[Lire la suite]

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 [Lire la suite]

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 [Lire la suite]

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Suivez ces quelques étapes pour paramétrer le raccourci.

Il est de plus en plus probable que l’iPhone XS, l’iPhone XS Max et l’iPhone XR soient incompatibles avec la prochaine version d’iOS. Mais pour le moment, rien n’est sûr.

Réfléchir à deux fois avant de faire la mise à jour…

With iOS 18.4, Apple added support for robot vacuums to HomeKit. There are a few Matter-enabled robot vacuums that can be added to the Home app for use with Siri, including the Deebot X8 Pro Omni from Ecovacs. I've been testing the X8 Pro Omni for the last several weeks to see if it's worth upgrading to a robot vacuum with Matter support to integrate with ‌Siri‌ and ‌HomeKit‌, as well as to check out its cleaning capabilities.

Design

The X8 Pro Omni is a circular vacuum that can both vacuum and mop, so it is an all-in-one floor cleaning bot. It comes with a base that has a dust bag, section for cleaning fluid, a tank for clean water, and a tank for dirty water.


This is not a small robot vacuum, and it's not going to be ideal for small spaces. It's almost 14 inches wide and about four inches tall. I have a TV stand that's four inches high and the vacuum does not fit underneath it, but it is short enough to get under most furniture, including my couch, bookcases, bed, and desks. Because of the width, it cannot get into spaces that are tight, such as a chair close to a table leg, or two chairs that are close to one another.


The base station is 21 inches tall, 14 inches wide, and 11 and a half inches deep, and you need to have enough area around it for the robot to dock itself. The X8 Pro Omni is black and gold, as is the station, but it's not garish. It blends right in, and even though the charging station is large, I was able to tuck it away in a corner.

There is a built-in camera at the front of the X8 Pro Omni, which is used for navigation, room mapping, and obstacle avoidance, plus it has a microphone for listening for voice commands and a speaker to respond and to ask for help if it gets stuck.

Cleaning

I've always been skeptical of robot vacuums, but I was impressed with the X8 Pro Omni. It has serious suction power (Ecovacs says 18,000 Pa) that was able to clean up cat hair and everything else on my floors, and running it regularly kept my floors a lot cleaner than my typical weekly vacuuming. The suction power is adjustable, and higher suction is noisier, but I mostly used it in the higher mode to get everything off of my floors.


I'm able to work in the room with the X8 Pro Omni running even at its highest suction, but I probably wouldn't take a phone call. It's the loudest when vacuuming, and is usually between 50 and 60 decibels with the standard mode. The mopping is quieter, and emptying the dust is the loudest operation.

There's a little spinning brush on the side that's meant to get around the edges of a room, and in the weeks that I've been using the vacuum, it's done a good job getting into nooks and crannies. There's also a mopping feature, and the mop that Ecovacs included is something special. It's a roller mop rather than the spinning mop that other robot vacuums have, and I think it cleans stains like dried cat food better than my other vacuum that has spinning mops.

With two passes, it was able to get most of the little bits of dried food off of my floor. I even tested it with dried ketchup that I put on the floor, and while it didn't get everything off in one go, it got close. The idea with robot vacuums is to have them clean daily or several times a week, and the X8 Pro Omni was able to keep my floor spotless with a schedule.


The Ozmo Roller, as Ecovacs calls it, is cleaned off with a water nozzle as the vacuum mops the floor, so dirty water is scraped off and clean water is reapplied. I like that concept better than a robot vacuum dragging dirty water along the floor, and it did seem to be effective. I don't wear shoes in the house and my floors are relatively clean, but the waste water was always dirty, so grime was coming up with every cycle. The X8 Pro Omni can clean the floor with just water, but it does accept cleaning solution that you can put in the base to fill the vacuum. Ecovacs recommends using its own cleaning solution to avoid damaging the vacuum.


I have wood floors, and I am careful with them. The X8 Pro Omni has not done any damage, but I do check the wheels and the mop to make sure nothing gets lodged there. The wheels are rubber and the mop is soft, so it doesn't seem like there's anything that would cause an issue.

I don't want to go on forever about the cleaning capabilities of the robot, so I'll wrap up by saying it did a great job, but there are a few caveats with navigation and obstacle avoidance.


