MacRumors

With iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura, it is going to be much easier to play iOS and Mac games with friends thanks to a new SharePlay integration feature that is coming to Game Center.

Introduced with iOS 15 and macOS Monterey, SharePlay is designed to let you make FaceTime calls with friends while doing other activities such as watching TV and using apps. With Game Center integration, all games that use Game Center's multiplayer support feature will automatically work with ‌FaceTime‌.

iOS and Mac users will be able to play multiplayer Game Center-compatible games while on a ‌FaceTime‌ call for a more interactive gaming experience. Unfortunately, the SharePlay Game Center feature is not going to be available right when the new software updates launch, and it is set to come in iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura updates later this year.

Apple is also adding Contacts integration to Game Center, allowing the Contacts app to show Game Center profiles for keeping a closer eye on what your friends are playing, but this too is coming at a later date.

To go along with the SharePlay and Contacts updates for Game Center, Apple has overhauled the design of the Game Center dashboard, which is accessible through the App Store. The revamped dashboard aggregates achievements and play activity to allow for a simplified interface.

Alongside iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, Apple announced the upcoming launch of a new Apple Pay Later feature, which is designed to allow customers to split ‌Apple Pay‌ purchases into multiple payments.

With ‌Apple Pay‌ Later, ‌Apple Pay‌ users can choose to make four payments spread over a six week period instead of paying up front. The ‌Apple Pay‌ Later feature includes no interest or fees so long as customers make the four payments within the allowed period.

Apple has partnered with Goldman Sachs and other companies for past financial ventures, but according to Bloomberg, Apple plans to take on the lending for the ‌Apple Pay‌ Later feature. Apple has launched a subsidiary, Apple Financing LLC, to handle credit checks and make decisions on loans for the service.

Apple Financing LLC operates separately from Apple, and as Bloomberg notes, this is the first time that Apple has opted to deal with financing itself. Goldman Sachs still has a role in the program, however, as it issues the Mastercard payment credential used to complete ‌Apple Pay‌ Later purchases as Apple Financing doesn't have a bank charter.

Bloomberg back in March said that Apple was working on a multiyear plan to bring its financial services in house, cutting out the need for partners like Goldman Sachs. Apple is working on payment processing technology and infrastructure such as lending risk assessment, fraud analysis, credit checks, and dispute handling, plus it is working on tools for calculating interest, rewards, approving transactions, reporting data to credit bureaus, increasing credit limits, and more. The ‌Apple Pay‌ Later feature is its first effort, but Apple may also use Apple Financial to handle other future services like the hardware subscription service that is in the works.

‌Apple Pay‌ Later has been in development for more than a year, and it is similar to PayPal's Buy Now, Pay Later feature that also allows for payments broken down into installments. At the current time, ‌Apple Pay‌ Later is limited to the United States.

iPadOS 16 is now available to developer beta testers with improvements in Messages and Safari and the all-new Stage Manager, enabling multiple app windows and Mac-like multitasking on M1 iPads.

As has always been the case, many features are shared across iOS and iPadOS, and that's certainly true this year. iPadOS 16 gains several major new features from iOS 16, including the ability to edit and unsend Messages, improvements to Focus, and more.

There are, however, some features and changes exclusive to iPadOS 16 that take even more advantage of the iPad and its performance. We've highlighted a few iPadOS 16 tidbits below:

Files App Gets Quality of Life Improvements

The Files app on iPadOS 16 is gaining some much-requested features from ‌iPad‌ users, including easier navigation buttons, easier access to common controls such as duplicate and rename, the ability to change file extensions, and more. The new changes are part of Apple's efforts to make iPadOS apps more "desktop-class."

System-Wide Undo and Redo and Find and Replace

iPadOS is gaining system-wide undo and redo functionality, making it easer and more Mac-like for users to easily revert changes made in apps and across the system. iPadOS 16 also introduces system-wide find and replace that in the Notes app, works in-line.

