Enhanced Health Tracking:

• Body Temperature Sensor: The most anticipated addition is the new body temperature sensor. This feature allows for continuous monitoring of your skin temperature, providing valuable insights into your overall health and potential early detection of fevers or other conditions.
• Advanced Sleep Tracking: Sleep tracking receives an upgrade with deeper insights into sleep stages and REM cycles, offering a more comprehensive picture of your sleep quality and potential areas for improvement.
• New Workout Metrics: The Series 9 introduces new workout metrics for activities like cycling and swimming, providing more detailed data to track your performance and progress.

Design Tweaks:

• Slightly larger display: The display sees a minor size increase, offering more screen real estate for notifications, workout data, and watch faces.
• New watch faces: Apple continues its tradition of refreshing the watch face collection, offering new options to personalize your watch.
• Durable materials: The Series 9 maintains its reputation for durability with a robust build quality and scratch-resistant materials.

New Features:

• Double-tap gesture: A new double-tap gesture on the side button allows for quick access to frequently used features, like workouts or music controls.
• Open Workout APIs: Developers now have access to open Workout APIs, paving the way for more diverse and personalized workout experiences through third-party apps.
• Apple Fitness+ enhancements: Apple Fitness+ subscribers gain access to custom training plans and new cycling metrics, further enriching their fitness journey.
• Mental health tools: The Series 9 integrates new mental health tools, including a mood logger and details about time spent in daylight, to promote well-being and mindfulness.

Battery Life:

The battery life remains similar to the Series 8, offering up to 18 hours in standard mode and up to 36 hours in low-power mode. While not a significant improvement, it’s sufficient for most daily use cases.

Conclusion:

The Apple Watch Series 9 offers a compelling upgrade for those seeking enhanced health tracking, subtle design tweaks, and exciting new features. While not a revolutionary overhaul, the improvements solidify its position as a leader in the smartwatch market, catering to both health-conscious individuals and everyday users alike. Whether you’re a fitness enthusiast or simply looking for a smarter way to stay connected and informed, the Series 9 is a worthy contender for your wrist.

Personalization Redefined

Dynamic Themes and Widgets

One of the standout features of iOS 16 is the introduction of dynamic themes and widgets. Users can now personalize their home screens with dynamic themes that adapt to the time of day or change based on their location. This provides a fresh and visually appealing experience, making the iPhone interface more dynamic and engaging.

Widgets have also received a major overhaul, allowing users to resize and customize them to fit their preferences. With more flexibility in arranging widgets on the home screen, users can create a personalized dashboard that aligns with their individual needs and priorities.

Customizable Control Center

iOS 16 brings a customizable Control Center, empowering users to tailor this essential feature to their specific preferences. Whether it’s rearranging toggles or adding shortcuts for frequently used apps, the new Control Center ensures that users have quick access to the functions that matter most to them.

Supercharged Productivity Features

Enhanced Multitasking

iOS 16 takes multitasking to a new level with enhanced capabilities. Users can now seamlessly switch between apps using the redesigned App Switcher, which provides a clearer view of the open applications. The introduction of split-screen multitasking on larger iPhone models enhances productivity, allowing users to run two apps simultaneously.

Smart Task Management with Siri

Siri becomes an even more integral part of the iOS experience in version 16. The voice assistant now offers smart task management, enabling users to create, edit, and organize their to-do lists with natural language commands. Siri’s improved contextual understanding ensures a more intuitive and efficient task management experience.

Focus Mode for Uninterrupted Work

The new Focus Mode is a productivity boon, allowing users to create customized profiles that filter notifications based on their current activity or location. Whether it’s work, personal time, or a specific project, Focus Mode ensures that users can concentrate without unnecessary distractions, leading to enhanced efficiency and a better work-life balance.

Seamless Integration Across Devices

Universal Clipboard and Handoff

iOS 16 continues to strengthen the integration between Apple devices. The Universal Clipboard feature allows users to copy content on one Apple device and paste it seamlessly on another. Handoff takes this integration a step further, enabling users to start an activity on one device and effortlessly continue it on another, creating a truly interconnected ecosystem.

