Carrot Weather — the entertainingly antagonistic weather application from developer Brian Mueller — just got its latest version 5.0 update, which brings a whole new (and far more customizable) design, removes the upfront price tag in favor of more subscription tiers, and, of course, adds new dialogue and Easter eggs for the app’s malevolent AI character.
It’s been a few years since Mueller released Carrot Weather 4.0, and the new update brings a fresh coat of paint to the weather app, with more detailed data that’s broken down into individual cards for things like Moon phases, wind speed, precipitation, and more.
Image by Brian Mueller
Users are also able to fully customize the layout of those interface cards based on the information that’s important to them, and they can swap between different custom layouts easily. (For example, a frequent skier might want to build a layout that focuses on snowfall and wind speed forecasts.) Everything has been visually updated to be more in line with modern iOS UI standards so the whole app will fit more seamlessly alongside the rest of your apps.
The new app also is now free to use, instead of charging $4.99 upfront to use. Like the old paid version, though, there are still optional subscription services that can be layered on top for more functionality. A Premium subscription ($4.99 per month or $19.99 per year) adds additional features like selecting weather sources, notifications, widgets, and Apple Watch complications. Premium Ultra ($9.99 per month or $39.99 per year) adds notifications for rain and storms, more widgets, and better data source switching. And a Premium Family subscription ($14.99 per month or $59.99 per year) is the same as Premium Ultra but can be shared through Apple’s Family Sharing with up to five other people.
Carrot’s new customizable Interface Maker tool.Image by Brian Mueller
If you’ve already been a Carrot owner, though, you’ll get to keep any paid features you already had forever, even if they’ve been moved to one of the pricier tiers. Similarly, existing subscribers to the old Premium Club memberships will be able to continue to pay those lower monthly or yearly prices.
The free version of Carrot Weather includes ads — but for now, they’re either for entirely fake products or for other indie applications. (Mueller says he’s not getting paid for those, either, but views them as a way of “giving back to the awesome indie developer community.”) That said, he notes that he may end up selling ads in the future.
Carrot Weather 5.0 is available to download now on the App Store.
During the Exynos 2100 launch, Samsung revealed that the company was on track to deliver a Radeon equipped Exynos SoC relatively soon. However, it appears the timeline for this product has been accelerated; there are leaked reports of a new unnamed Exynos SoC with Radeon graphics smashing Apple’s A14 bionic in leaked benchmark results.
Of course, take all these results with a grain of salt, as you would with any leak. The fact that there aren’t even photos of the leak could cast further doubt. Plus, these are GPU-only related tasks, we know nothing about the CPU performance of this SoC.
All we know about this mysterious Exynos chip is that it features an RDNA powered Radeon GPU, custom-built from AMD for Samsung. In the leaked benchmark results, this Samsung SoC was compared to Apple’s current flagship the iPhone 12 Pro that packs Apple’s A14 Bionic, one of the fastest SoC’s in a phone on sale today.
Benchmark:
Unnamed Radeon Exynos SoC
Apple Bionic A14 (iPhone 12 Pro)
Manhattan 3.1
181.8 FPS
146.4 FPS
Aztek Normal
138.25 FPS
79.8 FPS
Aztek High School
58 FPS
30.5 FPS
In the several benchmark applications used above, the RDNA-powered Radeon GPU was anywhere between 25-100% faster than the competing A14 Bionic. If these results are in any way true, it is quite an impressive feat from Samsung and AMD.
It would be an amazing achievement for Samsung if they can beat both Qualcomm and Apple’s integrated GPUs in the near future, even if it’s just in gaming performance. Samsung has been woefully behind in graphics power for years compared to its rivals; To all of a sudden become the champion of ARM integrated graphics in phones would mean a lot for Samsung and the adoption of its Exynos chips.
Philips has produced a brilliant OLED television, but the partnering soundbar isn’t quite at the same level
For
Tidy and appealing build
Punchy HDR and SDR pictures
Fabulous 4K detail
Against
UI a little dated
Mediocre motion processing
Sonically short on dynamics
Combining a television with an integrated soundbar can be a double-edged sword. It’s the height of TV sound convenience, but unless the soundbar is top quality, then you’re stuck with it. Enter the Philips 65OLED935 – a sleek, powerful television that aims to get around this inherent pitfall by having hi-fi specialist Bowers & Wilkins design and build the speaker system.
This isn’t Philips’s first combined television and soundbar. The company’s 2019 flagship OLED, the OLED934, was a similar creature, but with a far bigger Bowers bar built into a large floor stand. It proved to be a match made in AV heaven, so why break up the partnership?
This time, looks and price tag are considerably more modest, but its fresh take on the 3.1.2ch Dolby Atmos soundbar design makes this a tempting solution for those who like to keep things simple to use and easy on the eye.
But to describe the Philips 65OLED935 in those terms alone is doing it a disservice. Underneath that sculpted steel exterior, there is a TV with impressive specs that could even outperform its soundbar-less sibling, the five-star-rated Philips 65OLED805.
Now with a dual AI engine inside its top-of-the-line P5 processor, Philips is confident enough to describe the performance of the 935 as “OLED+”.
Build
(Image credit: Future)
Philips 65OLED935 tech specs
(Image credit: Future / Modern Love, Amazon Prime)
The Philips 65OLED935 is a classy looking set. It comes with a choice of two different chrome brackets in the box, one for wall-mounting and the other to use as a stand. The cable tidying system means that the join between the soundbar and the TV itself is seamless, leaving only your HDMI cables and power lines to tuck neatly away behind.
