The YouTube app on iOS will be getting picture-in-picture support, allowing all users to watch videos while doing other things on their iPhones and iPads. A YouTube spokesperson told The Verge that the feature is currently rolling out to Premium subscribers, and that a launch for all iOS users (including the free ones) in the US is in the works.
Apple added support for picture-in-picture video for iPads with iOS 9, and brought it to iPhones with iOS 14. Since then, YouTube’s support for the feature on iPhones and iPads has been spotty — it works for iPad if you’re using Safari (though some have reported it doesn’t work for non-Premium subscribers); iPhone users have only been able to access the feature periodically.
That complication seems to be going away, at least for those in the US: iOS users, with or without a YouTube Premium subscription, will soon have access to it using the YouTube app as Android users have for years. YouTube did not provide a timeline for when the feature would arrive for free users, but stated the rollout to Premium subscribes is in progress.
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that PiP video came to the iPad with iOS 13. It in fact arrived with iOS 9. We regret the error.
It might be aimed primarily at creative types, but the new iPad Pro 12.9 is also the best tablet there’s ever been if portable cinema is your thing
For
Stunning picture quality
Great sound with headphones
Hugely powerful
Against
Expensive for a tablet
At this stage, each new iPad feels like an incremental improvement on the one before it. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course – in practical terms, Apple is almost unchallenged in the tablet arena, so a nip and tuck is generally all that’s required, but it’s not exactly exciting.
That’s where the new iPad Pro 12.9 comes in. Despite being aesthetically similar to its predecessor, this is a big step forward for tablets.
The headline-grabber is the new, high-end laptop-derived processor, but the new mini LED-lit display is the real game-changer as far as we’re concerned. Ever wanted an OLED or QLED TV that you could fit in a backpack? The new iPad Pro 12.9 is that – and plenty more.
Pricing
The new iPad Pro 12.9 starts at £999 ($1099, AU$1649) for the 128GB wi-fi-only model. There are lots of storage options available, all the way up to a £1999 ($2199, AU$3299) 2TB version. Adding cellular functionality to any model adds £150 ($200, AU$250).
The smaller iPad Pro 11 starts at £749 ($799, AU$1199) but, as well as being 1.9 inches smaller, the screen uses different underlying technology, so picture performance won’t be the same.
Build
(Image credit: Apple)
There’s little difference between the physical design of the new iPad Pro 12.9 and its predecessor. In fact, other than the new model being 0.5mm thicker, the dimensions of the two models are identical.
It is a large tablet, as you’d expect of a device with a 12.9in screen, measuring 28 x 21 x 0.6cm (11 x 8.5 x 0.3 inches) in total. You have to be committed to the cinematic (or productivity) potential of the big display to opt for such a large device.
Apple iPad Pro 12.9 (2021) tech specs
(Image credit: Apple)
Screen size 12.9in
Resolution 2732 x 2048 (264ppi)
Storage 128GB / 256GB / 512GB / 1TB / 2TB
Finishes x2
Battery life 10 hours
Cameras 12MP + 10MP ultra wide on rear / 12MP front
Dimensions (hwd) 28 x 21 x 0.6cm
Weight 682g
Unlike the iPad Air, which is available in a number of subtle metallic hues, the iPad Pro 12.9 comes only in Space Grey or Silver. More variation would be nice, but both finishes are lovely and the new Pro both looks and feels utterly premium.
On the otherwise flat rear is a protruding camera array that will rest directly on a surface when the iPad is laid down. It’s designed to resist damage from such placement, but a case that physically raises the lenses will be a first add-on for many.
The top and bottom edges of the tablet each have two sets of speaker perforations so you’re listening in stereo when the iPad is oriented horizontally. Also along the edges are physical power and volume buttons, plus a USB-C socket that supports the much faster Thunderbolt standard, opening up the opportunity to connect higher-end storage devices and monitors.
The front is all glass, but there’s a 9mm black border between the display and the tablet’s edge. Embedded into this border is a new front-facing camera that can follow you around in the style of Facebook Portal. This is a great feature for FaceTime calls but the positioning of the camera on one of the shorter edges means you’re awkwardly off-centre when video calling in landscape mode.
Features
(Image credit: Apple)
Positioning aside, that front-facing camera is excellent in terms of image quality, thanks to a 12MP resolution and ultra-wide field of view. The rear camera array is solid, too, boasting a main 12MP wide camera, 10MP ultra-wide camera and a true tone flash.
If you’re the sort of person who’s considering buying a new iPad Pro, you may already have a top-end iPhone with an even better camera, but the iPad takes perfectly good photos and videos (the latter in up to 4K at 60fps) in its own right. It’s also of a high enough quality to enable lots of interesting and useful app-based features, such as document scanning and augmented reality experiences.
Apple positions its iPad Pro models as productivity and creativity devices, and the new M1 chip takes this to the next level. This is the same chip that Apple has just started putting in its MacBooks and has shaken up the laptop market thanks to its vast performance upgrade over previous processors.
Apple claims that it makes the new iPad Pro’s CPU performance 50 per cent faster than that of the already lightning-fast previous version, and GPU speed is up by 40 per cent. Frankly, that sort of power is overkill for those of us primarily interested in watching movies and listening to music but, needless to say, it makes the user experience smoother than Cristiano Ronaldo’s chest.
If you are looking to use the new iPad Pro for creating as well as consuming, you might want to consider combining it with the Apple Pencil (2nd Generation), which wirelessly charges when magnetically connected to the tablet’s edge, and/or the new Magic Keyboard, which essentially turns the iPad into a slick laptop, trackpad and all. Both accessories are expensive, though. In fact, adding the £329 ($349, AU$549) Magic Keyboard to the most affordable version of the iPad Pro 12.9 makes it more expensive than buying an M1-powered 13-inch MacBook Pro.
While content creators might be most excited about the new iPad Pro’s M1 power, we content consumers will be far more excited about the 12.9-inch model’s new screen. Apple calls it a Liquid Retina XDR display, with the ‘XDR’ standing for ‘eXtreme Dynamic Range’. This is the first mini-LED backlight in an iPad. There are 10,000 of the things, arranged into 2500 independent dimming zones – Samsung’s top mini LED-based 4K TV for 2021 (the QN95A) is thought to have around 800 dimming zones, so the iPad’s figure looks incredibly impressive.
The more dimming zones a display has, the more exact and precise it can be in terms of contrast, producing deep blacks next to bright highlights. Apple claims the iPad Pro 12.9 can maintain a full-screen brightness of up to 1000 nits and hit peaks of up to 1600 nits, which is around double the peak brightness of a modern OLED TV. Contrast ratio is claimed to be 1,000,000:1.
Picture
(Image credit: Apple)
Those screen specs should make the iPad Pro 12.9 a great performer with HDR content – and they do. It’s not so much that it goes vastly brighter than other iPad models, such as the iPad Air, it’s that it combines bright highlights with awesomely deep blacks to create a vastly more dynamic and exciting picture.
We play Blade Runner 2049 in Dolby Vision from the iTunes store and set both models to their highest brightness setting. The Pro’s peaks are noticeably brighter than the Air’s but not vastly so. However, to reach those levels the Air has had to entirely sacrifice its black performance, producing something clearly grey in hue. There’s no such sacrifice necessary with the Pro – its blacks are near-perfect.
That combination of deep blacks and very bright highlights makes for a supremely punchy image, particularly in the scenes around LA, which feature neon lights and holographic adverts lighting the city’s grimy gloom.
Thankfully, Apple hasn’t thrown away its reputation for colour authenticity while reaching for new heights in contrast. On the contrary, Apple claims that every iPad is calibrated for colour, brightness, gamma and white point before it leaves the factory, and it shows – there’s great consistency across iPad models, all of which come across as extremely authentically balanced. It’s the same with the new Pro.
There’s a little more vibrancy afforded by the greater dynamic range, seen in the yellow porch of Sapper Morton’s farm, for example, but there’s no hint of garishness or exaggeration. As we switch between films and TV shows from various streaming services and in various resolutions and formats (HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision are all supported), colours combine vividness and nuanced authenticity to an exceptional degree. Everything looks awesome, but it also looks correct.
Apple increases and decreases the resolution of its iPads depending on the size of the screen, so that pixel density is kept the same (all current models have 264 pixels per inch with the exception of the iPad Mini, which has a higher pixel density of 326ppi). As a result, the new iPad Pro 12.9 isn’t vastly sharper or more detailed than siblings such as the Air (although it does dig up more fine details in the brightest and darkest parts of the picture), but the deeper blacks help reinforce edges, making for a more solid and three-dimensional image.
