In macOS Sonoma, Apple has changed the widgets landscape. No longer do widgets have to be hidden offscreen and largely forgotten in the Notifications Center panel. Now they live right on your desktop – and they're interactive, too. It's worth noting from the off that widgets can still be parked in Notification Center, but now they can also be dragged out onto the desktop. The first widget can be placed anywhere, then Apple provides placement guidance for subsequent widgets by displaying a widget-shaped outline, indicating where they can be snapped into position in relation to the others. Alternatively, if you right-click on an empty space on the desktop, the menu that appears includes a new "Edit Widgets..." option. Selecting this…

Macworld Waves of extreme heat have already passed across the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world so far this summer. While people are at the greatest risk from high temperatures, your Mac may be even more fragile. (People can be water cooled and no current Mac offers that option—though some have tried.) An iPhone or iPad will warn you when it detects it’s too hot before shutting down, while a Mac may simply suddenly power off. If it doesn’t power down, you may be running it to close to its maximum capability and putting a lot of additional wear in the process on components that might fail later during other seasons. Knowing the temperature is one thing. The other is…

Macworld At the heart of every Apple device is an Apple processor. Apple has been using its own chips in its iPhones and iPads for some time, while the Mac lineup has finally completed its transition away from Intel chips. Every product Apple makes is powered by a home-grown chip. What’s remarkable about Apple silicon is its performance and power efficiency. But all chips aren’t created equally. Understanding the performance differences between each chip will help with your buying decisions, especially when you’re deciding between iPhone 14 or MacBook models. Knowing how each chip performs gives you a better idea of what products to buy and whether or not it’s worth your money to step up to a higher model.…

Macworld Apple currently sells two laptop lines: the MacBook Pro (which comes in 13-inch M2, 14-inch M2 Pro/Max and 16-inch M2 Pro/Max models) and the MacBook Air (which is available in 13.3-inch M1 or 13.6-inch M2 and a, new for 2023, 15-inch M2 MacBook Air). That is a lot of Mac laptops with very different specs. In this article, we are concerned with the Mac laptops that are best suited to average use: home, student and office work. The 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M2 Pro or M2 Mac chips are better suited to pro users and have much higher prices, so we won’t be including them here. But if you are wondering whether your needs might extend…

Apple today seeded the second beta of the recently announced macOS 14 Sonoma update to developers for testing purposes. The beta comes two weeks after the launch of the first beta that came out following the June 5 WWDC keynote event. While the beta is limited to developers at this time, Apple plans to provide a public beta later this summer. Registered developers can download the beta through the Apple Developer Center and after the appropriate profile is installed, with the betas available through the Software Update mechanism in System Settings. macOS Sonoma introduces new Apple TV-like screen savers that also serve as wallpapers after you log in, plus it moves widgets to the desktop. You can use the new…

Apple today seeded the second beta of an upcoming watchOS 10 update to developers for testing purposes, with the software update coming two weeks after the beta was first introduced following the June 5 WWDC keynote event. To install the ‌watchOS 10‌ update, developers will need to open the Apple Watch app, go to the Software Update section under "General" in Settings, and toggle on the ‌watchOS 10‌ Developer Beta. Note that an Apple ID linked to a developer account is required. Once beta updates have been activated, ‌watchOS 10‌ can be downloaded under the same Software Update section. To install software, an Apple Watch needs to have 50 percent battery life and it must be placed on an Apple…