Soundbyte 361 – March 2025

ChristopherNews, SoundByte

Welcome to Soundbyte! In this spring issue:

March Meeting

Join LMUG next Monday, March 10, 7pm GMT to discuss security. We will cover authentication, passwords and protecting your devices. We are going to try to avoid jargon and explain it simply. Fingers crossed!

Check the email this newsletter came in for the Zoom link to the meeting. You can also find the link in our Slack General Channel. 

Follow can now follow the London Mac User Group on Bluesky! Come and say hello 👋 over there 👉🏾 https://bsky.app/profile/lmug.bsky.social. Read more about it here.

March Madness – 5 new devices from Apple!

Like clockwork Apple announced new devices this week (and last month). The first is a replacement for the iPhone SE. The SE is the most affordable iPhone and is usually based-off an older iPhone design with updated internals making it a great value.

The new iPhone is called iPhone 16e. Whereas the old SE was based based-off the iPhone 6 design, this 16e is derived from the much more modern iPhone 14. Like the SE, the 16e supports wireless charging. Now if you want to use MagSafe charging you’re out of luck, since the 16e doesn’t have that. But there is a simple work-around. When you buy a case for your iPhone, just make sure it’s a MagSafe case like this one, with magnets built-in. This will ensure your 16e can snap securely onto MagSafe chargers.

In a shock to many, Apple put the latest A18 chip into this phone, making it ready for Apple Intelligence. Why? Well I think there are different types of people that a good value iPhone will appeal to. The first type will be, obviously someone looking for the best value. The second type is likely to be businesses, and I suspect that was the main driver for the A18 with Apple Intelligence. It’s a good bullet point on the business case they need to write, to buy a shed load of them for their employees!

The A18 chip is also in the regular iPhone 16 that costs £200 more. What gives? Well, the A18 chip in the 16e isn’t exactly the same chip as in the regular 16. The graphics chip in the 16e has 4 cores, while the 16 has 5. Will you notice the difference? Maybe not, but it will be cheaper for Apple to make. This is because computer chips are complicated and manufactured to tight tolerances. Some don’t make the cut. Some cores end up imperfect, but it is possible to turn the bad core off, and just have a slightly less powerful chip that works fine. It’s called chip-binning and it’s OK. Apple does it across all its M-chip product lines. It’s nothing new. Have a look at this explainer below:

But that’s not all. The 16e also contains a new Apple chip. Way back in 2019, Apple purchased Intel’s smartphone modem business. Many years later, it has finally released something: the C1 chip. C1 is a 5G modem for phone and internet communications, It’s main feature is power efficiency. It gives the 16e excellent battery life (more value still!). Have a look behind the scenes at this new chip here:

The second new product from Apple is an updated iPad Air. This has two main features. The first is the price, which despite global trade wars, remains the same as last year (starting at £599). The second is the chip, which is upgraded from the M2 to the M3. Similar to the 16e, this is a binned chip with one less CPU core and one less GPU core. And that’s OK. The main benefit of the M3 is that the updated graphics architecture will include hardware ray-tracing for 3D games and more types of hardware video decoding. It also gets a new keyboard case. Apple’s keyboard cases are worse than Apple Pencil mania. Rather than one good case for all types of iPad, each iPad gets a perfect case for itself that is incompatible with the others.

The third product is an updated iPad, which gets a binned A16 chip. Again one less CPU and graphics core. You won’t notice, since it’s a big performance increase (for the same price) over the old one. Something missing from this iPad is Apple Intelligence. You won’t notice that, for now…

Phew. Now onto number 4. The most popular Mac, the MacBook Air, also got a speed bump with value-added chip-binning. It gains the speed of the latest M4 chip. Just not exactly the same chip as in the other M4 Macs. This one has one less GPU core, which again, you probably won’t notice. You will notice the price, which has been cut by £100 to £999! Bravo! There is also a new light blue colour.

Have we left the best for last? Well maybe, if you are a professional Mac User. The fifth new product is a big upgrade to the Mac Studio. This gains the top-end M4 Max chip. But in a surprise twist it also gains a completely new chip, the M3 Ultra. It is confusing to see last year’s chip architecture in this year’s update, but the Ultra is a monster chip and is the most powerful chip Apple has yet made.

