Category: Apple Insider

The promotion offers students and teachers a free pair of standard AirPods with the purchase of an eligible Mac or iPad device. Customers can also upgrade to the wireless charging case or AirPods Pro for an additional fee.

All of those devices are also available at a discount when purchasing via the educational storefront. Users can also add AppleCare+ coverage at a 20% discounted rate.

The promotion is identical to the ones launched in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, and other regions over the summer of 2020.

Apple has been working on its own UWB tracking tags for several years now, though they have yet to be released. When they do debut, “AirTags” are expected to sport an Apple U-series chip that could allow for much more precise location tracking than Bluetooth alone allows.

According to TechCrunch, Tile plans to release its UWB tracking devices sometime in 2021. Internal schematics show that the tags will appear similar to existing Tile trackers, but leverage UWB for spatial awareness and precise indoor tracking.

Tile also plans to add AR capabilities to its UWB tags. Credit: Tile (via TechCrunch)

In addition to UWB, the tags will also use augmented reality to guide users to their missing items. Tile users will be able to use an AR camera view in the Tile app and find lost items via overlays and directional arrows.

Sources told TechCrunch that Tile expects to release its UWB tracker later in 2021 with support for both iOS and Android. Potential pricing for the new tags is unclear, however.

Tile will keep its Bluetooth-based trackers on the market, since many users don’t own an smartphone with UWB capabilities. Apple’s iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 devices pack a U1 chip, which allows for UWB capabilities.

Apple, for its part, is also expected to release its UWB “AirTags” tracking tags in 2021. Well-connected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on Monday said that the UWB accessory should debut sometime during the year.

Like the rumored Tile tags, “AirTags” are expected to feature both UWB tracking and augmented reality capabilities. The tags will apparently integrate in a new “Items” tab in the Find My app. Potential accessories could include leather sleeves and keychains.

Tile in 2020 testified before Congress about antitrust concerns amid rumors of Apple’s entry into the tracking tag market.

In a “year like no other,” the company announced that it added more than 4 million devices and 11,000 customers in 2020 alone. By the end of 2020, the company had hit the 20 million device threshold. That growth, of course, came about during a period of digital transformation spurred by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Those numbers also mean that Jamf has achieved a milestone it previously set for itself. At the start of 2015, when Jamf managed fewer than 4 million devices for around 5,000 customers, it set a goal to run on 20 million devices by the end of 2020.

“Through our mission to help organizations succeed with Apple, we are proud to have achieved this milestone, and more importantly to have enabled so many organizations to help their employees, doctors, nurses, teachers and students get the most out of their technology and be their best,” said Jamf CEO Dean Hager.

According to the company, Jamf software is now used to manage Apple devices at 24 of the 25 most valuable brands according to Forbes. It’s also used by the top 10 global universities; 16 of the top 20 best U.S. hospitals; and seven of the top 10 Fortune 500 technology companies.

The MDM firm also highlighted some of the digital transformations that occurred in 2020, such as “zero-touch deployment for at-home employees, virtually educating students and remote patient care.”

In July 2020, shares of Jamf debuted on the NASDAQ in a $100 million initial public offering. During the first day of trading, the company’s share price soared 51%.

Robot vacuums have always promised to keep our homes cleaner while saving us time — but do they live up to the claims?

Today we’re looking at the Proscenic M7 Pro, a robotic vacuum that even includes an optional mopping function.

The M7 Pro robotic vacuum is relatively standard when it comes to its design. It’s a classic, fully circular design that measures just under 14 inches across. Like other robots we’ve checked out, it has a raised laser sensor, which allows it to create a map of your home while it cleans.

This specific robot features two brush-arms that help kick dust toward the beater bar, located on the underside. They work better than some other robots we’ve tested and seem reasonably sturdy.

There are 24 sensors in the M7 Pro, most of which are used to keep the robot from crashing into walls or stairs. It includes a HEPA filter, which prevents allergens from escaping back into the room once collected.

The dustbin, located on the front of the robot, can be removed by pressing a tab. Emptying the robot is extremely easy and can be done in a couple of seconds. You’ll have to wash the included filter once a week and give it 24 hours to fully dry to keep the robot running at peak performance.

Included in the box is an additional filter, optional water reservoir, and cleaning cloth, enabling the robots mopping mode — the water reservoir clips under the dustbin when in use.

Depending on how you’re planning on using the robot, your setup will vary. For example, you don’t need to connect the M7 Pro to your home network — you can use the included remote control or press the buttons on top of the robot. Both methods work fine, and for plenty of people, that may be all they need.

