In the survey, almost 20 percent of respondents reported a breakdown in the first 3 years of use, most of them seriously affecting system use.
Apple, as in year’s past, has the most reliable notebooks by far – a 10 percent breakdown rate in the first 3 years – with Samsung and Gateway distant seconds at 16 percent, and the rest of the industry – including Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba, HP, Dell and Asus, at 18-19 percent.
Windows machines used more than 20 hours a week – average for Windows systems – have a higher break rate. Apple users report using their machines an average of 23 hours a week, 15 percent more. More hours, fewer breakdowns, what’s not to like?
The results of the Consumer Reports survey are predictable. While Macbooks aren’t perfect, they do tend to be significantly more reliable than their Windows counterparts. Good ammunition for those of you having the “Should I buy a Mac or a PC?” discussion with friends and relatives this holiday season.
Interested in podcasting? Have an idea for a podcast, but worry that no one else shares your passion? Watch this video. It’s inspirational. Oh, and, that guy giving the talk is Stephen Hackett, one of the founders of Relay.FM. He knows what he’s talking about.
There’s a battle going on, a battle between two opposing forces. On one side, there’s the sandboxed, curated safety of the Mac App Store, a place Mac users can go to find trusted apps, apps they can be sure are malware free.
On the opposing side, the Mac App Store comes with its costs. There’s the 30% fee that Apple charges developers for the privilege of appearing in the Mac App Store. There’s also the (sometimes lengthy) delay that comes with the app review process.
When things are running smoothly, apps benefit by selling more copies, merely by being part of the Mac App Store. Reviews turn around in a day or so and developers can count on Apple keeping counterfeit copies of their apps from ever appearing in the store.
As Apple’s customer base has grown, the review process has faced distinct growing pains. A few weeks ago, the Mac App Store mechanism failed and users were not able to launch their apps. Developers are facing longer and longer review times. Flagship apps such as Coda, BBEdit and, more recently, Sketch, are leaving the Mac App Store. Like a shopping center whose anchor shops are leaving, the Mac App Store is slowly deteriorating.
The Mac App Store comes with a lot of positives. It’s a safety harbor for users. That’s incredibly important. Apps sold outside the App Store are just not guaranteed to have undergone the malware screening they (presumably) go through with Apple. But developers need to be able to turn their bug fixes around in a timely fashion. When Apple makes the review process frustrating enough to force developers to abandon ship, Apple has not done their job properly. And remember, they take 30% of the billings in return for running a proper shop.
Is the Mac App Store a poor stepchild to the iOS App Store? Is Apple diverting Mac App Store resources to the more financially rewarding iOS App Store? This is one of those times when I wish Apple was less secretive, more willing to open up dialog with developers, to work together with developers to find ways to solve this problem.
As a user, I would much prefer to buy my apps through the App Store, to rely on the scrutiny of a solid malware/counterfeiting screening. I imagine that Apple is hearing the klaxon calls from the developer community, reading blog posts like this one from Daring Fireball.
It’d be great to get some kind of response from Apple, to know that they see the problem, that they have a solution in the works.
Jonny Evans, writing for ComputerWorld, lays out a series of Apple Watch tips and tricks that might be new to you, even if you are a grizzled veteran.
My favorite, by far:
A call comes in and you check your Watch. You know you want to talk to this person but want to use your iPhone to make it. Suddenly anxious you grapple through all your pockets to find your phone and the call drops. It needn’t be this way – just use the Answer on iPhone button at the bottom of the incoming call screen (turn the Digital Crown a little and you’ll see it). The person calling will hear a repeated sound while you search for your phone. Stay cool.
When I read this, I wondered if the person calling me would intuitively know to hang on, or if they’d hang up, thinking something went wrong. So I tried it.
This is designed perfectly. The moment you tap the “Answer on iPhone” button, the call is answered and Siri’s voice says, “Please hold on a moment”. Then, a series of repeating tones plays, that makes it sound like you are on hold. My instinctive response was to stay on the phone. This is great.
One of the more interesting features of Photos for Mac is its ability to not store my entire photo library on my Mac’s drive. It does this by syncing the entire library to iCloud Photo Library and then dynamically loading and unloading photos as you use it.
This is a nice feature to have if your photo library is big and your hard drive space is limited. The post is definitely worth reading, just so you understand the basics and can turn to this approach if it ever becomes necessary.
My only concern is what to do if something goes wrong. If some (or most) of your photos are stored in the cloud, how do you recover them if things go south. As is, I manage all my photos on a Mac with plenty of drive space. I back up that Mac regularly, then occasionally back up that backup to an external drive I keep off site.
Losing my photos would be devastating to me. How easy is it to recover from a scenario where my photos are split between storage mechanisms?
