Once upon a time, one attack vector for industrial sabotage consisted of exfiltrating data from Macs using a standard-issue USB storage card. Researchers have also shown that it’s possible to hijack computers with malware-infested cables. It’s a jungle out there, so Apple has toughened up (Apple Silicon) Mac protection with USB Restricted Mode.
What is USB Restricted Mode?
Beginning with macOS Ventura, the new layer of protection comes in the form of USB Restricted mode, which should provide a little reassurance to enterprise IT and is enabled by default.
An Apple developer note explains this protection: “On portable Mac computers with Apple silicon, new USB and Thunderbolt accessories require user approval before the accessory can communicate with macOS for connections wired directly to the USB-C port.”
If this sounds familiar, it is. It already exists on iPads and iPhones. It’s worth noting that support for mass storage devices on both those platforms always lagged the Mac, and it’s only since iOS 13 that you have been able to use external storage with those.
On the Mac, things have kind of worked in the other direction. Macs have always supported external storage media, but Apple has now made this more secure — though Apple Silicon systems.
How USB Restricted Mode works
The idea is that when a new USB or Thunderbolt device is connected to the Mac, the user will be asked to approve the connection. If a Mac is locked the end user must unlock it before the computer will recognize the accessory. This uses the new-to-the-Mac allowUSBRestrictedMode restriction. The protection is initiated when your Mac has been left locked for an hour or so.
Apple says it doesn’t apply to power adapters, displays, or connections to an approved hub, and devices will still charge even if you choose Do Not Allow for use of a connected accessory. The idea is that energy flows, but data does not.
Why do you want it? The security environment continues to deteriorate, and the idea here is that this protection provides one more wall to protect Mac users and their data. It also puts a stop to systems such as GrayKey to crack hardware security to get to the data.
Keeping honest people happy
In practice, most people won’t encounter a problem. They will attach a USB device, approve it, and won’t need to think about it much beyond that. (They may need to approve the use intermittently, but that’s it.)
Apple’s tech notes for the iPad/iPhone implementation of the feature explain:
“If you don’t first unlock your password-protected iOS device – or you haven’t unlocked and connected it to a USB accessory within the past hour – your iOS device won’t communicate with the accessory or computer, and in some cases, it might not charge. You might also see an alert asking you to unlock your device to use accessories.”
The new protection works well alongside the also-soon-to-debut Automated Device Enrollment feature, which forces anyone attempting to setup an enrolled Mac to engage with the enrollment process. This makes it much harder for unauthorized people to open a Mac in an attempt to get to data that is not theirs to grab.
Where is USB Restricted Mode controlled?
The protection is enabled by default on Apple Silicon Macs.
The enabled protection is to Ask for new Accessories, additional options include:
Ask every time.
Automatically when unlocked.
Always.
Asking for new accessories is the minimum protection that should be in place, though highly secure enterprises will want to mandate for permission each time.
You can disable/enable the setting in System Settings>Security & Privacy>Security.
Configuring an accessibility Switch Control sets the policy to always allow accessory use.
Approved devices can connect to a locked Mac for up to three days.
What about updates? Apple explains that accessories attached during software update from prior versions of macOS are allowed automatically. New accessories attached prior to rebooting the Mac might work, but won’t be remembered until connected to an unlocked Mac and explicitly approved.
This is just the latest security enhancement Apple has now managed to put in place across its platforms.
Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.
Apple’s Freeform collaboration tool, due out “later this year,” is designed to give remote teams a limitless virtual whiteboard within which they can work together.
We don’t know much about it beyond what was announced at WWDC 2022, but we do know not to expect it to appear in the first iterations of the Mac, iPad, and iPhone operating systems when they ship in fall. (Given recent claims the release of iPad OS 16 has been delayed pending changes in Stage Manager, it seems reasonable to think Freeform may also be delayed.)
It’s a tool that integrates nicely with Apple’s other collaborative enhancements in the upcoming OS releases, particularly Stage Manager and Continuity Camera.
What Apple has told us
“Freeform, a powerful new collaboration app with a flexible canvas gives users the ability to see, share and collaborate all in one place without worrying about layouts and page sizes, and with full support for Apple Pencil,” the company said in a statement.
Speaking at WWDC, Apple Senior Engineer Elizabeth Reid explained Apple’s Freeform promise: “Now you can be on a FaceTime call,” she said, “and with a tap you’re all collaborating live on a Freeform board. You can add almost anything to a board. It’s perfect for brainstorming sessions, jotting down notes, sharing files, or even creating diagrams with others.
“As others begin adding their thoughts, you can see their live cursor showing you right where they’re working,” she said. “And if someone is in another part of Freeform, you can just tap jump straight to where they are on the board.”
What Freeform does
You can begin a Freeform session within FaceTime, and as long as you and your potential collaborators are all running Apple equipment that supports it, you can all then get involved.
You can join an existing session by tapping a link in a Message or FaceTime chat. Changes and additions made during a session are tracked in a group thread in Messages.
Inside Freeform, you can take notes, draw, create tables and diagrams, and share various forms of content including video, web links, photos, PDF files, and more. Everyone taking part can check what each other is working on and make changes.
You see what other people are doing by looking around the document for brackets with a person’s name and icon above them. You can also zip to where a person is working by tapping their name in the list. Multiple people can be making changes or additions to the document at once.
What it may not do
Freeform doesn’t appear to be available in a developer beta at this point, so it’s not yet possible to confirm whether the application can be accessed asynchronously. That matters because remote teams often work asynchronously, so while collaboration can take place in real time, it’s also possible to catch-up on changes and look at those made by others in your own time space.
“Visual collaboration applications…find greater value when used as a continuous digital workspace for asynchronous collaboration,” notes Mike Fasciani, senior research director for digital workplace applications at Gartner.
Challenges and opportunities
As my colleague, Matthew Finnegan wrote in June, the challenges for Apple’s take on the whiteboard include lack of cross-platform support, it will only work on supporting Apple devices, and faces off against many robust cross-platform alternatives such as Mural, Miro, Whiteboard and tolls within Zoom, Box and others.
At the same time, it seems worth noting that while Apple’s recently-updated iWork suite is also Apple only (though it can also be accessed in iCloud) it is still consistently used by around 5-6% of enterprise employees, according to CCS Insight.
Given that many of the whiteboard solutions currently on the market impose additional cost, Apple is very likely to see good adoption of the software, given that it will be made available free within its Mac, iPad, and iPhone operating systems, which are themselves seeing rapid adoption across the enterprise.
Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.
With some phones, the hardware itself is the primary point of appeal.
Google’s self-made Pixel devices take a decidedly different approach. Sure, the shells around the phones are as shiny and purty as any of ’em — but it’s what’s inside that really sets the Pixel apart.
Plain and simple, Google’s Android software is in a league of its own. And aside from the thoughtfully designed, platform-consistent interface and the lack of obnoxious and often over-the-top experience-harming additions so many other manufacturers love to lard into their Android environments, Pixels are packed with genuinely useful features that tap into Google’s high-tech smarts and make your life easier in some small but significant ways.
But in some cases, it’s up to you to find the features and activate ’em before they’ll be available.
So today, we’ll pick up where we left off with our previous Pixel settings collection and explore a slew of spectacular buried Pixel settings worth surfacing. Find ’em, flip ’em on, and then come check out my free Pixel Academy e-course to uncover even more Googley magic lurking within your favorite Pixel phone.
Google Pixel setting No. 1: Your smart storage sorcerer
Phone-makers love to push the narrative that you need to drop more dollars on devices with oversized amounts of local space — but for most of us, the reality is that local phone storage is little more than a temporary holding vessel for stuff that’s soon to be backed up, synced, and available anywhere, anyway.
That’s especially true with photos and videos, which tend to be the biggest consumers of local phone storage. As long as you’re using Google Photos to sync all your stuff, there’s no need to keep the redundant local copies around. And your Pixel can make it incredibly easy to clear out that virtual crud and keep your local storage spacious.
Provided you’ve already set up Photos to back up your images and videos, just follow these fast steps:
Open up the Files app on your phone.
Tap the three-line menu icon in the upper-left corner of the screen and select “Settings.”
Look for the line labeled “Smart Storage” and flip the toggle next to it into the on position.
And that’s it: From that moment forward, your Pixel will automatically blast away the local copies of any photos or videos that are already backed up to the Photos service. You won’t notice a thing, practically speaking — other than the fact that your Pixel always has plenty of room to go around.
Google Pixel setting No. 2: Your smart security sidekick
This next one is technically something that’s part of Android itself, but it’s absolutely an important piece of the overall Pixel picture.
It’s an effortless way to make your phone easier to access when you’re in a safe scenario — but then still keep it fully secured when an extra layer of protection is most pertinent. And you’ve got a few intriguing options for how it can work.
To get started:
Open up your Pixel’s system settings (by swiping down twice from the top of the screen and tapping the gear-shaped icon at the bottom of the panel that comes up).
Tap “Security” followed by “Smart Lock.”
You’ll then be prompted to put in your password, pattern, or PIN before you can proceed. If you haven’t already set a password, pattern, or PIN, stop what you’re doing immediately, bop yourself uponst the nose forcefully, and find the option within that same settings section to get that set up now.
Check out the available Smart Lock options and see which of ’em make the most sense for you.
The best option, if you ask me, is “Trusted Devices” — which keeps your phone unlocked whenever it’s connected to a specific Bluetooth device (like your car or your favorite headphones).
“Trusted Places” is useful for keeping your phone unlocked whenever you’re in a specific, safe geographical location — like your home, your batcave, or your personal chicken coop. Just be warned that it can be a little finicky at times, so hang onto this handy Smart Lock Trusted Places fix in case you have issues with it working reliably down the road.
“On-Body Detection” is the broadest Smart Lock option. It’ll keep your phone unlocked anytime you unlock it and then remain in motion — walking, dancing, fleeing from rogue chickens, or whatever the case may be.
