Posts Tagged → beta

AirPods Pro Beta Firmware Update Brings Improved Audio on Calls

When it comes to talking to my Mac, the audio quality for me is feast or famine. I’ve got a great podcasting microphone that I can turn on at any point and start talking to my Mac with very high-quality audio.

The flip side is that I’m using a Mac Studio, which does not have a built-in microphone. Neither does my Pro Display XDR, and I’ve never been particularly excited about putting a USB microphone on my desk when not talking into my podcasting mic. So, I’ve been solving this problem for the longest time by using AirPods.

If you put an AirPod in your ear, it records your voice to your Mac just fine. Well, let me make that sort of fine. The audio quality has never been anything worth writing home about. Making calls is particularly bad.

However, while making a call on my Test Mac running macOS Sequoia the other day (using AirPods Pro) I noticed the voice quality was much better. After a little sniffing around on the Internet, I discovered that this is thanks to a new beta firmware update on AirPods Pro.

Historically, the max audio quality would turn to garbage the moment you’re on a call using AirPods Pro’s microphones. But this latest beta firmware update allows for a sampling rate of up to 48 kHz.

I’m not sure how they pulled that off, but it is a vast improvement if you pay attention to that sort of thing.

Private Relay Data Slow-Down

I had an interesting issue with my Monterey Mac. Since I bought my fancy new EERO routers, I’ve been dripping in Internet. But suddenly the party was over. My connection was noticeably slow and laggy. After a bit of troubleshooting, I discovered Private Relay is the culprit.

Here’s my speed with Private Relay turned on.


Here’s my speed just minutes later on the same machine with Private Relay turned off. From 55 to 890! (Interestingly, upload got slower.)


Screen Shot 2021-08-05 at 15.39.24.png

I’m submitting a bug to Apple, and I’m sure they’re already onto this. Monterey hasn’t shipped yet and I expect when it does, it will not crush your Internet speed. But in the meantime, if you are thinking about running the public beta, you’ve been warned.

The Case for the iOS 14 Public Beta

Apple has now released the public beta for the new iOS 14, iPad OS, and macOS Big Sur. This is where everybody who writes about this stuff tells you how you should not install the betas. I am feeling contrary this year.

I have been running the beta on my iPhone and iPad since it was initially released, and I have had very few problems. The battery life is a little worse, but my apps all seem to work, and I’ve had no restarts or crashes. Everything seems to be working fine. I talked about this on the Mac Power Users recently. In my opinion, this year is more about the paint job than the engine. Granted, it is quite an extraordinary paint job, but it’s still paint. As a result, this beta feels pretty stable. I also suspect it is because they released it later in the year. Usually, WWDC happens in the first week of June, and this year didn’t happen until much later.

I have had a lot of fun trying these new beta widgets, and iOS 13 already looks old to me. Don’t blame me if you install it and your iPhone catches on fire, but a lot of us are stuck at home and having something new and shiny on our phones may be just the distraction we need.