Think Luke and Darth. I’ve seen 4 different responses.
I think this feature first hit a few months ago, but give that we are just about two weeks shy of the opening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, this seemed as good a time as any to share it.
We’ve added a bunch of amazing new features to help improve your productivity, and made it possible to use Daylite with our Cloud service! Now you have the option to use Daylite Cloud, giving you all the benefits of a native Mac app, with the convenience of the Cloud. Or you can use Daylite 6 as a “Self-Serve” customer and manage Daylite Server on one of your own computers. You decide which option is best for you. Either way, you can still take advantage of all the new features in Daylite 6.
There are a number of websites and apps out there that help you track sunset and sunrise times so that you can plan your shoots around specific golden hour lighting. SunsetWx is a new website that takes things to the next level: it can forecast the quality of the upcoming sunset in your area (in the United States).
Created by three Pennsylvania-based meteorologists, the sunrise and sunset models take into account things like humidity, pressure changes, and clouds at various levels in the atmosphere. Wispy, high-altitude clouds are indications of a “high quality” sunset/sunrise, while low and thick clouds lower the score.
Photographers will tell you that not all sunsets are created equal. This site might be a way to increase your chances of getting that great sunset shot.
Jim and Merlin talk about who the iPad Pro is for, their favorite cover songs, and the best apps for making music. Also, Jim gives an out-of-character recommendation.
To celebrate the holidays, Microsoft employees, who were selected from across the country, gathered together, meeting each other for the first time, at the new Microsoft 5th Ave Store to spread some holiday wishes. Joined by a local NYC children’s youth choir, they share a message of peace and harmony with their neighbor down the street.
I hope we’re not too cynical and jaded that we can’t just sit back, watch this video and accept its message this holiday season.
Randy Spydell asked, in essence, why the File menu has a Duplicate command instead of the traditional Save As command. Implicit in his question was “and is there any way to bring back Save As?”
The answer to that second question is yes, and I’ll explain how in a moment.
This is one of those wonderful little “hacks” that you either don’t care about or you’re sitting there right now, going through Adam’s steps to put Save As back where it rightfully belongs.
We’ve been considering our options for some time. Over the last year, as we’ve made great progress with Sketch, the customer experience on the Mac App Store hasn’t evolved like its iOS counterpart. We want to continue to be a responsive, approachable, and easily-reached company, and selling Sketch directly allows us to give you a better experience.
There are a number of reasons for Sketch leaving the Mac App Store—many of which in isolation wouldn’t cause us huge concern. However as with all gripes, when compounded they make it hard to justify staying.
Not the first and certainly not the last developer to make this decision. As detailed in this blog post, the Mac App Store simply doesn’t work for some developers. Personally, I avoid using it whenever possible.
If you love Formula One racing, or if you grew up with slot racers (toy cars with pegs on the bottom drive on tracks with slots for those pegs, all driven with crazy abandon using electric controllers), you’ll definitely love this:
Imagine taking Google’s driverless car, mashing it up with Tesla’s zero-to-60-in-three-seconds “ludicrous mode,” and then pushing it to speeds of over 100 mph. Now imagine nearly two dozen of these souped-up robotic cars all speeding around on the same closed track and trying to outdo one another — without a human behind the wheel.
That’s basically what we’ll get next year in the Roborace, a high-speed stress test for 10 teams of driverless car designers who will compete as a part of Formula E, the global auto racing series that uses only electric cars.
John Voorhees, author of Blink, writing for MacStories:
One of the keys to succeeding in any online market where supply outstrips demand, or where risk is concentrated, is to remain nimble and distribute the risk. People have experimented with all sorts of revenue models as a hedge against this uncertainty. Memberships and patronage systems are options that let “super fans” support work that they value more than others. But, there’s another option you should consider that has a lower barrier to entry, the potential to reach a far wider audience, and once set up, works on autopilot, producing cash without any intervention by you and at no added cost to your audience – the iTunes Affiliate Program.
Outside of a savvy core of people who recognize that the affiliate program helps them keep doing what they love, the program is still largely unknown. The purpose of this article is to fix that – to lay it all out comprehensively.
Few people outside of Apple know as much about the iTunes Affiliate Program as John Vorhees. This is an expert guide.
Try asking Siri this (but substitute in your business of choice):
How late is Harris Teeter open?
This works well, though Siri can’t find the hours for some smaller businesses. I suspect this happens when the business does not have a web presence for Siri’s team to scrape.
Note that in the case above (Harris Teeter is open 24/7), Siri replies:
Harris Teeter is open all day today.
Good to know. Read the linked article for more details.