Activate any or all of ’em, depending on your preferences, and watch proper security get a heck of a lot easier to manage.
Google Pixel setting No. 3: Your emergency helper
This next Pixel feature isn’t exactly fun, but it most certainly could be valuable in the right sort of situation.
It’s an advanced system that can actually detect when you’ve been in a car crash and then alert the proper authorities if you’re unable to respond.
But, as with so many Googley treasures, the onus is on you to find and enable it before it’ll be available:
Fire up the Safety app within your regular Pixel app drawer (by swiping upward from the bottom of the screen whilst on your home screen).
Open it and follow the prompts to sign in and add an emergency contact and medical information, if you’re so inclined.
Once you get to the main Safety screen, tap the gear-shaped icon in the upper-left corner, then tap “Car crash detection.”
Flip the toggle at the top of the screen into the on position.
JR
Now, if your phone ever detects that you’ve been in an accident, it’ll vibrate, sound an alarm, and ask if you need help. If you don’t respond after a certain amount of time, it’ll then automatically contact 911 for you and share your location along with any car crash data it has available.
With any luck, you’ll never need that feature. But it’s a good bit of assurance to know it’s there and ready just in case.
Google Pixel setting No. 4: Your home screen themer
On a much lighter note, your favorite Google Pixel phone has the hidden power to transform all the icons on your home screen so that they always match the coloring of your current wallpaper.
It’s part of the Android 12-and-up Material You design system, and it’s an incredibly cool visual touch that makes your device feel perpetually fresh and personalized. Trust me: Once you get used to having it enabled, you won’t want to go back.
To activate the system, provided you’re using a Pixel phone recent enough to have Android 12 (and you’re using the default Pixel Launcher setup):
Press and hold any open space on your Pixel’s home screen.
Tap “Wallpaper & style” in the menu that pops up.
Scroll down and activate the toggle within the “Themed icons” line.
Now just head back to your home screen and mumble a few magic words for good measure — and just like that, you should see all of your icons instantly colored to complement your current wallpaper.
JR
Best of all? Anytime you change your wallpaper moving forward, the icons will automatically update themselves to match — without your so much as even lifting one of your fancy little fingies again.
Google Pixel setting No. 5: Your dark mood manager
Android’s Dark Theme is a great way to make your Pixel’s screen less glary in the evening hours. If you’re anything like me, though, you might prefer having a lighter and brighter background during the day.
Well, your Pixel has an option to automatically switch between its Dark Theme and the standard lighter alternative on its own — based either on a set time schedule or on the sunset and sunrise in your current location.
Here’s how to find it:
Open up your Pixel’s system settings.
Tap “Display,” then tap the line labeled “Dark Theme.” (Make sure you tap the actual words and not the toggle next to ’em.)
Tap “Schedule,” and pick whichever pattern you prefer.
JR
Google Pixel setting No. 6: Your nighttime screen enhancer
Android’s Dark Theme is nice and all, but personally, my favorite screen-enhancing option is the Night Light feature built into the Pixel’s software.
Night Light applies an amber-colored tinting to your phone’s screen to make it easier on the eyes in dim environments. It’s awesome to have enabled in the evening hours — but it’s a hassle to remember to manually toggle it on and off every time you want it.
Not to fear, though, for your Pixel has a handy way to handle that heavy lifting. And all you’ve gotta do is take 20 seconds to set it up:
Head back into your Pixel’s system settings.
Tap “Display” followed by “Night Light” (and again make sure you tap the actual words and not the toggle alongside ’em).
Tap “Schedule,” and select either a custom time routine or to have your Pixel turn the Night Light mode on automatically from sunset to sunrise every day.
All that’s left is to bask in the glow of your freshly optimized smartphone screenery. Bask, gersh dern it!
Google Pixel setting No. 7: Your battery-boosting buddy
Few things are more frustrating than running out of battery power before a day is done. Your Pixel has some smart systems to help you stretch out whatever stamina you’ve got and get yourself safely to sleepytime — and if you get ’em amped up and configured right now, you’ll never have to think about it again.
Go, go gadget protection sequence:
Scoot your way back into your Pixel system settings.
Tap “Battery” followed by “Battery Saver.”
Tap “Set a schedule” and select either “Based on your routine,” to have your Pixel activate its power-saving Battery Mode when it thinks you’re likely to need it — or “Based on percentage,” if you want it to simply kick in when your phone reaches a certain remaining percentage level of power.
If you have a relatively recent Pixel and want to take your power protection up a notch from there, back out to the main “Battery Saver” screen and look for the line labeled “Extreme Battery Saver.” That’ll let you enable an even more aggressive power-saving setup that can either activate itself automatically whenever Battery Saver gets triggered or can come up as an option every time you reach that status.
(The Extreme Battery Saver may or may not also activate anytime you’re playing the 90s power-ballad “More Than Words.” I’ve yet to confirm this, but I really hope it happens.)
Google Pixel setting No. 8: Your notification memory
All right, riddle me this: How many times have you seen some sort of important notification on your phone — then inadvertently swiped it away on accident?
If you’re as butter-fingered as I am, the answer is probably somewhere around “way too many times.” But whether that flub-up happens to you constantly or next to never, it’s well worth your while to enable your Pixel’s tucked-away notification history feature, which’ll make it easy to look back at dismissed notifications anytime.
Just mosey your way back into those system settings once again, then:
Tap “Notifications” and look for the line labeled “Notification history.”
Tap it, and tap it good!
On the screen that comes up next, flip the toggle next to “Use notification history” into the on position.
Now, anytime you have at least one notification present, you’ll see a special “History” option at the bottom of the notification panel.
JR
Tapping that will take you to a list of all your recently dismissed notifications, where you can interact with ’em, curse at ’em, or pretend they’re chickens and chase ’em around until you all fall into a feathery pile of giggling beaks.
Google Pixel setting No. 9: Your fast phone silencer
Give yourself a super-simple way to silence your Pixel at a second’s notice by flipping on your phone’s fantastic Flip to Shhh feature:
March back into your Pixel’s settings. Get those virtual legs up high!
Tap “System” then “Gestures.”
Look for the line labeled “Flip to Shhh.”
Tap it, then flip the toggle on the next screen into the on position.
Once that’s done, you can silence your Pixel in an instant simply by flipping it face down on any flat surface. As soon as you pick it back up, your previous sound settings will be restored.
Google Pixel setting No. 10: Your power button fix
Last but not least, if you have a recent Pixel model — the Pixel 6 or later — do yourself a massive favor and fix one smartphone setting Google got seriously wrong.
By default with the Pixel 6 and up, pressing and holding your phone’s physical power button pulls up the Google Assistant. And while you’ve got plenty of exceptional Pixel-specific advanced Assistant actions available, you’ve also got plenty of other ways to pull up Assistant when you want it.
So unless you like having that extra Assistant-summoning option and enjoy needing to jump through extra hoops to get to your actual power menu — y’know, that on-screen series of options that makes it easy to shut down or restart your phone (and is the reason the power button is even called the power button, for cryin’ out loud) — take 20 seconds to restore the power button’s proper purpose and send that Assistant connection a-packin’.
Here’s all there is to it:
Open up your phone’s settings.
Tap “System” followed by “Gestures.”
Find the line labeled “Press and hold power button” and tap it — preferably whilst muttering choice obscenities under your breath.
Tap the toggle next to “Hold for Assistant” to turn it into the off position.
Breathe a heavy sigh of relief.
And there you have it — 10 out-of-sight Pixel settings, dug up and discovered (plus the original seven we waded through earlier). Whew! That’s a lot of improvement for an already-excellent phone.
And that’s also just the start of our Pixel-enhancing adventures. Come join my free Pixel Academy e-course for seven full days of delightful Pixel knowledge — starting with some powerful camera-centric smarts and moving from there to advanced image magic, next-level nuisance reducers, and oodles of other opportunities for helpful Pixel intelligence.
You’ve already taken the first step by palming a Pixel product. Now take your experience up a notch and start tapping into everything your Pixel can do for you.
If there’s one place where saved seconds can seriously add up, it’s in your smartphone’s on-screen keyboard.
This doesn’t get nearly enough attention among average tech-totin’ animals, but Android has an awesome advantage over that (cough, cough) other mobile platform when it comes to text input. All it takes is two minutes of trying to type text on an iDevice to see just how much of a good thing we’ve got goin’ (and to make yourself want to gouge your eyes out with the nearest overpriced Apple accessory).
And you know what? While we’ve got no shortage of commendable Android keyboard apps to choose from, Google’s own Gboard keyboard really is the perfect example of how simple, effective, and expandable the Android typing experience can be. Gboard works well right out of the virtual box, and once you start poking around in the mustiest corners of its settings, you’ll uncover some tucked-away treasures that can inject all sorts of seconds-saving sorcery into your Android input process.
So crack those phalanges and prepare for pro-level productivity: We’re diving in deep to Gboard’s least traveled surfaces to take your Android typing experience to dizzying new speeds.
Gboard setting No. 1: Swifter symbol summoning
First and foremost, if you’re anything like most dual-thumbed Android phone owners, you probably waste tons of time hunting for symbols on your Android device’s keyboard — everything from asterisks to at-signs and pluses to parentheses.
Well, my fellow fast-fingered feline, there is a better way.
Start by heading into Gboard’s settings (by tapping the gear-shaped symbol in the keyboard’s top row — or, if you don’t see that symbol there, tapping the three-line menu icon in that same area and then finding the gear-shaped icon on the screen that comes up next). Then:
Tap “Preferences.”
Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the next screen and find the “Long-press for symbols” option.
Tap the toggle next to it to turn it on.
Now back out of that menu, and when Gboard comes back into view, look for the small characters in the corner of every letter.
Press and hold your fingers to any of those letters, and hey — how ’bout that?!
JR
Summoning symbols has never been so speedy.