Reference Mode Support on 12.9-inch iPad Pro

With the high-end 12.9-inch iPad Pro running iPadOS 16, users can take advantage of the Liquid Retina XDR Display and use the ‌iPad‌ as a reference monitor. This is aimed at artists and creators who need accurate colors and vivid detail when working on large projects.

Option to Turn on Lock to End Call

Under Settings, Accessibility, and Touch, users can now choose to toggle on "Lock to End Call," making it easer to end a current call by pressing the top button.

Apple is making notable improvements to the built-in Weather app in iOS 16, expanding the available data. You can now tap on any Weather module to get additional useful information that was not previously available in iOS 15.

Tapping on the main hourly or 10-day forecast, for example, brings up a more detailed forecast that lets you see the temperature for each day in a graph view, making it easier to visualize the temperature range and the weather conditions on an hourly basis.

Most of the modules provide additional information on an hourly basis. With the UV Index, users can see the UV estimates throughout the day, and get a visual of when UV exposure will be highest.

There are similar hourly graphs for wind, precipitation, humidity, visibility, and pressure. The sunset/sunrise module provides information on first light, sunrise sunset, last light, and total daylight, along with monthly sunrise and sunset averages. When rain is predicted, there is a rain chart with 10 minute intervals.

Apple offers the same precipitation, temperature, and air quality maps with no added function, but there have been some slight design updates to refine the look.

The updated Weather app also now provides alerts for severe weather, though this is limited to select regions. Apple says that not all Weather features will be available in all countries.

To provide more information through the Weather modules, Apple is leveraging data from Dark Sky, the weather app that it purchased in 2020. Dark Sky on June 6 updated its blog post to clarify that the Dark Sky forecast technology is enhanced and integrated into the Weather forecast, powering the new Weather app.

Dark Sky technology is also behind WeatherKit, a new API for developers. WeatherKit is designed to allow users to incorporate Weather forecast data into their apps. According to Apple, WeatherKit allows apps to offer current weather conditions and 10-day hourly forecasts for temperature, precipitation, wind, UV index, and more, along with minute-by-minute precipitation for the next hour and severe weather alerts in select regions.

As we highlighted earlier this week, Apple with iPadOS 16 is bringing the Weather app to the iPad for the first time. It is identical to the iOS 16 Weather app, but more information is available on one screen thanks to the larger display.

There's also a dedicated Weather app on macOS Ventura, identical to the iOS and iPadOS Weather apps, bringing feature parity across Apple's device lineup.

Apple in iOS 16, iPadOS 16, tvOS 16, and macOS Ventura is introducing a new "Passkeys" feature that replaces traditional passwords when signing into a website or an app. Passkeys are more secure than passwords, and protect users from phishing, malware, and other attacks aimed at gaining account access.

According to Apple, Passkeys are next-generation credentials that are safer and easier to use than standard passwords. As Apple explains in a support document on the feature, Passkeys are built on the WebAuthn standard and use a unique cryptographic key pair for each website or account.

One key is public and stored on the website server, while the second key is private and kept on-device. On the iPhone and other devices with biometric authentication, Face ID or Touch ID is used to authorize the passkey to authenticate the user to the website. The keys must match to allow for a log in, and because the second key is private and available only to the user, it cannot be stolen, leaked, or phished.

Passkeys rely on iCloud Keychain, which in turn requires two-factor authentication for further protection. Passkeys sync across all of a user's devices through ‌iCloud‌ Keychain, which is end-to-end encrypted with its own cryptographic keys.

Passkey synchronization across accounts provides redundancy in case an Apple device is lost, but should all of a person's Apple devices become lost and the passkeys along with them, Apple has implemented an iCloud keychain escrow function to recover passkey information. There is a multi-step authentication process to go through to recover an ‌iCloud‌ Keychain with passkeys, or users can set up an account recovery contact.

Though Passkeys sound complicated on paper, in practice, it will be as simple as using ‌Touch ID‌ or ‌Face ID‌ to create a passkey to go along with a login.

