial audio will revolutionize how we consume music in the same way that stereo did? Or is this a gimmick like 3D TVs that will fizzle out and be forgotten within a few years? If it’s going to be the former, it’ll take a lot of work and creativity from artists, producers, and mixers to make this format shine.
Because right now, for every Atmos spatial audio track that’s a standout on Apple Music, there are a dozen others that are quite meh — or worse than in stereo. We’re still in the early days, and now that Atmos is officially part of Apple Music, hopefully the consistency will improve. When you do find those mixes where they totally nail it, it’s something special.
Apple should make it easier to switch between Atmos and stereo
But in the meantime, and to avoid turning people off from Atmos when they land on a lackluster mix, Apple Music should make it easier to go back and forth between spatial audio and regular stereo tracks on a per-song basis. One solution could be displaying a choice when you tap on the Dolby icon, similar to the “go to artist / album” options that appear when tapping on an artist’s name.
In its much-anticipated WWDC session on Monday, June 7th, Apple introduced a load of new features for its upcoming update of its iOS mobile operating system: iOS 15. The developer’s beta is now available for anyone who’d like to download it — and who is a registered developer.
First, the obligatory warning: this version of iOS 15 is going to be very new and very beta. If you’re a developer, you know all this, but it’s worth repeating: it’s best to install this on a phone that isn’t the one that you rely on. In addition, remember that Backups Are Your Friend.
You can find the developers beta of iOS 15 on Apple’s Developers Website. You will, of course, have to sign in (we’re assuming you’ve paid your $99 for a developer’s account). You may be asked to register your device if it isn’t registered already.
Find the iOS 15 profile by choosing Downloads (either from the button on the upper right corner, or by using the two-line drop-down menu on the upper left).
Look for the iOS profile, and allow the download.
Once the profile is downloaded, go to the Settings on your device, find “Profile Downloaded,” and follow the instructions. You will eventually be told to reboot, and then should be able to install the update that is available in Settings > General > Software Update.
If you’re not enrolled as an Apple developer, don’t be downhearted — there will be a public beta available for download sometime in July. When it’s available, we’ll let you know where to find it and how to install it.
We now have evidence that staying home to game or stream and chill during the pandemic was pretty much a first-world problem (or privilege, depending on how you look at it). The proof is in a new report published today by the United Nations University and UN Institute for Training and Research that looks at where drops in electronics sales and associated e-waste took place.
The report looked at electronics consumption in the first few quarters of 2020, and then used that to estimate future e-waste. It projects that worldwide, we’ll have discovered that 4.9 million fewer metric tons of e-waste were generated compared to a “business as usual” scenario without the pandemic. But that drop was uneven across the globe, the authors found. Electronics sales are estimated to have fallen 30 percent in low and middle-income countries, compared to just 5 percent in richer nations.
“The so-called digital divide is increasing,” report co-author Ruediger Kuehr said in a statement. “The ability to adapt to digitisation and earn a living or simply to own and benefit from electronics is decreasing in some parts of the world.” Countries in Northern Africa, Western Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central Asia will be the hardest hit, according to the report.
On the other hand, high-income countries are projected to be solely responsible for a slight global uptick in game console, cell phone, laptop, and electrical oven purchases last year. In those countries, it seems people did indeed turn to screens (and maybe baking?) to while away their time during pandemic lockdowns.
Tech companies still managed to profit during the hellscape of 2020. Microsoft and Apple raked in the dough from gaming and computers. Samsung made more money last year than it did the year before. Amazon doubled its profit near the onset of the pandemic. And the 2020 lull in tech spending among low and middle-income countries is expected to be temporary.
As more people buy more gadgets, e-waste piles up, and can leach harmful materials like mercury into the environment. E-waste reached a record high in 2019, and just 17 percent was recycled. A lot more can still be done to prolong each gadget’s lifespan, increase recycling, and make companies responsible for collecting the products they generate so that e-waste doesn’t trash the environment, advocates say.
HBO Max has updated its Apple TV app as it attempts to fix the myriad issues that have been plaguing the software since last week. The update fixes significant problems with basic features like fast-forwarding and rewinding, which had been introduced after the software switched away from using the native tvOS video player. The software update brings the native player back.
“We just released an update to our Apple TV app, restoring the native tvOS video playback experience you know and love, with more improvements to come,” HBO Max said in a tweet. “Ensuring HBO Max viewers have a quality experience is our top priority and we missed the mark here.”