The X8 Pro Omni needs to be able to get to the floor, and it will have a hard time in rooms with a lot of furniture or items on the floor. I have to do a pass before I have it clean to move cat toys and whatever else I might have on the floor. While cleaning, the robot will empty its dust bin on its own, wash its mop, and recharge, so you just hit the start button and it goes about its chore on its own.

It does require my attention with rugs, because it can't handle them. I have some thin area rugs that I don't have any kind of rubber padding under, and the X8 Pro Omni cannot deal with these. It routinely sucks up the tassels on one of my rugs and gets itself tangled up, and getting up to fix it every two minutes when it's doing that section of the room is frustrating.


It does better with the thicker rugs I have in the bathroom that do have a sturdier backing, and it can navigate and vacuum those with fewer issues. I have one large area rug that isn't a problem, and it does fine, but that is the extent of the carpet in my house so I haven't been able to test carpet suction beyond my rugs.

For context, it takes two hours for it to deep clean a 600 sq ft room, of which it can access about 400 sq ft (because of furniture). A standard clean is closer to an hour. I've locked it in my office for this review, but were it to clean my whole house, it would take several hours and would likely need to recharge. The two hour deep clean does not require recharging, and leaves it with about 30 percent battery at the end. When used in standard mode, the X8 Pro Omni can run for over 3.5 hours before needing to charge. For a full recharge, it takes approximately four hours.

Upkeep and Performance

There are filters that need to be changed, water that needs to be added and emptied, and components that eventually need to be replaced. The Ecovacs app has a detailed Maintenance section that lets you know when you need to perform maintenance. A filter lasts for 120 hours, and the mop works for 150 hours. In the month that I've been testing the X8 Pro Omni, I haven't had to do anything other than add more water to the clean water bin.


There is some cost associated with upkeep, as components will need to be replaced over time. A new roller mop, for example, is $30, and three dust bags is $25.

I have not run into issues while testing the X8 Pro Omni. The robot is responsive, it has not gone offline, and the app has been stable. I also haven't had hardware issues, and Ecovacs does have a standard one-year warranty.

HomeKit and Siri

iOS 18.4 and its sister updates add support for Matter-enabled robot vacuums, so to be able to control the X8 Pro Omni from the Home app and via ‌Siri‌, iOS 18.4 or later is required.


Functionality is limited, compared with the feature set that is available with the Ecovacs website. In the Home app, there's a button to start the robot and to choose whether the robot vacuums or mops. Specific rooms that have been set up with the Ecovacs app can be selected, or you can choose to have the X8 Pro Omni clean all rooms that it has access to.

There's also a built-in toggle for Quick or Deep Clean, which controls the cleaning pattern that the robot uses. ‌Siri‌ commands can be used in lieu of the Home app, so you can say something like "turn on the Deebot" to start a cleaning cycle (I named the robot Deebot in the Home app).

Commands like "tell Deebot to vacuum" or "tell Deebot to quick clean" didn't work with ‌Siri‌, because ‌Siri‌ just kept telling me there was no Deebot in my contacts list. It was a frustrating experience trying to use ‌Siri‌ to activate and control the vacuum, and using the Ecovacs app or the Home app was simpler.

It's not Ecovacs' fault that ‌Siri‌ is less than capable, and the Ecovacs app is an easier solution for the most part, though I was also perfectly able to control the vacuum from the Home app.

Ecovacs App and Mapping

The Ecovacs app has a much deeper feature set than is available with the Home app or with ‌Siri‌, including its own personal assistant that can respond to voice-based commands.


Operating the X8 Pro Omni requires the Ecovacs app for setup and for specialized controls. Setup was a super simple process, and the app is complicated, but easy enough to figure out. There's an overarching "Home" that houses all of your Ecovacs products, and tapping into one brings up controls. You can start or pause the robot from this interface, or send it to recharge, and additional options are available by tapping the "Enter" option.

