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- Wednesday March 11
- 03:26 pmToday in Apple history: iPad 2 is the svelte sequel fans hoped for
On March 11, 2011, the iPad 2 launch date brought a thinner, more powerful tablet with massive advances over Apple's original tablet. (via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)03:22 pmMKBHD says MacBook Neo is Apple’s ‘most disruptive product’ in 10+ years
Today the MacBook Neo arrives in users’ hands, and in his review, MKBHD says it’s potentially “Apple’s most disruptive product” in the last 10+ years. more…03:14 pmSave up to $320 on M4, M5 MacBook Air laptops with March savings
Brand-new M5 and closeout M4 models are discounted today at Amazon and B&H, as the Apple retailers compete for your business with midweek deals.Save up to $320 on closeout M4 and new M5 MacBook Air models - Image credit: AppleToday's best MacBook Air deals deliver savings on a variety of models, from select M5 configurations that were officially released today to blowout M4 systems.You can jump straight to Amazon and B&H's MacBook sales, but we've also rounded up highlights below. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums03:08 pm‘Friday Night Baseball’ returns to Apple TV for its fifth season on March 27th
“Friday Night Baseball” — a weekly Major League Baseball (MLB) doubleheader on Apple TV — returns for its fifth season on Friday, March 27th… The post appeared first on MacDailyNews.03:00 pmASUS Executive Says MacBook Neo is 'Shock' to PC Industry
ASUS says the MacBook Neo is a "shock" to the Windows PC ecosystem. "In the past, Apple's pricing situation has always been high, so for them to release a very budget-friendly product, this is obviously a shock to the entire industry," said ASUS co-CEO S.Y. Hsu in a Tuesday earnings call. While he expects PC makers to respond, rising AI-driven memory shortages could push hardware prices higher across the industry. PCMag reports: Hsu said he believes all the PC players -- including Microsoft, Intel, and AMD -- take the MacBook Neo threat seriously. "In fact, in the entire PC ecosystem, there have been a lot of discussions about how to compete with this product," he added, given that rumors about the MacBook Neo have been making the rounds for at least a year. Despite the competitive threat, Hsu argued that the MacBook Neo could have limited appeal. He pointed to the laptop's 8GB of "unified memory," or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can't upgrade it. He also described the MacBook Neo as a "content consumption" device, similar to an iPad. "This is different from the use case of a mainstream notebook," which can handle more compute-intensive tasks, Hsu said. "How big of an impact [the MacBook Neo] will have on the PC industry will still require some time for us to observe," Hsu said while suggesting it might not gain traction among Windows PC users due to software differences. "Of course, the entire Windows PC ecosystem will push out products to compete against Apple," he added. Read more of this story at Slashdot.02:54 pmApple Invites widget just got a smart and useful improvement
Apple has released a new version of its Invites app, adding a smart and useful improvement to the iPhone app’s widget. Starting with today’s version 1.7 update, Apple Invites includes the option to let the countdown widget work with any upcoming event. more…02:50 pmMacBook Neo’s success is just getting started
Apple's first entry-level notebook is off to a strong start, and long-term MacBook Neo demand is predicted as well. (via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)02:38 pmApple Vision Pro user learns the hard way that flight attendants have the final say
A Delta passenger was told by a flight attendant to remove his Apple Vision Pro. No major U.S. airline specifically bans the headset.Apple Vision ProThe person shared their experience online saying a flight attendant asked them to remove their Apple Vision Pro during a flight. The user said they couldn't find a written airline rule banning the headset.Neither could we, but more on that in a bit. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums02:35 pmMajor League Baseball on Apple TV returns soon, here’s what’s coming
Apple’s sports lineup keeps growing. Following the start of Major League Soccer and Formula 1 seasons, Apple TV is about to premiere Major League Baseball (MLB) games too. Here are the full details. more…02:27 pmApple Arcade’s April lineup adding two of the most acclaimed recent indie games
Apple Arcade’s April lineup will introduce three new titles to the subscription gaming platform. These include a couple of the most acclaimed indie games of the last few years. more…02:25 pmApple published a new Press Release
Apple just published a new Press Release:“Friday Night Baseball” returns to Apple TV on March 27 for its fifth season02:22 pmSmaller Dynamic Island is headed for iPhone 19 Pro, not iPhone 18 Pro
