iPadOS 15 is gaining almost all of the new features that were introduced in iOS 15, but there are also several updates that Apple introduced that are designed exclusively for the larger screen of the iPad or have been adopted from iOS 14.
Widgets can now be placed anywhere on the iPad's Home Screen, and technically this doesn't count as an iPadOS feature because it's something that Apple is bringing over from iOS. In iPadOS 14, you could have a set spot for your widgets, but with iPadOS 15, you can put them anywhere, just like you can on the iPhone.
App Library is another new feature that was introduced on the iPhone first, and it's a useful change that lets you see and manage all of the apps you have installed on your iPad in one spot.
Multitasking is an iPad exclusive, and it's been improved in iPadOS 15. We already did a whole dedicated video on it, but we couldn't ignore the user interface updates in our list of top iPadOS features.
Also new to the iPad is a "Quick Note" option for the Notes app. With a swipe of the Apple Pencil, you can open up a Quick Note no matter which app you're in to jot down notes. You can also create a Quick Note from Control Center or with a keyboard shortcut.
Apple introduced Safari updates across iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey so this isn't an iPad-only feature, but Safari has a streamlined tab bar and support for Tab Groups so you can better organize your tabs. Web extensions are supported in iPadOS, there's a new customizable start page, and you can refresh a webpage by pulling down from the top.
Safari also now prevents trackers from accessing your IP address, and if you have a paid iCloud account, a Private Relay feature will encrypt all of your browsing activity.
What are your favorite iPadOS 15 features? Let us know in the comments.
Apple this week released Boot Camp version 6.1.15 for users running Windows on a Mac, as noted in a Reddit post spotted by The Verge.
The update adds support for more precise trackpad gestures on MacBooks running Windows, including a single tap to click, tapping the lower-right corner to right-click, swiping down to scroll up, and various multi-touch gestures using three or four fingers.
Support for these precise trackpad gestures while running Windows is available on Macs with Apple's T2 chip, according to an Apple user guide.
Boot Camp allows Windows to boot natively on Intel-based Macs. The utility is not available on Macs with the M1 chip.
Apple says Adaptive-Sync displays will be supported on any Mac with Apple silicon, like the M1 chip, as well as "many" recent Intel-based Macs. When a supported Adaptive-Sync display is connected to a compatible Mac, users will be able to enable Adaptive-Sync mode by selecting a new variable refresh rate option in System Preferences > Displays.
Adaptive-Sync is a feature of the DisplayPort 1.2a specification, and it serves as the foundation of popular variable refresh rate display technologies like AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync, which will now be supported on newer Macs.
Macs gaining support for Adaptive-Sync displays will be particularly beneficial to gamers, as these displays can actively adjust their refresh rate to match a game's frame rate, providing smoother, lower-latency gameplay. Apps or games must be running in full-screen mode on macOS Monterey for Adaptive-Sync mode to function, according to Apple.
macOS Monterey is available now in beta for developers, with a public beta to follow in July. The software update will be released in the fall.
Amazon today is taking $49 off Apple's new 24-inch M1 iMac in two configurations. Sales start with the 7-core GPU with 256GB, priced at $1,249.99, down from $1,299.00. This sale is available in Blue and Silver.
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.
Amazon previously was discounting this model down to around $1,258.99, making today's sale a new all-time low on this model of the M1 iMac. No other retailers are matching the sale as of writing, so you'll only find this deal on Amazon.
In another new sale, Amazon is also offering $49 off the M1 iMac with the 8-core GPU and 256GB of storage, priced at $1,449.99, down from $1,499.00. These iMacs are sold directly from Amazon and both are available to ship today.
You can keep track of ongoing sales on Apple's iMac line by visiting our Best iMac Deals guide. There, we keep track of the best iMac offers from Amazon, Adorama, B&H Photo, and other retailers, so be sure to check back often if you're shopping for an iMac for the first time, or thinking of upgrading.
In iOS 15, Safari has been completely redesigned with easier-to-reach controls in mind. Foremost is a new, compact tab bar that floats at the bottom of the screen when you're not inputting a URL address. Safari on iOS has also inherited the Start Page from macOS Big Sur, and you can now create tab groups to allow you to easily access them across devices. Let's take a closer look at how it all fits together.
