Author: batteryforpc

Last month, Apple released iOS 13.4, a big update with lots of features, as you’ll see below. But now, there’s another update. latest Apple iOS 13 update has just dropped and it’s one that is primarily designed to squish bugs, including an important one that impacted FaceTime.

Here’s everything important in this update, plus how to download and install it. Since iPadOS 13.4.1 has an extra bug squish, that’s here, too.

How to get it

You’re old hands at this, but just in case you’re not The new operating software is now available to download on compatible iPhones, with iPadOS 13.4.1 also ready for compatible iPads. Go to Settings, then General, then Software Update. Click on Download and Install, and leave it alone to work its magic.

One of the unforeseen consequences of installing iOS 13.4 and iPadOS 13.4 was that FaceTime calls may not work if you were FaceTime-calling someone who had iOS 9.3.6 or earlier versions of macOS, specifically El Capitan 10.11.6 or earlier. This has now been fixed, Apple says.

Choosing Bluetooth from Quick Actions

There was an issue with the Settings app where, if you wanted to choose Bluetooth from the Quick Actions Menu, the one on the Home Screen when you swipe down from the top-right corner, it might not do what it should. With 13.4.1, everything should work just fine again.

iPadOS 13.4.1 flashlight issue

This sorts an issue on the most recent iPad Pro models. That’s the fourth-generation 12.9-inch and second-generation 11-inch iPad Pro. Tapping the Flashlight button in Control Center or on the Lock screen could result in nothing happening. Which, obviously, wasn’t the plan. This certainly wasn’t universal, I never experienced it, but this update should fix it.

The previous iOS 13 updates

iOS 13.4

Released on 24 March 2020, this was a huge update with lots of new features. For example, Mail has had its toolbar significantly improved, and if you’re replying to an encrypted email, your reply will be encrypted, too.

The sister to iOS 13.4, iPadOS 13.4, included trackpad support so that the latest iPad Pro can be used in a more laptop-like way than ever. A feature that came and then went away, iCloud Folder Sharing, came back again so you can share documents easily. New Memoji stickers arrived with nine new choices, including party face and hands pressed together. Universal purchase support arrived for the App Store, meaning you can buy an app so it works on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and Apple TV all together, assuming the app supports this. As for Arcade games, recently played ones will appear in the Arcade tab so you can keep playing on each platform. Though there was no mention of CarKey, the super-cool element predicted previously which suggested you could unlock and drive your compatible car just by using your iPhone, there was extra information in the CarPlay Dashboard and support for other navigation apps in the CarPlay dashboard. The keyboard now supports predictive typing for Arabic in this version and there were plenty of bugs fixed, too

iOS 13.3.1

This landed on Wednesday, January 29. One of the main focuses was on the U1 chip. It’s on the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max and is a cool piece of kit. It allows you to AirDrop to a nearby iPhone 11 more easily. But it transpired that this chip continued to track user location even when location services were turned off. A toggle in Settings means you can turn off Bluetooth, Wi-fi and Ultra Wideband.

There were plenty of fixes. The first fix related to Screen Time and Communication Limits. Previously, it was possible for someone to get round the Limits without entering a passcode. That’s been sorted as has an issue with Deep Fusion photos, a Face Time problem, distorted sound in some cars using CarPlay, push notifications not coming through on wi-fi and connectivity issues for users on the British O2 network. Problems in Mail were also fixed. Finally, Apple added Indian English Siri voices for HomePod.

iOS 13.3

Released on Tuesday, December 10, this big-number update had a bunch of changes. It updated the layout for some newspapers in Apple News+, improved Screen Time parental controls (though a further fix was needed in iOS 13.3.1) and improved the Stocks app. Beyond that, it was all fixes and bug squishes, including how video clips are created, support for security keys, repaired an issue in Gmail, sorted an issue in text entry using the long-press on the space bar to allow a moveable cursor and resolved an issue in Voice Memos.