Gboard setting No. 2: An even faster pressing action
That symbol-summoning tweak is supreme, but don’t move on with your lovely life just yet — ’cause there’s a really effective way to make it even more efficient.
March your hindquarters back into those Gboard settings, and this time:
Tap “Preferences.”
Scroll down all the way and look for the line labeled “Key long-press delay.”
Tap it — then slide that slider down to about the 200ms mark.
That’ll make the time it takes for a long-press to be registered on your keyboard noticeably smaller — which in turn will let you tap into those secondary symbol shortcuts without having to hold a key down for nearly as long.
Try it out for a while at the 200ms setting and see whatcha think. I find that level to be a perfect balance of speed and accuracy, with long-presses registering fast enough to avoid interrupting your typing flow but also not happening so easily that you’re likely to trigger ’em inadvertently.
You might have to raise or lower the level a little to find the just-right spot that tickles your typing fancy, but regardless of where exactly you land, I’d be willing to wager you’ll end up with a much better situation than what the standard Gboard setup gives you by default.
Gboard setting No. 3: The fastest number access
Using those secondary characters is a great way to get to numbers quickly. If you find yourself typing tons of digits on your Android device and want to make numbers even easier to access, though, Gboard’s got you covered.
Dig back into those Gboard settings, then:
Tap “Preferences.”
Flip the toggle next to “Number row” at the top of the screen.
That’ll give you a permanent row of numbers at the top of your increasingly personalized Android keyboard — thus making every digit just one tap away instead of a tap and a hold.
JR
And here’s a hidden bonus tip related to that: You’d never know it, as there’s no visible indication, but once you have that number row active, you can press and hold any of those characters to get a pop-up list of related numerical options — fractions, superscripts, and even an on-demand holographic representation of The Count from Sesame Street.*
JR
* Holographic muppet available only during intense hallucinations.
Gboard setting No. 4: Easier emoji expression
Maybe you’re less of a numbers person and more of an emoji creature. Hey, we all have different ways of expressing ourselves.
If you’re frequently injecting smilies, kitten faces, and/or piggy snoots into your Important Business Communications, you’ll definitely want to take note of Gboard’s exceptionally efficient emoji-enhancing options.
So get yourself back to those Gboard settings, tap “Emojis, Stickers, & GIFs,” and pay special attention to three possibilities within that area:
First, the “Emoji fast-access row” toggle will add an entire dedicated row of recently used emojis onto the top of your keyboard.
If you want to take it down a notch from there but still keep your favorite smiley symbols close, try the “Emojis in symbols keyboard” switch instead.
Or, for a more contextual and on-demand approach, flip on the “Emojis” option under “Suggestions while typing.” That’ll cause select emojis to appear within the standard Gboard text suggestion area, right alongside your regular next-word predictions.
JR
Now, that’s I call effective symbolism.
Gboard setting No. 5: Custom keyboard height
Prefer a more plentiful space for plopping down your plus-sized fingies? Whether you’ve added extra rows into your Gboard setup or you’re just craving a roomier arrangement, take total control of your Android keyboard interface by making your keyboard the exact right size for you:
Back in the Gboard settings, tap “Preferences.”
This time, find the line for “Keyboard height.”
Tap that bad boy and experiment with the different available options.
JR
Rejoice (and/or rejuice, as needed).
Gboard setting No. 6: The one-tap auto-correct undo
Auto-correct is simultaneously one of the best modern tech innovations known to mankind and one of the most maddening bits of computerized wizardry to ever enter our lives.
The next time your Android keyboard auto-corrects something incorrectly, though, don’t scream and throw your phone at the nearest bovine. Or, I don’t know, do — if that bovine was really asking for it.
But either way, make this snazzy little Gboard settings adjustment, and you’ll have a lot less frustration:
In the “Text correction” section of Gboard’s settings, find the line labeled “Undo auto-correct on backspace.”
Make sure the toggle next to it is in the on position.
With that teensy tweak in place, anytime Gboard changes something you’ve typed and you aren’t thrilled with its correction, you can simply hit the Backspace key on the keyboard — the left-facing arrow shape with an “x” in it, in Gboard’s lower-right corner.
As long as you do it fairly quickly after the auto-correct occurs, before you hit any other keys, that’ll switch your word back to the way you’d originally entered it — erroneous or not. And that’s a nice kind of power to have.
Gboard setting No. 7: The sentence-ending step-saver
Last but not least, let’s look at one of Gboard’s most effective and also simplest step-savers — something that for some reason isn’t typically enabled by default.
I’m talkin’ about the keyboard’s ability to automatically fill in a period for you when you hit the spacebar twice at the end of a sentence. Handy, no?
All you’ve gotta do is fire up the associated setting one time:
Back in the Gboard settings “Text correction” section, find the line for “Autospace after punctuation.” (For some reason, it’s still considered a beta feature — and it’s available only if you’re using Gboard with U.S. English as its language. So if you don’t see it in your setup, that’s probably why.)
Turn that toggle into the on position.
And at that point, all that’s left is to type, type, type away — whilst basking in the knowledge that ending a sentence will never take more than a single double-space.
Now, if only ending actual conversations could be so easy.
Get even more advanced shortcut knowledge with my free Android Shortcut Supercourse. You’ll learn tons of time-saving tricks for your phone!
Semiconductors are in virtually every electronic device that leaves a factory today, and the US government has planted a flag in the ground as the burgeoning chip industry has become the future of technology manufacturing.
Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and others have been lobbying the US government to increase domestic chip production, citing problems overseas that have hampered hardware production. In fact, a US Commerce Department report in January said the chip shortage was so bad that at one point in 2021 there was just a five-day supply worldwide — with no sign the situation would improve anytime soon.
Late last month, Congress passed the CHIPS Act, a $77 billion piece of legislation that earmarks subsidies and tax credits for companies designing and manufacturing seminconductors on American shores.
Several Asian nations, including China, South Korea, and Taiwan, as well as the European Union, have also recognized the urgency in laying claim to the vast manufacturing opportunities in the semiconductor industry. They’ve injected billions in public and private funding to boost chip manufacturing capacity and development.
The tech industry in general, however, faces arguably its greatest dearth of available talent in history, with unemployment rates hovering around 1.7% — less than half that of the overall unemployment rate, according to CompTIA, a nonprofit association for the IT industry.
At the same time, semiconductor behemoths such as Intel, Samsung and TSMC are in the middle of building new chip fabrication plants in the US as part of a massive re-shoring effort. But there’s far too little tech talent to fill the needs.
Alphawave
Tony Chan Carusone, CTO, Alphawave
Tony Chan Carusone, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, in January became CTO at Toronto-based Alphawave IP, a five-year old, fabless semi-conductor company with offices in London, Ottawa, Canada and San Jose, California. Last year, while still a fledgling company developing chips for data centers, Alphawave raised $1.2 billion in an IPO led by cornerstone investors BlackRock and Janus Henderson. The IPO spoke to the massive opportunity investors see in developing application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for a wide variety of new technologies — from IoT devices and AI to data centers supporting cloud services.
Computerworld spoke with Carusone about the challenges the semiconductor industry faces in attracting young talent, particlarly as the industry is often seen as staid and less innovative than the software industry.
The following are experts from that interview:
Tell me a little about your background and Alphawave. “I’ve been a faculty member at the University of Toronto for 20 years, teaching electrical engineering and chip design to smart young people. Now, I’m also CTO of Alphawave. We’re focused on semi-conductors for data center connectivity. So, that’s traffic within the data center. It’s hidden from the public and it’s super high-tech stuff that’s not in your hands, but those things in your hands rely on our technology for the cloud.
“Alphawave was founded in Toronto by industry veterans. They’re geeks who founded three companies. We’ve now got 250 employees in the US and Canada. Almost all of them are engineers. And we expect to grow to over 600 [employees] by year’s end.
“So this talent recruitment thing is important to us. We’re focused on the design of the chips and engage with partners who fabricate the chips and bring them to market. So, it’s really a highly skilled workforce we’re after, entirely.
“We’re recruiting for the hardware side. I find it ironic. It should be easy. It’s the most transformative technology of our age — clearly; and yet it’s really hard. Most young, smart, ambitious people getting into the high tech think about computer engineering and software first.
“With my background in university, I’m interested in how we can increase the supply of young people and ensure there’s enough people for both hardware and software companies.”
TSMC
Construction of TSMC’s 5nm semiconductor plant in Phoenix, Arizona is currently underway and scheduled to begin producing chips in 2024.
How are you dealing with the lack of talent and how your industry is different from other tech sectors in that respect? “I think part of the problem is the semiconductor industry as a whole feels like a really inaccessible technology. First, there’s a perception of semiconductors as a staid industry. It’s less exciting, there are fewer opportunities for career development and wealth creation compared to the software industry.
“You’ve got all these pictures and news stories of folks in white bunny suits doing the actual manufacturing on the factory floor. That’s one aspect that I think is a little misleading. For every person in a white bunny suit on a manufacturing floor or in a clean room, you have a whole host of engineers sitting at their desks writing code or doing all the engineering activity needed to support that manufacturing.
“The reality is semi-conductor design relies a lot on abstraction. You’re not in there engineering one molecule at a time when you’re designing a microprocessor. You’re writing code.”
“The other thing is on the technology side itself, if you’re a young, smart, ambitious person going through school and you’re interested in high tech, the semiconductor industry feels like it’s focused on a dance of molecules. The miracle there seems like it lives in quantum physics. Again, it feels less accessible to you than writing software where you can get stuff working quickly and see your immediate impact and get that feedback. That feels more exciting and dynamic. Again, though, it’s a bit of a misperception. The reality is semi-conductor design relies a lot on abstraction. You’re not in there engineering one molecule at a time when you’re designing a microprocessor. You’re writing code.
“Most of us have never set foot on a manufacturing floor. And yet, we’re designing products that are in everyone’s hands and in every data center.
