Apple are constantly looking for ways to improve and develop their products, this blog post will look at a couple of developments and features that are currently available and possible developments that Apple will be releasing in the near future.

Reports of Apple’s New iPhone Payment Feature

Apple is reportedly set to launch a service which would benefit a number of small, medium, and large businesses. They are looking at letting your iPhones become standalone payment terminals which would accept credit card payments without the need for any external hardware or card reading device.

In 2020 Apple acquired a Canadian startup called Mobeewave. The firm which apparently cost Apple around $100 million, created assets that would allow existing smartphones to process credit card payments via built-in chips, like the ones that power Apple Pay in all modern iPhones.

The Mobeewave technology would require customers to simply tap their chip-enabled credit cards, or even other NFC-enabled smartphones, to the back of an iPhone to begin payment processing.

For businesses to receive cardless payments now, they need a third-party payment terminal which you insert your credit card into or tap your phone on when making payments within the store. When Apple’s feature arrives, businesses can throw those out and instead accept payments by having customers tap their phones or cards to an iPhone used solely by the business.

Apple’s New iPhone Payment Feature

It’s also unclear how much the feature will rely on Apple Pay. If other payment-processing companies, like Block Inc.’s market-dominating Square, aren’t allowed to tap into the service, Apple would become a major direct competitor. At this time, however, Apple hasn’t announced whether it will launch the service solo or co-launch with an existing payment network.

Apple’s new feature might be introduced via a software update in the coming months. A beta version of iOS 15.4 is expected soon, with a spring release likely for the final iteration.

The Scanner Feature for iPhone and iPads

When you need to scan a document and don’t want to dust off your bulky printer or scanner there is now a solution within your Apple iPhone or iPad.

Apple’s document scanner is hidden within the Notes app and with a couple of taps with your finger on the screen you can scan the document, make notes on it, convert it to a PDF and there is also the possibility for in-app sharing so you can also send your scanned documents anywhere you need too.

Scan Documents

How to scan a document on iPhone and iPad

1. Open Notes on your iPhone or iPad.2. Create a new note or tap on an existing one to add a document to it.3. Tap the camera button at the bottom of the screen or above the keyboard.

Camera Button

4. Tap Scan Documents.5. Line up the document you want to scan.

Scanner Feature iPhone

6. Tap the shutter button if the scanner doesn’t automatically scan the document. Repeat this step for every document you want to scan.7. Tap Save in the bottom right corner after you’ve scanned all the necessary pages. The button will have a count of how many pages you scanned.8. The scanned pages will populate in a new note in the Notes app. You can then send these to wherever you need too.

Final Scanned Article

Universal Control is coming to Macs and iPads

Being released in Spring 2022, Universal Control will allow users to be able to use the same keyboard and mouse for all Macs and iPads you are working on. All you need to do to move to different devices is to drag your pointer to the edge of the screen. This feature also makes it easier to copy content across different devices. This feature allows users to have a Mac as your main screen and then an iPad alongside it as an additional screen.

Universal Control

Universal Control won’t work with every Mac or iPad. If you want to operate multiple Macs and iPads with one keyboard, mouse and trackpad you’ll need a recent Mac and a recent iPad, both devices will need to be logged into the same Apple ID, you will also need two-factor authentication, and you will need to be running macOS 12.3 or iPadOS 15.4.