The stand and bracket are pretty heavy and highly polished, so take care they don’t slip out of your grasp when you’re putting this together. Fortunately, the wafer-thin OLED panel is nice and light. The stand needs a surface that’s at least 88cm wide and 26cm deep to accommodate it and if you choose to use the bracket, it stands 15cm proud of the wall.
There’s little to no bezel, just an even 2mm metal bead around the edge of the glass. On the back of the panel, you’ll find four HDMI sockets. Next-gen HDMI features are thin on the ground, though: there’s no support for 4K@120Hz (also known as HFR), VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) or eARC (Enhanced Audio Return Channel), although standard ARC and ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) do feature.
As well as the HDMIs there’s an optical audio-out, ports for connecting headphones and an external subwoofer, plus two USB slots. It’s Bluetooth-enabled for audio, too.
The soundbar houses ten separate drive units. There are two 5cm midrange cones plus a 19mm titanium-dome tweeter for the centre channel, one of the same cones and tweeters each for the left and right, and then a single racetrack-style 10cm x 6.5cm subwoofer unit on the top surface, ported to the rear. Also along that top edge are the two 5cm height speakers facing upwards for that Dolby Atmos effect.
The tweeters are decoupled from the main enclosure, with the centre one in a metal case of its own in B&W’s tweeter-on-top style. There’s a micromesh to protect those drivers on the upper surface and Philips’s acoustically transparent wool blend cloth, Kvadrat, across the front of the array.
Made from glass fibre-reinforced polycarbonate ABS, the enclosure is braced with internal rib sections to control resonance. It’s mounted to the TV with a stiff metal plate. If that sounds like an appealing level of attention to detail, you’ll also be pleased with the remote control, which is backed in Muirhead leather and feels very much the part for a premium OLED TV.
Features
(Image credit: Future)
Functionally, the remote is the same as we’ve had from Philips over the last few years. Much like the Android 9.0 operating system itself, all the right options are there but they’re not presented in a particularly wonderful, intuitive or user-friendly fashion.
Other manufacturers such as Samsung and LG are slicker and more progressive on this front and while it’s just about acceptable here, we’d expect to see the company up its game on this front before it falls too far behind the promised UI advances from Google TV and LG’s webOS 6.0.
The benefit of the Android OS is its app offering. All the UK catch-up services are present, along with Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. During testing, we experienced a little bit of crackling through the speakers when using the Netflix app, but restarting the app sorted that out.
There’s no Apple TV or Apple Music on Android TV. For that, you’ll need to add an Amazon Fire TV Stick, Apple TV or other media streamer. Instead, your pay-as-you-go film and TV options are Rakuten and Google Play Movies & TV, neither of which is up there with the Apple TV app. You’re better covered for sport, though, with BT Sport and Now TV both on board.
In terms of picture technology, the OLED935 gets one or two bumps over the soundbar-less OLED805 thanks to the improved Philips P5 processor with its AI dual picture engine. The big one is AI Machine Learn Sharpness, a local level picture sharpening tool that enhances the textures and patterns of specific parts of the image, rather than applying a blanket tightening up across the whole display.
Another is AI Smart Bit Enhanced 2.0, which should remove colour banding without sacrificing detail. Last, but not least, is a boost for the Philips Perfect Natural Reality processing which aims to boost standard-def material so it looks more like Full HD.
The other picture tech of note is an anti-burn-in logo detection feature, which recognises permanent screen logos, such as those of TV networks, and dampens their effect. In testing, this works very well – we try out a Dolby Atmos test disc and the bright white intensity of the Dolby logo in the corner of the screen is dropped to a level that won’t tire the pixels so rapidly.
On the sound front, the big news is the 3.1.2 speaker arrangement, the Dolby Atmos support and upmixing, and the involvement of hi-fi specialist Bowers & Wilkins. The TV is also compatible with the DTS Play-Fi hi-res streaming standard, meaning you can set-up your soundbar to work as part of a multi-room system along with any other Play-Fi-enabled kit you might own.
No review of a top-end Philips TV is complete without a tip of the hat to Ambilight. The company’s delightful LED lightshow tech comes in its four-sided variety for the OLED935. You can set it to change colour according to the on-screen image, to music or even to mimic a national flag for sporting events. It’s a great feature and long may it last.
Picture
(Image credit: Future / Modern Love, Amazon Prime)
The Philips 65OLED935 supports both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ alongside HDR10 and HLG. We see what it makes of the first of these by slotting Spider-Man: Homecoming into our 4K Blu-ray player and the results are impressive.
Using the Dolby Vision Bright setting, the upgrades to the picture quality over the Philips OLED805 are small but clear. The scene where Peter gets stuck in the Deep Storage Vault has plenty of monochrome textures, bright colours and a large depth of field, but right from the off, the Philips AI processing works alongside the Dolby metadata to make a brilliantly punchy and vivid HDR picture.
The spidey suit really pops against a nicely detailed and defined set of greys in the background. The AI Machine Learn sharpening tech enhances the textural differences between the rough raw concrete slabs of the hangar entrance, without doing the same to the soft marbling of the polished floor. There’s a strong sense of colour precision to the hero’s mustard yellow backpack and the different red and blue shades of his outfit.
All the same, we prefer Philips’ take on the film with the TV’s HDR AI preset, which is an excellent quick-fix solution for getting the most out of Dolby Vision films. This setting keeps things simple but leaves the user with the five main Philips processing modes to experiment with. Keep the Perfect Motion and Perfect Contrast settings at a minimum and you won’t go far wrong.
The HDR Personal mode squeezes every last drop of the excellent picture performance from this TV. Once balanced for brightness, the OLED Contrast slider offers the best customisation. The higher you go, the more zing you’ll add to the colours, however, you lose a little of the sense of depth to the picture.
