iCloud Keychain is end-to-end encrypted among all your devices and uses iCloud just for syncing your password and other shared keychain entries. As I’ve written previously in “Why iCloud Keychain may prompt you for a device password used with other Apple hardware you own,” Apple relies on device passcodes in a special way as you add additional devices to an iCloud Keychain set.

With your first device, you’re simply enabling syncing. Apple requires that you enter the password or passcode on that device to prime the pump. That encrypted password is used to wrap all your iCloud Keychain entries. The next device you add will prompt you to enter the passcode or password of the one you initiated iCloud Keychain with. Entering the secret unlocks the iCloud Keychain sync and adds your new device to the set of legitimate keychain sync partners. Because you’re entering the passcode or passphrase on a device under your control, it’s never leaving your hardware: Apple doesn’t learn it; it’s just a secret only you know to unlock the syncing operation.

One reader, however, was shocked when restoring an iPhone that they were prompted to enter the password of a computer they no longer owned—one they double-checked had been removed from their set of registered devices. Surely that was a security leak? They were concerned that whoever possessed their old computer might have access to their keychain secrets.

Fortunately, that’s not the case, though Apple surely should have a way to resolve this problem when devices are removed from iCloud—but possibly not with a restored backup. Only the encrypted passcode of that older device lingered, likely within the iPhone backup. When prompted to enter it, the reader was only unlocking their local keychain set.

While this request looked sketchy or problematic, it was poorly labeled rather than a security hole.

When the reader disabled iCloud Keychain on all their devices and re-enabled it, they weren’t prompted for the password on an old Mac again—or any passcode at all. The devices all retained enough mutual security elements associated with the iCloud identity that re-authentication wasn’t required.

This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Andrea.

Ask Mac 911

We’ve compiled a list of the questions we get asked most frequently, along with answers and links to columns: read our super FAQ to see if your question is covered. If not, we’re always looking for new problems to solve! Email yours to mac911@macworld.com, including screen captures as appropriate and whether you want your full name used. Not every question will be answered, we don’t reply to email, and we cannot provide direct troubleshooting advice.

iCloud, Security Software and Services

Amazon’s Prime Day sale will surely bring big savings on the latest Apple Watches, but none will be as good as this: Amazon is selling a 45mm Apple Watch Series 7 in graphite with cellular for $429, a near-50 percent savings of $320, and the best price we’ve ever seen on a non-refurbished model.

The Apple Watch Series 7 is a year old but isn’t drastically different than the Series 8. It was the same always-on display, EKG and blood-oxygen, 18-hour battery life, and watchOS 10 compatibility this fall. The main features it’s missing are a temperature sensor for cycle tracking and Crash Detection. In our 4.5-star review, we called the Apple Watch Series 7 “the best smartwatch around” and our opinion hasn’t changed over a year later.

If you really want a temperature sensor and Crash Detection, you could buy this same version of the Series 8 from Apple for $749, but we think the savings here are worth t.

Apple Watch

Amazon’s Prime Day sale will surely bring big savings on the latest Apple Watches, but none will be as good as this: Amazon is selling a 45mm Apple Watch Series 7 in graphite with cellular for $429, a near-50 percent savings of $320, and the best price we’ve ever seen on a non-refurbished model.

The Apple Watch Series 7 is a year old but isn’t drastically different than the Series 8. It was the same always-on display, EKG and blood-oxygen, 18-hour battery life, and watchOS 10 compatibility this fall. The main features it’s missing are a temperature sensor for cycle tracking and Crash Detection. In our 4.5-star review, we called the Apple Watch Series 7 “the best smartwatch around” and our opinion hasn’t changed over a year later.

If you really want a temperature sensor and Crash Detection, you could buy this same version of the Series 8 from Apple for $749, but we think the savings here are worth t.

Apple Watch

Adobe Photoshop is for image editing like Microsoft Office for the office: absolutely dominant and in a professional environment you can’t get around it. However, if you aren’t using Photoshop and the Creative Suite, or Creative Cloud as it is now called, for professional reasons (and even if you are) the package has become very unattractive since the introduction of the subscription model more than a decade ago.