We just released an update to our Apple TV app, restoring the native tvOS video playback experience you know and love, with more improvements to come. Ensuring HBO Max viewers have a quality experience is our top priority and we missed the mark here. Thank you for your patience.
— HBOMaxHelp (@HBOMaxHelp) June 9, 2021
Although the worst of the issues appear to have been fixed, users on the HBOMax subreddit are reporting that some bugs remain after the new update. One user reports that they’re finding their subtitles keep reverting back to Spanish, for example. Thankfully, as another user has pointed out, the new update makes it easier to switch subtitles back, a process which the previous update had made significantly more difficult.
Questions remain about how such broken software was able to be released to users in the first place. Responding to a tweet from The Verge’s editor in chief Nilay Panel, HBO Max’s EVP and general manager Andy Forssell admitted that this was “the zillion dollar question” and that the company would be investigating the issue.
Google may have shied away from a Pixel Watch, but a Pixel Fold still very much seems to be on the way — following a leak last August that revealed the company was planning to release its first folding Pixel phone in late 2021, Korean industry site TheElec is now reporting that Samsung will begin production of folding OLED panels this October for Google, Vivo and Xiaomi’s upcoming folding phones, all of which will reportedly be revealed late this year.
Google hasn’t exactly kept its folding phone ambitions a secret; in 2019, it published patent applications for its own folding screens and admitted it had been prototyping them for quite some time, telling CNET that it didn’t have “a clear use case yet.” But now, it appears Google has a foldable, codename “Passport,” that could be nearly ready to announce. 9to5Google even spotted a new reference to it last month in Android 12’s code, alongside other codenames believed to be the upcoming Pixel 6 and Pixel 5a 5G. TheElec says it’ll have a single 7.6-inch panel that folds inward, while Vivo’s upcoming phone will have a 8-inch main screen and a 6.5-inch outer display. It didn’t mention the size of the new Xiaomi phone’s screen.
It’s not clear whether a Pixel Fold would actually come with a display designed by Google itself, though it’s possible; Samsung acts as a contract manufacturer for many other companies, producing some of Apple’s homegrown processors. Either way, one portion of the screen’s sandwich may still largely belong to Samsung itself: ETNews reports that Samsung will supply its proprietary ultra-thin cover glass (which is technically made by German manufacturer Schott) to other smartphone manufacturers, and Google is expected to use it.
Xiaomi already announced a folding phone earlier this year, the Mi Mix Fold, but it sounds like it’ll have a second one. TheElec also reports Oppo will be delaying a new foldable phone to 2022, with a 7.1-inch main screen and a smaller one between 1.5 and 2 inches diagonally.
If you’ve attempted to stream something on HBO Max from an Apple TV sometime during the last several days, you may have noticed that its player controls are unusable. It’s not just you.
Ongoing issues seem to be related to an app update that supposedly addressed “a few bugs lurking around” on June 5th. Since that update released, users have reported that basic playback functionality — such as fast-forwarding, rewinding, and pausing — is borked completely when you try to use the service on an Apple TV box.
How an update this riddled with bugs rolled out to consumers remains unclear. Unfortunately, it’s also unclear when exactly they’re going to be fixed.
There’s legitimately no way to pause, rewind or fast forward on the HBO Max app no matter if you use the apple remote or the remote mobile app. Idk how anyone is watching anything on there
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) June 7, 2021
Asked for comment on Tuesday, a spokesperson told The Verge that the company was working to fix the issue “as quickly as possible.”
When The Verge’s editor in chief Nilay Patel tweeted about the issue, HBO Max’s EVP and general manager Andy Forssell replied that the company was undertaking “one whale of an effort to address this with app updates as soon as humanly possible.”
“You’ll hear no excuses from us,” Forssell added, “fixes coming.”
But when asked by Patel how it was possible that the update shipped to users with broken playback controls, the HBO Max head said that was “the zillion dollar question.”
@reckless That’s the zillion dollar question. First priority is to deliver for users in addressing the issues, but in parallel we will also dive deep into that question. More to come.
— Andy Forssell (@aforssell) June 7, 2021
On Twitter, the HBO Max help account is replying directly to frustrated users. “We’re aware that our recent #HBOMax app update for @AppleTV led to a number of issues for our viewers,” the account said in one tweet. “Our team is working quickly to restore the experience you’re used to. We appreciate your patience and will provide updates as they become available.”