Apple has been working with members of the FIDO Alliance, including Google and Microsoft, to ensure that passkeys can also be used with non-Apple devices and across platforms. On non-Apple devices, Passkeys will work through QR codes that will authenticate using the ‌iPhone‌, but it will require support from other companies, so it's a standard that needs to be adopted across the tech world.

There are unknowns about what happens to passkeys when transitioning away from Apple to another platform like Android, as Apple has not detailed what would happen in this situation.

Apple says that transitioning away from passwords is going to take some time, but it will be working with developers to create a passwordless future.

Starting with iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS Ventura, and watchOS 9, Apple Pay will allow users to pay multiple merchants in a single transaction within supported apps. Apple says this feature will let users make a bundled purchase, such as a travel package with flights, a rental car, and a hotel room, all in a single Apple Pay payment sheet.

Apple Pay has also received a redesign on macOS Ventura, with the payment sheet now looking similar to the one on iOS 15 and later.

As we previously reported, Apple Pay on iOS 16 is also gaining detailed receipts and order tracking information for Apple Pay transactions in the Wallet app. In addition, a new Apple Pay Later option will let customers split a purchase into four equal payments over six weeks, with no interest or fees to pay, according to Apple.

iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS Ventura, and watchOS 9 are currently in beta for developers and will be released to all users in the fall.

iOS 16 is chock-full of new features and changes, and earlier today we shared six interesting and unknown features Apple is bringing to the iPhone. Now, we're sharing six more iOS 16 tidbits.

Easily Manage Known WiFi Networks

Alongside being able to see your WiFi's password in iOS 16, users can now easily manage known and managed WiFi networks. Within the WiFi page in Settings, tap edit and authenticate with Touch ID or Face ID. From there, you'll be able to delete known networks and see their details.

Cleaner iCloud Settings Page

Apple has rethought the layout and structure of iCloud settings within the Settings app on ‌iPhone‌. The page is now organized into different sections, including "Sync with ‌iCloud‌," "Device Backups," and "‌iCloud‌+."

Within the Photos, iCloud Drive, Notes, Messages, Health, and Passwords and Keychain subpages, Apple has added a new icon, a small paragraph explaining the feature, and the ability to manage per-app functionality and storage.

New AirPods Glyph in Control Center and Now Playing

When connected to AirPods, a new corresponding glyph for your AirPods model will appear on the Now Playing section in Control Center and on the Lock Screen. This replaces the old AirPlay icon that remained static regardless of which device you're using.

New Battery Charging Being Held Alert

As spotted on Twitter (1, 2), iOS 16 will now alert users when the system has stopped charging the ‌iPhone‌ due to overheating, which could damage the longevity of the battery. The new notification will be displayed on the Lock Screen, Notification Center, and within the Battery page in Settings.

Redesigned Text and Editing Menu

Apple has redesigned the text and editing menu option on iOS 16, making it cleaner and now offering it in both light and dark themes, depending on your ‌iPhone‌'s current mode. In instances where the menu is longer, Apple has also readjusted the behavior of scrolling through options.

Quick Note Comes to iPhone

Introduced in iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey, Quick Note has come to the ‌iPhone‌ with iOS 16. Quick Note can be accessed via the Share Sheet across iOS, including for images, websites, and more.

Contacts Widget Now Indicates Unread Messages

The Contacts widget will now indicate if you have unread messages from a specific contact. The unread messages banner is limited to just the medium and large sized widgets for the Contacts app.

Apple's public release of macOS Ventura is expected sometime in October, but given the number of features in macOS Monterey that were limited to Apple silicon Macs, will Intel Mac owners again feel left out in the cold this fall?

Fortunately, it doesn't look like that will be the case this time round, with many of the major features in macOS 13 offering full functionality on both Intel and Apple silicon machines.

In fact, as long as your model of Intel Mac matches the minimum requirements for macOS Ventura, there's relatively little in terms of new features that will be off-limits to you. That said, here are three exceptions that we've been able to identify as being exclusive to Apple silicon.