Heading to the film’s climax, there are some healthy levels of dark detail on show alongside some lusciously deep OLED blacks. We can still make out the folds and the feel of the material of the Vulture’s leather jacket and sheepskin collar. Those details are just shy of the best LED-backed TVs, but the trade-off for those blacks is worth it here.
(Image credit: Future / Modern Love, Amazon Prime)
Philips has upped its motion processing game for its most recent TVs by adding a couple of extra modes. All the same, the actual quality of the underlying tech is similar to what we’ve found in previous years – perfectly decent, but not in the same league as the likes of Sony and Panasonic.
We prefer the light touches of either Pure Cinema or Movie mode, although many will prefer to turn the processing off altogether. Watching Peter rush to the rescue of his friends in the Washington Monument, we’re happy to put up with some judder in the faster panning shots in order to avoid the soap-opera aesthetic.
That decision is harder when watching SDR, where judder can be more significant. Viewing the opening scenes of Jack Reacher in Full HD on Blu-ray, there’s a case for setting the motion to Standard to avoid the over-processed look, although there are plenty of artefacts every time the car disappears and emerges again under overhead freeway signs.
Philips recommends its Vivid preset as a good starting point for SDR material, but you’ll need to step back quite far on most settings to get the right blend. Colour, Brightness and Sharpness should be below their halfway marks and the Perfect Natural Reality (fake HDR) and Perfect Contrast filters are best switched off.
Once stripped back, you’ll achieve a watchable picture. The overhead shot of the riverside crime scene is excellently handled. There’s a good feel to the paving stones, a believable colour palette to the nearby flowerbeds and plenty of dark detail as the uniformed SWAT team arrives on the scene. For SDR, it has a remarkably punchy look.
Watching standard-def material is obviously less of a treat, and you’ll struggle to pick up Philips’ good work on colour blending and image sharpening. No TV can work miracles, of course, but watching BBC News, the colour of the clothing appears faithful and the newsreader’s skin tone retains a natural feel.
Sound
(Image credit: Future)
Our expectations of TV sound are usually tempered, but here things are different. While there are small picture quality advantages of the OLED935 over the OLED805, the integrated soundbar makes up most of the difference in price.
There are plenty of sound presets to choose from, including Personal mode, which allows access to an EQ. ‘Movie’ gets our vote for the majority of our viewing. It’s not quite as clear as the AI or Original modes, but this is a speaker array with plenty of precision and we’re happy to sacrifice a little of that for the extra spatial boost.
We watch the bombing raid sequence of Unbroken in Dolby Atmos and the B&W soundbar projects an excellent soundstage, adding plenty of height and breadth to the sound. Even with our eyes closed, it’s easy to picture the planes flying across the screen and the bullets zipping by.
The agility of the drivers makes for a good separation of the effects, unveiling all the details in the clicks and clinks of the military equipment, and the creaks of the pilots’ leather jackets. But clarity isn’t quite everything when it comes to great TV sound and this set-up is missing one of the other crucial ingredients – excitement.
Dynamically, there just isn’t enough going on, with differences in scale between the various sounds too small to deliver much in the way of drama. Everything’s rather flat and lacking in impact. We hear the bombers fly over our heads, but without that level of involvement, we’ve no urge to duck whatsoever. The bullets offer little threat from our perspective, even as the cockpit becomes riddled with bullet holes.
Similarly, voices lack expression, which sells short the tension of the sequence. The young servicemen seem all too relaxed on their mission deep into the heart of enemy territory, rocked by the lifeless pops of flack exploding just inches from their heads.
The audio from the OLED935 is clearly superior to the OLED805. You won’t struggle to hear dialogue or appreciate music with more rhythm, but the results are far less enthralling than those of even a relatively affordable soundbar, such as the Sonos Beam. Compared with a more expensive Dolby Atmos-supporting soundbar, such as the Sonos Arc, the contrast is even less flattering.
Verdict
Philips has done a superb job to make improvements on what was already a first-class picture performance with this OLED+ TV. Watch 4K material on this set, whether Dolby Vision or otherwise, and it looks stunning. The picture is sharp and colourful with deep blacks and a great level of tonal detail – however, you can get almost all of that joy with the far more affordable OLED805.
Integrating a soundbar into the design of a TV brings the expectation of audio excellence and the OLED935 doesn’t quite deliver that. While there are plenty of plus points for the spatial smarts and the coherence and clarity of the sound, there just isn’t enough impact or drama.
Ultimately, while the price gap between the two TVs remains this wide, there’s a strong case for recommending opting for the OLED805 and investing in a dedicated soundbar, such as the Sonos Arc or even the much cheaper Beam. The 935 is clearly a more elegant solution and a step up in picture quality but, currently, that comes at too high a premium.
Apple overtook Huawei to reclaim its spot as the second-bestselling smartphone manufacturer in the world in 2020, according to new research reports from Counterpoint Research and Canalys. Samsung was still the leading seller in terms of number of smartphones shipped, while Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo took the next three spots, according to Counterpoint.
It was just under a year ago that the same research analysts reported that Huawei had overtaken Apple to take second place in 2019. But since then, US trade sanctions seem to have hit Huawei hard. The Chinese company’s smartphone shipments were 21 percent lower in 2020 compared to 2019, according to Counterpoint, and Huawei dropped out of the top five entirely in the fourth quarter of the year. It’s the first time in six years Huawei hasn’t been in the top five, Canalys notes.