Separately, on Friday, The Verge contacted the service about reported issues affecting the new Siri Remote’s scrubbing feature — though that issue was not limited to just HBO Max. At the time, a spokesperson said that it was aware of player control issues as well as “a few isolated reports” of HDR playback problems. But the spokesperson also added that the company did not believe the HDR issues were related to an update, as the most recent update at the time did not include changes to the video player itself.
Given the problems with the app right now, if you were hoping to stream the Mare of Easttown finale on your Apple TV box without issue, you may want to hold off.
Today, let’s talk about one of Apple’s many announcements this week at its Worldwide Developer Conference, which some see as a possible threat to the rise of journalism distributed by email. If that sounds self-indulgent, given that it’s coming from a journalist who distributes his work via email, I apologize. But it touches on so many of the subjects of interest to us here — a tech giant’s ability to reshape markets to its liking; how journalism will navigate the platform era; what we mean when we talk about privacy — that I hope I can pique your interest at least a little.
I.
Start with the announcement. On Monday at WWDC, Apple announced Mail Privacy Protection, which will limit the amount of data that people who send you emails can collect about you. Here’s how the company describes it:
In the Mail app, Mail Privacy Protection stops senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about the user. The new feature helps users prevent senders from knowing when they open an email, and masks their IP address so it can’t be linked to other online activity or used to determine their location.
When you eventually update your iPhone to iOS 15 this fall, you’ll see a screen at launch that invites you to opt in.
Let’s assume most Apple Mail users opt in. How necessary is this data to building email-based businesses? Over the past day I’ve read and heard lots of disagreement.
Some quick background for the non-email obsessives. Long ago, email marketers began including invisible pixels in the emails they send you; when you open their messages, those pixels load, telling the sender that you read their message, and might also infer your location from your IP address.
Collectively, the percentage of people that actually open emails is known as the open rate, and it’s one of the most important metrics that senders measure to gauge the effectiveness of what they’re doing. It gives you a sense of how engaged your audience is, and how that engagement is changing over time.
At the same time, there is a fairly long tradition of people finding this creepy. The email startup Superhuman had to apologize in 2019 after a viral blog post explained how the company tracked when, where, and how often people opened emails sent through its service. The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that often focuses on issues of data privacy, turned down eight potential email providers before finding one that would agree to turn off tracking capabilities.
Last year, when Basecamp launched the email service Hey, it made the blocking of tracking pixels a marquee feature. In a blog post today, Basecamp cofounder David Heinemeier Hansson — no fan of Apple in general! — declared victory against tracking pixels. He wrote:
Given Apple’s monopoly advantage with their preinstalled Mail app, we don’t need much of an uptake from what they’re calling Mail Privacy Protection to break the dam on spy pixels. You can’t really say anything authoritatively about open rates if 5-10-30-50% of your recipients are protected against snooping, as you won’t know whether that’s why your spy pixel isn’t tripping, or it’s because they’re just not opening your email.
There’s also simply no way users are going to willingly accept the premise of spy pixels if Apple presents the privacy dangers as clearly and as honestly as we’ve done in HEY. Apple already showed that with their drive to block unique ad identifiers for cross-app tracking in iOS 14.5: 96% of users in the US have declined to let apps track them like that! And email spy pixels are far worse and much creepier.
II.
Let’s stipulate a few things up front. One, most people still don’t know that these spy pixels exist. Two, if they did, most people probably wouldn’t allow them if given the choice. Three, the majority of these spy pixels are used for marketing purposes — efforts to target you better for e-commerce. I do not think it is at all irrational to look at the state of affairs the way Apple did, and say to hell with it.
At the same time, email-based publishing has been of the few bright spots for journalism in recent years. (Certainly it has been a bright spot for me!) Media companies from Facebook to Twitter to the New York Times are now investing heavily in newsletter strategies; new email-based publishers are popping up seemingly every week. Much of this has come in the wake of the success of Substack, which I use to publish Platformer (see disclosure).
And so it’s no surprise that some observers look at Mail Privacy Protection and see a threat. “This is another sign that Apple’s war against targeted advertising isn’t just about screwing Facebook,” Joshua Benton wrote in Nieman Lab. “They’re also coming for your Substack.”
Benton brings some powerful numbers to buttress his worries: “The most recent market-share numbers from Litmus, for May 2021, 93.5% of all email opens on phones come in Apple Mail on iPhones or iPads,” he writes. “On desktop, Apple Mail on Mac is responsible for 58.4% of all email opens.”
It seems clear that Apple’s move to cut off granular customer data from email senders will affect the email economy. But after conversations with newsletter writers and media executives today, I’m not sure that people doing email-based journalism have all that much to worry about from the shift.