“That’s what I want to emphasize. The hardware industry is one that you can hit the ground running and have an impact quickly and there’s already a lot of abstraction involved. For example, if I’m designing a chip, it’s basically writing code these days. If I showed you the code that ultimately gets turned into a chip side-by-side with code compiled for Linux, even an experienced person would have to look at the code for a few seconds to determine which is which.
“The industry is really dynamic and your day-to-day activities and the pace of things is very similar, whether you’re doing development for a software product or doing coding and design activity for a hardware product.”
What is Alphawave doing specifically to attract talent? “There is a global war for talent and aside from providing competitive compensation, companies must also demonstrate clear opportunities for candidates to work on industry-leading solutions in order to create a truly exciting and compelling value proposition. Alphawave provides that by being the world’s technology leader for connectivity and that is how we are able to attract world-class talent to our company. In addition, we are a very profitable company with no debt, no capital requirements, and a 100% year-over-year growth rate. This stability provides assurance to individuals and teams amid challenges and uncertainties in the market.”
Most people think of the semiconductor industry as dominated by a few dominant players. What’s the incentive for someone seeking a cutting-edge role in tech? “The general perception of the hardware industry is that R&D is slowing down. I’ve heard this comparison made: that it’s becoming like the auto industry, especially before the EV revolution when the people thought that the most innovation you might see in the auto industry is where to put the cup holder.
“But that perception comes from the idea that all it takes is one powerful CPU and you can write software on it to do whatever is needed. But the idea of the CPU was born in an age when there wasn’t enough volume required in different hardware products to justify custom designing hardware for each application. Literally, that’s what helped get Intel off the ground back in the 1960s; someone came to them asking them to build a dozen different processors for a dozen different purposes and Intel realized they could just design one chip to meet all the needs because there was not enough [sales] volume to justify doing a custom designed chip for each product.
“Now, things are changing where the volume of semiconductors is so tremendous in all these different areas. It’s become quite reasonable and desirable to custom design a solution for each type of product. So, that’s where you have different processors being designed for machine learning, whether for training or the actual online use case, or a low-power chip that’s mobile and battery operated versus one that’s used for the cloud.
“So, you have a proliferation application specific integrated circuits where just as the name suggests, you’ve got a new design for every different application. And that’s a trend that’s growing.
“With the new chip designs, that’s creating new opportunities for startups. Any startup that can identify a need for a specific application can go off and design a chip tailored for it and win that market. And it’s not a small market as, again, all ships are rising with the volume of semiconductors increasing.
“Alphawave is a good example of that. It took less than four years to go from founding with five people to unicorn IPO. That’s just one example, and there are others out there.”
What is your company doing now and how has it changed from the time it was founded?
“So we focus on connectivity solutions within the data center. We were founded in Toronto, so initially, growth was in Toronto. The founders all came from the University of Toronto. I was a faculty member at the time and still have my appointment there. Because of that strong connection, they were attracting a lot of young people right out of school. Basically, everyone was an engineer. Even today — with 250 employees — almost everyone is an engineer. So, obviously it was an environment where young people coming right out of school were just being thrown into the very cutting edge of technology. We work on the most cutting-edge fabrication technologies.
“Young people have to hit the ground running and have an impact right away. And, that was really successful — the combination of industry veterans and young people enabled us to create over 80 different product IPs in a short time. That’s really remarkable. Usually you think of hardware development as an army of people working for years to develop one product, and each person is just playing a small role. But this is a counter example where you have a small team designing 80 different products in four, four-and-a-half years.
“I think it’s a great example of what this new age of semiconductor design looks like.”
What’s the difficulty you’re running into when it comes to universities and colleges not turning out enough electrical engineers? “I think there’s a structural issue here. Young people coming into tech are drawn to the software side, and there is a ton of demand there. But the issue is universities are structurally set up so that the interest in computer software is cannibalizing electrical engineering programs.
“Universities shouldn’t be set up this way. There’s growing demand for both electrical engineers and computer engineers. So, universities have to increase capacity and not just allow computer engineering and software development programs to cannibalize electrical engineering programs.
“Then the other things that need to happen is to try to change the perception so it’s understood there’s not only a lot of opportunity for young people to hit the ground running and have an impact, but there’s also opportunity for wealth creation. Alphawave is one example of that.
“There’s a natural realignment of salary expectations happening. Semiconductor companies are increasing pay to compete. But there’s a time consequence to this too, and so that will be shaking out over the next year or two.”
What do you need most right now? “We need people that are writing code that can be turned into chips. We write code that describes a chip design and then put it through compilers that get turned into silicon. We need people writing code to validate those designs; we need people writing firmware that will ultimately run on those chips. And we need a way to make sure that firmware will run on our hardware and it’s all going to work on the application before we get the hardware back from fabrication. So, we need a whole other layer of code that’s for our verification environment.
“Those are huge teams. That’s a lot of our growth [as] we move from 250 to 600 people this year.”
If you work in a multi-platform environment and need a solution that lets you run a licensed version of Windows on your M1 Mac, the newly updated Parallels Desktop 18 has you covered.
Running Windows on a Mac the easy way
There are lots of improvements in Parallels Desktop for M1 Mac users seeking to run Windows apps, but the biggest one seems to be the ability to download, install, and configure Windows 11 on your Mac in a virtual Parallels environment in one click. The company introduced support for Windows on ARM chips in Parallels Desktop 17, but installation of the OS is now built in and you no longer need to use the Insider preview version of Windows 11 for ARM.
I’ve spent a very short time using the solution, and it is notable how simple it has become to install a functioning version of Windows on my M1 Mac. Installation was relatively straightforward, and performance within the virtual machine seems solid.
This does exactly what it promises to do, making it possible to quickly install and run various operating systems on your Mac. When used in Coherence mode, you get the added thrill of no longer needing to even think about which OS is running the software you use. It works quickly and well.
What has improved in Parallels Desktop 18?
The Corel-owned software company has made significant improvements in performance. It claims that it’s now possible to run more than 200,000 Windows apps and games on your Mac; it has made the software compatible with Apple’s Pro Motion display and (for gamers) made it possible to run Windows games with a connected game controller.
It’s all about performance of Windows in Parallels. When run on an M1 Ultra chip such as inside the Mac Studio you’ll experience up to 96% faster performance than you got with Parallels Desktop 17. It continues to be possible to argue that Windows run in Parallels on a Mac may be faster than on a PC, and no doubt someone will be testing just that.
The company also says 99.99% of existing Intel-based PC applications will run happily on Apple Silicon macs using Parallels.
The company promises macOS Ventura support from day one. This support should extend to Stage Manager on the Mac, so you’ll see your virtual Windows or Linux environment(s) appear in the left-hand view when using Coherence mode. Additional improvements include macOS Ventura support, improved compatibility with x86 applications (including important applications such as AutoCAD) and improved USB 3.0 support for video devices.
Significant enhancements for business and pro users
Software developers will want to use the network conditioner tools to help them set up their network in the Pro edition. They can also use the enhanced plug-in for Visual Studio to analyze application performance.
The Business Edition, however, adds valuable enhancements developed to better support Windows on Macs in remote workgroups. These include:
Single Sign On (SSO/SAML) authentication for employees to sign in and activate Parallels Desktop with a corporate account.
The ability by admins to deploy, provision, or transfer a Windows 11 virtual machine across employees’ Mac computers.
The ability to manage Parallels customer experience program participation centrally in Parallels My Account.
What this means is that it is much easier to maintain tight control of the Windows licenses across remote device fleets. These improvements also make for a better employee on-boarding experience, as it seems possible to ship a new Mac to a remote worker and have the entire process of set-up and installation (including of Windows) managed using a single password thanks to Parallels and your chosen MDM provider.
Pricing, availability, support
Used with an Intel Mac, Parallels lets users create virtual machines to run Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Debian GNU, Mint, Red Hat, Suse Linux, and Kali. It lets Mac users install virtual versions of every iteration of OS X back to Lion. And supports Windows 2000 to Windows 11
On Apple Silicon, support is a little more limited, primarily due to the need for ARM support. If you run an M-series mac you can support Windows 11, Windows 10, macOS Ventura and Monterey, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian GBU, RHEL, CentOS, and Kali.
Parallels Desktop 18 for Mac costs $99.99 per year, but is also available as a perpetual license for $129.99. The Pro edition costs $119.99 per year while the Business Edition will cost $149.99 per year. You can upgrade from any previous version of Parallels Desktop to version 18 for Mac for $69.99, or to the Pro edition for $69.99 per year.
Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.
Usually, when it comes to a business cloud decision, you’re going to go with one of the big players: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Services, IBM Cloud, or Microsoft Azure. You know their names.
But the bigger clouds aren’t always suitable for everyone or every job.
For example, with hyperscale clouds, it’s effortless to get locked into a particular cloud.
Say you’re working with serverless computing. If AWS is your provider, you’re set with either Lambda or Fargate. But, say you think you can pay less money and get more bang for the buck using Google Cloud Run. Guess what? You’ll need to spend a lot of time, money and effort porting your Lambda application stack to Cloud Run or vice versa.
Complex cloud applications are not — I repeat — not portable.
Or let’s say your AWS serverless guru takes a job elsewhere. Good luck finding another serverless expert. They’re few and hard to find.
Instead, think small.
You might be better off going with a smaller cloud provider that, instead of upselling you on high-end, complex services, provides you with the basics. Sure, sometimes you need access to Azure’s more than 200 different services and products. But sometimes, you only need many Linux virtual machines (VM)s or Docker containers.
For those times, I suggest you look at alternative clouds. These include providers such as Digital Ocean, Linode, OVHcloud, Rackspace, and Vultr. Of course, they’re far from being the same. But they share some characteristics that can make them better options for small businesses.
For instance, their offerings tend to be simpler and easier for you and your teams to get your arms around. I’m a cloud expert, and honestly, even I can’t keep track of all of AWS’s offerings.
Which one should you use for your particular needs? Well, pay me big money, tell me what you need, and I’ll have an intelligent answer for you in a few weeks.
