Business

Thoughts on the Touch Bar (cost and function keys)

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I just replaced my 2015 MacBook Pro with a brand new 2018 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. Lots has been written about Touch Bar over the last few years, so I’m going to focus on two things. [Jump to the main Loop post for the deets]

Marco: Low power mode on the Mac

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Marco Arment:

Sometimes, you just need Low Power Mode: the switch added to iOS a few years ago to conserve battery life when you need it, at the expense of full performance and background tasks.

There’s no such feature on Mac laptops, but there should be.

This is a fascinating read and this suggestion would be a perfect add to the System Preferences Energy Saver page.

Steve Jobs 1997 WWDC fireside chat

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[VIDEO] Steve is sitting on stage, taking questions from the audience of developers (video embedded in main Loop post).

The whole thing is great but, if your time is short, jump to 4:30, where the questions start. The first one, “What about OpenDoc?”, is a perfect opener. OpenDoc was a much ballyhooed architecture that Apple sold hard. When Steve came back, well, just watch the video.

Apple Q3 earnings call transcript

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Here’s a link to the transcript.

One little snippet:

Based on third party research estimates, the App Store generated nearly twice the revenue of Google Play so far in 2018.

Amazing to me how much money can be made, all while prioritizing privacy.

Jason Snell’s Apple earnings charts, and thoughts on the Mac sales numbers

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Another earnings call, another excellent, detailed set of charts from Jason Snell.

Jump down to the section of Mac sales:

Mac sales were down 13 percent year over year, and revenue was down five percent. It’s understandable given the environment—the year-ago’s quarter saw new MacBook Pros being released in June, while this year they didn’t release until July, after Apple’s third quarter ended.

That last bit is critical. As you read the reaction to Apple’s earnings, you’ll no doubt run into the “Mac is doomed” take, based on the numbers released yesterday. But, as Jason points out, the new MacBook Pro lineup, with its third generation, membrane protected keyboard and Apple keyboard exchange program in place, kicked in after the 3rd quarter ended.

Too early for sales numbers on the new Macs but, I will say, I’ve been waiting for the keyboard brouhaha to resolve itself and this new warranty and anti-crumb membrane were enough for me to buy in. I bought my new MacBook Pro last week and I am really happy with it.

My experience, as well as chats with other folks I’ve spoken with who’ve also been waiting to buy a new Mac, makes me bullish. I think we’ll see a nice upward slope on the next set of Mac numbers. My 2 cents.

Apple’s official earnings press release, and some numbers

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Apple put out a press release, highlighting a few numbers from 3Q2018 and offering some guidance for the fourth quarter.

A few links:

Rene Ritchie’s detailed 2018 MacBook Pro review

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Rene Ritchie does an excellent job digging through all the bits and pieces, pros and cons, that make up the new MacBook Pro. If you are considering a new machine, this is a worthwhile, detailed read.

Dave Lee reruns his MacBook Pro 2018 tests with Apple’s patch in place

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[VIDEO] Dave Lee started this whole thing, and this is him taking Apple’s new patch for a spin to see if things really are fixed (video embedded in main Loop post). Good results, thoughtful take on thinness and compromises.

One side note: The day before this patch hit, I tweeted about a Reddit take on thermal throttling. The Reddit take implied that the issue was an issue with the Voltage Regulator Module and not the CPU. This was the first take I saw that implied that this issue was fixable in software and not an Intel i9 issue, not a hardware heat sink issue (at least not completely).

The Reddit take has also been updated to reflect Apple’s patch. All very interesting. Glad this is resolved.

Rethinking the macOS Font Picker

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Sam William Smith:

The font picker is one of the most commonly used drop down menus in any creative application. Despite this, the default font picker on macOS has remained largely unchanged since the early days.

What I like about this relatively simple redesign is that it follows the pattern that Apple established in the Mac emoji picker, with sections for frequently used and favorited emoji/fonts.

I’d like to see this pattern become a standard throughout Apple’s design language. For starters, it’d be nice if the iOS emoji picker allowed you to favorite emoji, as you can in macOS.

