Total Tech Solutions from Rohit.

The 6 Best iOS 16 Features Coming to iPhones

Apple's iOS 15 is an impressive mobile operating system, but Cupertino has significant changes in store for iOS 16, which launched on September 12th.
Lock Screen customization is at the forefront, but the other highly convenient improvements involve CarPlay, Dictation, Fitness, Health, Siri, and Wallet. Apple even has a new Safety Check privacy tool designed to prevent stalking. The new features enrich your experience across Apple’s many platforms, including iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and MacBook.
Apple iOS 16 should start rolling out early in the afternoon on Sept. 12, check out the features that we’re most excited to use.

1. Safety Check
As Apple moves toward a more unified, always-connected infrastructure, new privacy features must be devised to keep people safe from harm. Safety Check is designed as an emergency reset when you find yourself in danger.
We all share account information and subscriptions with our loved ones and friends, but these connections become a massive liability if the relationship sours. Far too often, vulnerable people find themselves at risk from a domestic or intimate partner. Safety Check lets you sign out of iCloud on all your devices, rebuke and reset access you’ve given to others, and limit messaging to just the device in your hand. It also stops sharing your location, should you find yourself in the dire situation where you don’t want an abusive partner to find you. The topic is bleak, but Safety Check's safeguards are vitally important.
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2. Personalized Lock Screen
Phones are easily one of the most personal devices we carry on a daily basis, so it makes sense that Apple is giving you more freedom to customize your handset. With iOS 16, the Lock Screen receives a significant overhaul that lets you perform many tweaks.
Featuring a new multilayered effect, Lock Screen places a photo's subject in front of the time, creating a cool layer of depth. You can also change the date and time's appearances using a range of font styles and color options.
Beyond this simple aesthetic improvement, the Lock Screen streamlines the widgets to function a bit more like they do in Apple Watch. As a result, the important information you want, such as calendar events, weather, battery levels, and alarms, is available at a glance.
A new Lock Screen gallery is included for further customization. You'll find wallpapers with dynamic weather effects, cultural moments like Pride and Unity, and graphically impressive astronomy wallpaper for a look at the Earth and solar system. You can even preset multiple Lock Screens, and swipe between favorites.
Notifications are set to receive a redesign in iOS 16. They'll roll up from the bottom of the screen to give you a clean, unobstructed view of the Lock Screen you’ve worked so hard to customize.
New to the Lock Screen are Live Activities, a feature that serves up real-time events. These can be as mundane as keeping track of an incoming Uber ride, the status of a food order delivery, or play-by-play sports info. They won't arrive with the initial launch of iOS 16, though. Look for it "later this year," Apple says
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3. iCloud Shared Photo Library
This is another iOS 16 feature that's not expected until later this year, but when it rolls out, users will be able to create and share an iCloud library with up to six family members, giving the collaborators the ability to add, remove, and customize photos. The function utilizes intelligent suggestions to share photos that include family or friends in the Shared Photo Library. These photos appear in each user’s Memories and Featured photos, which is a nice touch. This function is being extended to the Camera, too, so you can choose to send photos straight to the Shared Library with a simple toggle.

4. Edit Your iMessages
Ever send a text you really wish you hadn’t? Or are you one of those folks who seethes with anger when they spot a typo in a message that cannot be corrected? Well, fret not: iOS 16 is here to save you from texting faux pas because you can finally edit—and even recall—recently sent messages. You can also recover recently deleted messages and mark conversations as unread to remind yourself to look at them later.
Apple's SharePlay, meanwhile, is being expanded to Messages as well, so you can sync movies, songs, and other content, and share playback controls with whoever you’re messaging.

5. Improvements to Live Text and Visual Look Up
Your iPhone’s camera is a massively powerful tool, as is the technology it uses to interpret and recognize what the lens sees. Live Text, for example, uses your handset’s AI to recognize text in images, which is handy whenever you’re trying to translate something. This functionality is coming to video in iOS 16, so you can pause a clip and interact with the in-frame text.
Similarly, Visual Look Up lets you inspect and manipulate image subjects and transpose them into apps like Messages. This function is getting beefed up with iOS 16 to recognize more objects, such as statues, birds, and insects.