However, by connecting the M7 Pro to your home network, you can take advantage of many of the settings only available from within the app.

Yet, we found that connecting the M7 Pro to our home network wasn’t as easy as we had hoped. Our first several attempts didn’t work, despite following the instructions to the letter. We could connect the robot to our network, but the installation feature would time out halfway through.

Eventually, after a few days, we could connect it by doing the same steps as before. We aren’t sure what changed, but the setup went smoothly after waiting several days before another attempt.

We were impressed with how well the M7 Pro did with sweeping. The apartment we tested it in has a mix of laminate and carpeted areas, with a recently replaced carpet. It effortlessly swept up dust, dirt, food preparation crumbs, and more from the laminate flooring.

The apartment we tested is only 700 square feet, and the robot was able to finish sweeping in about an hour and 10 minutes and had 40 percent battery left. The Proscenic M7 Pro is powered by a 5,200mAh battery that can clean for about two hours before the robot will need to recharge.

One of the best features of the M7 Pro is its ability to automatically detect carpet while sweeping. This means that the vacuum will increase suction over carpeting and decrease it over laminate, hardwood, and tile flooring.

As far as suction goes, the M7 Pro is notably more powerful than other vacuums we’ve tested. It offers up to 2,600Pa of suction power, a full 600 more than our current favorite Roborock S4. 2,600Pa is still significantly less than an upright vacuum — which often reach 18,000Pa — but great for maintenance cleaning.

The downside is that the Proscenic M7 Pro is also far louder than the others we’ve tested as well. Even in quiet mode, we found that it was loud enough to disrupt conversation.

When it came to the carpets, it removed hair, fuzz, lint, and crumbs exceptionally well. Because the carpet we tested is newer, it’s still shedding its preliminary factory-fuzz, which meant we had to take the robot’s filters out and clean them more than usual. Still, the three minutes of effort three times a week is a small price to pay for not needing to vacuum every other day.

The dustbin, while not gigantic, is bigger than some we have seen, and easy to empty

Of course, how well a robotic vacuum works is highly dependent on where you’re using it. Robotic vacuums work wonderfully for low-pile carpets, laminate floors, and hardwood floors. They can still help to keep shag carpeting and tile floors clean as well, but we don’t think they’d completely replace an upright vacuum cleaner.

Additionally, if you have kids that track dirt in or pets that shed, you’re going to spend more time maintaining the vacuum than you would otherwise.

There are also a few cases where a robotic vacuum isn’t the best tool for a job. If you have excessive amounts of pet hair — say if you own a bunch of pomeranians or ragdoll cats — it will likely just clog the vacuum and render it useless.

If you’ve got family members or roommates who have a habit of leaving things on the floor, a robotic vacuum may be more hassle than it’s worth. They are quick to suck up loose change, headphones, stray cords, and more.

This isn’t a big deal if you’re home and you can immediately stop what you’re doing and dislodge the items, but if it runs while you’re out of the house, you may not find out what damage it has caused until several hours — or even days — later.

This isn’t just true for the M7 Pro, but for all robotic vacuums — you’ll need to decide if one can slot into your life or not.

We were significantly less impressed by the M7 Pro’s ability to mop, though we’ve used enough robotic mops to know we should somewhat temper our expectations.

The first thing we took note of was the size of the water reservoir. It is tiny and doesn’t seem to dispense water into the cleaning cloth very much during the mopping cycle. That being said, it doesn’t leave your floors a sopping wet mess, either, making it ideal for hardwood floors.

The included water tank is almost laughably small

We’ve said it before— to adequately clean a floor, you’ll need to be able to utilize at least two of the following: friction, cleaner, and heat.

Like most robot mops, you can’t fill the reservoir with cleaning solution, it doesn’t have a heat function, and it’s too lightweight to scrub anything significant off the floor.

However, it does work wonders at shining up floors that are only somewhat dirty. It works well to maintain already clean floors — which means it’s not the best solution for a house with kids, pets, or especially high-trafficked areas.

For us, though, we found that it did keep the floors looking nice and extended the amount of time between actual mopping sessions.

We do have a word of caution for those who are looking into getting a robotic mop. Although it seemingly can identify carpet in the sweeping mode, it doesn’t seem to detect it in mopping mode.

This means you’ll need to make sure you use the app to ensure it doesn’t diligently mop your carpeted rooms.

The ProsenicHome app is, essentially, the same as most other robotic vacuum apps we’ve seen. Like other vacuums, there are two primary uses for the app.

