This is one of the most enjoyable-to-read teardowns I’ve made my way through in a long time. But that aside, Apple has clearly made some headway in Mac repairability.
One nugget in particular leapt out at me:
That new trackpad cable configuration pays dividends! Where last year the trackpad cables were trapped under the logic board, they are now free to be disconnected anytime—meaning trackpad removal can happen as soon as the back cover comes off. And since the battery rests under these same cables, this new configuration also greatly speeds up battery removal by leaving the logic board in place.
This alone makes the MacBook Air a big leap forward for me. Glad to see it.
If you’re an iPhone user with a modern Dell computer, you can now mirror your phone’s screen to your PC and control it using Dell’s Mobile Connect app. Version 3 of the iOS app lets you control your phone using your PC’s keyboard and mouse, and you can also drag and drop photo and video files to transfer them between the two devices. You can also now send SMS messages without needing to keep the iPhone app open in the foreground.
As our economies grind to a crawl, some companies experience an overwhelming surge in demand. Health care and Amazon leap to mind. But as more and more of us are forced to work from home, add apps like Skype, Zoom, and Slack to that list.
Follow the headline link to read Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield’s diary of demand buildup as coronavirus became more and more real.
Matt Patches, writing for Polygon, opens with this sentence:
Last February, one of the most enjoyable sitcoms of the last few years slipped onto Apple TV Plus.
Couldn’t agree more. And clearly one of the biggest reasons for Mythic Quest’s success is Charlotte Nicdao. To me, she is the beating heart of a top-notch ensemble cast.
If you are a fan of the show, follow the link and read on. And if you’ve not yet watched, now would be an excellent opportunity to dig in.
First built as prototypes for Apple employees in the early ’90s, they obviously drew on the most prolific training shoe styles of the time, and have such become a cult relic from the sneaker scene of that time.
Follow the link, check out the pic. These kicks scream ’90s, early Apple. Paging Matthew Panzarino.
UPDATE: Here’s a link to the auction itself. Looks like the sale was in AUD, not USD. Headline updated. [H/T AppleInsider’s Mike Wuerthele]
Like so many others, most sports announcers have suddenly found themselves without a venue for their talents. Nick Heath is among them, but he’s not letting his vocal abilities go to waste. In a series of videos he’s tagged with #LifeCommentary, Nick is narrating everyday scenes from his London neighborhood with all the tenacity and verve he’d bring to a rugby match. From crossing the road to shopping for essentials, the videos highlight the mundane in a clever, funny way, bringing some much-needed humor to such dark times.
San Francisco shelter-in-place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Driving through San Francisco during the pandemic is jaw dropping. Thankfully few people are outside (I wasn’t even close to a person), but seeing the shops boarded up is tough to see. I made sure the drone wasn’t a nuisance to anyone while shooting this short documentary of this…very weird time in San Francisco.
Many years ago, I would have been in San Francisco this time of year to attend Macworld Expo so I know what it’s supposed to look like. Seeing the city empty is eerie.
Proud to share we’ve been able to source 10M masks for the US and millions more for the hardest hit regions in Europe. Our ops teams are helping to find and purchase masks from our supply chain in coordination with governments around the world. pic.twitter.com/uTsA6eA5ks
More entertainment fodder for your shelter-in-place: Star Trek: Picard is now free to non-subscribers to CBS All Access.
Or, put more accurately: Non-paid subscribers. You’ll still have to sign up for the CBS streaming service to watch the show, but now there’s a coupon code that unlocks Picard: “GIFT.” The will unlock a one month free trial which includes all shows on the service (so if you want to check out Star Trek: Discovery or old episodes of Next Generation, you can do that too).
There are nine episodes from the show’s first season available now, and the season finale drops on Thursday.
As noted in the comments section:
There’s no way to sign up without giving them your credit card info and having to manually cancel the subscription in the future. It’s no different than any other free trial.
Office workers aren’t the only ones who can work from home during the coronavirus pandemic — radio DJs can do so, too. Show hosts on Beats 1, Apple Music’s internet radio station, will be broadcasting from the safety of their homes starting today. According to Apple, they will use FaceTime on their iPhones to conduct interviews with popular musicians like Elton John and Hayley Williams.