Huawei’s smartphone shipments dropped out of the top five in Q4 2020.Image: Canalys
Although Huawei was still able to hold on to the number three spot overall, thanks to domestic sales in China (where it reportedly shipped 70 percent of its phones in 2019), Xiaomi seized the opportunity to expand internationally and saw shipments increase by 17 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. However, the fastest-growing smartphone brand in 2020 was reportedly Realme, which shipped 65 percent more phones than it did in 2019.
Apple’s gains were more modest, increasing by 3 or 5 percent year over year depending on whether you ask Counterpoint Research or Canalys. The latter notes that Apple shipped the most iPhones ever in the fourth quarter of last year.
Counterpoint Research reports that Apple overtook Huawei last year.Image: Counterpoint Research
Although it’s still the bestselling smartphone manufacturer in the world, both reports suggest that Samsung’s smartphone business is losing market share. Both Canalys and Counterpoint say its shipments fell 14 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. It’s still around 50 million smartphones ahead of second place Apple, but the gap appears to be narrowing. Counterpoint says that the South Korean electronics giant is facing stiff competition from Apple at the high end of the market and from Chinese manufacturers in the midrange.
Overall, the entire smartphone market was reportedly down compared to 2019. Canalys reports that shipments were down 7 percent, while Counterpoint reports a bigger 10 percent decline. Counterpoint blames the pandemic and resulting lockdowns for the drop, but notes that shipments began to pick up in the second half of the year.
Apple is now selling replacement ear cushions for the class-leading AirPods Max wireless noise-cancelling headphones. In the US they cost $69 and are available now, while the rest of the world will get them soon.
The cushions come in all the same colours as the headphones themselves – silver, black, green, blue and red – so you can simply buy a replacement pair (not that you should need to yet…) or choose to mix and match the colours of your headband and ear cushions for a more customised look.
The cushions attach to the ear cups using magnets so are easy to swap in and out without any fiddly parts or screws. According to a recent teardown, Apple has shied away from using glues and other tricky to disassemble parts, making the AirPods Max the most repairable AirPods ever.
The AirPods Max are Apple’s first on-ear headphones – and what a debut they have proven to be. In our five-star AirPods Max review, we praised their sound quality, stating that “sonically, the AirPods Max don’t put a foot wrong”. Not only that, we lauded them as “hands-down the best wireless noise-cancellers you can buy”. High praise indeed.
But they don’t come cheap. They cost £549 ($549, AU$899), which is a lot more than rivals such as the Sony WH-1000XM4 and Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700. But then the best never does come cheap, does it?
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(Pocket-lint) – The Apple Mac mini has been around in one form or another for the best part of 15 years. It may not be a top seller, or a model you see millions upon millions of people using, but it clearly has strong appeal that’s seen it last as long as any of Apple’s product families.
What makes it attractive now is the same thing that made it attractive back in 2005 (when the PowerPC G4 version first shipped): it’s small, it’s powerful and it’s a lot less expensive than an iMac.
And while this Mac mini looks identical to the one that’s been on store shelves for the past couple of years, it has a totally new brain: Apple’s M1 processor. So what does that mean and does it make for the best miniature desktop machine you could buy?
Minimalist to the extreme
Case built from recycled aluminium
Dimensions: 197mm square x 36mm tall / Weight: 1.2kg
Like the M1-updated MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, nothing has changed for the Mac mini from a visual perspective. It’s still that minimalist rounded-edged square aluminium case with the Apple logo in the centre, with nothing but a single white LED on the front. All the ‘ugly’ ports are hidden at the back, so that if you want to hide all your messy cables then it’s easy.
Size wise, it’s maybe not as ‘mini’ as it could be though. Watch enough teardown videos and you’ll see how much space there is inside the new M1-powered Mac mini. That’s because the M1 hardware and all that entails fits into a much smaller space than all the previous components. We’d be surprised if the next-generation model wasn’t even smaller for that very reason.
Still, compare it to a tower PC or any other Mac desktop computer and it takes up a lot less space than most. Despite being a bit old now, there’s something quite attractive about a sleek metal box sitting on your desk with no seams, joins or screws visible (well, unless you you turn it upside down or look at it from the back).
That minimalism also applies to the port selection on the back, but there’s still much wider support here than on either of the M1 MacBooks. For starters, you get two USB-A ports, along with the two USB 4 Type-C/Thunderbolt ports. You even get an Ethernet connection point, HDMI 2.0, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. There’s also an opening to allow airflow from the fan.
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We’d love to see one or two more Thunderbolt ports and an SD card reader in future models though (as much as the latter is highly unlikely). It certainly seems like there’s adequate space, though, so we can’t fathom why there isn’t a card reader on a machine that’s otherwise primed and ready for creators. The same can be said of the MacBook Pro, really.
It’s not unusable with this number of ports, of course, but we had to rely on a Thunderbolt 3 desktop dock to get constant access to an SD card and microSD card reader. It also expanded our options for additional ports and – just as usefully – gave us a headphone port that we didn’t need to reach around the back of a computer to gain access.
Which monitors can I use?
Thunderbolt supports 6K up to 60Hz
HDMI 2.0 port supports 4K up to 60Hz
Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2, DVI and VGA adapters available
We can’t talk ports without talking monitors, which is certainly something to consider before deciding on whether to get a Mac mini or not. In this home office there’s been a USB-C LG monitor for a good few years. Primarily because it’s a monitor with multiple input options, and because for a good chunk of time, the MacBook Pro was our home computer of choice.
The model we paired up is the LG 27UK850. It’s a 4K 27-inch monitor that supports up to 60Hz refresh rates and is pretty much perfect for the Mac mini. You can plug it either into the HDMI 2.0 port on the back, or use one of the USB-C/Thunderbolt ports.
