MacRumors

Following rumors of a performance-boosting "Pro Mode" coming in the next update to macOS Catalina, developer Marco Arment has argued that Apple should bring an iPhone-style Low Power Mode to MacBooks as well.

Since iOS 9, Apple has included a Low Power Mode on iPhones that reduces the amount of power that the device uses when the battery gets low, and Arment this week shared his experience with his own self-styled equivalent for macOS.

His method involves the use of a third-party app called Turbo Boost Switcher Pro that enables users to disable Intel Turbo Boost on a Mac's processor. According to Arment, disabling Turbo Boost has increased his 16-inch MacBook Pro's battery life by an estimated 30-50 percent and made it "a much better laptop" the vast majority of the time he uses it.

With Turbo Boost disabled, peak CPU power consumption drops by 62%, with a correspondingly huge reduction in temperature. This has two massive benefits:

• The fans never audibly spin up. When Turbo Boost is enabled, the fans annoyingly spin up every time the system is under a heavy sustained load. Disable it, and it’s almost impossible to get them to be audible.
• It runs significantly cooler. Turbo Boost lets laptops get too hot to comfortably hold in your lap, and so much heat radiates out that it can make hands sweaty. Disable it, and the laptop only gets moderately warm, not hot, and hands stay comfortably dry.

Arment claims that despite the reduction in processing power, his ‌MacBook Pro‌ is "still fast enough to do everything I need (including significant development with Xcode)." His only concern is that the app which allows him to enjoy these benefits is on borrowed time: Turbo Boost Switcher Pro relies on a legacy kernel extension that likely won't be supported in future versions of macOS.

"I suspect that this is the last year I'll get to run the latest OS and be able to turn off Turbo Boost at will, making all of my future laptop usage significantly worse," says Arment.

An iPhone's Low Power Mode reduces battery usage by disabling background app refreshing and automatic downloads, locking the screen after 30 seconds, and via other methods. Would you be happy to see an optional Low Power Mode in a future version of macOS, too? Let us know in the comments.

United States President Donald Trump this afternoon weighed in on a disagreement between Apple and the FBI, calling on Apple to "step up to the plate" and "help our great country" by unlocking the iPhones used by Florida shooter Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani.

Trump said that the U.S. is "helping Apple all of the time" but Apple refuses to "unlock" smartphones used by "killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements."

The Twitter rant comes following a request yesterday from U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who asked Apple to unlock the iPhone 5 and iPhone 7 used by Alshamrani. Barr complained that Apple had provided "no substantive assistance" and said that it is critical "that the public be able to get access to digital evidence."

Apple previously said that it had provided all of the information in its possession (such as iCloud backups) to the FBI earlier in the month after the FBI asked for assistance obtaining the shooter's data. Law enforcement officials are not satisfied with the iCloud data, however, and want Apple to provide a way to unlock the shooter's iPhones, which is not possible without a backdoor into the software.

After Barr's request, Apple issued another statement and provided further detail on the data that has been provided, as well as once again stating that there is "no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys." Apple's full response to Barr that ultimately triggered Trump's tweet is below:

We were devastated to learn of the tragic terrorist attack on members of the US armed services at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida on December 6th. We have the greatest respect for law enforcement and routinely work with police across the country on their investigations. When law enforcement requests our assistance, our teams work around the clock to provide them with the information we have.

We reject the characterization that Apple has not provided substantive assistance in the Pensacola investigation. Our responses to their many requests since the attack have been timely, thorough and are ongoing.

Within hours of the FBI's first request on December 6th, we produced a wide variety of information associated with the investigation. From December 7th through the 14th, we received six additional legal requests and in response provided information including ‌iCloud‌ backups, account information and transactional data for multiple accounts.

We responded to each request promptly, often within hours, sharing information with FBI offices in Jacksonville, Pensacola and New York. The queries resulted in many gigabytes of information that we turned over to investigators. In every instance, we responded with all of the information that we had.

The FBI only notified us on January 6th that they needed additional assistance -- a month after the attack occurred. Only then did we learn about the existence of a second ‌iPhone‌ associated with the investigation and the FBI's inability to access either ‌iPhone‌. It was not until January 8th that we received a subpoena for information related to the second ‌iPhone‌, which we responded to within hours. Early outreach is critical to accessing information and finding additional options.

We are continuing to work with the FBI, and our engineering teams recently had a call to provide additional technical assistance. Apple has great respect for the Bureau's work, and we will work tirelessly to help them investigate this tragic attack on our nation.

We have always maintained there is no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys. Backdoors can also be exploited by those who threaten our national security and the data security of our customers. Today, law enforcement has access to more data than ever before in history, so Americans do not have to choose between weakening encryption and solving investigations. We feel strongly encryption is vital to protecting our country and our users' data.