“The advertising industry has addicted itself to tracking, prioritizing bottom of the funnel metrics at the expense of great content and creative. It’s tragic,” said Alex Kantrowitz, author of the free, ad-supported newsletter Big Technology. (He previously covered the industry for Ad Age.) “And it’s why people hate advertising and ad companies.”
Kantrowitz told me that his ad inventory was sold out for the first half of the year, thanks to a premium audience he identified not by pixel-based tracking but by a good old-fashioned reader survey. (The Markup, too, has used reader surveys to build a picture of its user base.)
“Pixel blocking makes placements like this more valuable and gives quality email newsletters a leg up on the junk clogging most people’s inboxes,” Kantrowitz said.
For ad-based newsletters, then, Mail Privacy Protection is likely to spur publishers to find other ways to understand their audiences. But what about paid newsletters, like the one this column is syndicated from?
Apple’s move may affect reader-supported newsletters even less, publishing industry executives told me today. Writers can triangulate reader engagement by plenty of metrics that are still available to them, including the views their stories get on the web, the overall growth of their mailing list, and — most meaningful of all — the growth of their revenue.
The media business changes so quickly that I don’t find it at all irrational to read about a move like the one Apple made this week and assume it will be bad for journalism. But in this case, it mostly strikes me as a false alarm. There are any number of changes that major email providers including Apple, Google, and Microsoft could make that would make life more difficult for newsletter-based businesses. In the end, though, I don’t think blocking spy pixels is one of them.
III.
All that said, I can’t end without pointing out the ways in which Apple itself benefits from cracking down on email data collection. The first one is obvious: it further burnishes the company’s privacy credentials, part of an ongoing and incredibly successful public-relations campaign to build user trust during a time of collapsing faith in institutions.
Taken together, the numerous iOS 15 features focused on user privacy combine to place more pressure on the digital ad ecosystem. Perhaps most notably, “Private Relay” — available to paying subscribers of Apple’s iCloud+ service — will encrypt all traffic leaving a user’s device, making them harder for advertisers to track.
One of my more cynical friends views all this as a way to funnel more businesses to building apps, offering in-app purchases, and promoting them with Apple’s advertising products. Marketing emails not working as well as they used to? Sounds like it’s time to buy some keywords in the App Store!
And what of creators who want to move away from the ad model? Apple will be there, ready and waiting to take a 30 percent cut of Twitter Super Follows, paid podcasts, and ticketed Facebook events.
It’s sometimes said that Amazon’s ultimate goal is to take a cut of all economic activity. Looking at Apple’s privacy moves this week, I’m mostly willing to take them at face value — as a necessary counter-balance to the inexorable rise of tracking technologies around the web. But it also seems clear that the value to Apple goes far beyond customer satisfaction — and as its revenues from ads and in-app purchases grow, we’d do well to keep an eye on how its policies are gradually reshaping the economy.
This column was co-published with Platformer, a daily newsletter about Big Tech and democracy.
Apple’s text selection magnifying glass has reappeared in the iOS 15 beta, and Apple’s own site confirms its return by listing it as a feature. Bringing the feature back is a reversal from when Apple made the decision to dump it in iOS 13, which is a bit of a rare occurrence: Apple doesn’t usually go back after it’s done away with something (bringing back scissor switches in its keyboards after years of butterfly switches is a notable exception). The return of the little pop-up is welcome, though: I can only speak for myself, but since iOS 13’s release, I’ve constantly been struggling without the helpful little magnifier.
The new version of the text magnifier seems to be a bit smaller than the old one (in case you’ve forgotten what it used to look like, you can see a great demonstration here), but it’s at least better than the nothing that appears in iOS 13 and 14.
The feature listing on Apple’s iOS 15 page. Did we not want to select exactly the text we wanted before?
It will, at the very least, solve the biggest problem with the current selection system: that your thumb is covering the text you’re trying to select, which makes it a little difficult to see what’s being selected until you pick your thumb up from the screen. Then, if you’re like me, you’ll probably sigh seeing that the wrong thing is selected, then struggle with the text selection handles to try to highlight what you were actually going for (squinting at the small screen the whole time).
It isn’t always this bad, but iOS 14’s text selection leaves something to be desired (and that something is a magnifier).
iOS 15 is currently in early beta, so anything we see now is subject to change — Apple could always make the magnifying glass more prominent based on feedback, if it seems like a lot of people are still struggling. While this feature isn’t quite enough for me to risk downloading the first developer beta, I think it may be what gets me to immediately grab the first public beta when it comes out.