Before starting to vacuum, the X8 Pro Omni maps out all of the rooms of the house, or the rooms that it is given access to. It's surprisingly good at identifying objects, distinguishing between flooring types, and separating areas into rooms. It can misidentify smaller spaces. For example, it merged my office bathroom into the main office area and split a closet into two rooms when it's one. I can view and edit the map to fix it, create boundaries for the vacuum, identify different rooms, and label furniture. There is a multi-map option for houses with more than one story, or for separate areas.


The X8 Pro Omni is continually scanning its surroundings as it cleans, and it is good at not bumping into furniture or objects. It also does well with pets. My cat loves the robot, and when it vacuums, he'll follow it around and get in its way. The X8 Pro Omni gently nudges him out of its path and continues on with its task.


As the X8 Pro Omni cleans, it shows a white line on the map of where it has vacuumed, so it's easy to ensure that it gets into every nook and cranny that it can reach. Mopping is shown with a more diffuse line over the vacuum line.

There are multiple options for controlling how it cleans. There's a vacuum only mode, a vac and mop mode where it vacuums and then mops at the same time, and a mop after vac mode where it will go around and vacuum first, then mop afterward. The benefit to that last mode is that it'll vacuum before it starts washing the floor, so there's no water from the roller mop getting on carpets or anywhere else.

You can adjust suction power for the vacuuming, water flow rate for the mopping, and the cleaning speed, which increases or decreases the space between the passes that it makes on the floor. Deep cleaning has little space between each pass (it cleans in lines along the floor), and quick clean has more space. There are also options for a single pass or two passes, and you can select specific areas of a room for even more cleaning to get up tough stains.

It's ideal to set up a schedule to have the X8 Pro Omni clean each day or multiple times a week. Depending on how large the area is that it's cleaning, it may need to stop and recharge, and there will be multiple stops to empty the dust bin or wash off the mop. Since it can take some time for it to finish, there is a Do Not Disturb option that prevents it from turning on during specific times of the day, and Auto Resume can also be turned off if you don't want it cleaning half the house, charging up, and then resuming late at night when you're trying to sleep.

With a large house, it would probably make sense to set the robot to clean a room or two each day, which would keep the floors clean without having it run for hours. It can also be scheduled to run when you're out of the house, which lets you avoid the noise, plus there are options for cleaning up eating areas after meals and keeping pet areas clean.

There is a voice assistant built into the X8 Pro Omni, called Yiko. Saying the "Ok Yiko" wake word activates listening mode, and the robot accepts commands to start a clean, continue a clean, stop a clean, go charge, and more.

Yiko is more capable than ‌Siri‌, and can understand commands to vacuum specific rooms, under specific furniture, and multi-step commands like sweep around the pet feeder, then mop. It can re-clean rooms on command, spot clean, and clean at specific times. There's even an option to have it come to where you are and clean, and you can send it away with a "don't clean here" command.

While the X8 Pro Omni is cleaning, you can view the camera to see what it's doing and what it's seeing. When it's not cleaning, you can enter the live view and have it patrol your house and communicate with whoever is in the house, so it's also sort of a mobile security or pet camera. I can direct it to go check in on my cat, using an on-screen remote control, and it can snap photos, take videos, and let me talk to him. It's fun to play with.


I do wish I could have it vacuum/mop while I control it, but that's not an option.

Privacy

Ecovacs is a Chinese company, and this is a product that includes a camera and the ability to map your house, which some users will be wary about. Ecovacs does have a clear privacy policy surrounding data storage, and footage from the camera is stored locally and encrypted.

Visual data can be uploaded to Ecovacs' servers for obstacle avoidance purposes, but this is an opt-in feature. There are multiple privacy controls in the app, with toggles for opting out of data sharing, though some of the opt-outs reduce functionality.

Bottom Line

Unfortunately, all of the robot vacuums that have Matter integration are higher-end models, and it's not a feature that has trickled down to entry level models. The Deebot X8 Pro Omni is over $1,000, and other robots with Matter support and similar features also have the same general price point.

Given that HomeKit-based controls for robot vacuums are limited in scope compared to what you can do in the apps designed for robot vacuums, Matter integration shouldn't be the sole reason to choose a particular product. Maybe it will get better over time, but there are a lot of advanced features you can't get to without the dedicated app, and it makes the most sense to set up a schedule and think little about the robot after that.

