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Apple’s next accessibility features let you control your iPhone and iPad with just your eyes
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Ahead of Global Accessibility Day on May 16, 2024, Apple unveiled a number of new accessibility features for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro. Eye tracking is leading a long list of new functionality which will let you control your iPhone and iPad by moving your eyes. 

Eye Tracking, Music Haptics, Vocal Shortcuts, and Vehicle Motion Cues will arrive on eligible Apple gadgets later this year. These new accessibility features will most likely be released with iOS 18, iPadOS 18, VisionOS 2, and the next version of macOS. 

These new accessibility features have become a yearly drop for Apple. The curtain is normally lifted a few weeks before WWDC, aka the Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off on June 10, 2024. That should be the event where we see Apple show off its next generation of main operating systems and AI chops. 

Eye-Tracking looks seriously impressive 

Eye Tracking demoed on an iPad.

(Image credit: Apple)

Eye-tracking looks seriously impressive and is a key way to make the iPhone and iPad even more accessible. As noted in the release and captured in a video, you can navigate iPadOS – as well as iOS – open apps, and even control elements all with just your eyes, and it uses the front-facing camera, artificial intelligence, and local machine learning throughout the experience. 

You can look around the interface and use “Dwell Control” to engage with a button or element. Gestures will also be handled through just eye movement. This means that you can first look at Safari, Phone, or another app, hold that view, and it will open. 

Most critically, all setup and usage data is kept local on the device, so you’ll be set with just your iPhone. You won’t need an accessory to use eye tracking. It’s designed for people with physical disabilities and builds upon other accessible ways to control an iPhone or iPad.

Vocal Shortcuts, Music Haptics, and Live Captions on Vision Pro

Apple's new Vocal Shortcuts for iPhone and iPad.

(Image credit: Apple)

Another new accessibility feature is Vocal Shortcuts, designed for iPad and iPhone users with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), cerebral palsy, stroke, or “acquired or progressive conditions that affect speech.” This will let you set up a custom sound that Siri can learn and identify to launch a specific shortcut or run through a task. It lives alongside Listen for Atypical Speech, designed for the same users, to open up speech recognition for a wider set. 

These two features build upon some introduced within iOS 17, so it’s great to see Apple continue to innovate. With Atypical Speech, specifically, Apple is using artificial intelligence to learn and recognize different types of speech. 

Music Haptics on the iPhone is designed for users who are hard of hearing or deaf to experience music. The built-in taptic engine, which powers the iPhone’s haptics, will play different vibrations, like taps and textures, that resemble a song's audio. At launch, it will work across “millions of songs” within Apple Music, and there will be an open API for developers to implement and make music from other sources accessible.

Additionally, Apple has previews of a few other features and updates. Vehicle Motion Cues will be available on iPhone and iPad and aim to reduce motion sickness with animated dots on that screen that change as vehicle motion is detected. It's designed to help reduce motion sickness without blocking whatever you view on the screen.

A look at Live Captions in visionOS at Apple Vision Pro

(Image credit: Apple)

One major addition arriving for VisionOS – aka the software that powers Apple Vision Pro – will be Live Captions across the entire system. This will allow for captions for spoken dialogue within conversations from FaceTime and audio from apps to be seen right in front of you. Apple’s release notes that it was designed for users who are deaf or hard of hearing, but like all accessibility features, it can be found in Settings.

Since this is Live Captions on an Apple Vision Pro, you can move the window containing the captions around and adjust the size like any other window. Vision accessibility within VisosOS will also gain reduced transparency, smart inverting, and dim flashing light functionality.

Regarding when these will ship, Apple notes in the release that the “new accessibility features [are] coming later this year.” We’ll keep a close eye on this and imagine that these will ship with the next generation of OS’ like iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, meaning folks with a developer account may be able to test these features in forthcoming beta releases.