Live Captions

macOS Ventura includes support for Live Captions across all audio content, and that includes FaceTime, allowing you to see automatically transcribed dialogue during calls. Live captions will be available in English and are limited to the iPhone 11 and later, ‌iPad‌ with A12 Bionic and later, and of course Macs with Apple silicon.

Reference Mode with Sidecar

Reference Mode with Sidecar lets you use a 12.9-inch iPad Pro with Liquid Retina XDR display as a secondary display with your Mac. "Reference" refers to the accurate and consistent representation of colors in professional workflows that involve review and approval, color grading, and compositing.

In Apple's example, the primary interface from Da Vinci Resolve is shown on a connected Studio Display, with color grading scopes on a MacBook Pro screen, and the fullscreen output image on an M1 ‌iPad Pro‌ in ‌Sidecar‌ mode.

Emoji Support in Dictation Mode

In macOS Ventura, Dictation automatically punctuates text with commas, full stops and question marks as you speak. You can also insert emoji with just your voice, although Apple says this particular feature only works on Macs with ‌M1‌ and later processors.

Dictation is available in Cantonese (Hong Kong), English (Australia, Canada, India, UK, US), French (France), German (Germany), Japanese (Japan), Mandarin Chinese (China mainland, Taiwan) and Spanish (Mexico, Spain, US).

Summing Up

As this short list demonstrates, there are far fewer restrictions in macOS Ventura for Intel users to contend with than there are in macOS Monterey. That said, macOS 13 does drop support for some Intel Macs sold between 2013 and 2016, so you may find that your model simply didn't make the cut for official compatibility.

Apple has almost finalized its two-year transition from Intel processors to its custom Apple silicon chips in Macs, with the changeover to be completed when the Mac Pro gets the Apple silicon treatment sometime this year. Expect Apple to reduce software support for Intel machines at a faster rate from 2023 and beyond.

macOS 13 Ventura is available to developers from this week, with Apple planning to provide a public beta in July.

Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers are now able to complete same-unit repairs for the Studio Display, instead of having to replace the entire display, according to an internal memo obtained by MacRumors.

The change came into effect this week, with Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers now able to order parts to complete Studio Display repairs in store.

Introduced alongside the Mac Studio in March, the Studio Display is Apple's newest standalone monitor that is positioned as a lower-priced alternative to its Pro Display XDR. The display features a 27-inch screen with 5K resolution, a 12-megapixel Ultra Wide camera with Center Stage, a six-speaker sound system with Spatial Audio, one Thunderbolt 3 port, and three USB-C ports. Pricing starts at $1,599 in the United States.

Studio Display supply remains heavily constrained. In the United States, Studio Display orders placed today on Apple's online store are estimated to ship in 6-10 weeks depending on the configuration. In-store availability is also tight.

Last month we tracked an all-time low price on Apple's M1 Mac mini, and that deal has now returned on Amazon. You can get the 256GB M1 Mac mini for $569.99, down from $699.00. You won't see this deal price until you add the Mac mini to your cart and an automatic coupon worth $99.01 is applied to the order.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Amazon. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

This deal remains the best price we've ever tracked for the M1 Mac mini. The Mac mini is shipped and sold directly by Amazon, with delivery as soon as June 10 - 13 for most places in the United States.

The M1 Mac mini was introduced in November 2020, and is the first Mac mini to include Apple's M1 chip. The M1 in the Mac mini has an 8-core CPU with four high-efficiency cores and four high-performance cores along with an integrated GPU that has 8 cores.

Be sure to visit our full Deals Roundup to shop for even more Apple-related products and accessories.

iOS 16 introduces a useful new feature that allows an eSIM to be transferred between iPhones via Bluetooth while setting up cellular service.

In the Settings app on an iPhone running iOS 16, tapping on "Set up eSIM" brings up an option to transfer an eSIM and its associated phone number from another iPhone via Bluetooth. To transfer an eSIM from another iPhone, Apple says to make sure the other iPhone is nearby, unlocked, has Bluetooth turned on, and is running iOS 16 or later.