That solidity is retained even during fast and otherwise tricky motion. The iPad Pro maintains a firm grip on the action at all times, sharpening and smoothing without adding any artificiality or shimmer. It doesn’t even get confused by K’s car moving behind a row of skyscrapers as he flies back to HQ at the beginning of Blade Runner 2049, or by the dogfighting planes in 1917. If this was a TV, in terms of motion handling it would be right up there with the superb Sony A90J.
In fact, that’s the underlying beauty of the new iPad Pro 12.9: it’s like having a miniaturised top-end TV you can take almost anywhere.
Sound
(Image credit: Apple)
With two speakers on each of the short edges, the iPad Pro is capable of producing proper stereo when in landscape orientation and, with some clever onboard processing, it’s even able to deliver some virtualised surround sound, with some of the radio chatter at the start of Gravity appearing to come to your left and right rather than being completely tethered to the drivers.
That effect is ramped up to astonishing degrees if you add a pair of AirPods Max or AirPods Pro headphones and take advantage of the spatial audio feature. It’s incredibly effective, particularly with the Max cans, and is like being in a personal Dolby Atmos cinema, with sounds coming from all around you. If the iPad Pro 12.9 is like having a top-end TV you can take anywhere, adding a pair of AirPods Max makes it like having a whole portable cinema. It’s genuinely amazing.
Of course, the tablet will also output sound to any standard wired and Bluetooth headphones, although you will need to buy a USB-C headphone adapter for the former. As with its approach to video, Apple has always favoured authentic, uncoloured sound, and so it proves here – movies and music are both presented with deft tonal balance, impressive rhythmic organisation, lots of engaging punch and detail, and dynamic shifts both big and small.
While it’s not a vast step up from the current Air in terms of its audio quality through headphones, the new iPad Pro does sound noticeably cleaner and more nuanced than its smaller, much more affordable sibling. It has added richness and dynamic subtlety, too. Play both out loud, meanwhile, and there’s a clear increase in available volume and weight from the Pro, although both models are fairly bass light, as you’d expect from drivers small enough to fit inside a tablet device.
Verdict
Apple’s Pro tablets have, as the name suggests, always been aimed at professional, creative types, and they will be delighted by the huge power brought to the new models by the M1 chip.
Our focus is on the picture and sound, though, and the iPad Pro 12.9 is at least as exciting here. The picture performance is superb – punchy and deep, vibrant and natural, exciting and nuanced. It’s right up there with that of the very best TVs you can buy. Sound, meanwhile, is great from the speakers, excellent via standard Bluetooth or wired headphones, and simply amazing with a pair of AirPods Max cans.
This is a hugely expensive tablet and the price is hard to justify for anyone who has no intention of taking advantage of its productivity potential, but it’s also the best tablet you can buy for watching movies on the move. Sure, this is a luxury device, but it’s an extremely persuasive one.
(Pocket-lint) – Sonos is not one for racing new products out for the sake of it. Its Playbar, for example, ruled the roost for seven years, being its only full-fledged soundbar in that time.
The Sonos Beam arrived in the meantime, but was more meant for smaller TVs and rooms, giving you a better alternative than the speakers on your flatscreen rather than cinematic experience. So, a replacement to the Playbar was long overdue.
That’s where the Sonos Arc came in. But it didn’t just replace the Playbar, it brought so many new bells and whistles to the party that it is an altogether different beast. One with Dolby Atmos – a first for the company – to deliver a virtual surround-sound experience from the single ‘bar.
Design
Dimensions: 87 x 1141.7 x 115.7mm / Weight: 6.25kg
Can be wall-mounted or laid on a TV cabinet
Black and white options available
Adjustable status LED
Putting its tech and audio prowess to one side for a minute, the Sonos Arc is a sleek looking soundbar that matches the aesthetic of the company’s One and Move standalones.
Best soundbar: Options to boost your TV audio
It is long – almost the length of a modern 55-inch flatscreen TV – but more subtle than its predecessor, with a plastic alloy build and grille to front and sides. Even the logo fades away when you’re not staring directly at it, whichever finish you choose (there’s black or white, nothing more outlandish than that).
Pocket-lint
We particularly like that there are no contrasting flourishes in the design, as there’s nothing worse than catching a soundbar out of the corner of your eye while watching an intense moment in a film. Unlike children, speaker systems – and especially soundbars – should be heard and not seen. The subtlety of Sonos’ bar ensures that is the case, whether it’s wall-mounted or laid flat on a TV stand.
There are a few touch buttons on the top for play/pause and volume adjustment, but the Sonos app is so simple to use we couldn’t see ourselves bothering with them. Plus, as it is HDMI eARC-enabled, you can mainly control the soundbar through your TV remote for general use.
What is HDMI eARC? Why is it different to HDMI ARC?
The only other distinguishable icon on the bar itself is a microphone symbol, indicating that it is voice-enabled, with support for both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. You can tap it to turn on/off the listening mode – signified by a small LED light.
Connections
Ethernet (10/100 Mbps) and Wi-Fi (802.11b/g, 2.4GHz)
HDMI eARC (with optical digital audio adapter)
IR sensor on the front
Around the rear, hidden in an alcove, there are connections for power, HDMI and Ethernet. That’s it.
Pocket-lint
Those not wanting to connect the Arc through HDMI will be pleased to know that a digital optical audio adapter is included in the box, but that will effectively disable any Dolby Atmos support, as that requires hooking it up to an HDMI eARC/ARC port on a compatible TV. You’ll still get very effective multichannel surround sound, just not Atmos.
Also missing (if setup using the optical connection) will be the ability for full automation through your TV’s remote control. There is an infrared (IR) sensor, so you can set your remote to also adjust volume, but that’s a less elegant solution than using HDMI CEC (standing for Consumer Electronics Control) between TV and Arc. It also emits automated audio sync between them.
Still, if it’s all you’ve got then that’s fine – you’re still getting a superb sound system and are future-proofed to boot.
Plus, while there are plenty of TVs with at least one ARC-enabled HDMI port, only more recent models support Dolby Atmos decoding or passthrough. Even fewer support the full HDMI eARC standard, so it’s possible you might consider the soundbar with an eye on upgrading your TV somewhere down the line.
Pocket-lint
As well as 10/100 Mbps Ethernet for wired network connection, single-band (2.4GHz) Wi-Fi is available too.
Features
Dolby Atmos support (through HDMI eARC/ARC)
Built-in Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa voice assistants
Runs on new Sonos S2 software
Apple AirPlay 2 support
Sonos multiroom compatible
As well as Dolby Atmos – which we’ll come to in a bit – the Sonos Arc is quite a step up over the Playbar when it comes to features.
Support for Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant is wholly welcome, for starters, implementing in similar fashion to Sonos One and Move.
The Arc has a four far-field microphone array built in that detects voice from a fair distance. We walked around a decent sized living room, even stepped outside for a moment, and it could still hear and recognise our voice.
Pocket-lint
FEATURE UPGRADE
Both services are setup through the Sonos app and, subsequently, their own individual applications on iOS and Android, so once complete act almost exactly as they would on any other supported device.
You can only use one assistant, having to disable the other if you swap, but it’s great to be given the choice. And, depending on Amazon and Google’s compatibility, it means you can play and control music by vocal command, across streaming services, and your own digital library.
You can also technically use your Arc to control your TV, if it too is Alexa and/or Google Assistant-enabled.
Apple AirPlay 2 is also supported by the soundbar, to present the cleanest possible audio sent wirelessly from an iPhone, iPad or Mac. And, Sonos’ Trueplay audio tuning during setup ensures that the output matches your surroundings through very simple instructions.
What is Sonos Trueplay and how does it work?
Of course, the Arc’s biggest, most attractive feature is that it is a Sonos speaker.
Sonos has provided an integrated, connected multiroom solution for many years, and has refined the experience over time. Today it is compatible with all the big music streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal, and more. There is also Sonos Radio, the brand’s own free service with ad-supported stations and curated playlists, so even if you aren’t a member of a third-party platform, you will still have plenty to listen to.
Pocket-lint
As Sonos products also connect wirelessly to each other, through your home network, you can sync the same songs playing on your Arc to, say, a Sonos Five speaker in another room, for example. You can group multiple speakers together and have them all play the same music. It’s great for house parties, that’s for sure.