Considering that a few of these features are powered by on-device machine learning and artificial intelligence, aiding with accessibility features is just one way that Apple believes AI has the potential to make an impact. We’ll likely hear the technology giant share more of its thoughts around AI and consumer-ready features at WWDC 2024.

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iTunes for Windows 11 gets a fresh update with a vital security fix, and it brings in support for new iPad Air and iPad Pro
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Apple has released a new version of iTunes for Windows 11 (and Windows 10), which also includes support for the newly debuted iPad Air and iPad Pro models. 

You can download iTunes version 12.13.2  for Windows from both the Microsoft Store and from Apple’s website.

iTunes has been phased out for macOS and is no longer present on Apple’s own desktop operating system. Apple still updates iTunes pretty regularly on Windows, though, and this new update follows a release that brought in security fixes back in December 2023.

This latest iTunes update also delivers a security fix, dealing with a vulnerability that could lead to the app unexpectedly shutting down, or a malicious party leveraging  “arbitrary code execution” (allowing an attacker to do nasty things to your PC, basically).

Woman relaxing on a sofa, holding a laptop in her lap and using it

(Image credit: Shutterstock/fizkes)

Apple's transition away from iTunes to more modern apps

In general, though, it does seem like Apple is trying to move away from iTunes in favor of its more modern media apps like Apple Music, Apple TV, and iCloud. These modern media apps are also available on Windows, and are optimized to match Windows 11’s own sleek contemporary aesthetics. 

iTunes is more than a media app – it’s also a device manager that many users of Apple hardware are used to, allowing iPhone and iPad users to carry out tasks like backing up data and installing software. However, nowadays you can do that using the newer Apple Device app, which you get through the Microsoft Store as well. 

There’s one caveat to consider – Apple’s new apps might not work as intended if you also have iTunes installed, as Neowin points out, so it’s advised that you pick one to use and uninstall the other.

Woman sitting by window, legs outstretched, with laptop

(Image credit: Shutterstock/number-one)

iTunes: a timeless hub for Apple's media

Apple’s legacy media manager is a classic and still has a lot of purpose as it’s a place to manage all the media you’ve purchased from Apple including music, movies, and TV shows, as well as Apple Music.

If you prefer to continue to use iTunes, of course, you’re still in luck, as you can grab this latest version from the Microsoft Store. This will work whether you’re using Windows 11 or Windows 10, but not Windows 7. You can get older versions of iTunes from Apple’s website (but of course, you shouldn’t still be using Windows 7 for obvious reasons – the lack of security updates being the primary concern).

It’s good that Apple’s still looking out for users who might want to continue to use iTunes, and it also gives Apple a way in with customers who might prefer Windows as their PC’s operating system. 

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TOPS explained – exactly how powerful is Apple’s new M4 iPad chip?
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Apple announced the M4 chip, a powerful new upgrade that will arrive in next-generation iPad (and, further down the line, the best Macbooks and Macs). You can check out our beat-by-beat coverage of the Apple event, but one element of the presentation has left some users confused: what exactly does TOPS mean?

TOPS is an acronym for 'trillion operations per second', and is essentially a hardware-specific measure of AI capabilities. More TOPS means faster on-chip AI performance, in this case the Neural Engine found on the Apple M4 chip.

The M4 chip is capable of 38 TOPS – that's 38,000,000,000,000 operations per second. If that sounds like a staggeringly massive number, well, it is! Modern neural processing units (NPUs) like Apple's Neural Engine are advancing at an incredibly rapid rate; for example, Apple's own A16 Bionic chip, which debuted in the iPhone 14 Pro less than two years ago, offered 17 TOPS.

Apple's new chip isn't even the most powerful AI chip about to hit the market – Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon X Elite purportedly offers 45 TOPS, and is expected to land in Windows laptops later this year.

How is TOPS calculated?

The processes by which we measure AI performance are still in relative infancy, but TOPS provides a useful and user-accessible metric for discerning how 'good' at handling AI tools a given processor is.

