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In iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, Quickly Turn Home Screen App Icons into Widgets

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Widgets on the iPhone or iPad Home Screen are enhanced versions of app icons that display extra information. You can now bypass the complicated widget creation process and experiment with widgets more easily. No longer do you have to edit the Home Screen, tap the Edit button, tap Add Widget, choose a widget from the full set of choices, and position it as desired. Instead, touch and hold an app’s icon and tap the desired widget size from the bottom of the menu. The first icon represents a standard icon; the remaining three display the app as a 2×2 widget, a 4×2 widget, or a 4×4 widget. The menu appears only for apps with widgets, and unavailable options indicate that the app lacks a widget of that size. Repeat the process to change a widget’s size or revert a widget to an icon.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Marvin Samuel Tolentino Pineda)

Social Media: A new shortcut in iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 makes it easy to convert an app’s icon on the Home Screen into a widget of any size supported by that app.

Use Guided Access for Securely Allowing Others to Use an App on Your iPhone or iPad

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iPhones and iPads are highly personal devices, but you might want to let someone else use a particular app on yours without letting them poke through Messages, Mail, and Photos. For example, a child could play a game, a volunteer could check in attendees, or a friend could take photos. To allow this, Apple created Guided Access, which you turn on in Settings > Accessibility—give it an easily remembered passcode and decide if you want to let the display auto-lock. Then, to turn on Guided Access, open the app you want to share and triple-click the side or top button. Options let you control buttons, the accelerometer, software keyboards, touch input, and a time limit. To end a Guided Access session, triple-click the side or top button, enter the Guided Access passcode, and tap End.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Userba011d64_201)

Social Media: If you’d like to allow a child, friend, or colleague to enjoy a specific app on your iPhone or iPad while keeping them focused and preventing access to everything else on the device, check out Apple’s Guided Access feature.

Apple’s Tips App Provides Extensive User Guides and Helpful How-Tos

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Apple has included the Tips app with the iPhone and iPad since iOS 8 in 2014 and on the Mac since macOS 10.14 Mojave in 2018. Initially, it didn’t contain much useful content, and many longtime users ignored it. However, Apple has significantly increased the amount of information in Tips over time, adding device-specific tips, full device and app user guides, highlights of new features, and more. Many tips even include short demonstration videos. Tips is worth exploring or referring to the next time you have a question. Be sure to encourage anyone you know who’s new to the iPhone, iPad, or Mac to take a look—it even helps them practice key gestures!

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Social Media: If you haven’t explored Apple’s Tips app on the iPhone, iPad, or Mac recently, check it out. Apple has added a lot more content, including device and app user guides, highlights of new features, and interactive practice guides.

Five Quick Tips to Ease iPhone and iPad Text Editing and Amaze Your Friends

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A friend recently expressed astonishment when she saw us using trackpad mode while editing text on an iPhone. (It works on the iPad, too!) So, even if you already know these tips, do your friends a favor and show them:

  • Tap once to position the insertion point at the start or end of a word.
  • Touch and hold to reveal the magnifier and move the insertion point within words ➊.
  • Touch and hold the Space bar to turn the entire keyboard into a virtual trackpad that lets you move the insertion point above ➋. On the iPad, you can also touch and hold with two fingers anywhere on the keyboard.
  • Double-tap to select a word; keep dragging to select more text, one word at a time ➌.
  • Triple-tap to select an entire paragraph.

(Featured image by Adam Engst with keys from MXW Photo)

Social Media: Editing text on an iPhone or iPad will never be as easy as on a Mac, but with these tips, you can quickly position the insertion point and select words and paragraphs using your finger.

Missed an Alert? Check Notification Center

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iOS, iPadOS, and macOS all let you specify whether any given app should show no notifications, temporary banners, or persistent alerts: look in Settings > Notifications and System Settings > Notifications. Temporary banners appear briefly and then automatically disappear, which is appropriate for notifications requiring no acknowledgment. But what if you see a temporary banner only as it’s disappearing and can’t read it in time? You can find a historical list of notifications in Notification Center. To open it from the Lock Screen on an iPhone or iPad, swipe up from the middle of the screen. From any other screen, swipe down from the center of the top of the screen. On the Mac, click the date and time in the upper right corner. If your Mac has a trackpad, you can also swipe with two fingers from the right edge.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/Shutthiphong Chandaeng)

Social Media: If a temporary banner disappears from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac before you have a chance to read it, you can find it in Notification Center.

Apple Explains Its Approach to Device Longevity

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We Apple users tend to believe that our devices usually last longer—both physically and functionally—than Windows PCs and Android smartphones. For instance, Apple’s current operating systems work on nearly all Macs, iPhones, and iPads introduced in 2018 and later, albeit with some feature loss on the oldest devices. In a white paper entitled “Longevity, by Design,” Apple has now outlined how it works to increase product longevity through design and manufacturing, ongoing software support, and access to repair services. The white paper may be partially aimed at dissuading elected officials from passing Right to Repair legislation that could force unwanted design changes, but it still offers an illuminating look at how the company balances environmental impact, protecting customer privacy and safety, and enabling repair transparency. It’s worth a read if you’re interested in why Apple makes the design decisions it does.