That’s weeks, not days.
Now, do you have people in your company that can master the technical and financial complexities of a hyper cloud? I doubt it. Take a trivial example. If I told you, you needed AWS Route 53, which you probably do, by the way, would you have a clue what I’m talking about without clicking on the name? Probably not.
(It’s DNS, by the way.)
In a Linode blog post, Blair Lyon, Akamai’s head of cloud experience, explained it this way: “SMBs need to focus on cloud compute, storage and networking capabilities. Those are the core primitives they need. Cloud compute is the virtual machines: shared and dedicated GPUs and other constructs, like Kubernetes and containers. Then you have storage, which is everything from backups to block storage and object storage. SMBs also need networking to be able to provide scale, lean on load balancers, and leverage other features that make it easy to run applications in the cloud. …There is a misconception that you need the hundreds of services that big cloud providers want you to buy. But in reality, for SMBs to run applications, they just need these core capabilities.”
Lyon is right.
With a smaller cloud provider, your people will already know their way around Linux, PHP/Perl/Python, MariaDB, and Nginx, the LAMP stack — in short, they can get productive work done without mastering high-end cloud complexities.
I like simple. Simple works.
That’s not to say these alternative clouds are always right. They’re not. Sometimes, you need complex arrays of services to get the job done.
Or, more simply, if you have a small business with operations scattered worldwide, you need a cloud with availability zones (AZ) across the globe.
I suggest that before you buy into a major international cloud, take a long, hard look at the smaller cloud providers.
I suspect many small business owners will find that a small local cloud might better fit your needs.
Apple-in-the-enterprise MDM and security solutions provider Jamf announced its quarterly results yesterday, confirming consolidation in the Apple moble device management market and shedding a little light on the scale of Apple enterprise deployments.
Customers up 34%, devices up 22.4%
What’s the top line data from the company’s results? We know Apple use in professional scenarios (enterprise, medical, education) continues to grow, and this seems to be reflected by the Jamf results. It disclosed second quarter revenue growth of 34% (year over year) to $115.6 million for GAAP gross profit of $86.2 million, with increases in subscription revenues and good growth for its recently introduced security solutions portfolio.
Perhaps the biggest evidence of Apple’s surging presence is that Jamf now claims to manage 28.4 million devices across 67,000 customers, up 5.2 million devices and 17,000 customers from a year ago.
That customer figure suggests an increase of 34% in terms of Jamf users and a 22.4% increase in the scale of deployments of supported devices. (The latter include Macs, iPhones, iPads, and Apple TV.)
“Increasing demand for Jamf’s broad line of security solutions combined with a strengthening replacement market for core management solutions show that Jamf’s unique approach to support and extend Apple innovations the same day they are made available is proving to be more valuable than ever to existing and new customers,” Jamf CEO Dean Hager said in a statement.
Industry consolidation continues
Speaking during the company’s fiscal call, Jamf shed a little light on its results. It noted that customers are increasingly moving to replace alternative MDM services with those provided by Jamf. It said that this reflects the need to keep pace with Apple’s new systems as they ship, and also noted that consolidation across the industry continues.
“The majority of the software providers that were considered leaders in the enterprise mobility management market just five years ago have been consolidated into other organizations, leading to additional challenges for their engineering teams to continue innovating at the pace of Apple,” Hager said during the analyst call.
Hager claimed that Jamf products replaced over 35,000 seats of one leading EMM solution across “just four customer wins.” Hager also pointed to rapid adoption of the company’s widening tranche of enterprise and education security products.
Enterprises still moving to Apple
The company also shared insights into some of the larger Apple migrations it had experienced, including Red Bull, which has now consolidated its Mac and iOS fleet to Jamf Pro. These announcements revealed the scale and extent to which Apple’s solutions are being adopted across business.
Hager cited a multinational food distributor that now has 13,000 Apple products in use; a behavioral therapy group that has 6,000 in place; and a 15,000-seat distribution across “a prominent ecommerce and online retail company.” Jamf has also been adopted across one of Florida’s largest hospital networks, the company said.
Hager mentioned a series of other deployments, but the main take away should be that Apple’s kit is now seeing front-line use across a diverse number of industries. Jamf noted this pattern is global, confirming it has secured some big Apple-based clients internationally.
“Our international markets have continued to grow faster outside the US,” the company said.
But supply chain challenges remain
However, for all the wins, Jamf also hinted that the Mac and iPad supply problems Apple recently acknowledged may be decelerating the rate of Apple enterprise adoption.
Perhaps one of the most important revelations for Apple watchers was confirmation that hardware supply issues delayed projects. We had anticipated this may be a problem in the quarter, but the revelation hints that hardware supply scarcity may be impacting enterprises seeking to broaden their Apple deployment.
[Also read: Jamf CIO: Apple will be the No. 1 enterprise endpoint by 2030]
The results also confirmed a sense of caution across business markets.
The company said it was seeing elongated sales cycles, suggesting customers are attempting to restrain unnecessary spending. At the same time, it also pointed out that in terms of budget adjustments, what it provides comes at a relatively small cost but delivers an effective ROI for IT management; Jamf seems confident it can hold its own in the prevailing challenging atmosphere.
Why are enterprises adopting Apple?
Hager discussed five critical capabilities prompting companies to move to Apple (and Jamf):
The ability to separate personal and private data on apps on user enrollment.
Support for Single Sign On.
Jamf’s support for zero trust network access.
The ability to assign per-app VPN configurations so users don’t need to consider them.
Jamf’s self-serve enterprise app store, which helps IT managers and end users assign apps or install the apps they require.
All these capabilities have been revealed as important across the last few years, with the pandemic simply accelerating adoption and increasing need.
You can listen to the financial call here.
Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.
Android 13 may be one of Google’s strangest Android versions yet. And considering the company we’re talking about here, my goodness, that’s really saying something.
Android 13 — currently in the final phase of its beta development and expected to be launched any moment now — is without a doubt one of the most shape-shifting software updates in Android’s history. It’ll completely change the way Android looks, feels, and acts and open the door to a whole new side of growth for the platform.
And yet, at the same time, most average Android-owning animals who get Android 13 on their phones are gonna find themselves befuddled about what the fudd the update even does.
It’s a funny sort of dueling identity — and it’s made even more awkward by the likely twist in timing that’ll accompany it.
Allow me to explain.
The Android 13 duality
Most new Android versions have traditionally been fairly straightforward: You get the software on your device, and you can immediately see what new stuff it introduces into your phone-using experience.
Android 13, in contrast, is a tale of two totally different operating system updates clumped together in one.
On the phone side of the equation, the software’s front-facing effects are incredibly limited — to the point where most folks will almost certainly have a tough time even detecting what’s different when it lands on their devices. There’s the usual slew of under-the-hood improvements in areas like privacy, security, and performance, of course, but that’s not stuff you see or are explicitly aware of. And when it comes to the surface, the actual noticeable changes are both subtle and slim.
I’m not exaggerating when I say the most common reaction to getting Android 13 will be something along the lines of: “Wait — what? Did I actually get the update? Has anything changed?!”
That’s a sharp contrast to the tablet and foldable phone front, where Android 13’s outward-facing impact will be immediately obvious. There, the software picks up with what Google started (and then, erm, quietly abandoned) a decade ago and aims to optimize Android for an exceptional large-screen experience.
And the changes on that end really are dramatic. Android 13 introduces a whole host of enhancements to the core user interface on tablets and foldables, with desktop-like productivity tools and a new and improved framework for encouraging developers to make the most of the expanded screen space on such devices.
Google/JR Raphael
Android 13’s desktop-like multitasking setup — a massive improvement that you likely won’t see anywhere for quite a while.
But here’s what’s weird: Unless we see an unprecedented miracle with Android upgrade delivery, no one’s gonna even get a glimpse at any of that for quite some time.
The reason is simple: Outside of Google and its own self-controlled Pixel devices, no Android device-maker is especially speedy at getting new Android upgrades into their customers’ hands. And right now, those non-Google companies are the only ones with devices where Android 13’s most meaningful changes will be relevant.
Sure, Google’s working on a new Pixel Tablet that looks to bring its own set of eyebrow-raising advancements into the Android universe. And yes, we’ve been hearing scuttlebutt about a foldable Pixel phone for something like 734 years now.
But as of this moment, the Pixel Tablet isn’t slated to arrive until sometime in 2023. And as for that mythical folding Pixel — well, your guess is as good as mine, but it seems all but certain it won’t be on store shelves within the next few weeks.
So that leaves us with the foldables by companies like Samsung along with a smattering of low-profile Android tablets that tend to get upgrades with the same urgency as a snail out for an afternoon stroll. For context, with 2021’s Android 12 update:
Samsung’s flagship-level Galaxy Tab S7 devices didn’t start seeing the software until this past January — a full quarter of a year after Android 12’s release.
The previous-gen top-of-the-line Galaxy Tab S6 tablet waited seven-and-a-half months to see its Android 12 update’s arrival.
The company’s current foldable flagship, the Galaxy Z Fold 3, had about a quarter-of-a-year wait for its delivery.
And those results were Samsung’s swiftest yet, following years of even more lackluster Android upgrade performance. (Samsung aside, it’s honestly not even worth thinking about how other Android device-makers are faring in this department these days.)
That creates a situation now where Google’s putting one of its most ambitious Android software updates out into the world — and we’re likely still months away from being able to experience its most significant elements in action. So, yeah: awkward, to say the very least.
But while Android 13’s arrival may seem anticlimactic at first, know that what we’re about see is only just scratching the surface. And know that the full Android 13 story will become apparent eventually — even if it’s awkwardly out of sight and invisible for now.
Want even more Googley knowledge? Sign up for my free newsletter to get next-level tips and insight in your inbox every Friday.