Alternatively, you can use the interoperability to hook up a couple of Sonos One speakers to work as rear speakers, using your Arc as the front, centre and height channels. And adding a Sub for extra bass is made as simple as possible.
A decent feature set is all well and good, but the most important aspect of a soundbar is the sound itself. And the Arc does not disappoint when it comes to spatial performance.
Sonos
It effectively presents a virtual 5.0.2 soundfield with Atmos engaged, 5.0 when not. Dedicated centre, left and right channels provide the front-facing effects. Two other channels angled at either end of the bar provide virtual surround, while a pair of additional drivers point upwards to reflect Dolby Atmos height channels off the ceiling and back to the listening position.
There are eight woofers and three tweeters in all, each with its own Class-D digital amplifier, and when all are working in unison it presents a wall of sound that belies the simple, thin form factor.
We advise pairing the Arc with the Sonos Sub, as that will put extra growl into the bass, but we’re already impressed with the overall effect when it’s playing solo, including low frequencies.
As we’ve mentioned above, you can also add a pair of additional Sonos speakers for true rears/surrounds, but the reason why many invest in a soundbar is for its simplicity. Unless you are a true home cinema buff, you’ll already be impressed with the Arc’s out-of-the-box experience.
We tested the Arc using the latest Sonos software (Sonos S2) and several sources. We also used a Philips OLED754 TV, which has Dolby Atmos processing on board and passthrough – which we activated.
This allowed us to play a few Netflix shows that come with Atmos sound, plus several 4K Blu-rays: The Rise of Skywalker, John Wick 3 and Ready Player One. The second John Wick sequel is an especially good check disk for Dolby Atmos, with rain effects utilising the height channels throughout the first few scenes.
Pocket-lint
Perhaps the best test came via our Xbox One X. The Dolby Access app for the console (plus the One S) comes with a great collection of game and movie trailers featuring Atmos mixes, plus a few of Dolby’s own demo clips. They each gave the Sonos Arc a great workout, which it passed with flying colours. It provides a wall of sound, with clear precise spacing, even at extreme volumes.
When listening to the Arc you get an impression of audio above the seating position, plus a widening of the soundscape. But you also get a bold, cinematic presentation that seemingly comes straight from the TV screen. Having a dedicated centre also allows for clean vocal tracks.
In music terms, listening to high-res mixes of Price’s Purple Rain and The Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want streamed over Tidal perfectly illustrated the bar’s ability with mid and high frequencies. Even bass response is more than acceptable for music playback.
You are still likely to want a separate Sub to get the most from genres utilising sub-bass – d&b and dubset heads, that’s you – but even without that additional cost the Arc’s neutral tones are a great starting point for all genres.
Verdict
The Sonos Arc is a highly-accomplished bit of kit. There are caveats: it only works with the Sonos S2 software, so cannot be part of the same multi-room setup as older legacy kit; and, without a separate source input on the bar, your TV needs to have Dolby Atmos and HDMI ARC/eARC support to use it at its fullest.
However, those are minor points really as, like the Playbar before it, this is a speaker with the potential to be relevant for the next seven years or more. Your surrounding kit will inevitably catch-up.
In the meantime, the Arc presents an exemplary sound experience even without Dolby Atmos – which accounts for 90 per cent or so of the audio you’ll pump through it anyway. And, with Alexa and Google Assistant built-in, plus AirPlay 2 and Sonos’ own feature-filled music platform, you have yourself a very compelling speaker system to elevate your entertainment no end.
It’s pricey, granted, but you’re getting a tough-to-rival feature set and a very classy act all told.
Also consider
Samsung
Samsung HW-Q90R
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If you’re not bound to Sonos’ multi-room system idea, yet want a true surround sound system in the one box, Samsung delivers a 7.1.4 with ‘bar, sub, rear speakers and Dolby Atmos support out of the box. All for a very reasonable price considering.
Read our review
Writing by Rik Henderson. Editing by Britta O’Boyle.
Apple took over a health clinic to test plans for a primary care service with its own employees, The Wall Street Journal reported. But efforts reportedly stalled as employees questioned the integrity of data collected through the services.
Tech companies including Apple and Amazon have spent the past few years looking to expand into healthcare, which is a $4 trillion industry in the United States. Amazon now offers its own telehealth and at-home healthcare program to other companies. But not all efforts have been successful. Amazon’s healthcare project Haven, co-founded with Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan, failed and shut down in January.
Apple’s own plans for a primary care service focused on integrating data collected by devices like the Apple Watch with clinical care. A subscription-based program would offer patients personalized care. The company trialed the planned service by taking over an employee health clinic and using it as a test site.
If Apple could show the combination of monitoring devices and health services could improve health, it planned to offer the model to other organizations, according to documents reviewed by TheWall Street Journal.
The project hasn’t moved past the preliminary stage. Apple employees have raised concerns about the data collected at the clinic and the culture of the program. Sumbul Desai, vice president of health at Apple and head of the project, reportedly was angry when employees questioned the clinic’s data during a 2019 meeting. The incident led employees to believe that there wasn’t room for critical feedback,
An Apple spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that the criticisms were not accurate and that the incident was investigated.
Desai’s team also worked on an app called HealthHabit, which gives people health challenges and lets them chat with clinicians. The app has a hypertension program used in the health clinic. Apple chief operating officer Jeff Williams said during a meeting that 91 percent of patients at the Apple clinic with severe hypertension saw improvement, and that it was evidence for the app and clinic’s potential, The Wall Street Journal reported. But employees were concerned that data gave a misleading impression of how well the clinic was working.
An Apple spokesman told The Wall Street Journal that the data announced in the meeting was from an internal pilot program.
Apple has other features that let people blend iPhone and Apple Watch data with their clinical care. A tool announced last week would let people send data from their iPhone’s health app directly to doctors.
Razer had a few announcements timed for E3 2021, including its new Razer Blade 14 with AMD’s Ryzen 9 processors, and an updated Raptor 27 gaming monitor along with a 130W GaN charger. We weren’t expecting to hear about anything else, but Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan announced that its Project Hazel mask will actually go on sale, starting early in the fourth quarter of this year.
Tan said that Hazel will be released in “drops” exclusively on its website, with the first coming in that fourth quarter timeframe.
A slide from Razer’s E3 2021 presentation announcing the launch plan. Image: Razer
Alongside that availability announcement, Tan also shared some changes coming to the mask since it was first shown in January. Razer is planning to keep the mask’s transparent design to make it easier to see the wearer’s mouth, but the company will also be adding interior lighting and anti-fog coating on the inside of the mask.
If you want to see what Project Hazel looks like on your face, Razer has an Instagram filter that lets you try it on via augmented reality. (I should note that for some reason, it doesn’t work for me on my iPhone 12 mini.)
We know you’ve been waiting for the Project Hazel smart mask to become a reality – we’re working on it and there’ll be news soon! Meantime, we’ve made our Project Hazel smart mask available as an Instagram AR Filter. Check out how it looks like on you: https://t.co/jGFjDnZHDU pic.twitter.com/j8bo5twjYU
— R Λ Z Ξ R (@Razer) April 24, 2021
If you want to be notified of the upcoming drops, sign up on the Project Hazel website.
Correction: The Project Hazel filter on Instagram is not new; it was released in April. We regret the error.
Beats today announced its second pair of true wireless earbuds, the new Beats Studio Buds. Priced at $149.99 and available in red, black, or white, the Studio Buds have a much different, more compact design than the previous Powerbeats Pro. There are no ear hooks on these, nor any stems, and that results in a very lightweight, comfortable fit. Preorders start today in the US and Canada from Apple and other retailers like Amazon and Best Buy, and the earbuds will be available in stores on June 24th.
The Studio Buds include active noise cancellation, IPX4 water and sweat resistance, and can last for up to five hours on a charge. (If you leave noise cancellation off, they can eke out eight hours of continuous playback. They also use USB-C for charging — there’s no wireless charging, unfortunately — and either earbud can be used independently.
The Studio Buds have a sleek, lightweight design.Image: Beats
Interestingly, Beats is supporting both iOS and Android features with the Studio Buds. On iPhone, you get the familiar, easy AirPods-like setup and Control Center integration. They can also do hands-free “Hey Siri” commands. On Android, Beats now works with Fast Pair and Google’s Find My Device features.
Beats came up with an all-new acoustic architecture design for the Studio Buds, which have 8.2-millimeter drivers, and the company claims you can expect “outstanding stereo separation and low harmonic distortion across the frequency curve so you hear every note.”