6. Apple Pay Later, Which Lets You...Pay Later
Everyone likes shopping, but expenses are tight during these trying times. To that end, Apple is giving you a surprisingly generous hand with iOS 16's Apple Pay Later. When buying items using Apple Pay, you can opt to pay later, which splits the purchase's cost into four equal payments that are spread across six weeks. Even better, there's zero interest and fees. In addition, Apple Pay Order Tracking delivers detailed receipt and order-tracking info directly to your Wallet.
Dictation receives more intuitive controls, letting you fluidly transition between voice and touch controls. If you’re dictating, the keyboard stays open and gives you the opportunity to tap within the text field to make changes, insert suggestions, or move the cursor without stopping the voice-to-text translation. The new Dictation automatically adds punctuation and emoji.
CarPlay goes next-gen with iOS 16. Ever drive around and wonder, “Gee, I wish my car was more like a phone?" Apple hears you, and is expanding its CarPlay features to better integrate with your vehicle. You will also be able to personalize your dashboard with different gauge cluster designs, widget support, and at-a-glance weather and music. Everything’s a computer nowadays; what’s the harm in letting them all communicate with one another? More information will come at a later date, with compatible vehicle announcements expected in late 2023.
Family Sharing gets a small update that lets parents or guardians suggest age-appropriate restrictions, and automatically set up new devices with existing parental controls. Additional screen time can be approved or declined directly through Messages.
Finally, Apple News introduces a My Sports section that enables you to better follow a beloved team or league. This includes stories from hundreds of top publishers, scores, schedules, and even highlights.

Russia Exploring Cyberattacks on US Critical Infrastructure, White House Says
The Biden administration cites 'evolving threat intelligence' indicating the Kremlin may be preparing cyberattacks to disrupt US critical infrastructure.
The White House has received new intelligence that Russia is “exploring options” for using cyberattacks to disrupt US critical infrastructure.
The Biden administration mentioned the potential threat on Monday in an alert urging US companies to be on guard. “There is no evidence of a specific cyberattack we are anticipating for,” Deputy National Security Advisor Anne Neuberger said in a White House briefing. But "there is some preparatory activity that we’re seeing.
“Preparatory activity could mean scanning websites, it could be hunting for vulnerabilities,” she added. “There’s a range of activities that malicious cyber actors use, whether they’re nation-state or criminals.”
For weeks now, the US has been warning about a potential cyberattack from Russia after the White House imposed crippling economic sanctions on the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine. Neuberger declined to go into details on what new intelligence the US has received. But she noted a "shift" in Russia’s intentions to carry out such an attack.
“To be clear, there is no certainty there will be a cyber incident on critical infrastructure,” she said. Nevertheless, last week the White House held classified briefings with the US companies it fears could be targeted. Today’s warning is meant to serve as a wider call to action for all private organizations to bolster their IT defenses.
“The majority of our critical infrastructure, as you know, is owned and operated by the private sector,” Neuberger said. “And those owners and operators have the ability and the responsibility to harden the systems and networks that we all rely on. We continue to see adversaries compromising systems that use known vulnerabilities for which there are patches. This is deeply troubling."
Europe may have already experienced one such cyberattack. Last month, US satellite internet provider Viasat suffered a major outage for users in Europe and Ukraine right as Russia began to invade the country. In addition, Ukraine has faced several waves of "destructive" malware attacks, capable of wiping entire Windows systems.
Neuberger said the US has been investigating the Viasat incident, but for now, the White House is refraining from pointing fingers at the Russian government.
To help the companies improve their IT defenses, the White House released a fact sheet with a long list of recommended practices. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency also published numerous guides. If a Russian cyberattack does occur against US companies, President Biden has said the US is prepared to strike back.

Intel P-Series and U-Series Bring 'Alder Lake' Chips to Ultraportable Laptops

Intel fires up thin and light laptops with 12th Generation processors and a new Evo specification.

