If you’re using QuickBooks Online with the service’s Mac app to manage your business’s accounting, you may have seen a message like the one below announcing that Intuit has stopped updating the QuickBooks Online app. This doesn’t affect your QuickBooks Online account, which you can and should use via a Web browser at qbo.intuit.com now. Even if the QuickBooks Online Mac app continues to work, which it likely will for some time, we recommend that you delete it and switch entirely to a Web browser. It’s not safe to use an unsupported app for financial records because Intuit won’t be fixing any security vulnerabilities going forward.

(Featured image based on an original by RODNAE Productions from Pexels)

Have you heard the term technical debt? It’s what you incur whenever you delay upgrading software and hardware for too long. It’s like forgetting to brush your teeth regularly and putting off dental checkups. There may be no immediate downside, but the ongoing maintenance and low cost of regular cleanings will likely save you from painful and expensive fillings and root canals.

It’s easy to start down the path toward technical debt. Perhaps you rely on an out-of-date productivity package, an industry-specific program that gets infrequent updates, or an accounting package that isn’t being developed for the Mac anymore. There’s no reason you have to act as soon as you realize you’ve been painted into a technical corner, but the longer you put off the upgrade, the faster the technical debt meter increases.

Here’s what happens. Because of the old app you need, you can’t upgrade to a new version of macOS. No problem, except that prevents you from running the app on a new Mac, since new Macs seldom support older versions of macOS. That’s not a problem either, until the old Mac dies and you need to replace it. Or, perhaps the Mac doesn’t fail, but it becomes clear that it’s far slower than any Mac you could purchase today. Worse, when you are forced to replace that Mac due to poor performance or hardware failure, you’re suddenly faced with an additional expense for new software on top of the new hardware. Old software is a ticking time bomb.

There’s another aspect to technical debt that you have to keep in mind. The older your systems are, the more work it will take to keep them running. That work may come out of time you could spend on other projects or with your family, or it could end up generating consulting expenses. Is it sensible to avoid the monthly cost of Adobe Creative Cloud if it means that you’re paying a consultant regularly to solve the kinds of problems that become ever more common with an older Mac that can still run the ancient Adobe Creative Suite 6?

In short, the deeper your technical debt, the more you’ll eventually pay in three categories:

• Loss of productivity: Modern Macs are vastly faster than models from years ago, and new app features can provide significant productivity boosts as well.
• Unscheduled upgrades: Murphy’s Law ensures that an old Mac or peripheral will fail at the worst possible time, usually when you’re facing a deadline or when the expense is hard to swallow.
• Support costs: Just as taking care of your teeth reduces the likelihood of dental surgery in the future, keeping up with upgrades eliminates the need for long hours of heroic data migration or recovery later.

We’re not saying that you have to buy the latest and greatest immediately. But you can employ some smart strategies to ensure that you never fall too deep into technical debt. Before we get into them, be aware that everything we’re going to discuss here will cost money. Sorry, but technology is essential to modern life and business—it’s not a luxury. However, follow our advice, and you will have more predictable costs and may even pay less overall.

Software

In the past, you paid for a software license once and could choose to pay a (usually discounted) upgrade fee every year or two. Licenses were typically expensive—it wasn’t uncommon for apps to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. Such licenses still exist, but many apps have moved to a subscription model, where you pay monthly or annually. The overall cost is usually roughly similar to the licenses plus upgrades of yesteryear, but many people dislike subscriptions because they feel locked in.

We empathize—subscriptions add up for us too—but on the plus side, they offer a predictable cost and guarantee that you’ll always have the latest version, usually along with free technical support.

For software still sold on a license basis, we recommend assuming that you’ll upgrade at least every two or three years. Any longer than that and you’ll have to start making accommodations that will cut into productivity or increase support costs.

The worst-case scenario to avoid is depending on an app or system that’s so old that you have to buy used hardware to replace anything that fails. Bite the bullet and pay for a new app, transition consulting, and hardware, or else you’ll find yourself paying non-stop to keep an ancient system running.