The iPhone 18 Pro has previously been rumored to have few differences from its predecessor, but the latest reports say it won't even have a smaller Dynamic Island.Now rumors say that the iPhone 18 Pro will not have a smaller Dynamic Island.Sporadically accurate leaker Digital Chat Station was among those previously saying that the the iPhone 18 Pro would feature a smaller Dynamic Island. He or she did then add there were not expected to be significant hardware design changes from the iPhone 17 Pro model, but now the leaker has gone further.In a post to his Weibo account, Digital Chat Station says that the smaller Dynamic Island is delayed until the following generation, the iPhone 19 Pro. At the same time, the leaker says (in translation) that Apple is considering re-using the same molds it did for the iPhone 17 Pro. Rumor Score: 🤔 Possible Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums02:22 pmSmaller Dynamic Island is headed for iPhone 19 Pro, not iPhone 18 Pro
The iPhone 18 Pro has previously been rumored to have few differences from its predecessor, but the latest reports say it won't even have a smaller Dynamic Island.Now rumors say that the iPhone 18 Pro will not have a smaller Dynamic Island.Sporadically accurate leaker Digital Chat Station was among those previously saying that the the iPhone 18 Pro would feature a smaller Dynamic Island. He or she did then add there were not expected to be significant hardware design changes from the iPhone 17 Pro model, but now the leaker has gone further.In a post to his Weibo account, Digital Chat Station says that the smaller Dynamic Island is delayed until the following generation, the iPhone 19 Pro. At the same time, the leaker says (in translation) that Apple is considering re-using the same molds it did for the iPhone 17 Pro. Rumor Score: 🤔 Possible Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums02:17 pmApple Music subscribers will soon be able to listen to complete songs in TikTok
Thanks to a new partnership, Apple Music subscribers will be able to listen in entirety to songs they discover on TikTok, without shifting over to the Music app.'Play Full Song' for Apple Music in TikTokWhile TikTok is best known for its shortform content, oddball advertising, and the whole US ownership shift situation, it's also a platform for discovering music. In a new feature announced on Wednesday, it will become a much better place for music lovers who also subscribe to Apple Music.The new "Play Full Song" experience will allow TikTok users to listen to full-length tracks they find while doomscrolling through their For You Page, or from a Sound Detail page. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums02:17 pmApple Music subscribers will soon be able to listen to complete songs in TikTok
Thanks to a new partnership, Apple Music subscribers will be able to listen in entirety to songs they discover on TikTok, without shifting over to the Music app.'Play Full Song' for Apple Music in TikTokWhile TikTok is best known for its shortform content, oddball advertising, and the whole US ownership shift situation, it's also a platform for discovering music. In a new feature announced on Wednesday, it will become a much better place for music lovers who also subscribe to Apple Music.The new "Play Full Song" experience will allow TikTok users to listen to full-length tracks they find while doomscrolling through their For You Page, or from a Sound Detail page. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums02:11 pmNew iPhone 18 Pro leaks explore design details, dimensions, more
Today a pair of new iPhone 18 Pro-related posts from Weibo leakers have arrived, outlining what to expect from the product’s design, dimensions, and more. more…02:00 pmApple TV celebrates world premiere of ‘Imperfect Women,’ starring Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington, and Kate Mara | Mac Daily NewsApple TV celebrates world premiere of ‘Imperfect Women,’ starring Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington, and Kate Mara
On Tuesday, March 10th, Apple TV celebrated its highly anticipated limited series “Imperfect Women” with a star-studded… The post appeared first on MacDailyNews.01:54 pmApple published a new Press Release
Apple just published a new Press Release:Apple Arcade adds DREDGE+ and Unpacking+ to its catalog in April01:54 pmFirst footage shows X-Plane 12 on Vision Pro, including an ARKit trick in action
Yesterday we learned that the “world’s most advanced flight simulator” will soon work with Apple Vision Pro. Now we have a first look at how the experience will look, including how ARKit intelligently handles physical controls. more…01:51 pmStudio Display XDR review: The right Mac display at the wrong price