I'm about to get technical, so if you don't care about the mathematics, feel free to skip ahead to the next section! The current industry standard for calculating TOPS is TOPS = 2 × MAC unit count × Frequency / 1 trillion. 'MAC' stands for multiply-accumulate; a MAC operation is basically a pair of calculations (a multiplication and an addition) that are run by each MAC unit on the processor once every clock cycle, powering the formulas that make AI models function. Every NPU has a set number of MAC units determined by the NPU's microarchitecture.

'Frequency' here is defined by the clock speed of the processor in question – specifically, how many cycles it can process per second. It's a common metric also used in CPUs, GPUs, and other components, essentially denoting how 'fast' the component is. 

So, to calculate how many operations per second an NPU can handle, we simply multiply the MAC unit count by 2 for our number of operations, then multiply that by the frequency. This gives us an 'OPS' figure, which we then divide by a trillion to make it a bit more palatable (and kinder on your zero key when typing it out).

Simply put, more TOPS means better, faster AI performance.

Adobe Premiere Pro's Firefly Video AI tools in action

Adobe’s Firefly generative AI tool can be hardware-accelerated by your device’s NPU. (Image credit: Adobe)

Why is TOPS important?

TOPS is, in the simplest possible terms, our current best way to judge the performance of a device for running local AI workloads. This applies both to the industry and the wider public; it's a straightforward number that lets professionals and consumers immediately compare the baseline AI performance of different devices.

TOPS is only applicable for on-device AI, meaning that cloud-based AI tools (like the internet's favorite AI bot, ChatGPT) don't typically benefit from better TOPS. However, local AI is becoming more and more prevalent, with popular professional software like the Adobe Creative Cloud suite starting to implement more AI-powered features that depend on the capabilities of your device.

It should be noted that TOPS is by no means a perfect metric. At the end of the day, it's a theoretical figure derived from hardware statistics and can differ greatly from real-world performance. Factors such as power availability, thermal systems, and overclocking can impact the actual speed at which an NPU can run AI workloads.

To that end, though, we're now starting to see AI benchmarks crop up, such as Procyon AI from UL Benchmarks (makers of the popular 3DMark and PCMark benchmarking programs). These can provide a much more realistic idea of how well a  You can expect to see TechRadar running AI performance tests as part of our review benchmarking in the near future!

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The 5 subtle AI announcements Apple made at its big iPad 2024 launch event
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Today's Apple iPad Air and iPad Pro event was big on product launches, but quieter about AI. Or was it? 

While there weren't any AI announcements to rival the launch of the iPad Pro (2024) or new M4 chip, Apple did uncharacteristically mention 'AI' on eight different occasions during the event – and those covered five different new announcements about the tech.

Apple has previously been reluctant to join the chorus of AI hype, preferring to stick to the less zeitgeisty (if often more accurate) 'machine learning' during its launch events. But back in February, Tim Cook started making unexpectedly bold statements about AI, calling it a “huge opportunity for Apple” and that AI tools would be coming to Apple devices “later this year”.

So what exactly were those subtle AI announcements at the iAPd-centric Apple event? Here are the times the Cupertino crew gave us a taster of what's to come next month at WWDC 2024…

1. The M4 chip is more powerful than 'any AI PC today'

An iPad sitting on a desk

(Image credit: Apple)

Apple's next-gen silicon had been rumored for the iPad Pro (2024), but it was still something of a surprise to see the M4 appear for the first time during a tablet announcement. Naturally, Apple was keen to flag its serious AI potential.

Tim Millet, Apple's VP of Platform Architecture, said that “the Neural Engine makes M4 an outrageously powerful chip for AI”, pointing to the simple example of it letting you isolate a subject from its background in 4K video with a tap in Final Cut Pro.

