neilm

I wish multitasking on my iPad Pro could be turned off. I’ve never once wanted it —have a Mac for that —but every now and again I fat finger something and it gets accidentally invoked in the most annoying fashion. The worst is split-screening Safari, which completely screws up whatever I was doing.

According to iFixit’s recent teardown of the AirTag, the battery lid is quite difficult to remove. They state that even with clean, dry fingers it’s hard to get enough friction to turn and release it.

NoFliesOnMe said:

Does anyone know if they have fixed the bug that stopped external monitors from working yet. I have been putting off installing this version of OS X until that was resolved as I use an external monitor for work.

All current M1 Macs (i.e. excluding the new M1 24" iMac, which we don't know about yet) support a total of two displays. For the M1 MBA and MBP that means the built-in display plus one other; for the M1 Mac mini it means two external displays.

At present this appears to be a deliberate decision on Apple's part. There's no evidence that it is a bug, or that anything will change with the current hardware. (And yes, I'm aware that people have come up with workarounds involving external hardware adapters and special display drivers.)

We have an M1 MBA driving a Samsung 4K monitor, and an M1 MBP driving a 5K LG monitor. Both work fine.

crowley said:

Seems weird that the MacBook's doesn't fare better in battery life than the others.  I wonder if there's much variation in battery capacity.

Here’s Microsoft’s battery test, in their own words:
"Testing consisted of full battery discharge with a mixture of active use and modern standby. The active use portion consists of (1) a web browsing test accessing 8 popular websites over multiple open tabs, (2) a productivity test utilizing Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook, and (3) a portion of time with the device in use with idle applications. All settings were default except screen brightness was set to 150nits with Auto-Brightness disabled. Wi-Fi was connected to a network. Battery life varies significantly with settings, usage and other factors."

Here is Apple’s:
“MacBook Pro with Apple M1 chip: Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD. The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom. The Apple TV app movie playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 1080p content with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom.”

The main difference is that MS includes in-app idle time, and standby time, which obviously reduce power draw. That’s like pausing the test. However Apple runs the M1 continuously. 

Yes, that is indeed the question: how does authoritative and verifiable info get into the app?

Like the poster above, I have a vaccine card from my county health department. They also texted me a persistent link to a state database certifying that I'm fully COVID vaccinated (hey, age has its privileges, even if they're not numerous). A reasonable person would accept those as authoritative — but how does that conclusion make its way into the app? Obviously not just on my say-so, because otherwise every twenty-something looking to party on the Mayan Riviera would be claiming to have had their shots.

Most people won't be aware of this, but the World Health Organization has long sponsored an "International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis," colloquially known as the "Yellow Card," that's used by international travelers to demonstrate their vaccination status. These Yellow Cards are issued by the national health authority in each country, which in the case of the USA is the CDC. Blank cards are available (in bulk only) from the US Government Printing Office as document CDC 731. Small quantities at big markups are sold on Amazon. Yellow Card vaccination history is entered by the medical authority administering the inoculation, signed and officially stamped, and is accepted by border control authorities worldwide.

The IATA app needs an authentication process of some sort prior to travel use.