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This week’s top stories: Apple Watch Series 7 pre-orders, AirPods firmware updates, more

In this week’s top stories: Apple Watch Series 7 pre-orders begin, firmware updates for AirPods and Beats, Facebook’s massive outage, and much more. Read on for all of this week’s top stories and more.

Apple Watch Series 7 pre-orders

After being announced last month alongside the iPhone 13, Apple this week officially opened pre-orders for the new Apple Watch Series 7. While the first orders are set to arrive on Friday, October 15, supply is severely constrained. Shipping estimates for essentially every model have already started slipping to November and December.

If you’re looking for the full details on what’s new with the Apple Watch Series 7, and how it compares to its predecessors, check out our in-depth comparison.

iOS 15.1 beta testing

Apple continued beta testing iOS 15.1 this week, adding new features for iPhone 13 Pro users. This week’s release of iOS 15.1 added support for ProRes video on the iPhone 13 Pro as well as a new toggle to disable the Auto Macro feature.

We expect iOS 15.1 to be released to the public sometime in the coming days.

Beats and AirPods updates

Apple this week released new firmware versions for its range of AirPods and Beats wireless headphones. With this week’s updates, here are the latest firmware versions: 

  • AirPods Pro – 4A400
  • AirPods Max – 4A400
  • AirPods (second-generation) – 4A400
  • Beats Solo Pro – 4A394
  • Powerbeats 4 – 4A394
  • Powerbeats Pro – 4A394

Most notably for AirPods Pro and AirPods Max users, this week’s update added support for deeper Find My integration. This means that the compatible AirPods models gain new functionality inside of the Find My app, including precise location, a new Nearby Finding UI, Lost Mode, and the ability to get notifications when your earbuds are left behind

These and the rest of this week’s top stories below.

iOS |

iPhone |

Apple Watch |

Mac and iPad |

Tech Industry |

AirPods |

AAPL Company |

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9to5Mac Daily |

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9to5Mac Happy Hour Podcast |

This week on Happy Hour, Benjamin and Chance discuss this week’s Apple news including the latest antitrust case with the EU, the surprisingly fast availability of Apple Watch Series 7, new AirPods Find My features and a rumored roadmap for CarPlay. Plus, we cover what’s new in iOS 15.1 beta 3.

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9to5Mac Happy Hour is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play Music, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

Stacktrace Podcast |

John gets back into game development, Rambo builds a custom Bluetooth packet parser for AirBuddy, and the two embark on another technical deep dive — this time into the big topic of performance tuning.

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Avatar for Chance Miller Chance Miller

Chance is an editor for the entire 9to5 network and covers the latest Apple news for 9to5Mac.

Tips, questions, typos to chance@9to5mac.com