When the European Parliament voted in favor of making USB-C the common charging standard in the region, it was pretty obvious which company was going to be the most affected by the mandate. Apple, of course. While the tech giant already has iPad models with USB-C ports, its iPhones still require a lightning connector. Now, in an interview at Wall Street Journal'sTech Live event, Apple's SVP of worldwide marketing Greg Joswiak has confirmed that the tech giant will be transitioning to USB-C connectors to comply with the EU's regulation.
"Obviously, we’ll have to comply." Joswiak responded when asked by WSJ's Senior Personal Technology Columnist, Joanna Stern, whether Apple is moving to USB-C. But not before talking about the company's history with regulation compliance, such as making its phones compatible with hearing aids and how it had to come up with its own solution because existing technology at the time didn't work.
Joswiak also talked about how the EU has been pushing for the adoption of micro-USB 10 years ago. Since part of the EU's concern was that people had to have several adapters with different connectors, Apple made cables detachable so that people can easily switch them out. The executive said the move allowed over a billion people to continue using their lightning cables instead of throwing them out and giving rise to a "bunch of e-waste."
"We have no choice as we do around the world but to comply to local laws," Joswiak said. However, he didn't say whether Apple is only making a different variant for the European market while continuing to sell phones with lightning connectors elsewhere. He also that Apple thinks the approach would have been better environmentally and better for its customers to "not have a government be that prescriptive."
Apple also previously cited environmental concerns for not selling power adapters with new devices. The tech giant said that doing so will save 861,000 tons of metal and will also save fuel, since more iPhones can fit in shipping containers. Not everyone was convinced with the company's explanation, though, and Apple has gotten fined several times in Brazil for removing adapters from iPhone packages.
Under the new EU mandate, Apple will have to ship iPhones and iPads with USB-C ports in the region by the end of 2024.
Back in July, Samsung began testing a new privacy feature on Galaxy S21 phones in Korea. Dubbed Maintenance Mode, the tool allowed users to secure their personal information – including photos, messages and contacts – when sending their device in for repair. Now Samsung says the feature is ready for primetime.
Starting today, the company has begun rolling out Maintenance Mode to Galaxy devices with One UI 5 installed. Broader availability will follow in 2023. In other words, Galaxy S22 users will receive access to the feature first.
Once Maintenance Mode arrives on your phone, you’ll find the option to enable it within the “Battery and device care” section of the Settings menu. It will create a separate account on your phone for a technician to use while working on your device. In addition to protecting your personal information, Maintenance Mode prevents a technician from seeing what apps you have installed. They can use the Galaxy Store to download any diagnostic software they need, but once they’re done, your phone will automatically wipe any new data and apps. When your phone is back in your possession, you can disable Maintenance Mode by authenticating your identity.
It's a major Apple update day, as the company is rolling out new versions of its iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems. While iPhone users at large have already had a taste of iOS 16, this will be the first time that most folks will get their hands on iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura.
Apple delayed the release of iPadOS 16 amid reports suggesting it needed more time to polish up the Stage Manager multitasking feature (which we felt was unrefined in an early iPadOS 16 beta). In fact, Apple said it was skipping a public release of iPadOS 16 and going straight to version 16.1 — just in time for the company's latest iPad Pro and entry-level iPad shipping this week.
The latest version of the iPad operating system will include many of the same updates as iOS 16, including significant changes to Mail, Safari, Messages and other key apps. There are more collaboration-centric features, while the Weather app is finally coming to iPad.
As for iOS 16.1, that offers shared photo libraries through iCloud and a clean energy charging function, which optimizes iPhone charging times depending on when the power grid is using greener energy sources. Apple Fitness+ is now available on iPhone without the need for an Apple Watch. Also new are an improved battery life icon, Live Activities and per-app copy-and-paste permissions, which should mitigate iOS 16's irritating paste prompts.
For digital artists, doodlers, and heavy note takers, we think Apple's own second-generation Pencil is, unsurprisingly, the best iPad stylus money can buy. The one major hang-up with the device has been that it's wildly expensive, but if you've been looking to pick one up, a deal going on today alleviates that concern at least somewhat. The second-gen Pencil is currently available for $89 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart, which marks the lowest price we've tracked to date and comes a couple days before Apple makes its newest iPad Pros widely available. This is $10 off the previous low we've seen from various past discounts, about $30 off the device's average street price in recent months, and $40 off Apple's MSRP.
As a refresher, both this and the first-gen Pencil—which Apple continues to sell for its older tablets at $99—are specifically designed to work with the iPad. There's no Bluetooth pairing process to worry about, and notably they both offer pressure sensitivity across iPadOS, so the harder you press down, the heavier the line you're drawing gets. Various third-party styluses support the latter in specific apps, but the Pencils have the benefit of offering it system-wide. The latest model was released in 2018 but, while it's possible Apple could announce an updated version in the near future, we haven't heard much to suggest a refresh is imminent.