The feature appears to be available in multiple countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, but it is only possible to complete Bluetooth transfers of eSIMs issued by carriers that support the feature. Given that iOS 16 was only announced a few days ago and is currently in beta, carrier support may be limited right now.

Apple also continues to provide the more traditional option of setting up an eSIM by scanning a QR code provided by a carrier.

An eSIM is a digital SIM that allows you to activate a cellular plan from a carrier without having to use a physical nano-SIM card. A single eSIM is available on the iPhone XS and newer, while all four iPhone 13 models support dual eSIMs.

The first beta of iOS 16 was seeded to developers earlier this week, and a public beta will be available in July. Apple said iOS 16 will be released in the fall, at which point this new eSIM transfer feature will be available to all users.

(Thanks, Carson!)

With the release of the first macOS Ventura beta in the hands of developers, early adopters continue to discover smaller changes in the new version of Apple's Mac operating system. Below are some of the more notable differences that have since come to light since Monday.

Share Sheet Popover

In the first developer beta of macOS 13, Apple no longer displays an item's sharing options in a standard menu.

The "Share..." option is still there in the right-click contextual menu, but selecting it now causes a standalone popover menu to appear over the item in Finder or on the Desktop, with Message contacts listed above other sharing options, similar to the Share Sheet in iOS. The same popover appears whenever you click the Share button in an app window.

Spotlight Search Improvements

In macOS 13, Apple has integrated Quick Look into Spotlight Search, allowing you to get a quick peek at a file that appears in your search results, without opening it wholesale in its associated app.

Quick Look also continues to support text-based clipboard actions, so you can now copy and paste content from documents after searching for them using Spotlight.

In other improvements, Spotlight now leverages the full search window to display information-rich web results, and it can also retrieve results from your photo library, with full Live Text support meaning you can even Spotlight search for text that appears in your images.

Rich Links in Mail

When you paste a web link into a Mail message in macOS 12, only the web address is shown in the message content, providing the recipient with no information about what's being linked to beyond what's included in the URL.

By contrast, macOS 13 inserts rich link previews in emails. Rich links display a preview of the website being linked to, giving recipients an idea of the content they can be expected to see if they click to open the webpage.

Stage Manager Works With Multiple Desktops

One of the big features of macOS 13, Stage Manager is Apple's latest attempt to solve the clutter that can occur on the desktop when you have multiple apps and app windows open at the same time.

‌Stage Manager‌ works by moving all open background applications over to the left, leaving the most recently opened and active app front and center on the screen. Clicking another app in the side column switches it with the current centered app, and so on.

‌Stage Manager‌ also works with separate Desktop Spaces, so you can have multiple instances of ‌Stage Manager‌ organizing several groups of apps on different desktop screens. It's also possible to hide the ‌Stage Manager‌ column of apps by increasing the size of the active app window or moving the window over to the left of the screen. A submenu option in Control Center lets you do the same thing.

Continuity Camera in QuickTime Player

Continuity Camera gives Mac owners the ability to use their iPhone as a webcam in FaceTime, Zoom, Teams, and other third-party video conferencing apps. It also works natively in QuickTime player, allowing users to record movies and control several recording settings.

In QuickTime, users can opt to record from the ‌iPhone‌'s microphone or the Mac's microphone, making it possible to record the video from the ‌iPhone‌ and the audio from the Mac, for example.

In addition, Continuity Camera brings your ‌iPhone‌'s Center Stage functionality to your Mac even if it isn't natively supported. The same goes for Studio Light and Portrait Mode.

Other Features and Tidbits

• Siri can start timers
• Live Captions option in Accessibility settings
• Playlist search in Music app
• Color Gradient options for desktop wallpaper

macOS Ventura will be released to all users in the fall, likely around October. Apple said a public beta will be available starting in July.

