Macworld Solid-state drives aka SSD used to be really expensive, but prices have really fallen in the past few years, and you can now pick up fast, reliable SSDs that cost only slightly more than their hard drive counterparts. Even the slowest SSDs are generally faster than mechanical hard drives. As well as being faster than conventional hard drives, SSDs are lighter and sturdier too, making them ideal for use with a laptop when youre traveling. Thats reflected in the drives that we review he

Macworld Looking for a great deal on a new hard drive or SSD to use with your Mac? We see some great deals on storage in the Amazon Prime Day sale (running July 8 to 11), so theres no better time to pick up a deal on some new external storage for your Mac. During Amazon Prime Day Prime subscribers can take advantage of savings. To take advantage of the deals you will need Amazon Prime (which costs $14.99 / 8.99 / AUD$6.99 a month but can be canceled after 30 days). If you dont already have a Pri

Macworld Looking for a great deal on a new display or monitor to use with your Mac or MacBook? This Amazon Prime Day, youll have a great opportunity to pick up a new monitor to use with your Mac mini or MacBook, as Amazon is discounting some of our favorite monitors. The sale starts on July 8 and runs until July 11, which is longer than usual, but we still recommend you act quick to grab the biggest bargains. Amazon Prime Daylets Prime subscribers take advantage of great savings. See our roundup

Macworld If youre in the market for a new Mac, the good news is Amazon Prime Day is coming soon! It runs from July 8 to July 11. In our experience, you can get discounts on Macs all year round, but some of the best Mac discounts fall during Amazons sales. The Amazon Prime Day sale is a great way to save some money when buying a new Mac. We see some of the best Mac deals during Prime Day, plus, the sale comes at a time when you might be thinking about back-to-school shopping, making its July timi

Macworld Last month, Apple released the iOS 26 developer beta , letting testers try out upcoming features before the OS launches this fall. As expected, the early code references unreleased Apple products, such as what appears to be the AirTag 2 and AirPods Pro 3 . Thats not all! A closer look at iOS 26s user-facing changes suggests that an iPhone 17 Air is coming later this year. Liquid Glass design Apple has long envisioned its ideal smartphone to resemble a sleek glass slab; it would do away

Macworld Google has announced a UI redesign for its Photos app on iOS, updates that are being made available on the iPhone before they are released on Android. Google states that the updates make for a simpler, more modern, and more intuitive UI. The changes include: A new light mode and the ability to match the iPhones setting of light or dark mode. Identification of date, time, and location at the top of a photo. Some actions have moved to the three-dot menu . Photo stacks and bursts now have

Macworld Gaming subscription services are all the rage now, but Apple Arcade isnt a little different from the likes of PlayStation Plus, EA Play, or Xbox Game Pass. If youve got questions about it, weve got plenty of answers. Updated July 3, 2025: There are four new games added to Apple Arcade this month: Angry Birds Bounce , Crayola Scribble Scrubbie+ , Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance TD+ , Suika Game+ . What is Apple Arcade? Apple Arcade is a gaming subscription service for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and App

Macworld While we know the numbers of Apples upcoming operating systems iOS 26 , iPadOS 26 , macOS 26 Tahoe , etc.Apple, like other companies, assigns code names to its products that are used internally for products in development. As noted by aaron613 on X, Apple is shifting to a mostly botanical theme for next years operating systems. According to various rumors, the codenames for Apples 2027 updates have already leaked: iOS 27 Buttercup macOS 27 Honeycrisp watchOS 27 Orchid visionOS 27 Ec

Macworld So, has an airline ever lost your luggage? With vacation season in full swing, you have to make sure you always know where your things are at any given moment, which is super easy by popping an Apple AirTag into your bag. And even betteryou can get one of these for $23 right now , the lowest price so far in 2025. These AirTags are super cute, and there are about a million accessories that go with them (including dog collars and kid bracelets, even if Apple doesnt advertise AirTags in th

Macworld The monitor might be the most important part of your Macs setupafter all, you cant use any desktop computer without one and even the 16-inch screen on the MacBook Pro is going to feel cramped if you are having a particularly productive morning. Spread your work out by plugging in multiple monitors to your Mac and extending your desktop over a wider space. Because youll spend a lot of time looking at the display, youll want to invest wisely. Not only will you want a monitor that provides