Pocket-lint
The good thing about this particular monitor is that it also features two USB-A ports on the back, so you can effectively use it as a desktop hub if you need to plug an extra couple of peripherals in, like a USB microphone or a wired keyboard.
Anyway, enough about the monitor. The real thing to note with this Mac is that you can connect up to two monitors. But you do need to split it between the HDMI port and one Thunderbolt port. Using two screens, you get 4K and 60Hz on both. For higher-resolution monitors, you’re limited to just one monitor and you have to use one of the Thunderbolt ports as the HDMI maxes out at 4K. Those power users who like three or more screens won’t have much luck here, but we suspect those users are few and are already using a Mac Pro.
M1 power
8 core M1 processor, 8GB or 16GB RAM
8 core GPU + 16 core Neural Engine
256GB/512GB/1TB/2TB storage
A lot has been said about Apple’s M1 processor. That’s not exactly a surprise though. Following years of partnership with Intel, Apple used the expertise it’s built up following years of putting powerful ARM-based chipsets in its smartphones and iPads, and applied that to a custom processor for ‘proper computers’.
In our use-case – primarily video editing in Final Cut Pro and Affinity Photo – the apps are already optimised for the M1 processor, so the experience is dreamy.
Pocket-lint
It’s worth noting at this point, however, that our unit is 16GB RAM model, so it’s a custom order from Apple which – as well as being pricier than the standard configurations – takes longer to ship. Compared to the other Macs it’s by far the most affordable and best value if you have monitor, keyboard and mouse already.
It took us by complete surprise how quickly Affinity opened images. Where our older Intel Core i5-powered MacBook would take a second or two to open large image files, the M1 Mac mini is virtually instant.
Likewise when zooming and out of those images using trackpad gestures, it’s instant and smooth, making the process of editing photos so much more convenient Even compared to using our previous powerful Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080Ti-powered desktop PC with 32GB RAM and SSD storage, Affinity Photo feels much quicker. We’ve been genuinely blown away by it.
It’s a similar feeling when editing 4K video in Final Cut Pro: skimming through timelines of 4K/30 projects is smooth and rarely resulted in any noticeable frame drop. It’s worth noting, our edits aren’t especially complex – we’d have a maximum of three video streams – but it remains smooth in ways we don’t typically see.
Pocket-lint
For instance, when we show screen recordings on top of an expanded and blurred background of that same recording, or when adding masks and censoring to parts of the screen. These are the areas when we’d typically see a little stutter or frame drop on a lot of our previous MacBook setups. With the M1 Mac mini that just didn’t happen.
Export times are fast, too, but it’s the buttery smoothness when actually working with footage, photos and timelines in the M1-optimised apps that makes the most day-to-day difference.
We also dabbled with Pixelmator Pro, using it to edit thumbnails for videos, and found it as fast and responsive as Affinity Photo. For those interested in benchmarks, there are plenty available to view on Geekbench.
For those apps that aren’t yet M1-optimised, there’s Rosetta – which is like an app translator, to ensure things can run – but the list of programmes and apps that needs Rosetta is slowly getting smaller. Both Zoom and Chrome now have M1-optimised versions, while Microsoft Edge is close at the time of writing.
For creatives, the list of apps that are M1 optimised is getting bigger too. Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom are both ready, as is Microsoft Office. In terms of video editors, both Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve have beta versions available with M1 support but – at time of writing – no official, stable release.
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Like its laptop-shaped cousins, the desktop Mac does everything quietly with a barely an audible whirr from its built-in fans. It’s just ridiculously efficient. It didn’t seem to matter what we were doing with it, we didn’t hear the fan, even when exporting a video. That would normally be enough to send an Intel Mac’s fans spinning furiously.
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As for other apps, we tested a whole load of them during our testing of both the M1-powered MacBook Pro and M1-powered MacBook Air, both running Big Sur, and our experience was pretty much faultless. Of course, those using specific enterprise software and systems my have a different experience and it’s worth looking up examples of tests on your specific needs before making the jump to M1. For the average user though, we don’t anticipate any significant issues arising.
Verdict
This miniature desktop might be small, but it’s still mighty thanks to the M1 chipset. It won’t be for everyone, however, especially if you’ve invested in a lot of apps not yet optimised for M1 support. Otherwise it’s a speedy and reliable workhorse that, given its small size, doesn’t draw attention to itself and helps you gets stuff done quickly.
The Mac mini has long been about being a versatile tool that works for most people. Given how fast and efficient it now is, it’s also a great tool for digital creatives. Whether you edit lots of photo or video, or just need something at home that works for you.
It’s the lowest price Mac available, yet its performance with optimised apps blows away some of the supposedly more powerful Intel-powered versions that cost far more. The Mac mini M1 really delivers big bang for your buck.
Apple’s rumoured plans to release its second-generation AirPods Pro by April have just gained significant traction, thanks to unnamed industry sources cited in a report from Taiwanese publication DigiTimes.
The report hones in on flash memory supplier Winbond, stating: “Winbond is also expected to be among the NOR flash suppliers for Apple’s next-generation AirPods Pro slated for launch later in the first half of this year… The Taiwan-based chipmaker will be running its NOR flash production lines at nearly full capacity utilisation during the six-month period.”
The news follows hot on the heels of a report from Japanese blog Mac Otakara that claimed the new AirPods Pro will be here by April. That particular bulletin offered little new information regarding the actual design of the headphones, but lets not forget, Bloomberg recently reported that the next AirPods Pro would be more compact than the current model, with no stems sticking out of the bottom of the earbuds. That might make the AirPods Pro 2 similar in shape to the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro, Galaxy Buds Live or Amazon Echo Buds. Crucially, the report also mentioned a 2021 release date.