Amazon has the 41mm GPS Apple Watch Series 7 in Green Aluminum with the Clover Sport Band for $300.00, down from $399.00. Only the Green device is on sale at this price, and you'll find other colors at the traditional discount price of $329.00.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

To date this is the best deal we've ever seen on the 41mm GPS Apple Watch Series 7, and overall this is now the lowest price we've ever tracked on the Series 7 family. If you order it today, Amazon has an estimated delivery between June 10 - 13.

There are still solid deals on most of the Apple Watch Series 7 lineup going on this week on Amazon, and you can see the full sale in our post from late May. You'll find $70 off both GPS and Cellular models for both 41mm and 45mm sizes.

Our full Deals Roundup has more information on the latest Apple-related sales and bargains.

Apple is facing backlash from users after it announced that iOS 16, its next major release of iOS destined for release this fall, will not be supported by the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

iOS 16 will bring major changes and customization features to the Lock Screen, much-awaited changes in iMessage such as mark as unread and message edits, and so much more.

Users have long asked Apple to give them more personalization controls on iOS, and Apple is finally doing that with iOS 16. Unfortunately, all of iOS 16's new features, including the update itself, won't be coming to customers who own many older iPhones, with the most notable being the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

As a refresher, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus were released in September 2016. The iPhone 7 Plus was the first iPhone to feature a dual-lens camera setup, and both models were the first to get rid of the physical Home button and replace it with a Haptic one. The iPhone 7 also marked the end of the headphone jack.

With iOS 15, Apple supported devices as old as the second-generation iPhone SE, including the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. While it was expected that iOS 16 would drop support for the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, and the now-discontinued iPod touch, surprisingly, Apple also dropped support for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

Following Monday's WWDC keynote, iPhone 7 users shared their disapproval online over the lack of support for the upcoming release of iOS. "Wow. Surprised they ditched the 7/7+," one user wrote on the MacRumors Forums. Other customers voiced complaints on Twitter.

The reasonable explanation is that the A10 Fusion chip in the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus is simply not powerful enough to run iOS 16 and all its new features. That explanation, though, is invalidated when the sixth and seventh-generation iPad, both powered by the same A10 Fusion chip, are supported by iPadOS 16.

Furthermore, the fifth-generation iPad, which features the less powerful A9 chip compared to the A10 Fusion chip in the iPhone 7, is also supported by iPadOS 16. While iOS and iPadOS are different, they also share many of the same features and the same underlying technology.

In theory, Apple could have supported the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus with iOS 16 but just disabled some of the CPU and ML-heavy features for newer models.

By doing so, iPhone 7 users would still benefit from performance and security enhancements offered by iOS 16, as well as small refinements like the ability to edit iMessages, which don't require an intense amount of CPU work.

Offering only newer devices certain features that aren't available to older models is not something new, and a practice Apple is long accustomed to. As a matter of fact, several of iOS 16's latest features will only work with iPhones powered by the A12 Bionic and later.

As MacRumors reported in May, it was plausible that due to the higher memory on the iPhone 7 Plus, it would retain support for iOS 16, while the iPhone 7 would miss out. It seems as though, to avoid any possible confusion, Apple has just entirely dropped support for both iPhone 7 models instead of supporting one and not the other.

We've reached out to Apple to comment on why the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus won't be receiving iOS 16 and we'll update this article if we hear back.

Apple this week announced iOS 16, a major release filled with significant customization features for the Lock Screen, new features for Focus mode, the ability to edit and retract iMessages, and so much more.

While Apple showcased some of iOS 16's major features during its jam-packed WWDC keynote, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of smaller features and changes left for users to discover. Below, we've compiled a list of six changes and new features you may not have known about.

Transparent FaceTime Video Call UI

During a FaceTime video call, Apple has updated the UI in iOS 16 to be fully transparent, with buttons for camera, microphone, message, speaker, and SharePlay now larger and easier to tap.

iMessage Mention Suggestions Now Include Contact Images

When mentioning a contact on iMessage, mention suggestions now include a contact image in the Quick Tap bar. This can be particularly helpful in group chats where multiple people may share a first name.

Entirely Redesigned Video Player UI

Apple has redesigned the stock video player UI in iOS 16, making it cleaner by getting rid of unnecessary clutter while highlighting basic controls such as volume, play/pause, and Picture in Picture.