Where Matter might be more important is if you want to have a vacuum that interacts in some way with other ‌HomeKit‌ devices, because you can set up multi-device automations. If you want to have the robot vacuum whenever people leave the house, the Home app can do that. You can absolutely clean, mop, and operate the X8 Pro Omni with ‌Siri‌ and the Home app, it's just more efficient to use the Ecovacs app.

Even with somewhat weak ‌HomeKit‌ integration, I do think the X8 Pro Omni is worth considering just for its cleaning capabilities. The roller mop that it has for washing the floor works well, and the suction more than keeps up with a multi-pet household. It's good at avoiding obstacles, and the app does come with privacy controls and policies that are appreciated.

How to Buy

The Deebot X8 Pro Omni can be purchased from the Ecovacs website for $1,300, and it is also available from Amazon. Retailers like Best Buy, Costco, and Home Depot also sell Ecovacs products, so it's worth looking for discounts and promotions.

Note: Ecovacs provided MacRumors with a Deebot X8 Pro Omni for the purpose of this review. No other compensation was received.
This article, "Review: Ecovacs' X8 Pro Omni Robot Now Works With HomeKit" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple today released iOS 18.4.1 and iPadOS 18.4.1, minor updates to the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating systems that came out last September. iOS 18.4.1 and iPadOS 18.4.1 come two weeks after the launch of iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4.


The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software Update.

There have been complaints about issues with CarPlay and deleted apps being restored, and iOS 18.4.1 includes several bug fixes. According to Apple's release notes, the update includes bug fixes and security updates. It addresses an issue that could cause wireless ‌CarPlay‌ not to work in select vehicles.

Apple is already testing iOS 18.5 and iPadOS 18.5, updates that are available in a beta capacity right now. iOS 18.5 and iPadOS 18.5 will likely launch in May.
This article, "Apple Releases iOS 18.4.1 With Bug Fixes" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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When using macOS Finder in List view, you'll see the sizes of individual files – but not folders.
Instead, folders show a pair of dashes (--) in the Size column. macOS skips calculating folder sizes by default to keep List view performance fast, especially in directories with many nested files. But if you want to keep an eye on folder sizes in certain locations, or even globally, there are a few ways to do it. Here's how.


What if you want to use List view and still keep an eye on the size of a handful of folders in a specific location – in Documents, for instance, or in a directory synced to a cloud storage service? Or what if you have a super-fast SSD that can handle the pressure of calculating the size of lots of folders on the fly? Thankfully, there are several ways to make Finder show folder sizes, even in List view.

Enable Calculate All Sizes

Open the folder in question, select View ➝ Show View Options from the menu bar or press the keys Command+J, and check Calculate All Sizes. Finder will now remember your viewing preference for that particular location only.

Turn On Preview Panel

If you're looking for a more global solution for keeping tabs on folder sizes that will work in any Finder view mode, you might consider enabling the Preview panel. To do this, open a Finder window and select the menu bar option View ➝ Show Preview, or press the keys Shift+Command+P.


In the Preview panel, the size of the selected folder always appears immediately below the folder name. If this is the only folder information you want to see in the Preview panel, you can select the menu bar option View ➝ Show Preview Options and uncheck all other metadata options.

Use Get Info

Of course, you may find that relying on the Preview panel to keep a check on individual folder sizes isn't an ideal use of Finder window space. This is where the menu bar option File ➝ Get Info (or key combo Command+I) can come in helpful. Opening a separate Get Info panel lets you see the size of the item in question, regardless of whether it's a file or a folder.


The downside? Each Get Info panel is static and specific to the item selected. Opening several at once can clutter your desktop, since each new window stays open until manually closed.

Use Inspector for Live Folder Info

Fortunately, this inconvenience can be easily solved: Click File in the menu bar and hold the Option key, and Get Info will turn into Show Inspector. Unlike a Get Info panel, the Inspector panel is dynamically updated and will always display information for the active Finder window's currently selected file or folder – including, of course, its size.

In summary, for casual folder-size checking, use the Preview panel. For detailed or multiple folders, enable Calculate All Sizes in View Options. And if you need real-time updates without clutter, use Show Inspector.
This article, "Reveal Hidden Folder Sizes in macOS Finder With These Tricks" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Anthropic, makers of the Claude AI chatbot, are close to launching a new voice assistant to rival OpenAI's similar option for interacting with ChatGPT, according to Bloomberg.