Hardware

Smart businesses upgrade their Macs on a schedule rather than dealing with each computer on an individual basis. Research has shown that the sweet spot to swap out a Mac is in the 3–5 year timeframe. Hardware problems start to increase after that point, performance lags compared to current machines, and resale value drops.

If you don’t already have one, make an inventory of all your Macs, including the date they were purchased, and use it to work up a replacement schedule. Larger companies tend to do this programmatically—they pay less attention to what each employee does or what their needs are—but there’s no reason you can’t prioritize some systems over others to optimize performance and smooth out the overall expense.

It may make sense to shuffle some Macs around instead of treating each one independently. For instance, if one employee does a lot of video work, upgrading them every year to the most powerful Mac available might improve their productivity significantly, and their old Macs can be handed down to other employees.

Maintenance

Regular maintenance also plays a role in avoiding technical debt. It’s essential to keep up with Apple’s operating system and security updates, for instance, because failing to do so could result in a breach that would be costly to remediate.

Monitoring software can also be useful in providing early warning of failing drives, reporting on backup status, clarifying which of your Macs are up-to-date, and much more. Contact us if you’re interested in learning more about a service like this.

Don’t dismiss physical maintenance as a way of reducing technical debt. Keeping Macs free of dust can prevent them from running hot, which shortens the lifespan of various components. Ensuring that every Mac has at least a surge protector, if not an uninterruptible power supply, can also go a long way toward protecting sensitive electronics from damaging power surges and sags.

In the end, avoiding technical debt just means making a plan for regular upgrades and maintenance and sticking to it. Do that and you’ll both have predictable expenses and save money in the long run. And hey, make that dentist appointment too, eh?

(Featured image by Anna Shvets from Pexels)

We’ve all gotten that panicked “Where are you?!?” text message at some point. Sometimes it’s an easy question to answer, but at other times, the answer is “Well, right here, wherever that is.” That’s unsatisfying, of course, but using Messages on your iPhone, you can do better. Tap the person’s name at the top of the conversation, tap the Info button, and in the screen that appears, tap Send My Current Location. Messages immediately sends a little thumbnail map showing where you are, and if the recipient taps it, they can see a larger map, get directions, or open it in Maps. It’s a brilliant little feature!

(Featured image by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels)

After a long day of video calls, you might feel like your brain has been wrung out like a wet washcloth—we certainly do. It’s exhausting to stare into a computer for hours every day while participating in meetings or classes. This condition is called Zoom fatigue, and it’s a recent affliction for most of us because the pandemic has dramatically increased the popularity of video calls. We don’t mean to beat on Zoom here—this condition plagues people who use Cisco WebEx, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Skype, and other videoconferencing software too.

But there are techniques you can employ to reduce Zoom fatigue. Researchers at Stanford University have identified four reasons why video calls are so tiring and offer suggestions on making them less so. They include:

• Close-up eye contact is overwhelming. You usually sit about an arm’s length from your computer display, and if one person is on screen at a time, their head may be close to life-size. You’d never be that near someone’s face in real life unless they were a close family member, and even then, you wouldn’t hold that position for long. Shrink your window or switch to gallery view so you’re talking to postage stamps rather than feeling like someone is up in your face.
• Looking at yourself is psychologically harmful. We all have mirrors, but can you imagine staring into one for hours every day? Only a pathological narcissist would do that. Worse, constantly seeing your own image can make you worry about your appearance and what others think of you. Once you’ve verified that you’re properly framed and don’t have salad in your teeth, hide your preview or switch to a view that doesn’t include you.
• Sitting perfectly still is difficult. This is hardest on kids, but even adults have trouble staying sufficiently still to remain perfectly framed in a video window. When you’re on a standard phone call or in an in-person meeting, you might pace around the room or at least adjust your position in your chair. Try turning off your camera when possible—most calls work just as well without video—or position it so you can fidget or pace in person. Another solution is Apple’s Center Stage technology on the new M1-based iPad Pros, which automatically pans and zooms to keep you in the picture as you move around.
• Video calls make you constantly think about call mechanics. There’s nothing natural about interacting with multiple people on a screen, so we’ve all come up with behaviors (some of which we just recommended!) to smooth over the cracks in the system. For instance, your brain has to expend extra effort to help you stay framed in the video window, worry about how you look, use exaggerated facial expressions so people know you’re paying attention, and use techniques like a thumbs-up to indicate approval without unmuting. The solution is to turn off your camera and hide the video window so your brain can take a break and focus on just the audio content of the call.

