MacRumors

With the iOS 15.4 update that was introduced today, Apple has added support for Emoji 14, introducing a selection of new emoji like melting face, biting lip, heart hands, and more. There are 37 new emoji and 75 skin tone additions in Emoji 14, resulting in a total of 112 characters.

New faces include melting face, saluting face, face with open eyes and hand over mouth, face with peeking eye, face with diagonal mouth, and dotted line face, while new emojis include biting lip and bubbles.

There are several new hand emojis, such as heart hands, rightwards hand, leftwards hand, palm down hand, palm up hand, hand with index finger and thumb crossed, index pointing at the viewer, along with an update to the handshake emoji.

Nest with eggs, empty nest, x-ray, crutch, playground slide, wheel, ring buoy, hamsa, mirror ball, jar, identification card, and low battery are new items, while plants and animals will include coral and lotus. As for fantasy characters, we can expect a new troll emoji, and eggs, beans, and pouring liquid make up new food items.

The new emoji are available on the iPhone and iPad with iOS 15.4 and iPadOS 15.4, plus the Mac with macOS Monterey 12.3.

Apple today seeded the first beta of macOS 12.3 to developers for testing. In the release notes for the update, Apple confirms that it has deprecated kernel extensions used by Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive and notes that both cloud storage services have replacements for the functionality currently in beta.

Earlier this week, Dropbox announced that users who update to macOS 12.3 may temporarily encounter issues with opening online-only files in some third-party apps on their Mac. Dropbox did not provide a reason for this issue, but it is now clear that it relates to the kernel extensions that enabled this functionality being deprecated by Apple.

In a support document and an email to customers, Dropbox said it is actively working on full support for online-only files on macOS 12.3 and will begin rolling out an updated version of its Mac app to beta testers in March. In the meantime, Dropbox users who update to macOS 12.3 will still be able to open online-only files in Finder.

Microsoft is also working on a new online-only files experience for OneDrive that is "more integrated with macOS" and "will have long-term support from Apple."

The iPadOS 15.4 and macOS Monterey 12.3 betas that Apple released today introduce support for Universal Control, the long-awaited feature that's designed to allow multiple Macs and iPads to be controlled with a single mouse and keyboard.

There are ‌Universal Control‌ settings available on both the Mac and the iPad, and the feature is enabled by default after updating to the new betas. On the Mac, the settings can be found under Displays > Advanced, and on the ‌iPad‌, the AirPlay & Handoff section under General has a new "Cursor and Keyboard (Beta)" option.

With ‌Universal Control‌, you can use the same cursor and keyboard on any nearby Mac or ‌iPad‌ that's signed into your iCloud account. So, for example, if you have a MacBook and an ‌iPad‌ next to it, your MacBook's trackpad and keyboard can be used right on the ‌iPad‌.

Apple introduced ‌Universal Control‌ in June at the Worldwide Developers Conference and initially said that it would be introduced this fall, but the company was not able to meet that deadline and ultimately delayed the launch.

In December, Apple updated its macOS Monterey feature page with a "spring 2022" release date for ‌Universal Control‌, which is aligned with when we are expecting to see iPadOS 15.4 and macOS Monterey 12.3 launch.

The iOS 15.4 beta that was introduced today added a new feature designed to allow Face ID to be used with a mask and without an Apple Watch for authentication.

Apple says that the feature can "recognize the unique features around the eye" for authentication purposes. If you opt to use this feature during setup, you will need to rescan your face for ‌Face ID‌. From there, ‌Face ID‌ will be able to unlock your iPhone even when you're wearing a mask.

In the Settings app, there's a new "Use ‌Face ID‌ with a Mask" toggle that can be turned on or off if you change your mind about the mask, and there's a new feature to "Add Glasses" to make ‌Face ID‌ more accurate when you're wearing glasses and a mask at the same time.

Apple warns in the Settings app that ‌Face ID‌ is "most accurate" when it's set up for full-face recognition only. For ‌Face ID‌ with a mask to work, you must be looking at your device to get it to unlock, and it does not work when wearing sunglasses. ‌Face ID‌ with a mask can authenticate Apple Pay payments and it can be used in lieu of a login and password in apps that support ‌Face ID‌, unlike the prior Apple Watch ‌Face ID‌ feature.

It looks like the ‌Face ID‌ with a mask feature requires an ‌iPhone‌ 12 or ‌iPhone‌ 13 model, as the feature is not available for users who have the ‌iPhone‌ 11 at this time.

Apple today seeded the first beta of an upcoming macOS Monterey 12.3 update to developers for testing purposes, with the new software coming just a day after the release of macOS Monterey 12.2.

