Category: Apple Insider

In October 2021, a ruling passed by the Reserve Bank of India made it so banks, financial institutions, and “gateways” would need to require approval before completing credit and debit card transactions for auto-renewable subscriptions.

According to the mandate, merchants must obtain user approval through transaction notifications, e-mandates, and Additional Factors of Authentication (AFA). Banks or card issuers will decline transactions that do not meet the directive’s requirements.

Because of this regulatory change, users in India will not be able to purchase apps from the App Store, subscribe to Apple TV+ or Apple Music, or buy movies or shows through iTunes with a credit or debit card.

To prevent seeing interruptions to their subscriptions, users will need to fund their Apple ID balance, Apple’s support site explains.

Regulatory requirements in India apply to the processing of recurring transactions. If you hold an Indian debit or credit card and you have a subscription, these changes impact your transactions. Some transactions might be declined by banks and card issuers.

To continue enjoying your subscriptions, you can pay with your Apple ID balance. You can add to your Apple ID balance using App Store Codes, Net Banking, and UPI.

In addition to encouraging developers to warn customers about the change, Apple ran a promotion that gave customers in India chance to add funds to their Apple ID to receive a 20% bonus.

Based on Pat Conroy’s 1986 novel, “Prince of Tides,” follows a man that falls in love with his twin sister’s psychiatrist. As the story progresses he learns that many of his sister’s issues — as well as his own — stem from traumatic events in his childhood.

Conroy is also a co-writer of this Apple TV+ series, alongside Becky Johnson. The series is set to be directed by Streisand, who both directed and starred in the original film.

There has yet to be any casting decisions for the series, according to a report by The Hollywood Reporter.

The 1991 film adaptation was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

It will be the first increase on the affected plans in three years, Bloomberg has reported. The monthly fees will rise by up to $6 a month for single-line customers and up to $12 a month for those on family plans.

According to AT&T, customers will be able to avoid the price hikes by switching to new unlimited plans.

“We are encouraging our customers to explore our newer plans which offer many additional features, more flexibility for each line on their account and, in many cases, a lower monthly cost,” the carrier said Tuesday in an emailed response to questions.

The price hike will mark a reversal for near-term trends in the telecom industry. For the last few years, the companies have been offering discounts, free devices, and other promotions in an effort to compete for customers.

While carriers saw record low churn rates during the pandemic, there’s a chance that AT&T’s plan could backfire and cause existing subscribers to defect to competitors like T-Mobile and Verizon. It’s not clear how many consumers are on the older plans at present.

According to a Recon Analytics mobile customer survey seen by Bloomberg, the rate of customer defections because of the hikes could rise to as much as 1.25% a month, up from 1%. Verizon could be the biggest beneficiary.

Late Monday afternoon, Leviton debuted several new smart home products to its Decora lineup. Most of them are geared toward adding HomeKit-compatible lighting to older homes that may not feature neutral wiring.

No matter what devices you’re interested in, you’ll need to purchase a required Smart Wi-Fi Bridge. It supports up to 25 of the No-Neutral devices and offers coverage for 2500 square feet.

Once you’ve obtained a Bridge, you can add a No-Neutral switch and a No-Neutral dimmer, allowing you to control your lighting from your iPhone.

If you’d like to add a Switch or Dimmer to an area that doesn’t have one, the Decora Wire-Free Anywhere companions have you covered. Simply stick the battery-operated switch to your wall — no need to mess with electrical wiring.

Additionally, Decora also released a second-generation Wi-Fi Tamper-resistant outlet. However, it does require a neutral wire to work, so it’s best suited for newer construction or retrofitted homes.

It provides on/off control for loads of up to 15A, including lamps, holiday lighting, electronics, and small appliances. It’s also compatible with the Anywhere Switch companion.

Lastly, new to the Decora lineup is the Decora Smart Wi-Fi 2nd Gen Motion Sensing Dimmer.

It features ambient light sensing to dim the lights to the perfect level every time. It also offers presets for night, a light guide, and a handy motion snooze that allows you to keep the lights down low while watching movies. It also functions as a control point for other smart switches and HomeKit automations.

Like the Tamper-resistant outlet, it requires homes with neutral wiring to work.

Members of the Gaston family from Tennessee had spent a full day enjoying themselves at Disney World, but a notification on an iPhone about an AirTag they didn’t own tracking their movements darkened the end of the day at the Magic Kingdom.

Mother Jennifer Gaston and daughter Madison were walking to their car late in the evening when they were notified an AirTag was moving with them, reports WKRN. Jennifer said the first detection was at 7:09 p.m., and the notification appeared on their device at 11:33 p.m.