AirDrop Improvements

AirDrop sees improvements in iOS 16, making file sharing between Apple devices even more convenient and efficient. The increased speed and reliability of AirDrop contribute to a smoother cross-device sharing experience, further emphasizing the seamless connectivity within the Apple ecosystem.

Conclusion

With iOS 16, Apple once again demonstrates its commitment to enhancing the user experience on the iPhone. The focus on personalization, productivity, and seamless integration across devices sets a new standard for mobile operating systems. As iPhone users embrace the latest iOS update, they can look forward to a more personalized and productive digital journey.

Enhanced Multitasking:

One of the standout features of iPadOS 16 is the revamped multitasking experience. Apple has refined the way users can work with multiple apps simultaneously, making it more intuitive and efficient. The new multitasking menu provides users with quick access to recently used apps, facilitating seamless transitions between tasks. Additionally, users can now create custom app pairings, allowing for even more personalized multitasking workflows.

Pro-Level Productivity with Quick Note Overhaul:

iPad users will appreciate the substantial improvements made to the Quick Note feature. iPadOS 16 elevates note-taking to a pro-level with enhanced organization options, improved handwriting recognition, and new collaboration features. Quick Note now seamlessly integrates with other productivity apps, making it easier than ever to incorporate notes into various projects.

Desktop-Class Browsing with Safari:

Safari on iPadOS 16 has undergone significant enhancements, bringing a desktop-class browsing experience to the iPad. The new tab bar design allows for better tab management, making it easier to navigate through multiple open tabs. With added support for web extensions, users can now customize their browsing experience further, turning Safari into a versatile tool for work and leisure.

Innovation in Widgets and Home Screen:

iPadOS 16 introduces new widgets and customization options for the home screen, enabling users to tailor their iPad to their individual needs. The redesigned widgets offer more information at a glance, making the home screen a dynamic hub for productivity and information. Users can now choose from a wider array of widget sizes and styles, providing greater flexibility in organizing and accessing essential information.

Expanding Creativity with Pro Apps:

For creative professionals, iPadOS 16 brings a host of updates to pro apps, including Procreate and Adobe Creative Cloud. The increased integration between hardware and software unlocks new possibilities for artists and designers, allowing them to take full advantage of the iPad’s capabilities. The refined performance and updated features make iPadOS 16 a game-changer for those pushing the boundaries of creativity on a digital canvas.

Privacy and Security Enhancements:

Apple remains committed to user privacy, and iPadOS 16 reinforces this commitment with new privacy and security features. Enhanced app tracking transparency, improved password management, and the introduction of on-device processing for certain tasks contribute to a more secure and private user experience.

Conclusion:

iPadOS 16 is a testament to Apple’s dedication to refining and expanding the capabilities of the iPad. The update brings a plethora of features that cater to both professionals and casual users alike, enhancing productivity, creativity, and overall user experience. With its seamless integration of hardware and software, iPadOS 16 solidifies the iPad’s position as a versatile and powerful device, capable of meeting the demands of a wide range of users in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Design Refresh

The iPhone 15 is expected to receive a minor design overhaul, with a flatter front panel and slightly narrower bezels. This could bring the iPhone’s design closer to the iPad Pro’s sleek aesthetic. The notch on the display is also rumored to be slimmed down or even replaced entirely by a punch-hole design, allowing for more screen real estate.

Camera Enhancements

Apple is known for its impressive camera technology, and the iPhone 15 is expected to continue this trend. Leaks suggest that the main camera will be upgraded to a 48-megapixel sensor, allowing for higher-resolution photos and videos. The telephoto lens is also expected to see an improvement, with a longer focal length for better zoom capabilities.

Powerful Processor and Software

Apple’s A-series chips have consistently set the standard for smartphone performance, and the iPhone 15 is expected to be no exception. The A17 Bionic chip is rumored to be even more powerful than its predecessors, delivering blazing-fast performance for demanding tasks like gaming and video editing. The iPhone 15 is also expected to run iOS 17, the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, which is packed with new features and enhancements.