Clearly, Apple thinks its silicon makes for a strong foundation for AI apps, with Millet adding that “the Neural Engine is an IP-block in the chip dedicated to the acceleration of AI workloads”. And he finished with the bolder statement that “the Neural Engine in M4 is more powerful than any neural processing unit in any AI PC today”. We can't verify that yet, but it doesn't sound like an outlandish claim.

2. The Logic Pro 2 app has AI-powered Session Players

A hand holding an iPad that's running Logic Pro

(Image credit: Apple)

The Logic Pro app landed on the iPad about a year ago – and the new version that Apple's just announced has some AI-powered 'Session Players' for you to dabble with.

These are designed to play alongside the existing Drummer feature to give you something like a virtual band. Will Hui, Apple's Product Manager of Creative Apps, said: “Now Drummer is getting some new bandmates in a feature we call Session Players. We're introducing an all-new Bass and Keyboard Player, and like Drummer, they're built using AI.”

Given Apple's digital audio workstation was already a lot of fun, we're looking forward to giving them an audition.

3. The iPad Pro uses AI to help you scan documents

Image 1 of 2

A hand holding an iPad that's scanning a document

(Image credit: Apple)
Image 2 of 2

A hand holding an iPad that's scanning a document

(Image credit: Apple)

This might not be the most wildly exciting AI use case, but sometimes the tech is best suited to helping us with more mundane tasks – and Apple reckons it does just that with the iPad Pro (2024)'s AI-powered document scanning.

This comes courtesy of a new 'adaptive' True Tone flash, which works in tandem with AI algorithms to adjust the lighting depending on the document and ambient lighting. John Ternus, Apple's SVP of Hardware Engineering said: “We've all had the experience of trying to scan a document in certain lighting conditions where it's hard to avoid casting a shadow – the new Pro solves this problem.”

“It uses AI to automatically detect documents like forms and receipts,” he added. “If shadows are in the way, it instantly takes multiple photos with the new, adaptive flash. The frames are stitched together and the result is a dramatically better scan.”

We'll have to see how well that works in practice, but because it's built into iPadOS it'll also be in the Camera app, Files, Notes, and third-party apps, too.

4. The iPad Air 6 isn't left out of the AI party 

An iPad sitting on a desk

(Image credit: Apple)

Apple was keen to stress that the iPad Pro (2024) isn't the only tablet in its range suitable for AI-powered tasks or future apps, despite that tablet being the only one with the new M4 chip.

Melody Kuna, Apple's Director of iPad Product Design, said that “with M2, the new [iPad] Air is also an incredibly powerful device for AI. It's blazing fast for powerful machine learning features in iPadOS, like Visual Look Up, Subject Lift, and Live Text capture.”

So while the iPad Pro's M4 chip is capable of an impressive 38 trillion operations per second (which apparently makes it sixty times faster than Apple's A11 Bionic neural engine from the iPhone 8), the iPad Air 6 won't be left out of future AI apps and features on Apple's tablets.

5. iPadOS is just getting started with AI

A person sitting at a desk working on an iPad and monitor

(Image credit: Apple)

On a similar theme, Apple's final mention of AI during its long-awaited iPad launch was reserved for iPadOS.

Will Hui, Apple's Product Manager of Creative Apps, said that “iPadOS has advanced frameworks like Core ML that make it easy for developers to tap into the Neural Engine to deliver powerful AI features, right on device”.

Clearly, Apple is treading carefully with AI in its own apps, with only Logic Pro's session players and the iPad Pro's document scanning making much use of it so far. But it also put out a call to developers to tap the potential of its software (and chips) for AI-powered features. And we can expect to hear a lot more about those next month at WWDC 2024.

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Apple’s new Final Cut Pro apps turn the iPad into an impressive live multicam studio
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At Let Loose 2024, Apple revealed big changes coming to its Final Cut software, ones that effectively turn your iPad into a mini production studio. Chief among these is the launch of Final Cut Pro for iPad 2. It’s a direct upgrade to the current app that is capable of taking full advantage of the new M4 chipset. According to the company, it can render videos up to twice as fast as Final Cut Pro running on an M1 iPad.