Macworld Apple announced in March that it would support RCS Universal Profile 3.0 in a future software update. That future update is expected to be iOS 26either in September or soon after. RCS 3.0 will provide the ability to encrypt iPhone-to-Android messages, as well as other features to make the experience between iPhones and Android phones more seamless. One of those features includes message editing. According to a report by Android Authority, Google has been slowly deploying the ability to

Macworld If youre in the market for a new iPhone, Amazons Prime Day sales might be a good time to find a dealwith a few caveats. In the U.K., you can find the latest iPhones unlocked at Amazon and at other resellers. Supplies can be limited, and there are usually only small discounts for the newest iPhones, but we are seeing discounts on the iPhone 16 series and on the older iPhone 15 models. If you arent sure which iPhone to buy take a look at our iPhone buying guide and our comparison of every

Macworld Once upon a time, Apple used to make significant changes to the iPhone every couple of years. A new model (iPhone 4, 5, 6, etc) would launch with an overhauled look, followed by an S variant that boosted performance and smoothed out any imperfections. Thats no longer the case. Primarily due to the iPhones maturity, iterative annual upgrades have become the norm. After all, theres only so much it can improve year over year. And despite what you may have read about this years phones, the

Macworld If you are wondering if MacBooks are on sale for Prime Day, you will be glad to learn that yes, you can get money off MacBooks at Amazon. Lots of money, in fact! Sales on MacBooks are normal for most of the year, but the best deals tend to happen during Amazons big sales events. With Amazons Prime Day running for four days from Tuesday, July 8, and continuing until it all ends on July 11, this could be a great time to save money on a new Mac laptop. Below you will find links to the best

Macworld At the WWDC25 keynote , Apple announced a new AirPods feature that would enable the headphones to pause when they sense that their wearer has fallen asleep. But its now been discovered that the function is a little more versatile than that suggests. A contributor to the tech site MacRumors has discovered code that indicates the feature is tied to iOS 26, rather than the AirPods line specifically, and suggests that it will work on Apples Beats headphones too. A good thing, since the Beat

Macworld Amazons annual Prime Day sale is longer than ever this year, lasting from Tuesday, July 8, to Friday, July 11, which means youll have even more time to grab a great dealespecially if you want a new iPad. All of Apples tablets, from the iPad Air and Pro to the mini and 11th-gen iPad are already seeing some of their best prices ever. The iPad deals picked here are all chosen by our editors, who have decades of experience with Apple devices. Weve reviewed everything we recommend, and we wo

Macworld Its hard to believe, but if youve been an Apple Music subscriber since its inception , youve been streaming for a full decade. Announced as One more thing at WWDC 2015, the service launched on June 30, 2015, months before iOS 9 and Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan landed later that fall. To celebrate the milestone , Apple is offering a special version of its annual Replay playlist. Similar to Spotifys Wrapped campaign, Replay offers a look back at the top songs, artists, albums that defined yo

Macworld If you want the best tablet you can possibly get, look no further than the M4 iPad Pro. And right now, its never been cheaperwith an all-time-low price cut of $200 off , you can get yourself your very own iPad Pro for as low as $1,099. The same discount applies to all other storage capacities as well. The 13-inch iPad Pro has all the features you could possibly want and then some. Its super powerful thanks to the M4 chip and it comes with a gorgeous ultra-thin design built around a stun

Macworld Apple published two job openings on LinkedIn and on its job search portal last week. In them, the Bangalore, India, location is looking for two engineers for its machine learning/artificial intelligence team. The two adverts are somewhat vague, but reveal some insights into Apples plans. Our team is responsible for delivering next-generation Search and Question Answering systems across Apple products including Siri, Safari, Spotlight, and more. You will collaborate with outstanding Sear

Macworld Amazons annual Prime Day sales event is a fantastic opportunity to find a good deal on the Apple Watch, and this year youll get even more time to save. Amazons Prime Day sale runs a whopping four days this year, from Tuesday, July 8, to Friday, July 11, and were already seeing some great discounts on the Apple Watch even before it officially starts. The Apple Watch models picked here are all chosen by our editors, who have decades of experience with Apple devices. Weve reviewed everythi