You’ll notice that most of the recommendations for reducing the mental strain of video calls come down to eliminating video. It shouldn’t be surprising because talking on the phone isn’t nearly as tiring, even when you’re on a conference call with a couple of people. There’s no question that video can help convey information that would be lost in a phone call, and it’s nice to see far-flung friends and family, but there’s no rule that video calls are the best form of communication for all situations.

We’ve started to put these recommendations into practice ourselves, and we encourage you to do so as well. And if you need support for why you’re turning off your camera or asking for audio-only calls, send people a link to this article.

(Featured image by Anna Shvets from Pexels)

You have to feel for Apple sometimes. The company’s engineers put an astonishing amount of work into the hardware and software necessary for Face ID to recognize your face nearly instantly and unlock your iPhone or iPad. Regardless of whether you’re wearing a hat and glasses. Even in the dark. It’s one of those pieces of technology that’s so advanced that it’s indistinguishable from magic.

But the one thing that stymies Face ID every time is also the most important factor in curbing the spread of the coronavirus: the humble face mask. We’ve all been wearing masks for the past year, so if you have an iPhone X or later with Face ID, you’ve undoubtedly been annoyed by having to tap in your passcode repeatedly while masked. Early in the pandemic, Apple tweaked iOS 13 so you could enter a passcode without waiting for Face ID to fail. That was a help, but with the just-released iOS 14.5, Apple has now made the problem go away entirely, at least if you have an Apple Watch.

Here’s how it works. Once you’ve updated your Face ID–enabled iPhone to iOS 14.5 and your Apple Watch Series 3 or later to watchOS 7.4, you can enable the Unlock with Apple Watch setting. From then on, if your mask prevents Face ID from unlocking your iPhone, iOS will check to see if your watch is nearby, on your wrist, protected by a passcode, and unlocked. If so, your iPhone unlocks immediately, just as though it had scanned your face successfully. Your Apple Watch also taps your wrist to alert you and give you the option of locking the iPhone again, just in case someone has surreptitiously snagged your iPhone and is using the feature to unlock it in your presence.

To enable this feature, go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode on your iPhone, scroll down to Unlock with Apple Watch, and turn on the switch next to your Apple Watch. If you don’t have a passcode enabled for your Apple Watch, turn that on in the Watch app, in My Watch > Passcode. (While you’re on that screen, be sure to enable Unlock with iPhone too, since that prevents you from having to type the Apple Watch passcode in nearly all situations.)

That’s all there is to it—it’s brilliant! Apple undoubtedly put a great deal of thought into architecting this feature so it’s easy to use without compromising the iPhone’s security. If you haven’t yet updated to iOS 14.5 and watchOS 7.4, we encourage you to do so right away to take advantage of this feature. And if you don’t yet have an Apple Watch, this might be reason enough to get one.

(Featured image by Uriel Mont from Pexels)

Email is a major part of all our lives, both personally and professionally, and as such, it can add up. Before you know it, you have years of email stored away—potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands of messages. Most of the time, that’s fine. Email doesn’t take up any physical space and not even that much digital space in the scheme of things.