Both Pencils perform reliably, but between the two, the second-gen Pencil remains a fairly noticeable upgrade. Instead of having to charge through a Lightning port—or a dongle, if you own a USB-C-based iPad—and awkwardly jutting out the side of your tablet, it attaches magnetically to a newer iPad's right side. Apart from providing more natural place to rest, this also charges the Pencil, so battery life should never be a concern unless you plan on drawing for 12 hours straight. The newer model also has a useful double-tap feature that lets you quickly toggle between settings in certain apps; in Apple's Notes app, for instance, you can double-tap to switch from your drawing tool to an eraser. The flatter edges of the second-gen Pencil are less conducive to rolling off a table than the rounded design of the first-gen model, too.
The other knock against the Pencil is that it's only compatible with iPads, and each generation only works with specific models at that. For the second-gen Pencil on sale here, those models include the fourth-gen iPad Air and up, the third-gen 12.9-inch iPad Pro and up, any 11-inch iPad Pro, and the sixth-gen iPad mini. All other iPads, including the entry-level 10.2-inch iPad or the just-announced 10th-gen iPad, aren't supported. Nevertheless, while there are other iPad styluses like Logitech's Crayon that we recommend for more casual needs, this deal should be a relatively strong value for more committed iPad artists.
In 2017, Apple released a $329 iPad, and ever since the company has said that this basic tablet is its most popular. It’s easy to see why: When I reviewed last year’s model last fall, I found that this relatively modest device could do almost everything I normally do with my pricier 11-inch iPad Pro. That said, in a world where Apple has gotten rid of the home button and trimmed the bezels on all of its tablets, the basic iPad was starting to feel stale.
So this year, for its tenth generation, Apple rebuilt the iPad, taking obvious inspiration from the iPad Air. It has the same size screen, cameras, USB-C port, optional 5G networking and Touch ID-enabled power button, all of which are improvements over last year’s model. It also has an A14 chip, which doesn’t stack up to the M1 in the iPad Air and M2 in the new iPad Pro, but it’s still a capable piece of silicon. Apple even designed a new keyboard and trackpad folio, the first iPad keyboard that the company made with a function key row.
Of course, Apple had to cut some corners to differentiate this iPad from the Air. The usual compromises are here — namely, the screen isn’t quite as good as the one on the Air, with no full lamination on the front glass, anti-reflective coating or support for the wider P3 color gamut. It also still only supports the first-generation Apple Pencil, which is a pretty major bummer for anyone looking for an improved stylus experience.
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
And all the changes Apple made means the iPad is no longer the tremendous value it was — it now costs $449, while last year’s 9th-generation iPad stays in the lineup at its original $329 price. I’ll be giving the new iPad a full review soon, but in the meantime, here are my first impressions after spending a few days with it.
While the new iPad is ever so slightly larger and thicker than the Air, my first feeling picking it up was one of complete familiarity. It feels almost exactly like the Air, but it’s obviously a completely different experience than using last year’s model with the old Home button. While the 10.9-inch display isn’t significantly bigger than the old 10.2-inch screen, it’s just big enough to make multitasking more comfortable. I miss things like the iPad Pro’s fully laminated display and 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate, but I notice the “air gap” between the screen and front glass less on this iPad than any of the older basic models. While the iPad Air technically has a better screen than this tablet, the difference between the two models has been significantly reduced.
Between the bigger screen and the new trackpad-equipped Magic Keyboard Folio, I feel a lot more productive on the new iPad than I did on last year’s model. The trackpad may be small, but when you’re using the iPad with a keyboard, it’s a lot more convenient to use than reaching up to tap the screen every time you want to move a cursor or switch apps. And the row of function keys that Apple included on the Smart Keyboard Folio is something that should have been included on every other iPad keyboard the company has made, so I can’t give them too much credit for finally getting things right here.
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
That said, it’s still handy to have an escape key and a handful of other useful shortcuts right there when you need them. Between that and the trackpad, you can get away without not having to touch the screen for longer stretches than ever before (that might lead you to ask why you’re using an iPad in the first place, but I’ll save those philosophical questions for my full review). Meanwhile, the typing experience is significantly better than the one the old Smart Keyboard cover offered, and the keys feel quite similar to the Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro and Air. I’m much more likely to use this iPad for long typing sessions than I was with last year’s model. As with most things Apple, though, this comes at a price — this new keyboard costs a whopping $249.
I’ve been using an M1-powered, 12.9-inch iPad Pro for much of the last four months as a testing device for iPadOS 16, so I had some concerns about the A14 chip on the new iPad. I shouldn’t have worried; while occasional things like swiping up to see all my open apps felt a little less smooth than I’d like, overall the new iPad is holding up extremely well so far. I can swipe through my library of RAW photos in Lightroom with no slowdowns, the games I’ve tried so far (including Skate City, Spire Blast and Mini Motorways) have all run perfectly and apps load quickly when I swap between them or pull up a few different ones at a time in Split View and Slide Over modes.