Registered developers can download the beta through the Apple Developer Center and after the appropriate profile is installed, betas will be available through the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences.

In the release notes for the update, Apple confirms that it has deprecated kernel extensions used by Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive and notes that both cloud storage services have replacements for the functionality currently in beta. The update also adds new emojis and support for Universal Control.

Universal Control is designed to allow a single mouse and trackpad to be used with multiple Macs and iPads, and Apple has said it will be launching this spring.

Apple today seeded the first betas of upcoming iOS 15.4 and iPadOS 15.4 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the new software coming just a day after the launch of iOS 15.3 and iPadOS 15.3.

Developers can download iOS 15.4 and iPadOS 15.4 through the Apple Developer Center or over the air after the proper profile has been installed on an iPhone or iPad.

The updates add new emojis, support for third-party apps to implement 120Hz animations on ProMotion displays, EU vaccine certificates in the Wallet app, the ability to use Face ID while wearing a mask with an ‌iPhone‌ 12 or newer, the ability to turn off notifications for Shortcuts automations, keyboard brightness controls in Control Center, an Apple Card widget, iCloud Keychain notes, custom email domains, SharePlay in the share sheet, support for Universal Control, and more.

Universal Control will let multiple Macs and iPads be controlled with the same keyboard and mouse, and in December, Apple updated its website to let us know that ‌Universal Control‌ is expected in the spring.

According to Bloomberg, Apple is developing a new payments service that will allow the ‌iPhone‌ to accept debit and credit cards without additional hardware. This feature will let small business owners take payments over NFC without needing hardware like the Square Reader.

Apple is also working on adding support for IDs in the Wallet app so people in participating states can use a digital ID instead of a physical ID. Arizona, Georgia, Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah are expected to be the first states to implement digital ID support, and Florida is also in talks to support the feature.

Apple today seeded the first beta of an upcoming watchOS 8.5 beta to developers for testing purposes, with the new software coming just a day after the release of watchOS 8.4.

To install ‌‌‌watchOS 8‌‌‌.5, developers will need to download the configuration profile from the Apple Developer Center. Once installed, ‌‌‌watchOS 8.4‌‌‌ can be downloaded through the dedicated Apple Watch app on the iPhone by going to General > Software update.

To update to new software, an Apple Watch needs to have 50 percent battery life, it must be placed on the charger, and it needs to be in range of the ‌‌‌‌iPhone‌‌‌‌.

We don't yet know what's included in the watchOS 8.5 update, but if if we find new features after installing the beta, we'll update this article.

For the first time in a while, Apple has started selling a refurbished iPhone 8 model for $359 through its online store in the United States.

For the time being, this is now the cheapest iPhone model that can be purchased directly from Apple, but the device is nearly four and a half years old and we strongly recommend considering the second-generation iPhone SE in this price range. Released in April 2020, the iPhone SE is available with 64GB of storage for $399 or 128GB for $449.

An even better option may be to wait for the third-generation iPhone SE, which is expected to launch around March or April with an A15 chip and 5G.

There are many downsides to the iPhone 8, including that the device will likely stop receiving iOS updates at least a few years before the second-generation iPhone SE due to its age. The second-generation iPhone SE also has a newer A13 chip, compared to the A11 chip in the iPhone 8, and has several features not available on the iPhone 8, including Portrait Mode photos, QuickTake video, Wi-Fi 6, Gigabit-class LTE, and eSIM/Dual SIM.

The refurbished iPhone 8 is available in space gray and is an unlocked device. All refurbished iPhones come with a new battery, a new outer shell, and a new white box. Included with the iPhone 8 is EarPods with a Lightning connector, a Lightning to USB-A cable, and a 5W power adapter. All refurbished iPhones are also covered by the same one-year warranty as a new iPhone, and AppleCare+ can be purchased for the device.

The 27-inch iMac with a nano-texture display is unavailable from Apple in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and several other key markets until late March, possibly due to more advanced manufacturing processes needed to achieve the glass coating.

The updated 27-inch ‌iMac‌ released in 2020 offers customers a nano-texture glass option that helps reduce reflectivity by etching the display with a nano-texture at a molecular level. Apple says this coating results in "beautiful image quality that maintains contrast while scattering light to reduce glare to the barest minimum."

Upon checking Apple's online store in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, the 27-inch ‌iMac‌ configured with a nano-texture display shows an estimated delivery date of seven to eight weeks, or in other words, towards the end of March. The standard display option with certain storage and memory configurations is estimated to ship in two to three weeks.