Perhaps the M4 Max is targeted at media professionals and their demanding workflows. M3 Ultra, has some features so extreme, that some are considering it for AI workflows that would normally have to be done using the power of cloud computing. The M3 Ultra can be purchased with an 80-core GPU and 512GB of Ram. We will have to wait for this to ship to see the implications of this combination, including whether it challenges Nvidia’s dominance of 3D workflows.

New account migration options (coming soon)

Regent Street Apple Store

Apple now permits users to move to purchases of apps and music between different Apple Accounts. Read about it on 9 to 5 Mac, and how do it from Apple here. However it doesn’t work in the UK yet…

What you can do now is transfer your playlists between streaming services (Apple Music, Spotify etc). This is made possible with an app called Soundiiz. You can try it for free or it costs a few pounds monthly (e.g. to synchronise multiple playlists across services).

Apple packs up toys in privacy dispute

There is an on-going dispute between Apple and the UK government over end-to-end encryption. Apple’s tech at dispute is called Advanced Data Protection. It is so secure that even Apple can’t access your files. This is perhaps a novel situation; post and phone calls were always interceptable by governments and others in the past.

Like most innovation there’s a good side and a bad side. The UK for while now has warned that pedophiles are taking advantage of end-to-end encryption to hide their deeds. The Government now allegedly wants to break through Apple’s encryption to catch these criminals, but Apple doesn’t want to break their encryption for fear of other criminals taking advantage and breaking into people’s accounts.

I’m not sure you can address one risk without accepting the other risk here.

Apple is standing their ground and has removed Advanced Data Protection from UK users. This might not be as big deal as it may seem, as this was not turned on by default for users. I note, I wasn’t using it and maybe not many people are. I hope new innovations in the future will solve this dilemma. Some users are outraged now at the loss of this tool. Solutions, should this concern you, may involve extreme actions. Have a look at this solution from Cult of Mac below and come to our meeting on Monday for other ideas:

Apple Intelligence still faking and flAIling

Apple Intelligence

Is Donald Trump famous for his actions against people of colour? Put another way, why would Apple Intelligence confuse the word Trump for racist? Yet that’s exactly what it was doing. Apple says it’s because both words contain the letter “r”. OK. Read more on the BBC. The article reports that this is already fixed so don’t try it yourself!

Instead if you are interested in what might be going on, have a look at this video from IBM explaining AI assistants:

How to type special symbols?

Have you wondered how to type symbols on your Mac? Like this one ©? These all available in Font Book on your Mac, but these aren’t that easy to find. Luckily here is a link to a page with some of the common ones and how to type them. Best bookmark this one from MacWorld.

Sort out your Bluetooth issues

Is your Mac’s Bluetooth bugging you? The obvious solution might be the best one. Watch below:

Is it time for swappable batteries?

It used to be common to be able to swap your phone battery. I never did and maybe most didn’t, but it was of value to some. Apple has innovated this issue away with MagSafe batteries, but why not just go back to how it used to be? HMD (who own the Nokia brand) have done just that and more. Watch Marques Brownlee discuss it below:

New light switch for the UK!

If you came to last month’s meeting you might have been excited about home automations. Aqara are big in this space (and e.g. HomeKit friendly) and have released a new light switch that is compatible with UK wiring. It does not require a neutral wire, which most UK houses don’t have on their light circuits. A risk of death applies here as usual. Don’t touch your electrics if you don’t know what you’re doing. Otherwise watch Stu’s review below:

Jony Ive didn’t design this one

Jony Ive did design a camera many years ago. It looks very nice. I’m not how usable it really was, and the same could be said for this new camera from Sigma. It’s made in a way that is making some think of one of Jony Ive’s innovations. And it has a simplified control set that reminds others of Apple design. Have a look at this review below from Peta Pixel.

A new people’s car?

If you know your history, you’ll know that the people’s car is the Volkswagen. But is it that today? VW’s new leadership is betting on a reset; creating a new Volkswagen for the people or for EVERY1 as they call it. Have a look at this video from its reveal event. It blends American technology from Rivian with German engineering.