And as proof that hardware is affected by software, some wireless chargers were charging more slowly than they should. This software update should have aimed to fix that.

iOS 13.2.3

This was the last update before the new iOS 13.3. It went live on Monday, November 18, 2019. A smallish and unexpected update, it aimed to fix problems, including the following. System searches inside Mail weren’t working quite right, nor in Files or Notes. This update sought to fix this. Similarly, where Messages had an issue with displaying photos and attachments, this update was there to sort it. Apps that weren’t downloading content in the background before were resolved in this update, hopefully. Oh, and Exchange accounts that weren’t getting new messages or other content were the focus of this update, too.

iOS 13.2.2

Released on Thursday, November 7, 2019, this update sought to fix the way apps running in the background kept quitting. It also tried to get rid of temporary loss of cell signal, and fixed how some encrypted email messages between Exchange accounts were unreadable.

iOS 13.2.1

Don’t worry if you missed this one. Unless you have a HomePod, you literally wouldn’t have seen it. It was there to fix issues caused by iOS 13.2 which made some HomePods turn into useless, oversized paperweights. What that update had meant to do was add new HomePod features. These arrived in all their glory with this corrective update, when iOS 13.2.1 went live on October 30, 2019, just 48 hours after iOS 13.2. Something of a record, surely?

With iOS 13.2.1 HomePods were granted the ability to recognize different family members’ voices, music could be added to HomeKit scenes, you could hand off music, podcasts and phone calls just by bringing your iPhone near to the HomePod. Oh, and if you like ambient sounds, these arrived in this update, with the facility to set a sleep timer to these restful noises.

iOS 13.2

A big update, this. released on Monday, October 28, 2019. Marquee features include Deep Fusion, a new camera feature that improves images taken in medium and low light. Siri Privacy settings were updated with this release – also an important step forward. Foundations were laid for the new Research app which could have a big impact on health data collection. Oh, and scores of new emoji were set free. AirPods Pro in-ear headphones are supported in this release. More features including Siri reading out your messages were also included.

iOS 13.1.3

This was another surprise release, out on October 15, 2019. It was aimed at fixing issues more than anything else. Some devices didn’t ring or vibrate when a call came in – kind of important for a phone, right? That was fixed in this update. As was an issue with Voice Memos not downloading or problems where meeting invites didn’t open in Mail. A U.K.-focused repair was made so that Health data would display properly after British Summer Time ended (which was yesterday, October 27, by the way).

Issues which saw the Apple Watch not pairing with an iPhone and notifications not coming through to the Watch were also fixed. Other fixes included apps not downloading after an iCloud Backup and better connectivity between Bluetooth hearing aids and Apple devices. Launch performance of apps in Game Center were addressed and one relating to Bluetooth connectivity in certain vehicles. Lots of fixes, then.

iOS 13.1.2

September 30, 2019was the release date for this recent update, just one weekend later than 13.1.1. It’s another bug fixer to do with iCloud Backup, for instance which showed a progress bar even after being completed. A malfunctioning camera was fixed here, too, as was the flashlight failing to initiate. Like in 13.1.3, this update sought to address an issue with Bluetooth dropping on some vehicles. There was also a display issue for the iPhone and a fix for problems running shortcuts from Apple HomePod.

iOS 13.1.1

This update launched on September 27, 2019. The big element was a fix for the flaw which led some third-party keyboards access the iPhone even when permission hadn’t been granted.

It also offered a solution to problems with battery drain, rather in contrast to the battery life gain which iOS 13 is all about.