Given the anomaly that only the nano-texture display option is significantly back-ordered, it's plausible that Apple and its suppliers are experiencing production issues with the more advanced display coating. Due to the ongoing chip shortage and pandemic-related restrictions, Apple is struggling to keep up with demand for the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros.

For customers looking to purchase Apple's largest all-in-one Mac desktop computer, it might be a safe bet to wait a little bit longer anyway. Apple is expected to be holding an event sometime in March or April to announce a slew of new products, including an updated iPhone SE, a new iPad Air, and possibly a completely redesigned ‌iMac‌ to replace the existing Intel-based 27-inch model.

The ‌iMac‌ family was last updated in April 2021 with the 24-inch model sporting a colorful new design and the first all-in-one desktop Mac computer to feature an Apple silicon chip. The 27-inch ‌iMac‌ has kept the same overall design for almost ten years, and rumors suggest the upcoming redesign could resemble the Pro Display XDR, feature a mini-LED ProMotion display, and start at around $2000. Learn more about what we expect to see in the 2022 ‌iMac‌ redesign using our guide.

Apple is exploring methods to bring user authentication to AirPods, a newly published Apple patent application shows.

In a patent application titled "User Identification Using Headphones," filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and spotted by Patently Apple, Apple explains how it can authenticate AirPods users using other nearby devices, ultrasonic signals, voice recognition, and even a wearer's gait.

The filing seeks to address the issue of AirPods being unable to determine whether a wearer is the authorized user of a connected device. Apple suggests that this can be a problem since any user can place headphones into their ear while they are connected to a device belonging to another person, which risks the connected device releasing personal information, such as via notifications announced by Siri.

The system is able to bypass the need for Face ID, Touch ID, or any other kind of biometric authentication on a separate device, instead using a "similarity score" to verify a user's identity. This similarity score may be based on multiple variables, such as the proximity of other nearby devices belonging to the connected device's owner. Nevertheless, Apple says that biometrics could still be used to increase the accuracy of the similarity score. To authenticate a user based on biometrics with AirPods themselves, Apple proposes playing and receiving ultrasonic sounds inside the headphones:

For example, various characteristics of the user's ear provide an echo of the ultrasonic signal which is unique to the user. Variations in the surface of the user's ear canal may cause the ultrasonic signal to reflect off the surface and generate an echo having a signature that is associated with the user. For example, a user having a larger ear canal may result in an echo having a longer reverberation time than a user having a smaller ear canal.

Apple adds that AirPods could also use information gathered about a user's gait and voice from the AirPods' gyroscopes, accelerometers, and microphones to determine if they are the owner of the connected device. Collectively, these various data points provide an overall similarity score that could authenticate users if it reaches the required threshold.

Apple often adds new features to existing AirPods devices using firmware updates, such as support for the Find My network, Conversation Boost, and Spatial Audio, so seems it plausible that AirPods user authentication could theoretically be added in a future update. Patent filings are not representative of Apple's immediate plans, but they do show some of the company's specific areas of research and development.

Other recent Apple patent filings included designs for all-glass iPhones and Apple Watches, a removable MacBook key that works as a mouse, and a hydration sensor for the Apple Watch.

Today you can get the Beats Studio Buds for $109.95, down from $149.95 on Amazon. Only the white color option is available at this price, and as of writing only Amazon is offering the discount.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

This price is about $10 higher when compared to the record low price that we saw over the holidays. That discount was rare and has yet to return to any retailer, so if you missed out Amazon's offer today is a good second-best price.

If you're shopping for AirPods, be sure to check out our post from earlier this week. All of these deals are still live, and you can save up to $100 on AirPods Max, AirPods 2, and AirPods Pro. Our full Deals Roundup has more Apple-related discounts as well.

Apple released iOS 15.3 and iPadOS 15.3 on Wednesday with several security fixes, and we have since learned that the software updates also resolve an issue with HomeKit camera thumbnails failing to refresh for some users in the Home app.

HomeKit Secure Video cameras added to the Home app each have a thumbnail that provides a still view of recent footage, and normally these thumbnails automatically refresh periodically. In recent weeks, however, some iPhone and iPad users had experienced an issue with the thumbnails failing to refresh and showing outdated footage.

As alerted to us by reader Collin A. Zimmerman and others, users who have updated to iOS 15.3 and iPadOS 15.3 are reporting that the bug has been fixed, with HomeKit camera thumbnails now behaving properly in the Home app.

iOS 15.3, iPadOS 15.3, and macOS 12.2 are relatively minor updates in terms of new features. Apple still has a few new features promised for early 2022, including Universal Control and the ability to add an ID to the Wallet app in participating U.S. states, and those features could potentially arrive with the next round of updates.