Release Date and Pricing

Apple typically unveils its new iPhones in September, and the iPhone 15 is expected to follow this trend. The release date for the iPhone 15 is likely to be September 2024. Pricing is also a closely guarded secret, but it’s safe to assume that the iPhone 15 will start at around $1,000 for the base model.

Overall, the iPhone 15 is shaping up to be a significant upgrade from its predecessor. With a new design, enhanced camera, powerful processor, and latest software, the iPhone 15 is sure to be a popular choice for smartphone enthusiasts.

Most people have heard of Stardew Valley at this point, and it is available on the iPhone and iPad for $4.99, but the ‌Apple Arcade‌ version will be available to ‌Apple Arcade‌ subscribers at no additional cost.

Stardew Valley allows players to overhaul an abandoned, overgrown plot of land, turning it into a thriving farm complete with crops, animals, and more. Players will also be able to get to know the townspeople, solving villager quests and taking part in seasonal festivals.

There are caves to explore to fight monsters and gain treasure, and goods collected from crops and animals can be turned into artisan products that sell for more money. Other features include dating events, fishing ponds, clothing and hats to unlock, pets, and more, with the ‌Apple Arcade‌ version including all content from recent updates. Stardew Valley is set to launch on July 21.

Also coming to ‌Apple Arcade‌ in July is a new Hello Kitty simulation game called Hello Kitty Island Adventure (July 28), plus classics like Slay the Spire+ (July 7), LEGO DUPLO WORLD+ (July 7), and Ridiculous Fishing EX (July 14).

‌Apple Arcade‌ is priced at $4.99 per month, with family members able to share a subscription. The service has more than 100 games, and new content is added on a regular basis.

This article, "Stardew Valley Coming to Apple Arcade on July 21" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple’s latest Mac Pro targets professionals with highly demanding computing workloads. But we talked to those professionals, and they don’t want it — because Apple’s other computers are just too good.

Apple’s latest Mac Pro was finally revealed at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference as a machine for the most power user of power users. The video discussed audio engineering, color grading, and video transcoding. Apple’s product page mentions code compiling, animation, compositing 8K scenes, 3D rendering, and “analyzing enormous datasets.” This isn’t just for pros, Apple seems to claim; it’s for capital-P Pros.

Exactly who these pros are and why the Mac Pro is the perfect device for them remains somewhat unclear to me, even after testing the new machine for a few days and speaking to various professionals that Apple is ostensibly targeting. That’s in part because Apple, on the same day it announced the Mac Pro, also announced a smaller, M2 Ultra Mac Studio with the exact same RAM, storage, and processor options. The former, nevertheless, costs at least $3,000 more and carries a towering starting price of $6,999.

I wanted to know whether Apple’s purported target demographic — people who spend their days animating, making visual effects, and doing various other tasks generally associated with big, powerful computers — were actually interested in purchasing this machine. So I asked a bunch of them, and the answer, basically across the board, was no. Not because the Mac Pro is bad but because Apple’s other computers, namely its laptops, have just gotten too good.

Zach Passero, who does editing, animation, and visual effects for films, has been a diehard Mac Pro user for over a decade. “I’m still a big champion of the old trash can,” he says, referring to the oft-maligned 2013 design. He was skeptical when the M1 Max chip was announced — he’d never envisioned that a laptop could handle his heavy workload. But he gave the 16-inch MacBook Pro a shot and was surprised — and a little bit sad — to find that it felt just as fast as his older desktop. “Video editing, even doing effects, compositing, animating — it has been a smooth and fluid process,” he says. “I’m like, ‘This might actually suffice for a while.’”

Passero still loves the Mac Pro, but he can’t justify buying the latest one when his laptop is so good. “There’s something about my experience using the M1 chip where I’m like, ‘I don’t know if I need the full Mac Pro,’” he says, with some disappointment in his voice.

Vikram Bodicherla, a staff privacy engineer at WhatsApp, previously owned two Intel-based Mac Pro models — one for home and one for work. The minute the M1 Max came out, he jettisoned both of them. Like Passero, Bodicherla now spends his day — he works on mobile apps for Android and iOS, as well as “server-side stuff” — on a MacBook Pro with the M1 Max. He can build much faster. He hasn’t even considered buying Apple’s new desktop. “I don’t really need any other computer,” he says.

