• The Weekender
  • Posts
  • Apple’s MagSafe is better than AirPower was ever going to be

Apple’s MagSafe is better than AirPower was ever going to be

August 07, 2021

Charging mats are great. They are my preferred method of charging my iPhone and AirPods, and I'd gladly charge every electronic device the same way if I could.

But they sometimes miss their mark and come morning, my iPhone is dead because it wasn't optimally placed on the mat.

Apple tried to remedy this with the AirPower mat, which had multiple overlapping charging coils to make exact placement moot. Alas, Apple couldn't get it to work, but from the ashes of that failure rose something much better -- MagSafe.

Check our top post to see how Apple again grabbed victory from the jaws of defeat.

-- Leander Kahney, EIC.

News and opinion

Remember AirPower? The world got a glimpse of Apple’s failed multidevice charger when a video of a working prototype surfaced online Thursday. But the reminder also demonstrates that AirPower was never going to be better than what we got instead: MagSafe.

Apple will soon offer a new tool to protect children from sexual predators. The Messages application will be able to detect if an iPhone or iPad user gets or sends sexually explicit photos.

Apple plans to scan photos stored on peoples’ iPhones and in their iCloud accounts for imagery suggesting child abuse, according to news reports Thursday. The effort might aid in law-enforcement investigations, but also could invite controversial access to user data by government agencies.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden and other privacy advocates are speaking out against Apple’s plan to scan user photos for child abuse imagery. The move will turn everybody’s iPhone into an “iNarcs,” Snowden said on Twitter. “If they can scan for kiddie porn today, they can scan for anything tomorrow.”

A number of new Apple devices including Apple Watch Series 7 and two new MacBook Pro models have appeared in regulatory filings ahead of an official unveiling. The listings suggest we could see a launch in the near future.

How-tos

With iOS 15, your iPhone can warn you if you’ve left your Mac at the office. Or in a hotel room, restaurant, plane… wherever. Separation alerts are one of the better features of Apple’s operating system upgrade. It’s easy to set up these up. Here’s how.

Worried your iPhone may have been infected with Pegasus spyware that’s being used by governments to spy on people? You can now use the free Pegasus detector built into iMazing to find out if your handset is safe. We’ll show you how.

If you’ve found that autocorrect is suddenly changing words it doesn’t need to change, or offering up other strange glitches, you may need to reset your keyboard dictionary on iPhone and iPad. We’ll show you how.

It’s now possible to share your Focus status with select contacts in the latest iOS and iPadOS 15 developer betas. Here’s how you pick and choose who sees that your notifications are disabled while you’re busy.

Deals

AirPods are awesome, but they’re more magical with iOS devices than with Macs. Unless, of course, you use AirBuddy. The Mac app brings some of that iOS-style sweetness to your AirPods experience on an Apple computer. And right now, you can get a lifetime subscription to AirBuddy for less than $9.

This pocket-size Smart Keychain wirelessly recharges your Apple Watch and is great for emergencies.

There’s only one thing worse than seeing the dreaded ‘iPhone Storage Full’ notification on your device: seeing the dreaded ‘iCloud Storage Full’ notification. But did you know that you don’t have to rely on cloud storage options, which can be limited in their space, to backup your data?

It may look like something from a billionaire rapper’s episode of MTV Cribs, but you’d be surprised at how affordable the wow-factor effect actually is.

Reviews

While the Apple Magic Keyboard is an outstanding way to transform an iPad Pro into laptop, it’s not necessarily the best option. The Brydge 12.9 Max+ is also a very capable keyboard case for Apple’s premier tablet. I use both and pitted them against each other. And I found definite advantages to Brydge’s offering.

Just place your iPhone 12 on the Mophie Snap+ Wireless Charging Stand and the two will cling together magnetically thanks to the MagSafe system. The stand makes it easier to see the iPhone’s screen on portrait or landscape mode, and your handset is getting recharged at the same time.

With new Apple TV+ series Mr. Corman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt returns to our screens after a brief hiatus and well … I can’t say I was ready to have him back.

Tweet o' the week