A group of filings posted to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission website yesterday (via SlashGear) reveal impending upgrades for Apple's Magic Mouse and wireless keyboard accessories. Images accompanying the filings point to the Magic Mouse's successor to simply be titled "Magic Mouse 2," but no specific name for the new wireless keyboard has been revealed.
The internals of both devices will see a notable overhaul in their Bluetooth capabilities, with each device getting a bump from Bluetooth 2.1 to Bluetooth 4.2. The upgrade will bring about Apple accessories that should see a noticeable increase in battery life and more robust communication between the input devices and the main computer.
Also of note is the inclusion of integrated lithium battery packs, which users will have to charge instead of the swapping in traditional AA batteries as seen in the current generation of the Magic Mouse and Apple wireless keyboard. The change is noticeable on the wireless keyboard in particular, with Apple able to do away with the barrel shaped feature on the bottom of the existing keyboard where the replaceable AA batteries are housed.
When the existing Magic Mouse runs low on battery, it sure is nice that downtime is only the length of time it takes to swap 2 rechargeable AA batteries for the 2 that are drained (no more than about 30-60 seconds). While the Lithium option probably means a much longer time between charges, I hope that one doesn't have to swap mice when they forget to charge it when it's close to empty... or more regularly monitor for "low battery" so you can catch it on the day before it is going to be exhausted.
Rechargeable peripherals have never sat well with my workflow. It's much easier to swap AAs than to be inconvenienced while it charges. Hopefully there's an elegant solution in the works.
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Wednesday April 24, 2024 2:05 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
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