If you only want to edit a few photos every now and then you probably won’t think that a monthly subscription for around $9.99/£9.98 is worth it – because most of the time it is not.

A cheap and affordable alternative to Photoshop is Affinity Photo, which was released in its second major version in late 2022. Here you get an unlimited license for an extensive image editing toolbox for $69.99/£67.99 (the iPad version costs only $18.49/£17.99 up front).

If you also need software for vector graphics and print media, you can also get the complete Affinity V2 Universal License as a one-off payment of $164.99/£159.99. This consists of Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Designer 2 (an alternative to Adobe Illustrator) and Affinity Publisher 2 (an alternative to Adobe InDesign). This way you can even save a little – the complete package costs only 200 euros, including the versions for the iPad.

We’ve been testing Affinity Photo 2 for a while now and are generally very satisfied, especially considering what the software does for a relatively low price.

Familiar interface

If you are already familiar with Photoshop, you will quickly find your way around Affinity’s interface: The (default) layout overall is virtually identical, and the icons in the toolbar on the left differ but are similar or easy to follow with a few exceptions. Most of the basic keyboard shortcuts are also the same, which makes getting used to them much easier.

Affinity Photo does some things better than Photoshop, although this is of course a matter of taste. Personally, for example, I like the fact that the options for supported alignment (pixel alignment, magnetic alignment) are located in the top toolbar and not hidden in menus.

However, if you are familiar with image editing, Affinity Photo can be as confusing as stepping into an airplane cockpit and seeing tons of buttons and not knowing what they do. Luckily, to make it easier to get started and get around, Serif, the company behind Affinity Photo, has uploaded several dozen video tutorials to Affinity Photo’s YouTube channel.

In addition to the standard interface, there are several other pre-configured interfaces for special purposes – Serif calls them “Personas”: The standard interface is called “Photo Persona”, but there is also the “Liquify Persona”, which is specially designed for deforming, distorting and retouching images, the “Develop Persona” for developing raw images, and a handful of others. You can easily switch between the individual personas in the upper bar.

Just as in Photoshop, you can drag individual elements, windows and tools from the main window to another monitor. This allows you to effectively enlarge the workspace by swapping out tools and other settings.

It’s different on the iPad, where the interface is significantly simplified and optimised for the smaller screen and pen input with the Apple Pencil and fingers. Here, too, it is clearly reminiscent of the touch-optimised version of Photoshop.

Remarkable range of functions

The number of tools that Affinity Photo offers is also quite impressive. If you are interested in image editing and composing, the software offers almost the same functions as Photoshop: various layer types, (live) filters, adjustments (tonal value correction, contrast, etc.), effects (shadows, glows, etc.), masks, color gradients, brushes and much more – Affinity Photo will not fail to provide the basic functions. Affinity Photo even has a counterpart to the content-based filling of Photoshop, but here it is called “Inpainting”.

Differences to Photoshop only become apparent with AI-related functions. For example, some time ago Adobe added an AI-supported function that can completely replace the sky in landscape photos, which Affinity Photo does not have. Similarly, Photoshop can now recognise objects in images and select them quite accurately – also with the help of AI.

Affinity Photo can’t do that either, here you still have to select everything manually, even though the magic wand and the selection brush do a solid job even without AI.

One function that surprised me due to how intuitively it works in Affinity Photo is crop masks. To create a blurred background in the cover image for my article “The best games for the iPhone“, I drew three shapes, dragged the respective images into Affinity Photo and dropped them onto the respective shape in the layer list – done.

In Photoshop, this is only slightly more complicated, but still less intuitive: there, you drag the respective image in the list over the respective shape and then, while holding down the Option key, click on the line between the two layers to create a cut mask from the one above for the one below.

Surely this is a matter of habit, but for me personally, the drag-and-drop principle using only the mouse wins here against the combination of mouse and keyboard input.

