Welcome to unite five mac daily for thursday, november fourteenth, twenty twenty four. I'm your host, chance Miller. Leading up today, the apple backed group that oversees the matter smart device standard has launched its later big update matter one point four has a built with a variety of improvements that IT hopes will further advance smart home capabilities.
A big focus in most matter updates is adding support for new device types in matter one point for there are a variety of new supported devices that relate to energy management. New device categories include solar power batteries, heat pumps and water hears. There are also new energy management features supported for electric car charges, thermostats and more.
Finally, inward smart home switches for lights and fans are now given their own device types. Instead of being categorized as lights, this should provide more robust settings and more powerful automation features. In addition, new device types, there's also a new multi admin feature introduced this part of matter one point four.
The matter consortium says that this should make smart home management easier, letting people share multiple accessories with single. These are consent, enabling existing and new devices to connect to multiple ecosystems automatically. So if you've ever tried to juggle device setup, betwen multiple platforms like alexa, google home and home kit matter one point four should make that a lot Better.
But as is the case with most updates to matter and matter in general, these changes won't necessarily offer immediate improvements to your smart home experience. Instead, the focus is on laying the groundwork for future devices and making IT easier to know which platforms the devices you buy will actually support. There are over two hundred eighty companies that are members of the matter group and now that matter one point four has been announced, its up to those companies to formally introduce feature support to their respective platforms.
Next today, as part of its dramatically design, apple moved to the power burden on the inform mac mini from the back of the machine to the bottom. In a new interview, apple executives greg jazz, ack and john turn is addressed. What's turned out to be a surprisingly controversial decision in the interview, tennis and jazz act explained that the dramatically smaller form factor of the magni forced apple to find a new position for the power button.
They said, quote, we shrink the size of IT so much. It's equivalent to half the size of the previous generation. So we needed to put the power bug in the most appropriate spot because it's so small, it's convenient to press, just talk your finger in there, hit the button.
In fact, the most important thing is you pretty much never use the power button on your mac. I don't even remember the last time I turned on a mac in the quote. Various hair downs have also shown the links to which apple has gone to make the mac many smaller and more compact.
While still maintaining a powerful infantry ent thermal system 是 the overwhelming majority of people。 The decision to move the para button to the bottom of the mac mini is a non issue. And if you are someone who completely shuts down their computer at the end of every day, this is apple clearly telling you that you don't need to do that, especially in the age of apple silicon.
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K. Consumer rights group, which is leading a lawsuit against apple targeting the companies over cloud services on iphone and ipad. The multi billion dollar lawsuit argues that apple forces IOS device users to buy eyes cloud storage, as IT does not allow other cloud services to integrate directly with the system for data back up.
Apple, meanwhile, said IT rejects any suggestion that I like practices are anti competitive. The class action lawsuit is looking for damages of about seventy euros per individual, although that figure could dramatically change, which argues that apple is abusing its position in the market with unlawful conduct. Effectively tying ee cloud subscriptions to iphone and ipad usage.
IT says apple favors I cloud over other cloud storage services, preventing users from watching a way to I cloud in enabling apple to charge higher fees for I cloud. Then I would if there was more competition, you can be a claim ant in the lawsuit if you use an IOS device with eyelet oud at any point after october twenty fifteen and live in the U. K, which estimates that around forty billion people would qualify with a total expected payout of around three billion dollars if the suit is found in, which is favor, claims will then be able to apply and receive their share of that payout.
But IT may take years before a final decision is reached, a similar class action lawsuit about apple's eyes. Cloud dominance is also currently being advanced in courts in the united states that laws IT takes issue with the five gig bites of free storage offered by apple and focuses on the fact that iphone users only have one option when IT comes to full device backup PS the lack of competition means that apple can limit free storage on I cloud to five gigabytes and know that most people will need to subscribe and pay for more storage just to back up their devices and photos. Again, both of these cases are now progressing through the court systems in the U.
K. And the U. S. And we are likely years away from any changes or result for claimants that ups up another episode of ninety five mac daily. As always, you can find all of the latest apple news on nine five mcdowall com. Follow along with me on threads at chance h Miller, and will be back tomorrow for a new episode of nineteen five mac daily.