Tab Groups in macOS Safari should give you the option to retain audio playing in other Tab Groups.
When you leave a Tab Group in macOS Safari, any audio playing in that Tab Group will pause, which I find annoying and I’m sure others feel the same way. I can see how this makes sense for some workflows, but there should be an option to retain audio playing in other Tab Groups. Simply place an additional audio glyph in the Tab Group selector to guide people to the audio source in their web of Tab Groups.
When you leave a Tab Group in macOS Safari, any audio playing in that Tab Group will pause, which I find annoying and I’m sure others feel the same way. I can see how this makes sense for some workflows, but there should be an option to retain audio playing in other Tab Groups. Simply place an additional audio glyph in the Tab Group selector to guide people to the audio source in their web of Tab Groups.
M5 Max MacBook Pro vs…Dell Pro Max 18 Plus
Dell can have every muscular iPhone moniker attached to its name, but it still can’t compete when it comes to dollar for dollar value. Plus it’s way too big of a laptop.
I’d rather have a Dell Neo mini 13 Air.
Dell can have every muscular iPhone moniker attached to its name, but it still can’t compete when it comes to dollar for dollar value. Plus it’s way too big of a laptop.
I’d rather have a Dell Neo mini 13 Air.
MacBook Neo Review: is it an upgrade from the 2020 M1 MacBook Air?
I’ve been testing out the MacBook Neo for over a week now, and I am confused by its performance. It works well (great in fact!), but now I wonder if I need more than this. I have been using the base model M1 Air for over 3 years now, and I don’t see the need to upgrade. If I do upgrade, the Neo would be on my list. Even a discounted M4 Air is overkill for me.
I got the base model MacBook Neo for testing, so both my Air and the Neo have 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
Chassis and design
Compared to the M1 Air, the design is a huge shift. Instead of a wedge shaped laptop with sharp corners, you get a flat design with rounded curves and edges. It doesn’t have a range of depth unlike the M1 Air, with a thicker back tapering to a thinner front end. Somewhere along the line my M1 Air got a bend in the chassis, not sure how or if it was that way from day one, but if I place it down on a flat surface, it definitely wobbles even though it has all 4 rubber feet in place. It’s not huge, but definitely noticeable. The Neo is flat and has no flex or wobble and feels just as premium as Apple’s most expensive laptops. If you were to really press hard on the lid of both laptops (or any laptop for that matter), you would notice some flex and notice the lid pushing in, but it’s an unnatural amount of push. For the record, the flex is more on the M1 Air.
I would argue that the design is even more premium in some ways, such as the keyboard. It seems counterintuitive to call the keyboard more premium even though it has no backlight, but the change to lighter, colored keycaps matching the color aesthetics of the laptop gives it a fun and premium look. Apple could have slapped a white keyboard for all 4 colors and it still would look nice, but they went out of their way to colorize the keys. Very cool.
You also get color-matching USB-C pins, a feature usually reserved for premium devices. Once again, very cool.
Overall, the design is great and very surprising for a $599 laptop. It is a joy to hold and gives you confidence when holding it with its sturdy chassis and consistent dimensions front to back. The M1 Air is still light and great to hold, but you only feel comfortable and confident holding it from the thicker hinged side since that angle doesn’t fight your finger grip. Try holding a big wedge of cheese from the thin side, and you’ll know what I mean.
Keyboard
Having no backlight not only helps with lowering the price and repairability, but it also makes perfect sense for the lighter colored keys. If the keys were backlit, the letters on the keys would have to be translucent, and that translucency in normal daylight or office lighting would be disastrous for readability. The shimmering lights would bounce off the keys making the light keys and now light letters invisible and therefore unreadable. I noticed that a lot when fondling over other laptop brands in the past, with their silver keys with translucent letters being almost unreadable with proper room lighting.
Don’t get me wrong. I would prefer a backlight and I do miss it everyday, but the keyboard contrast is great enough that you can see the keys from the screen’s light. This is also a good time to motivate anyone who complains about the lack of backlighting to learn how to properly type, especially all these influencers who are still pecking away at their keyboards. If pecking is your only hope, don’t get the Indigo color because it has the darkest keys. The keyboard contrast is much better on Silver, Blush, and Citrus. I can confirm that after using my niece’s Blush model and comparing it side by side in the dark with my Indigo test model.