Macworld At a glanceExpert's Rating Pros Extreme color accuracy Really good built-in webcam Very good HDR brightness Cons Costs a fortune Speakers are mediocre Mac-only; Thunderbolt-only Our Verdict For well-heeled Mac (and only Mac) users, this is just the display to make your content shine. It should cost a lot less, and should be 32 inches instead of 27, but there’s no denying that the color gamut and accuracy are top-notch, HDR picture quality is fantastic, and even the webcam is really good this time. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Price When Reviewed$3299 Best Prices Today: Apple Studio Display XDR (2026) Retailer Price $3,299 View Deal $3299 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Apple finally made a nice modern computer monitor with nice modern features and specs. Something that compares well with contemporary PC monitors in most respects: high and variable refresh rate, quality HDR, and wide color. The Pro Display XDR wasn’t it. The Studio Display (2022) wasn’t it. This is it. It even manages to outshine its contemporaries in some ways. It’s a shame it won’t be used by more than a handful of visual artists burning through VC startup money and YouTube influencers with cash to spare, because the Studio Display XDR is the kind of monitor you really need to get the full Mac experience. Unfortunately, the $3,300+ price tag places it out of reach and out of touch. Studio Display XDR: Design You’d have a hard time spotting the difference between the new Studio Display XDR and the regular Studio Display. They are virtually identical and almost exactly the same as the original 2022 Studio Display. It’s a 27-inch display, with relatively thick black bezels and a silver aluminum body that’s about an inch thick. There are four USB-C ports on the back and speaker holes along the top and bottom. The regular Studio Display comes with a stand that only tilts, but does not go up or down—a problem since it’s set too low for most desks. There are a lot of Studio Displays sitting on makeshift monitor stands. You can buy a handsome tilt-and-height adjustable stand that is elegant, simple, and very Apple. With it, your display can tilt and go up and down, though not rotate. Unfortunately, it still costs $400, easily four times what a reasonable price should be. The Studio Display XDR comes with that upgraded stand, but it should really come standard with the regular Studio Display as well. Foundry Those perforations are the only visible difference between the Studio Display and the Studio Display XDR when the power is off. The Studio Display has five rows of ventilation holes about halfway across the thickness of the display, while the XDR model has nine rows that nearly stretch all the way across. Foundry The four USB-C ports on the back are a big upgrade over the 2022 model, and identical on both the Studio Display and XDR versions. While the old Studio Display had a single Thunderbolt 3 port and three USB-C (10 Gbps) ports, the new models have a pair of Thunderbolt 5 ports and two USB-C ports. Foundry That second port lets you hook up high-speed accessories such as external storage, or daisy-chain multiple monitors together—up to four, with a MacBook Pro with M5 Max. The downstream Thunderbolt port still supplies up to 96W of power on the standard model to charge your connected MacBook, but the Studio Display XDR boosts that up to 140W so you can fast-charge a MacBook Pro. These are nice improvements, but it’s frustrating to think that you’ll need adapters to plug anything in via HDMI or DisplayPort. Apple built Studio Display for Macs and Macs alone. Case in point: There is no way to adjust display settings other than with a connected Mac. Studio Display XDR: Screen The new Studio Displays both feature the same size and resolution as the old model: 5K (5120 x 2880) at 27 inches. The new XDR model finally adds the critical features that should be standard for any monitor costing over $800 these days. The XDR version has a mini-LED backlight array with up to 2304 dimming zones that can crank the brightness up to 1000 nits for SDR content and a peak of 2000 nits for HDR content. It supports resolutions up to 120Hz and variable refresh rates, too. (A note on 120Hz support: Macs with M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, M1 Ultra, M2, and M3 will only drive the display up to 60Hz. You still get HDR and all the other display features, though.) Plug into an M1 Mac and you’re limited to 60Hz.Foundry Both models support P3 wide color, but the XDR model adds a host of additional color reference modes, including P3 + Adobe RGB, and even DICOM medical imaging. Calibration options are limited for a professional monitor, but enhanced full instrument-driven calibration is coming in a future software update, according to Apple’s white paper. I don’t have the colorimeters to fully test the gamut and color accuracy of the Studio Display XDR. It’s not as high-resolution as the original Pro Display