On checking the notification, Madison saw a map including places they had walked throughout the park over a four-hour period. “It showed the first destination where it was detected with her, then it basically draws a line and makes the connections of the points where she had been,” said Jennifer.

To try and find the AirTag, both mother and daughter shook their bags and clothing in the parking lot, but failed to find the device. They then drove to their hotel and called police on the way.

If an AirTag is found, it can be handed to police, who can then use the serial number to track down its owner. However, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said the responding deputy did not identify a criminal violation since the physical tag wasn’t found.

Even so, investigators did take an incident report, and say they are aware of the situation.

Though it is plausible that the AirTag fell and went missing in the car park, OSCO offers the possibility it was a mistaken identification. It is proposed that the sheer number of Apple devices in the park, along with AirTags, could’ve produced an “erroneous” detection.

“As a parent, I was just so frantic in the moment,” Jennifer told the report. “Just to think that somebody had those intentions. Looking at your daughters and just having those intentions, it was just terrifying.”

Madison said she was scared as she had seen videos about AirTag stalking, “but it’s one of those things you never think is going to happen to you until it actually does.”

In all probability, the family was in proximity to a group of folks in the park, with one or more of them having an AirTag. Some of the more popular attractions can have lines of up to two hours — and sometimes more. Additionally, a crowd gathers sometimes three hours before the nightly fireworks shows.

Even though Apple says that the AirTag isn’t for tracking people, AppleInsider has seen families with children wearing AirTags on special necklaces in the parks.

The misuse of AirTag for stalking has caught the attention of lawmakers and authorities, prompting the New York Attorney General to issue a warning about trackers in February. Apple has also come under criticism for its anti-stalking features, which have been found in one April report not to be as effective as they could be.

Even so, there are cases where the anti-stalking features have proven to be useful. In February, the features were credited for the arrest of a stalker who attempted to use an AirTag hidden in a trailer hitch.

Following an unexpected settlement with Qualcomm in 2019 to end patent infringement legal action, Apple has been a major client of the modem maker’s products. However, with Apple working on its own modems, the days of using Qualcomm’s communications hardware may be numbered.

In a Saturday profile of Apple’s modem efforts, the Wall Street Journal outlines the challenge Apple faces in creating modems that are good enough for Apple to use instead of Qualcomm’s version.

The rewards are numerous, including 5G in items like the MacBook Pro and extremely fast speeds for iPhones. For future hardware augmented reality headsets and smart glasses could benefit from the fast speeds, with the former needing high bandwidth but minimal latency to be worthwhile.

Apple’s work in the field was bolstered by the acquisition of most of Intel’s smartphone modem business and the onboarding of some 2,200 engineers, but Apple continues to expand its talent pool in the field.

Approximately 140 job postings based in an Apple office in San Diego, the hometown of Qualcomm, center around the creation of cellular chips. Meanwhile a satellite engineering office in Irvine, California has around 20 similar open positions, potentially to try and tempt employees of Broadcom over to the company.

Current expectations has Apple moving to its own modems from 2023, with TSMC expected to be the producer of the chips for the iPhone maker.

Making its own modem offers Apple advantages in a number of areas, including cost-savings and a reduction in reliance from suppliers like Qualcomm, which Apple has a tension-filled relationship with, CCS Insight senior director of research Wayne Lam told the report.

The ability to fine-tune the modem for Apple’s intended purposes is also a big benefit, as it could adjust the modem to work in specific ways for one product, but in others to be more effective for another item.

As for what this could look like, the report points to Apple Silicon’s impact, which involved high power efficiency chips that out-performed Intel’s alternates. Lam offers the same sort of design improvements could improve the connectivity of smaller devices like the Apple Watch.

However, Tantra Analyst founder Prakash Sangam offers that “in some ways a modem is more complex” than a processor like the M1, in part due to the complexity of dealing with many circumstances that can affect a signal. This could make it harder for Apple to produce, increasing the relative development time.

“If you throw enough time and resources and money at it, it can be done,” says Sangam. “But whether they can do it by 2023, I don’t think anyone other than Apple can say.”

However, Miani also notes that the criticism surrounding the display is valid. It’s the same 5K, 27-inch, non-ProMotion, non-MiniLED monitor that has been available on the iMac since 2014 — which got him thinking.

If it’s the same display that Apple has been offering for nearly a decade, then you should be able to convert an old iMac into a similar display.

The video, spotted by 9to5mac, is hardly an exhaustive tutorial, but it does show the process of turning a 2014 27-inch iMac into a DIY Studio Display.