Trackpad
The trackpad is also newly engineered to provide good tactility, even though it is a mechanical trackpad and not the more premium Force Touch. It is the first mechanical trackpad in a MacBook since 2015. Fun fact - Apple did release a mechanical trackpad in 2020 in the form of the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. I have an iPad Pro from that era along with the Magic Keyboard case, and the mechanical trackpad works fine without any issues many years later. The one on the Neo feels like it has a deeper click, but it feels just as solid and would be delightful for anyone who isn’t a fan of the haptic trackpad Apple currently uses. If you’re used to Force Touch, you will notice the Neo’s trackpad does slow you down just a hair since your finger is physically traveling (albeit maybe 2mm), compared to no travel with Force Touch.
Another fun fact - the trackpad is 7% of the total weight of the MacBook Neo, which is crazy. I believe Apple had to make the trackpad a mechanical one with a lot of weight (twice the weight of the Force Touch trackpad on the M5 Air), in order to keep the weight balance right and allow for the one-finger lift.
The one-finger lift. Ah yes, the tell-tale sign of a premium product. It’s still there and better than ever.
Display
The display is slightly smaller than an M1 Air (0.3 inch diagonal shorter) and won’t be missed. On an M2 Air and above it is 0.6 inches shorter, which will be missed, but these aren’t the target markets. The target market is Chromebooks and budget windows laptops and in that market, you will find bigger screens, but you won’t find quality, high-res screens with 500 nits of brightness. It even gets brighter than the M1 Air which maxes out at 400 nits. Chromebooks usually max out at 1080p at this price point, and you could even end up with washed out displays that shift colors really easily causing more eye strain than watching C-SPAN.
Speakers
Speaker quality is equal to my M1 Air, and I really couldn’t tell the difference between the two, which is a good thing because they do a more than adequate job. They are side firing instead of top firing, but it doesn’t affect the quality. If you cup your hands on the sides right by the speakers, you get a bit deeper bass as you reroute the audio upwards. The headphone jack is closer to the front compared to the back, which gives you some extra slack.
Performance
Coming from the M1 Air, I don’t see a noticeable difference between the two devices even though my M1 Air has dual NAND chips with faster read and write speeds to the SSD. That means if I am running low on RAM and have to borrow internal storage as RAM, technically my M1 Air would be faster, but again I am not noticing any difference in performance between the two because Apple has done some things under the hood to mitigate the memory swap issue plaguing the base model M2 Air with a single NAND chip. Whether you get 256GB or 512GB on the Neo, you will only have single channel memory, with less “highways” for data transfer. I would still opt for the 512GB model since you get the benefit of Touch ID which has its perks and security benefits.
So what exactly do I do to “push” this laptop? I have many stock apps open at any given time, including Mail, Messages, Notes, Calendar, Safari with 12+ tabs, News, Photos, and it just flies through my workload without a hitch. Playing 4K videos in Photos, while playing a 4K video in YouTube and editing images in Canva on Safari didn’t lead to any slow downs and is beyond a realistic workload for me. Even with nearly 4GB of swap memory, things were moving along fine. This laptop will surprise you with its capabilities, and is ideal for someone who is starting off as a simple, basic user that wants to delve into more ambitious projects as they learn new tools and creative apps. Ambition and creativity are part of the Neo’s theme, amplified by its built in hardware-accelerated ray tracing that will really smoke the M1 Air out of Apple’s walled garden.
Battery life
Apple quotes 16 hours of battery life vs 18 hours on all previous Airs including the M1 Air, so a slight decrease. The main issue however is charging speed. The Neo maxes out at 30W of charging, but you need a separate charger brick since the one supplied in the box is a 20W brick. More intensive tasks like 3D rendering and gaming will deplete the battery quickly, and it will take longer to charge it to full since it doesn’t support fast charging. If you’re coming from an M1 Air, the battery charging experience will be about the same since both the M1 Air and the Neo don’t support MagSafe 3 fast charging.
The great news - you can use battery banks to charge this laptop with ease due to the relatively low wattage requirements.
Who is this laptop for?
This laptop is for many types of people, and most people will fit into one of these categories:
Someone new to macOS, and just wants a cheap way to get into the Apple walled garden after already being a dedicated iPad and iPhone user. They want to take the jump into familiar yet unfamiliar territory by having a proper computer to manage school, life, and/or work.
A nice “beater” laptop for professionals who work on Macs that costs thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars and want a secondary machine for those days where they are doing more admin type of work.
Any student looking to get a laptop for school or college will be fine with a Neo.
Anyone upgrading from a Chromebook will appreciate the extra power and higher fidelity screen.