We all spend a lot of time on our phones, and it’s possible — just possible — that some of us spend too much time. In 2018, we ran an article explaining how to use what was then Apple’s brand-new Screen Time feature, which was built in order to help people keep their on-screen time in some sort of sane proportion.
At the time (which was when iOS 12 came out), you could use Screen Time to check how much time you spent on your phone, use an App Limits feature to limit your (or your kids’) daily time spent on various apps or types of apps, or use its Downtime feature to cut off access to all (except a few) apps.
Since then, and especially since iOS 13 came out, Screen Time has been expanded, making it easier to lock down apps and / or limit your screentime. (There have been no additional features announced so far for the upcoming iOS 15, but we’ll add them here if there are.)
To begin using Screen Time, go to “Settings” > “Screen Time.” Here are some of the things you can do.
Daily Average
At the top of the Screen Time app, you can see an accounting of your activity over the course of the day. Click on “See All Activity” to see a breakdown of which specific apps you used and how long you used them.
Downtime
Downtime lets you set periods when you want to force yourself to give your eyes a rest and avoid staring at the screen. It does this by locking down the apps with which you are most likely to spend time. These lockdowns are not absolute — as you’ll see later, you can cancel Downtime when you need to.
Begin by choosing when you want to start your time away from your phone.
Tap on “Downtime” and toggle it on.
Select the days (it can be every day or just on specific days) and times that you want to avoid getting swallowed by your favorite iPhone apps. During those times, only specified apps that you pre-selected (along with phone calls) will be allowed through. For example, you can disable Facebook and Twitter during working hours, but keep the Messages app going for texts. (We’ll go over how to choose which apps to disable in a moment.)
You’ll get a warning before Downtime kicks in. If you need to keep working on an app, don’t worry — you’ll be given the chance to ask for one more minute, to be reminded in another 15 minutes, or to ignore the limit for today.
Keep in mind that Downtime, and the other Screen Time features, can be applied to all your devices that use iCloud. So if you set it on your iPhone, for example, it can apply to your Mac or iPad as well. To share your settings across your devices, go to the Screen Time main screen and toggle “Share Across Devices” on.
Now that you’ve chosen when you want some downtime, you’ll probably want to select which apps should be allowed to remain active.
Back in the Screen Time main screen, select “Always Allowed.” Here you can choose which apps you will still have access to during downtime.
You’ll see two sets of apps: Allowed Apps and Choose Apps.
To select an app you’ll always want access to, even during downtime, tap on the app’s name in Choose Apps and it will appear in the Allowed Apps list.
If you want to disallow any of the Allowed Apps, tap on the minus sign next to the app, and then on “Remove.”
There are more ways to personalize Downtime. Let’s say you want to get alerted about text messages from specific people — you’re planning to concentrate on a project and don’t want to hear from any of your friends, but you still want to get texts from family members. You can do that.
On the same “Always Allowed” page, tap on “Contacts” at the top of the page.
Under “Allowed Communication,” select “Specific Contacts” and choose which contacts you want to allow through, even during downtime.
Note that the “Allowed Communication” page is also accessible from the main Screen Time page.
App Limits
Another way to keep your app use in check is to limit the amount of time you use an app (rather than setting what time of day you can use it). For example, if Twitter tends to be your personal black hole, you can decide not to spend more than, say, two hours on Twitter each day.
To set your app limits:
In the Screen Time screen, select “App Limits” > “Add Limit.” Toggle “App Limits” on and tap on “Add Limit.”
You’ll see a list of categories, such as “Social,” “Games,” and “Entertainment.” Tap on a specific category, and it will open up to show a list of all your apps that are in that category.
Select the apps that you want to limit — or select an entire category to choose all the apps in that category.
Tap on “Next” in the upper right corner.
Select the maximum amount of time you can use the app(s) on a daily basis. When you reach your limit, you’ll be interrupted by a screen that lets you either apply the limit (just tap on the “OK” button), or shrug and select “Ignore Limit.”
If you choose the latter, you can get one more minute, ask to be reminded in 15 minutes, or decide to ignore the limit for today.
Note: if for any reason you don’t want to use an app at all, except for on rare occasions, you can set the Screen Time to 23 hours and 59 minutes. The app will then be out of reach unless you go back into “Settings” > “Screen Time” > “App Limits” and disable the limit.