Intel is bringing "Alder Lake" chips to ultraportable laptops with the new 12th Generation Intel Core P-Series and U-Series laptop processors.

By harnessing the same scalable architecture Intel introduced in the enthusiast-level Core i9-12900HK to laptops that use 28, 15, or even 9 watts of power, the company promises better performance and longer battery life, along with support for a slew of new features.
Intel has more up its sleeve than just the new processor models it's launching this week. It's also revamping the Intel Evo program, which is intended to call out some of the best features and capabilities you’ll find on a modern laptop when you're trying to decide which one to buy.
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New Architecture, New Tricks
The biggest changes coming to the P- and U-Series chips aren’t much of a surprise. Recent Alder Lake desktop and laptop processors feature Intel’s new Hybrid Performance architecture, a mixed-core approach that spreads processing duties across high-powered, performance-focused P-cores and lower-powered efficiency-focused E-cores, all on the same CPU.
The thinking behind this design shift is easy enough to follow. Performance-focused P-cores offer the same multi-thread capabilities that past Intel CPUs have had, delivering the expected annual bump in top performance, while background tasks and simple functions can be handled by the single-thread E-cores using significantly less battery power. The result should be enhanced performance that doesn’t sacrifice battery life.
With Intel’s sophisticated Thread Director managing the mix of processes across the multi-threaded P-Cores and single-thread E-cores, the new approach should shuffle tasks to the necessary P- and E-cores seamlessly.
But we’re still waiting to see those promises of ultra-efficiency pay off. When we tested the enthusiast-level Intel Core i9-12900HK, we saw category-leading processing muscle, but it came with the highest power draw among competitors like AMD and Apple, and the test unit’s short battery life wasn’t reassuring on the efficiency front.
Here’s hoping that the new P-Series and U-Series models can deliver the goods without the battery-draining power usage.
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Premium Performance: The 28-Watt P-Series
Unlike the 45-watt H-Series CPUs, the Intel P-Series is designed for high-performance, thin-and-light laptops, with up to 28 watts of power. These aren’t budget laptops, but performance-focused machines that pack a lot of capability into a premium package.
Intel estimates that the P-Series will provide 70% more processing oomph than past P-Series models, along with faster web browsing and office productivity. You’ll even be able to do basic photo editing on these systems, with 30% faster productivity speeds.
All told, Intel is introducing six new P-Series processor SKUs, with new models ranging up to a Core i7, with as many as 14 cores delivering 20 processor threads. The number of cores and the distribution of P- and E-cores will vary by model, but all feature a base power of 28 watts, and can scale up to 64 watts under Turbo power.

The new CPUs also get several platform updates, with baked-in support for Wi-Fi 6E (including Gig+ wireless) and Thunderbolt 4, plus DDR5 memory. Even your video calls should look better, thanks to Intel’s new image-processing unit for cleaner, more vibrant we**am streaming. They’ll sound better, too, with dynamic noise suppression and a clever bit of tech called Gaussian and Neural Accelerator, which is Intel’s AI-based tool that handles background blur and dynamic noise suppression to make your we**am dialog clearer.
Manufacturers will be able to take advantage of the processor’s PCIe 4.0 support, with up to eight lanes for peripheral devices and networking, and as many as 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 for better efficiency and productivity. USB bandwidth is doubled, with integrated USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, along with USB4 and Thunderbolt 4 support.
Ultra Efficiency: U-Series in 15 Watts and 9 Watts
Stepping down in power, the Intel U-Series is divided into two power categories: 15-watt and 9-watt. The 15-watt version will be found in more mainstream thin-and-light systems, while the 9-watt version is tailor made for detachable and foldable designs, offering many of the same upgrades accessible to the latest Windows tablets, as well as the foldable laptop designs being introduced by Lenovo, Asus, and others.
The 15-watt U-Series includes Core i7, i5, and i3 CPUs, as well as low-cost Pentium and Celeron processors. All feature the same hybrid architecture, with anywhere from five to 10 total processor cores, and power levels starting at 15 watts, but scaling up to 55 watts in Turbo mode.
The total number of cores and processing threads may be lower than other models, but these lower-powered CPUs still offer support for dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI 2.0 output for 4K display, and 6GHz Wi-Fi 6E support.
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Evo Evolves
Intel Evo is also getting an upgrade. Intel’s designation for laptops that meet a set of requirements for battery life and speedy wake times has been expanded, with the third-generation Evo specifications offering features like Instant Wake, biometric logins (using fingerprint or facial recognition), and seamless unlock with Bluetooth phone proximity.