Macworld iPhone owners beware: a new and surprisingly plausible phishing scam is making the rounds, and could easily catch out the unwary. The message, which has been seen by AppleInsider reporters, claims to be from the delivery company UPS. It says a package is ready to be delivered, and encourages the recipient to click on a link to set this up. Of course, the link goes to a fake website where personal data can be harvested. We attempted to deliver your UPS package on [date], the message read

Macworld Um what the heck is going on with Apples advertising? Forget the problem with Apple selling ads, which is also a problem. Apple has a problem making ads. Disclaimer: you cant talk about Apple ads without discussing the Get a Mac ads . Legally, the Macalope means. There are any number of local, state, and federal laws that prohibit the discussion of Apple ads without first laying the groundwork of the Get a Mac ads. So, sorry, the horny one would love to just discuss Apples ads of late b

Macworld Cloud storage subscription fees have gotten out of hand. For some popular platforms, paying monthly doesnt even guarantee youll get enough space for all your files, or that those files will be secure once theyre uploaded. Internxt gives you a simpler, long-term solution. Instead of paying monthly, you pay once and get 20TB of cloud storage that lasts for life. Normally, Internxts 20TB lifetime subscription would cost $4,900, but the price just dropped to $389.97 during Macworlds version

Macworld Prime Day isnt until next week, but theres never been a better time to get your hands on an iPad mini. Ahead of the 4-day Prime Day sale extravaganza, A mazon has dropped the price of the A17 Pro iPad mini down to $399 , its best price yet. The smaller form is one of the main benefits of getting the iPad mini because its 8.3-inch screen can fit just about anywhere. Its also super fast thanks to the A17 Pro chip and a whopping 8GB of RAM, enough to run all of the Apple Intelligence goodi

Macworld Its all very well telling people to back up their Mac . But human nature means that searching for backup advice is something that usually happens after the worst has already happened. Hopefully, youll be able to fix the damaged drive and get your data back by following our advice, but we will also cover what you need to know about crashing without a backup and how to recover data from damaged hard disk or an external drive. This guide is also relevant if you have accidentally deleted a

Macworld Apples most affordable new laptop is a $999 MacBook Air. For a lot of people, thats still too expensive, especially when compared to Chromebooks and budget PCs. But Apple may finally be doing something about that. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo , Apple plans to release a brand-new MacBook model thats designed for the low-cost market. The laptop will not use an M-series chip, but an A18 Pro, the same chip found in the iPhone 16 Pro. Kuo believes it will have a 13-inch display and come

Macworld As a diehard Apple fan and a technology journalist, I try to refresh my gear every year or so to keep up with the latest features. However, while my three-year-old M2 MacBook Air could certainly use an upgradeand Ive got my eye on a new MacBook Pro its going to have to last for another year. Not only are the M5 MacBooks not expected to bring much in the way of new features, but Apple is reportedly set to kickstart a new era with the M6 MacBook Pro as soon as next year. Heres why Im wait

Macworld Thanks to the excellent quality of smartphone cameras these days, we take so many pictures when were on holiday, with friends, or just when we see something that we want to remember. Sadly, the results arent always as good as wed hope, and theres the problem of how you can easily share the images with your family or friends. Yes, there are plenty of photo-editing options around that can help fix the problems, but they can be expensive or have too many options and features for someone wh

Macworld Apple is expected to introduce noticeable changes to the iPhone this fall, especially with the Pro models. For the first time, the camera wont be confined to a square in the upper-left corner but will now stretch across the entire back of the device with the flash at the far right. For a company obsessed with symmetry and balance, that change will force another adjustment thats both visual and practical. According to leaker Majin Bu , Apple will reposition the Apple logo thats long been

Macworld As we keep warning prospective testers , Apples software betas are prone to bugs. Until a big software update is pushed live to the general publicand sometimes even beyond that pointit should be regarded as unfinished, flawed, and liable to go wrong in all sorts of unexpected ways. This particularly applies to a first developer beta, the most speculative and the least finished of an updates run; the one that has been subject to precisely zero testing in the real world outside Apples lab