The first is to set up an automatic cleaning schedule for the robot to perform. For many people, the ability to have a robotic vacuum cleaner sweep while they’re asleep or out of the house is a significant benefit.

The second is to keep an eye on your vacuum. It can often be a little hard to deduce what may cause a robot vacuum to stop working. An app provides helpful insight and can alert you to blocked filters, suspended wheels, bound-up beater bars, and more.

Of course, the app has other features, too. It can let you see the cleaning path your robot has most recently taken, allow you to set up no-go zones, or send the vacuum to clean up a specific area.

Generally speaking, the app experience — after the initial setup — was sufficient. It’s easy to use and offers all the features we’d expect to use.

While we didn’t get to test it, the Proscenic M7 does have an optional automatic dust collector. The dust collector will automatically empty your robot after it finishes sweeping and bundles the debris into disposable vacuum bags. It doesn’t eliminate maintenance — you’ll still need to clean the filter at least once every ten days or so, but it cuts down a lot of the maintenance.

The dust collector costs $100, which may be worth the investment if you don’t want to empty the robot every other time you vacuum or if you’re a person who suffers from a lot of allergies.

As far as robotic vacuums go, the Proscenic M7 Pro is pretty decent. It outperformed several other vacuums we’ve tested when it comes to sweeping but had a fairly mediocre go when it came to mopping. It can be fairly loud, too, which may limit the times you can use it.

Should you want to purchase your own Proscenic M7 Pro, you can head over to Amazon, where it retails for $399.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

• Strong suction makes quick work of light to medium messes
• App allows users to set up convenient cleaning schedules
• Robot is easy to empty, filters are easy to wash

• Small mopping reservoir does not provide enough water to clean the floor
• Can be excessively loud, even on quieter modes
• Setup can be frustrating, even for experienced users

Originally announced in April 2019, the Duke of Sussex Prince Harry is working on a series for Apple TV+ about mental health. While the show was originally anticipated to air in 2020, sources claim a number of factors have caused the project to stall.

Royal insiders told the UK’s Sun there were multiple elements impacting the production of the show, including the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. A decision by Harry and wife Meghan to cease performing official duties for the Royal Family in March 2020 followed by a move to the United States has also played a part in delaying the project.

The major events have caused changes in filming for the show, though it is unclear how much of an impact the delays actually had on production. An insider explained the news of the postponed production was kept secret as “delays never look good.”

While there is no official release date for the program, it is thought that it will be available to watch sometime this spring, delays pending.

The untitled series is a continuation of the Duke’s years of campaigning about mental illness, encouraging discussion about the subject. The show would be about mental health worldwide, rather than featuring just the UK.

“Our hope is that this series will be positive, enlightening and inclusive – sharing global stories of unparalleled human spirit fighting back from the darkest places, and the opportunity for us to understand ourselves and those around us better,” said Harry in 2019. “I am incredibly proud to be working alongside Oprah on this vital series.”

For those who don’t keep their photos and videos backed up into iCloud, SanDisk’s Ixpand Sync promises to provide an invaluable service— the ability to easily back up content on their iPhone every time they charge it.

It comes in three capacities — 64, 128, or 256 gigabytes — which allows you to free up some of the space on your iPhone if you’re not ready to purchase additional iCloud storage.

The Ixpand Sync has a wide surface with a satisfactory charging “sweet spot.” We like the bright white color, a change of pace from chargers that are often black or gray. Of course, that means it’ll be prone to getting noticeably dirty, but it’s always nice to see some variety out there.

Instead of being a USB-powered device, this charger features an outlet plug, which was a bit surprising. While this means you won’t need to find an adapter for your wall socket, it does mean that it will take up wall-socket space. This is mildly annoying if you’d planned on using the charger in conjunction with a dock.

Because there’s internal storage, there’s a decent amount of setup you’ll have to do. The Ixpand app walks you through it, but the general gist is that you’ll need to give the charger permission to connect to your home WiFi network and enable access to all the photos on your iPhone. We didn’t have any issues with the initial setup.

As far as wireless chargers go, it’s decent. As stated above, it’s a wide charger, which means you’re more likely to hit the area that will charge your phone versus something smaller.

It provides up to 10W of charging power, which means you’ll get a decent charging speed. We typically prefer to leave our iPhone on a wireless charging pad when not in use, so we know we’ve always got juice when we need it.

Our only complaint on the charging front is that it sometimes seems somewhat inconsistent about charging through cases, even when they’re relatively thin.

