The reviews are in, and for the first time, Consumer Reports has not awarded recommended ratings for MacBooks.
The latest batch of MacBook Pro laptops exhibited “battery life results (that) were highly inconsistent from one trial to the next,” the magazine said in a review published Thursday.
“Battery life is an important attribute for a laptop, and it it represents a significant portion of our overall score,” reviewer Jerry Beilinson wrote. “After factoring together our complete test results, Consumer Reports finds that all three MacBook Pro laptops fail to meet our standards for recommended models.”
Regardless of your opinion of Consumer Reports, this does not look good for Apple. Apple refused comment on the report but expect them to, in the New Year, address the issue.
Apple today announced the five top-grossing holiday movies of all time on iTunes in the US. Elf, originally released in 2003 starring Will Ferrell as Buddy the Elf, is the all-time best-selling holiday movie on iTunes.
Jesse Myshak was at work in his shop in Stony Plain on Tuesday with his new ice-surfacing machine, which he bought to flood his rink in his backyard. He was working on it in the shop, and it was ready to be put to work at home.
There was only one problem — home was a couple kilometres away.
Luckily, there was a solution. “I figured I’d just drive it home,” Myshak told CBC News. After deciding to make the trek, the ball started rolling. “Guys at work were kind of laughing after I was driving home, [they said] to drive through Timmies and get a coffee,” Myshak said.
In September 1993, Dan Amrich raced home from Electronics Boutique and jammed his shiny new Mortal Kombat cartridge into his Sega Genesis. After the SEGA logo flashed on his screen, Amrich’s speakers pumped out heavy percussion as text describing three types of codes—ethical, honorable, and secret—engraved itself across a stony background. The last line caught his attention: Mortal Kombat adheres to many codes, but does it contain one?
As a matter of fact, it did, and Amrich was one of a select few who knew about it.
Raise your hand if you’re old enough to remember scrounging for cheat codes.
Over the years, hundreds of people online have shared memories of a cheesy Nineties movie called “Shazaam”. There is no evidence that such a film was ever made. What does this tell us about the quirks of collective memory?
I know Sinbad and asked him about this at a Macworld Expo many years ago. He thought it was hilarious and was sure people were confusing him with the Shaquille O’Neal movie.
The CRTC has declared broadband internet a basic telecommunications service.
In a ruling handed down Wednesday, the national regulator ordered the country’s internet providers to begin working toward boosting internet service and speeds in rural and isolated areas.
With today’s ruling, the CRTC has set new targets for internet service providers to offer customers in all parts of the country download speeds of at least 50 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds of at least 10 Mbps, and to also offer the option of unlimited data.
This is a “good news, bad news” kind of thing for Canadians. Many of us, myself included, are in rural areas and don’t have access to anywhere near the speeds the government is now mandating (my internet seems particularly good at this moment but even then, I’m getting 3.83Mb/s downloads and only 0.96Mb/s uploads). The bad news is there is no cap on the rates ISPs will charge rural customers so they could effectively price the service out of availability for us country folk.
Apple has debuted a major update to its web-based iCloud Photos app at iCloud.com, presenting a new user interface that more closely resembles the macOS Photos app. A new sidebar is enabled by default which provides more streamlined browsing of photo albums, although as in the corresponding macOS app, users can choose to toggle the sidebar off using a button at the top of the screen. Multiple photos can now be selected, and action buttons in the top-right corner will apply to all selected photos, allowing you to share, download, delete, or file several photos at a time; individual photos can also be organized into albums via drag-and-drop into the sidebar. Viewing an individual photo also now displays a carousel of thumbnails at the bottom of the screen, allowing you to quickly browse through other photos in the same album.
I don’t use iCloud Photos but this looks like a decent update to start bringing it more in line with macOS Photos app.
Today, AT&T launches AT&T Call Protect. The free network-based service gives eligible AT&T wireless customers with HD Voice more control over unwanted calls on their smartphones.
This innovative solution harnesses the power of the AT&T network to give customers automatic fraud blocking and suspected spam call warnings.
Sounds like a great idea, but I was under the impression that many of the spam calls cycle through numbers endlessly. That could be a long cat and mouse game, but hopefully with technology, they can curb a lot of it.
Nokia Corp said on Wednesday it had filed a number of lawsuits against Apple Inc for violating 32 technology patents, striking back at the iPhone maker’s legal action targeting the one-time cellphone industry leader a day earlier.
djay Pro provides a complete toolkit for DJs of all skill levels. Built exclusively for iPhone, djay Pro seamlessly integrates with your media library and Spotify, giving you instant access to millions of tracks. Pristine sound quality and a powerful set of features including high-definition waveforms, four decks, and video mixing give you endless creative flexibility to mix music on-the-go.
These guys do such a great job with their apps, I just love them.
In April, a British Airways jet was hit by a suspected drone as it landed at London’s Heathrow airport, while in August a passenger plane narrowly avoided being hit by a drone as it prepared to land in Cornwall.
There are a lot of very responsible drone owners, but like many things in life, there are a few that are so irresponsible, it gives everyone a bad name. Flying a drone anywhere near an airport or over a major fire when helicopters are trying to fight the fire is just plain stupid.