Redesigned Voice Messaging Experience in iMessage

Apple has redesigned the voice messaging experience on iMessage with iOS 16, making it its own separate iMessage app that lives in the app bar.

The app lets users tap, hold, and record messages more quickly. Apple has replaced the previous hold and swipe-up gesture to record voice messages with a new Dictation button. On a related note, users can now skim through voice messages on iOS 16.

Privacy Access History

On iOS 16 Apple is adding a neat trick that lets users check which apps have recently accessed their camera, microphone, location, and other sensitive sensors on their iPhone. The new view can be accessed by tapping on the top of Control Center shortly after an app has used access.

Apple is adding virtual memory swap to iPadOS 16, allowing apps on the recent iPad Pro and iPad Air models to use free and available storage as extra memory for demanding workloads.

With iPadOS 15, certain apps can use up to 12GB of memory on the highest-end M1 ‌iPad Pro‌ which has 16GB of total RAM. With iPadOS 16 and virtual memory swap, Apple is significantly increasing the amount of memory an app can use by tapping into available storage on the device.

For ‌M1‌ ‌iPad Pro‌ models, apps can use up to 16GB of memory for the most demanding workloads. Fifth-generation ‌iPad Air‌ models with the ‌M1‌ chip and a minimum of 256GB of storage also support the feature.

Virtual memory swap and the higher memory ceiling join a list of features coming with iPadOS 16 that are exclusive to the ‌M1‌ ‌iPad Pro‌ and ‌iPad Air‌, including Stage Manager. In fact, Apple told Digital Trends that ‌Stage Manager‌ relies on this virtual RAM swap.

‌Stage Manager‌ is an entirely new way for pro-users to use their iPad, allowing users to have multiple windows of an app opened at once, overlaid on top of each other. ‌Stage Manager‌ also enables full external display support on iPadOS for the first time.

iPadOS 16 is currently available to developers, with a public beta planned in July. iPadOS 16 will be available to all supported iPads later this fall.

Update: Apple's footnote on its iPadOS 16 preview page originally stated that it was the fourth-generation ‌iPad Air‌ that supported the feature, but the error has been corrected.

Apple this week announced that watchOS 9 will allow users to make VoIP calls directly from an Apple Watch via supported third-party apps.

During its WWDC 2022 keynote, Apple said that users will be able to start, end, or mute VoIP calls from the Apple Watch in supported apps like Webex. This feature will allow Apple Watch users to answer VoIP calls right from their wrist, and it is made possible by Apple expanding its CallKit framework for developers to watchOS 9.

Apple has not shared any additional details about this feature at this time, and it remains to be seen if some of the most popular apps with VoIP calling like WhatsApp offer this functionality on the Apple Watch over the coming months.

It is already possible to make calls over Wi-Fi on the Apple Watch via FaceTime Audio in the Phone app, and expanded support for VoIP calling in watchOS 9 will give Apple Watch users more options going forward. watchOS 9 is currently available in beta for developers and will be released to all users in the fall — likely in September.

The Fitness app on the iPhone has long been available as an activity tracking tool for those who own an Apple Watch, but in iOS 16, Apple wants to make the app an activity tracking option useful even for those who don't own an Apple Watch.

With iOS 16, you can track your activity using the ‌iPhone‌ motion sensors. The ‌iPhone‌ can keep tabs on steps, distance, and third-party workouts, giving you an estimate of your calories burned.

You can set a daily move goal even if you don't have an Apple Watch, using the ‌iPhone‌ to track your progress toward reaching the goal. The updated Fitness app is useful for people who don't have an Apple Watch or another kind of activity tracker and who would like to be more active.

The Fitness app looks almost identical to the Fitness app available to Apple Watch owners, but it does not include a Fitness+ tab as that feature is restricted to the Apple Watch, nor does it have Stand and Exercise rings.

For more on what's new in iOS 16, make sure to check out our hands-on video.