Screen Time Passcode
If you want to keep certain apps out of the reach of your kids — or your roommate — then you can create a passcode that will be needed to make any changes to Screen Time. The passcode is also useful if you feel you need an extra barrier before you undo one of your limitations.
Go to Screen Time and tap on “Use Screen Time Passcode.”
Set a four-digit passcode, and then reenter it when asked.
Enter your Apple ID and password so that you can use it if you’ve forgotten your passcode.
And that’s it. If you want to change or delete your passcode, go back to Screen Time and select “Change Screen Time Passcode.”
Content & Privacy Restrictions
The last selection in Screen Time isn’t as much concerned with when you use your iPhone as with what you see or hear on it. Select “Content & Privacy Restrictions” if you want to allow or restrict explicit content, keep TV shows or movies to certain ratings, set an age limit for apps, limit which websites are allowed, and set a number of different limits on games (such as multiplayer games, connecting with friends, or private messaging).
Most of this is geared toward parents who want to oversee what their kids see and hear online, but if you’d rather avoid accidentally crashing into any “adult” websites, it could be useful. There are also a number of privacy features, such as stopping Apple advertising, or not allowing apps to change the settings of your microphone, Bluetooth sharing, and other features.
You won’t find many true wireless earbuds that come close to matching the all-round brilliance of the Sony WF-1000XM4
For
Clear, detailed bass performance
Wonderful sense of musicality
Comfortable
Class-leading battery life
Against
Missing Sony’s Multipoint feature
Lacking ear tip choices
No aptX HD
How do you improve on arguably the best all-round true wireless earbuds on the market? Sony has gone back to the drawing board and designed a brand new pair that look nothing like their predecessors – and the result is the WF-1000XM4. Is it a brave move? Definitely. Crazy? Quite possibly.
Sony’s WF-1000X range of wireless earbuds has been a dominant force in this category over the last few years, and the last pair to emerge from its stable, the WF-1000XM3, are two-time What Hi-Fi? Award-winners.
But instead of making the odd refinement here and there, Sony’s engineers have gone to town on the WF-1000XM4 with an all-new design, a new charging case and a new audio processor. They have even found time to develop a new eartip material, which here is appearing on a pair of Sony earbuds for the first time. What could possibly go wrong?
Luckily for Sony, very little does. In fact, the WF-1000XM4 are one of the most feature-packed, user-friendly and sonically gifted pair of wireless earbuds we’ve tested.
Pricing
Unsurprisingly, the Sonys sit at the premium end of the market, coming in at £250 ($280, AU$500). That places them right in the firing line of other five-star rivals such as the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 2 (£279, $299, AU$499), Bose QuietComfort Earbuds (£249, $280, AU$399) and, of course, the Apple AirPods Pro, which at the time of writing range in price between £199 ($199, AU$300) and £249 ($249, AU$329).
Build
(Image credit: Sony)
Your initial contact with the WF-1000XM4 is a surprising one. Sony has ditched the usual glossy box for recycled packaging made from a special blend of paper. This makes for a more compact box (34 per cent smaller than the WF-1000XM3’s), and one that’s plastic-free. That’s great news for the environment, though it doesn’t really give off the vibe that you’ve just bought a pair of premium noise-cancelling headphones.
Sony WF-1000XM4 tech specs
(Image credit: Sony)
Bluetooth version 5.2
Noise-cancelling Yes
Battery life 8 hours (BT + ANC), 24 hours (total)
Voice control Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa
Finishes x2
Weight 7.3g (x2)
Once you’ve liberated the WF-1000XM4 from their packaging, you’re greeted by a small, black charging case. It’s smaller than the case that comes with the Bose Quiet Comfort Earbuds, and positively tiny (40 per cent smaller) compared with the charging case that comes with their predecessors.
The case charges via USB-C and also introduces wireless charging to the WF-1000X range for the first time – all you need is a compatible Qi charging pad. You can even battery share with compatible smartphones and piggyback off their power supply, too.
You shouldn’t have to worry too much about the battery life. Sony’s new buds might come with a smaller case, but the XM4’s battery life is actually up compared with the XM3. You now get eight hours of play from the earbuds with noise-cancelling and Bluetooth turned on, and Sony claims the case can supply a further 16 hours of charge. That places their battery life from a single charge above all major rivals. The AirPods Pro can only manage five hours, the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless seven hours and the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds six hours. Turn off noise-cancelling and the Sony’s life is extended to 12 hours from a single charge and 24 hours with the case. A five-minute quick charge is good for one hour of playtime, too.