M1 Air owners whose laptop is on its last legs from a physical perspective - this is the best lateral move. I’ll say it again - I’ve been using the M1 for over 3 years now as a daily driver, and this laptop can easily handle everything the M1 can. If you give me enough time, I might see a beach ball, but I have seen one beach ball in nearly 10 days. Think of the Neo as a lateral job promotion - you don’t get a pay raise, but you love your new job and don’t want to go back.
Finally, if you’re using an Intel MacBook Air, the benefits are insane when you jump to the Neo. You get the promotion at work with a serious pay raise, and you love the job.
I’ve been testing out the MacBook Neo for over a week now, and I am confused by its performance. It works well (great in fact!), but now I wonder if I need more than this. I have been using the base model M1 Air for over 3 years now, and I don’t see the need to upgrade. If I do upgrade, the Neo would be on my list. Even a discounted M4 Air is overkill for me.
I got the base model MacBook Neo for testing, so both my Air and the Neo have 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
Chassis and design
Compared to the M1 Air, the design is a huge shift. Instead of a wedge shaped laptop with sharp corners, you get a flat design with rounded curves and edges. It doesn’t have a range of depth unlike the M1 Air, with a thicker back tapering to a thinner front end. Somewhere along the line my M1 Air got a bend in the chassis, not sure how or if it was that way from day one, but if I place it down on a flat surface, it definitely wobbles even though it has all 4 rubber feet in place. It’s not huge, but definitely noticeable. The Neo is flat and has no flex or wobble and feels just as premium as Apple’s most expensive laptops. If you were to really press hard on the lid of both laptops (or any laptop for that matter), you would notice some flex and notice the lid pushing in, but it’s an unnatural amount of push. For the record, the flex is more on the M1 Air.
I would argue that the design is even more premium in some ways, such as the keyboard. It seems counterintuitive to call the keyboard more premium even though it has no backlight, but the change to lighter, colored keycaps matching the color aesthetics of the laptop gives it a fun and premium look. Apple could have slapped a white keyboard for all 4 colors and it still would look nice, but they went out of their way to colorize the keys. Very cool.
You also get color-matching USB-C pins, a feature usually reserved for premium devices. Once again, very cool.
Overall, the design is great and very surprising for a $599 laptop. It is a joy to hold and gives you confidence when holding it with its sturdy chassis and consistent dimensions front to back. The M1 Air is still light and great to hold, but you only feel comfortable and confident holding it from the thicker hinged side since that angle doesn’t fight your finger grip. Try holding a big wedge of cheese from the thin side, and you’ll know what I mean.
Keyboard
Having no backlight not only helps with lowering the price and repairability, but it also makes perfect sense for the lighter colored keys. If the keys were backlit, the letters on the keys would have to be translucent, and that translucency in normal daylight or office lighting would be disastrous for readability. The shimmering lights would bounce off the keys making the light keys and now light letters invisible and therefore unreadable. I noticed that a lot when fondling over other laptop brands in the past, with their silver keys with translucent letters being almost unreadable with proper room lighting.
Don’t get me wrong. I would prefer a backlight and I do miss it everyday, but the keyboard contrast is great enough that you can see the keys from the screen’s light. This is also a good time to motivate anyone who complains about the lack of backlighting to learn how to properly type, especially all these influencers who are still pecking away at their keyboards. If pecking is your only hope, don’t get the Indigo color because it has the darkest keys. The keyboard contrast is much better on Silver, Blush, and Citrus. I can confirm that after using my niece’s Blush model and comparing it side by side in the dark with my Indigo test model.
Trackpad
The trackpad is also newly engineered to provide good tactility, even though it is a mechanical trackpad and not the more premium Force Touch. It is the first mechanical trackpad in a MacBook since 2015. Fun fact - Apple did release a mechanical trackpad in 2020 in the form of the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. I have an iPad Pro from that era along with the Magic Keyboard case, and the mechanical trackpad works fine without any issues many years later. The one on the Neo feels like it has a deeper click, but it feels just as solid and would be delightful for anyone who isn’t a fan of the haptic trackpad Apple currently uses. If you’re used to Force Touch, you will notice the Neo’s trackpad does slow you down just a hair since your finger is physically traveling (albeit maybe 2mm), compared to no travel with Force Touch.
Another fun fact - the trackpad is 7% of the total weight of the MacBook Neo, which is crazy. I believe Apple had to make the trackpad a mechanical one with a lot of weight (twice the weight of the Force Touch trackpad on the M5 Air), in order to keep the weight balance right and allow for the one-finger lift.
The one-finger lift. Ah yes, the tell-tale sign of a premium product. It’s still there and better than ever.
