Apple today announced M1, the most powerful chip it has ever created and the first chip designed specifically for the Mac. M1 is optimized for Mac systems in which small size and power efficiency are critically important. As a system on a chip (SoC), M1 combines numerous powerful technologies into a single chip, and features a unified memory architecture for dramatically improved performance and efficiency. M1 is the first personal computer chip built using cutting-edge 5-nanometer process technology and is packed with an astounding 16 billion transistors, the most Apple has ever put into a chip. It features the world’s fastest CPU core in low-power silicon, the world’s best CPU performance per watt, the world’s fastest integrated graphics in a personal computer, and breakthrough machine learning performance with the Apple Neural Engine. As a result, M1 delivers up to 3.5x faster CPU performance, up to 6x faster GPU performance, and up to 15x faster machine learning, all while enabling battery life up to 2x longer than previous-generation Macs. With its profound increase in performance and efficiency, M1 delivers the biggest leap ever for the Mac.
This is so much better than I expected. The M1 puts the Mac in a class of its own in CPU, GPU, battery, and every other aspect of computing.
First things first, there’s Austin Mann’s comprehensive review. Read the detailed comments, check out the images and videos. There’s a lot to process.
Don’t miss the wish list and low light shooting tips at the end of Austin’s post. And, most importantly, don’t miss the decision tree at the very end, which lays out the questions you should ask yourself before you plunk down your hard earned cash for the upgrade.
While it’s expensive, it’s not that much more expensive than the smaller iPhone 12 Pro: it’s just $100 more at every storage level, starting at $1,099 with 128GB of storage and going up to $1,399 for 512GB of storage. For that money, you get a larger display, a bigger battery, and a very different camera system. I’ll just cut to the chase and say it’s absolutely worth it over the standard 12 Pro if you can deal with the size — but it’s a lot of size. And the camera is worth exploring in depth, because there’s a lot going on.
And that says it all. Bigger sensor, better camera, more battery, bigger display, at $100 and some not insignificant pocket size/weight.
As you make your way through these reviews, think about the types of photos you take. On my end, I take a lot of photos of moving things, like cats, birds, and people. If that’s you, make sure you read the reviews with that in mind, keep your eye peeled for those sorts of examples.
If you hew more toward nature photography, I would definitely dive deep into Austin Mann’s immersive review. And if you are exploring the difference between different high-end smartphone cameras, spend some time on the slide-over shots in Nilay’s review.
Since the Pro Max marks the first time in a while that Apple changed the size of its camera sensor, PetaPixel spoke to two Apple executives who outlined the company’s vision and design philosophy behind camera development.
In an interview with Apple’s Product Line Manager, iPhone Francesca Sweet and Vice President, Camera Software Engineering Jon McCormack, both made clear that the company thinks of camera development holistically: it’s not just the sensor and lenses, but also everything from Apple’s A14 Bionic chip, to the image signal processing, to the software behind its computational photography.
This is an interesting read, especially the discussion of the new, bigger sensor in the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
For context, you have to understand that this thing is $129 but feels like it should be $70. When you realize that it is a charger that doesn’t come with a power adapter, I would not be shocked if you mentally downgraded it to $40.
And (look at the pic of the hinge in the review):
The hinge and casing are coated in soft-touch rubber that is sort of press-molded on. While the hinge works fine, it is wobbly and immediately creases. The rubber is thick enough that it doesn’t give the impression that it will rip immediately or anything — but it’s not exactly confidence-inducing. This is an inexpensive hinge solution that you would expect to see from a price-conscious third-party accessory, not from Apple.
One of those takes where it’s all laid out in the headline.
If you are considering the iPhone 12 mini, this is absolutely worth your time. Rene does an excellent job, both verbally and visually, walking through the decision process, the things you should think about before you click the iPhone 12 mini buy button.
Since Apple Silicon Macs will have the same processors as iPhone and iPad, Apple will let users download and install iOS apps on these Macs even if the developer doesn’t offer a specific version of the app for macOS.
Key point is the idea that you might have a choice between an Intel-built app running in some form of emulation on an Apple Silicon Mac or an iOS app running natively.
Although by default all iOS apps are available on the Mac App Store for Apple Silicon, the company is allowing developers to opt their iOS apps out of the new unified store.
And there’s the rub. According to this post, not all iOS apps will be available on the new Macs.