The sample files that Serif makes available for download are very helpful. You can find them in a tab in the “Open” dialogue and can then look over the shoulder of professionals and see what they have used which tools for and in what way. In addition, there are also many YouTube tutorials for Affinity Photo, partly from Serif itself, and partly from a large community.

Creative Cloud – the biggest difference

Like many large software companies, Adobe has switched to a software-as-a-service model, which means that the focus is no longer on the software alone, but on a large package of software and various additional services. A big advantage of Adobe’s Creative Cloud, of which Photoshop is now a part, is precisely these additional services: You get access to Adobe Stock, a database of stock photos by professional photographers, over 20,000 different fonts and many other services that you would otherwise have to take obtain yourself.

Most of this is missing from Affinity Photo, where there is only the software with which you can edit images. You have to take care of fonts, cloud storage and collaboration tools yourself, but this can save you a lot of money, especially as a hobbyist, and use free platforms like Unsplash.

Stock photos are at least connected via Pixabay, an external platform for free or license-free photos and vector graphics. Affinity Photo does not explicitly refer to this–I only found the tab after a reader had pointed it out to me. It is commendable that Pixabay is completely integrated into the interface and does not refer to external browsers. The selection of graphics is perfectly fine, but cannot quite keep up with commercial platforms.

Online store for additional content

If you need additional or pre-configured tools, some add-ons can be downloaded for a fee from the Affinity Photo online store – textures, overlays, brush presets and a few more. In terms of price, the offer seems quite fair: for $25/£25, you get 53 textures, brushes and templates with the “Vibrant Paint Strokes Bundle“, for example.

The “Handwritten Font Bundle” with six different handwritings and several styles each is currently the most expensive add-on at $44/£44, and the “Nature Brush Pack” with 68 “bio brushes” for $9.99/£9.99 is the cheapest. All in all, the selection is manageable, but the shop will probably be more of a nice add-on for Serif than a source of income to be taken seriously.

Verdict

If you are a beginner, hobby graphic artist, or photographer, Affinity Photo is an incredibly attractive alternative to Adobe Photoshop, which hardly differs from the class leader in its essential functions. You lose out on the really smart features here and there, but there is nothing wrong with learning how to retouch and select objects properly by hand.

In terms of appearance and handling, Affinity Photo is now so similar to Adobe’s software that if you know Photoshop it will take no time to get familiar with Affinity Photo. The main selling point, of course, is that Affinity Photo, for all that it offers, is available for $69.99/£67.99 with an unlimited license, unlike Adobe Photoshop, and does not require a monthly subscription. Buy once, use always – that’s how we like software. For the indecisive, there’s a free 30-day trial for each platform – Mac, Windows, iPad.

Translated from Macwelt by Karen Haslam.

MacOS, Personal Software

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

Ask a Siri question

It’s been a few weeks now since the excitement of the WWDC 2023 keynote presentation, and the triumphs and disappointments have had a chance to sink in. There was plenty of the former, but several of the latter, and the one that continues to sting–particularly when I have an especially bad week with the feature in question–is the lack of reassurance about Siri.

Apple is surely aware that Siri is bad, and that it needs to be improved. But looking back through our coverage of WWDC, an event that’s all about software, I can find only two mentions of the ailing voice assistant. One is the news that it will soon intelligently handle multiple commands in succession without having to be asked properly each time; this is a welcome if belated addition, coming years after Alexa and Google Assistant gained the same capability. And the other relates to it losing one word from its trigger phrase, which strikes me as disastrous. As it stands, Siri is constantly nagging and bothering me when I don’t want it to turn on, just because it (wrongly) thinks it’s heard the words “Hey Siri.” When it’s listening out for just “Siri,” my life is going to be hell. Realistically, I’ll probably have to turn off that feature and access Siri with a button press as before. There’s progress for you.

Neither of the stage mentions, you’ll notice, made any reference to Siri’s accuracy. Which is… odd.

What I wanted to hear from Apple this June was reassurance that it understands that Siri needs work and that the company’s people are on it. Maybe it would be a lot to expect an admission of failure on such a public stage, but Federighi could have done one of his self-deprecating jokes, while slickly segueing into a hype job about the improvements coming down the pipe. I mean, what happened to Operation Bobcat, Craig?