The only real catch I’ve noticed with the A14 compared to more powerful chips like the M1 is that apps often have to reload their content, probably because there’s less RAM here. For example, if I navigated away from the file I’m writing this in, I’d usually have to re-open it when I went back to Google Docs; it didn’t keep the file loaded in memory.
Before I can fully evaluate this new iPad, I need to push the A14 further with more intensive tasks; try out the new cameras (including the landscape-oriented front-facing camera!); dig more into the new features in iPadOS 16; and relive my frustration with the first-generation Apple Pencil. But at first glance, I’m slightly bummed about the price hike, but I recognize that these updates are a major improvement to the iPad experience. My thoughts so far are that spending the extra $120 to get this iPad instead of last year’s model is worth it, and that most people will even prefer it to the $600 iPad Air.
Evaluating the new iPad Pro is a simpler task than the basic iPad that Apple announced alongside it last week. That iPad has been completely redesigned. But the 2022 iPad Pro is a minor iteration of the model released in early 2021, which was powered by the M1 chip. Now, with M2 Macs out in the wild, Apple decided its best tablet needed one, too.
That new chip is by far the most notable change here. Otherwise, the design, screen, cameras, storage options, accessories and price are all the same. That’s not a big problem, though, because the iPad Pro was already an outstanding device — and the Liquid Retina XDR display Apple introduced on last year’s 12.9-inch model is still a simply outstanding screen. There are a couple new tricks here, like the Apple Pencil “hover” feature and the ability to shoot video in Apple’s ProRes codec, but by and large this iPad Pro isn’t angled at people who bought that M1 model. Instead, it’s just a case of Apple flexing its muscles by making the most powerful, spare-no-expense tablet that it can.
In the short time that I’ve been testing the latest 12.9-inch iPad Pro, I can say that it’s far more responsive than my personal 11-inch iPad Pro from 2020 as well as the new iPad I’ve also been testing. Those other devices aren’t slow by any stretch of the imagination, but the M2-powered iPad Pro responds to everything almost instantaneously. Of course, the same can be said about the M1 iPad Pro, especially given my modest workflow.
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
In a demo last week, Apple showed how the new iPad Pro can chew through apps like the forthcoming DaVinci Resolve and Octane X. The former is an intense video application that combines things like professional-level color correction, color grading, visual effects and much more, while Octane X is meant for 3D rendering. Both apps are pretty far outside things I’d use, but in the demo it was pretty easy to see how responsive the new iPad Pro was scrubbing through and editing frames from an 8K video or applying different effects.
One thing I can tell is that the new Stage Manager multitasking feature in iPadOS 16 is working much better on this new iPad Pro than it did in my testing on last year’s model using various beta releases over the last four months or so. Again, my needs are modest, but I never had any app crashes or moments where the interface just shut down and threw me back to the Home Screen. In a sign of Apple’s confidence, Stage Manager was even enabled out of the box, whereas it was turned off by default when iPadOS 16 was in beta.
Conceptually, I’m still struggling a bit with how Stage Manager decides what apps (or groups of apps) show up on the left-side switcher, and I feel like the experience of using it on any iPad smaller than the 12.9-inch Pro is not going to be much better than just using two apps in Split View, but it does seem a lot more stable now. I don’t know if that’s thanks to software optimizations, the more powerful hardware or some mix of both, but it’s a welcome change.
If you’re an Apple Pencil aficionado, the M2 enables a pretty cool new feature called Hover. As the name suggests, the iPad Pro can detect when the Pencil is within 12mm of the screen, and elements will start to react. For example, if you hold the Pencil over the apps in your dock or on the homescreen, the one that the Pencil is over will zoom in slightly to show you what you’re targeting. It’s similar to what happens when you use the trackpad to move the pointer over apps. It’s not the most essential trick, but it’s a good example of what Hover can do. But this is just a trick that doesn’t really change the iPad experience; developers will need to build Hover functions into their apps for it to be really useful.
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
That said, I was able to see a few potential use cases for it. In the Notes app, there’s a new watercolor brush, and when you hover the Pencil over the screen you’ll get a little preview of the color you’ve selected. And when you select a new color, you can hover the Pencil over your existing sketch to see how the watercolor interacts with it before actually drawing. In a demo of the illustration and animation app Procreate, hovering the Pencil over a project brings the animation to life or shows a 3D view of your creation. It’s one of those features that is clever but doesn’t have an essential use case yet, but I’m definitely curious to see how developers implement it.