If you were expecting to watch YouTube on your new Mac with a native app, you’re out of luck. Google has chosen not to offer most of its apps on the Apple Silicon platform, and this also includes Google Maps, Google Drive, and Gmail apps. On the other hand, the Netflix app for iOS is still on track to be available on new Macs, as well as the HBO Max app.
This is life on a new platform. But over time, older Mac apps will either fade away, or rebuild for the new hardware. Over time, you’ll have all native apps, one way or the other.
Open the headline link on your iPhone or iPad (not your Mac) and start playing. This is a great way to get a sense of all the different colors and materials, cases and finishes.
Pick an iPhone, case, wallet, customize the colors, switch ’em up. Fun.
Sort of like Apple Watch Studio, but Apple Watch Studio works on the Mac. Wonder what’s different.
Apple Inc. suspended new business with iPhone assembler Pegatron Corp. after discovering labor violations at a student workers’ program, taking strong action to clean up a Chinese-based production chain long accused of worker abuse.
And:
[Apple] said it discovered several weeks ago that the Taiwanese manufacturer misclassified student workers and allowed some to work nights and overtime in violation of Apple’s Supplier Code of Conduct.
And:
“The individuals at Pegatron responsible for the violations went to extraordinary lengths to evade our oversight mechanisms.”
Dave and I took some time to talk about Apple’s Mac event happening virtually next week from Cupertino. The new Macs will be the first with Apple Silicon. We also talked about the release of Apple One, the services bundle the company released last week.
Linode: Get started on Linode today with a $100 in free credit for listeners of The Dalrymple Report. You can find all the details at linode.com/dalrymple.
A billion dollars worth of bitcoins linked to the shuttered darknet market Silk Road has changed hands for the first time in seven years, prompting renewed speculation about the fate of the illicit fortune.
Almost 70,000 bitcoins stored in the account which, like all bitcoin wallets, is visible to the public, had lain untouched since April 2013. The website was shut down by an FBI raid six months after they were deposited, and they have not moved since.
Late on Tuesday night, however, the full amount less a $12 (£9) transaction fee was transferred to a new bitcoin address, records show.
This is an amazing story. If you’ve never heard of Silk Road (the online marketplace), here’s a link to the Wikipedia page. It’s a riveting read.
Silk Road’s founder, Ross Ulbricht, was sentenced to life in prison. Did he somehow move this trove? Did someone figure out a way to hack into the bitcoin wallet and move the funds? This is a pretty great story.
If this intrigues you, you should check out the book American Kingpin. It tells the story of the creation and, ultimately, the shutdown of Silk Road and it is a real page turner.
Today the Justice Department finally revealed where a billion-dollar tranche of the Silk Road’s treasure ended up: stolen by a mysterious hacker, and now seized by the US Treasury.
The DOJ today filed a civil forfeiture complaint over 69,370 bitcoins—and other variants of the cryptocurrency—seized on November 3 from an unnamed person who court documents refer to only as Individual X. According to the IRS’s criminal investigation unit, Individual X successfully hacked the Silk Road sometime between May of 2012 and April of 2013, stealing that abundance of drug money from the dark web site’s bitcoin addresses before Ulbricht’s downfall in October of 2013. The IRS says it has finally tracked down the hacker who stole the Silk Road’s nearly 70,000 bitcoins—now worth more than $1 billion—and allowed law enforcement to take control of those funds.
This starts a little slow, but it slowly builds. Two interesting subtopics are the discussion of tethering being potential faster than Wi-Fi and 5G in the enterprise space.
I find it fascinating to think of tethering as a 5G Trojan horse, bringing 5G speeds to non-5G devices by tethering them to a 5G phone connected to mmWave.
When MLB settled on its structure for coronavirus gameplay—in home stadiums but without fans—it knew it would need to provide a remedy for the unnatural quiet of empty ballparks.
The league found its answer in the form of 30 iPads, one for each team, loaded with various crowd reactions so that a little tapping and scrolling was all it took to play the proper noises. But an artificial crowd is as an art as much as it is a science. And it’s harder than it looks (or sounds).
The linked SI article is from back in September. I had no idea how this was done. And, frankly, I’m glad. It does take away a bit of the mystery.
But, that said, this is pretty cool. Wondering if other sports use the same approach. The NFL has famously adopted Microsoft Surface (that first season, cameras caught a lot of coaches using iPads, NFL clamped down). Wonder how they do it? Well here ya go. Don’t miss that Mac screenshot at about 1:34.