I’ve long believed companies should offer workers a choice in the technology they use in the office and when working remote. Doing so lets employees use what they feel is the best choice of devices for their work, it can help attract and retain staff, it lessens the likelihood workers will go rogue and source their own technology (a.k.a. shadow IT), and it establishes a positive relationship between IT and the rest of an organization.
Companies like IBM and SAP have documented their experiences in moving to an employee-choice model and have declared it a success. But does that mean it would work for every company? And how do you decide which way to go?
The most important question in developing (or expanding) an employee-choice model is determining how much choice to allow. Offer too little and you risk undermining the effort’s benefits. Offer too much and you risk a level of tech anarchy that can be as problematic as unfettered shadow IT. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Every organization has unique culture, requirements/expectations, and management capabilities. An approach that works in a marketing firm would differ from a healthcare provider, and a government agency would need a different approach than a startup.
Options also vary depending on the devices employees use — desktop computing and mobile often require differing approaches, particularly for companies that employ a BYOD program for smartphones.
PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, and other desktops
Most employee-choice programs focus on desktops and laptops. The default choice is typically basic: do you want a Windows PC or a Mac? Most often, the choice only extends to the platform, not specific models (or in the case of PCs, a specific manufacturer). Keeping the focus on just two platforms eases administrative overhead and technical support requirements. It also allows companies to leverage volume purchases from one partner in order to receive bulk discounts.
The rise of Chromebooks in business expands that choice, as does the use of other operating systems such as varying flavors of Linux or specific versions of Windows. Although Windows 11 has been out for some time now, many organizations are still tied to Windows 10 — partly for simplicity of support and partly because many older PCs don’t meet the requirement of Windows 11.
Google is making a play for the enterprise by offering ChromeOS Flex, which turns aging PCs and Macs into Chromebooks. This allows companies to continue to use machines that have dated or limited hardware, but it also means adding support for ChromeOS devices. Because Flex is so new, it’s not clear just how feasible it is with varyious hardware configurations.
Then there’s the option of going beyond just specific platforms. Although hardware uniformity makes it easier to deploy, manage, and support a fleet of devices, some users might need specific models, specs, or manufacturers. And even a minimal amount of hardware choice can greatly expand the overhead for deployment and support, particularly when you use multiple manufacturers.
Cloud-based work management platform Monday.com is branching out into customer relationship management (CRM) software, with the launch of a fully-customizable Monday Sales CRM.
The launch is the first of five job-specific products to be launched by the software company. Together, they will aim to better support teams working across sales, marketing, software development, and project management.
The new CRM platform has been built on Monday’s customizable no-code framework, Work OS, and allows users to manage their sales cycle and unify all customer processes on a single platform.
For example, once a deal is completed, Monday Sales CRM will immediately create a new account to start client onboarding, surface any data related to a specific account, and automatically cross-sync customer data across departments, removing the need for a dedicated account administrator.
In addition to unifying the sales process, Monday Sales CRM also allows users to automate repetitive tasks, track team goals, manage post-sale activities, and fast-track the sales hiring process.
Monday Sales CRM integrates with Gmail and Microsoft Outlook to send, receive and automatically log sent emails and notifies users when a lead opens or replies to an email. The tool also integrates with popular third-party enterprise applications and services, such as Salesforce, Hubspot, Slack, Aircall, Mailchimp, PandaDoc, and Docusign.
Ron Kimhi, Monday Sales CRM product lead, said that as organizations continue to digitize their operations, the need for a unified cross-department customer view becomes more pressing.
“We’re building a CRM that is fast, flexible and breaks down departmental silos to connect teams across entire organizations, which increases efficiency and results,” he said. “Our new approach to CRM is unified but also very easy to use, ensuring a seamless journey from prospect to customer and beyond, optimizing daily teamwork, team satisfaction, and success.”
Monday Sales CRM is available to customers as of this week and pricing ranges from a free plan, to $10 (£8.50) for the basic package, and up to $25 (£20) for pro.
As I said the other week, small businesses can still do well by sticking with their own servers. That said, many of them are also moving toward the cloud.
We’re in a time of transition: as the most recent annual Flexera State of the Cloud Report showed, 53% of small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) — those with 1,000 or fewer employees — spend more than $1.2 million annually on the cloud.
That’s a jump from 38% who did so just two years ago.
Flexera predicts that within the next year, 63% of SMB workloads and 62% of SMB data will reside in a public cloud. That’s a significant increase.
Several things are driving the shift.
One you might not think of is the COVID-19 pandemic. However, because the pandemic kept IT staffers out of the office and server rooms, 66% of respondents said cloud usage was higher than they’d initially planned.
So, where are your SMB peers going?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to be the leader of the pack. But AWS is no longer having its own way. Indeed, its market share has declined. For example, last year, 53% of SMBs were on AWS.
This year, to date, it’s only 31%.
For bigger businesses, Microsoft Azure has caught up. In some areas, it’s even beating AWS. Who would have guessed that even three years ago?
The same is true with SMBs: Azure is catching up with AWS. And Google Cloud Platform is in third place and gaining.
For enterprises, Oracle Cloud is fourth. Interestingly, the percentage of SMB respondents who report running significant workloads in Oracle Cloud has more than doubled, from 6% to 15% over the last year.
Looking ahead, 31% of SMBs with future projects — indicated by the combination of the clouds they’re experimenting with and planning to use — demonstrated the most interest in the Google Cloud Platform.
It’s followed closely in a three-way tie at 25% by Azure, IBM Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud.
Remember that fewer businesses use just one cloud service, less than 11%. The vast majority, 89%, rely on two or more.
We call that multi-cloud, but that implies a real strategy: that managers have a single pane of glass to watch over all cloud usage. Unfortunately, that’s not, from what I’ve seen, happening.
Instead, companies tend to pick one cloud for business storage, such as Dropbox or iCloud; another for office Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), such as Google Workspace or Microsoft 365; and yet another for a company’s own apps.
That last one is where you’ll find AWS, Azure, and the other so-called hyper clouds.
Sure, we want to have a central cloud team or a cloud center of excellence (CCOE). Their job is to provide centralized controls, tools, and best practices and to speed up cloud adoption by centralizing expertise while reducing costs and risk.
Many small businesses, 64%, have such teams.
I’ll be honest, though, I haven’t been impressed by many I’ve seen.
If we look at business cloud concerns, you can see why. Our No. 1 concern with a bullet is security. Generally, we trust the cloud more than we once did.
That said, we’re still worried about what might happen to our office and data if something goes awry with our cloud.
Right behind those security worries is a simple fact that no one — and I mean no one —has enough in-house cloud expertise. There are simply not enough cloud experts to go around.
And, just because someone is, for instance, an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner doesn’t mean they can help a bit with your Google Cloud. Nor can a Google Cloud Digital Leader help you run AWS.
Finally, everyone needs help managing their cloud spending.
Many of us first moved to the cloud to save money. Now that we’ve made that move, we’re finding out that losing money is too easy unless we keep a close eye on our cloud cash flow.
Put all these factors together, and it’s easy to see why 57% of all organizations outsource at least some public cloud work. Indeed, 26% engage cloud Managed Service Providers (MSPs) for most of their cloud use.
This is a smart move.
While I love in-house expertise, cloud experts cost a pretty penny. So for many SMBs, as we keep moving into the cloud, I suggest you seriously consider hiring an MSP.
Like it or not, the cloud is the future, and you’ll need all the help you can get to make the cloud work for you.
Part of the Pixel’s primary appeal is the phone’s phenomenal software. All Android experiences are not created equal, as anyone who’s spent seven seconds with an out-of-the-box Samsung setup can tell you, and Google’s clean and simple approach to Android is a huge piece of what makes a Pixel so pleasant to use.
Still, while a Pixel may be perfectly peachy from the moment you power it on, Google’s smartphone software is full of hidden features and advanced options that can make your experience even more exceptional.
And whether you’re setting up a shiny new Pixel 6a right now or cradling an older Pixel model in your suspiciously sticky paw, taking the time to think through some of your phone’s most easily overlooked settings can take your Pixel adventure to a whole new level.
So grab whatever Pixel you’ve got, grab yourself a grape soda for good measure, and let’s unearth some of your phone’s greatest Googley secrets. And be sure to come check out my free Pixel Academy e-course to uncover even more advanced intelligence lurking within your favorite Pixel phone when you’re done.
Google Pixel setting No. 1: Your friendly phone-holding genie
Some of the Pixel’s most practical features revolve around the brilliant bits of Googley goodness available on the phone calling front — and yet, most of those elements are off by default and barely emphasized in Google’s marketing. Go figure, eh?
First and foremost is the Pixel’s impossibly useful Hold for Me system, which will automatically recognize when you’re placed on hold on a call and offer to shoulder the burden for you. The system will actually monitor the call on your behalf and then audibly alert you when a real (alleged) human comes back on the line — so you can go about drinking your grape soda and playing your tiddlywinks without having to worry about missing a thing.
JR
Hold the phone, though: It’s up to you to first find and activate the thing. Otherwise, that fizzy purple beverage and delightfully odd pastime of yours will kept on hold indefinitely.
So here’s the answer — provided you’re palming a Pixel in the US, Australia, or Canada, where the feature is presently available:
Open up your Pixel’s phone app.
Tap the three-dot icon in the upper-right corner and select “Settings.”
Tap “Hold for Me.”
Flip the toggle on the screen that comes up into the on position.
And that’s it: Now just wait for your next rage-inducing customer service call and look on your Pixel’s screen for the offer to hold on your behalf — and try not to rub your newfound power in your iPhone-carrying companions’ faces too much, all right?
Google Pixel setting No. 2: Your call interception assistant
But while the Pixel’s spam-blocking basics are on by default, your phone’s most advanced annoyance blockers require you to enable ’em once and opt into their magic.
So first and foremost, hop back into your Pixel Phone app’s settings, and this time:
Tap the line labeled “Spam and Call Screen,” then tap “Call Screen.”
Under “Unknown Call Settings,” tap “Spam” and change its setting to “Silently decline.”