If you’re wondering how the Studio Buds might stack up to the AirPods Pro or other competitors, I’ve been spending some time testing the just-announced earbuds, and you can read my full review of the Beats Studio Buds here.
Have you ever wanted to make your iPhone your own, with your individualized style and flair? Sure, you can change your home screen wallpaper. But if you really want to personalize your phone, why not create your own app icons?
It’s doable, using Apple’s built-in Shortcuts app. You actually won’t be replacing the icons that the apps came with — rather, you’ll be creating separate Shortcuts that lead to the app. It’s a tedious and time-consuming process, but in the end, you can have a fully customized iPhone home screen.
Here’s how you do it:
First, find and tap on the Shortcuts app. It’s pre-installed; if you can’t see it immediately on your home screen, swipe left until you’re at the App Library and start typing “Shortcuts” into the top search bar.
Once you’re in the app, tap on the “plus” sign in the upper-right corner, and then on “Add Action”
There are a lot of interesting things to try out in Shortcuts. But right now, what we want to do is switch app icons. Type “Open app” in the search bar and then tap on the “Open App” link.
Tap on the word “Choose.” You’ll see a list of your apps; pick the one you want to customize and you’ll be taken back to the New Shortcut page.
Select the three dots in the upper-right corner. You’re now in the Details page. Give your shortcut a name and tap “Add to Home Screen.”
You’ll now see a preview of the icon (which will be a standard, uninteresting icon that Shortcuts automatically adds). Don’t worry, we’re going to make it better. Select Add in the top-right corner.
Now it’s time to find your substitute icon. There are a bunch of icon sources online (Flaticon, for example), or if you’re artistic and / or ambitious, you can create your own. Whether you use someone else’s or your own, save the image to Photos.
Now go back to the Shortcuts preview area. (You can find it again by going to the Details section and tapping on “Add to Home Screen.”) Tap on the icon under “Home Screen Name and Icon.” You’ll have the choice of either taking a photo, choosing a photo, or choosing a file. Assuming you’ve already saved an image in Photo, tap on “Choose Photo” and select the photo you want to use.
On the next screen, a highlighted area will indicate what part of the photo will appear as an icon; you can move the photo around until you’re happy with the section indicated. Tap “Choose” in the lower-right corner.
Now, you’ll see your new icon. Tap Add.
You should see your new customized icon on your home screen. Congrats!
There’s the possibility you may see two new icons on your home screen: one with the first boring icon, and one with your wonderful new icon. If that’s the case, just press and hold the icon that you don’t want, and then select “Delete bookmark.” Remember, this (and the other you created) is a bookmark / shortcut — not the original.
You can also hide the original app icon so you’ll just have the new one visible. (You don’t want to delete it completely, of course; that would delete the app.)
Long-press on the original app icon and select “Edit Home Screen”
Tap on the minus sign. On the pop-up menu, tap “Remove from Home Screen.” The original icon won’t be deleted, just hidden; you can always find it in the App Library.
One note: when you use your new icon to go to the app, you will occasionally get a small drop-down notice that tells you what the original app is called and to remind you of the fact that it is a shortcut. But the drop-down will only last for a second or two, so it shouldn’t be much of a bother.
Apple is bringing one of streaming’s trendiest features to iPhone users with the debut of SharePlay in iOS 15 later this year, allowing FaceTime users to stream music, online videos, and movies together with friends. The move positions FaceTime to compete more directly with platforms like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and Houseparty, which all offer ways to video chat while watching things as a group.It offers Apple a chance to hook a new generation of users on FaceTime — but the service is still missing some key integrations to make that happen, particularly for the teens most likely to use it.
SharePlay, announced earlier this week and likely arriving in the fall, will allow FaceTime users to share and stream media in real time from an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV. It’s a neat tool for the pandemic era, and it takes inspiration from the watch party modes that many major streaming platforms — including Disney Plus, Hulu, and Prime Video, among others — added themselves in the last year. For services where it’s not supported, like Netflix, there are popular extensions that enable simultaneous streaming and chatting as well.
The goal isn’t to compete with those native platforms, though. After all, you’re still watching Hulu, just in a different space. Instead, the update puts FaceTime square against services like Facebook Messenger that dominate messaging and have already been trying to build out co-watching experiences, but without as robust of a service list as Apple has the ability to line up.
SharePlay particularly makes sense for the next generation of iPhone users, as teens are more inclined to watch videos on their phones. Video-based social media apps like Instagram and TikTok are immensely popular among teens, and an overwhelming majority of teens have access to these apps on their own personal smartphones. Video chatting is hugely popular, too, with a 2015 survey from Pew Research finding that 59 percent of US teens video chatted with their friends.
The introduction of SharePlay also jibes with Apple’s reported plans to make iMessage compete more directly with Facebook-owned WhatsApp by becoming more of a social network. It makes a lot of sense that the company would similarly invest in developments for its video-calling product as well, which is just a couple of taps away.
But if Apple wants SharePlay to be a success among the demographic of consumers most likely to use it, it’ll need to expand the number of apps that support it.
Apple said that at launch, Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, HBO Max, Hulu, MasterClass, Paramount Plus, Pluto TV, TikTok, and Twitch will be supported on SharePlay, which is a somewhat limited grab bag of streaming options. Granted, there’s plenty of time for that list to get longer before iOS 15 officially rolls out to users in the fall. And Apple told The Verge that SharePlay will be available to any streaming app that wants to support it, so we’re likely to see wider adoption down the road.
Some of the best applications of this feature failed to make their way into Apple’s initial slide of supported services, though. Netflix is perhaps the most obvious of these simply on the basis that virtually everyone has a Netflix login, whether they’re actually paying for it or not (at least until the inevitable password crackdown). But YouTube was not mentioned either, and neither company had comment to share about potential support down the line when contacted by The Verge this week. A spokesperson for Peacock, however, told The Verge that SharePlay support was on its “roadmap.”
YouTube, in particular, seems like a huge miss for Apple, especially where teens are concerned. YouTube hosts just about every digital media format imaginable — music, movies, news, personalities, tutorials, live feeds, etc. — but most importantly, it’s free. As video callers tend to skew younger already, apps with highly shareable content like livestreams seem like the best use case for SharePlay outside of live sporting events. That’s particularly true given that for paid services, each participant in a SharePlay streaming session will need a login for the app. After all, if the tool didn’t require credentials and allowed just anyone to drop in a FaceTime stream of content from a paid service, SharePlay would be a piracy nightmare.
But that’s part of what makes the practical application of SharePlay a bit of a puzzler. Streaming the game or a movie premiere could get expensive fast. If your friends are watching NFL coverage on Sling TV, you’ll need a $35 subscription to join in (assuming the content is included in one of the service’s base plans). If you wanted to watch a Premier Access release like Cruella on Disney Plus, you’d need to pay the $8 monthly subscription cost on top of an additional $30 early access ticket fee. (A spokesperson for Disney Plus confirmed to The Verge that SharePlay users still need to pay for access to watch.)
It’s hard to imagine that most users would pay for a service just to be able to FaceTime while they’re watching a title. Then again, based on recent media consumption trends among teens, maybe SharePlay is part of the future of how entertainment is consumed, at least for the younger subset of Apple users.
It makes sense that a company investing heavily in its services offerings would jump on the watch party trend, if not a little late, and it does feel like a natural way for Apple to not only stay relevant but also sell subscriptions and hardware — even if right now, SharePlay alone seems unlikely to balloon numbers for streaming services. Free, social-leaning services and streaming titans are most likely to see success with this feature, and livestreaming apps seem likely to perform best. But they’ll actually have to beon SharePlay for that to work. As it currently stands, many are not.
Apple’s iOS 15 preview earlier this week gave us a look at an important new feature coming to your iPhone’s notifications: help. A few new tools may act as a life preserver for those of us up to our eyeballs in a sea of notifications every day, regulating which apps and people are allowed to bug us, and when. But on the flip side, app developers get some additional tools for getting your attention, too, and could very well start sending you even more notifications — albeit in a less disruptive way.
First, the good news: the new notification features in iOS 15 look genuinely good and useful. There’s a new feature called Focus that allows you to choose which people and apps you’d like to see notifications from at a given time. It’s like Do Not Disturb but with much more customization than simply turning off every possible disruption. You can set up modes for work, sleep, personal time, and other scenarios like workouts.