Display
The display is slightly smaller than an M1 Air (0.3 inch diagonal shorter) and won’t be missed. On an M2 Air and above it is 0.6 inches shorter, which will be missed, but these aren’t the target markets. The target market is Chromebooks and budget windows laptops and in that market, you will find bigger screens, but you won’t find quality, high-res screens with 500 nits of brightness. It even gets brighter than the M1 Air which maxes out at 400 nits. Chromebooks usually max out at 1080p at this price point, and you could even end up with washed out displays that shift colors really easily causing more eye strain than watching C-SPAN.
Speakers
Speaker quality is equal to my M1 Air, and I really couldn’t tell the difference between the two, which is a good thing because they do a more than adequate job. They are side firing instead of top firing, but it doesn’t affect the quality. If you cup your hands on the sides right by the speakers, you get a bit deeper bass as you reroute the audio upwards. The headphone jack is closer to the front compared to the back, which gives you some extra slack.
Performance
Coming from the M1 Air, I don’t see a noticeable difference between the two devices even though my M1 Air has dual NAND chips with faster read and write speeds to the SSD. That means if I am running low on RAM and have to borrow internal storage as RAM, technically my M1 Air would be faster, but again I am not noticing any difference in performance between the two because Apple has done some things under the hood to mitigate the memory swap issue plaguing the base model M2 Air with a single NAND chip. Whether you get 256GB or 512GB on the Neo, you will only have single channel memory, with less “highways” for data transfer. I would still opt for the 512GB model since you get the benefit of Touch ID which has its perks and security benefits.
So what exactly do I do to “push” this laptop? I have many stock apps open at any given time, including Mail, Messages, Notes, Calendar, Safari with 12+ tabs, News, Photos, and it just flies through my workload without a hitch. Playing 4K videos in Photos, while playing a 4K video in YouTube and editing images in Canva on Safari didn’t lead to any slow downs and is beyond a realistic workload for me. Even with nearly 4GB of swap memory, things were moving along fine. This laptop will surprise you with its capabilities, and is ideal for someone who is starting off as a simple, basic user that wants to delve into more ambitious projects as they learn new tools and creative apps. Ambition and creativity are part of the Neo’s theme, amplified by its built in hardware-accelerated ray tracing that will really smoke the M1 Air out of Apple’s walled garden.
Battery life
Apple quotes 16 hours of battery life vs 18 hours on all previous Airs including the M1 Air, so a slight decrease. The main issue however is charging speed. The Neo maxes out at 30W of charging, but you need a separate charger brick since the one supplied in the box is a 20W brick. More intensive tasks like 3D rendering and gaming will deplete the battery quickly, and it will take longer to charge it to full since it doesn’t support fast charging. If you’re coming from an M1 Air, the battery charging experience will be about the same since both the M1 Air and the Neo don’t support MagSafe 3 fast charging.
The great news - you can use battery banks to charge this laptop with ease due to the relatively low wattage requirements.
Who is this laptop for?
This laptop is for many types of people, and most people will fit into one of these categories:
Someone new to macOS, and just wants a cheap way to get into the Apple walled garden after already being a dedicated iPad and iPhone user. They want to take the jump into familiar yet unfamiliar territory by having a proper computer to manage school, life, and/or work.
A nice “beater” laptop for professionals who work on Macs that costs thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars and want a secondary machine for those days where they are doing more admin type of work.
Any student looking to get a laptop for school or college will be fine with a Neo.
Anyone upgrading from a Chromebook will appreciate the extra power and higher fidelity screen.
M1 Air owners whose laptop is on its last legs from a physical perspective - this is the best lateral move. I’ll say it again - I’ve been using the M1 for over 3 years now as a daily driver, and this laptop can easily handle everything the M1 can. If you give me enough time, I might see a beach ball, but I have seen one beach ball in nearly 10 days. Think of the Neo as a lateral job promotion - you don’t get a pay raise, but you love your new job and don’t want to go back.
Finally, if you’re using an Intel MacBook Air, the benefits are insane when you jump to the Neo. You get the promotion at work with a serious pay raise, and you love the job.
Should you upgrade your MacBook Neo for $100 to get Touch ID and more storage?
The $100 upgrade price is the only upgrade option on MacBook Neo and it gives you two features:
256GB of extra storage, for a total of 512GB.
Touch ID instead of a Lock button.