Nintendo has confirmed what we all knew was likely – Super Mario Run got a lot of downloads at launch. The company says that the app was downloaded over 40 million times during its first four days on the App Store, which breaks records for Apple’s mobile software shop. Previous third-party estimates suggested the new game was on track to topple Pokémon Go’s previous early performance and approach the 40 million mark, but this official number confirms it.
Apple SVP of Marketing Phil Schiller is quoted in the release, confirming that the game broke a record for App Store downloads during its initial few days of availability.
While this is surprising to absolutely no one, it will be interesting to see how Nintendo keeps the momentum going.
I was reading this post from Kirk McElhearn, walking through ways of checking AirPods battery life, when I noticed that the iPhone AirPods icon does not include a battery life icon.
For example, here’s what I see with my Bluetooth headphones. Note the headphone icon in the upper right, showing the battery life left in my headphones.
While the AirPods do show up as a Headphone icon on the iPhone, they do not include a battery level indicator in the icon. Any idea why this is?
One thought is that the AirPods would require three different battery icons (left and right, plus the case itself), perhaps too much clutter for the limited space.
UPDATE: Curiouser and curiouser. Looks like anything with a W1 chip loses the battery sub-icon in the iPhone status bar. Powerbeats 3 have a single charge source (mini USB plug) and do not have the battery sub-icon. Certainly not a big deal, but I am a curious fellow.
These pictures are amazing. They are from deep sea fisherman Roman Fedortsov’s Twitter stream. As fantastic as they are scary. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were special effects castoffs from some sci-fi movie.
Interviews with people familiar with Apple’s inner workings reveal that the Mac is getting far less attention than it once did. They say the Mac team has lost clout with the famed industrial design group led by Jony Ive and the company’s software team. They also describe a lack of clear direction from senior management, departures of key people working on Mac hardware and technical challenges that have delayed the roll-out of new computers.
“Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we’re committed to desktops,” Cook wrote. “If there’s any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that.”
It’s not that I am worried. It’s more that I recognize that Macs are in the back seat now. Especially the Mac Pro.
Letting the Mac Pro languish is shortsighted thinking. As I’ve said many times, Apple developers are foundational to Apple’s success. Inside Apple, developers are building the secret future. Outside Apple, developers are building the apps, macOS and iOS, that bring life and revenue to the ecosystem. Make sure those developers have the best tools possible so they can do their work efficiently and effectively.
And don’t let elegant design be a bottleneck for the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro need not be retail store pretty. Just make it powerful as can be, let me add memory and drives, swap out video cards, VRAM, GPUs, SSDs and the like for third party options, and get it to me ASAP. It can be ugly or plain, just not loud. As long as it runs the latest macOS and is compatible with all the major power tools, like Final Cut Pro, Logic, ProTools, Xcode, Photoshop, etc.
Apple’s AirPods have now officially joined the NES Classic and Hatchimals as the high demand, hardest to get your hands on, marked up outrageously on eBay, must have gifts of the season.
Apple added AirPods to their personal shopper list so you can check stock at your local Apple Stores. But iStockNow is showing zero stock. Anywhere. And Apple is showing first availability as February 13th.
Interesting to see what you can adjust. This list will no doubt grow over time. As I said yesterday (here, here, and, especially here), this is some great tech.
Scaling our websites and applications so that they look great on every screen can be difficult. A big portion of that difficulty can be trying to get specific components, particularly ones that have pieces that have to stay a certain size (like animations), to look good regardless of the screen size. In this post, we’ll cover how to help keep our responsive animations sized the way we want them.
Twenty years ago today, Steve Jobs started his march back to Apple.
On Dec. 20, 1996, Apple announced plans to acquire NeXT Software, the company Jobs founded, for $400 million. As part of the deal, Jobs, who had been previously pushed out of Apple, returned to report to then CEO Dr. Gil Amelio.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of this sale, not just for Apple (I don’t think the company would still be around if this hadn’t happened) but for the entire technology industry. It can be easily argued that, if it weren’t for this sale, we’d all still be using boring beige computers and talking on flip phones.
The European Commission has charged Facebook Inc with providing misleading information during its takeover of the online messaging service WhatsApp, opening the company to a possible fine of 1 percent of its turnover.
The EU is on fire this year. Facebook, Google, and Apple have all felt the wrath.
Apple certified refurbished, free shipping and free returns on all refurbished products. We test and certify all Apple refurbished products and include a 1-year warranty. Limited supplies, but updated frequently. Availability is guaranteed upon receipt of full payment.
Apple has a limited selection of refurb Watches now available. Don’t wait too long to decide. Even though the savings are fairly minor (but every little bit helps), refurbs tend to sell out quickly and I’d imagine the Apple Watch even more so this time of year.
Uber has admitted that there is a “problem” with the way autonomous vehicles cross bike lanes, raising serious questions about the safety of cyclists days after the company announced it would openly defy California regulators over self-driving vehicles.
It’s interesting that this was observed before the launch of the self-driving cars.