He obtained the iMac for “a smidge over $600,” but notes that you could get it for less if you found one with a dead logic board and a working display.

Miani completely guts the iMac and, once finished, winds up with a 27-inch 5K display with a built-in camera and USB-C connectivity for $829.

While impressive, it’s still not an exact duplicate of the Studio Display. For example, it doesn’t feature P3 color gamut support — to get that, you’d need to get an iMac from 2015 or later.

He also points out that the performance isn’t exactly the same as the Studio Display. The blacks aren’t as deep, and the contrast ratio isn’t as good. However, if you’re willing to hunt down a 2015 — or even better, a 2017 iMac — you’d likely see even better results.

While the process does require some tools and technical prowess, it proves that it is possible to repurpose an old iMac into a high-end monitor if you so choose.

Apple debuted the Studio Display at the 2022 March Apple Event. The $1,600 monitor has received mixed reviews.

The display had an early issue where users were unable to update the device until Apple resigned iOS 15.4 specifically for the monitor.

Additionally, the monitor has seen multiple problems with its built-in webcam. The quality was seen as lacking, and even after an update, does not seem to be as impressive as we’d hoped.

Apple brought in $97.28 billion in revenue and the iPad contributed to $7.65 billion of that. This is down from $7.8 billion from Q2 2021.

During the quarterly Apple earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook commented on the decline in iPad revenue, pointing out that supply constraints have had an effect on sales. He asserted that demand for iPad, and specifically the new iPad Air 5 with M1 processor, was still strong.

According to Cook, the install base for the iPad is at an all-time high. Also, half of the customers buying an iPad were first-time buyers of the device.

Every other category Apple provides data for had an increase in revenue overall. While Apple says supply chains were at fault, other issues could include lower demand in tablets now that COVID lockdowns have ended or potential customers being steered towards the Apple Silicon-powered Macs.

iPad quarterly revenue

Apple guides that its third quarter will continue to be an unknown and it is difficult to provide guidance due to a number of factors. COVID continues to impact the supply chain, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine means no sales in Russia. It isn’t clear if iPad revenue will recover in Q3.

Nathan Proctor, the right to repair campaign director of the U.S. Public Research Interest Research Group, said that the organization is “really pleased to see” the new program. The U.S. PIRG previously gave Apple an “F” score for its difficult product repairs.

The U.S. PIRG director added that Apple’s program is a sign that Right to repair it “breaking through.” However, he said that the iPhone maker is still exerting too much control over the process.

“While this is a start, there are still too many hoops to jump through to fix phones. As it’s becoming clear that Apple and other manufacturers can give us the Right to Repair, we should require them to,” Proctor said. “And we should have more options. Not just one set of parts. Not just a few manufacturers. No product should be tossed in the scrap heap, wasting money and adding to our toxic electronic waste problem, because the manufacturer doesn’t properly support repair.”

Similarly on Wednesday, the repair experts at iFixit praised Apple’s program as a good first step, stating that “anything that enables more people to do repairs is great news.” However, iFixit noted that the company is still “doubling down on their parts pairing strategy, enabling only very limited, serial number-authorized repairs.”

“While it’s a great step for repair, and a change of course for the mighty Apple, the program doesn’t do what Right to Repair legislation around the world aims to do,” iFixit’s Elizabeth Chamberlain said. “A true right to repair will give independent repair shops a chance to compete in the repair marketplace, bringing down the cost of repairs for everyone.”

Apple launched the Self Service Repair program for iPhones earlier on Wednesday, creating a dedicated storefront for ordering iPhone parts and making available a number of repair documents. Similar repair resource access is also coming to the Mac down the road.

After all, sometimes you’re going to need a bit more screen real estate than the MacBook Pros offer, even in their largest variations. Chances are, if you’re looking for a great MacBook Pro monitor, you’re using the device for work of some kind.

That means you’re going to want to look out for a variety of things, including screen size, screen resolution, and even color quality. Finding one of the best MacBook Pro monitors can be difficult, especially with so many monitors out there to choose from. That’s why we’ve done most of the legwork and put together this list of the best MacBook Pro monitors, including a budget option for those who don’t want to break the bank with their latest accessory.

The Dell UltraSharp U2720Q has a built-in USB-C port.

The Dell UltraSharp U2720Q might not look like much, but once you plug it in and see excellent color coverage it offers, you’ll never want to go back to another monitor. This delightful monitor comes with support for 4K resolution, and 95% DCI-P3, 99.9% sRGB, and 99% REC 709. That means you’ll have vibrant, sharp, and naturally beautiful visuals no matter what you’re doing on your MacBook Pro.