However, there are situations where you might want to archive email, by which we mean download it from the server and store it for posterity on your Mac, possibly outside your email app. Some of those reasons include:

• Insufficient server space: Institutional email accounts sometimes have inflexible mail quotas, and although you can pay for more storage on many large email providers, you might prefer instead to clear out old mail that you don’t refer to anymore.
• Reduce clutter: Even if you have sufficient server space, archiving mail—particularly mail from ancient completed projects—might reduce the mental load of having it in your email app.
• Poor email client performance: Although good email apps should be able to handle hundreds of thousands of messages, it’s possible that reducing the amount of email in your account would help if you’re experiencing slowdowns.
• Switching email providers: If you choose to stop using a particular email account, you might want to download all the mail in it first.
• Leaving a job or graduating from school: If you have a work or school email account that will be shut down after you leave, you might want to archive all that email beforehand.
• Preserving a former employee’s business communications: From the opposite perspective, if an employee of yours leaves, you might want to archive their work email account so you have an easily searched record of what they said to clients or suppliers.
• Local backup: Although most email providers and businesses back up their servers (and probably better than most users), it’s not inconceivable that you could lose mail stored remotely. Archiving email locally—perhaps on an annual basis—ensures the long-term preservation of your email communications.

So how should you archive your email? There are two general approaches:

• Store email in a local mailbox: The most straightforward approach is to store email in a local mailbox on your Mac using your existing email app. It’s free and keeps your mail together, but it makes switching to another email app more complicated, and it’s fussy to move local mailboxes to other Macs. Plus, it may require some effort to keep an archive up to date.
• Archive email in a dedicated app: You’ll have to pay for an archiving app, but these apps work with multiple email apps, may provide more powerful searching capabilities, and often integrate email with other archived data. It’s also easier to move archived data between Macs or even keep it available on a server for access on multiple machines.

Store Email in a Local Mailbox

For simple archiving, it’s easy to create local copies of messages or mailboxes you want to preserve locally. The main thing to keep in mind here is the difference between moving and copying.

• Move: When you move a message from the server to a local mailbox, you’re deleting it from the server. Move messages when you want to clear space on the server.
• Copy: When you copy a message, the original message stays on the server, and a copy appears in the local mailbox. Copy messages if you want a local backup of important messages or mailboxes but also want to keep them available online.

How you do this varies slightly by app, but let’s look at Apple’s Mail—other apps will be similar. The first step is to create a local mailbox. Choose Mailbox > New Mailbox and then choose On My Mac from the Location pop-up menu when naming it.

Then, to move or copy mail:

• Move messages locally: Select messages and, from the Message > Move To menu, choose the desired On My Mac mailbox. You can also Control-click a selection to access the Move To menu or drag the messages from a server-based mailbox to a mailbox under On My Mac.
• Copy messages locally: Select messages and, from the Message > Copy To menu, choose the desired On My Mac mailbox. Alternatively, Control-click a selection to access the Copy To menu, or Option-drag the messages to an On My Mac mailbox. Also note that you can copy an entire mailbox by dragging it from an online account in Mail’s sidebar to the On My Mac section of the sidebar.

You can also select a mailbox and choose Mailbox > Export Mailbox to save all the data to a local file in .mbox format suitable for importing into other email and archiving apps.

Archive Email in a Dedicated App

When it comes to archiving email in an app dedicated to that purpose, the details vary, so let’s focus on giving you some choices for the leading Mac archiving apps. Once you know what you want, you can more easily pick among them:

• DEVONthink Pro ($199): The most powerful (and expensive) of these apps is undoubtedly DEVONthink Pro. It can import directly from Apple’s Mail and Microsoft Outlook and supports importing .mbox files exported from other email apps. Its integration with Mail and Outlook lets you continually archive new messages without worrying about duplicates. DEVONthink is a general-purpose information management app that also lets you import, organize, and search for files of any kind, scan documents with optical character recognition, and much more. The $499 DEVONthink Server lets multiple people access the shared data over the Web.
  