People who message you in third-party apps can be associated with their profile in your contacts list.Image: Apple
When setting up a new Focus mode, Siri can scan your outgoing messages and calls and automatically suggest allowing notifications from the people you talk to most. There’s a neat trick here too: communications from the people you approve can come from other apps, like Facebook Messenger, not just from iMessage or texts. When you get that Facebook Messenger message in iOS 15, you may see prompts to associate that person in that app with a matching person in your contacts list, too. Once you’ve done this, communications from that person in a third-party app will be allowed to interrupt your Focus mode, provided that you approved them to do so.
You’ll also have the option to set a kind of away message when you’re using a Focus mode that will let others know you’re temporarily unavailable when they send you an iMessage. When your friend doesn’t hear back from you for hours, they won’t have to guess whether you hate them or you’re just really busy with work, and that’s nice for everyone. iOS 15 also adds notification summaries, which will batch lower priority notifications into digests you’ll receive at certain times of day.
Notification summaries.Image: Apple
All of this gives you more control over interruptions, which is great! But what about app developers who want you to ~engage~ with their platform? They have new options too. They can now use one of four notification interruption types, two of which are new in iOS 15. First are passive interruptions, a new, less obtrusive kind of notification available to developers that doesn’t wake your screen or cause your phone to vibrate — they go straight to your notification center. Previous versions of iOS allowed the user to designate notifications from certain apps to be delivered silently, but this new framework lets the app developer choose to deliver them this way.
Notifications classified as “passive” appear in your notification center silently, without buzzing your phone or breaking through a Focus mode.Image: Apple
These are the types of notifications likely to end up in summaries if you’ve enabled that feature. They don’t just appear in chronological order in the summary digest either — machine learning helps sort them by priority. They’ll likely include images and other visuals too, since Apple encourages developers to include media as part of the notification to increase its chances of showing up at the top of the summary list. And since the risk of annoying you is lower, developers have some incentive to send more frequent, more engaging notifications. They’ll be less disruptive, but these are the kinds of notifications we’re likely to see more of in iOS 15.
The other new interruption type is “time sensitive,” which is kind of a Notification Plus. It behaves like a standard notification, lighting up your screen and playing a sound or vibrating, but with an important difference: it’s allowed to break through your focus mode settings and notify you even if they aren’t from an “approved” app. The option to see time sensitive notifications can be turned on and off by the user, so if you really don’t want to see them, you don’t have to. In theory though, they should be for truly time sensitive events, like a package being delivered or your credit card company making sure it was you who bought two round-trip tickets to Maui.
In theory. Apple lets developers decide which notifications deserve time sensitive designation, so it’s more or less on the honor system. The company urges them to maintain trust and keep in mind that users can turn off notifications for their app if they feel they’re being bothered unnecessarily. And lest we forget, Apple itself has bent the rules before on what’s considered too intrusive for a notification. Could developers end up overusing time sensitive notifications? Possibly, but they likely won’t gain much from doing so, since users can opt out of them and may decide to silence the app entirely.
There are a few other things worth noting about notifications in iOS 15:
With compatible audio devices like AirPods, Siri will be able to read any incoming notification to you. Previously, this function was limited to things like incoming messages. By default, Siri will read the contents of messages and time sensitive notifications.
Notifications with a “critical” interruption type basically remain unchanged: these are things like Amber Alerts, which bypass your ringer settings to play a sound and get your attention. App developers still need special permission for these notifications, so we shouldn’t suddenly start seeing more of them in iOS 15.
Notifications will look a little different, with bigger app icons and images of contacts included in messages. The actions you can take on a notification (liking an image, etc.) will get graphical icons, too.
Virtual private networks (VPNs) can offer an additional layer of security and privacy for your online activity. Whether you’re working on a public Wi-Fi network and want to escape prying eyes, or you’re worried about privacy in general, a VPN can offer a lot of benefits.
In a nutshell, a VPN establishes a secure, encrypted connection between your device and a private server, hiding your traffic from being seen by others. Of course, the VPN itself can still see your traffic, which is why you should choose a VPN from a company you trust. (A good rule of thumb is to avoid free VPNs, because if they’re not charging you a fee, they may be monetizing in some less desirable way.) In addition, law enforcement can get its hands on your information through the VPN company. However, for the most part, a VPN offers you a way to hide your online activity from others.
Note that getting a VPN is only one of the measures you can take to make your web browsing more secure. Others include enabling two-factor authentication and using a password manager.
In addition to their security benefits, VPNs can be handy when you’re trying to access sensitive information, or if you’re traveling in Europe and want to stream Netflix or Amazon Prime titles only allowed in the US. Some even claim they can allow you to jump firewalls in heavily regulated countries such as China.
At home, you can set up your VPN through your router, which takes a few more steps, but then any devices connected to your router won’t need to be configured individually; this can also slow down all traffic that goes through. However, for this article, we’re going to concentrate on VPN apps that you can load on your laptop or phone so you can use the internet safely while away from your home base.
Most VPN apps these days support the OpenVPN protocol, making setup a simple matter of allowing the app access to configure the settings for you. But whether your device uses macOS, Chrome OS, Windows 10, iOS, or Android, if you’d like a quick overview of what’s involved before selecting a service, or if you prefer to do a manual setup, we’ve broken down the steps into straightforward instructions for you.
Setting up a VPN in Windows 10
The first step is to create a VPN profile, which you’ll fill out with details from your particular VPN service.
Add a VPN profile in Windows 10.
Click on the Windows button, then head into “Settings” > “Network & Internet” > “VPN.” Click on “Add a VPN connection.”
In the fields on the menu, select “Windows (built-in)” for your VPN provider. Give your VPN a name under “Connection name.” Enter the server name or address, the VPN type, and the type of sign-in info, such as a username and password.
Click “Save.”
To connect to your VPN, go back to “Settings” > “Network & Internet” > “VPN.” Click on your VPN name.
If you want, you can select “Advanced Options” to edit the connection properties, clear your sign-in info, or set up a VPN proxy. You can also add a username and password in this section for extra security (optional, but recommended).
Select “Connect” and enter a password if you’ve set one.
Setting up a VPN in Chrome OS
While using a VPN with a Chromebook used to be a problem, these days, there are several (like ExpressVPN or NordVPN) that have versions specifically for Chrome OS. To get started, you can head to the Google Play store and get the VPN app from there, or download one from the VPN’s website. No matter which you choose, after opening your VPN app, it should prompt you with instructions on how to fully set it up.
If you need to do it manually, you can. Chrome has native support for L2TP / IPsec and OpenVPN. To install a VPN that works with one of these formats:
Chrome OS has native support for L2TP / IPsec.
Click on the time in the lower-right corner of your screen, then click on “Settings.”
Click on “Add connection” and then on “OpenVPN / L2TP.” (You may also find the name of your VPN in the “Add connection” list, which will make things easier.)
Add all of the necessary information, which may include server hostname, service name, provider type, pre-shared key, username, and password. You can save your identity and password if you like. When finished, click on “Connect.”
Some VPNs, especially those issued from a workplace, demand a certificate, which you will need to import first. If that’s required:
Enter chrome://settings/certificates into the address bar.
Go to the “Authorities” tab. Find the correct certificate in the list and click “Import.”
Then follow the instructions above for setting up the VPN.
Setting up a VPN in macOS
As with the other formats here, there are apps that automatically guide you through the setup process, but you can also do it yourself manually.
Open the drop-down menu and choose “VPN” so you can enter your VPN’s details.
To start, head into “System Preferences” and then choose “Network.”
From there, the process is straightforward. Click the Plus-symbol button on the bottom left, and use the Interface drop-down menu to choose your VPN. You’ll need the details from your VPN of choice to fill out “VPN Type” and “Service Name.”
Click on “Create.” Fill out the server address, remote ID, and local ID in the appropriate fields. Then click on “Authentication Settings.”
Enter the username and password for your VPN, which you can set through your VPN app.
Click “OK” and then “Connect.”
Setting up a VPN in iOS
Setting up a VPN on an iOS device is fairly simple. Again, if you download an app from the App Store, select it and it should guide you through configuration. Here’s how to do it manually, though:
Just head into “Settings” and tap on “General.”
Scroll down to select “VPN.” (The iPhone will indicate whether you are currently connected to one or not.)
Tap on “Add VPN Configuration” and then on “Type” to select a security protocol. (Follow the instructions provided by your chosen app.)
Go back to the “Add Configuration” screen, where you will add the VPN’s description, server, remote ID, and local ID.
Enter your username and password. You can also use a proxy if you like.
Tap “Done.” You will then be brought back to the VPN screen. Toggle the “Status” switch to on.