The little things

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Reddit user ltethe:

I’ve been a dedicated Mac guy for… I don’t know… Near 30 years? But lately I’ve pooh poohed some of the latest Mac features…

Haptic feedback, touch ID, Touch Bar…

It’ll take me a few years, but inevitably, I’ll get a new model Apple product, and the new tech is bundled in… And… Those features turn out to be waaaaaayyy cooler than I thought.

Interesting read, especially regarding Touch Bar. One of the things I love about Apple’s design sense is the thought that goes into each element. It’s delightful when a new feature shaves a bit of time off something I do on a regular basis.

For me, a perfect example of this is my Apple Watch unlocking my Mac. This sort of thing is Apple at their best.

Good little writeup. Heartfelt.

How to close apps on iPhone X in iOS 12

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Juli Clover lays out the change from iOS 11 to iOS 12 that simplifies the process of closing out an app. On an iPhone X.

Good to know.

To me, just another sign of how splintered things have become. There’s iOS vs macOS, iPhone vs iPad, iPhone X gestures vs home button gestures, etc. Add to that the large set of features hidden behind 3D-touch. A lot to remember.

Live spider inside an iMac screen

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[VIDEO] Can’t believe this is real (video embedded in the main Loop post). How did that little critter get inside the screen?

I vote for Timothy to take the machine to the Apple Store and just record everything that goes on.

UPDATE: From Jason Snell’s similar spidey experience, posted last September [H/T Matthew Cassinelli]:

Yep. That’s a teeny, tiny spider, wedged between the screen and the glass. 1600 pixels from the right edge of the screen, 840 pixels down. The size of one of the red/yellow/green stoplight buttons on the left side of my window’s title bars. A 20-by-20 pixel area covered by the body of a spider.

And:

You may be saying to yourself, how bad is it, really? Can’t you live with a spider in your display at all times? The answer, after one week, is… no, I don’t think I can. Not if I can avoid it.

Jump to Jason’s post for a picture. And no, I couldn’t live with this either. No chance.

What APFS does for you, and what you can do with APFS

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Jeff Carlson, TidBITS:

You may not even have noticed that your Mac is now running APFS. To find out, open Disk Utility, click your startup disk in the sidebar, and look under the disk name.

As Jeff suggests, take a minute to launch Disk Utility, click on your startup disk and look at the text underneath the volume name. Mine says “APFS Volume • APFS (Encrypted)”.

This is a terrific read, chock full of detail on APFS, but very readable. And the fact that the transition to APFS has been so seamless for so many says a lot about the APFS engineering team.

Apple opens masterpiece in Milan

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Gorgeous. Follow the link, check out the images, especially that first one.

This newest Apple destination is in central Milan, just a few blocks from La Scala, the world famous opera house. Two bucket list reasons to visit Milan.

Inside ‘the reality distortion field’: An early Apple employee talks about having Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as bosses

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Jim Edwards, Business Insider:

Standing in the hallway at the Cupertino headquarters at Bandley Drive, Jobs asked, “So what are you doing?”

Shelton said, “Actually, I think we’re going in the wrong direction and I’m leaving the company.”

Jobs replied, “come with me.”

The founder took him to Bandley 4 building and showed him what Steve’s secret group was working on next: The Mac prototype.

And:

“Would you like to be the product manager?” Jobs asked. Obviously, Shelton said yes.

Terrific read, wonderful pictures. Loved every bit of this.

Make your Venmo transactions private. Seriously.

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FastCompany:

When you think of companies that violate your privacy online, chances are Facebook is one of the first names that come to mind. But there’s another common app that should: Venmo, the PayPal-owned peer-to-peer payment app that lets people send money to friends, family, and anyone else you need to pay (including, for instance, drug dealers). The payments you make on the app, complete with a cute little emoji or note, are public by default, which means that many users don’t realize just how easy it is for the rest of the world to observe the $35 billion in transactions made on Venmo.

When I first read this, I was shocked. This is such a basic breach of user etiquette, so egregious, I struggled to believe it was true.