• EagleFiler ($49.99): Another general-purpose archiving app, EagleFiler supports direct imports from Mail and Outlook, and it can also import .mbox files exported from numerous other email apps. With Mail, EagleFiler can skip previously imported messages and includes an option to remove duplicate messages from mailboxes. It makes it easy to search archived email and lets you reply (using your standard email app) to archived messages. Beyond email, you can import, organize, search, and view any kind of file, and everything is stored in its original format in a standard Finder folder.
  
• Mail Archiver X ($49.95): Mail Archiver X focuses on email, supporting major email clients like Mail, Outlook, Postbox, and Thunderbird along with .mbox files, and it can even archive email directly from your IMAP or Gmail account. You can set up Mail Archiver X to archive email on a schedule, automatically skipping previously archived messages. It lets you store messages in its internal database format, FileMaker (if you have a license), or PDF.
  
• MailSteward ($24.95/$49.95/$99.95): All the basics are here—support for Mail and Postbox plus .mbox files, scheduling of imports, importing into a relational database, automatic skipping of duplicates (and later identification of them if necessary). The three editions of MailSteward let you pick how much power you need. The Lite edition may be all most people need, but the standard edition adds automatic scheduling, saved searches, and database exporting and merging. The Pro version is necessary only for very large archives over 250,000 messages—it trades MailSteward’s SQLite database for MySQL.
  

We realize there’s a lot to think about here, but no one solution fits all. If you’d like advice on which app would be best for your particular needs and help setting it up, don’t hesitate to contact us.

(Featured image by Gerhard G. from Pixabay)

Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive all have their place, but as of March 2020, Apple users no longer have to venture outside the Apple ecosystem for online folder sharing. Before then, you could share a single file in iCloud with another iCloud user, but nothing more. With iCloud Drive Folder Sharing, you can share an entire folder, complete with permissions that control what your collaborators can do with the contents of the folder.

Pros and Cons

Why use iCloud Drive Folder Sharing instead of the more established services? Cost is the main one. Say you’re already paying Apple $9.99 for 2 TB of storage so you can use iCloud Photos with a large library. Why pay one of the other services another $9.99 per month—$240 per year—when you can get the same capabilities using iCloud? (Dropbox used to be entirely usable at its free level for those who didn’t need much shared storage, but users at that tier are also limited to just three devices, rendering it problematic for anyone with an iPhone, iPad, and desktop and laptop Macs.)

The main reason not to use iCloud Drive Folder Sharing is if the people with whom you want to share documents aren’t Apple users. Such people can get a free iCloud account if they create an Apple ID and then access iCloud Drive in a Web browser. Windows users can instead install iCloud for Windows to access it in Windows Explorer. But that may be too much effort for many.

iCloud Drive Folder Sharing on the Mac

First off, make sure iCloud Drive is selected in System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud. If you have plenty of storage, leave Optimize Mac Storage unchecked. It’s worthwhile only if your Mac’s internal drive is nearly full.

On the Mac, iCloud Drive creates a special folder to hold all the data mirrored to iCloud. You can access it by choosing Go > iCloud Drive in the Finder. It’s usually available in the sidebar of Finder windows too. If not, open Finder > Preferences > Sidebar and select iCloud Drive.

You’ll likely see quite a few folders in iCloud Drive already, with names and icons matching apps that synchronize their data and files via iCloud. These folders exist purely for you and your apps—you can’t share them. However, you can create and share other folders within iCloud Drive.

To share a folder you’ve created, Control- or right-click it and choose Share > Share Folder to display a Share Folder dialog. You need to do three things here:

• From the Who Can Access pop-up menu, choose between “Only people you invite” and “Anyone with the link.” With the latter, you’re opting for security only through obscurity, so avoid that option if the data in the folder is confidential or important.
• From the Permission pop-up menu, choose between “Can make changes” and “View only.” Think carefully about this choice—view-only users can still copy files out of the folder and change them locally on their computers. However, they won’t be able to change your versions of shared files or add new files to the folder.
• Despite its position at the top of the dialog, choose the manner of sending the invitation last. If you’re sharing only with people you invite, you can select a sharing method and enter their email addresses or phone numbers. For folders shared with anyone who has the link, you don’t need to enter information for specific users.