The original Apple AirPods Pro were introduced in November 2019, an in-ear design with slightly shorter stems than the second-generation AirPods, plus three sizes of soft, flexible silicone tips included. Of course, the AirPods Pro have several upgraded features over regular AirPods, the most notable of which is active noise cancellation.
Just before Christmas, a patent spotted by Patently Appleseemed to state that the new AirPods could feature “through-body” response technology, allowing users to control the next-generation Apple noise-cancelling wireless earbuds by touching their face, clicking their tongue or making in-air hand gestures.
Exciting stuff on the way, then. We’ll bring you updates as and when.
MORE:
AirPods Pro 2: all the news and rumours
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Samsung Electronics has reported its fourth-quarter earnings, confirming that the company made more money in 2020 than the year before despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Operating profit was up to 35.99 trillion won ($32.1 billion) off 236.81 trillion won ($211.5 billion) in revenue, increases of 29.6 percent and 2.78 percent respectively.
Samsung says its fourth-quarter results were helped by its “company-wide efforts to ensure a stable supply of products and services globally” in the pandemic environment. Quarterly profit was up 26.4 percent year-on-year, largely driven by the display and memory businesses, though the latter was down quarter to quarter.
Samsung’s display business had its highest ever quarterly earnings, which the company mainly attributes to high demand from major smartphone manufacturers. (Samsung doesn’t spell it out, but this was the quarter that Apple outfitted its entire new iPhone 12 lineup with OLED panels.) Samsung also reduced its losses from larger displays like TVs and monitors, and calls out a greater demand for contactless services as a contributing factor.
Samsung expects mobile profit to increase this quarter thanks to the launch of the Galaxy S21 series, and says it plans to expand its lineup of foldable devices. The display division, meanwhile, expects OLED penetration to continue to increase throughout the smartphone market and beyond, with wider applications in laptops, tablets, and cars. The company will also pursue growth with foldable and slidable displays.
A mysterious system packing a Core i9-10910 Comet Lake CPU and a (currently unheard of) AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT with 65GB of RAM has been spotted on an Ashes of the Singularity benchmark score. All data indicates this system could possibly be a prototype for the next generation iMac from Apple.
We’ve already covered the Core i9-10910 several months ago; this processor is rumored to be exclusively sold to Apple. The CPU features 8 cores, 16 threads, a base frequency of 3.6 GHz, and a max turbo boost of 5 GHz flat. The 10910 also includes a configurable TDP of 95W-125W which further proves this CPU is targeted towards compact systems, like an iMac. The Core i9-10910 is roughly 10% faster than its closest brother, the Core i9-10900 according to known Geekbench 5 results of the CPU.
What’s interesting about this benchmark score is the GPU used in the system, a Radeon Pro RX 5700 XT. This is the first we’ve heard of such a GPU, so we wouldn’t be surprised if this is another Mac exclusive, presumably for the new iMac. If we had to guess, the Radeon Pro 5700 XT is simply a Pro model of the 5700 XT with a lower TDP.
For benchmark results, the Core i9-10910 system scored an average frame rate of 41.7; however, the specific resolution used is unknown so we don’t have enough data to make an accurate comparison with another GPU.
So yes, this system could genuinely be a prototype for one of Apple’s new iMacs; all the evidence points to it. However, we do have contradicting info that Apple will feature its new M1ARM-based chips in the unit instead. Presumably, this means Apple will launch two different versions of the iMac, one with Intel silicon, and the other with Apple’s M1 chips.
Apple’s new privacy feature requiring developers ask for permission to track iOS users for ad targeting is at last going live in the next iOS 14 beta with a planned full release some time this spring for non-beta users, the company tells The Verge.
The announcement coincides with Data Privacy Day, as well as a speech on privacy from Apple CEO Tim Cook later today at the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference in Brussels. Apple initially planned for the feature to go live with the launch of iOS 14 last fall, but it delayed its implementation to 2021 in September of last year to give developers more time to comply. Today’s announcement narrows the launch window to this spring, but Apple is not commenting further on when exactly we might see it to go live for everyone.
Called App Tracking Transparency, the new opt-in requirement will mark a significant shift in how mobile app developers are able to collect data on iPhone owners and share that data with other firms to aid in advertising. Prior to the change, Apple let iPhone owners dig into their settings to disable this type of tracking. Now, instead of forcing users to be proactive about disabling it, Apple will demand developers ask for permission or risk suspension or removal from the App Store if they don’t comply or try to skirt the rules.
The primary way advertisers are able to, say, know when you are shopping for a new hat on one app before serving you ads for that same hat on another app is that a unique identifying code, the so-called Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), is linked to your device, collected by the first app, and shared with the second. That allows those apps to serve targeted ads and to measure whether the ad actually worked, for instance if you ended up purchasing that hat you saw in an Instagram ad by clicking an ad for the company’s online store in Google Chrome.
Apple’s new opt-in requirement will make it so developers must have express consent from iOS device owners to allow their IDFA to be collected and shared across apps. App makers can still use other information you give them for the purpose of targeting advertising even if you opt not to let the app track you, but that information cannot be shared with another company for the purpose of ad tracking under Apple’s new policy. The sharing with other third-party companies is effectively what Apple refers to when it uses the word “tracking.”
Apple intends to strictly police any attempt to get around the opt-in requirement. For instance, it says app developers will not be allowed to disable app functionality of any kind if users say no to the opt-in, and that developers will also be barred from charging money or incentivizing users with in-app perks or giveaways to sway their decision one way or the other. Any app that tries to replace the IDFA with another identifying piece of information, like an email address, will be in violation of the opt-in requirement.