Unless plans change, the new "voice mode" feature could be released as soon as this month – nearly a year after OpenAI began rolling out its own equivalent to users.

The feature, which will be available in the Claude iOS app and likely elsehwhere, reportedly includes three voices named Airy, Mellow, and British-accented Buttery.

Anthropic has previously said it is working on a voice mode for Claude, but it has not officially revealed a planned launch window or any other details. The feature was discovered in Anthropic's code by app researcher M1Astra.

Anthropic recently launched a new feature for its Claude AI assistant called "Research," aimed at providing thorough, citation-supported answers by drawing from online sources and corporate customer data. The tool is Anthropic's answer to OpenAI's Deep Research, which debuted earlier this year.

In addition, Claude is gaining support for Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs, enabling users to query and interact with their Google Workspace content for more efficient task and information management.
This article, "Anthropic's Claude AI Chatbot Expected to Gain 'Voice Mode' This Month" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Portable multi-device chargers are popular accessories for frequent travelers, offering the ability to keep your iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods, and in some cases other devices charged up while away from home. Alogic's recently launched Roam 21,000mAh 6-in-1 Power Bank takes things a step further, pairing all of these chargers with an integrated battery to help charge your devices even while away from fixed power.


I've been testing out the Roam for a few weeks, including on a week-long multi-stop trip around the U.S., and I've found it to be a handy travel companion that gets the job done with a few sacrifices.

The Roam is essentially a fairly large 21,000 mAh (77 Wh) power bank equipped with a variety of charging surfaces, ports, and even an integrated USB-C cable to help charge whatever devices you're bringing with you on the road.

The whole thing folds down to a relatively compact rectangular body, but when you're ready to use it, the Qi2 magnetic phone charging pad and the Apple Watch charging puck swing up for optimal positioning while also revealing a recessed Qi charging surface for charging your AirPods. If you need to charge more devices like an iPad and/or a Mac, there's a short integrated USB-C cable that tucks in along the side of the Roam, plus a pair of USB-C ports on the rear.


The body of the Roam is primarily a matte black plastic that does pick up a few fingerprints over time, with a band of aluminum around the edges.

As noted, the phone charger on the Roam is a MagSafe-compatible Qi2 charger, and it supports up to 15 watts of charging power for most of Apple's recent iPhones. That's not quite as fast as the 25-watt MagSafe support introduced on the iPhone 16 series, but it's plenty sufficient. In my testing, the Roam was able to boost an iPhone 16 Pro Max battery by 50% in under an hour, similar to what I've seen with other Qi2 chargers. The folding pad works at any angle from completely flat against the body of the Roam to up to almost 90 degrees, and it remains solidly in position thanks to hinge tension, making it convenient to set up your phone to charge in either vertical or horizontal orientation, with StandBy mode supported.


The AirPods charging surface is revealed once the Qi2 pad is raised, and it's a simple 5-watt Qi charging pad without magnetic alignment, but it works fine for keeping wireless charging-capable AirPods cases charged up.

The Apple Watch charging puck swings up at the rear of the Roam, and it's a matte black color that blends in nicely with the rest of the Roam's surface, a pleasant deviation from the typical white Apple Watch charging pucks that tend to stand out visually. The puck's design supports Nightstand mode for the Apple Watch, but its placement behind the Qi2 charger means you probably won't be able to see it while charging multiple devices. The ‌iPhone‌'s larger-screen StandBy functionality is better for nighttime use anyway.


One potentially significant drawback for the Apple Watch charger is that it is NOT a fast charger and offers only 2-watt charging. As a result, my Apple Watch Ultra 2's battery only increased by around 25% in an hour on the charger, when a fast charger should be able to deliver around 80% charge in that amount of time. It's a non-issue if you want to leave your watch on the charger overnight, but if you're someone like me who likes to wear their watch overnight and usually tries to get a a quick charge in before bedtime, the Roam won't be able to deliver on that front.