Setting up a VPN in Android
As with iOS, setting up a VPN on an Android device shouldn’t be too difficult. Here’s the manual process if you’re not letting an app automatically configure things for you. (Keep in mind that, because some vendors like Samsung tweak their Android versions, your process may vary slightly.)
Head into “Settings” > “Network & Internet” > “Advanced” > “VPN.” If you don’t see “Network & Internet” in the Settings menu (which may depend on your Android overlay), then do a search within Settings for VPN. Press the “Add” button.
If you happen to be setting this up on a new phone, or if you haven’t yet set a screen lock or password, Google will prompt you to set one for your phone first. Do so.
Now create your VPN profile. Add the VPN name, type, and server address. Click on “Save.”
You’ll be taken back to the VPN screen, where you should now see the name of your VPN. Tap on it, and put in your name and password for the VPN. You can also choose to save your account information, and you can optionally set the VPN to be always on. When finished, tap “Connect.”
Enter the VPN name, type, server address, username, and password.
Then tap “save.” You’re done!
Once you’ve got your VPN up and running, you might notice that web browsing isn’t as fast as it used to be, especially if you’ve configured traffic to go through another country. Stronger encryption, or more users connected to one VPN, can also slow down your internet speeds. Downloads might slow to snail speed, and your League of Legends screen lag might be absurd. But those aren’t big problems compared to the security that you’ve added.
And anyway, now that you know how to set up a VPN, toggling it off is easy in comparison. You just have to remember to do it.
Update June 1st, 2021, 10:20AM ET: This article was originally published on March 1st, 2019, and now features a few updates related to changes in the Windows 10 interface.
Apple had its WWDC keynote on Monday, where it showed off the big new features coming to its platforms, but it didn’t have time to show off everything coming to the new versions of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. So we’ve combed through the preview pages, Twitter, and a good chunk of the internet to see what interesting features got left out of the presentation.
The big features in iOS and iPadOS were the updates to notifications, FaceTime, and multitasking, but it appears Apple may have been really focusing on the platforms themselves, too. There are a ton of quality-of-life improvements including:
More Memoji options with new outfits and accessibility options
FaceTime will let you know when you’re muted but trying to talk.
FaceTime will also let you zoom with the back camera so you can finally show people things across the room without standing up.
The Announce Messages feature found in AirPods is coming to CarPlay, so your phone can automatically read texts out loud while you’re driving.
Wary iPhone users will be able to put off upgrading to iOS 15 but still get security updates.
Find My will be able to track your iPhone when it’s off (or even after it’s been factory reset). It’s currently unclear what phones will support this feature.
There’s an improved print dialog with more options.
You’ll get free temporary iCloud storage when you transfer to a new device, but it will only last for three weeks.
Leaving and arrival times are coming to Apple Maps, letting you better plan trips in the future.
iPhone apps for iPad will be able to run in landscape. No more flipping your iPad around when you need to check the one app that is still iPhone only.
There will be push notifications to tell you when it’s going to rain.
You’ll have the ability to schedule HomeKit devices with Siri (for example, asking it to turn on your bedroom lights at 7PM).
Safari is getting the pull-to-refresh mechanism found in Mail and many social network apps.
Accessibility settings like text size and contrast will be able to be set on a per-app basis.
EXIF data will be available in Photos, including camera and lens info.
You’ll also be able to adjust a photo’s date and time.
There’s a redesigned software Apple TV remote, which looks more like the new hardware version.
Panoramas taken on iPhone 12s should have less distortion, and moving subjects should look better.
You’ll be able to suggest to Photos that specific subjects shouldn’t show up in places like the Photos widget or Memories.
Spotlight will be accessible from the lock screen and Notification Center.
Filtering for spam texts… if you live in Brazil, that is. It’s likely rolling out there because of rampant spamming of SMS in the country — India got the feature last year.
You’ll be able to drag and drop files across apps on iPhone.
Spanish speakers will be able to choose whether their devices refer to them using masculine, feminine, or neutral words.
Mail is getting a widget, and there’s also a widget to show you how poorly you slept.
iPads are getting the ability to tab through text fields and buttons in apps, as can be done with Macs and in Safari.
iPads will support eye-tracking hardware to improve accessibility by letting people control a cursor using just their eyes.
The Monterey portion of the keynote was dominated by an incredibly impressive demo that showed off Apple’s new Universal Control feature, but Apple also took the time to discuss Shortcuts, which are coming to macOS. Macs are complex machines, though, and there are a few more fun and useful things that will be coming in the fall:
The ability to use your Memoji as your user profile picture (it’ll even shake its head if you try to log in with the wrong password).
A software microphone indicator light in the menu to show when an application is listening to you
A better file copy interface, with the ability to pause and resume transfers
The easy ability to erase user data, settings, and apps without re-installing the OS (great for if you’re selling your Mac)
The ability to manage your saved passwords in System Preferences. You can also import them from other password managers or export them.
You can customize the mouse cursor’s outline and fill color.
Windows will resize when you move them to another monitor.
Shortcuts will let you integrate shell commands.
An improved Go To Folder dialog in Finder
Of course, Apple is running an ecosystem here, so many of the features that got announced will be coming to all of its computers. Here are a few more that will also be coming to iPhones, iPads, and Macs:
A built-in one-time password generator, similar to Google Authenticator or Authy
Safari will detect if websites can support HTTPS and will automatically use it if they do (similar to the HTTPS Everywhere extension).
A low power mode for macOS and iPad (I can’t wait to see how far I can stretch an M1 MacBook Pro)
Reminders are also getting a tags feature, similar to the one found in Notes.
The Photos info pane will tell you about what Visual Look Up sees in the picture.
The ability to turn on DownTime whenever, if you really need to focus on something
An extension for Edge on Windows that lets you use your iCloud Passwords
Well, Apple showed off pretty much everything for WatchOS onstage — it looks like it’s not a big year for the wearable (but I’ll be very happy to get better always-on display support and multiple timers). There are some new time complications, though!
Just noticed there is a new set of Time complications in watchOS 8. While a slight bit of ‘Sherlocking’ for Watchsmith, I’m honestly super glad it’s here. A good number of my gray hairs came from supporting time based complications…glad I can focus elsewhere now. pic.twitter.com/q44aVDMoZh
— David Smith (@_DavidSmith) June 9, 2021
If you want to know if you’ll be getting these features, we’ve laid out which devices the new OSs will be coming to here:
Microsoft is making some significant upgrades to its Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) service in the next few weeks. The Xbox cloud streaming service will be moving to Xbox Series X hardware on the server side, bringing dramatic improvements to load times and frame rates. Microsoft is also moving xCloud on the web out of beta, which is good news for owners of Apple devices.
“We’re now in the final stages of internal testing, and we’ll be upgrading the experience for Ultimate members in the next few weeks,” says Kareem Choudhry, head of cloud gaming at Microsoft. “The world’s most powerful console is coming to Azure.”
The upgrade will include major improvements to xCloud, with players able to benefit from the same faster load times and improved frame rates that are available on Xbox Series X consoles. Microsoft’s xCloud service launched in September, powered by Xbox One S server blades. The load times have been one of the troubling aspects of using Xbox game streaming, and this upgrade will dramatically reduce the wait time of launching games. Players will also be able to access Xbox Series X / S optimized games.
Microsoft’s xCloud service on an iPhone.Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge
Alongside the server upgrades, Microsoft is launching Xbox Cloud Gaming through the browser for all Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members in the next few weeks. The service is currently in an invite-only beta mode, but the expansion will make it available for all Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members to access xCloud streaming on iPhones, iPads, and on any device with a compatible browser (Chrome, Edge, and Safari).
Microsoft is also expanding cloud gaming to Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and Japan later this year, and hinting at plans for new Xbox Game Pass subscriptions. “We need to innovate to bring our games and services to more people around the world, and we’re investigating how to introduce new subscription offerings for Xbox Game Pass,” says Liz Hamren, head of gaming experiences and platforms at Microsoft.
These new Xbox Game Pass subscriptions will likely include some form of access to xCloud game streaming. Microsoft currently only offers Xbox game streaming to those who subscribe to the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate tier, which is priced at $14.99 per month. It’s easy to imagine a future where Microsoft offers a separate Game Pass tier that only provides access to Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud).
Microsoft is also announcing plans for an Xbox TV app and its own streaming stick today, alongside the ability to access and use xCloud on Xbox consoles later this year.