I don’t understand why Siri isn’t Priority No. 1 at Apple Park right now. Because–and I must apologize to regular readers for harking back to a favorite complaint here–the voice assistant simply isn’t fit for purpose, and its deficiencies taint my experience with nearly every Apple device I own. That includes, as previously mentioned, the devices (such as the Apple Watch) on which I very rarely use Siri, because Siri won’t take a hint and pushes its way into my life anyway. But it’s particularly infuriating on the ones where I rely on Siri, which is to say the HomePods in the living room and kitchen, and the iPhone, hooked up to CarPlay when selecting songs on a drive.

Ask for a song that shares a name with the album it’s on, and Siri will assume you mean the album (which surely the statistics would argue against?) and blithely start playing that instead. Ask for a song that’s incredibly famous in the studio version, and Siri will inexplicably plump for an obscure live recording with unclear vocals. Ask for a song you play all the freaking time but this time say the name of the artist slightly less clearly than Siri likes, and it will guess a same-named song by someone else who you’ve never listened to in your life. As far as musical choices go, Siri is like that wedding DJ who patiently listens to your grandma’s request for Perry Como, then slams on the Andrew WK record he was going to play all along. It would be funny if it wasn’t so annoying.

Remember when Apple apologized for Maps? That was great! Taking responsibility is cool. Resolving to improve things is cool. Let’s all admit that Siri is a dog’s dinner, then we can get back to salivating over Vision Pro, and I can stop writing these articles. Otherwise, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Trending: Top stories

The widgets revolution is coming to change your screens forever.

iOS 17 has a bunch of great features–that no one will ever use.

Apple Vision Pro will replace the Mac long before the iPhone.

Swiss fruit growers have expressed concern as Apple seeks trademark rights to actual apples.

Best Buy’s Apple Watch Ultra Upgrade+ plan offers a peek at Apple’s hardware sub.

Apple has killed off Apple Card financing for SIM-free iPhones.

The rumor mill

The iPhone 15 is getting a U2 chip to prepare for Vision Pro integration.

Sorry, iPhone SE fans. The new model probably won’t arrive until 2025… if at all.

An FCC filing suggests Apple is launching an AirPods Max competitor from Beats.

Podcast of the week

Apple revealed iOS 17 at WWDC, and it looks like it’s more than a maintenance release. We talk about the features of iOS 17 that caught our eye, in this episode of the Macworld Podcast.

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Software updates, bugs, and problems

If you’re reading this on an Apple device, go update it right now.

New Maps, Calendar, and search integrations are coming to Chrome on iOS.

You can now home-repair your iPhone 14 and M2 MacBook.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Twitter or on Facebook for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.

Apple Inc

Apple’s Vision Pro may be the most intriguing new Apple product in years, but at $3,499, very few people are going to actually buy one. But fret not: Apple is reportedly already working on a cheaper model to be announced in 2025.

In his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman claims that a “cheaper” version of the Vision Pro is in development, likely with “lower quality screens, either an iPhone-grade chip or an older Mac chip and fewer cameras.” Dubbed Apple Vision or Apple Vision One, the headset is expected to launch in 2025.

We’ve heard this rumor before, but now that we know what Apple’s high-end headset looks like, does, and costs, it puts the less-expensive model in a bit more context. The headset is packed with very high-end tech, so we can expect the cheaper model to cut back on some of the specs, not unlike the iPod mini. Compared to the iPod, the iPod mini had a smaller case and screen and introduced the Click Wheel, a compact version of the original iPod’s iconic scroll-wheel, as well as less storage for $249, about 40 percent less than the original iPod. A similar formula puts the lower-priced Vision at around $2,000, which seems like a bargain compared to the Vision Pro.

Apple cut the price of the iPhone too, but a higher-end model wasn’t introduced until the iPhone 6 Plus many years later. With Vision Pro, Apple is setting the bar extremely high at the start in order to make its lower-end model seem even more affordable.