When the people with whom you’re sharing the folder receive the sharing invitation or link and open it, the shared folder is added to their iCloud Drive folder. Its icon will have silhouettes of multiple people to indicate it’s a shared folder.

What if you need to invite more people, change permissions, get the sharing link again, or stop sharing entirely? Control- or right-click and choose Share > Manage Shared Folder (there’s also a Copy Link option there). A new dialog appears.

Most of the controls here are self-explanatory, but note that you can revoke a person’s access and change their permission level by clicking the ••• button in the row next to their name.

iCloud Drive Folder Sharing in iOS/iPadOS

The process is similar in iOS and iPadOS. Follow these instructions in the Files app:

1. Press and hold on the folder you want to share.
2. In the sheet that appears, tap Share.
3. In the Share sheet that appears, tap Share Folder in iCloud.
4. On the Share Folder screen, first tap Share Options and set Who Can Access and Permission.
5. Tap Back to return to the Share Folder screen, and tap the app through which you want to send your invitation (Messages below).
6. Enter the name of your recipient or pick them from your contacts list.
7. Enter a message to your recipient and send them the link to the shared folder.

Managing a shared folder in the Files app is similar. Once you press and hold on an already shared folder and tap Manage Shared Folder in the Share sheet, you can do the following:

• Tap Share Options to change Who Can Access and Permissions options, or to copy the link to the shared folder.
• Tap a person’s name to change their permissions or remove access entirely.
• Tap Stop Sharing to stop sharing the folder.

One final tip. Although iCloud Drive generally works well, we’ve occasionally seen it get stuck syncing on the Mac. You may see files or folders fail to sync between devices or have a file or folder permanently display the little cloud icon in the Finder that indicates iCloud Drive is updating. To resolve such problems and reset the local state of iCloud Drive, first make a copy of any critical files to the desktop, just in case. Then open System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud, deselect iCloud Drive, click Remove from Mac when prompted, and then select iCloud Drive again. Give it some time to resync with iCloud and download new copies of your files.

(Featured image by sendi gibran on Unsplash)

On April 20th, Apple took to the Internet to stream its “Spring Loaded” event. Pundits had been unable to figure out a theme based on the name, but Apple was being blunt: the event was taking place in the spring, and it was loaded with announcements.

With Apple CEO Tim Cook bookending the presentation—and doing a cameo as a master thief at 37:26 into the presentation—the company announced an M1-based 24-inch iMac, M1-based iPad Pro models, the long-rumored AirTag item tracker, and an enhanced Apple TV 4K with a redesigned Siri Remote. All these items can be ordered on Friday, April 30th, but some won’t ship until the second half of May.

More on these shortly, but briefly, Apple also unveiled the new Apple Card Family program, which allows two people to co-own an Apple Card and share it with their children, complete with spending limits. And for those still looking for a colorful iPhone 12 or iPhone 12 mini, it now comes in purple.

M1-Based 24-inch iMac Comes in Spring Colors

Apple has continued replacing Macs at the lower end of the product line with new models featuring the company’s homegrown M1 chip. While the first Macs to get the M1—the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini—didn’t receive any design changes, Apple radically overhauled things for the new M1-based 24-inch iMac.

At 11.5 mm thick, the 24-inch iMac is thinner than the original iPhone. It comes in seven colors: green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, blue, and silver. The back of the iMac—which is often visible, such as on a receptionist’s desk—is a bold, vibrant color, whereas the front uses a muted version of the color and a light gray bezel. It looks like a 24-inch iPad clipped to an aluminum stand. It’s so thin that there’s no room for a standard power jack, so it comes with an external power adapter that includes an optional Ethernet jack.

Behind the iMac’s “chin” is the guts of the computer, most notably the same M1 chip as in other M1-based Macs. Overall performance will be stellar thanks to the M1’s 8-core CPU and 8-core GPU, but you can tweak the price/performance curve slightly by choosing a 7-core GPU instead and by picking either 8 GB or 16 GB of unified memory.