Kevin Ford, who shoots and edits documentaries, has been using the Mac Pro for years. He’s owned both the tower models and the trash can. But he switched to the latest 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 Max a few weeks ago, and he’s not looking back — it can do everything he needs. He can cut 4K and 6K footage. He can color correct. He can even create graphics and titles. As a bonus, he can now do it all on the road; the last project he cut, which is now on Netflix, was done entirely in hotel rooms and airplanes.

“I’m very practical when I’m looking at a piece of equipment — what will allow me to do what I need to do for the best cost?” Ford says. “If the cheese grater was priced at a certain point, would that have been more attractive to me? Possibly.” But, he adds, his new MacBook is “working very well.”

But it’s not just that the MacBook has gotten better with the release of Apple’s M-series chips. The Mac Pro, with the release of the Mac Studio, has also gotten significantly more confusing.

The Pro I received to test vastly outperforms Intel models from 2019 — even those with Apple’s fancy Afterburner card that cost thousands of dollars more. But it’s a step backward from those other models in another way: modularity.

The 2019 Mac Pro was endlessly configurable, and ports could be swapped out and upgraded as users needed. Much has changed. Spec choice is now more limited (there are only two processor options, for example, and memory is now capped at 192GB where previously up to 1.5TB was available). The 2023 Mac Pro’s memory is not upgradeable after purchase for the first time in the model’s history.

And now, of course, the Mac Studio is here. And while the Pro delivers impressive performance, you can now get that same performance in a less expensive and much more compact chassis.

I had similarly specced models of the Pro and the Studio on hand to test. Both included Apple’s 24-core M2 Ultra processor with 76 GPU cores, as well as 128GB of unified memory. While the two look quite different, and the Mac Pro has a couple extra ports, I can confirm that their performance is close to the same.

The primary advantage that the Mac Pro can claim over the Studio is the fact that the former has PCIe expansion slots — six full-length PCIe Gen 4 slots, specifically, as well as a half-length Gen 3. These, in theory, allow for some degree of modularity, where a user could slot in additional storage, IO, or other peripherals.

Except: that doesn’t include external GPUs, which mitigates the utility of these slots for graphic use cases significantly. The Mac hasn’t supported Nvidia cards for quite some time, and Apple’s own silicon doesn’t support AMD’s GPUs, either. Further muddling this matter is the fact that most PCI-E cards can now be used with Thunderbolt via an external enclosure — you specifically need to require the PCI-E 4 x16 speeds in order to gain a tangible benefit from those extra thousands of dollars.

The slots, with those caveats, didn’t blow anyone I spoke to out of the water. “Would it be nice to have? Yeah, totally… if it wasn’t a machine that started at $7,000,” said Evan Stone, a senior iOS engineer at the software development agency MartianCraft. (Stone also works on the MacBook Pro with M1 Max, and he’s a fan; he has one for work and another at home.)

Passero used to be a huge fan of the Mac Pro’s expandability, but his new MacBook performs so well that he doesn’t feel the need to add anything extra. “The new silicon chips and these built-in GPUs that they have, and the neural networks, I’m finding that most of my needs are met,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Do I just settle in and see how this goes?’”

The lack of support for external GPUs makes the feature particularly confounding for graphic professionals. “GPU support, that’s what we mostly use PCIe for,” said Tom Lindén, who runs a 3D animation agency. Other than a capture card, he says, “there are not that many expansion cards that would be useful.”

The only aspect of the Pro that Lindén finds particularly compelling for his studio is its double ethernet port. “We’re simulating huge simulations, so fast networking is really important,” Lindén says. “I don’t know how much we’d be able to utilize two slots — like if that would help the speed.” He thinks for a moment. “I guess it could, probably.”

