MacLife

BY THE TIME you read this Apple will have revealed its next major upgrades to iPhone, with the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max all getting amazing new features — from improved cameras to more powerful “brains”, but you don’t need to spend a cent to gain access to much of what’s on offer. That’s because alongside new iPhones, Apple is releasing iOS 18, which offers all kinds of additions and improvements — like Apple Intelligence and new ways to customize your Home and Lock Screens, plus apps such as Passwords and Image Playground. While not all of the capabilities unveiled at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June will be available straight away, there’s still plenty to excite and enthrall you — and you can…

Andrew Cottle Art Editor Andy is dusting himself down after reading about the strange Apple products that time forgot on p60 and hunting through the loft for much-loved old gear. Ian Evenden Production Editor Ian has been thinking about getting a new Mac after a few years using an M1 iPad Pro instead of a laptop, but the iOS 18 guide on p12 makes him wonder if he needs to. Howard Oakley Contributor Problems with your Mac, iPhone or iPad? Luckily, Howard’s waiting on p46 to answer all your hardware and software questions.…

Biggest data breach ever? Nearly 3 billion Social Security numbers and other personal data leaked A HUGE “DATA SECURITY incident” has leaked up to 2.9 billion records containing personal information, affecting potentially “the entire population of the USA, Canada and the UK.” The data was held by National Public Data (NPD), a background–check company based in Florida. It has acknowledged the incident, although an official data breach notice filed in Maine by NPD says only 1.3m records were involved. The breach came to light in April, when a hacker known as USDoD, who has a track record of selling stolen data, started offering the huge data set on the dark web for $3.5m. Parts of the data were subsequently leaked and at least some of it was validated. In August…

Apple TV+ is successful. Creatively, at least. In July, Zack Van Amburg, Apple’s head of Worldwide Video, proudly responded to the streaming service’s 72 Emmy Award nominations across 16 shows. “It has been an immensely rewarding morning,” he said, going some way towards justifying the $20 billion Apple has spent on original programming so far. Yet all is not entirely well. That huge sum has paid for a relatively small number of shows, certainly when compared to Apple TV+’s rivals, notably Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime. From the start, Apple decided to go for quality over quantity, yet despite spending big to snap up high–profile talent, the service has only a 0.2% share of TV viewing in the US. Apple is now reassessing its strategy. According to a report by…

AIRPODS, EVERYONE’S favorite wireless headphones, have reached a point of stagnation with relatively few hardware improvements to write home about over the last few years. The AirPods Pro 2 are two years old, the AirPods Max launched nearly four years ago and don’t even have a USB–C charging port yet, and the AirPods 3 get the job done with three–year–old hardware. Software improvements aside — like the addition of Voice Isolation in iOS 18 — AirPods hardware doesn’t get the same annual refresh as Apple’s iPhones, and that’s okay. Audio hardware doesn’t need constant updates; the AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Max are some of the best consumer–friendly earbuds and headphones on the market — so why are we clamoring for more? A patent from June suggests that Apple could…

ARE YOU EXCITED? This year’s update to the iPhone’s operating system is iOS 18, and there are some major changes coming. The most important update is the introduction of Apple Intelligence, which Apple describes as “the personal intelligence system for iPhone, iPad, and Mac”. It’s integrated into all three device categories, and it offers opportunities to create text and pictures right there on your iPhone. The Home Screen and Lock Screen have been overhauled, with new ways of customizing your iPhone. You can even change the color of the app icons. Control Center also gets a boost, with opportunities to adapt it to your own needs. You can add far more controls, and spread them across multiple pages too. The popular Photos app gets its biggest ever redesign, including a…