The screen, which actually measures 23.5 inches diagonally, offers 4480-by-2520 resolution, making it a 4.5K Retina display, between the 4K display on the now-discontinued 21.5-inch iMac and the 5K display on the 27-inch iMac. It’s topped by a 1080p FaceTime HD camera that, with help from the M1 chip’s image signal processor—and advanced microphones and speakers—should offer excellent out-of-the-box videoconferencing quality.

Apple introduced three new color-matched versions of the Magic Keyboard as well. One adds dedicated keys for Spotlight, Dictation, Do Not Disturb, Lock, and Emoji; the second trades the Lock key for the first Touch ID sensor on a standalone keyboard; and the third includes both Touch ID and a numeric keypad. They come with color-matched models of the Magic Mouse, or you can upgrade to a color-matched Magic Trackpad instead.

Two models of the 24-inch iMac are available:

• $1299 gets you that 7-core GPU, two Thunderbolt ports, 256 GB of storage that’s upgradable to 1 TB, optional Gigabit Ethernet, and a standard Magic Keyboard. It’s available in only blue, green, pink, and silver.
• $1499 gets you the 8-core GPU, 256 GB of storage upgradeable to 2 TB, two Thunderbolt ports and two USB 3 ports, standard Gigabit Ethernet, and a Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. And you can pick from all seven colors.

Our take is that the new 24-inch iMac is a fabulous Mac for a family, student, or front-office worker where everyone will appreciate its striking color and design. It may not offer everything a pro wants, but the Intel-based 27-inch iMac remains available, and Apple will be releasing even more powerful Macs based on Apple silicon for professionals, likely later this year.

M1-based iPad Pro Gains Thunderbolt and Liquid Retina XDR Display

Unlike the 24-inch iMac, there are no major industrial design changes in either iPad Pro model, but Apple has made significant upgrades under the hood, most notably switching from the previous A12Z Bionic chip to the M1 chip that now powers an increasing number of Macs. The M1 chip offers roughly 50% greater performance, significantly differentiating the 11-inch iPad Pro from the highly capable fourth-generation iPad Air introduced late last year.

Apple also updated the iPad Pro’s port from USB-C to Thunderbolt/USB 4, allowing users to take advantage of higher-performance hardware, such as external storage devices and high-resolution external displays. You can even connect Apple’s Pro Display XDR at its full 6K resolution. As welcome as Thunderbolt is, iPadOS could use enhancements to enable users to take full advantage of it.

For those who need constant connectivity while out and about, the cellular models of the iPad Pro now support 5G wireless networking, including the millimeter-wave version that offers the greatest throughput. Although 5G coverage is still extremely spotty, it’s only getting better, and supporting it will help future-proof these iPad Pro models.

Both iPad Pro models also receive a new 12-megapixel Ultra Wide TrueDepth camera on the front. Along with help from the M1 chip’s machine-learning capabilities, it enables a new feature called Center Stage that recognizes you in video calls and pans and zooms to keep you in the frame as you move around. It will work with FaceTime, of course, and Apple says third-party services will also be able to support it.

Last but far from least is a new display for just the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Based on the technology behind Apple’s $5000 Pro Display XDR, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro’s Liquid Retina Display XDR is lit by more than 10,000 miniature LEDs, combined into nearly 2600 dimming zones. (The previous model’s screen had 72 LEDs.) The result is a display that’s brighter and offers more contrast than before, making it ideal for photo or video editing. If you think screen quality is the deciding factor between the 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros, we encourage you to compare them in person with the same images or videos.

Pricing has changed a little for the iPad Pros. The 11-inch model continues to start at $799 with 128 GB of storage. However, the 12.9-inch model is $100 more expensive than previously, thanks to the Liquid Retina XDR display, starting at $1099 for 128 GB. Both are upgradeable to 256 GB ($100), 512 GB ($300), 1 TB ($700), or 2 TB ($1100), and note that the models with 512 GB and less come with 8 GB of unified memory, whereas the 1 TB and 2 TB models have 16 GB of memory. Adding 5G cellular now costs $200, up $50, although special deals with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon may reduce or erase that cost.

