How about a Periscope on your iPhone? | Face ID: Exclusive deep dive |Compared: MacBook Air and MacBook Pro

This week we’ll be considering a rumored Apple Special Events which may or may not be this month, plus what will be announced if it transpires, and why it’s periscope-up for a future iPhone. Today’s One More Thing compares the two most recently-released Mac laptops so you can decide which is the better buy for you. 

The Thing Nobody Told You has a deep-dive into Face ID, how it developed and how it’s about to change, with exclusive details from Apple execs. Plus, cool links from around the web and a farewell to the iMac Pro. 

I hope you’ll like it, but let me know your thoughts, positive or negative, please. You’ll find me at appleunboxed@forbes.com. 

AppleUnboxed is not affiliated with Apple Inc.

No, no, I’m not saying that mirrored viewing devices will rise up out of your iPhone body in the future, of course not. Although that might be fun.

Periscope cameras are those clever doohickeys which use mirrors and lenses to reflect light along the inside of a smartphone, for instance, to increase the zoom equivalent. 

According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from TF International Securities, this technology is coming to the iPhone, though not for another two years. Periscope cameras are a neat way of increasing focal length without fattening up the profile of a gadget. 

Physics dictate that for a camera with a focal length that’s the equivalent to 5x the zoom of the main camera, for example, you need greater actual distance between lens and sensor. A periscope makes this happen. Huawei has been excelling at this for years—even using multiple mirrors to bend the light repeatedly to increase the focal length as much as 10x. So, Apple, though late to the game if there’s no such camera until 2023, will none the less be a welcome new member of the Periscope Club.

Until this year, the iPhone only offered zoom equivalents of 2x. The iPhone 12 Pro Max (only the Max version, not the regular Pro) boasts a telephoto lens which is 2.5x that of the main wide lens. But to go further, periscopes offer a great alternative. You can’t miss them: instead of the regular circular glass, a persicope is rectangular because it’s the judiciously angled mirror that you’re looking at. Apple will undoubtedly ensure there's a design change to ensure the rectangular periscope is aesthetically pleasing among the circular lenses.

In these days of computational photography, the right glass is still crucial, so a move to adding a periscope camera will be a big step forward.

What do you think? Be honest. Drop me a line: appleunboxed@forbes.com.

Apple’s facial recognition system, called Face ID, first appeared on the iPhone X and has been on all top-end iPhones since then, and recent iPad Pro models. When it first appeared, there were many who wondered whether Apple had tried to get a new version of the fingerprint sensor, Touch ID, to work alongside it. 

Dan Riccio, Apple’s SVP of Hardware Engineering, told me a few weeks before the iPhone X went on sale, that that wasn’t true. “I heard some rumor that we couldn’t get Touch ID to work through the glass so we had to remove it. When we had line of sight on getting Face ID to be as good as it was, we knew that we could make the product we all wanted to do. We wanted to be all-in with this, that it could be a better solution. So, we spent no time looking at fingerprints on the back or through the glass or on the side because if we did those things they would be a distraction from enabling the thing we were trying to achieve, that is, Face ID in a high-quality way.”

And while some users were uncertain about switching away from Touch ID, Craig Federighi, SVP of Software Engineering, said he felt the new system was better because your thumb or finger is better placed on the screen: “With Touch ID you plant your finger on the Touch ID sensor which is a gesture of sorts and then click it awake. In this case you just swipe and it's very fast. And then my thumb is now in a position where it's ready to use the phone instead of being planted down at the bottom on the sensor. So, in terms of being ready to get using your phone I think it's quicker.”

Apple went all-in on Face ID, then. The company wasn’t even deterred by what people called the notch. Alan Dye, Alan Dye, VP of User Interface Design at the time has since become Apple’s vice president of Human Interface Design. In 2017, he told me, “We spent a great deal of time thinking about how we've got this amazing camera system packed into this space at the upper center of the display. Ultimately we felt really comfortable with this notion that we'll be really honest about it and allow the content to push out into these beautiful rounded corners. The TrueDepth camera system really becomes secondary and very much defers to your content.”

The notch was a distinctive look, of course, so the latest rumor that it might shrink down to a holepunch was a surprise in several ways. Other phones have holepunch cut-outs for the camera to sit behind, but other phones don’t have the super-secure Face ID system. According to TF International Securities’ Ming-Chi Kuo, the move could come as soon as next year.