All in all, Asus’s Chromebook Detachable CM3 is a nice package. It’s a 10.5-inch tablet with magnetically-attached fabric cover and kickstand. It’s $389.99 as tested, which means it’s priced far below all kinds of convertible Chromebooks. I’m not the first to make this comparison, but it’s a slightly more expensive, and slightly fancier version of the $269 Lenovo Chromebook Duet (currently listed at $269) that impressed me so much last year.
I think the CM3 is a slightly worse purchase than the Duet for most people who are looking for a secondary device, or a small Chromebook for a student. The CM3 does offer a few noticeable benefits over the Duet, but I’m not sure they’re worth $100. While features like a dual-folding kickstand, a garaged stylus, and a headphone jack are nice to have, none of them are as central to a device’s user experience as its processor. And while $269 is an acceptable price to pay for a tablet with a MediaTek chip, $389.99 is pushing it.
With all that said, I don’t have many problems with this Chromebook. It’s just in a bit of an odd spot.
My test unit includes 128GB of storage, 4GB of RAM, a 10.5-inch 1920 x 1200 display, and a MediaTek 8183 processor. There’s a 64GB version listed at $369.99 as well. 64GB isn’t a lot of storage (and there’s no microSD card slot for expansion on the CM3), so my config is the one I’d recommend most people go for.
The most important thing to understand about the CM3 before you buy it is the size. It’s small, with just a 10.5-inch screen. This brings benefits and drawbacks. On the one hand, it’s quite slim and portable, at just 0.31 inches thick and 1.1 pounds (2.02 pounds with the keyboard and stand attached). It’s the kind of thing I could easily carry in my purse.
On the other hand, a 10.5-inch screen is cramped for a desktop OS like Chrome OS (though it is bright enough to use outdoors, and I appreciate that it has a 16:10 aspect ratio — 16:9 would be unbearable for me at this size). But it was too small for me to comfortably use as a work driver. I had to zoom out far to be able to see everything I needed to in my Chrome windows.
It also means there’s only so much space for the keyboard deck, which is also cramped. The touchpad, in particular, is small. The keyboard itself is roomier than the Duet’s, though — it has a surprising amount of travel and a satisfying click. While the small keys are a bit of an adjustment, none are small enough as to be unusable.
Small doesn’t mean cheap, and the CM3’s build is fairly sturdy overall. The palm rests and detachable keyboard deck feel quite plasticky, but the tablet itself is aluminum (with “diamond-cut edges”, per Asus). The magnetic cover is made of a woven fabric, and looks quite similar to the cover of the Chromebook Duet. The cover is included with the price of the CM3, which isn’t the case with some detachables (such as Microsoft’s Surface Go line).
A USI stylus lives in the top right corner of the chassis — it’s firmly in there, so you’ll need a nail to tug it out. It’s small, and not my favorite stylus I’ve ever used, but it is there and does work. The Duet supports USI styluses, but it doesn’t come with one, so that’s one advantage the CM3 brings.
The main way the CM3 is unique to other detachables is that its kickstand folds multiple ways. That is, you can fold it the long way when you’re using the tablet like a laptop, or you can flip the tablet vertically and fold the kickstand horizontally. This is a cool feature I haven’t seen before, and it does work — I was never worried about the CM3 falling over in either direction.
On the other hand, the only real use case I can think of for the horizontal position is video calls where you don’t need to have the keyboard attached and are okay with the camera being on the side of the screen. You can take your own view, but I’d rather use an iPad or dedicated tablet for these purposes and have the camera in the right place.
My unit did have a bit of fraying on the edges of the keyboard deck, which was disappointing to see on a brand-new device, even at this price. The kickstand cover also slipped off the tablet a few times while I was adjusting the height, which isn’t something that ever happened with the Duet.
Speaking of convertibility, the CM3 has a two-megapixel front-facing camera as well as an eight-megapixel rear-facing camera. Both cameras deliver a surprisingly reasonable picture. I wasn’t too washed out when I did a video call outside, nor was I too grainy in dim light. That said, the dual-camera setup is another cool-sounding feature that probably isn’t the most pragmatic: The rear camera isn’t good enough for actual photography of any kind, and the best use case is probably for snapping pictures of a whiteboard in class. It also takes a few seconds for the CM3 to swap between cameras (it’s not nearly as quick of a swap as it is on an iPhone, for example) so it wouldn’t have saved me a ton of time over just whipping out a phone.
The CM3’s MediaTek MTK 8183 is a hybrid chip that’s mainly used in Android tablets. (It’s a different MediaTek chip from the one that was in the Duet last year, but very similar to the one in uh, Amazon’s new Echo Show 8 smart display.) It’s far from the most powerful processor you can find in a Chromebook, but that’s by design — battery life is going to be a higher priority for many folks who are considering a device as portable as the CM3.
The battery life is, in fact, excellent. I averaged 12 hours and 49 minutes of continuous use running the CM3 through my regular workload of Chrome tabs and Android apps including Slack, Messenger, Twitter, Gmail, Spotify, and an occasional Zoom call with the screen at medium brightness — over an hour longer than I saw from the Duet with the same workload. This is already a heavier load than many people may want to put the CM3 through, so you may get even more time between charges. The 45W USB-C adapter juiced the CM3 up to 40 percent in an hour, making it much faster than the Duet’s wimpy 10W charger.
That battery life doesn’t come free, though, and the CM3’s performance was a mixed bag. It works fine in Chrome, for example, albeit with a teensy bit of sluggishness when swapping tabs and resizing windows, as well as other Google services like Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, and Meet (and it comes with a free 12-month 100GB membership to Google One for the rest of this year). Gaming is also fine — Flipping Legends and Monsters were both smooth and stutter-free, regardless of whether the CM3 was plugged in or running on battery.
I also think Chrome OS’s tablet mode, which the CM3 supports, has gotten pretty good. It uses Android-esque gesture controls that can help flatten the learning curve for new Chromebook users. Swiping up brings you to the home screen, for example, and swiping right swaps between web pages. You can access a version of Chrome specifically for tablets, which allows you to easily open, close, and reorder tabs with drags, swipes, and large buttons. It’s not quite like using an iPad, but I do think it’s a smoother experience than Windows’s tablet mode (especially in Chrome).
All you have to do to switch in and out of tablet mode is snap the keyboard on and off — it takes a second, and my windows didn’t always quite go back to the way I’d arranged them when I put the keyboard back on, but it’s a reasonably smooth affair overall.
But the CM3 didn’t perform well on every task I needed. Sometimes when I was trying to use Slack or Messenger over a pile of Chrome tabs, something would freeze. Zoom calls were possible — which is more than can be said for some budget Chromebooks — but I did run into lag between audio and video inputs. Slack froze and crashed quite often, and Spotify crashed a few times as well.
Access all kinds of Android apps through the Google Play store.
Photo editing was where I really ran into trouble. Lightroom was basically unusable on the CM3 with just a few things running in the background — I tried to edit a batch of around 100 photos, and could consistently only get through a few before the program crashed. I tried to move over to Google Photos, which also eventually crashed, and ended up having to do everything in Gallery. Of course, not everyone will be editing photos on their Chromebook, or pushing it as hard as I was pushing this one, so it’s a matter of knowing your own needs.
Speaking of Zoom meetings, the dual speakers are okay for Zoom calls but not too much more. The songs I played had stronger percussion than I sometimes hear from laptop speakers, but it was thin and tinny overall. The microphone did seem to work well, and didn’t have trouble picking up my voice on calls.
This was a difficult product to score. I do think the CM3 is a great device. And it does offer a few benefits over the Chromebook Duet that justify it costing a bit more. I’d probably purchase it over the Duet myself for the keyboard alone if I were looking for this type of device — the versatile kickstand, built-in stylus, and decent build quality are nice perks as well.
But “if I were looking for this type of device” is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence. I’m not looking for a MediaTek device, and there’s a reason I’m not. The battery life is impressive, sure, but it’s just not enough horsepower for the workload I need. And if you are someone whose needs are suited to this low-powered processor (and there are plenty of these people in the world), I really think $389 is at the very high end of what you should be spending.
Sure, the CM3 has a (just okay) stylus, a kickstand with a funky fold, slightly better battery life, and one extra port. But it’s also on par with or slower than the Duet in most tasks I tried, the audio is worse, and it’s thicker and heavier. Given all that, I’m not convinced the CM3’s advantages are worth $100 to most people who are shopping in this category.
Apple has spent considerable time championing itself as a protector of user privacy. Its CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly stated that privacy is “a fundamental human right,” the company has based multiple ad campaigns around its privacy promises, and it’s had high profile battles with authorities to keep its users’ devices private and secure.