XDR, which had a 6016 by 3384 panel, but I would be shocked if the new model were any different than the original Studio Display, which was lauded for its spot-on calibration out of the box. To my eyes, the Studio Display XDR looks extremely accurate across the brightness range, and there’s a minimum of blooming or variance in backlight uniformity. Motion clarity is another matter. The original Studio Display was criticized for both its low 60Hz refresh rate and aging panel technology with poor response times, resulting in significant blur and smearing on moving objects. The Studio Display XDR improves that quite a bit with the boost to 120Hz, but taking a spin through the tests at blurbusters.com, it’s easy to see that motion clarity is still an issue relative to quality OLED PC displays. Many of those are larger, support higher refresh rates, and feature much better response times, resulting in much better motion clarity. It won’t be an issue for visual artists working on still images or video editing, but any quick-moving 3D graphics, including (but not limited to) games, will show significant motion clarity problems compared to monitors that cost a fraction of what the Studio Display XDR does. Studio Display XDR: Camera and speakers You’d be forgiven for thinking the webcam has barely been upgraded in the new Studio Displays, judging from the specs. The three-year-old model has a “12MP Center Stage camera,” and the new model has a “12MP Center Stage camera with Desk View.” The image quality is vastly improved, though Desk View is unfortunately not that useful here. The angle captured is still a little high, forcing you to tilt the monitor down quite far to show your desk. It’s a night-and-day difference under any lighting conditions, and especially low light where video from the old Studio Display looks like mud. You still get better results with a modern iPhone using Continuity Camera, but the new Studio Display really closes the gap. Even with a bright key light, the original Studio Display struggles.Foundry White balance, clarity, resolution, and smoothness are all so much better. At this price we still think Apple should be a leader and give us 4K and 60fps recording, but at least the built-in webcam is now genuinely quite good. In low light, the difference between the new and old Studio Display webcam is dramatic. The same can’t be said for the speakers. Apple touts its six-speaker array with Spatial Audio (a marketing term now indiscriminately applied to every Apple product, it seems) as having 30 percent deeper bass than the six-speaker array on the previous Studio Display. It’s noticeably better, but still not very good. The overall sound is tinny and thin, and “Spatial Audio” seems like a joke—there’s barely any stereo separation, much less some sort of 3D, room-filling spatial sound. Monitors are notorious for having terrible built-in speakers, or none at all. The Studio Display’s audio is much better than most, but that’s damning with faint praise. If you care about sound quality at all, invest in dedicated speakers. Even cheap speakers sound better than the Studio Display. Should you buy a Studio Display XDR? The Studio Display XDR shines in its resolution (5K is nice when 4K is so common), color accuracy, brightness, and webcam quality. The speakers are far better than what you get in most monitors, though still not very good. But it’s hard not to criticize the price. At $3,299 it’s three times what it should cost, even for an Apple product. At least the price includes the tilt-and-height adjustable stand, a whopping $400 upgrade for the regular Studio Display, as well as a short 1-meter Thunderbolt 5 cable. And yes, if you order the Nano Texture Glass (+$300) to reduce glare, it still comes with the Apple Polishing Cloth. Sure it’s overpriced, but you get a 1-meter Thunderbolt 5 cable and a polishing cloth!Foundry But consider the alternatives. Just one example of many: the 27-inch Asus ROG Swift PG27UCDM is a QD-OLED 4K display with 99% DCI-P3 color coverage, extremely good color accuracy, a 240Hz refresh rate, much better motion clarity, and HDR peak brightness of 1000 nits. It accepts multiple standard display inputs, has USB-C ports, and delivers 90W of power. Sure, it’s got no webcam or speakers, but it’s $1099. If Apple were to charge only double that for the Studio Display XDR, you could probably convince yourself it’s worth it. Integrated webcam and useable, if not great, speakers. 5K resolution. Higher brightness and wider color gamut. Who needs inputs other than Thunderbolt anyway? We’re used to paying the so-called “Apple Tax” for products with superior design and build quality, but the Studio Display XDR, like the standard Studio Display, pushes the concept too far. It’s a great product for Mac users (and only Mac users), but such a terrible value that it’s hard to recommend it, even if it’s on sale.