Next, tap “Possibly faked numbers” and change its setting to “Automatically screen; decline robocalls.”
If you really want to go all out, consider adjusting the screening behavior for private or hidden callers, too, so that your Pixel automatically screens those sorts of calls to find out who’s calling and what they want before buggin’ you with any buzzing. Just be aware that you might end up interfering with legitimate calls from doctors’ offices and other such venues with that setting enabled, so use your own best judgment as to whether it makes sense for you.
Call Screen is available on Pixels in the US as well as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the UK. If you aren’t in one of those areas, don’t panic: We’ll get to some less geographically restricted features in a minute.
Google Pixel setting No. 3: Your business call IQ booster
Spam calls aside, one of the biggest phone-related annoyances in our modern lives is the cryptic incoming call from a company. Are they calling for a real reason? Is it actually important? Or is it just more time-wasting, patience-testing poppycock?
Your Pixel can help separate the real from the rubbish. Just march your way back into those Phone app settings again, and:
Once more, tap “Spam and Call Screen.”
Then tap the toggle next to “Verified Calls” to turn it into the on position.
Now, whenever a “participating business” dares to interrupt your life with an unsolicited call, your Pixel will show the company’s name and logo so you know it’s legitimate and also show you the reason it’s calling (e.g. “to annoy the living daylights out of you”) right on your screen.
Not bad, eh?
Google Pixel setting No. 4: Your phone menu magician
Maybe my favorite Pixel phone feature of all is a relatively recent addition called Direct My Call. It’s available only in the US and with English at the moment — grumble, grumble, sorry, international Pixel comrades! — but if you’re in the States and speaking something vaguely reminiscent of the English language, it can be a massive hassle-saver and one of the greatest advantages to having a Pixel in your pocket.
Plain and simple, Direct My Call senses when you’ve entered the hellscape of a company phone maze and shows you all the available options as tap-ready buttons on your screen. That way, you can skip over the typical test of your sanity and avoid having to listen to every flippin’ option at every point along the way.
And all you’ve gotta do is enable it once:
Make your way back to your Phone app’s settings and tap “Direct My Call.”
Now flip the toggle next to “Direct My Call” into the on position.
Do a joyous little jig of celebration and then be sure to look at your screen the next time you find yourself in phone menu hell.*
JR
*Joyous jig optional but highly recommended.
Google Pixel setting No. 5: Your business-finding BFF
All right — one last phone-specific setting for your favorite Pixel product.
When you need to dial a nearby business, your Pixel can save you the step of searching for its name, finding the number, then tapping that or copying it to get back into your Phone app and ready make the call.
Yeesh — forget that mess. Save yourself steps and needless brain-aches by simply searching for the business you want directly in your Pixel’s Phone app and then placing the call right then and there, in a single streamlined spot.
First, you need to activate all of the related options:
Gallop your way back into those Phone app settings one final time.
Tap the line labeled “Nearby places.”
Make sure the main “Nearby places” toggle is on — which it probably will be.
Next, tap the toggle next to “Personalized search results” to flip it into the on position. That’ll let the Phone app reference your regular ol’ search history when looking for business results to increase the odds of offering up the place you want right away.
And finally, tap the “Location permission” line to grant the Phone app the permission it needs to operate intelligently.
Another one down. And now we’re ready to think about a couple of broader, non-calling-specific Pixel features worth finding.
Google Pixel setting No. 6: Your song superbrain
You know that feeling when a song is playing and you can’t for the life of you figure out what it is? (FYI, there’s at least a 70% chance it’s something by Michael Bolton.)
Your Pixel can help — by proactively identifying any song playing in your vicinity and putting its name and the artist responsible for it right on your lock screen.
JR
To get the feature going:
Head into your Pixel system settings (by swiping down twice from the top of the screen and then tapping the gear-shaped icon on the panel that appears).
Tap “Display” followed by “Lock screen” and “Now Playing.”
Flip the toggle next to “Identify songs playing nearby” into the on position.
Go ahead and flip the toggle next to “Show search button on lock screen” into the on position while you’re there, too. That’ll give you a manual button on the lock screen to start up a sound search when a song is playing and your phone can’t (or maybe just chooses not to, due to an understandable moment of Bolton overload) identify it for you.
Google Pixel setting No. 7: Your on-demand song memory
Speaking of your Pixel’s song-identifying prowess, you’d be forgiven for forgetting, but your phone actually maintains an ongoing list of every single song it identifies throughout your day.
Make it extra-easy to access that treasure trove of Bolton ballads by placing a one-tap shortcut directly on your Pixel’s home screen:
Head back into that same area of your Pixel settings we were just spelunkin’ around — the “Now Playing” section within “Display” and then “Lock screen.”
See the line labeled “Now Playing history”? Tap it. Tap it with gusto, garsh dern it!
Look for the option at the top of the screen that comes up next to add a shortcut onto your home screen.
One more tap there, and ta-da: Every song your Pixel picks up during the day will always be a single press away.
JR
And with that, we’ve made it through our first set of smart Pixel settings worth changing. Stay tuned for a second set of stellar Pixel settings soon — and don’t forget to come join my free Pixel Academy e-course to unearth oodles of outstanding hidden features and time-saving tricks in the meantime.
Part of the Pixel’s primary appeal is the phone’s phenomenal software. All Android experiences are not created equal, as anyone who’s spent seven seconds with an out-of-the-box Samsung setup can tell you, and Google’s clean and simple approach to Android is a huge piece of what makes a Pixel so pleasant to use.
Still, while a Pixel may be perfectly peachy from the moment you power it on, Google’s smartphone software is full of hidden features and advanced options that can make your experience even more exceptional.
And whether you’re setting up a shiny new Pixel 6a right now or cradling an older Pixel model in your suspiciously sticky paw, taking the time to think through some of your phone’s most easily overlooked settings can take your Pixel adventure to a whole new level.
So grab whatever Pixel you’ve got, grab yourself a grape soda for good measure, and let’s unearth some of your phone’s greatest Googley secrets. And be sure to come check out my free Pixel Academy e-course to uncover even more advanced intelligence lurking within your favorite Pixel phone when you’re done.
Pixel setting No. 1: Your friendly phone-holding genie
Some of the Pixel’s most practical features revolve around the brilliant bits of Googley goodness available on the phone calling front — and yet, most of those elements are off by default and barely emphasized in Google’s marketing. Go figure, eh?
First and foremost is the Pixel’s impossibly useful Hold for Me system, which will automatically recognize when you’re placed on hold on a call and offer to shoulder the burden for you. The system will actually monitor the call on your behalf and then audibly alert you when a real (alleged) human comes back on the line — so you can go about drinking your grape soda and playing your tiddlywinks without having to worry about missing a thing.
JR
Hold the phone, though: It’s up to you to first find and activate the thing. Otherwise, that fizzy purple beverage and delightfully odd pastime of yours will kept on hold indefinitely.
So here’s the answer — provided you’re palming a Pixel in the US, Australia, or Canada, where the feature is presently available:
Open up your Pixel’s phone app.
Tap the three-dot icon in the upper-right corner and select “Settings.”
Tap “Hold for Me.”
Flip the toggle on the screen that comes up into the on position.
And that’s it: Now just wait for your next rage-inducing customer service call and look on your Pixel’s screen for the offer to hold on your behalf — and try not to rub your newfound power in your iPhone-carrying companions’ faces too much, all right?
Pixel setting No. 2: Your call interception assistant
But while the Pixel’s spam-blocking basics are on by default, your phone’s most advanced annoyance blockers require you to enable ’em once and opt into their magic.
So first and foremost, hop back into your Pixel Phone app’s settings, and this time:
Tap the line labeled “Spam and Call Screen,” then tap “Call Screen.”
Under “Unknown Call Settings,” tap “Spam” and change its setting to “Silently decline.”
Next, tap “Possibly faked numbers” and change its setting to “Automatically screen; decline robocalls.”
If you really want to go all out, consider adjusting the screening behavior for private or hidden callers, too, so that your Pixel automatically screens those sorts of calls to find out who’s calling and what they want before buggin’ you with any buzzing. Just be aware that you might end up interfering with legitimate calls from doctors’ offices and other such venues with that setting enabled, so use your own best judgment as to whether it makes sense for you.
Call Screen is available on Pixels in the US as well as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the UK. If you aren’t in one of those areas, don’t panic: We’ll get to some less geographically restricted features in a minute.
Pixel setting No. 3: Your business call IQ booster
Spam calls aside, one of the biggest phone-related annoyances in our modern lives is the cryptic incoming call from a company. Are they calling for a real reason? Is it actually important? Or is it just more time-wasting, patience-testing poppycock?
Your Pixel can help separate the real from the rubbish. Just march your way back into those Phone app settings again, and:
Once more, tap “Spam and Call Screen.”
Then tap the toggle next to “Verified Calls” to turn it into the on position.
Now, whenever a “participating business” dares to interrupt your life with an unsolicited call, your Pixel will show the company’s name and logo so you know it’s legitimate and also show you the reason it’s calling (e.g. “to annoy the living daylights out of you”) right on your screen.
Not bad, eh?
Pixel setting No. 4: Your phone menu magician
Maybe my favorite Pixel phone feature of all is a relatively recent addition called Direct My Call. It’s available only in the US and with English at the moment — grumble, grumble, sorry, international Pixel comrades! — but if you’re in the States and speaking something vaguely reminiscent of the English language, it can be a massive hassle-saver and one of the greatest advantages to having a Pixel in your pocket.
Plain and simple, Direct My Call senses when you’ve entered the hellscape of a company phone maze and shows you all the available options as tap-ready buttons on your screen. That way, you can skip over the typical test of your sanity and avoid having to listen to every flippin’ option at every point along the way.
And all you’ve gotta do is enable it once:
Make your way back to your Phone app’s settings and tap “Direct My Call.”
Now flip the toggle next to “Direct My Call” into the on position.