Apple is also introducing a feature called Live Multicam. This allows users to connect their tablet to up to four different iPhones or iPads at once and watch a video feed from all the sources in real time. You can even adjust the “exposure, focus, [and] zoom” of each live feed directly from your master iPad.

Looking at Apple’s demo video, selecting a source expands the footage to fill up the entire screen where you can then make the necessary adjustments. Tapping the Minimize icon in the bottom right corner lets creators return to the four-split view. Apple states that previews from external devices are sent to Final Cut Pro so you can quickly begin editing.

Impactful upgrades

You can’t connect your iPhone to the multicam studio using the regular camera app, which won’t support the setup. Users will instead have to install a new app called Final Cut Camera on their mobile device. Besides the Live Multicam compatibility, Apple says you can tweak settings like white balance, shutter speed, and more to obtain professional-grade recordings. The on-screen interface even lets videographers monitor their footage via a zebra stripe pattern tool and an audio meter. 

Final Cut Camera

(Image credit: Apple)

Going back to the Final Cut Pro update, there are other important features we’ve yet to mention. The platform “now supports external projects”. This means you can create a video project on and import media to “an external storage” drive without sacrificing space on an iPad. Apple is also adding more customization tools to the software like 12 additional color-grading presets and more dynamic backgrounds.

Final Cut Pro for Mac is set to receive a substantial upgrade too. Although it won’t support the four iPhone video feeds, version 10.8 does introduce several tools. For example, Enhance Light and Color offers a quick way to improve color balance and contrast in a clip among other things. Users can also give video effects and color corrections a custom name for easy identification. It’s not a total overhaul, but these changes will take some of the headache out of video editing. 

Final Cut Pro on Mac version 10.8

(Image credit: Apple)

Availability

There are different availability dates for the three products. Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 launches this spring and will be a “free update for existing users”. For everyone else, it will be $ 5/£5/$ 8 AUD a month or $ 50/£50/$ 60 AUD a year for access. Final Cut Camera is set to release in the spring as well and will be free for everyone. Final Cut Pro for Mac 10.8 is another free update for existing users. On the Mac App Store, it’ll cost you $ 300/£300/$ 500 AUD.

We don’t blame you if you were totally unaware of the Final Cut Pro changes as they were overshadowed by Apple's new iPad news. Speaking of which, check out TechRadar’s guide on where to preorder Apple’s 2024 iPad Pro and Air tablets. 

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YouTube TV’s sports-friendly Multiview mode is rolling out to iPad and iPhone
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YouTube TV’s Multiview feature is reportedly rolling out to iOS devices, giving iPhone owners a new, more immersive way to watch sports.

News of this update comes from multiple users on the YouTubeTV subreddit claiming that they had just received the option on their smartphones. One person even shared a short video of their iPhone playing four different basketball games at once – well, one’s a commercial, but you can tell it’s basketball due to the ESPN banner. 

We don’t know the full capabilities of Multiview on YouTube for iOS. According to 9To5Google it can be activated from the app’s Home tab, however it “only works with select games,” and it doesn't have all of the same features as the smart TV version. 

Multiview on iOS apparently can’t show sports scores alongside a broadcast, nor does it have the Last Channel Shortcut to hop between recently viewed channels. There is a gap in performance, but regardless of what it can’t do, Multiview on mobile is still very useful to have, especially now during March Madness.

Availability

It appears this isn’t a limited roll out as a company representative told Reddit users the feature will appear in a patch that will be available on all iOS devices. You need to have YouTube version 8.11 installed to see the option. 

The feature is also coming to iPadOS, as another user claims to have the patch on their iPad Pro 12.9. Admittedly, it’s difficult to watch four sports games on their iPhone since the small screen shrinks each window considerably, but iPad owners should have a better viewing experience.

