Apple Pay uses NFC technology, and it requires you to effectively touch the terminal to make a connection. | Image: The Verge Tap-to-pay services like Apple Pay may soon no longer need the actual tapping part to work. That’s because NFC, the technology that enables you to pay at shops by touching your phone to a payment terminal, is getting new capabilities over the next next two to five years, such as a communications range boost, more powerful wireless charging for tiny devices like earbuds, and more (via Android Authority). NFC, which stands for Near Field Communication, is inside thousands of devices today ranging from smartphones to video game-enhancing figurines. Now the body that decides how to standardize the technology,…

Macworld Along with the second beta of iOS 17, Apple this week released the very first beta visionOS, giving developers who weren’t lucky enough to try Vision Pro at WWDC their first glimpse of the company’s mixed-reality vision of the future. (Without wishing to repeat the F word too often, Apple describes the software as its “first spatial operating system.”) You don’t need an actual Vision Pro headset to explore the software, which is fortunate since they won’t go on sale until sometime next year. You only need the latest Xcode beta. It’s still early days, but a few interesting titbits have emerged already. For instance, there are several Environments present in the beta, which can be used to shut…

Macworld Along with the second beta of iOS 17, Apple this week released the very first beta visionOS, giving developers who weren’t lucky enough to try Vision Pro at WWDC their first glimpse of the company’s mixed-reality vision of the future. (Without wishing to repeat the F word too often, Apple describes the software as its “first spatial operating system.”) You don’t need an actual Vision Pro headset to explore the software, which is fortunate since they won’t go on sale until sometime next year. You only need the latest Xcode beta. It’s still early days, but a few interesting titbits have emerged already. For instance, there are several Environments present in the beta, which can be used to shut…

Macworld A MAC address may be the address of your Mac, but they’re not interchangeable. MAC stands for Media (or Medium) Access Control, a geeky term for a part of network communications between the actual hardware, like a Wi-Fi radio or ethernet chip and jack, and the data that flows over it. Every network adapter has a unique MAC address set by the manufacturer during production. Why should you need to know a device’s MAC address? It can come in handy when you want to configure features on your router. You’re probably familiar with an IP (Internet Protocol) address, one that uniquely identifies your computer, phone, or other hardware’s connection on the internet. A MAC address applies only to the…

Behold! A device with an actual headphone jack. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon Prime Day officially kicks off on July 11th, and while we’re expecting to see steep discounts on Amazon’s line of inexpensive Fire tablets, it’s safe to say that Amazon’s latest slates still can’t match an iPad when it comes to design and performance. Fortunately, the 2021 iPad is currently on sale at Amazon in the 64GB / Wi-Fi configuration for $249.99 ($79 off) at checkout — a price we haven’t seen since March of last year. On the whole, Apple’s ninth-gen slate remains the best budget iPad you can buy, even with the introduction of the 10th-gen model last year. The entry-level tablet…

Macworld Wireless headphones are essentially the standard now, with Bluetooth not only being convenient but Apple removing the audio jack on the iPhone range. For most people, the sound quality difference to wired isn’t noticeable anyway. The market is huge, but here are the best wireless headphones we’ve tested for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Macs. If you do want a wired connection some of these do offer it in addition to Bluetooth, but we also have a round up of the best wired headphones. And if you’re wondering why the AirPods Max don’t appear on this list, rest assured that we gave them due consideration – but while audio quality is exceptional, their very high price and ill-judged case…