Using his iPad, he navigated through the communication app to indicate he wanted to change out of his collared shirt – a request that would have been impossible for him to make just months earlier. After changing his clothes, Zaiden zoomed around the room, his entire demeanor transformed, finally comfortable and understood.
This interaction represents just one example of how technology is transforming the lives of students with autism at this small but mighty school in north Okaloosa County, where iPads and communication apps are breaking down barriers and giving non-verbal children a voice.
It's a trial that could transform cardiovascular healthcare, reduce the risks of complications associated with the medication, and save a whole lot of money in the process.
The iMac is so good that I wish we didn’t live in a world where most of our computers are laptops. Desktop computers can be great, but these days they’re a niche device. Fortunately, sometimes what you want is to plop down a Mac with a big screen in a particular place, and let it do its job. And if you want that Mac to be purple, or blue, or orange, or whatever, the M4 iMac will be up to the challenge.
Apple has turned to the Mac Studio and, increasingly, the Mac mini to fill that enthusiast/power user desktop niche. The 27-inch iMac is dead—apparently permanently, despite vague rumors that Apple has tested larger Apple Silicon iMacs internally—and the iMac is back to being the approachable, stylish Internet machine.
But the new $599 M4 Mac mini is easily the fastest and most capable Mac that Apple has sold for this price, and it's good enough that it doesn't just feel like a cheap way to buy into the Mac ecosystem. It's a capable mainstream PC with few notable compromises, and the M4 Pro version is a proper workstation that can fit in the palm of your hand. It sounds like hyperbole, but that's how good the M4, M4 Pro, and the 16GB RAM boost are.
Why wouldn’t you want the new Mac Mini? Over the last several days of testing Apple’s redesigned desktop Mac, I’ve been impressed by all the power and potential crammed into this very compact machine. For a starting price of $599 and with 16GB of RAM now standard, the M4 Mac Mini has immediately become the best value in Apple’s entire Mac lineup. It’s more than capable for most computing tasks today, and if my M1 MacBook Air is anything to go by, the Mini won’t feel slow (or anything close to it) for at least the next four or five years.
That the new design is small is great: with more than 40 percent less volume compared to the previous Mac mini, it fits in more places, takes up less room on your desk, and is less obtrusive than ever before. It ought to, for example, sit fairly well atop the foot of an Apple Studio Display (though the cables coming out the back might make that harder). Apple also hasn’t cheated by moving the power supply into an external brick: it’s the same standard two-prong power connector cord.
Anyway, here’s the good news: All the things that have made Apple silicon-based MacBook Pros great are still here, now powered by the impressively upgraded M4 chip. Apple has also sufficiently improved the base model to finally elevate it out of “Why does this exist?” territory, boosted the device’s world-class display, and seriously upgraded the built-in webcam. Not bad for a small update.
The biggest difference this time is that the entry-level MacBook Pro doesn’t really feel like a compromise. The base configuration has enough memory and storage to be actually worth considering, and it has all the ports and creature comforts of the higher-end Pros. Even the nano-texture screen upgrade feels worth it. For the first time in a long time, it actually feels like a Pro.
The version of Image Playground available in the iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2 betas only offers animation and illustration as style options, leaving us wondering if sketch might be added a later time.
It looks like the answer might be no, as Apple has removed Sketch from the Image Playground app description. Image Playground used to list three styles as design options, but it was updated to two, and the line about Sketch was removed.
Apple's subscription gaming service Apple Arcade is being updated with four new games today, including Wheel of Fortune Daily, Drive Ahead! Carcade, Arkanoid vs Space Invaders+, and Texas Hold'em Poker: Pokerist+.
TikTok took another step to integrate itself deeper into the music streaming ecosystem on Thursday (Nov. 7), as Spotify and Apple Music users gained the ability to easily share songs on the short-form video app — posting them to their For You Page, for example, or sharing them via DM.
The Sol 5’s glowing puck is connected to its magnetic mount with a short arm that extends its reach and lets it swivel 180 degrees and angle as needed. That allows the Sol 5 to be used as an indirect light source as well, softening its effect by bouncing it off another nearby surface. But it doesn’t need to be stuck to an iPhone. It can also be used as a standalone light source, or even a flashlight that far outperforms what the iPhone’s LEDs are capable of.
Both of these products feel practical and sensible in a way that some of the decisions around the original Vision Pro launch didn’t.
The company has unveiled its new Belkin Travel Bag as a “compact and lightweight” alternative to Apple’s own Travel Case.
The exact reason for the reboots is unclear, but the document authors, who appear to be law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan, hypothesize that Apple may have introduced a new security feature in iOS 18 that tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have been disconnected from a cellular network for some time. After being rebooted, iPhones are generally more secure against tools that aim to crack the password of and take data from the phone.
It’s been two long years since the launch of Matter — the one smart home standard designed to rule them all — and there’s been a fair amount of disappointment around a sometimes buggy rollout, slow adoption by companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google, and frustrating set-up experiences.
However, the launch of the Matter 1.4 specification this week shows some signs that the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA, the organization behind Matter) is using more sticks and fewer carrots to get the smart home industry coalition to cooperate.
The reviews are out, and it sure seem like all the new Mac computers are great. Remarkable. If you need a Mac, just find a form-factor that suits you, and you will not be wrong.
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Thanks for reading.