Otherwise, most of what we said about the iPad Pro in 2021 still applies here. Performance is outstanding, the screen is one of the nicest that we’ve seen on any device, the Pencil and Magic Keyboard are great but expensive add-ons, but iPadOS 16 still feels like it occasionally holds back the hardware here. Over the next few days, I’m going to do more detailed performance testing to see how the M2 compares to the M1, though we already have a good idea of how that’ll play out thanks to how M2-powered Macs stack up to older models. Even after a few days, I’m pretty sure that people who own the M1 iPad Pro don’t need to worry about upgrading. If you really push your iPad Pro to the limit, and it’s a few years old, these new models should offer a pretty significant upgrade.
The next time you want to download an app on your iPhone, prepare to see more ads. Starting on October 25th, Apple will begin rolling out two additional ad categories to the App Store, according to an email seen by MacRumors. In all countries outside China, the company plans to begin selling ad space within the “Today” tab and at the bottom of individual app listings. Once they arrive, the ads will feature an icon with a blue background to distinguish them from other recommendations.
While Apple has sold search ads through the App Store since 2016, the Today tab was previously reserved for recommendations from the company’s editorial team. “With a Today tab ad, your app can appear prominently on the front page of the App Store — making it some of the first content users see when they begin their App Store visit,” the company states on a support page.
Apple first announced it was bringing ads to the Today tab in July. The expansion is part of a broader push by the company to expand its advertising business. According to a recent report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company hopes to nearly triple its advertising revenue to $10 billion annually over the next few years. In addition to more App Store ads, the company reportedly plans to introduce search ads to Maps in the near future.
Apple just dropped several new devices on us this week, seemingly out of nowhere. In this episode, Cherlynn and Devindra break down Apple’s new base iPad and iPad Pro with M2. They chat about why the iPad lineup is now more confusing than ever, and what that means going forward. (At least the new Apple TV 4K seems likely a genuinely solid upgrade.)
Listen below, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!
Apple isn't just updating iPad and Mac software next week. The company has revealed that Fitness+ will come to the iPhone on October 24th in tandem with required software updates, including iOS 16.1. You'll need the handset to sign up, but it will also be accessible through the iPad and Apple TV. You also won't need an Apple TV to put vital stats on the big screen — Roku players with AirPlay will display metrics as of November.
You'll have access to the full range of workouts and meditations through the relevant tab in the Fitness app. The main limitation, as you might guess, is accuracy. Where Apple Watch owners can rely on constant heart rate monitoring to determine their calorie burn, iPhone users have to trust estimates. You may still want Apple's smartwatch if you insist on personalized performance data. The wristwear is also useful if you want to listen to Time to Walk or Time to Run workouts without bringing your iPhone.
There are added incentives to give the service a try, too. You now get three free months of Fitness+ if you buy an iPhone, iPad or Apple TV, not just an Apple Watch as before.
iOS 16.1 will include a number of changes beyond Fitness+ support. You can expect an improved battery life icon, Live Activities like sports scores, iCloud Shared Photo Library, per-app copy-and-paste permissions and clean energy charging. Simply speaking, many of Apple's OS update promises will become reality in a matter of days, regardless of which device you're using.
Blackmagic Design is bringing it's popular DaVinci Resolve video editing app to the iPad, promising support for RAW, cloud collaboration and more, the company announced on Twitter. It won't be a full version of the PC/Mac app, as it will initially feature just the Cut and Color pages. Otherwise, though, "it will be similar to the desktop version," Blackmagic said.
The iPad app will support file formats including H.264, H.265, Apple ProRes and Blackmagic RAW, with clips available from the "iPad Pro internal storage and Photos library, externally connected iCloud or USB-C media disks," the company wrote on Facebook.
In addition, you'll be able to open desktop projects on the iPad version, including shared collaborative projects via Blackmagic Cloud. "This means DaVinci Resolve for iPad is the same professional tool, and the same codebase as used on major Hollywood feature films," Blackmagic pointed out.
There are some changes to the UI because of the screen size, as the menu bar will be removed, for instance. In addition, there's no plan to bring the Edit page to the iPad version, as it's essentially designed for a keyboard and mouse. "This makes it very difficult to move to the iPad without changing it in a way that would cause problems for professional editors who rely on the edit page for their work," the company said. Because of that, the Cut page will gain new features, including "enhanced audio support, key framing , split edits and more."
The Fusion effects and Fairlight audio tools aren't available yet either, "because their software code has not yet been redesigned for the iPad." However, the company plans to work on those pages and include them in a future release.
DaVinci Resolve is a popular app with professional editors, in part because of its powerful color correction tools — making Engadget's list of the best editing apps. In addition, there's a powerful free version of the app and the paid version costs just $300, with all future updates free. That has proven tempting for editors who don't want to pay a monthly fee to use Adobe's Premiere, After Effects and Audition tools.