Find Your Keys, Purse, or Backpack with an AirTag

The long-rumored AirTag has finally appeared, promising to help us all stop misplacing our keys, purses, backpacks, and more. An AirTag is a small disc that you put inside or attach to something you might need help finding. Should that item go missing, you use the Find My app on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad, or in iCloud to locate the associated AirTag, just as you can use Find My to locate missing Apple devices or find family members. The Find My network leverages nearly 1 billion Apple devices to relay the location of lost items back to you, all without compromising anyone’s privacy. Plus, Apple has built in alerts if someone tries to track you with an AirTag.

AirTags are 1.26 inches in diameter and .31 inches high—roughly the size of four half-dollar coins—and run on a standard user-replaceable CR2032 battery. They communicate with nearby Apple devices via Bluetooth and Ultra Wideband, the latter of which works with an iPhone 11 or iPhone 12 to provide Precision Finding that directs you to the exact location of the AirTag. (“You’re getting warmer…”)

To make it easier to attach an AirTag to your keys or backpack, Apple offers a variety of key rings and loops, including some pricey Hermès versions. We anticipate third-party manufacturers will offer numerous alternatives.

A single AirTag costs $29, or you can buy a four-pack for $99. Apple offers free engraving, although the company limits the emoji available to prevent pictographic rudeness. We’re looking forward to giving an AirTag a try, assuming we can still find our keys when it ships on April 30th.

Apple TV 4K Offers Enhanced Video and Redesigned Siri Remote

After four years, Apple has finally updated the hardware inside the Apple TV 4K, giving its second-generation model a faster A12 Bionic processor, HDMI 2.1, and 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 wireless networking. The speedier processor enables playback of HDR and Dolby Vision video at 60 frames per second, and the other hardware changes could enable new capabilities in the future, like 4K video at 120 fps.

In software, Apple added a new color calibration feature that lets you use any Face ID-enabled iPhone running iOS 14.5 or later to calibrate the colors on your TV; it will also be available to the Apple TV HD and first-generation Apple TV 4K. Also new is support for Thread, a cross-platform mesh networking protocol for home automation devices, which could play a role in the future of HomeKit.

But the big news is that Apple redesigned the much-reviled Siri Remote, adding more buttons and reducing the emphasis on the touchpad surface. The new Siri Remote features a circular clickpad controller with five-way navigation, a touch-sensitive surface for swiping in the middle, and a touch-sensitive outer ring that works as a jog control for navigating within a video. It also features dedicated power and mute—at last!—buttons for your TV. Finally, there’s a new side button for invoking Siri so you don’t accidentally press it in the dark. It has a rechargeable battery that should last for months. The only thing lacking? The necessary hardware so you can use the Find My app to ferret it out from inside the couch.

Apple is bundling the new Siri Remote with the new Apple TV 4K ($179 for 32 GB or $199 for 64 GB) and the old Apple TV HD ($149), and if you already have an Apple TV HD or 4K, you can buy the new Siri Remote by itself for $59.

(Featured image by Apple)

If you’ve turned on automatic App Updates in Settings > App Store on your iPhone or iPad, you might wonder how you’d know if an app was updated or what changed. To find that information, open the App Store app and tap your avatar icon in the upper-right corner. Scroll down and you’ll see an Updated Recently list. If you pull down on the screen, that will force it to refresh, and you may see a list called Upcoming Automatic Updates at the top. For any downloaded update, you can tap Open to open it. If it hasn’t yet been downloaded, you can tap Update to update it right away rather than waiting for the automatic update. Tap More to see the full release notes. Finally, here’s a hidden tip: swipe left on any app to delete it.

(Featured image by Brett Jordan from Pexels)