Before that, though, a new Face ID could be in place as early as this Fall. It would likely be made possible by the introduction of a new transmitter made of plastic instead of glass. Kuo claims that this was previously impossible, but new coating technologies have overcome the issue of heat distortion which defeated plastic before. 

Will this change, assuming it's true, mean a different notch size on this year's iPhones? Or will the difference be one of speed and performance?What seems certain is Apple won't sacrifice an ounce of the system's unparalleled security.

A new iPhone OS update is here: If, like me, you’re eagerly awaiting iOS 14.5 with its new emoji, you may be disappointed to see this software update isn’t that. Don’t be: it’s a small but urgent update that provides a crucial security fix. Full details here.

The cheapest Sonos yet: Sonos has just revealed its first super-portable speaker which at $169 is its most affordable. Here are seven things nobody told you about the Sonos Roam.

OLED iPad next year: You may have heard rumors that miniLED is coming to iPad Pro in the coming weeks. And now, it seems, OLED may be on its way to the iPad Air in 2022. Honestly, it's hard to keep up. Here’s all you need to know. 

More on the PS5 goldrush: If you enjoyed Janhoi McGregor’s brilliant piece on PS5 scalpers, don’t miss his PS5 feature on scammers hijacking Twitter profiles. 

The iMac Pro as a stopgap: You can read in more depth below about the Apple innovation that is the iMac Pro, but Forbes’ Dwight Silverman could see its demise a mile off, even if it was the Darth Vader of Macs.

Are these better than AirPods: Forbes’ Mark Sparrow knows a thing or two about audio, so check out his analysis of the latest news from Cambridge Audio as it updates its Melomania earbuds.

Nothing like an earbud: When Carl Pei left OnePlus, he set up a new company called Nothing. And now, we’ve had sight of the Concept 1, a transparent earbud. Read what Cam Bunton has to say at Pocket-lint.

One of Apple’s big computing innovations of recent years was the iMac Pro. 

It is suddenly going end-of-life. You can still buy it from apple.com, but you’ll need to be quick. Was it a failure, or, as I suspect, Apple was determined to make the iMac so good that there was just no need for the Pro version any more?

When Apple launched the iMac Pro just three years ago, it turned heads. Look at the sleek space gray design that covered not just the front of the iMac but the Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad and extended keyboard. It was expensive but powerful, fast enough to bowl you over. It allowed users to edit 8K video on a Mac for the first time in Final Cut Pro X, for instance. 

When it launched, I met with several high -powered users—people who needed much more capable machines than I do—to get their opinions. One guy, Craig Hunter, a scientist as NASA, no less, was deeply impressed with the machine. Hunter told me, “One of the main advantages of the iMac Pro is that moving to a workstation class CPU gives access to more cores, advanced processing features, and a bigger, more scalable, performance envelope than you can get in a standard iMac. Other key advantages are memory capacity and graphics capability. If your work benefits from any of these things, then the iMac Pro is the natural choice.”

But then, last August, Apple significantly upgraded the 27in iMac. While it’s true that there were simultaneously upgrades to the iMac Pro, it seemed like the big updates were being saved for the iMac, in 27in screen size only. 

For instance, the iMac can consistently been much, much cheaper than the iMac Pro. At the time, I felt that those users who had yearned for an iMac Pro would come to see that the regular iMac would be more than enough, even if they had power-hungry programs to run. 

The 1080P FaceTime HD camera that was previously the reserve of the iMac Pro, popped up on the iMac 27in, along with faster performance, extra memory capacity, four times the storage capacity and an improved display. This included the super-smooth nano-texture glass option which suddenly meant the iMac display was way better than the one on the iMac Pro.

It’s like Apple saw a rival machine and decided to outgun it for a fraction of the price. The only difference is the rival was an Apple device, too. 

In other words, the writing was on the Cupertino wall for the iMac Pro. The future for the iMac looks strong, especially if the next one is blessed with a super-fast Apple Silicon processor.

Mind you, I'm going to miss that space gray finish.

Will there be an Apple event on March 23?
I’m saying no. 

Although there is surely an Apple Special Event coming soon, because there’s just so much stuff the company seems about to release, I think March is looking unlikely. 
Though Apple likes a Spring event, and historically has favored March above other months, it just doesn't feel right to me. There was a rumor that March 16 was the day, then that was quickly pooh-poohed. So an event a week later could happen, but my guess is it will be later in the year, though likely in April or May.