Like the iPod mini, Gurman says certain features will likely make it into the cheaper model, including the external EyeSight screen that projects an image of the wearer’s eye and the eye- and hand-tracking interface. However, a cheaper headset could sacrifice screen, audio, and build quality to lower the price.

It makes sense to price Vision Pro so high. With the first version, you want to showcase the best possible tech, and in the case of the Vision Pro, it needs to blow people away. Apple will surely sell some Vision Pro headsets, but its main job will be to make people who won’t buy one want one—so when the cheaper model arrives they’ll rush to buy one. Just like the iPod mini.

Apple, Virtual Reality

The Apple Vision Pro has been here for only a week (disclaimer: not actually here at all) and the general reactions seem to be a mix of awe, desire, fear, and sadness. Let’s see what we can unpack.

Apple seems to believe that it has found a way to solve the isolation problem presented by every headset product to date. The Macalope thinks it’s a fine solution for the headset wearer. It’s less of a solution for people who have to interact with that person, however.

As a mythical creature who has been guilty of claiming to be paying perfect attention to a conversation while playing a video game–in the past, of course, surely this hasn’t happened while playing “Tears of the Kingdom” over the past few weeks, why, who have you been talking to, it’s the Macalope’s spouse, isn’t it–the Macalope has found that people would often prefer that you not try to have your cake and eat it, too. Particularly right in front of them all while denying you have any cake at all.

“Look, my fake eyes show I’m paying attention to you!” is not the convincing message you think it is. “We’re really connecting now!” No, we’re not, Kent! Take the headset off!

It’s not all fake eyeballs and another promise that Apple is getting into gaming (this time for sure), though. This is still an amazing product and what’s particularly amazing about it is not that it will play games or show you movies on the side of Mt. Hood (it should have been a drive-in), or let you creepily relive precious family moments when no one saw your actual face (yeah, yeah, how’s that different from any family moment?). It’s the thing they led with: spatial computing.

There are a lot of reasons why the Vision Pro is seven times as much as most headsets you can buy today. Cameras, nits, motors, number of processors… It will clearly run circles around the other devices at the things they currently do. But probably the biggest is the thing that none of them can do: be a spatial computer.

Okay, all computing takes place in space (and time!). But, since the dawn of computing, users have been restricted by screens. Sure, if you’re a cartoon villain you’ve got dozens of screens set up in your subterranean layer, but that’s a half solution at best and…

Well, it’s a weird look, Kent. We’re just gonna say it. You think it looks ominous, we think it just makes you look lonely.

Also, eating a “high gluten” diet doesn’t make you a villain. It just doesn’t. You’re not hurting anyone but yourself. And, really, no one even knows what you mean by that so we don’t even know if you are hurting yourself.

Anyway, imagine a screen with no edges. There. Apple’s multi-year investment in making bezels smaller had a huge breakthrough when they were able to make them with a negative width so they wrapped all the way around you. Honestly, the Macalope is quite looking forward to being able to put distracting apps behind him so he has to turn completely around to see them. He might actually get something done.

The Vision Pro is just the beginning of spatial computing. A very expensive beginning. Yes, after months of hearing that Apple’s headset would be $3,000 while many speculated Apple would do what it did with the iPad and undercut the rumored price, it is actually more than that. So, while this device is both amazing and troubling, it’s clearly not for everyone.

This rollout reminded the horny one of the Apple Watch rollout. First, both had an early announcement. Of course, Apple’s done that in the past, the iPhone being the most notable case, but in the case of both the Watch and Vision Pro, these are devices that look less likely to gain wide early adoption. Their announcements also featured an emphasis on personal touches that kind of fell flat: a man reliving a family moment by himself and sending a heartbeat to someone. That awkwardness didn’t affect the Watch’s long-term success and the Macalope doubts it will affect the Vision Pro’s.