The Start Page
First seen in macOS Big Sur, Safari's redesigned Start Page is where your Bookmarks, Favorites, Frequently Visited sites, Siri Suggestions, iCloud Tabs, Reading List, and Privacy Report all live.
Like macOS, you can customize which of these items appear on your Start Page via the Edit button at the bottom, and you can also add a custom wallpaper of your own or use an existing alternative background. In addition, you have the option of syncing your Start Page in iCloud so that it's mirrored across all your devices.
Tab Bar Functions
At the bottom of the Start Page is the new tab bar. Apple has consolidated several controls into the new floating bar, which spends most of its time at the bottom of the UI while you're browsing.
Tapping the Tab Bar URL makes it fly up to the top of the screen, where you can search or enter a website address. As soon as you hit Enter, the page loads and the Tab Bar flies back down to the bottom of the screen so as not to impede your view.
If you find the Tab Bar distracting you can swipe down on it to minimize it, but either way it automatically minimizes as you scroll down a page, and all you have to do to reveal it again is tap it again. (To refresh the current page, just pull down on it from the top.)
Neat: Safari in iOS 15 lets you switch between open tabs with a swipe gesture on the new tab bar. pic.twitter.com/FQzSlQ9uZT
— Tim Hardwick (@waxeditorial) June 11, 2021
Swiping between open tabs is as simple as swiping across the Tab Bar. You can also tap the ends of the Tab Bars trailing off either side of the screen to switch to adjacent open tabs, but swiping will be easier for most users.
A long press on the Tab Bar brings up a menu offering options including Copy, Paste and Search, Add to Reading List, Add Bookmark, Add Bookmarks for X Tabs, Share, and Move to Tab Group. (See below for more on Tab Groups.)
Tapping on the ellipsis (three dots) icon in the Tab Bar brings up the usual Actions menu with sharing options, but you can also long press the ellipsis icon to switch into Reader View for the current page. Tapping the rightmost icon – or swiping up on the Tab Bar – takes you into the Tabs Switcher, where are there also some surprises.
Tab Switcher and Tab Groups
In iOS 15, gone is the familiar stacked card-style view of multiple open tabs. Instead, tabs are arranged as thumbnail previews in a vertically scrolling grid, while the Tab Bar functions in the Tabs Switcher view are transformed to help you organize your tabs more efficiently. A long press on the center of it brings up a menu of Tab Group options.
As well as an option to open a Private Browsing tab, you can create a New Empty Tab Group, or create a new tap group containing the currently open tabs. If you've already created at least one Tab Group and named it, then you'll also see it listed in this menu and you can tap to switch between it and any grouped or ungrouped tabs. (If there are open tabs that don't belong to any group, they'll just be listed as X number of Tabs.)
As you'd expect, the plus (+) icon in the Tab Switcher Bar opens a new tab, but if you long press on it you'll also see a list of recently closed tabs.
Elsewhere, you can long press any open tab displayed in the Tab Switcher to access options like Close Other Tabs, move the selected tab to a Tab Group (tapping this opens a submenu of Tab Groups), Arrange Tabs By Title, and Arrange Tabs By Website.
Overall, Safari in iOS 15 feels very different indeed, and may not chime with user's expectations. While there's more screen space dedicated to the browsing experience itself, the interface changes are drastic, although now that the iPhone also supports extensions for the first time, there's plenty of scope for additional customization.
Note that iOS 15 is still in early beta, and the public beta is still a month away, so the usual caveat applies in that any of these functions could change before Apple releases its new operating system in the fall.
In iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey, Apple is expanding the features built into the stock Reminders app, which received a major overhaul in 2019. With the new updates shipping this fall, users will be able to create "Smart Lists" that corral reminders based on different filters, such as their location, due date, flag, priority, and more.
With the new functionality, users can create powerful lists that show reminders based only on several filters. For example, users may create a Smart List with a filter to show reminders due on the weekend, with their location set to home. Apple offers five filters as of the current betas for the software, including date, time, location, flag, and priority.