Restoring from a backup was a problem in this update as well as the latest one. Siri recognition is better and syncing in Reminders shouldn’t be slow any longer.

iOS 13.1

This came out on September 24, 2019 and sought to fix issues and squish bugs such as problems opening the camera properly, improperly behaving wallpapers, text entry issues and so on. There was also a fix to a battery management problem. New features included activating the U1 chip in the latest iPhones which gives the handsets a form of spatial awareness, improving AirDrop immediately and with other benefits set to follow. The Shortcuts app also saw extra support and more features. The facility to send your ETA to others from Maps was added.

iOS 13

Released on September 19, 2019, this was a very big release with an awful lot in it. For full details, read the indepth analysis here. Features include:

Dark mode to make the iPhone’s interface less glaring in a low-light environment, for instance. App developers can integrate Dark Mode into their apps so that the iPhone has a consistent look. Sign in with Apple lets you sign up to apps with your Apple ID and Apple will keep the site or app at arm’s length. You can sign in using Face ID or Touch ID as appropriate. Maps has been updated with a new street-level look and in-depth mapping on selected cities.

Photos and Camera apps have been seriously altered with a new look to the Photos tab and significant editing upgrades. Siri sounds more natural and will offer personalized recommendations. Reminders has been completely overhauled, and Notes has a new gallery view. Find My combines Find My iPhone and Find My Friends. It will help to locate offline devices, too.

QuickPath is the new way to enter text by swiping. It’s very cool.

Text editing has been improved, though the elegant magnifying glass which used to appear when you touched a word, making it visible even though the word itself was hidden under your thumb, say, has gone. I hope it’s coming back soon.

Among the miscellaneous treats are a pro-active system that tells you which apps have been accessing your location, for example. A message says how often it has done so in a set period of time and you can leave things as they are or adjust. It’s a very simple but highly reassuring detail.

It has been a long time since a standard version of Windows required less than 1GB of RAM to run. Nevertheless, a 16-year-old Twitter user posted screenshots of Windows 10 running with only 192MB of RAM, and partially booting with as little as 140MB.

As spotted by our friends at Tom’s Hardware, Twitter user @0xN0ri chronicled their progress in a Twitter thread, which began with a successful attempt to boot and run a 32-bit build of Windows 10 (version 1909) with 512MB of RAM, half the amount it officially requires.

The user told Tom’s Hardware that they were running Windows 10 in a virtual machine environment (Oracle VM Virtualbox), on a Dell Inspiron 3670 desktop tower running Arch Linux.

This allowed them to keep reducing the amount of RAM, first to 256MB, then 192MB. Going for broke, the user attempted to run Windows 10 with only 128MB of RAM, which resulted in a blue screen error. Nudging back up, the user tried 140MB, and while it did technically boot, 128MB was not enough to load the UI for logging in.

There’s no grand purpose to all this, but sort of like chasing an overclocking record, it’s the achievement itself that is interesting. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Not since Windows XP in 2001 has the official requirement to run Windows been less than 1GB—Windows XP required 64MB, and it was recommended to use 128MB. [Correction: Windows Vista could run on 512MB of RAM, the minimum amount required, though Microsoft recommended 1GB].

Also like record-breaking overclocks, there’s not too much utility to the practice, but it should still serve as some inspiration for the low-spec gamer.

“It took around three minutes to boot up to the desktop and it’s unusable with the virtual machine file stored on my 7200 RPM hard drive,” the user explained. “I was only able to get task manager, CMD, and file explorer open on 192MB RAM and the performance was very bad with 15MB free.”

The Kirin 985 is an upcoming chipset from HiSilicon that will feature a 5G modem and may be at the heart of the Honor 30 instead of the Kirin 990 5G. Little was known about the chip, but newly surfaced results from AI Benchmark show the composition of the CPU and NPU.

The 985 will be similar to the Kirin 820 in that it will have only one prime core, plus three big and four small cores. For comparison, the flagship Kirin 990 (4G and 5G) have a 2+2+4 configuration.

All three chips use the same CPU cores, though, Cortex-A76 and A55. Check the table below for a more detailed look.

Next up is the NPU, which uses the Huawei-designed Da Vinci cores. The Kirin 985 will have a dual-core NPU, doubling its AI computational resources compared to the 820 chip.

Note the higher clock speeds of the CPU, they may hint at newer process – 7nm+ EUV, just like the Kirin 990 5G. The 820 chip and 990 4G are manufactured using the older 7nm DUV process.