Do a joyous little jig of celebration and then be sure to look at your screen the next time you find yourself in phone menu hell.*
JR
*Joyous jig optional but highly recommended.
Pixel setting No. 5: Your business-finding BFF
All right — one last phone-specific setting for your favorite Pixel product.
When you need to dial a nearby business, your Pixel can save you the step of searching for its name, finding the number, then tapping that or copying it to get back into your Phone app and ready make the call.
Yeesh — forget that mess. Save yourself steps and needless brain-aches by simply searching for the business you want directly in your Pixel’s Phone app and then placing the call right then and there, in a single streamlined spot.
First, you need to activate all of the related options:
Gallop your way back into those Phone app settings one final time.
Tap the line labeled “Nearby places.”
Make sure the main “Nearby places” toggle is on — which it probably will be.
Next, tap the toggle next to “Personalized search results” to flip it into the on position. That’ll let the Phone app reference your regular ol’ search history when looking for business results to increase the odds of offering up the place you want right away.
And finally, tap the “Location permission” line to grant the Phone app the permission it needs to operate intelligently.
Another one down. And now we’re ready to think about a couple of broader, non-calling-specific Pixel features worth finding.
Pixel setting No. 6: Your song superbrain
You know that feeling when a song is playing and you can’t for the life of you figure out what it is? (FYI, there’s at least a 70% chance it’s something by Michael Bolton.)
Your Pixel can help — by proactively identifying any song playing in your vicinity and putting its name and the artist responsible for it right on your lock screen.
JR
To get the feature going:
Head into your Pixel system settings (by swiping down twice from the top of the screen and then tapping the gear-shaped icon on the panel that appears).
Tap “Display” followed by “Lock screen” and “Now Playing.”
Flip the toggle next to “Identify songs playing nearby” into the on position.
Go ahead and flip the toggle next to “Show search button on lock screen” into the on position while you’re there, too. That’ll give you a manual button on the lock screen to start up a sound search when a song is playing and your phone can’t (or maybe just chooses not to, due to an understandable moment of Bolton overload) identify it for you.
Pixel setting No. 7: Your on-demand song memory
Speaking of your Pixel’s song-identifying prowess, you’d be forgiven for forgetting, but your phone actually maintains an ongoing list of every single song it identifies throughout your day.
Make it extra-easy to access that treasure trove of Bolton ballads by placing a one-tap shortcut directly on your Pixel’s home screen:
Head back into that same area of your Pixel settings we were just spelunkin’ around — the “Now Playing” section within “Display” and then “Lock screen.”
See the line labeled “Now Playing history”? Tap it. Tap it with gusto, garsh dern it!
Look for the option at the top of the screen that comes up next to add a shortcut onto your home screen.
One more tap there, and ta-da: Every song your Pixel picks up during the day will always be a single press away.
JR
And with that, we’ve made it through our first set of smart Pixel settings worth changing. Stay tuned for a second set of stellar Pixel settings soon — and don’t forget to come join my free Pixel Academy e-course to unearth oodles of outstanding hidden features and time-saving tricks in the meantime.
Microsoft announced its fourth quarter 2022 results yesterday, posting revenue of $52 billion, up 12% year-on-year. However, the company’s net income was relatively flat at $16.7 billion, at a much more modest increase of just 2%.
In a call with analysts, Microsoft chief financial officer, Amy Hood, said unfavorable foreign exchange rate movement within the quarter negatively impacted revenue and diluted earnings per share, while extended production shutdowns in China and a deteriorating PC market had contributed to a negative Windows OEM revenue impact of more than $300 million.
The scaling down of Microsoft’s operations in Russia also led to the company recording operating expenses of $126 million related to bad debt expense, asset impairments, and severance.
Microsoft’s cloud business continued to go from strength to strength however, surpassing $25 billion for the first time in a quarter and growing at 28% year-on-year.
Segment results
Microsoft’s intelligent cloud segment—which includes Azure public cloud services, SQL Server, Windows Server, and enterprise services—was the primary beneficiary of that growth, up 20% for the quarter, at $20.9 billion.
Server products and cloud services revenue also increased 22% to $3.4 billion, driven by Azure and other cloud services, which saw revenue grow by 40%.
Microsoft also saw its productivity and business processes segment, which includes Office software, increase 13% this quarter to $16.6 billion.
Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 9% to $807 million, while Office 365 Commercial revenue grew 15%. Office Commercial products revenue declined 32%, driven by a continued customer shift to cloud-based offerings.
LinkedIn revenue increased $768 million, or 26%, while Dynamics CRM products and cloud services revenue increased 19%, driven by its cloud-based Dynamics 365 growth of 31%.
While the other segments have performed well this quarter, Microsoft’s personal computing segment struggled, with revenue increasing by only 2%, totaling $270 million. The once-thriving PC market has been blighted with problems in the last 12 months, due to manufacturing shutdowns leading to a steep decline in PC shipments.
Gaming revenue also decreased to $259 million or 7%, with Xbox content and services revenue decreasing by 6% and Xbox hardware revenue decreasing by 11%.
If you use an iPad, Mac, or both to get things done, you’ll be looking at Stage Manager when it ships this fall. It’s Apple’s latest attempt to improve multi-tasking on iPads and is available on Macs running macOS Ventura. You enable and disable Apple Stage Manager in the Control Center on Mac and iPad.
What is Apple Stage Manager?
Introduced at WWDC 2022, Stage Manager shows Apple is attempting to create a more harmonious interface between Macs and iPads. Stage Manager is a multitasking feature designed to organize your desktop better. The idea is that the things you are doing can be up front, while all the other applications you need access to are easily available.
It’s just one way Apple is attempting to help you stay focused, including the recently announced Focus Modes, upcoming improvements to single sign-on and more.
For me, Stage Manager is best when used with Universal Control, as it enables you to have multiple open apps across your Macs and iPads, which makes it much easier to migrate between apps while having a unique overview of what you are doing – while using the same keyboard and mouse to handle them all.
What does Stage Manager do?
Open windows are shown at the left-hand side of the display in the form of small screenshots, which will seem familiar to anyone who uses Spaces on the Mac.
The idea is that the window of the app you are working with is displayed in the center, with other open apps and windows arranged on the left in order of recency. This makes it easier to dip in and out of other apps while maintaining a visual sense of what is there.
On iPads, users can create overlapping windows of different sizes in a single view, drag-and-drop windows from the side, or open apps from the Dock to create groups of apps for faster, more flexible multitasking. Stage Manager also unlocks full external display support with resolutions of up to 6K; this lets you arrange the ideal workspace, working with up to four apps on iPad and four apps on the external display.
[Also read: Review: Apple’s M2 MacBook Air]
How to enable Stage Manager on a Mac
Stage Manager is enabled by default on Macs running macOS Ventura, but you can switch it on and off using a toggle in Control Center. You are also able to change which apps are shown in Stage Manager, though you only get two choices: Show Recent Apps, which will show recently used apps on the left side, and Hide Recent Apps, which hides those apps until you bring your mouse to the left side.
(My observation after using my preferred “Hide Recent Apps” state: if you already use Hot Corners and Universal Control you may find this extra contextual load a little taxing, but it is worth persisting until it becomes habitual.)
You can also add Stage Manager to the Menu bar: Open System Settings>Control Center>Stage Manager and check Show in the Menu Bar.
How to use Stage Manager on a Mac
Launch the applications you want to use once you have enabled Stage Manager. Depending on your Recent Apps setting (see above) you’ll either see small icons depicting those apps appear to the left of your display, or will be able to invoke them by moving your cursor to the left edge of the screen. You can then drag the app you want to use along with your existing primary app from the left to the center.
The two apps are now grouped and available side by side in the Stage Manager window. They are also visually represented as two apps in the view.
To open a different app or pair of apps you must tap the icon in the Stage Manager view.
How to enable Stage Manager on an iPad
You also use Control Center to activate Stage Manager on an iPad – just swipe down from the top-right of the screen and tap the Stage Manager icon — it looks like a box with three dots to the left of it. Tap it again to switch it off. Once enabled, the apps you’re using will appear at the center of the screen with a left-hand section showing all your currently active (but unused) apps.
Another benefit for iPad users is that once you have enabled Stage Manager, you can resize windows by dragging the curved white line at the bottom right corner of an app. To close, minimize and find other options to handle an active app, just tap the three-dot icon you find a the top-center of the app; this is also the control you’ll use to ungroup apps, just tap the last (dash) icon.
How to use Stage Manager on an iPad
As with a Mac, you can set Stage Manager to show or hide Recent Apps and see which of your applications are currently active. To open a new app, or pairing of apps, just tap the icon in the Stage Manager view.
What do you need to run Stage Manager?
To run Apple’s Stage Manager UI you’ll need to be using a Mac or iPad running macOS Ventura or iPad OS 16. The feature is compatible with any Mac capable of running macOS Ventura, but is only available to iPads equipped with an Apple ‘M’ processor. That confines it to the current iterations of iPad Pro (11-in. and 12.9-in.) and the recently introduced iPad Air.
Macs that support macOS Ventura:
iMac (2017 and later)
MacBook Pro (2017 and later)
MacBook Air (2018 and later)
MacBook (2017 and later)
Mac Pro (2019 and later)
iMac Pro
Mac mini (2018 and later)
If your iPad lacks an M1 chip or your Mac is not included in the above list, Stage Manager will not work.
A work in progress
Stage Manager is beta software, which means how it works or the features it provides could still change before the feature appears, in or after new operating systems ship in early fall. Drop me a line if anything changes and I’ll revise this guide.
Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.
ANKARA, Turkey -- A Turkish airline company whose jets were used to fly former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn from Japan to Lebanon said an employee falsified records and that Ghosn's name did not appear on any documentation related to the flights. Ghosn ear…
JR
JR
JR
JR
JR
JR
JR
JR
JR
Alphawave
TSMC
Google/JR Raphael
JR 
JR 
JR 
JR 