Apple-owned Shazam is the most popular music-identification service in the world. Starting with iOS 14.2, your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch can identify music playing around you or in apps via Shazam-powered music recognition available from the Control Center.
In a nutshell, if you’ve got the iOS or iPadOS 14.2 beta installed:
Go to Settings > Control Center
Tap the green + to add Music Recognition to Included Controls
Do that, and you’ll see the Shazam icon in Control Center. Tap it, it’ll do its thing.
Me, I ask Siri:
“What song is this?”
Both seem to work equally well. I’m guessing they fire up the same exact bit of code. The Control Center approach is much more subtle if you’re in a room with others. Good to have both.
Apple is asking suppliers to produce 2.5 million MacBook laptops powered by its in-house designed CPU by early 2021 as the California tech giant looks to rapidly cut its reliance on Intel chips, sources have told Nikkei Asia.
These initial production orders for the first MacBooks to use the Apple Silicon central processing unit are equivalent to nearly 20% of total MacBook shipments for 2019, which came in at 12.6 million units, sources briefed on the matter said.
And:
Apple has said it intends to completely cut the use of Intel’s standard CPUs, which rivals HP, Dell, Lenovo and Asustek also use for their computers, in its MacBook lineup within two years.
First bit shows that Apple expects a big wave of orders for the coming Apple Silicon Macs. Makes sense. This is a big change, and the first time in many years that we expect a truly significant performance upgrade in a new generation of Macs.
My favorite Apple product rollouts are brand new product categories (like the original iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch), significant feature introductions (like Night mode or Face ID), or significant construction changes (a modular, snap together Mac, the move to aluminum cases, or the first flat sided iPhone).
One last category that excites me is the move to an entirely new processor family. This wave has occurred twice, with the move from the Motorola 68K to PowerPC back in 1994, then the move to Intel in 2006.
To me, the coming Mac adoption of Apple Silicon will bring the biggest impact of these waves, with the unification of the product lines to Apple’s own chip designs, along with the incredible performance increase with on-chip machine learning, making highly performant AI available throughout the product line.
Like 5G, this stuff is in its infancy. Looking forward to what Apple’s got in the pipeline.
To communicate with a Wi-Fi network, a device must identify itself to the network using a unique network address called a media access control (MAC) address. If the device always uses the same Wi-Fi MAC address across all networks, network operators and other network observers can more easily relate that address to the device’s network activity and location over time. This allows a kind of user tracking or profiling, and it applies to all devices on all Wi-Fi networks.
So if you always use your device’s actual MAC address at, say, your local Starbucks, it becomes easy to uniquely identify that device and track you.
As Android did last year, Apple has given you the ability to randomize your MAC address. Follow the headline link to learn more but here’s how to turn this on/off:
Go to Settings > WiFi
Tap your WiFi network
Look for the Private Address toggle
Private Address is likely already on. If it is and you never noticed, perfect!
Since a randomized address is seen as a new network device, this might cause you to see a “new network device” alert each time you get on your home network (if you are set up to monitor such things). Apple lets you customize a network to turn private addresses on or off to address that issue.
Consider this feature to be Apple’s version of Google Maps Location History. Now, before you start worrying about your privacy, keep in mind that Apple doesn’t see or read this information, since all the data related to Significant Locations is encrypted. Plus, you have the option to remove these locations from your device and also turn this feature off, if you still have security concerns or you simply don’t want to share such information.
Significant Locations are enabled by default on iOS devices, but if you are reading this, you mighty want to turn it off and clear out that data. In this article, we’ll be discussing exactly how you can delete Significant Locations on both the iPhone and iPad.
Good to know you can delete your Significant Locations, but even if you don’t particularly care about that, worth following along just to explore this little-used branch of Settings.
In April 2017, a man started hiking in a state park just north of New York City. He wanted to get away, maybe from something and maybe from everything. He didn’t bring a phone; he didn’t bring a credit card. He didn’t even really bring a name. Or at least he didn’t tell anyone he met what it was.
And:
Six months later and 600 miles south, on July 23, 2018, two hikers headed out into the Big Cypress National Preserve. The humidity was oppressive, but they trudged forward, crossing swamps, tending aching feet, and dodging the alligators and snakes. About 10 miles into their journey, they stopped to rest their feet at a place called Nobles Camp. There they saw a yellow tent and a pair of boots outside. Something smelled bad, and something seemed off. They called out, then peered through the tent’s windscreen. An emaciated, lifeless body was looking up at them. They called 911.