Whatever the process and clock speeds, the Kirin 985 was outperformed by the MediaTek Dimensity 1000 in the AI Benchmark (which also has four Cortex-A77 cores, thus faster CPU performance).

This benchmark doesn’t use the GPU, which remains shrouded in mystery for now.

AMD announced its Ryzen 4000 U-series chips for laptops in January, but the lineup doesn’t include any Ryzen 9 models. However, a Ryzen 9 4900U was spotted on UserBenchmark by hardware leaker @TUM_APISAK, pointing to a future CPU for thin-and-light laptops.

The chip should be based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture and take advantage of TSMC’s 7nm FinFET manufacturing process. Like any other U-series part, the Ryzen 9 4900U is shown rated with a 15W, but it also features a cTDP (configurable thermal design power) between 10W and 25W.

This Ryzen 9 4900U in question shares the same configuration as the already announced Ryzen 7 4800U. You can expect the upcoming flagship to arrive with eight cores, 16 threads and 12MB of total cache. At the end of the day, the higher clock speeds on the Ryzen 9 4900U will ultimately set it apart from the Ryzen 7 4800U.

The scores from the UserBenchmark submission suggest that the leaked Ryzen 9 4900U is very likely an engineering sample. The Ryzen 7 4800U outscores the unreleased chip’s numbers by a fairly substantial margin. Only the Ryzen 9 4900U’s single-core result is closer to expectations.

Engineering samples aren’t true indicators for final specifications. Furthermore, software typically has a hard time reporting unreleased hardware correctly. For what it’s worth, UserBenchmark detected the Ryzen 9 4900U with a 1.8 GHz base clock and 2.35 GHz average boost clock; however, the Ryzen 7 4800U has a 4.2 GHz boost clock, so the Ryzen 9 4900U is expected to come with an even higher boost clock, such as 4.3 GHz or more. 

The UserBenchmark entry doesn’t give any hints on the Ryzen 9 4900U’s integrated graphics solution, but there shouldn’t be any surprises here. The Ryzen 7 4800U is equipped with eight Vega cores ticking up to 1,750 MHz. The setup will probably transfer over to the Ryzen 9 4900U, unless AMD decides to beef up the clock speed a little.

In Intel’s camp, there’s the Intel Core i7-10710U hexa-core Comet Lake-U part and i7-1065G7 quad-core Ice Lake chip, which are the respective flagships of their lineups. On paper, the Ryzen 9 4900U has the advantage over the two Intel chips, based on core count alone. However, we won’t understand the octa-core chip’s real performance until AMD confirms it and it starts showing up in laptops — which, considering the appearance of these benchmark results, shouldn’t be far off.

In 2018, Google Fit received a big redesign that introduced Move Minutes and Heart Points as an easy to digest health metric. After coming to iOS last year, the mobile and Wear OS apps are getting a redesign today that emphasizes step count.

This redesign for Google Fit starts with the activity circle at the top of the app shrinking in size as your profile image is no longer at the center. To make things more “viewable at a glance,” Google is using bolder text and brighter visuals.

Of course, the biggest change sees Move Minutes de-emphasized in favor of “Steps.” The former metric is not going away and still visible, but Google listened to feedback that users prefer the familiar metric.

Many users track steps daily in Google Fit and in other apps, and it’s an important goal for them. We listened closely to our users and now both Heart Points and step count will be paired together as goals at the center of our app. This change allows users to keep track of their general movement with steps, while also knowing when to increase their intensity to earn more Heart Points.

Steps now go hand-in-hand with Heart Points to track intensity and match WHO and American Heart Association weekly guidelines. Google is adding a new progress card underneath the activity circle to show when you’re close to hitting a goal.

Today’s updates are also reflected on Wear OS. The Google Fit app on the wearable platform adds two new Tiles. The first lets you quickly start a workout, as well as see “progress toward your goal through the day or week at a glance.”

Google Fit’s step-focused redesign is already available on iOS, and rolling out now to Android and Wear OS.