The current dispute between Apple and the U.S. government mirrors a similar incident in 2016. Apple was ordered by a federal judge to unlock the iPhone owned by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. Apple fought hard against the order, which was asking for backdoor access into iPhones, and explained that weakening security "makes no sense" and would create "new and dangerous weaknesses."

Apple ultimately won the dispute and the government was able to find another way to access Farook's iPhone, which may also be an option in the current situation. Bloomberg this afternoon spoke to several security researchers, including Will Strafach, who said the government could "absolutely" get into the iPhone 5 and iPhone 7 owned by Alshamrani using technology offered by Cellebrite and other iPhone cracking firms.

As in 2016, Apple is not likely to cave in to government demands because doing so would compromise the security of all iPhones. A new report from The New York Times suggests Apple is privately preparing for a legal fight while also attempting to publicly diffuse the situation.

Apple executives are said to be surprised at the case's "quick escalation" and some of the team working on the issue are frustrated that the Justice Department "hasn’t spent enough time trying to get into the iPhones with third-party tools." Apple CEO Tim Cook has put together a team handling the dispute, and the group is said to be hoping to steer the situation towards an outside resolution that "doesn’t involve the company breaking its own security."

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

On iPhone and iPad, a long press (also known as a press-and-hold) gesture will often initiate a different action in an app that isn't immediately obvious, such as revealing an icon's contextual menu. On recent iPhones, a long press will sometimes also offer haptic feedback in the form of a vibration, which Apple calls Haptic Touch.

Apple has made extensive use of the long press gesture and ‌Haptic Touch‌ in its apps, which means if you don't tend to long press screen elements, you could be unaware of some convenient shortcuts to everyday actions, or you could even be missing out on app functionality altogether.

This is particularly true for Safari, Apple's native mobile browser, which has several handy features that can be accessed with a long press. In this article, we've put together 10 of our favorite long press tips for Safari on iPhones and iPads running iOS 13.

Note that the default minimum period that a finger must press on the screen for the long gesture to be recognized is half a second. If you're having trouble performing a long press, open the Settings app, go to Accessibility -> Haptic Touch, and try selecting a Fast or Slow touch duration. There's also a handy interactive demo area for you to test each setting.

1. Bookmark Multiple Tabs in One Go

Make sure you have a few tabs open in Safari that you want to reference at a later time. Now, select one of those tabs, and in the main browsing window, long press the Bookmark icon (it looks like an open book).

A popup menu will appear on the screen that includes options to Add to Reading List and Add Bookmarks for X Tabs, X being the number of tabs open. Once you've tapped the latter option, you'll be asked to save the tabs in a new bookmarks folder. Alternately, you can choose an existing folder in which to save the tabs.

2. Bulk Copy Links in a Bookmarks Folder

Following on from the last tip, if you long press on a bookmarks folder in Safari, you'll see a Copy Contents option pop up in the contextual menu.

Selecting this will copy a list of every website URL in that folder to your clipboard, allowing you to paste it elsewhere for easy sharing.

3. Fast Scroll Web Pages

A scroll bar appears on the right-hand side of the Safari window whenever you swipe to navigate a web page.

If the content you're viewing is long, perform a long press on the scroll bar. The bar will swell slightly and you'll be able to drag it up and down and scroll at a much faster rate.

4. Close All Open Tabs

If the number of active tabs has gotten out of hand in your browser session, long press the Tabs icon in the bottom-right corner (top-right on ‌iPad‌) of the web page view to reveal the Close All Tabs option.

If you're in the vertical tabs view, you can reveal the same option by long pressing the Done button, which appears in the same location.

In iOS 13, you‌ can actually get Safari to close tabs on your behalf, based on when you last viewed them. Launch the Settings app and select Safari -> Close Tabs, and you'll find options to make the browser automatically close tabs that have not been viewed After One Day, After One Week, or After One Month.

5. Re-open Recently Closed Tabs

If you've accidentally closed a browser tab in Safari and want to open it back up, open up the Tabs view and long press on the "+" icon to get a look at all of the tabs that you've recently closed.

It's worth remembering that this long press option exists, because if someone gets ahold of your phone and checks your browser, even if you've closed out a tab, it's still going to be accessible in Safari, unless you were using a private browser window or have cleared your browsing history.

6. Open All Bookmarks in a Folder in New Tabs

This option appears in the same contextual menu described in tip 2. Long press a bookmarks folder and you'll see an option to Open in New Tabs.

Select the option, and Safari will open everything in that folder in separate tabs, ready for perusal.

7. Preview a Favorite Site or Hyperlink

If you want to take a peek at what a specific web page hyperlink has to offer before actually visiting the site, long press the link to get a preview of it. Note that you can also perform this action on the Favorites or Frequently Visited sites that appear in the start page of a new tab.

If, say, you just want to copy a URL and would rather not have to wait for the preview to load every time you long press on one, simply tap Hide preview at the top-right corner of a link preview, and you won't get one again.