Apple says the rules will also apply to its own apps, and the company already lets users disable personalized advertising the company serves within the App Store, Apple News, and the Stocks app using data it collects from your device. (It’s worth noting that ad personalization is not the same as ad tracking, and mobile app companies can still personalize ads so long as they can disclose that with an App Store privacy label.) Apple has no history of sharing the information it collects with other companies, either, and it makes that clear in its ad personalization toggle in the iOS settings.
This is expected to affect both the companies that run ad networks, like Facebook, and the companies paying for the ads, like the aforementioned unnamed hat seller. That’s precisely why Facebook has come out as arguably the biggest opponent to Apple’s new privacy measures, which include not only this new opt-in requirement but also app privacy labels it launched on the App Store last month.
Facebook has positioned itself as a champion of small businesses that risk getting hurt by this privacy change, and small businesses do rely on Facebook’s ad network and its powerful targeting tools to reach customers. Past privacy changes to Apple’s mobile Safari browser did also have legitimate negative consequences for ad-supported businesses like news websites. (The Verge is an ad-supported news website.)
But in full-page newspaper ads and statements to the press, Facebook has gone a step further and cast Apple as a hypocrite trying to exempt itself from the rules it forces on other developers and as greedy for encouraging app business models that rely less on advertising and more on subscriptions, of which Apple would theoretically get a cut.
“Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do to preference their own,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on an earnings call on Wednesday. “This impacts the growth of millions of businesses around the world, including with the upcoming iOS 14 changes.” Zuckerberg added that, “Apple may say they’re doing this to help people but the moves clearly track their competitor interests.”
Apple has consistently defended its choice as a way to give users more freedom over their privacy and refuted Facebook’s claims it intends to hold its first-party software to different standards. The showdown has emerged as one of the largest and most visible tech company feuds in recent memory, though it’s clear now Facebook has little to no leverage in the situation despite its defensiveness and public posturing. The changes are imminent, and Facebook will be forced to comply as it was with the privacy labels last month.
To further hammer home its privacy philosophy, Apple has created a new online guide it’s calling “A Day in the Life of Your Data” that breaks down common ad tracking and targeting practices in the mobile app and web industries and presents statistics on the prevalence of these practices. Apple says the average mobile app contains six trackers that share your data with other apps, and that a “large and opaque industry has been amassing increasing amounts of personal data.”
“A complex ecosystem of websites, apps, social media companies, data brokers, and ad tech firms track users online and offline, harvesting their personal data. This data is pieced together, shared, aggregated, and monetized, fueling a $227 billion-a-year industry,” the guide reads. “This occurs every day, as people go about their daily lives, often without their knowledge or permission.”
Apple says there are now more than 1 billion active iPhones, an enormous milestone for the company that speaks to the phones’ continued success and longevity. There are now 1.65 billion Apple devices in active use overall, Tim Cook said during Apple’s earnings call this afternoon.
The milestone had been approaching for a while. Apple sold its billionth iPhone in 2016, and in January 2019, Apple said that it had hit 900 million active iPhone users. An Apple spokesperson didn’t clarify how Apple is counting “active users” when asked by The Verge. But the stat would suggest that a substantial number of the iPhones ever sold remain in active use, at least by Apple’s definition. BNN Bloomberg reported last year that analysts believed Apple would be approaching its 1.9 billionth iPhone sale by the end of 2020, though the company hasn’t announced if it’s passed that milestone.
Apple’s announcement came during an enormous quarter for the company, in which it set an all-time revenue record. iPhones did particularly well during the final quarter of 2020, with sales of $65 billion, another record (though one that was helped by delays pushing iPhone 12 sales fully into the holiday quarter). And the company saw more iPhone “upgraders” than ever before. Cook also said that a record-setting number of FaceTime calls were made on Christmas 2020 — a milestone that was certainly helped along by the pandemic keeping many families and friends apart.
While sales are up and usage is at an all-time high, Apple has spent the last several years trying to diversify its product line as iPhone unit sales slow. Analysts have estimated a decline in overall phone shipments and sales in recent years, and Apple hasn’t been immune to the trend. But even if fewer iPhones are being put into people’s hands each year, people are evidently hanging on to them for a long time.
Apple today reported its fiscal Q1 2021 earnings, which cover the final calendar quarter of 2020 and the holiday sales season. That means this is the first time we’re getting a real indication of how the new iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max are faring with consumers. As it turns out, they’re doing very well. Apple crossed $100 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time in the company’s history: it brought in $111.4 billion in total, with earnings per share of $1.68.
The latest iPhones went on sale a bit later than normal, and Apple has had to again close some of its retail locations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But despite those obstacles, the iPhone business did extraordinarily well, tallying over $65 billion in revenue. The previous all-time record for iPhone revenue in a quarter was $61.58 billion, which Apple hit in the first quarter of fiscal 2018.
Alongside a tweaked, flatter design, the iPhone 12 series is the first to include 5G mobile data, which some have speculated could result in a so-called “super cycle” of upgrades from people who are still using iPhones that are a couple years old at this point. The strong early interest is certainly there; now we’ll have to see if it holds.
Apple’s Mac and iPad lines have seen rocketing sales during the prolonged period of working at home and remote education as a result of the pandemic. The momentum continued in this latest quarter, with iPad sales up a staggering 41 percent — during a holiday quarter, remember — and Mac sales up 21 percent year over year.
iPad sales were up a staggering 41 percent year over year.Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
The company’s MacBook Air, base-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini are now powered by its own M1 processors. Those three products officially kicked off a transition away from Intel chips that will extend to Apple’s other Mac products over the coming months. The popular iPad Air was also updated in the fall with a more modern design similar to the iPad Pro.