Emilio Guarino, a music producer and engineer, thinks that feature is mostly useful for “edge case kind of scenarios” in his field. “If you’re doing game development, I’ve seen session files where the track count is like two or three thousand. You might need the added expansion for that,” he says. “But if I’m just doing commissions or just building virtual instruments and samples… I would probably just get the Mac Studio and be done.”

What about additional storage? People mostly shrugged. “I’ve never really hit that limit, and I have a very large chunk of the company’s code base on my computer,” WhatsApp’s Bodicherla says — companies as large as his, he explains, generally have processes in place that mean their engineers don’t need to hold unreasonable amounts of data on their personal machines. “If you’re doing a huge ML model, it might make sense to download everything. But even then, I feel like for running that one odd job, you could always go to, like, a server cluster,” he muses.

“I can’t justify paying double for a machine that has a couple of slots,” said Danny Nathan, founder and CEO of the product design and venture studio Apollo 21.

In general, the attitude among the professionals I spoke to was not skepticism so much as confusion.

“I don’t know why they made two different products,” said Vyacheslav Drofa, a UX director at Alty, which engineers mobile applications for banks, as he looked bemusedly at the Studio’s and Pro’s identical spec sheets.

“The offering across the board from Apple has gotten so powerful that, frankly, the Mac Pro feels a little unnecessary,” echoes Nathan, who has owned a number of Mac Pros throughout his career but is now very happy with his 14-inch MacBook. “I think we all appreciate it for what it is and what it demonstrates, but at no point has anyone said to me, ‘So when are we getting an office load of these?’”

Many people across industries, who were confident that the Mac Pro wasn’t a good investment for them, spitballed about who it might be ideal for but weren’t exactly sure. Maybe architects need it, Stone suggested. “Really, really tough machine learning tasks,” posited Serhii Popov, a software engineer at Setapp. 3D rendering, Guarino proposed, but only if you’re doing a lot of it. DevOps, others said. But there was one use case that pretty much everyone suspected might tangibly benefit from the Mac Pro and its plethora of slots: VFX.

David Lebensfeld, founder and VFX supervisor at Ingenuity Studios, was dubious. “That doesn’t seem like something a VFX studio would use,” he said after I described the product. Nobody on Lebensfeld’s team has expressed interest in the Mac Pro — there has been “zero chatter” about the product, he says.

Lebensfeld’s company is all in on Windows and Linux, and that’s common for studios of Ingenuity’s size. Switching over to the Mac Pro, given its price point, would just be impractical. Lebensfeld gets better value out of Windows PCs, which support the latest GPUs from Nvidia and can be equipped with the exact parts and specs that each team needs. When a part breaks, they can grab another one off the shelf.

In fact, some of the VFX and animation professionals I contacted for this story declined to be interviewed because they simply don’t know much about Macs — they just aren’t widely used in that industry at this point. The reality is that these types of studios need to keep their hardware functional and up to date. Replacing a full Mac Pro system — let alone a fleet of them — regularly would be an absurd cost.

Lebensfeld speculated that the Mac Pro might be better for small businesses and independent artists who work with heavy graphics. But Lindén’s smaller studio is also fully a Windows shop, decked out with high-end Nvidia cards (which decisively outperform the M2 Ultra in programs like Blender), largely for the same reason. “We like to keep updating our machines with new hardware when we need to,” he says.

Deborah Wright, a digital sculptor, has the same hang-ups; she also uses a Windows PC. “I really, really love Mac… but it’s become prohibitively expensive,” she says. “Part of the attractiveness of a PC is my ability to customize the heck out of it,” she adds. “You buy a Mac, and you hold onto it for a few years. Buying a PC, you’re switching out your hardware pretty regularly.”

Wright suspects her next purchase might be a MacBook Pro, which, while not modular, is at least more affordable. “Their displays are just exquisite,” she says. “Velvet on the eyes.”

But the larger issue among the professionals I spoke to, and one that will likely take many more product cycles for Apple to truly fix, is one of trust. Apple, the business behemoth that it is, still has a reputation to build in the enterprise space. In order to become a go-to purchase for studios, Apple doesn’t just need to make the Mac Pro more competitive on price — it needs to reestablish itself as a brand that industries can rely on for years to come. And it needs to make some amends.