We tested the Ixpand Sync with an iPhone 11 that is housed in a Casetify Impact case. The Impact case has not prevented wireless charging in the past with other chargers we’ve used, and we would consider it a thin case. Unfortunately, there were times when it seemed that it would trip the chargers foreign object detection and cease charging— but it wasn’t 100% of the time.

Removing the case and placing the phone directly on the charger alleviated this problem entirely, but we’re not the type to rock a naked phone.

While we were most excited for the backup feature, we’ll be upfront — it wasn’t without issue. Sure, it would back up images, videos, and contacts when we tossed it on the charger, and we thought that was great. This means that you can safely delete the files, giving you precious space back.

Unfortunately, what wasn’t great was the fact that occasionally the pictures on the Ixpand would become inaccessible from within the app, which lead us to erroneously believe that they were corrupted.

The backed up photos shown correctly (left), versus after failed backup when connected to the wrong channel (middle, right)

Troubleshooting the problem wasn’t terribly fun, either. We did all the things you should do. We restarted the iPhone, first — which typically tends to fix about 80% of the odd, occasional app problems we’ve come across. It didn’t fix the Ixpand problem.

Next, we reinstalled the app, which wasn’t the most fun thing. Going back through the laborious task of setting up the charger a second time was unideal.

After substantial testing, we think we may have figured out why this happens. The charger doesn’t know what to do in the event that the phone connects to the 5G channel rather than the 2.5G channel on a router. So, if your phone connects to the 5G channel instead, it won’t back up your photos, and for some reason, it seems to render the existing images on the charger inaccessible from within the app, even if you’re connected via Bluetooth.

The fix is relatively simple, just connect your phone to the 2.5G channel. Of course, this assumes that you think to do it, instead of panicking that you’ve lost your photos

Again, it’s not a complete deal-breaker, but something to keep in mind, especially if you’re giving it as a gift to someone else.

Ultimately, we found this to be pretty disappointing because we love the idea. Backing up photos at the end of the day when you charge your phone was something we got very excited about. We thought that this would be the perfect use case for parents and less tech-savvy folks who routinely run out of space for pictures, but it could cause frustration if it quits backing up photos.

The microUSB port

Another minor gripe is that the Ixpand still uses micro USB instead of USB-C like most devices have moved onto. This isn’t a big deal if you are only going to retrieve the pictures back to your phone, but if you plan on moving your images to your MacBook, this may require some adapters or specialized cords to keep track of.

The Ixpand Sync is a great concept, but we feel it could be executed a little better. As long as you can ensure that your iPhone will reliably connect to your 2.5G wireless router channel and that your iPhone case isn’t too thick, it may slot into your life perfectly. However, if you can’t, be prepared for a bit of frustration here or there.

Rating: 3 out of 5

• Automatically backs up photos and contacts to the charger
• Wide charging surface
• Looks great

• Can be fickle about charging through thin cases
• Can create errors if phone is connected to different router channel than charger
• Utilizes outdated microUSB to extract images to computer

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At press time, all three M1 Macs are in stock and ready to ship. Want to see how the deals stack up? Find the lowest Mac prices across all models in our Price Guide.

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To activate the exclusive prices, you must shop through the pricing links above or in our Mac Price Guide using a laptop or desktop computer. We apologize, but the offers cannot be redeemed in mobile apps at this time. Need help? Send us a note at [email protected] and we’ll be happy to assist.

Apple launched the Research app in 2019 alongside three health studies, one of them for hearing health. The Apple Hearing Study is conducted by the World Health Organization and the University of Michigan.

When users signed up for the study, they provided permission for the study to access certain types of data. Those data types include:

• headphone sound level
• environmental sound level
• heart rate
• workout data types

The data collected is meant to help researchers understand the link between long-term sound exposure and its impact on hearing health. The study was meant to only collect data from the authorized categories for the time after consenting to the study.

AppleInsider was informed of the error in the data collection by reader Chris Sprague. Michigan Public Health emailed Sprague and other participants in the study to notify them of extra data collection, and what was done to rectify the situation.

The study had unintentionally collected 30 days of additional data, which was not requested as part of the study. This occurred due to a bug in the Research app but has since been corrected.

All extra data has been deleted and was not used for research purposes and was never accessed by Apple. Individual participants cannot be identified due to the privacy restrictions and lack of identifiable research subject markers as part of how the Research app functions.

The bug fix is a simple application, and only needs participants to update the Research app from within the App Store.