But I popped open my Venmo app, jumped over to Settings > Privacy and, sure enough, my Default Privacy Setting was set to Public (Visible to everyone on the Internet).

Why, Venmo? Why would you ever think that the transfer of money would be something I’d want to share with the world? What possible use case is that?

And even if there is a case for public visibility, why make it the default?

The mind reels.

All of the changes to notifications in iOS 12

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[VIDEO] If you are not yet running iOS 12, or if you’ve never dug into the new Notification Manager, this is worth your time. Jump to the article if you prefer reading through the changes or watch the video embedded in the main Loop post.

Apple eats a bit of Samsung’s lunch

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From the CIRP mobile market share report, updated to reflect the quarter ending June 30th:

“Apple improved in part at Samsung’s expense, whose share of activiations declined relative to both last quarter and last year,” said Mike Levin, Partner and Co-Founder of CIRP. “In a quarter without any significant phone launches, Samsung had market share only equal to Apple’s. A year ago, Samsung had a considerably greater share of sales.”

Two interesting points from this report:

  • Android has about 63% of all mobile phone activations and Apple about 36%.
  • Apple made some nice gains this last quarter as Samsung’s share shrunk. Apple moved from 31% to 36% of all activations and Samsung dropped from 38% down to 36%.

Interesting charts. It’s clearly an iOS/Android world. Windows Phone never had a chance.

iFixit teardown of the 3rd gen, 2018 MacBook Pro butterfly keyboard

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iFixit:

The 2018 MacBook Pro keyboard is a wealth of secrets—it just keeps surprising us. Just when we think we’ve exhausted one vein of tasty tech ore, we find something new. And today, we bring this trove to you.

And:

We pumped this keyboard full of particulates to test our ingress-proofing theory. We started with a fine, powdered paint additive to add a bit of color and enable finer tracking (thanks for the tip, Dan!). Lo and behold, the dust is safely sequestered at the edges of the membrane, leaving the mechanism fairly sheltered. The holes in the membrane allow the keycap clips to pass through, but are covered by the cap itself, blocking dust ingress.

And:

On the 2018 keyboard, with the addition of more particulate and some aggressive typing, the dust eventually penetrates under the sheltered clips, and gets on top of the switch—so the ingress-proofing isn’t foolproof just yet.

I do appreciate the testing, good to know the threshold at work here. Bottom line, don’t dump a bunch of powder or sand on your keyboard and you should be fine.

If you want a more traditional, picture-laden keyboard teardown, iFixit has that too.

And on a related note, here’s John Gruber’s take on the legal/marketing side of the new keyboard, and the quieter vs. better at keeping out debris language.

Apple Music posts new trailer for Ed Sheeran’s “Songwriter” documentary

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[VIDEO] From the writeup:

‘Songwriter’ is an intimate and personal look into the writing process of one of the world’s biggest artists – Ed Sheeran. Filmed by Murray Cummings, ‘Songwriter’ details the creation of Sheeran’s third studio album ‘÷’ and gives authentic insight into his life through never-before-seen home videos. Witness his creativity firsthand, from the very first chord to the finishing touch – the sounds become the songs on August 28, exclusively on Apple Music.

I love videos that show a song being written, then produced. This video (embedded on main Loop post) looks like it gives a good sense of the entire process.

If this interests you, you’ll love this post from back in April.

An entomologist rates all the ant emoji

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This turned out to be fascinating. A bunch of company-specific ant emoji, all critiqued and rated.

Gonna share three with you:

  • Apple: Beautiful big almond eye, realistic and full of expression as she gazes gently at you. Elbowed antennae and delicately segmented legs and body. Gorgeous pearlescent sheen like she is glowing. This ant moisturizes. This ant is round and huggable. This ant is a star. 11/10.

  • Samsung: This ant has an unexplained, double-jointed thorax, and no evidence of a waist. Her four-footed pose suggests that she a centaur rather than an ant. Centaur ants would be cool. I’m not sure what was intended here. 2/10.

  • Twitter: Were you even trying. 0/10

Follow the link to see the reviews in place with the emoji images. Great!