You can revert this functionality on the same long press screen at any time by selecting Tap to show preview.

8. Merge All Safari Windows

This one is exclusively for ‌iPad‌ users running iPadOS. If you have multiple browser windows open in the background, you can tidy things up by merging all of them, including their tabs, into the active browser window.

Simply tap and hold the Tabs icon in the top-right corner of the screen and select Merge All Windows.

9. Download a Linked File

Now that now Safari has a Downloads Manager, you can download files directly from hyperlinks. Simply tap and hold a linked file, then select Download Linked File from the contextual menu. You can tap the Downloads Manager icon in the top-right corner of the address bar to check on its progress.

This option works for web pages, too. If you long press the headline of this article, for example, you can download an HTML version of it.

10. Access the Tab Control Panel

Another one that's just for Safari on ‌iPad‌. Next time you have multiple tabs open, tap and hold one of those tabs to access the new tab control panel.

From this panel, you'll see options to copy the URL of the tab to the clipboard, close all other tabs, and two entirely new options allowing you to Arrange Tabs By Title or Arrange Tabs By Website. Select one of the latter two options, and your open tabs will be arranged alphabetically.

Apple plans to release one 5.4-inch, one 6.7-inch, and two 6.1-inch iPhone models in 2020, according to UBS analysts Timothy Arcuri and Munjal Shah. While the analysts expect all four iPhones to be equipped with OLED displays, they believe other features like camera specifications and RAM will vary by model.

In a research note shared with MacRumors, the analysts provided an overview of the four iPhones they expect in 2020:

• 6.7-inch iPhone: triple-lens rear camera with 3D sensing and 6GB of RAM
• 6.1-inch iPhone: triple-lens rear camera with 3D sensing and 6GB of RAM
• 6.1-inch iPhone: dual-lens rear camera and 4GB of RAM
• 5.4-inch iPhone: dual-lens rear camera and 4GB of RAM

The camera specifications line up with those shared by reputable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo last month, while 6GB of RAM in the two highest end models lines up with a prediction shared by Barclays analysts in November.

5G is expected to be a key feature of high-end iPhones in 2020. UBS conducted a survey of over 9,000 consumers across the United States, Germany, Japan, China, and the United Kingdom and found that 22 percent of respondents view 5G support as something that is worth upgrading smartphones for.

Apple today seeded the second betas of upcoming iOS and iPadOS 13.3.1 updates to developers, almost a month after seeding the first betas and several weeks after the release of iOS 13.3 with Communication Limits for Screen Time.

iOS and iPadOS 13.3.1 can be downloaded from the Apple Developer center or over the air once the proper developer profile has been installed.

There's no word yet on what's in the iOS 13.3.1 update, but it likely includes bug fixes for issues unable to be addressed in the iOS 13.3 update. Specifically, it could address some issues with Communication Limits, fixing a workaround with the Contacts app that allowed children text someone who contacted them from an unknown number. There's also a new "Play Again" button when replaying content that you've already watched in the TV app.

No other notable new features were found in the first betas of iOS and iPadOS 13.3.1, but we'll update this article should anything new be found in the second betas.

Apple today released the rack mount version of the Mac Pro, offering a design that is suited to a rack configuration. Priced starting at $6,499, the rack mount Mac Pro features all of the same configuration options as the standard ‌Mac Pro‌.

Rather than feet or wheels, the rack mount version of the ‌Mac Pro‌ uses stainless steel slide rails that allow it to be slotted into a rack. The machine features the same 3D lattice design for maximizing airflow and top handles for accessing the internals.

The base model of the rack mount ‌Mac Pro‌ is the same as the base model standard ‌Mac Pro‌ featuring a 3.5GHz 8-core Intel Xeon W processor, 32GB RAM, and 256GB of storage.

Apple is developing 5G-enabled iPads with mmWave support, according to sources cited by industry publication DigiTimes.

A paywalled preview of the report claims Taiwan's Advanced Semiconductor Engineering will supply antenna-in-package technology for the 5G iPads, in addition to 5G iPhones. While not specified, it is almost certain that these models would be iPad Pros given 5G is a high-end feature with higher production costs.

While the first 5G iPhones are expected in fall 2020, the report does not indicate when the 5G iPads would be released. Major new features often come to the iPhone before the iPad, but a notable exception was the third-generation iPad receiving LTE support in March 2012, prior to the iPhone 5 in September 2012.

mmWave or millimeter wave is a set of 5G frequencies that promise ultra-fast speeds at short distances, making it best suited for dense urban areas. By comparison, sub-6GHz 5G is generally slower than mmWave, but the signals travel further, better serving suburban and rural areas.

The complete report should be published by tomorrow, and we will update this post if there are any additional details to share.

Update: The full report is now available and it speculates that 5G iPads could be released as early as the second half of 2020.