In my opinion it is well worth the upgrade for these two features. 256GB is already limiting for a MacBook, and if you take a lot of photos and videos on your iPhone, the 512GB of storage comes in handy for local storage. Even though this laptop isn’t really a “creator’s laptop” due to its lower specs, it does give people plenty of power to dabble in photo or video editing, where storage once again comes in handy. There’s also the possibility of faster read and write speeds with double the storage and better performance when your 8GB of RAM is full, forcing the computer into swap memory. We will have to wait for the teardown to see if Apple is using single or dual NAND chips but like I said previously:
If I were a betting man, I would assume the base model comes with a single NAND 256GB chip instead of dual NAND 128GB chips. You would get extra performance if you had dual 128GB chips since you have more “lanes” for data transfer and memory swap, but since this is the budget MacBook, it’s hard to tell until someone does a teardown.
Even if there was no difference in SSD speeds and performance, the price upgrade is worth it.
The second reason - Touch ID, a huge time saver when you add the cumulative amount of time you would spend either typing in your password, or hoping your “Apple Watch to Unlock” feature is going to work. Don’t get me wrong - using your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac works really well most of the time…but you need an Apple Watch. Even if you have one, the times where it doesn’t work makes it annoying to manually type your password, potentially making it a security risk if people are snooping around.
Let’s not forget about the other benefits of Touch ID:
Apple Pay.
You can easily fill usernames and passwords more securely. Without Touch ID, you simply click your username and password from iCloud Keychain to fill the field with no authentication other than when you unlocked your MacBook. In this case Touch ID is less convenient (barely), but more secure.
Passkeys - if you’re trying to login with a passkey, there’s a lot less friction with Touch ID. Simply touch and you’re in. Without Touch ID, you would have to use an iPhone or iPad and scan a QR code, adding more friction.
Apple kept the upgrade path simple with MacBook Neo, and the $100 upgrade is a no-brainer. At $699, this is still a great deal and the deal gets even better with education pricing at $599.
The $100 upgrade price is the only upgrade option on MacBook Neo and it gives you two features:
256GB of extra storage, for a total of 512GB.
Touch ID instead of a Lock button.
In my opinion it is well worth the upgrade for these two features. 256GB is already limiting for a MacBook, and if you take a lot of photos and videos on your iPhone, the 512GB of storage comes in handy for local storage. Even though this laptop isn’t really a “creator’s laptop” due to its lower specs, it does give people plenty of power to dabble in photo or video editing, where storage once again comes in handy. There’s also the possibility of faster read and write speeds with double the storage and better performance when your 8GB of RAM is full, forcing the computer into swap memory. We will have to wait for the teardown to see if Apple is using single or dual NAND chips but like I said previously:
If I were a betting man, I would assume the base model comes with a single NAND 256GB chip instead of dual NAND 128GB chips. You would get extra performance if you had dual 128GB chips since you have more “lanes” for data transfer and memory swap, but since this is the budget MacBook, it’s hard to tell until someone does a teardown.
Even if there was no difference in SSD speeds and performance, the price upgrade is worth it.
The second reason - Touch ID, a huge time saver when you add the cumulative amount of time you would spend either typing in your password, or hoping your “Apple Watch to Unlock” feature is going to work. Don’t get me wrong - using your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac works really well most of the time…but you need an Apple Watch. Even if you have one, the times where it doesn’t work makes it annoying to manually type your password, potentially making it a security risk if people are snooping around.
Let’s not forget about the other benefits of Touch ID:
Apple Pay.
You can easily fill usernames and passwords more securely. Without Touch ID, you simply click your username and password from iCloud Keychain to fill the field with no authentication other than when you unlocked your MacBook. In this case Touch ID is less convenient (barely), but more secure.
Passkeys - if you’re trying to login with a passkey, there’s a lot less friction with Touch ID. Simply touch and you’re in. Without Touch ID, you would have to use an iPhone or iPad and scan a QR code, adding more friction.
Apple kept the upgrade path simple with MacBook Neo, and the $100 upgrade is a no-brainer. At $699, this is still a great deal and the deal gets even better with education pricing at $599.
Should you buy a 15-inch 2013 MacBook Pro in 2026?
I probably overpaid for this device back in 2018 ($900 on eBay), but 8 years later, I would say it was worth the money. I got a pretty good spec too:
2.6 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB graphics card
1TB SSD
Battery cycle count - 476 (as of today)
Battery condition - Normal
15.4” retina display.
The battery doesn't last more than a few hours, but the real issue is the News app not working reliably. I’ve been using it for about a week straight and it crashes without fail, but it’s still great for almost everything else. Basic computing with a huge screen, MagSafe charging, and plenty of USB-A ports for legacy devices along with HDMI and a full-sized SD card slot makes it a great deal for newbie mac users or just as a secondary backup device. As long as you use Safari for browsing the web, you’ll be fine.