Macworld I have long complained that, for all its impressive hardware and software technology, the Apple Vision Pro is thus far a failure mostly because Apple doesnt understand AR. Or Spatial Computing, or whatever it wants to call it. Thats been the case for two years, since the Vision Pro arrived in February 2024 and the first major update in visionOS 2. But based on what Apple showed of visionOS 26 at WWDC, I feel like the company is finally starting to understand what a spatial computing exp

Macworld In online publishing, as in Hollywood, nobody knows anything. Why did a dashed-off news story get vastly more traffic than a painstakingly honed opinion piece? Who can say. As flies to wanton boys are we to the algorithms; they kill us for their sport. Last weeks mystifying success (not that Im ungrateful, Google!) was a short article about a ringtone . In the first beta of iOS 26, testers discovered a new variant of the Reflection ringtone; in the second beta, this became a usable opti

Macworld Running Windows on a Mac isnt just for the brave anymoreits for the smart. Whether youre dual-booting with Boot Camp, running Parallels, or keeping a Windows environment handy for dev work or app testing, this bundle has you covered. Right now, you can get Microsoft Windows 11 Pro plus a training course for only $24.99 (reg. $237). Thats alifetime licensefor Windows 11 Pro (great for installing on a Mac via virtualization) and a self-paced course that helps you master its features, from

Macworld Writing a book can feel overwhelming, especially when youre staring down a blank page with no clear starting point, but AI can help. Youbooks is an AI-powered platform that helps you turn non-fiction ideas into professional, polished books in a fraction of the time it usually takes. With a lifetime subscription, you get ongoing access to tools that let you generate up to 300,000-word manuscripts tailored to your style, with real research and your own supporting materials built in. Its a

Macworld Leaker Majin Bu has noticed something in looking at screen protectors for the iPhone 17 line . The screen protector for the alleged iPhone 17 Air has its camera cutout shifted from the right side of the Face ID sensors to the left side. The obvious implication is that the usual front sensor layoutan oval cutout for TrueDepth sensors on the left and a round cutout for the front camera on the rightwill be reversed in the iPhone 17 Air. The camera will be on the left with the TrueDepth sen

Macworld Wireless AirPods are fun and all, but they can be easy to lose if youre not careful, and can run out of juice right in the middle of a run. These Apple EarPods, however, are affordable, always attached to your phone, and never run out of battery. You can get a pair for $16 right now, the cheapest theyve ever been, an impressive 16 percent discount. These old-school earbuds come with a USB-C port so you can connect them to all the most recent iPhone models, as well as pretty much any oth

Macworld At a glance Expert's Rating Pros Compact NAS drive provides lots of storage Good performance Expandable design Cons Hard drives cost extra Poorly designed apps Our Verdict The expandable storage options provided by the DS925+ make it a great option for small businesses and home offices that need a fast, reliable network drive. However, Synologys apps and documentation could be a lot simpler and more straightforward for first-time users. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolo

Macworld Apple does its best to keep upcoming product launches a secret, but this isnt always easy. Supply chains have to be briefed, regulatory database entries have to be filed, software for other products has to be updated to work with the new ones. There are lots of clues for eagle-eyed analysts to spot. The latest example of this concerns an unreleased Apple audio product which appears to be on the verge of launch. We dont yet know what it is, but theres a decent chance its the long-awaited

Macworld Ever since the iPhone X arrived in 2017 with a rather large notch, people have been obsessed with the iPhones front camera cutout. Over the years, weve gone from a notch (iPhone X) to a smaller notch (iPhone 13) to the Dynamic Island (iPhone 14 Pro), and back to the notch (iPhone 16e). And now reports say Apple is looking to gradually get rid of the cutout altogether within five years. To recap, Display Supply Chain Consultants CEO Ross Young reports that Apple will tweak the front came

Macworld One of the most consequential developments in the history of computing happened 50 years ago. It set Apple on course to becoming one of the most valuable companies on the planet and changed the face of computing in unfathomable ways. Yet, youve probably never even heard of what went down. Its an often-overlooked moment that had incredible consequences for years to come. Typing on a computer is something we all take for granted. One of Apples key philosophies has long been to get the tec