An Android version is apparently in the works, however it won’t be out for a while. The same representative said that the update will arrive within “the coming months” although it may arrive sooner than expected. One user claims to have received a notification after opening the YouTube app on their Android informing them of Multiview. But, when they checked, it wasn’t actually there. 

We reached out to Google asking them to confirm whether or not the iOS release will reach everyone or just a select few. We'll update this story if we learn anything new. 

Until then, check out TechRadar's list of the best iPhone for 2024 if you're looking to upgrade.

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Procreate is releasing a new iPad app for animation – and it looks incredible
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Procreate, the best-selling paid app on iPad for over six years, has unveiled an exciting addition to its arsenal – a new animation app called Procreate Dreams.

Following in the footsteps of the widely acclaimed Procreate app, which is a more accessible alternative to traditional digital art software that still offers powerful and complex tools, Procreate Dreams will deliver a touch-centric creative experience.

The app is slated for release on November 22, 2023, and much like its two-time Apple Design Award-winning predecessor, it will be available for a one-time purchase of $ 19.99 (UK and AU prices TBC). In stark contrast to more complex Adobe software, there are no costly subscriptions with Procreate

The best iPads offer incredible computing power, great pressure sensitivity, and excellent accuracy, increasingly making them a go-to tool for artists at all skill levels. Procreate Dreams will similarly leverage Apple's slate – and in particular, those featuring Apple Silicon chips – to deliver smooth and efficient workflows as well as intuitive tools suitable for all skill levels.

Procreate dream keynote

(Image credit: Future)

New features and tools

To create a more accessible animation experience, Procreate has created several features and tools for Dreams, some of which may be familiar to users of the original app.

One such tool is Performing, which allows creatives to animate through touch, automatically adding keyframes while recording actions. This breathes life into the artwork in real-time, and without the need for complex keyframes and paths, making it a lot more approachable for inexperienced animators.

Also noteworthy is the app's Multi-touch Timeline, which allows for quick and easy navigation, organization, and editing. Procreate claims this system is faster than a mouse and keyboard, and that for the first time, it allows artists and animators to combine drawing, cel animation, keyframing, video editing, and compositing, all performed with fluid gestures.

By drawing directly on the timeline with the Apple Pencil, you can quickly select content, tracks, or keyframes, and then edit them all at once. Group drawings, move tracks, retime content, adjust keyframes, and much more. The timeline is kept clutter-free with simplified keyframes, but you can also tap into a keyframe for more precise property edits.

Its painting and compositing engine is immensely powerful, now allowing creatives to work on raster projects with resolutions of up to 1 million x 1 million pixels with abundant layers. It also supports all of Procreate's brushes, which are Apple Pencil-optimized. There will also be full support for files created in Procreate.

Plus, thanks to GPU acceleration built on Metal and powered by Apple Silicon, creatives will be able to instantly play back projects as they edit. This level of real-time rendering stands to save animators a lot of time wasted on RAM previews.
Procreate Dreams introduces a new audio engine, enabling voice-overs, atmospheric music, and sound effects to bring creations to life. High-resolution video editing is also seamless with ProRes footage up to 8K supported. Video can be drawn over, allowing you to create annotated or rotoscoped projects using the full breadth of Procreate's brush library,

There's plenty more to shout about, too; Flipbook, which pays homage to traditional animation and builds on the original Animation Assist tool in Procreate; text and typography; and an iCloud synchronized Procreate file format, which the company says sees 1TB files opened in an instant. At long last, this new file format will offer eternal undo history, too.

With Procreate Dreams, the boundaries of what's possible in animation and digital art might be about to change beyond belief, much like what Procreate's original app did for digital art – so keep your eyes peeled for our first impressions of the app when it releases later this year!

Procreate dream keynote

(Image credit: Future)

Analysis: Procreate joins the big leagues

It's been 10 years since Procreate's first app was released, and in that time it's gone from strength to strength. Given it featured an animation assist feature, it always felt like just a matter of time until the developer released a full animation app – so why now?