Don’t use Chrome.
What’s the pricing like? When you factor in the cost of a new, legitimate $70-$80 MagSafe 2 charger - yes, Apple still makes these - you’re at less than $250 all in. Some previous price history (price includes cost of a new charger):
~$900 in 2018
~$480 in 2023
~$380 in 2024
~$230 in 2026
If you’re a DIYer, you can get a cheaper storage config and put your own SSD in. This was the last design that allowed for user upgradeable storage and is a great way to backup your photos in iCloud. More thoughts in my previous posts below.
I probably overpaid for this device back in 2018 ($900 on eBay), but 8 years later, I would say it was worth the money. I got a pretty good spec too:
2.6 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB graphics card
1TB SSD
Battery cycle count - 476 (as of today)
Battery condition - Normal
15.4” retina display.
The battery doesn't last more than a few hours, but the real issue is the News app not working reliably. I’ve been using it for about a week straight and it crashes without fail, but it’s still great for almost everything else. Basic computing with a huge screen, MagSafe charging, and plenty of USB-A ports for legacy devices along with HDMI and a full-sized SD card slot makes it a great deal for newbie mac users or just as a secondary backup device. As long as you use Safari for browsing the web, you’ll be fine.
Don’t use Chrome.
What’s the pricing like? When you factor in the cost of a new, legitimate $70-$80 MagSafe 2 charger - yes, Apple still makes these - you’re at less than $250 all in. Some previous price history (price includes cost of a new charger):
~$900 in 2018
~$480 in 2023
~$380 in 2024
~$230 in 2026
If you’re a DIYer, you can get a cheaper storage config and put your own SSD in. This was the last design that allowed for user upgradeable storage and is a great way to backup your photos in iCloud. More thoughts in my previous posts below.
This editing feature in Photos will save you tons of storage.
If you crop a video and select “Save Video,” the storage size of your video won’t decrease. You have to select, “Save Video as New Clip” to get a reduction in file size, and then delete the original video.
The “Save Video” option crops your video, but still retains the whole video in case you change your mind. When you go back to editing the video under the “crop” option, you will see the entire video with your cropped selection. I had a 10GB slow-mo video that was 42 minutes long, but I only needed 1 minute from it. After cropping my video and selecting “Save Video,” the file size was still 10GB. I was sure I didn’t need all that extra footage, so I selected, “Save Video as New Clip,” and then deleted the original 10GB video.
My new file size? 342MB.
If you crop a video and select “Save Video,” the storage size of your video won’t decrease. You have to select, “Save Video as New Clip” to get a reduction in file size, and then delete the original video.
The “Save Video” option crops your video, but still retains the whole video in case you change your mind. When you go back to editing the video under the “crop” option, you will see the entire video with your cropped selection. I had a 10GB slow-mo video that was 42 minutes long, but I only needed 1 minute from it. After cropping my video and selecting “Save Video,” the file size was still 10GB. I was sure I didn’t need all that extra footage, so I selected, “Save Video as New Clip,” and then deleted the original 10GB video.
My new file size? 342MB.
It seems more likely that the iPhone 17 Pro will feature 8K video recording.
Update 4/8/25: 8K resolution and 180-degree field of view are separate parameters and unlikely for an iPhone to support the 180-degree field of view.
Joe Rossignol from MacRumors describes Apple’s new Immersive Video App for Vision Pro and Mac:
Apple Immersive Videos are 3D videos recorded in 8K resolution, with a 180-degree field of view and Spatial Audio. For example, recent performances by singer The Weeknd and heavy metal band Metallica are available in the format.
The new Apple Immersive Video Utility app allows you to import, organize, package, and review Apple Immersive Video files on a Mac. Then, you can connect one or more Vision Pro devices and review the immersive videos. For larger groups, Apple says there is a synchronized playback option for multi-device viewing sessions….
The app seems to be primarily intended for producers of Apple Immersive Videos, but the app is currently available for anyone to download.
I’m speculating here, but this sounds like a giant hint for iPhone 8K video recording support. I had the Vision Pro for a month, and immersive videos were the highlight for me and many others.
If people could record their own families in that same resolution and immersiveness, I think it would entice more people to purchase a Vision Pro. The Vision Pro videos that I have are 2200 x 2200, which is 2.2K resolution in a square aspect ratio, whereas 8K resolution is 7680 x 4320 pixels, or about 7 times the amount of pixels with 180-degree field of view.