New Evo requirements include the inclusion of integrated Intel Xe or optional Intel Arc discrete graphics, along with at least 8GB of dual-channel memory and 256GB PCIe/NVMe SSD storage. Even more exciting, Evo is now going beyond Windows, with Evo options for both Windows 11 and Chrome OS.

What Is Truth Social? All You Need to Know About Donald Trump's Social Network

With Truth Social, out today on iOS, the former president wants to 'stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech.' Can the fledgling social network get the job done?

Following Donald Trump's permanent ban from Twitter in 2021, the former US president decided to launch his own social network, dubbed Truth Social, which he claims will "stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech." It went live on —Presidents' Day in the US—here's what that means.

Why would Trump want his own social network? Just look at his (former) follower counts. Before his Twitter account was taken down, Trump had nearly 90 million followers, and he has 34 million followers on Facebook, which also banned him until at least January 2023.

If there's one thing Trump loved before and during his presidency, it was posting on the internet. According to an archive of his past tweets, Trump tweeted over 30 times a day on average by the end of his time in office. After he was banned, he returned to the internet with a short-lived blog that posted Twitter-like updates.
Instead of walking away from the millions of people who hang on his every word, Trump believes he can take control of the conversation and move those followers to Truth Social. If he can get even a small percentage of the people to follow him, this experiment will be a success for him.

Of course, money is also a big motivator, whether it be large investments in the company or another way to solicit small-dollar donations from followers.

There are two entities behind Truth Social. The first is Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which was formed in February 2021 by Donald Trump. The company also uses the name T Media Tech LLC in some places. As of January 2022, former US Rep. Devin Nunes serves as the organization's CEO.

The other company involved is Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), a publicly traded S**C founded by Miami banker Patrick Orlando. The two entities have entered into a merger agreement in order to make TMTG a publicly traded company. However, the combined entity has been under SEC investigation for potentially skirting securities laws.

The plan for TMTG, as a publicly traded company, would be to offer alternatives to mainstream media and social networks. Aside from Truth Social, the company is also working to launch a news network called TMTG News and a video-streaming service known as TMTG+. All three of these products will center on conservative viewership.

Who Is Truth Social For?
Do you belong on Truth Social? If you have to ask, the answer is probably no. This platform was not intended as a replacement for mainstream services like Twitter or Facebook. Rather, it's another social media platform designed to fight against a perceived "woke culture" and less about content moderation or accessibility.
Similar platforms have popped up over the years in an attempt to attract the attention of alt-right, far-right, extremist, and fringe groups. These spaces—such as Gab, Parler, and Telegram—have courted the right to varying degrees of success, and failure, as hate speech proliferated. Even Trump's former political advisor, Jason Miller, created his own right-wing social platform called Gettr back when Truth Social was just a rumor, but it has its own problems. Truth Social has formally partnered with Rumble, a video platform popular with the far right.

In an initial statement about his platform, Trump said Truth Social will have no "shadow-banning, throttling, demonetizing, or messing with algorithms for political manipulation,” which can be read as a reference to the de-platforming that has happened to many alt-right figures on mainstream social media sites over the years.
“We will not silence our fellow citizens simply because they might be wrong—or worse, because we think that Americans ‘can’t handle the truth,’” Trump said. Notably, though, the site's terms of service says your account can be suspended if you make fun of the platform.

Truth Social will no doubt be courting the people who use these rival platforms, as well as those who once followed Trump on Twitter and Facebook.

Truth Social bears more than a passing resemblance to Twitter, but that's not just because Twitter was Trump's platform of choice. Truth Social was created using an open-source license from Mastodon, which itself was initially created as an alternative to Twitter.