There will need to be an announcement of some sort, and it’ll definitely be virtual or even signaled in a press release. Apple has a lot up its sleeve. Most urgent among these is the upgraded iPad Pro with an all-new display tech, miniLED, perhaps alongside a redesigned iPad mini. But we’re still waiting for Apple’s location trackers, called AirTags and updated AirPods and/or AirPods Pro. Many are expecting an update to Apple TV: this would be great timing, surely, as we’re all at home watching so much telly right now.

More Mac devices are coming, but I’d say these are more likely to arrive alongside the (doubtless-also-virtual) WWDC event in June. 

This week, here’s a 60-second review of Apple Watch’s Blood O2 measurement app.

When it comes to the Apple Watch and health monitoring, it’s one thing after another. Heart rate monitoring has been there since day one, though it’s now more sophisticated and most recently added Cardio Fitness to the mix. Then came ECG measurements, and with Series 6, the introduction of a new Blood Oxygen app. Really, Apple, isn’t this information overload?

Not really, and definitely not now. 

Blood oxygen levels indicate how much O2 is in your red blood cells. High blood oxygenation is important in making sure your brain, muscles and other organs have enough oxygen to function properly. 

But the metric suddenly became more important with the arrival of Covid-19. Some patients with Covid-19 witnessed their blood oxygen levels falling, and in some cases this was thought to be an early warning sign that medical care would be needed.

Covid-19 apart, testing your blood oxygen levels is quick, easy and is accompanied  by an onscreen animation which is deeply relaxing to look at. I find it works as a micro-mindfulness session (just 15 seconds), and it works effortlessly.

Some users have said they find it often gives inconclusive readings but for me these have been one-in-a-hundred cases. Overall, this is a neat, brilliantly executed app that's soothing to use.

The biggest news in Mac computing for 2020 was the arrival of laptops powered not by Intel but by Apple’s own chip, called the M1. This processor arrived late last year in several configurations of the 13in MacBook Pro and every version of MacBook Air. 

So, which should you choose?

The Air is completely silent. Apple took the fan out of the Air, replacing it with a heat-spreading block of aluminum. This means that it never makes a noise and, in my experience of using the Air, there’s never been an issue of even a hint of overheating. The M1 is designed to work fast without breaking a sweat. But the Pro has a fan, so if you want the quietest laptop (even the keyboard is near-silent in use), the Air is your choice.

It’s all about the M1. The same processor is in both the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, and it’s very, very fast. If you’ve ever found your laptop was slow – you know, like everyone—then you’ll likely find that much less with the M1. It’s apparent across the system, even down to the fact that these laptops are instant-on, like a phone or tablet rather than a computer. 

But if the processor is the same on both models then there’s no benefit to the Pro, right? Not quite. The Pro, as mentioned, has a fan. This thermal management kicks in when you’re using the Pro at full pelt for a longer time. So, if you need the greatest power for extended periods, then the Pro is your choice as it can perform at speed for longer. There’s also the option, with the Pro, to choose Intel chips on higher configurations if you really need extra power. Oh, and the Pro comes with an 8-core GPU as standard, while the Air has up to 8 cores. 

Battery life is huge. Both the Air and Pro laptops see very big battery life increases on these new models. The Air has had a 50% increase over the previous version, that’s up to 18 hours against the (still-decent) 12 hours before despite the Air's battery size being identical now to the last version.

But if even that’s not enough, the MacBook Pro goes all the way to 20 hours. If that’s what you need, the Pro is the one for you. 

Price may be the decider. How much do you want to spend? The MacBook Air is $999 and the MacBook Pro starts at $1,299. For many people that will be the the thing that makes their mind up quite quickly. 

Verdict Many aspects are common to both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. The storage options, RAM choices and above all the super-fast processor are identical. But the Air is lighter (2.8 pounds against 3 pounds for the Pro). The Pro is very fractionally thinner than the Air is at its thickest point, though the Air's distinctive styling tapers to just 0.16 inches at its thinnest point. The Pro is uniformly 0.61 inches thick, which still ain’t exactly much, of course. The Pro display goes a little brighter and it has the cool Touch Bar instead of physical row of function keys. And, of course, it can perform at full speed for longer stints, thanks to the fan, and has the longest battery life. 

The most demanding users will need the Pro. For the rest of us, the MacBook Air will very likely be more than enough: Apple has brought speeds and capabilities previously associated with Pro machines to a lighter, noticeably more affordable laptop in the latest MacBook Air. It feels faster and more capable than many rival laptops.

Comments, questions or complaints? All are welcome, well, the complaints maybe not so much, but try me. Drop me a line: appleunboxed@forbes.com.