For date, users can select to show reminders only due on a specific date, a relative range, a specified range, such as over the weekend or longer, and reminders due on any date. Users can select a filter for any time of day or more granular options for morning, afternoon, evening, and night. The location filter allows users to see only reminders due in a specific location. Users can also select the flag filter to show only flagged reminders and the priority filter.
iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey are all currently in beta testing for members of the Apple Developer Program, with public beta versions set to be released soon.
Apple has begun testing a major redesign to the iCloud Mail experience on the web, bringing its webmail service more in line with recent design changes made in macOS Big Sur.
The new design, currently in beta, reported first by 9to5mac, features a cleaner overall design and feel than the current public experience of iCloud Mail for the web. The current, soon-to-be previous version features thin typography, lighter colors, and design elements from iOS 7. Additionally, the new design allows users to compose emails in a smaller window in the middle of the screen, compared to opening an entirely new window.
As the new design is in beta testing alongside iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, macOS Monterey, and tvOS 15, it will likely be made available for all iCloud web users later this fall. Users wanting to try the new iCloud Mail design can check out the beta website for iCloud.
Nashville Chatter Class has discovered a new Russian-language regulatory filing in the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) database pointing towards several unreleased iPhone 13 models that Apple will be launching in the fall.
Versions of iPhone running iOS 14 are listed with the model numbers A2628, A2630, A2634, A2635, A2640, A2643, and A2645. None of the numbers correspond to Apple's existing smartphone lineup.
The EEC filing, published on Friday, satisfies Russia's requirement for companies to register all products containing encryption and/or cryptographic tools. Several new models of iPhone and Mac have been registered with the EEC in previous years and these devices turned out to correspond with later device launches.
Apple's 2021 iPhone 13 lineup, due to launch in September, will look similar to the 2020 iPhone lineup, with four devices in sizes that include 5.4-inches, 6.1-inches, and 6.7-inches, with two of the iPhones being higher-end "Pro" models and two positioned as lower-cost, more affordable devices.
Major design changes are not expected, and 2021 iPhones will have the same feature set as the 2020 iPhones, but we can count on camera improvements, a faster A-series processor, a new 5G chip from Qualcomm, increased battery life, and some tweaks to the notch. See our dedicated iPhone 13 roundup for all the details.
In iOS 15, Apple is introducing a new feature called Live Text that can recognize text when it appears in your camera's viewfinder or in a photo you've taken and let you perform several actions with it.
For example, Live Text allows you to capture a phone number from a storefront with the option to place a call, or look up a location name in Maps to get directions. It also incorporates optical character recognition, so you can search for a picture of a handwritten note in your photos and save it as text.
Live Text's content awareness extends to everything from QR codes to emails that appear in pictures, and this on-device intelligence feeds into Siri suggestions, too.
For instance, if you take a picture that shows an email address and then open the Mail app and start composing a message, Siri's keyboard suggestions will offer up the option to add "Email from Camera" to the To field of your message.
Other Live Text options include the ability to copy text from the camera viewfinder or photos for pasting elsewhere, share it, look it up in the dictionary, and translate it for you into English, Chinese (both simplified and traditional), French, Italian, German, Spanish, or Portuguese.
It can even sort your photos by location, people, scene, objects, and more, by recognizing the text in pictures. For example, searching for a word or phrase in Spotlight search will bring up pictures from your Camera Roll in which that text occurs.
Live Text works in Photos, Screenshot, Quick Look, and Safari and in live previews with Camera. In the Camera app, it's available whenever you point your iPhone's camera at anything that displays text, and is indicated by a small icon that appears in the bottom right corner whenever textual content is recognized in the viewfinder. Tapping the icon lets you tap recognized text and perform an action with it. A similar icon appears in the Photos app when you're viewing a shot image.
In another neural engine feature, Apple is introducing something called Visual Look Up that lets you take photos of objects and scenes to get more information from them. Point your iPhone's camera at a piece of art, flora, fauna, landmarks, or books, and the Camera will indicate with an icon that it recognizes the content and has relevant Siri Knowledge that can add context.
