Mark Gurman: Intel 16″ MacBook Pro showing unavailable for pickup

Written by

Here’s the tweet:

https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1447700808821260292

You can buy a 16″ MacBook Pro (Intel inside) from Apple, have it in your hands in a week or two. But every Apple Store I’ve checked shows the 16″ Intel MacBook Pro unavailable for pickup.

It’s no secret that there’s rumored to be a new M1X MacBook Pro on the immediate horizon. Again, it’s a rumor, but a strongly held rumor. If that’s the case, this in-store unavailability might be the strongest sign yet.

And the shipping delay (a week or two to get it) is another clue. If I order an M1 MacBook Pro, I can have it in my hands in 2 hours, if I’m willing to pony up $9 for courier delivery.

Jony Ive and Marc Newson put up a web site

Written by

Jony Ive and Marc Newson were the life blood of Apple’s design sensibility for a long time. They left Apple a few years ago to form a new design firm, called LoveFrom. Somewhat famously, they started work and did not put up a web site. Until now.

Follow the headline link, load the site. It’s simple, but with a signature minimalist design.

Take a look. Pay attention to the animation (typing “LoveFrom,”) when the page loads. Don’t miss that whimsical detail as the comma animates into place. Now reload the page. There are a number of different comma sequences. A tiny, but fun detail.

The page is signed, “love & fury”. Not sure what this signifies, but it is the title of a book about Mary Wollstonecraft (Frankenstein author Mary Shelley’s mother). Not sure there’s a connection, but an interesting choice.

A few weeks ago, we posted about this fake LoveFrom web site. Wonder if that site had anything to do with coaxing the real site into existence.

AirPods Max on sale for $449. What’s your price?

Written by

Apple sells the AirPods Max for $549. Amazon has them on sale (see the headline link) for $449. That’s a pretty steep discount.

Though it is interesting to wonder why this price discrepancy exists (Inventory clearance? New model in the offing? Neither of those seems likely to me), more interesting to me is the price point itself.

Is $449 low enough to bring you into the fold? If not, why not? Is the increase in functionality over your existing setup not worth the price? Are the AirPods Pro good enough? Is the issue that you just don’t have a real sense of how good the AirPods Max really are?

What is the highest price that would draw you in? Would you snap a pair up for $299? $399?

Selling the AirPods Max is like selling a high resolution TV. How do you advertise it? You can describe it, but showing video is limited to the potential buyer’s existing display. Like a new TV, the sale depends on a leap of faith on the buyer’s part.

AnandTech analysis of iPhone 13 series battery life and screen power

Written by

Andrei Frumusanu, AnandTech:

> This year’s new iPhone 13 series have been extremely promising in terms of battery life as Apple has improved this aspect of the devices through a slew of different improvements. All the new phones feature new generation displays, most notably the new Pro models which have new variable refresh displays, along with increases in battery capacities. After a few arduous days of battery life testing, we can come to some very positive conclusions.

There’s a detailed discussion of LTPO VRR. If that’s just alphabet soup to you, here’s a bit from this discussion of LTPO:

> LTPO is the snappy acronym that stands for low-temperature Polycrystalline oxide. In short, it allows for a display to dynamically change its refresh rate without needing any additional hardware components to sit between a device’s graphics processing unit and the display controller.

And VRR is variable refresh rate, which is being branded as ProMotion. Apple’s rates vary from 10Hz to 120Hz.

If the screen discussion doesn’t grab you, scroll down the the section labeled “Bigger Batteries”. The first table compares battery capacity of all the iPhone 12 models to that of the iPhone 13s. Big jumps (ranging from 8% to 18% across the board) in every model.

Next up is a bar chart showing web browsing battery life (in hours) for a variety of phones. From. the description:

> All the new phones showcase extremely large generational gains compared to their predecessors. For the iPhone 13, we’re getting results that are 34% better than the iPhone 12, which exceeds the +14.6% battery capacity increase. The new SoC efficiency as well as increased display power efficiency would explain the remainder of the difference.

The iPhone 13 battery life is a big leap forward.

iPhone 13 Pro sample image gallery

Written by

Follow the headline link, maximize your window size (large display, if possible). Tap each of the controls on the upper right of the current sample image, just to get a sense of what each does. I’m a big fan of the loupe (click to turn it on, then drag the mini-window around the image).

I love this interface, wish there was a version that laid on top of a public, crowd-sourced gallery, with the favorite images rising to the top.