Macworld At a glance Pros Easy to populate and use Up to 32TB (8TB SSDs) of external storage Good performance in single (20GBps) or RAID 0 (40Gbps) Cons Paltry paper documentation RAID only via software Our Verdict If you want to add gobs of fast storage to your Mac, theres hardly a better way than TerraMasters four-slot USB4 D4 SSD. You provide the NVMe SSDs, but you get nearly 4GBps transfers from them in RAID 0 and 1.8GBps individually. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated

Macworld The Apple Watch Ultra 2 isnt all that different than the original Apple Watch Ultra, but we love one thing: the new black titnium color. Unfortunately, it doesnt go on sale as often as the natural titanium color, but today you can get a great deal on one: Amazon is seling the Apple Watch Ultra 2 with a black titanium case and black ocean band for $730 , a savings of $69 and the price weve ever seen for this colorway. This is an amazing smartwatch with a ton of features, a super bright s

Macworld If you are concerned about your privacy and security online using a VPN could give you some reassurance. Apple provides various measures in macOS that make Macs more secure , but if you want to ensure that the connection between your Mac and the internet is protected, rather than the computer itself, you need a VPN. Our top choice for Mac users is NordVPN , read on to find out why. PROMOTION NymVPN Forget everything you know about VPN Many traditional VPN services still store logs cent

Macworld Every year, when Apple rolls out betas of the new operating systems after WWDC, we advise readers to be cautious about installing them on their primary devices. Betas are, by their nature, unfinished and imperfect software, and they are likely to contain bugs. (Spotting the bugs is what the beta program is for!) So it should come as no surprise that the second developer beta of watchOS 26 contains a known bug and its quite a serious one. For one specific line of Apple Watches, the Herms

Macworld As a diehard Apple fan and a technology journalist, I try to refresh my gear every year or so to keep up with the latest features. However, while my three-year-old M2 MacBook Air could certainly use an upgradeand Ive got my eye on a new MacBook Pro its going to have to last for another year. Not only are the M5 MacBooks not expected to bring much in the way of new features, but Apple is reportedly set to kickstart a new era with the M6 MacBook Pro as soon as next year. Heres why Im wait

Macworld At a Glance Expert's Rating Pros Free tier Streaming-focused servers included Advanced features Cons Fewer servers than other options Our Verdict Hide Me is likely to be the Goldilocks VPN for many users. It offers a free tier, has a whole host of power features (if you want them), and has a whole host of servers recommended for streaming services. It could do with a few more servers in general, but its a fantastic option. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing

Macworld Apple knows bestor certainly appears to think so. Steve Jobs famously said the companys job was not to listen to customers, because they would ask, metaphorically speaking, for faster horses rather than cars. Thus, whenever rivals rush to jump aboard the latest bandwagon, whether netbooks or foldables or smart rings or AI chatbots, Apple quietly sticks to its own path, which more often than not proves to be the right one. So when word got out that Apple was working on an ultra-thin iPho

Macworld You dont need to risk your $2,000 work laptop every time you head to a coffee shop. For just $329.97 (reg. $1,499), you can grab this Grade A refurbished 13 MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar, so you can handle email, edit photos, or stream Netflix in buttery Retina resolutionwithout worrying about every little spill or bump. Despite the price tag, this mid-2017 MacBook Pro doesnt skimp on power. It comes equipped with a 3.1GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor (with Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz)

Macworld On this weeks episode of the Macworld Podcast its all about your hot takes! You have thoughts aboutWWDC25, Apples new UI design, and more. This is episode 940 with Karen Haslam, David Price, and Roman Loyola. Watch episode 940 on YouTube Listen to episode 940 on Apple Podcasts Listen to episode 940 on Spotify Your hot takes Here are the hot takes discussed on the show. The UI changes At WWDC25, Apple unveiled the UI changes it will make in its operating systems, which, of course, genera

Macworld Were just a couple of months away from iPhone seasons, and weve been inundated with reports about the changes coming, which include leaked photos of the iPhone 17 Air in protective wrap , video of dummy Airs , and a video of the iPhone 17 Pro Max . Now, a new set of leaked photos gives us another look at just how thin (and thick) the new iPhones will be. Majin Bu on X has posted a few purported leaked photos of the iPhone 17 Air and iPhone 17 Pro, both in black. Three things stand out a