“Apple doesn’t really have a great history of servicing this market,” Lebensfeld said. “Do you want to hang millions of dollars of equipment purchases on a company where you know this isn’t their main focus?” He added, “It really feels like an afterthought. It feels like they’re gonna put this chip in every laptop and iPad that they can, and then later, they’re gonna fuse 20 of them together, and that’s the Pro.”

And while Apple’s decision to overhaul Final Cut Pro was over a decade ago, studios still haven’t forgotten. Almost all of the video professionals I spoke to brought it up. “Every filmmaker in the world was using this,” Lebensfeld complained. “And they lost that whole market. They just don’t take it seriously.”

“They really did screw us over on that,” Ford, the documentarian, agreed. “I was really upset.”

I searched high and low and ended up connecting with over 20 professionals for this story in order to locate someone who enthusiastically wanted to buy the Mac Pro. I found exactly one: Drofa. He loves the cheese-grater design.

“The killer feature is when somebody comes and says, ‘Okay, you have a Mac Pro,’ and I say, ‘Yeah, I can make a cheesesteak,’” he explained. Asked about the Mac Studio, he replied, “I don’t trust that small thing.”

]]> https://www.latest-apple-news.com/2023/06/21/everything-new-with-carplay-in-ios-17/ Wed, 21 Jun 2023 19:06:41 +0000 http://www.latest-apple-news.com/?guid=0a4faa09335977e7db7a76ee4915f8c8 Apple is introducing new functionality for almost every iPhone app and feature with iOS 17, and CarPlay hasn’t been left out. We haven’t seen the total overhaul of ‌CarPlay‌ that Apple promised last year as of yet, but there are a handful of new features.

SharePlay for the Music App

SharePlay works with the Apple Music app in ‌CarPlay‌, which means everyone in the car, passengers included, can contribute to an ‌Apple Music‌ playlist.

As long as the car owner has an ‌Apple Music‌ subscription and initiates a SharePlay session from ‌CarPlay‌, other people in the car can choose music to play. Each person can scan a QR code generated by the main user to get access to the playlist to add songs to the in-car ‌Apple Music‌ queue.

Only the person who starts the SharePlay session has to have an ‌Apple Music‌ subscription. Everyone else can use ‌Apple Music‌ to contribute without having to pay.

EV Charging Station Improvements

If you have an electric vehicle, the Apple Maps app can provide real-time charging availability for the charging networks that are compatible with your car. The update should make it easier for EV owners to locate nearby charging stations on a trip.

Messages Updates

The Messages app in ‌CarPlay‌ has a revamped interface that makes it easier to quickly reply and re-read a message without taking too much attention away from the road.

Wallpaper

‌iOS 17‌ includes new wallpaper options, which can be expanded to the ‌CarPlay‌ interface.

The All-New CarPlay Experience

Apple at WWDC 2022 previewed the next-generation version of ‌CarPlay‌, which will offer deeper integration with vehicles in the future. Apple did not talk about the new ‌CarPlay‌ experience at WWDC 2023, but the company did say in 2022 that the first cars with the updated technology will be coming in late 2023.

‌CarPlay‌ will support multiple displays, showing up across all of the displays in a vehicle, including the instrument cluster. Apple will be able to offer a consistent experience throughout the car, and ‌CarPlay‌ will integrate with the speedometer, tachometer, odometer, fuel gauge, and more.

The vehicle’s climate controls will also be accessible through ‌CarPlay‌ in upcoming vehicles, letting users adjust temperature and activate other in-car climate features through the ‌CarPlay‌ interface.

With the revamped ‌CarPlay‌ experience slated for a 2023 launch, we can likely expect to see additional ‌CarPlay‌ features coming in future ‌iOS 17‌ updates. Car brands that will support next-generation ‌CarPlay‌ include Acura, Audi, Ford, Honda, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Porsche, and Volvo.

Read More

More information on all of the new features in the ‌iOS 17‌ update can be found in our iOS 17 roundup.

This article, "Everything New With CarPlay in iOS 17" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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