Well, the unrivaled computing power of the Apple M2 chips – especially in the tablet market – is likely the culprit here. The best graphics tablets used for animation will generally need to be hooked up to a powerful computer that handles the processing and rendering of beefy animation software, as the slate itself is just the canvas and workflow interface. Of course, with iPads, that's not the case; these lightweight slates handle everything on board.

Animation, especially at the scale Procreate Dreams is offering, requires immense computing power, and up until now it likely just wasn't possible; certainly not in a way that fully optimized the iPad's innate features and benefits while also remaining accessible to non-professionals, which is a key selling point for Procreate's software.

Given how long this has inevitably been in the pipeline, and just how successful the original app was as a gateway to digital art for so many – including myself – it's hard to imagine the software being a flop. We'll see come November.

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Windows 11 just got a huge new feature for the stylus, finally catching up with Apple’s iPad
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Windows 11 has implemented a major change for those who use a stylus, allowing for writing directly in the operating system’s interface and menus – though this is still in testing right now.

The move comes in preview build 23481 in the Dev Channel, where Windows Ink has been bolstered to allow for writing with a pen directly into, say, the search box in Windows 11.

The eventual goal, Microsoft notes in its blog post introducing the preview build, is to make it so you can write anywhere in Windows 11 with your pen. A further change has been applied to increase the accuracy of handwriting recognition, and also to bring in a ‘scratch out’ gesture to allow you to quickly edit (delete) text.

The catch is that so far this feature only supports English (US), but Microsoft assures us more languages are in the pipeline.

On top of this, build 23481 tweaks File Explorer to remove a bunch of outdated folder options. This is part of cleaning up this section of the interface ahead of a major revamp which is inbound for File Explorer, as you may have seen.

Finally, Microsoft has introduced a new Focus Session widget which allows users to quickly trigger (or halt) a session from the widget panel. And naturally, there’s the usual raft of minor tweaks, fixes, and known issues with this preview build as detailed in the full blog post.

Analysis: Playing catchup with Apple

The ability to write directly in the interface throughout Windows 11 is obviously going to be a major boon, but it’s a feature that is very much playing catchup with Apple. You may recall that Apple brought in its similar Scribble functionality with the Apple Pencil in iPadOS 14, which was released three years ago – so Microsoft has been slow to come to parity in this respect.

Not every Windows 11 tester will see the new Windows Ink capability either, as it’s a limited rollout to begin with, as Microsoft gauges early feedback. There are a number of known issues with the feature right now. (If you want to turn it on, you’ll find it in Settings > Bluetooth and devices > Pen and Windows Ink, where there’s a ‘Shell Handwriting’ option – though not for everyone yet, as noted).

Speaking of phased feature rollouts, preview build 23481 witnesses the completion of a few of these. That includes ‘never combined’ mode for the taskbar, and the ability to tear out (or merge) File Explorer tabs, both of which are now available to all Windows Insiders in the Dev channel.

For us it’s great to see ‘never combined’ making good progress in testing, so surely that’ll be in the mix for the release version of Windows 11 later this year (and there’s every chance the same will be true for the new Windows Ink feature).

Via XDA Developers

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Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are finally available on your iPad – here’s how to get them
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Just two weeks after the initial announcement, Apple's Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro editing software have made landfall on select iPad models.

Both apps function similarly to their desktop counterparts with some customizations so they can take full advantage of the hardware. As stated in our previous coverage, Final Cut Pro will feature a new jog wheel to make interacting with the touch screen easy to do. This includes smoothly navigating the Magnetic Timeline and moving clips for a video. Support for the Apple Pencil is present enabling Live Drawing so you can draw and write on top of content. Additionally, Final Cut Pro on iPad allows for multicamera editing so you can easily combine multiple angles into one timeline.