(Featured image based on an original by Apple)

Social Media: Apple has published a white paper that offers an illuminating look at how the company works to increase device longevity while balancing environmental impact, protecting customer privacy and safety, and enabling transparency in repair.

Quickly Catalog Books or Other Named Items on Shelves

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If you have trouble finding particular items across multiple shelves of books, labeled boxes, or anything else that’s clearly identified with a text name, take carefully composed photos that capture all the titles without glare. Later, you can search for any text in those photos to find them—tap the Search button in Photos on the iPhone or iPad, or use the Search field in Photos on the Mac. Photos highlights the search term on the found photo. (If Photos on the Mac doesn’t surface an expected photo, try again on your iPhone, which seems to get more hits on harder-to-read text.) This capability comes courtesy of Apple’s Live Text feature, which uses machine learning to identify text in photos. Think of it as the lazy person’s database!

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Social Media: You can take advantage of Apple’s Live Text feature in Photos to catalog books, boxes, or any other items with text names. Think of it as a lazy person’s ad hoc database.

Apple Introduces New iPad Air, iPad Pro, Apple Pencil Pro, and Magic Keyboard

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After no new iPads throughout 2023, Apple has unveiled new 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Air and iPad Pro models, plus a more capable Apple Pencil Pro and a redesigned Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. The company also refined the iPad lineup by dropping the ninth-generation iPad and reducing the price of the tenth-generation iPad to $349. Only the iPad mini was left untouched. We wouldn’t be surprised to see a new iPad and iPad mini before the end of 2024.

iPad Air Adds 13-inch Model and Moves to the M2 Chip

The 11-inch iPad Air has long been Apple’s mid-range iPad, offering more power and better specs than the iPad while leaving the high end to the iPad Pro. With this refresh, Apple significantly enhanced the lineup by adding a 13-inch model of the iPad Air, a screen size previously limited to the iPad Pro. Both iPad Air models now position their front-facing camera on the longer landscape edge, so you appear to others on landscape-orientation calls as if you’re looking directly at them rather than off to the side, as happened with the previous shorter portrait edge location. They continue to use Touch ID via a top-mounted sensor.

Apple switched the iPad Air from the M1 to the M2 chip, improving performance by 50%. Storage has also increased, with the base level jumping from 64 GB to 128 GB. For those needing more space, Apple now provides storage tiers of 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB. Finally, Apple updated the iPad Air with the latest wireless technologies, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.

Those who want a keyboard can purchase the current Magic Keyboard for $299 (11-inch) or $349 (13-inch), and the new iPad Air models are compatible with the new $129 Apple Pencil Pro and the $79 USB-C Apple Pencil.

The 11-inch iPad Air starts at $599, and the 13-inch iPad Air at $799. Adding 5G cellular connectivity increases the price by $150. Moving to 256 GB bumps the price by $100, 512 GB adds $300, and 1 TB costs $500 more. You can choose from four subtle colors—blue, purple, starlight, and space gray—and you can order now with units arriving next week.

iPad Pro Gains M4 Chip and Ultra Retina XDR Display in Thinnest Apple Product Ever

While the new iPad Air models feel like modernized versions of the previous iPad Pro models, the new iPad Pro models break new ground. They boast new Ultra Retina XDR displays that leverage OLED technology that promises brighter highlights, deeper blacks, and faster response times. They’re noticeably better and brighter than the iPad Air Liquid Retina screens, which are already pretty good. Because Apple targets the iPad Pro at professional photographers and cinematographers who need the best display accuracy, there’s even a nano-texture glass option that reduces glare.

As with the iPad Air, the front-facing camera is now located on the longer landscape edge, along with the Face ID sensor. Surprisingly, the rear-facing camera isn’t as capable as the previous models, which sported Wide and Ultra Wide cameras and supported 2x optical zoom. The new models drop the Ultra Wide camera and retain just the 12-megapixel Wide camera. However, they now feature an adaptive True Tone flash that improves document scanning by stitching together multiple photos to eliminate the shadows that plague most camera-based scans.

In part because of the Ultra Retina XDR display, the new iPad Pro models are thinner than before, so much so that the 13-inch iPad Pro is the thinnest product Apple has ever made at 5.1 mm thick. More impressive is that the 13-inch model also shed nearly a quarter of a pound in weight—103 grams. Ignore the fact that the iPad Pro is now thinner and lighter than the iPad Air, and that the iPad Air is the mid-range iPad, but the MacBook Air is the low-end MacBook. Air is just a name now.

To power the Ultra Retina XDR display and make the iPad Pro models as thin as they are, Apple leapfrogged a chip generation, moving from the M2 to the new M4, which hasn’t appeared in any Macs yet. Apple says the M4’s CPU is 50% faster than the M2 in the previous models, and its GPU is up to four times faster.

For those who want a keyboard, the new iPad Pros are compatible only with the just-released Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro ($299 for 11-inch, $349 for 13-inch). As with the iPad Air, you can use either the new $129 Apple Pencil Pro or the $79 USB-C Apple Pencil.

