Month: October 2022

Enlarge / A 2022 Toyota bZ4X on display at the 43rd Bangkok International Motor Show 2022 in Bangkok, Thailand. (credit: NurPhoto via Getty)

Five months since Toyota started selling its first all-electric car to compete directly with Tesla, hardly any of them have been seen on the road.

The rollout of the bZ4X sport utility vehicle was intended as a watershed moment for the world’s largest carmaker by sales. Its first mass-produced EV was Toyota’s answer to investor criticism that it had been slow to embrace the industry’s transition to electric.

Instead, the long-awaited debut was hampered by a humiliating global recall because of safety problems and supply chain delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic. With the rollout of the bZ4X only just resumed, Toyota has spent much of the year on the defensive and under scrutiny for its lobbying against rules designed to encourage a shift to electric vehicles.

Enlarge / Macs running macOS Ventura. (credit: Apple)

The next versions of macOS and iPadOS will be released to the general public on October 24, Apple announced today. Both updates have been available as betas to developers and users since this summer, and a near-final version of each OS should be released to those testers sometime soon.

The iPadOS 16 update runs on all iPad Pros, the 5th-generation iPad and later, the fifth-generation iPad mini and later, and the 3rd-generation iPad Air and later, dropping support for the venerable iPad Air 2 and a handful of other models (it will also ship on all the new iPads Apple announced today). The macOS Ventura update generally requires a Mac released in 2017 or later, dropping support for various models released between 2013 and 2016.

Both updates will enable some iOS 16 features on iPads and Macs, including editing and deletion of iMessages, better search in Mail, passkey support in Safari, and a new large-screened Weather app and redesigned Home app, improved gamepad support, and more. Both also include a version of the Stage Manager window management feature, and Ventura includes a redesigned System Settings app.