During an earnings call with investors, CEO Tim Cook said Apple crossed 1.65 billion active devices worldwide during the quarter. iPhones account for over 1 billion of those devices.
Unsurprisingly, AirPods / AirPods Pro and the Apple Watch were a holiday hit for another year running, boosting the wearables division up 30 percent year over year.
Just as 2020 came to a close, Apple launched its latest paid subscription service, Apple Fitness Plus, which joins Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple TV Plus, and Apple News Plus as ways of getting recurring profits from consumers who buy Apple hardware. The company has continued to extend the trial periods for some of those services — namely, Apple TV Plus — but the services unit as a whole continues to perform very well and was up 24 percent.
Executive shifts at the company also continue. Just this week, Apple announced that longtime hardware engineering SVP Dan Riccio will now focus on a new, unspecified project; John Ternus — who has publicly introduced well-received products like the revamped Mac Pro, iPad Pro, and M1 Macs — has replaced him as Apple’s hardware boss.
The company has also pushed forward with its social initiatives, announcing a number of racial equity investments earlier this month. Apple also removed conservative social media app Parler from the App Store, citing insufficient moderation policies and calls to violence from some users on the app.
Users caught between Apple and Microsoft may now have an easier time managing passwords: it looks like iCloud Keychain is coming to Windows 10 as a Chrome extension (via MacRumors). It’s already in the iCloud for Windows 10 app, but there’s just one small problem: the Chrome Extension isn’t available yet.
The latest version of iCloud for Windows 10 includes “Support for iCloud Passwords Chrome Extension” in the list of new features, and when you open the app, there’s a new Passwords-syncing option. Checking the box will cause a login prompt to come up, along with a request for two-factor authentication. According to Apple’s support page, you’ll need to have two-factor turned on for your account to have access to the feature, which is probably a good choice since, in theory, you’re going to be syncing all of your passwords.
I say “in theory” because after you log in again, you’re prompted to download the iCloud Passwords extension for Chrome. However, the download button just takes you to a 404 page, and searching the Chrome Web Store for the extension doesn’t turn up anything. It seems like Apple may have launched the iCloud for Windows update a little prematurely.
This is not the extension I was promised.
Hopefully the Chrome extension will be available soon, as having access to iCloud Keychain on Windows would make life a lot easier for people who use it on their iPhones, iPads, or Macs. However, if you simply can’t wait, you could always switch to a dedicated password manager. Of course, moving all of your passwords would be a pain if you’re already using iCloud Keychain, so you may be better off just waiting a little bit longer.
In retrospect, stock memes were inevitable. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of brokerages weren’t ready.
Vanguard, Charles Schwab, and Fidelity Investments, among others, have been experiencing outages, The Wall Street Journal reports. None of the brokerages would tell the WSJ specifically why the outages were happening. Also, Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade are restricting trading around GameStop and AMC, as individual investors pile into these companies, MarketWatch reports.
See, GameStop stock rose an astounding 1,600 percent in January alone, MarketWatch points out. What happened is a little complex, but basically boils down to traders gathering on Reddit, Discord, and elsewhere to encourage others to buy call options on the stock. The internet’s exuberance over GameStop has also affected AMC, Bed Bath and Beyond, BlackBerry, Tootsie Roll, and other companies. The trading action has further enriched some of the world’s richest people. It has also caught the attention of Janet Yellen, the US Treasury secretary.
Over the last decade, most of us have seen the power that social networks can bring to bear on politics, for instance, and media. Now, social networks are disrupting finance. The pandemic has more people day trading — 2020 was a record high in the volume of individual trading, Devin Ryan, an analyst with JMP Securities, told The Wall Street Journal. And collectives of retail traders can use platforms such as Discord, Twitch, and Reddit to coordinate their actions in real time.
Until recently, it was hard to imagine that doing a trade would be as easy as posting to Instagram, but here we are. And what’s more, trading is cheaper than ever — free at many brokerages — reducing further the amount of confidence an investor might need in a stock to buy options on it. Right now, Robinhood, a broker that allows free trades on stocks and options, is the most popular free app in Apple’s App Store.
The result of this frenzy is what appears to be a massive casino, but investors beware: at a casino, the house always wins.
Apple could start manufacturing iPads in Vietnam by the middle of this year, marking the first time a “significant number” of the tablets would be produced outside of China, Nikkei reports. As well as shifting iPad production, Apple is also reportedly increasing the number of iPhones manufactured in India, where it’s produced some iPhone 11 units since last year. It will reportedly begin producing iPhone 12 series devices in the country as early as this quarter.
The report paints a picture of a company that’s increasingly keen to diversify its manufacturing out of China, despite hopes that trade tensions could ease under President Biden. Nikkei notes that the new administration has said it won’t immediately ease tariffs on Chinese imports, and there are also other factors like rising labor costs in China prompting Apple and other companies to look for alternative manufacturing hubs.
Beyond iPhones and iPads, Nikkei reports that Apple is ramping up manufacturing of a host of other devices outside of China. Following reports last year that Apple moved some AirPods Pro manufacturing to Vietnam, Nikkei says it’s also planning on expanding HomePod mini production in the country and will also move some MacBook production. (Reuters reported on Apple’s early plans to shift MacBook and iPad production to Vietnam last year.) Some Mac mini production has also been moved to Malaysia, Nikkei notes.
News of Apple’s shifting supply chains comes a little under two years after reports emerged that Apple was planning to move between 15 and 30 percent of its manufacturing out of China. It now appears much of that shift is well underway.
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