Pricing for the 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $999, with the 13-inch iPad Pro at $1299. 5G cellular connectivity adds $200. Storage starts at 256 GB, up from 128 GB, and Apple offers tiers of 512 GB ($200 more), 1 TB ($600), and 2 TB ($1000). The nano-texture glass also adds $100 and is available only for models with 1 TB or 2 TB of storage. The only available colors are black and silver.

Apple Releases Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro

For artists, students, and others who like precise stylus input, the new Apple Pencil Pro offers a variety of new sensors and capabilities. A sensor in the barrel detects a squeeze that brings up a tool palette, and a gyroscope notices when you roll the barrel to change the orientation of shaped pen and brush tools. A new haptic engine provides confirmation of actions like squeezing, double tapping, and snapping to a Smart Shape. When used with the iPad Pro, the Apple Pencil Pro pairs, charges, and is stored on the side using a magnetic interface. If you lose it, you can now locate it with Find My.

While the new iPad Air models work with the existing Magic Keyboard, the new iPad Pro models are compatible only with the new Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. It retains the design that floats the iPad Pro above the keyboard but adds a function row of keys for features like screen brightness and volume. The palm rest is made of aluminum, and it has a larger trackpad with haptic feedback, so it feels more like using a MacBook. It attaches magnetically and uses the Smart Connector to connect power and data without Bluetooth—there’s also a USB-C connector in the hinge for charging.

Buying Advice

All these products are available for order now and will ship next week. Who should buy what? Apple’s comparison page can be helpful, but here’s our advice:

  • iPad: With the price drop to $349, the tenth-generation iPad becomes a remarkable deal, and it’s an ideal iPad for watching videos, browsing the Web, reading email, and other basic tasks.
  • iPad mini: If smaller is better for you, the iPad mini remains in the lineup, starting at $499. It performs slightly better than the iPad, but its size is the main reason to buy it.
  • iPad Air: The iPad Air is the workhorse of the iPad line, with sufficient performance to do nearly anything you want. The addition of the 13-inch model is particularly welcome because it’s $500 cheaper than the equivalently sized iPad Pro. Buy the iPad Air if you want to do more than the basics with your iPad.
  • iPad Pro: The technology in the iPad Pro is impressive, but so is the cost. As with the Mac lineup, the Pro models are mainly targeted at creative professionals who need the ultimate power and are willing to pay for it.

A related question surrounds upgrades. Generally speaking, upgrading to a new iPad may not be worthwhile if you have the previous model. However, once you’re two generations back, the performance increases tend to be significant. The caveat to that advice is that if an iPad isn’t doing what you want, it’s time to upgrade. For instance, if you have an M1 iPad Air that runs your drawing app slower than you’d like, it’s worth considering either an M2 iPad Air or an M4 iPad Pro, depending on how important performance is to you.

Regardless, contact us if you have any questions about what iPad makes the most sense for you.

(Featured image by Apple)

Social Media: Apple has released new 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Air and iPad Pro models, plus a new Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. We round up the new features and provide advice on what to consider for your next iPad.

Select Non-Contiguous Text in Pages, Keynote, and Numbers 14

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The latest versions of the Mac and iPad apps in Apple’s iWork suite—Pages 14, Keynote 14, and Numbers 14—have gained a helpful feature: non-contiguous text selection. By holding down the Command key, you can select chunks of text that aren’t next to each other. For example, imagine you want to make the first part of each item in a bullet list bold. Instead of bolding each one separately, hold down Command as you work to select all of them and then apply bold to the entire selection with a single command. Non-contiguous selection is particularly helpful when applying formatting, but you can also copy non-contiguously selected text or work with it in nearly any way you would interact with a contiguous text selection. (Note that while holding down Command, you can double-click to select words or triple-click to select paragraphs, just as you can normally without holding down Command.)

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Social Media: A new feature in Pages, Keynote, and Numbers lets you select bits of text that aren’t next to each other so that you can, for example, format them or copy them all at once.

Display an Album of Photos on Your iPhone or iPad Lock Screen

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A popular feature of iOS 16 was the Photo Shuffle option for customizing the iPhone Lock Screen. It used machine learning to select photos in four categories—People, Pets, Nature, and Cities—and rotated through them when you tapped, on lock, hourly, or daily. If you didn’t like the automatic selection, you could pick photos manually, but it was clumsy. In iOS 17 (and iPadOS 17, which also added customizable Lock Screens), you can now point the Lock Screen’s Photo Shuffle wallpaper at an album. Touch and hold the Lock Screen, tap Customize, tap the blue ⨁ button to create a new wallpaper, select Photo Shuffle, select Album, choose the desired album from the pop-up menu, set a frequency, tap Use Album, and tap the Add button at the top. Then tap Set as Wallpaper Pair or Customize Home Screen to choose a different image for the Home Screen wallpaper.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Social Media: If you like how the Lock Screen’s Photo Shuffle wallpaper rotates through photos but would prefer that it worked from an album you specified, you’re in luck! That’s now possible in iOS 17 and iPadOS 17.