Customers who have a grandfathered unlimited smartphone data plan will receive notifications of a $5/mo. rate increase for the data plan. The rate increase will take effect starting with the customer’s February, 2016 service.
This price increase will not impact your current unlimited data speeds. You’ll still be able to enjoy the nation’s most reliable network and will only see reduced speeds if you exceed 22GB of data in a billing cycle and are in a congested area.
Should you decide to cancel your wireless service because of the $5/mo. increase, we will waive the early termination fees (ETFs) for the lines impacted by the price increase, so long as you cancel within 60 days after the price increase first appears on your bill. If you cancel after that time, you will be subject to the usual ETF.
First increase in 7 years. If the $5/month increase is a deal breaker, they’ll drop the early termination fee.
For nearly two decades, Flash Professional has been the standard for producing rich animations on the web. Because of the emergence of HTML5 and demand for animations that leverage web standards, we completely rewrote the tool over the past few years to incorporate native HTML5 Canvas and WebGL support. To more accurately represent its position as the premier animation tool for the web and beyond, Flash Professional will be renamed Adobe Animate CC, starting with the next release in early 2016.
Interesting move on Adobe’s part. They’re essentially giving up on the Flash brand while, at the same time, embracing HTML5 and WebGL. Hard for a brand to overcome so much negative baggage.
In 1992, Mike Myers used “Bohemian Rhapsody” as the rambunctious centerpiece of the indelible opening scene of the film, Wayne’s World, which had been adapted from a Saturday Night Live sketch of the same name, and gave the song and the band behind it an unprecedented second life.
The gleeful scene has become iconic itself, a cultural touchstone that’s been parodied, copied and celebrated almost since the moment of its release back in 1992. Here, the creative forces behind the scene and the beneficiaries of its influence tell the story of how all that happened and how it almost didn’t.
There are few movie scenes more full of childlike joy. I defy you to watch the attached video and not smile and sing along with Wayne and Garth.
Over the Thanksgiving break the intrepid crew over at Chipworks sent over their initial teardown information for Apple’s A9X SoC. The heart of the recently launched iPad Pro, the A9X is the latest iteration in Apple’s line of tablet-focused SoCs. We took an initial look at A9X last month, but at the time we only had limited information based on what our software tools could tell us. The other half of the picture (and in a literal sense, the entire picture) is looking at the physical layout of the chip, and now thanks to Chipworks we have that in hand and can confirm and reject some of our earlier theories.
I only understood about every fourth word in this article but it sounds like Apple has done some pretty incredible engineering.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook will collect a humanitarian award from an organization founded in honor of one of his personal heroes, Robert F. Kennedy.
The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights will present Cook with its Ripple of Hope Award on Dec. 8 in acknowledgment of his work on behalf of social change. He will be recognized in New York City, alongside U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and Freedom Rider during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s; Evercore co-founder and former assistant treasury secretary Roger Altman; and UNESCO Ambassador Marianna Vardinoyannis.
The Apple executive has become an outspoken advocate for workplace equality, arguing that businesses benefit when their workers feel fully recognized.
Congratulations to Mr Cook. Even though he gets a great deal of flack for it, I admire him for taking a stand on these issues.
Universal Pictures has released the script for the Aaron Sorkin Steve Jobs movie as a PDF. I love reading movie scripts of films I’ve seen but I’m unlikely to read this one because I’m not very interested in seeing the movie. Thanks to John Watson for pointing me to the web page.
What if you could get 5% of your day back? What would you do?
You already have enough work to do today and shouldn’t have to waste time looking for the things you need to do your job.
Igloo makes it easy to find what you need, when you need it. And it’s not just for locating your traditional intranet stuff like HR policies and expense forms. It also helps you find experts, talk about problems and share content with your team. So stop digging through your inbox for that file from 3 months back and give yourself the tools you need to do your best work.
Try it yourself or send your IT guy to investigate Igloo, an intranet you’ll actually like.
Because Apple makes the hardware, the operating system, and many applications, the Mac is a truly integrated system. And only the AppleCare Protection Plan gives you one-stop service and support from Apple experts, so most issues can be resolved in a single call. Extend the complimentary service and support on your Mac to three years from the original Mac purchase date with the AppleCare Protection Plan. You get direct telephone access to Apple experts for technical questions, and you get global repair coverage—including both parts and labor—for your Mac and select Apple peripherals.
Thanks to Dan Frakes on Twitter for this link. When I first saw it, I asked Dan if it was legit (knowing it was. Dan is the Senior Editor at Wirecutter and was formerly the same at Macworld magazine) and I trust him. There are some really good deals here – up to $100 off some AppleCare plans. I asked Dan for further info and he said, “I’ve purchased two AppleCare policies from them. You get a box with a code; you redeem the code on the AppleCare site.”