You can see the life remaining in both the buds and the case through Sony’s Headphones Connect app, which will also give you a reminder when the case drops below 30 per cent charge.
As with all wireless earbuds, battery life can vary due to a number of different factors, such as the quality of files you’re listening to, how hard the internal processor is working, and the volume you’re listening at. During our testing, we found the battery life consistently good enough to get us through a day of mixed use.
Comfort
(Image credit: Sony)
Flip open the magnetic case and you’ll see the all-new earbud design of the WF-1000XM4. Based on a combination of customer feedback about the XM3 and research about the human ear, Sony has settled on a rounder body that sits more inside the ear opening.
The matte finish on each earbud gives the headphones a premium feel, while the small accents around the microphone and sensor holes add a tiny splash of colour. Speaking of colour, the XM4 come in a choice of black or silver.
If you want your XM4 to double as sports or running headphones you’ll be pleased to know they boast an IPX4 rating, making them resistant to “splashing from any angle” – a big improvement on the old model.
Besides the new-look earpieces, the XM4 also have brand new eartips. Made from polyurethane, which feels like a cross between silicone and foam, Sony claims they help secure a tighter, more stable fit. The thousands of tiny bubbles in the tips are also supposed to help reduce and dissipate noise.
The only downside here is that you only get a single set of small, medium and large-sized tips to choose from. Sony says you will get years of use out of one pair, and naturally extra tips should be available to purchase if you need them.
We don’t have any major problems sliding the earbuds in and twisting them into place. If you are struggling for a seal, you can pinch the tips and slide them into your ear canal, until they expand. We find they sit snugly in your ear opening, but they are comfortable over longer listening sessions.
To make sure you have the perfect fit, Sony has introduced a new air-tightness test, accessible through its Headphones Connect app. The app fires out a test tone and reports back on whether or not you need to make any adjustments. It’s worth trying out, especially if you feel the sound is lacking bass or there is outside noise leaking in.
In fact, we’d recommend installing the Headphones Connect app when you first connect the XM4. It gives you direct access to all the key features and functions of the earbuds so you can choose which ones to enable and disable. It also helps you get set up for listening to music in Sony’s 360 Reality Audio format from compatible streaming services such as Tidal and Deezer.
Features
(Image credit: Sony)
The circular outer surface of each earpiece is a touchpad and, by using the Headphones Connect app, you can customise the functionality of each one. They can control volume and playback or switch between noise-cancelling and ambient sound modes through the usual combination of taps, presses and long holds – and the headphones are quick to respond to these actions. Switching between sound modes, changing volume and activating and deactivating features such as Quick Attention (which drops the volume of what you’re listening to, so you can have a quick conversation without having to remove the earbuds from your ears) happen with minimal fuss.
The Sony WF-1000XM4 borrow the Speak-to-Chat function that debuted in the WH-1000XM4 wireless headphones. This feature allows you to talk to someone while the earbuds are still in place and is triggered when you start talking. It works well, although as is the case with the over-ears, it’s only triggered a second or so after you start talking.
This slight delay can be frustrating, as can the tendency for the feature to be triggered by a cough or an impromptu karaoke session while sat at your desk. You can reduce the sensitivity of the feature, or you can turn it off completely and either use Quick Attention or remove an earbud completely (which pauses playback automatically).
On the inside of the XM4 is plenty of new technology. The earbuds feature an improved DAC and analogue amplifier and are powered by a new Integrated Processor V1. Sony claims it provides a clearer sound and even better noise-cancelling than their predecessor. The new model also gets Sony’s DSEE Extreme audio processor with Edge-AI, which we have already experienced in the WH-1000XM4 over-ear headphones, and is designed to upscale low-bitrate music files to near hi-res quality.
The 6mm driver used inside the XM4 is similar in size to the one used in the previous model, but it’s made from a new material and features a bigger magnet, which Sony claims helps improve sound quality and noise-cancelling, especially with certain low frequencies.
There’s no aptX HD support onboard, but the XM4 support Sony’s LDAC file format, which, streamed over Bluetooth from a compatible source, allows hi-res audio files up to 24-bit/96kHz to be transmitted at data rates of up to 990kbps.
(Image credit: Sony)
Sony has also aimed to deliver clearer call quality with new features, including beam-forming and the use of a bone conduction sensor that stops the mics from picking up distracting ambient sounds while you’re talking. There’s even an automatic wind noise reduction mode which attempts to cut out swirls of noise passing through the headset and into your ears.