Apple has plenty of time to refine its message around this product. Heck, it has time before it even ships. But even when it does ship, it’s not going to ship to that many people. This is a tantalizing first look at a rather radical breakthrough in computing. And while some of it may have been rough around the edges and unintentionally painted a bleak future of humans sitting by themselves reliving memories of when they used to interact with their families…

Jeez, now the Macalope’s depressed himself so much he forgot what he was going to say.

Anyway, it’ll probably all work out.

Apple, Virtual Reality

The Apple Vision Pro has been here for only a week (disclaimer: not actually here at all) and the general reactions seem to be a mix of awe, desire, fear, and sadness. Let’s see what we can unpack.

Apple seems to believe that it has found a way to solve the isolation problem presented by every headset product to date. The Macalope thinks it’s a fine solution for the headset wearer. It’s less of a solution for people who have to interact with that person, however.

As a mythical creature who has been guilty of claiming to be paying perfect attention to a conversation while playing a video game–in the past, of course, surely this hasn’t happened while playing “Tears of the Kingdom” over the past few weeks, why, who have you been talking to, it’s the Macalope’s spouse, isn’t it–the Macalope has found that people would often prefer that you not try to have your cake and eat it, too. Particularly right in front of them all while denying you have any cake at all.

“Look, my fake eyes show I’m paying attention to you!” is not the convincing message you think it is. “We’re really connecting now!” No, we’re not, Kent! Take the headset off!

It’s not all fake eyeballs and another promise that Apple is getting into gaming (this time for sure), though. This is still an amazing product and what’s particularly amazing about it is not that it will play games or show you movies on the side of Mt. Hood (it should have been a drive-in), or let you creepily relive precious family moments when no one saw your actual face (yeah, yeah, how’s that different from any family moment?). It’s the thing they led with: spatial computing.

There are a lot of reasons why the Vision Pro is seven times as much as most headsets you can buy today. Cameras, nits, motors, number of processors… It will clearly run circles around the other devices at the things they currently do. But probably the biggest is the thing that none of them can do: be a spatial computer.

Okay, all computing takes place in space (and time!). But, since the dawn of computing, users have been restricted by screens. Sure, if you’re a cartoon villain you’ve got dozens of screens set up in your subterranean layer, but that’s a half solution at best and…

Well, it’s a weird look, Kent. We’re just gonna say it. You think it looks ominous, we think it just makes you look lonely.

Also, eating a “high gluten” diet doesn’t make you a villain. It just doesn’t. You’re not hurting anyone but yourself. And, really, no one even knows what you mean by that so we don’t even know if you are hurting yourself.

Anyway, imagine a screen with no edges. There. Apple’s multi-year investment in making bezels smaller had a huge breakthrough when they were able to make them with a negative width so they wrapped all the way around you. Honestly, the Macalope is quite looking forward to being able to put distracting apps behind him so he has to turn completely around to see them. He might actually get something done.

The Vision Pro is just the beginning of spatial computing. A very expensive beginning. Yes, after months of hearing that Apple’s headset would be $3,000 while many speculated Apple would do what it did with the iPad and undercut the rumored price, it is actually more than that. So, while this device is both amazing and troubling, it’s clearly not for everyone.

This rollout reminded the horny one of the Apple Watch rollout. First, both had an early announcement. Of course, Apple’s done that in the past, the iPhone being the most notable case, but in the case of both the Watch and Vision Pro, these are devices that look less likely to gain wide early adoption. Their announcements also featured an emphasis on personal touches that kind of fell flat: a man reliving a family moment by himself and sending a heartbeat to someone. That awkwardness didn’t affect the Watch’s long-term success and the Macalope doubts it will affect the Vision Pro’s.

Apple has plenty of time to refine its message around this product. Heck, it has time before it even ships. But even when it does ship, it’s not going to ship to that many people. This is a tantalizing first look at a rather radical breakthrough in computing. And while some of it may have been rough around the edges and unintentionally painted a bleak future of humans sitting by themselves reliving memories of when they used to interact with their families…

Jeez, now the Macalope’s depressed himself so much he forgot what he was going to say.

Anyway, it’ll probably all work out.

Apple, Virtual Reality