As for Logic Pro, the music editing software comes with Multi-Touch so you can use your hands to zoom in on tracks or scroll through them. Custom audio boards can be built thanks to Plug-in Tiles. All you have to do is drag audio control plug-ins together like a jigsaw puzzle. Apple Pencil support is here as well for “precision edits”. 

There are even a couple of new features not present on the desktop version. First, you have Beat Breaker, which lets “creators “reshape and shuffle sounds with a swipe of their finger or a pinch. There’s also Sample Alchemy for manipulating music samples with, as you can probably guess, just your finger.

Availability

The apps can do more than what we just described, but we think you get the picture. It doesn’t look like there will be any hiccups in the transition from desktop to tablet. So, how can you buy them?

Both Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro are available through the App Store for $ 4.99 USD (£4.99 and $ 7.99 AUD) a month or $ 49 USD (£49 and $ 59 AUD) a year “with a one-month free trial.” As you can see, the iPad versions of these apps are much, much cheaper than on Mac. Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro will run you $ 299.99 (£299.99/$ 499.99 AUD) and $ 199.99 (£174.99/$ 299.99 AUD) respectively.

Do note there are some limitations. The software only works with select iPad models. To use Final Cut Pro, you need to own either a 12.9-inch iPad Pro (5th or 6th gen), 11-inch iPad Pro (3rd or 4th gen), or iPad Air (5th gen) with iPadOS 16.4 or later installed. For Logic Pro, the app will work on “any iPad with the A12 Bionic chip or later” like the 7th Gen iPad from 2019. The device must also be running iPadOS 16.4.

It’s worth mentioning there have been rumors of these two applications coming to Apple’s rumored VR headset. This information comes from notable industry insider Mark Gurman who claims “there’s a very real possibility” they’ll roll out to the headset at some point. Apparently, the xrOS platform can run iPad apps.

It’s unknown if that’ll actually happen, but our questions may soon be answered. The company’s big WWDC 2023 event will be held in less than two weeks on June 5. We do expect to see the long-awaited reveal of Apple's VR device among other high-profile gadgets.

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Microsoft Teams will finally be a lot easier to use on iPad and iPhone
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Apple users are set to get a welcome productivity boost when it comes to using Microsoft Teams on their mobile or tablet device.

The video conferencing platform has revealed it is working on bringing Picture in Picture mode to iPhone and iPad users, letting them view multiple windows at once on their device.

This could mean users are able to carry out a video call on their device whilst consulting a useful document or presentation at the same time, without the need to switch between apps and potentially drop their call.

Microsoft Teams Picture in Picture for iOS

In the official Microsoft 365 roadmap entry for the update, the company notes that, “the new Picture in Picture mode lets you see your meeting in an adjustable window while using other apps on your mobile device.”

The feature is still listed as being “in development”, but has an expected availability date of December 2022, meaning users shouldn't have too long to wait. When released, it will be available to all iOS users of Microsoft Teams across the globe.

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The launch is the latest in a series of productivity-themed releases from Microsoft Teams as it continues to try and boost the usability and efficiency of its platform.

This includes a number of under-the-hood speed-related upgrades aimed at improving the user experience when navigating around Microsoft Teams, namely an upgraded framework which is now able to render HTML trees faster, run JavaScript and serialize arrays more efficiently. 

The company claims that these changes should contribute to a 30% speed increase when switching between Microsoft Teams chats or channels.

In other multi-tasking news, the company also recently announced that in-app games are coming to Microsoft Teams. 

However, far from just being a distraction, Microsoft claims that interaction through play is designed to tackle some of the greatest challenges of the hybrid workplace, including “struggling to build trust, create connections, and improve team morale.”

It also recently revealed that transcription for 1:1 calls and group calls is now available on the Microsoft Teams app for Android, giving users the chance to review exactly what was said, or if any details were missed. 

Users will also be able to start transcription for meetings on Microsoft Teams for iOS and Android, as well as being able to view the meeting transcripts after their calls have finished.

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