Since Live Text relies heavily on Apple's neural engine, the feature is only available on iPhones and iPads with at least an A12 Bionic or better chip, which means if you have an iPhone X or earlier model or anything less than an iPad mini (5th generation), iPad Air (2019, 3rd generation), or iPad (2020, 8th generation), then unfortunately you won't have access to it.
The iOS 15 beta is currently in the hands of developers, with a public beta set to be released next month. The official launch of iOS 15 is scheduled for the fall.
Facebook has announced new features for its Messenger app, including a quick reply bar, QR codes, and new chat themes.
The new quick reply bar can be found in the Messenger media viewer, and aims to make it easier to chat about media posted by friends without needing to go back to the main chat thread.
Users can tap on a photo or video and send a response via the quick reply bar, which lives at the bottom of the screen, then swipe up to exit the fullscreen media viewer to return to the main chat thread.
Three new chat themes, which are available in both Messenger and Instagram in chat settings, let users add new twists to their chat thread backgrounds. The themes include Olivia Rodrdigo, World Oceans Day, and F9: Fast and Furious.
In addition, Facebook is adding QR codes and payment links for use with Facebook Pay, allowing users to make payments even if they're not on Facebook.
To access a personal QR code and payment link, go to Messenger settings and tap "Facebook Pay." Users can share the payment link or allow friends to scan the QR code to send or request money.
The new features are rolling out now to Facebook Messenger, which is a free download for iPhone and iPad from the App Store. [Direct Link]
Apple TV+ has announced that season two of its popular original series "See" starring Jason Momoa will premiere on August 27, with new episodes releasing every Friday. The streaming giant also announced that it has renewed the show for a third season, Variety reports.
"See" follows Jason Momoa, Alfre Woodard, and Dave Bautista through a post-apocalyptic drama where a virus has cleared out the world, and all the remaining men, women, and children have been made blind. Alongside other Apple TV+ originals such as "The Morning Show" and "Ted Lasso," the show has been one of the most popular for the streaming service.
Apple today also shared the official trailer for the upcoming season two of "See" which will premiere on August 27.
When investigating leaks of classified information during the early days of the Trump Administration, the United States Justice Department subpoenaed Apple for metadata from the accounts of at least two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, reports The New York Times.
Apple was also required to provide data from their aides and family members, with the DoJ requesting the records of at least a dozen people tied to the committee in 2017 and early 2018, including a minor. One of the Democrats was Adam Schiff, who now serves as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
The Department of Justice subjected Apple to a gag order that expired earlier this year, with Apple informing lawmakers they had been investigated just last month. Biden's Justice Department revealed the subpoenas and gag orders to the press this week.
According to The New York Times, Apple provided metadata and "other account information," but did not give the DoJ photos, emails, or other content. The records did not link the committee to the leaks.
The full report on the subpoenas and the circumstances behind them can be read over at The New York Times.
Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Apple today announced the apps and games that are receiving a 2021 Apple Design Award for outstanding app design, innovation, ingenuity, and technical achievement, with winners including CARROT Weather, Genshin Impact, Alba, Bird Alone, League of Legends: Wild Rift, Little Orpheus, and more.
Winners were selected in categories that include Inclusivity, Delight and Fun, Interaction, Social Impact, Visuals and Graphics, and Innovation, with a full list of winning apps available below.
During each Worldwide Developers Conference event, Apple chooses developers to receive the App Design Award, and more than 250 developers have been recognized over the last 20 years. This year's winners are receiving a physical award and hardware to continue creating apps and games.
Apple's latest Apple Pay promotion offers a Father's Day-themed discount, with $20 off select items when spending $100 or more with Adidas. Checking out with Apple Pay is required.
The Apple Pay discount is available today through June 17 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time. The offer excludes brands that include YEEZY, 4D, select Ultraboost, Pharrell x adidas, Disney, adizero adios pro, Human Made, limited-edition Originals, select NMD, select Stan Smith, and select Superstar.
Apple's promotional email for the deal also recommends apps like Goldbelly, Lands' End, Dunkin', Ace Hardware, and Best Buy for purchasing Father's Day gifts.