For charging other devices, the Roam features an integrated ~5-inch USB-C cable supporting up to 100 watts of charging power, as well as two USB-C ports on the rear, one of which supports up to 100 watts and the other supporting up to 18 watts. It's worth noting that the Roam can deliver a maximum of 100 watts of simultaneous output, so you'll only be able to max out those 100-watt USB-C options if you have nothing else connected to the power bank, but you can still get a decent amount of power out of them even with other devices charging.


The Roam supports up to 65 watts of input charging through either the integrated cable or the 100-watt USB-C port, and it took about 90 minutes to recharge the Roam from 25% to 90% before things slowed a bit as it approached a full charge, reaching 97% after 120 minutes. Passthrough charging of other devices is supported if you are charging the Roam through the 100-watt USB-C port, but not if you're using the integrated cable.

To help you keep tabs on charging state, the Roam features a small LCD on the side that shows the current level of the Roam's internal battery, as well as some small green icons to provide information about charging input and output. There is also a power button on the rear of the Roam to help you turn it on and off and activate passthrough charging, but the bank also turns off automatically after a period of non-use to help limit battery drain.


With its 21,000 mAh battery that checks in at 77 Wh, the Roam is comfortably under the limit for carrying it on an airplane, though that internal battery does still bring some heft with it. The Roam checks in at 606 grams or around 1.3 pounds.

That's a decent amount of weight, but not unreasonably so to toss in a bag, backpack, or carry-on suitcase. Alongside everything else I was carrying in my backpack on my trip, the Roam's weight wasn't noticeable, but if I'd been traveling lighter it certainly would have made a difference. It measures in at 158 mm (6.2 inches) x 82 mm (3.2 inches) x 35 mm (1.4 inches), so it's roughly the footprint of a Pro Max phone but substantially thicker and nearly three times as heavy.

That bulk and weight is the price you pay to be able to have a fair amount of battery power with you, but just how much does that 21,000 mAh actually get you? Alogic says you should be able to charge an ‌iPhone 16‌ four times from the Roam, and that seems pretty much in line with my observation of around three times for an ‌iPhone 16 Pro‌ Max. The ‌iPhone 16 Pro‌ Max's battery is only 4,685 mAh, so in theory you should be able to charge it four times from the Roam, but due to inefficiencies in power storage and transfer you won't get quite that much out of it. An Apple Watch and AirPods obviously don't require much juice to recharge, but if you're looking to charge bigger items like an ‌iPad‌ or MacBook from the Roam, you're going to start running out of power pretty quickly.

You might be able to get a full charge of a 13-inch MacBook Air out of it, but a 15-inch model would definitely be pushing it and any MacBook Pro would come up short, and that doesn't even account for charging your ‌iPhone‌ and any other devices from the Roam.


So while the Roam would be plenty adequate for a weekend trip off the grid with your smaller devices, it's not going to be sufficient to keep an entire set of Apple portable products up and running for more than a single additional charge, if that. While it would be great to be able to keep an ‌iPhone‌, ‌iPad‌, MacBook, Apple Watch, and AirPods charged up for days' worth of use, the shortfall is simply the reality of how much power our devices need and the calculated tradeoffs of size and weight required to carry extra juice for them. As long as you're aware of the limitations and keep your expectations in line, the Roam can be a solid travel companion to keep your devices going when you don't have ready access to fixed power.

The other consideration worth keeping in mind is that the handy features of the Roam do add bulk, weight, and cost to the overall package. If you want a barebones power bank in the same capacity range, you can certainly find options that are much cheaper, a bit smaller, and on the order of half the weight, but you will need cables for each of your devices and potentially not be able to charge as many devices simultaneously as you can with the Roam. The Roam is a premium product offering convenience and travel simplicity, but if you're willing to pay a bit more and carry some additional weight around, it may be worth the tradeoffs.

The Roam 21,000mAh 6-in-1 Power Bank is available from Alogic's website and is normally priced at $197.99, but an Easter sale currently knocks 20% off, bringing it down to $158.39.

Note: Alogic provided MacRumors with the Roam power bank for the purposes of this review. No other compensation was received. MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Alogic. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
This article, "Review: Alogic's Roam Power Bank Charges Up All of Your Devices on the Go" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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