The panel here is also 27-inches, which means plenty of screen real estate to spread out your windows and make use of. The included ergonomic stand can also tilt, pivot, and adjust vertically, which means you can easily set it up any way you like it without having to move the monitor stand around a lot.

On top of great resolution and color quality, the Dell UltraSharp U2720Q also comes with a built-in USB-C port. That means you can charge your MacBook Pro even while running it at its full potential. The brightness could be a little bit better, but with so many other things going for it for under $600, it’s hard to beat this great monitor from Dell.

The Gigabyte M27Q offers an abundance of features for a budget-friendly price.

If you want to add a monitor to your MacBook Pro setup, but don’t want to spend a lot of money, there are still some good options. One of the best budget options is the Gigabyte M27Q. This monitor features a max refresh rate of 170Hz an an IPS panel with a full resolution of 1440P. That makes it crisp enough to handle most work you’ll throw at it. The color support here isn’t as great as you’ll find in higher-priced monitors, but it’s still more than good enough for most of what you’ll do with it.

The peak brightness, on the other hand, is extraordinary, and it handles reflections really well, too. That means you can work in bright rooms without having to worry so much about them causing glare on your screen. Additionally, the picture quality is good overall, and the accuracy of the image is fantastic right out of the box. If it had checked a few more boxes, it could easily have been a possibility for our best overall MacBook Pro monitor. But, since it falls somewhat short, and the included USB-C port doesn’t have enough power to charge your MacBook Pro, it will have to settle for the budget spot on our list.

The LG 34BK95U-W Ultrafine display has ample ports to connect accessories.

If you want to maximize screen real estate, while also taking advantage of a colorful and bright screen. At 34-inches, this 5K monitor is a great option for anyone who needs a large screen with a high resolution. It also comes with ample viewing angles and great build quality. Overall, it’s hard to beat the LG 34BK95U-W Ultrafine and its bevy of features.

On top of sporting a higher resolution panel, the 34-inch monitor also comes with a ton of ports, including a DisplayPort, two HDMI ports, as well as a USB-C (Thunderbolt 3) port, and even some regular USB-A 3.0 ports. That makes it great for accessories, which most MacBook Pros may struggle with. One of the real standout parts of this monitor, though, is its three year warranty for parts and labor. That means you won’t have to worry about dropping such a large sum on a monitor again, at least for a good few years. The LG 34BK95U-W retails for $1,649, but is currently on sale at Amazon and at B&H Photo.

The Apple Studio Display connects easily to your MacBook Pro

If you don’t mind spending a pretty penny and want to keep everything in the Apple ecosystem, then pair your MacBook Pro with the Apple Studio Display. The newly released 5K monitor comes with a bevy of features, including multiple USB ports, which should help you accessorize as needed.

Like the Pro Display XDR, the Studio Display is geared towards creative professionals. That means multiple reference modes, and P3 wide color gamut support, too. You’ll also find a built-in six-speaker sound system, as well as a 12MP ultra-wide web camera enclosed in the front of the device. The entire thing is powered by an onboard A13 chip, and comes with a nano-texture display that does great at cutting down on glare.

There are better 5K displays out there, but if you really want to keep it in the Apple family, then the Studio Display is the monitor for you. Read our full Apple Studio Display review.

AppleInsider readers can also save $50 on AppleCare for the Studio display with this activation link and promo code APINSIDER at Adorama. Step-by-step coupon instructions can be found here.

The Dell UltraSharp U4021QW offers enhanced screen real estate.

If you’re planning on multitasking, then going with an ultrawide monitor can be a great way to give yourself some extra screen real estate. It might not be the best ultrawide out there, but the Dell UltraSharp U4021QW does come close, and it gives you a ton of features to take advantage of during usage for under $2,000.

First, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. This monitor is massive. At 39.7 inches, the Dell UltraSharp U4021QW will take up a lot of desk space. But, it makes up for all of this with an absolutely stunning picture quality you aren’t likely to find on many other monitors. The ports that it comes with are also fantastic, and you’ll probably never need to use them all.

But what makes it so special for multitaskers? We’re glad you asked. Let us introduce you to the Dell UltraSharp U4021QW’s various multitasking modes, including picture-by-picture, picture-in-picture, and KVM (which stands for keyboard, video, and mouse). These features allow you to connect two separate laptops or computers and view them on that single screen. So, if you need to collaborate with a teammate who has their own MacBook Pro, the Dell UltraSharp U4021QW can let you both work side by side whenever you need to.