Apple is working on a new payments service that will allow iPhones to accept payments directly on device with no additional hardware, reports Bloomberg. Right now, iPhones can accept credit cards with add-ons like the Square Reader, but Apple's new technology will eliminate the need for a third-party product.

Individuals and small businesses will be able to accept payments with the tap of a debit or credit card on the iPhone, a feature that is likely to use the NFC chip that's already built into Apple's devices.

Apple started developing the hardware-free credit card payment option back in 2020, when it purchased Mobeewave for approximately $100 million. Mobeewave was a startup that created technology for smartphones to accept payments using NFC.

At the time, Mobeewave's website said that sending payments with the Mobeewave app was as simple as inputting a transaction amount and tapping an NFC-enabled card on the back of a smartphone, and Apple's built-in payment feature is likely to work in a similar way.

Bloomberg says it's not yet clear if the payment service will be bundled into Apple Pay, though the team working on the feature has been working within Apple's payments division.

Because current iPhones already have NFC technology, this is not a feature that will be tied to a hardware update. Apple is planning to roll out on-iPhone card payments in the coming months, perhaps including it in the iOS 15.4 update that could launch in the spring.

Apple appears to have fixed an ongoing iCloud server issue that was causing some apps that have implemented ‌iCloud‌ support to fail to sync properly. The bug has persisted since November, and app developers were becoming increasingly upset with Apple's lack of effort to address the problem.

According to YarnBuddy developer Becky Hansmeyer, Apple said that it has managed to address the issue that was causing sync failures.

Users of apps with ‌iCloud‌ issues were seeing 503 error messages such as "Request failed with http status code 503," but multiple developers have confirmed that the error messages appear to have gone away over the course of the last couple of days.

Tweetbot developer Paul Haddad said that he has received "basically 0" ‌iCloud‌ Sync reports over the past couple days, and Craig Grannell, who wrote about the ‌iCloud‌ problems, said that he is no longer seeing issues with the Cloud Battery or Transloader apps he uses.

The ‌iCloud‌ syncing bug appears to have been introduced sometime around late November or early December, and it was a major headache for developers. App users experiencing ‌iCloud‌ syncing issues don't know that it's a problem on Apple's end, causing developers to be blamed. Some app developers even went as far as building ‌iCloud‌ status dashboards into their apps so end users would have a better idea of when there were issues with the way ‌iCloud‌ was working.

While most developers have said that the syncing issue has been largely resolved, there are still a few complaints about ongoing problems, so Apple may have a few kinks to work out.

It's worth noting that this ‌iCloud‌ sync issue is an ongoing problem that developers were dealing with for months, and it is separate from the current two-day iCloud outage that is affecting ‌iCloud‌ services.

Amazon today has Apple's 2020 64GB Wi-Fi iPad Air for $539.00, from $599.00. This sale is available in Green and Sky Blue, but Green has the faster shipping options with delivery as soon as this Friday for United States residences.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

Besides the same deal appearing earlier in January, we haven't seen many discounts on the iPad Air line since around August and September 2021. Compared to previous sales, today's offer is a second-best price and so far the best deal we've tracked in 2022.

There are a few other noteworthy iPad deals happening on Amazon this week. You can get the 10.2-inch iPad (256GB Wi-Fi) for $449.00, down from $479.00. The iPad mini 6 (64GB cellular) is on sale for $629.00, down from $649.00. Both of these sales are lowest-ever prices.

For even more iPad deals, head to our full Best Deals guide for iPad. In that guide we track the best discounts online for iPad, iPad mini, iPad Air, and iPad Pro.

Apple today released macOS Monterey 12.2, the second major update to the macOS Monterey update that launched in October. macOS Monterey 12.2 comes over a month after the release of the 12.1 update, which brought SharePlay support.

The ‌‌‌macOS Monterey 12.2‌‌ update can be downloaded on all eligible Macs using the Software Update section of System Preferences. Apple has also released a macOS Big Sur 11.6.3 update for those still running macOS Big Sur and macOS Catalina Security Update 2022-001 for those on Catalina.

macOS Monterey 12.2 is a bug fix update, and Apple's release notes have no information other than generic bug fix information. We don't yet have a full list of security updates, but we do know that macOS Monterey 12.2 addresses a Safari bug that could cause your recent browsing history and details about your identity to be leaked to malicious entities.

A full list of security fixes that are in the update will be available from Apple's security update support document.