All of this works with Sony’s Precise Voice Pickup technology, originally introduced in the WH-1000XM4. The net effect is an impressive call quality for a pair of wireless earbuds. The technologies all combine to do a solid job of dampening down outside noise and interference, especially for the person on the other end of the line.
The general level of noise-cancelling is excellent, especially for a pair of wireless earbuds. Not everyone likes that ‘vacuum’ feeling you get when it’s turned on, but it’s extremely effective through the Sonys and you’ll struggle to find better noise cancellation at this level.
Android users will be pleased to hear the Sonys are compatible with Fast Pair so you can get up and running with minimal fuss. You receive a battery notification pop-up on your smartphone when they power up and you can even track their location down using the Google Find My Device app.
Unfortunately, iOS users don’t get any such pairing perks, but all you need to do to start pairing is open the case and take the headphones out. It’s a shame Sony hasn’t carried across the ‘Multipoint’ feature enabled on the WH-1000XM4 over-ears. This allows you to connect the headphones to two different Bluetooth devices simultaneously, which can come in handy if you’re working on a laptop but still want to be connected to your phone. Here’s hoping it can be added at a later date.
In terms of stability, we use an Apple iPhone 12 and Macbook for the bulk of our testing and find the connection to be rock solid with no dropouts, even in more built-up areas.
Sound
(Image credit: Sony)
Before we get to the WF-1000XM4’s immense musicality and expressive dynamics, we should note the way the headphones handle bass. The quality of bass and the clarity of low frequencies is stunning. There’s such a fantastic level of detail on display that it makes rival headphones, such as the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds, sound congested in comparison.
We’re keen to hear how the earbuds handle one of our favourite bass-heavy test tracks, Massive Attack’s Angel – and we’re blown away by the confidence with which the song is dispatched. Every element of that pulsing bassline is precisely deployed and dripping in texture. It’s the clarity around the notes that really grabs you – it allows the WF-1000XM4 to communicate intricacies in the bass notes that other headphones struggle to uncover.
But it’s not a sound that purely favours low frequencies. There’s clarity across the board and a sense of rhythmic precision that allows the Sony’s to switch pace effortlessly. They sound as at home keeping up with, and succeeding in not being tripped up by, Radiohead’s 15 Step as they are dispatching the slow, deliberate swagger of Nina Simone’s Feeling Good.
Simone’s effortless vocal oozes class and sophistication, with every nuance in her delivery laid bare for the listener. Combine the emotion in her voice with the impact of the piano, percussion and wind section and the Sony’s create a captivating sound you can’t help but be swept away by.
If you were wondering whether the WF-1000XM4 would be a step up from the WF-1000XM3, we can confirm that they are. The newer model sounds more informative and uncovers more subtle detail. Bass notes are better defined and the overall sound is better balanced. Even the much-admired Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 2 struggle to match the Sonys for tonality and refinement.
You can hear that refinement and natural tone shine through as we listen to Ludovico Einaudi’s Experience. From the delicate, deliberate piano strokes at the start to the soaring strings at the song’s climax, the Sonys bring the individual personalities to life and mix them together like the ingredients of a fine cocktail.
Verdict
We’re quite taken by the Sony WF-1000XM4. Given all the design changes and new features in these wireless earbuds, it must have been a real challenge to get them right. But Sony has absolutely nailed it. The headphones deliver a satisfying user experience, class-leading battery life, some of the best noise-cancelling we’ve heard in this category, and absolutely stunning sound quality. Put simply, this is a new benchmark for premium true wireless earbuds.
Apple is extending support for spatial audio to macOS and tvOS. The feature will work with the company’s high-end AirPods Pro and AirPods Max, using the devices’ built-in accelerometers and gyroscopes to create a 3D audio effect that tracks the listener’s head movements.
Apple initially announced spatial audio for the AirPods Pro last year and impressed us with the feature’s immersive quality. At this year’s WWDC, the company extended support for spatial audio to Apple Music and FaceTime calls.
According to a press release from Apple, spatial audio for macOS will only work with the AirPods Pro and Max on Macs with the company’s latest M1 chip and the macOS Monterey operating system. During this week’s WWDC presentation, Apple said spatial audio would arrive on tvOS sometime “this fall,” offering a “full-surround experience” and “dynamic head tracking.”
Some outlets are reporting that spatial audio on tvOS will only work with the Apple TV 4K, and it’s not clear what apps on the Apple TV will support the feature. Or when support for spatial audio through other headphones on either platform will be available. We’ve reached out to Apple to find out more and will update this story if we hear back.
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