8K video would require more storage, and I’m sure the iPhone Pro storage will be bumped up from 128GB to 256GB, along with a $100 price increase.
Update 4/8/25: 8K resolution and 180-degree field of view are separate parameters and unlikely for an iPhone to support the 180-degree field of view.
Joe Rossignol from MacRumors describes Apple’s new Immersive Video App for Vision Pro and Mac:
Apple Immersive Videos are 3D videos recorded in 8K resolution, with a 180-degree field of view and Spatial Audio. For example, recent performances by singer The Weeknd and heavy metal band Metallica are available in the format.
The new Apple Immersive Video Utility app allows you to import, organize, package, and review Apple Immersive Video files on a Mac. Then, you can connect one or more Vision Pro devices and review the immersive videos. For larger groups, Apple says there is a synchronized playback option for multi-device viewing sessions….
The app seems to be primarily intended for producers of Apple Immersive Videos, but the app is currently available for anyone to download.
I’m speculating here, but this sounds like a giant hint for iPhone 8K video recording support. I had the Vision Pro for a month, and immersive videos were the highlight for me and many others.
If people could record their own families in that same resolution and immersiveness, I think it would entice more people to purchase a Vision Pro. The Vision Pro videos that I have are 2200 x 2200, which is 2.2K resolution in a square aspect ratio, whereas 8K resolution is 7680 x 4320 pixels, or about 7 times the amount of pixels with 180-degree field of view.
8K video would require more storage, and I’m sure the iPhone Pro storage will be bumped up from 128GB to 256GB, along with a $100 price increase.
Passwords App on iPhone and Mac - one huge security difference.
I was reading about Microsoft’s AI based Recall feature, and I thought to myself, what if that feature was on the Mac? Would sensitive information be blurred out when screenshots were automatically being captured?
I was reading about Microsoft’s AI based Recall feature, and I thought to myself, what if that feature was on the Mac? Would sensitive information be blurred out when screenshots were automatically being captured?
The most sensitive app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac is the Passwords app, and if it were to be “screenshotted,” it should blur the passwords.
On iOS and iPadOS, the Passwords app blurs all passwords when you take a screenshot. Even if you want to display the password in large type, the whole screenshot is a giant white blank screen, which is awesome. Even if the password field is obscured with dots (•••••••••••), taking a screenshot makes that whole field completely blank so you don’t even know how long the password is.
Here are 4 screenshots on iOS, showing the completely blank password field:
Now compare that to what you actually see when you are in the Passwords app on iOS (or iPadOS):
In general, iOS and iPadOS do a great job of obscuring your password when taking a screenshot in their app.
On macOS, that is not the case.
I opened the Passwords app and started taking screenshots, and it faithfully captures everything your eyes can see:
If your password is hidden with dots, you will see the dots.
If you hover over your password revealing itself and then you take a screenshot, you will see the password.
If you choose the option to display the password in large type and then take a screenshot, you will see the password.
This is the complete opposite of iOS and iPadOS, and something Apple should address.
This might not be a security risk, but it can be in certain scenarios:
You save your screenshots to the cloud by default, making your passwords exposed to other individuals who might share the same iCloud folders as you.
You have multiple monitors and your passwords app is on your secondary (or tertiary) monitor. Many people don’t know or forget that when you take a screenshot, all of your monitors are being captured.
You have a custom mouse that has hotkeys for screenshotting, and you accidentally capture screenshots without your knowledge.
If this Recall feature was on macOS today, would you even want to open your Passwords app, knowing that the computer is taking screenshots in the background and capturing your sensitive information?
This is the one reason why you need iPhone Mirroring on your Mac.
With macOS Sequoia and iOS 18, you can now seamlessly mirror your iPhone to any of your Macs.
It might seem pointless since whatever you can do on your iPhone you can do bigger on the Mac, but there is one reason, one critical reason, why you need this feature.
As much as we love our Macs, there are always times where it just doesn’t want to work as magically as Apple would make you think.
You get an iMessage on your iPhone, but it doesn’t show up on your Mac.
You get a WhatsApp message on your iPhone, but it doesn’t show up on your Mac.
You need to login to your bank and need your 2-factor code that was texted to you, but it doesn’t show up on your Mac.
Are you getting it?
With iPhone Mirroring, you will never miss a message from any app since you literally have your iPhone on screen. No more frustration and forcing yourself to reboot your Mac right then and there when you are in the skin of it in order to make all the things sync perfectly.
Just mirror your iPhone and reboot later when it’s convenient for you.
With macOS Sequoia and iOS 18, you can now seamlessly mirror your iPhone to any of your Macs.