Apple is developing a new passkey feature that will allow customers to use Face ID and Touch ID-based account authentication in lieu of a password, Apple engineer Garrett Davidson explained today in a WWDC developer session (via CNET).
"Passkeys in iCloud Keychain," a feature in iOS 15 and macOS Monterey, stores a new WebAuthn credential called a passkey in iCloud keychain. It's used instead of a password for account creation and login, with one-tap login.
When you create an account using a passkey, there is no password to deal with. You can access that account with just a login and authentication through Touch ID or Face ID.
No password is required because your Apple device handles the generation and storage of the unique passkey used for the site, so login is just a matter of entering a username and authenticating. Passkeys are end-to-end encrypted and synced across all of your Apple devices thanks to iCloud Keychain. Since everything is stored in iCloud Keychain, credentials are preserved even if Apple devices are lost or stolen.
Passkeys are more secure than most password plus two-factor authentication solutions, and developers can easily implement support for logins via passkeys.
At the current time, passkeys only work with Apple devices, so Apple is talking to partners at FIDO and the World Wide Web Consortium about a wider solution that would allow users to eliminate passwords across non-Apple devices as well.
Passkeys in iOS 15 and macOS Monterey are designed for testing and are not for production accounts as Apple tests the feature. Apple is allowing developers to test passkeys as part of a multiyear effort to replace passwords.
The emphasis of this preview is the authentication technology, an iCloud Keychain-backed WebAuthn implementation. An industry-wide transition away from passwords will need thoughtful and consistently applied design patterns, which are not part of this preview.
Former BMW senior executive and self-driving vehicle startup founder Ulrich Kranz has taken on a role at Apple working on the company's autonomous car project, reports Bloomberg.
Kranz founded Canoo, a self-driving car startup that he left earlier this year. Prior to creating Canoo, Kranz helped to develop the i3 and i8 vehicles at BMW, where he was employed for 30 years.
According to Bloomberg, Kranz's hiring is a sign that Apple is determined to build a self-driving vehicle that will rival Tesla. Kranz will report to Apple Car lead Doug Fields, who works under AI chief John Giannandrea.
Rumors about Apple's car project have picked up in recent months as Apple now appears to be looking for suppliers and manufacturing partners to develop the vehicle. There were rumors that Apple would work with Hyundai's Kia division, but it's not clear if that relationship has progressed.
Development on the Apple Car remains in the early stages, and Bloomberg suggests that it will be at around five years before the product is ready to debut.
Tracking when you've opened up an email and what you've read is something that many companies and advertisers rely on for their marketing efforts, plus there are email clients out there designed to let users know when the emails they've sent have been opened up.
Much of this tracking is facilitated by remote images that load when viewing an email, and some of it is even sneakier, with advertisers using invisible tracking pixels. Tracking pixels are hidden graphics that you might not see in an email, but your email client loads them, allowing senders to gather data from you. Senders can see that you've opened an email get other information, such as your IP address.
With iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey, Apple is putting a stop to email tracking with a suite of Mail Privacy Protection features.
Mail Privacy Protection is not enabled by default, but Apple will highlight it as an option when you upgrade to iOS 15 or iPadOS 15. If you're running one of these updates, you can turn it on in Settings > Mail. Tap on "Privacy Protection" and then toggle on "Protect Mail Activity." In macOS Monterey, open up Mail, go to the Mail Preferences, and then click on Privacy. From there, toggle on Protect Mail Activity.
When enabled, Mail Privacy Protection hides your IP address and loads all remote content privately in the background, routing it through multiple proxy services and randomly assigning an IP address.
Here's how Apple describes the feature in full:
Emails that you receive may include hidden pixels that allow the email's sender to learn information about you. As soon as you open an email, information about your Mail activity can be collected by the sender without transparency and an ability to control what information is shared. Email senders can learn when and how many times you opened their email, whether you forwarded the email, your Internet Protocol (IP) address, and other data that can be used to build a profile of your behavior and learn your location.
If you choose to turn it on, Mail Privacy Protection helps protect your privacy by preventing email senders, including Apple, from learning information about your Mail activity. When you receive an email in the Mail app, rather than downloading remote content when you open an email, Mail Privacy Protection downloads remote content in the background by default - regardless of how you do or don't engage with the email. Apple does not learn any information about the content.