This is a fascinating read, a bit of escapism if you need such a thing.
Sudeikis originated the character of Ted Lasso in ads for NBC Sports, but as he explains below, the idea to make it a series really came alive when Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence came on board. I previously wrote about how he and Lawrence worked together on this project, but please below find my full interview with Sudeikis (lightly edited for clarity), in which he explains how the show made the leap from a speculative pilot based on the commercials to an enduring beacon of nice-ness — and why that matters right now more than ever.
An enduring beacon of nice-ness. Perfect description of Ted Lasso. Great read.
Follow the headline link if you want the details. Move on if you don’t want even the slightest hint of what’s said to be coming. Suffice it to say that Apple has promised new Apple-silicon Macs this year, and next week’s event is the last chance to fulfill that promise.
One particular bit that struck me (move along if you don’t want a potential spoiler):
Apple engineers are currently developing a new Mac Pro that looks like the current design at about half the size. It’s unclear if that Mac will replace the current Mac Pro or if it’s an additional model.
I have my eyes (and budget) on the highest end laptop that Apple announces next week. But if Apple goes Pro? It’d be delightful to hear about a desktop (non-iMac) in my price range. The machine I am replacing is a machine I do a lot of development on. A desktop screamer would be absolutely perfect, give me the chance to buy more power without taking out a mortgage on the house.
The 20-strong Industrial Design Group is at the core of Apple’s creative process and typically works at least two years out. This suite of products revealed in October were still at prototype stage back in 2018, long before Chief Design Officer Jony Ive stepped back from the company after 27 years. This level of foresight is essential, allowing time for the vast global mechanism of mass production, assembly and distribution to gear up for the next generation.
And:
As ever, the details go far beyond what you see on the surface — the iPhone team had to tweak the internal architecture — already a literal miracle of packaging – to accommodate the magnetic coil. The cardholder wallet is sprung so that a single card is still held as tightly as three. The passive NFC field ensures the iPhone detects when an accessory is docked, a feature demonstrated best by the sleeve which leaves a small slot for the time display. Putting away your phone will also change the display colour to match the sleeve’s.
If you appreciate design, this is a fun read. Apple and detail, partners.
Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac, digs into the new MagSafe iPhone Leather Wallet.
My biggest concern is the stickiness of the wallet. If I wedge my iPhone into a tight pocket, how hard would it be to accidentally dislodge the wallet, especially with a rear pocket?
It can definitely fall off easier than you’d hope. But I think once you get used to it, you’ll be aware of how to carefully put it in your pocket (especially with tight jeans/pants etc.) so you don’t knock it off.
So awareness is key here. No worries on demagnetizing your credit cards, but know that you’ll need to pay attention when you pick up and pocket your iPhone with wallet attached.
Xbox users who aren’t already subscribed to Apple TV+ will be able to do so right on their Xbox. I’m curious if that’s a thing where Microsoft gets a cut of the subscription — I’m guessing no, because I can’t see why Netflix would go for that.
Giant towers of commerce, all built on exclusive ecosystems, with tendrils working their way across battle lines into opposing camps, all built on foundations of control and exclusion. If anti-trust breaks one of those foundational building blocks, watch out.
Oscar winner Christopher Walken is set as a lead alongside Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette, Tramell Tillman, Jen Tullock, Zach Cherry, Britt Lower and John Turturro in Severance, Apple’s upcoming workplace thriller drama directed by and executive produced by Ben Stiller.
That’s a helluva cast. And Ben Stiller as exec producer, one of the few humans on the planet involved in multiple billion dollar movie franchises. Mix in Christopher Walken, and this’ll be worth watching, no matter the plot.
To attract folks like this, Apple TV+ has to have achieved a certain level of critical mass, of gravitas. And doing this in a single year is remarkable.
Apple on Monday announced a special event that will take place virtually from its Cupertino, California Headquarters on November 10. The event will start at 10:00 am PST.
Dubbed “One More Thing,” the event doesn’t give any hints to what will be announced, but it’s widely expected that Apple will announce its new Mac with Apple silicon.
Apple said it would release the Apple silicon Mac before the end of the year, but we don’t know which model—or models—the company will release using its own chips. We’ll find out soon enough.