It might seem pointless since whatever you can do on your iPhone you can do bigger on the Mac, but there is one reason, one critical reason, why you need this feature.
As much as we love our Macs, there are always times where it just doesn’t want to work as magically as Apple would make you think.
You get an iMessage on your iPhone, but it doesn’t show up on your Mac.
You get a WhatsApp message on your iPhone, but it doesn’t show up on your Mac.
You need to login to your bank and need your 2-factor code that was texted to you, but it doesn’t show up on your Mac.
Are you getting it?
With iPhone Mirroring, you will never miss a message from any app since you literally have your iPhone on screen. No more frustration and forcing yourself to reboot your Mac right then and there when you are in the skin of it in order to make all the things sync perfectly.
Just mirror your iPhone and reboot later when it’s convenient for you.
Great macOS Sequoia tips Apple didn’t tell you about.
Quinn Nelson put up a great video a few weeks ago, showcasing some of the more useful and nerdy features of macOS Sequoia. It’s a long video, but you can easily use the time stamps in the video description to find the features that you like most.
The biggest helping feature for me in macOS Sequoia? The ability to tile your windows more effectively and easily with simple keyboard shortcuts.
Quinn Nelson put up a great video a few weeks ago, showcasing some of the more useful and nerdy features of macOS Sequoia. It’s a long video, but you can easily use the time stamps in the video description to find the features that you like most.
The biggest helping feature for me in macOS Sequoia? The ability to tile your windows more effectively and easily with simple keyboard shortcuts.
iPhone Mirroring on a desktop Mac only works well if you have these devices.
To put it simply, you need a Magic Trackpad or a Magic Mouse to get the full iPhone mirroring experience. If you use any other mouse, the experience is not good.
Transitions stutter, and clicking and holding your normal mouse to swipe left and right on your home screen is imprecise. Very often the iPhone triggers “jiggle mode” to edit your home screen when you just wanted to swipe left or right. Scrolling with the click wheel is also not smooth at all.
And yes, I have a very capable wired mouse.
Swiping left, right, up, and down on the Magic Trackpad just feels more natural for operating iOS since it is a touch-based OS. The experience is very similar to my iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard.
I haven’t tested the Magic Mouse, but if you love the Magic Mouse, I am sure it will work just as well since it uses a similar touch interface.
Thankfully, Apple’s Magic Trackpad is worth the cost compared to the Magic Mouse, especially now that it is USB-C.
To put it simply, you need a Magic Trackpad or a Magic Mouse to get the full iPhone mirroring experience. If you use any other mouse, the experience is not good.
Transitions stutter, and clicking and holding your normal mouse to swipe left and right on your home screen is imprecise. Very often the iPhone triggers “jiggle mode” to edit your home screen when you just wanted to swipe left or right. Scrolling with the click wheel is also not smooth at all.
And yes, I have a very capable wired mouse.
Swiping left, right, up, and down on the Magic Trackpad just feels more natural for operating iOS since it is a touch-based OS. The experience is very similar to my iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard.
I haven’t tested the Magic Mouse, but if you love the Magic Mouse, I am sure it will work just as well since it uses a similar touch interface.
Thankfully, Apple’s Magic Trackpad is worth the cost compared to the Magic Mouse, especially now that it is USB-C.
What features do older iPhones get with iOS18.1?
Great writeup by Chance Miller showing all the features you get even if your iPhone doesn’t support Apple Intelligence.
Apple Intelligence is only supported on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, and all iPhone 16 models.
If you have an older iPhone, then check out the link to see what features you will get with iOS 18.1.
The best feature in my opinion the ability to drag and drop files from your iPhone to your Mac and vice versa:
Making good on its promise from WWDC, iPhone Mirroring now supports the ability to easily drag and drop files between your iPhone and your Mac. This feature requires both iOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1. Then, when you’re using iPhone Mirroring, you can wirelessly move files back and forth just by dragging and dropping.
Great writeup by Chance Miller showing all the features you get even if your iPhone doesn’t support Apple Intelligence.
Apple Intelligence is only supported on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, and all iPhone 16 models.
If you have an older iPhone, then check out the link to see what features you will get with iOS 18.1.
The best feature in my opinion the ability to drag and drop files from your iPhone to your Mac and vice versa:
Making good on its promise from WWDC, iPhone Mirroring now supports the ability to easily drag and drop files between your iPhone and your Mac. This feature requires both iOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1. Then, when you’re using iPhone Mirroring, you can wirelessly move files back and forth just by dragging and dropping.