In addition, all remote content downloaded by Mail is routed through multiple proxy servers, preventing the sender from learning your IP address. Rather than share your IP address, which can allow the email sender to learn your location, Apple's proxy network will randomly assign an IP address that corresponds only to the region your device is in. As a result, email senders will only receive generic information rather than information about your behavior. Apple does not access your IP address.
It's worth noting that senders will see an IP address that corresponds to the region where you're located, giving them generic information about your behavior that is non-specific and cannot be used for building a profile of your behavior.
You could previously block email trackers by blocking the loading of remote content in the Mail app on iOS and macOS, but Apple's new feature is superior because you can still view all email content as normal while Mail Privacy Protection works in the background with no visual compromises.
Email senders can still monitor your behavior with tracked links that you will need to be mindful of, but the behind the scenes tracking that you might not notice won't happen.
Mail Tracking Privacy pairs well with iCloud Private Relay, a feature that's included in iCloud+. iCloud+ is just Apple's name for its paid iCloud plans, which start out at $0.99 per month. With that $1 per month, all the traffic that leaves your device is routed through two separate internet relays so advertisers can't see your IP address or location, nor can they link your browsing history to this information to build a profile about you.
iCloud Private Relay is not quite a VPN, but it's similar, and it's an incredible feature for the less technically inclined that would not think to use a VPN or wouldn't know how, such as elderly people who need the most protection from tracking and scams.
Apple's plans for iCloud Private Relay and Mail Tracking Privacy are already worrying advertisers, according to a report earlier this week from The Wall Street Journal. Ad-measurement firm Branch Metrics' CEO Alex Austin said that Private Relay could be "vastly more damaging to the advertising ecosystem than the App Tracking Transparency measures implemented early this year. "If IP were to go away entirely, it would be very challenging for a lot of companies to operate," he said.
As for Mail Privacy Protection, advertisers are "surprised" that Apple blocked tracking in emails because of how much harder it will be for brands to know if their emails are working.
These new privacy features could spur Google to adopt similar measures for Chrome, and a Google spokesperson confirmed that Google is indeed considering similar features for blocking IP addresses.
iCloud Private Relay and Mail Privacy Protection alone are enough reason to upgrade to the newest software when it becomes available this fall, but the rest of the features coming in iOS 15 and macOS Monterey can be found in our roundups.
Apple software engineering chief Craig Federighi this week did a series of interviews with YouTubers, sharing iOS 15 highlights and tidbits with them. Each YouTuber was able to ask Federighi targeted questions about the new update using FaceTime.
Andru Edwards talked to Federighi about Apple's focus on togetherness with iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey features like SharePlay in FaceTime and Shared with You in Messages. "We have so many ideas that come up over time, over years. And then there comes a moment when we can suddenly connect them all in a meaningful way and they're right for the moment, and we go for it. This year was one of those," said Federighi.
"With so many of us apart having to connect over distance, we were craving that connection and that ability to be together virtually but still share things with one another and to have all that context for connection." Federighi went on to say that Apple likes to work "thematically" without just "dribs and drabs" of unrelated features. "If we can pull something together to be bigger than the sum of its parts, then that's the moment to really go for it, connect all the threads."
TechMeOut asked Federighi which iOS 15 features he's most excited about. "I think if I had to pick right now, it's probably SharePlay," said Federighi. He went on to explain that he hasn't been able to use it with friends and family because Apple had to keep it secret, so he's eager to give it a go.
French YouTuber TheiCollection spoke with Federighi about macOS Monterey and the new Universal Control functionality that will let you use a single keyboard, mouse, or trackpad across multiple Macs and iPad devices. Federighi said Apple is thrilled for the "zero setup" feature that just works. "It was a fun one to put together," he said about Universal Control.
Other videos featuring Federighi in a series of short interviews are embedded below.
iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey are all available to developers at the current time, but Apple plans to release a beta for public beta testers in July, at which point anyone who wants to will be able to test out these new features.
Update: Several other Federighi interviews have now gone live covering VPNs, FaceTime on Android, and more.
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.