The pitch is simple: our products protect your privacy. But this promise has shifted very subtly in the wake of this week’s iCloud Plus announcement, which for the first time bundled new security protections into a paid subscription service. The pitch is still “our products keep you safe,” but now one of those “products” is a monthly subscription that doesn’t come with the device in your box — even if those devices are getting more built-in protections as well.
iCloud has always been one of Apple’s simplest services. You get 5GB of free storage to backup everything from images, to messages and app data, and you pay a monthly subscription if you want more (or just want to silence Apple’s ransom note when you inevitably run out of storage). Apple isn’t changing anything about the pricing or storage options as part of the shift to iCloud Plus. Prices will still range from $0.99 a month for 50GB of storage up to $9.99 for 2TB. But what is changing is the list of features you’re getting, which is expanding by three.
The first change sits more within iCloud’s traditional cloud storage remit, and is an expansion of Apple’s existing HomeKit Secure Video offering. iCloud Plus now lets you securely stream and record from an unlimited number of cameras, up from a previous maximum of five.
With the new Private Relay and Hide My Mail features, however, iCloud Plus is expanding its remit from a storage-based service into a storage and privacy service. The privacy-focused additions are minor in the grand scheme of the protections Apple offers across its ecosystem, and Apple isn’t using them as justification for increasing the cost of iCloud. But they nevertheless open the door to so-called “premium” privacy features becoming a part of Apple’s large and growing services empire.
The features appear as an admission from Apple about the limits of what privacy protections can do on-device. “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone” was how the company put its promise in a 2019 ad, but when your iPhone needs to connect to the internet to browse the web, receive email, and generally earn the “i” in “iPhone,” inevitably some of its privacy rests on the infrastructure serving it.
The most interesting of these new features is Apple’s Private Relay, which aims to shield your web traffic from prying eyes in iOS 15 and macOS Monterey. It hides your data from both internet service providers as well as advertisers that might build a detailed profile on you based on your browsing history. While it sounds a bit like a VPN, Apple claims the Private Relay’s dual-hop design means even Apple itself doesn’t have a complete picture of your browsing data. Regular VPNs, meanwhile, require a level of trust that means you need to be careful about which VPN you use.
Image: Apple
As Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering explains, VPNs can protect your data from outsiders, but they “involve putting a lot of trust in a single centralized entity: the VPN provider. And that’s a lot of responsibility for that intermediary, and involves the user making a really difficult trust decision about exposing all of that information to a single entity.”
“We wanted to take that completely out of the equation by having a dual-hop architecture,” Federighi told Fast Company.
Here’s how it works. When using Private Relay your internet traffic is being sent via two proxy servers on its way to its destination. First, your traffic gets encrypted before it leaves your device. Then, once it hits the initial, Apple-operated server, it gets assigned an anonymous IP that hides your specific location. Next up, the second server, which is controlled by a third-party, decrypts the web address and forwards the traffic to its destination.
Apple can’t see which website you’re requesting, only the IP address you’re requesting it from, and third-parties can’t see that IP address, only the website you’re requesting. (Apple says it also uses Oblivious DNS over HTTPS.) That’s different from most “double VPN” and “multi-hop” VPN services you can subscribe to today, where a provider may control both servers. You could perhaps combine a VPN and a proxy server to do something similar, though. Apple says Private Relay won’t impact performance, which can be a concern with these other services.
While Private Relay is theoretically more private than a regular VPN, Apple’s offering is also more limited. You can’t use it to trick websites into thinking you’re accessing them from a different location, so you’re not going to be able to use Private Relay to get around geographical limitations on content blocked by a government or a service like Netflix. And it only seems to cover web browsing data through Safari, not third-party browsers or native apps. In a WWDC developer session about the feature, Apple says that Private Relay will also include DNS queries and a “small subset of traffic from apps,” specifically insecure HTTP traffic. But there was no mention of other browsers, and Apple clarified to The Verge that it’s only handling app traffic when your app technically happens to be loading the web inside a browser window.
Hide my Email provides a slick interface for making burner email addresses.Image: Apple
In addition to Private Relay, iCloud Plus also includes Hide my Email, a feature designed to protect the privacy of your email address. Instead of needing to use your real email address for every site that requests it (increasing the risk of an important part of your login credentials becoming public, not to mention getting inundated with spam), Hide My Email lets you generate and share unique random addresses which will then forward any messages they receive back to your true email address. It’s another privacy-focused feature that sits outside of iCloud’s traditional area of focus, and could be useful even if similar options have been available for years.
Gmail, for example, lets you use a simple “+” symbol to add random extra characters to your email address. Even Apple’s own “Sign In with Apple” service pulls a similar trick, handing out random email addresses to each service you use it with. But the advantage of Apple’s new service is that it gives you an easily-accessible shortcut to generate them right in its Mail app and Safari, putting the feature front and center in a way that seems likely to boost its mainstream appeal.
Apple might be charging for Private Relay and Hide My Email by bundling them into iCloud subscriptions, but these iCloud Plus additions are still dwarfed by the array of privacy protections already built into Apple’s hardware and software. There’s no sign that any of these existing privacy features will be locked behind a monthly subscription fee anytime soon. Indeed, the list of built-in protections Apple offers continues to grow.
This includes a new Mail Privacy Protection feature in the Mail app in iOS 15, which sends your emails through a relay service to confuse any tracking pixels that might be hiding in them (read more about tracking pixels here). There’s also a new App Privacy Report feature coming to iOS 15 that will show how often apps are accessing your location, camera, microphone, and other data.
The iPhones’ list of built-in privacy features continues to expand with iOS 15.Image: Apple
But with iCloud Plus, Apple now offers two privacy protections that are distinct from those that are included for free with the purchase of a device, and the division between the two seems arbitrary to some extent. Apple justifies charging for features like Private Relay and Hide My Email because of the incremental costs of running those services, but Mail Privacy Protection also relies on a relay server, which presumably isn’t free to run.
Regardless of its rationale, choosing to charge for these services means that Apple has opened the door to premium privacy features becoming part of its increasingly important services business, beyond just its hardware business. Adherence to privacy was already part of the company’s attempt to lock you into its devices; now it could become part of the attempt to lock you into its services. All the while, those walls around Apple’s garden creep higher and higher.
iOS 4 originally appeared nearly 10 years ago as Apple’s first mobile operating system to drop the iPhone OS naming convention. An 18-year-old developer has now lovingly recreated iOS 4 as an iPhone app, and it’s a beautiful blast from the past. If you never got the chance to use iOS 4, or you’re a fan of the iPhone 3G, OldOS almost flawlessly pulls off the experience of using an iPhone from a decade ago.
OldOS is “designed to be as close to pixel-perfect as possible,” says Zane, the developer behind the app. It’s all built using Apple’s SwiftUI, so it includes buttery smooth animations and even the old iPhone home button that vibrates with haptic feedback to make it feel like a real button.
Apple’s built-in iOS 4 apps have also been recreated here, and it’s a real flashback to the skeuomorphic days of the iPhone whenever they launch. Photos lets you view your existing camera roll as you would have 10 years ago, while Notes transports you back to the yellow post-it notes of yesteryear.
Today is Launch Day
Introducing OldOS — iOS 4 beautifully rebuilt in SwiftUI.
* Designed to be as close to pixel-perfect as possible. * Fully functional, perhaps even usable as a second OS. * ️ Fully open source for all to learn, modify, and build on. pic.twitter.com/K0JOE2fEKM
— Zane (@zzanehip) June 9, 2021
The only apps that don’t work as you might expect are Messages and YouTube. Apple used to bundle YouTube directly into its operating system, and the developer behind OldOS says there are “still some major issues with YouTube” and Messages that they’re working to fix.
Everything else is mostly flawless. and you can even browse the web in the old UI of Safari. The App Store also list apps that will redirect you to the modern store to download and install. There are some things that simply don’t work, including folders and no jiggling to rearrange home screen apps.
We’ve seen this type of nostalgic app appear on the iPhone before. Rewound launched in the App Store back in December 2019, turning an iPhone into an iPod. Apple quickly pulled the app a few days later, citing store violations.
This latest OldOS app is available on Apple’s TestFlight service, which is typically used to distribute beta versions of apps. That means it probably won’t last long before Apple takes exception, so grab it while you can. Zane has also published the source code for the entire project on GitHub, so if you’re willing to compile it in Xcode then it will live forever.
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