The fact that internet radio shows can more or less continue as normal could be seen as a testament to the technology and infrastructure in place.
FYI Engadget that technology has been in place for over 26 years.
When large tech companies including Apple and Facebook announced this week that they’d be donating stockpiles of protective masks to health workers around the world, some people may have wondered why they had them in the first place.
Executives said they had them in storage because of the recent spate of wildfires in California. They were required to have them by law.
In 2019, California’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board adopted a regulation forcing employers to provide respiratory equipment, including N95 masks, for workers when the Air Quality Index, or AQI, reaches unhealthy levels.
After it was announced Apple was donating a large supply of masks, The Usual Suspects trotted out, conspiracy hats in hand, trying to figure out why Apple was “hoarding” masks. Well, here’s the explanation.
Scattered amid a relentless barrage of news about COVID-19 case surges, quarantine orders, and medical supply shortages on Twitter this week, some happy stories softened the blows: Swans had returned to deserted Venetian canals. Dolphins too. And a group of elephants had sauntered through a village in Yunnan, China, gotten drunk off corn wine, and passed out in a tea garden.
These reports of wildlife triumphs in countries hard-hit by the novel coronavirus got hundreds of thousands of retweets. They went viral on Instagram and Tik Tok. They made news headlines. If there’s a silver lining of the pandemic, people said, this was it—animals were bouncing back, running free in a humanless world.
But it wasn’t real.
“Fake news” is everywhere, even in “good news” stories.
Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief, took his iPad Pro on a one-week trip to Brazil:
The trip changed my mind completely about whether I could run TechCrunch wholly from a tablet. It turns out that it was lighter, smoother and more willing than my MacBook at nearly every turn. I never went back.
Balance that comment with:
The new iPad Pro offers an attractive refresh for new buyers, but not current ones.
That last is not a complaint, as much as a note that the new A12Z Bionic processor appears to be in-line, power wise with the A12X in the previous iPad Pro, the so-called third generation, introduced in October 2018.
Obviously, there’s much more to this fourth gen iPad Pro, including the celebrated LiDAR Scanner (early days for AR, but a machine ready for those apps as they come), eight-core CPU and GPU, doubling of base storage to 128 GB and, of course, the soon-to-arrive Magic Keyboard.
Great, real world review. If you’re considering the new iPad Pro, this is worth reading.
Suppliers engaged in the supply chain for Apple’s new products featuring its redesigned scissor-switch Magic Keyboard are ramping up production and have seen no cutbacks in the orders despite concerns over the coronavirus, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.
And:
So far, Apple has not cut any of its orders with the upstream supply chain for 2020, but related upstream suppliers are still closely monitoring the coronavirus development.
Note that the same Magic Keyboard scissor mechanism is used in the external Magic Keyboard, shipping in May, as well as internally in the new MacBook Air and the 16″ MacBook Pro.
Apple Inc. told staff that some of its retail stores may reopen in April on a staggered basis and has extended remote work abilities for many employees through at least April 5.
And:
“For all of our retail stores outside of Greater China, we will reopen our stores on a staggered basis. At this time, we anticipate some stores may be able to open in the first half of April depending on the conditions in their community,” O’Brien wrote. “We will provide updates for each store as soon as specific dates are established.”
Take with a grain of salt, for many reasons, not the least of them being the unpredictable nature of the coronavirus spread.
That said, I’ll take it. A bit of light at the end of the tunnel.
Ditching some or even all of the paid services you subscribe to now might mean missing out on some of your favorite new content as it airs, but some people might not have a choice right now. And keep in mind that this is a temporary solution — you can always cancel Netflix and all those other services for just a few months and then subscribe again when we make it to the other side of the coronavirus outbreak. In the meantime, we’re republishing our list of 10 free streaming sites that will help tide you over.
I certainly wouldn’t cancel Netflix for these alternatives but if you’re bored, there’s lots of options to “channel surf.” It also shows just how many streaming services are out there. I haven’t even heard of some of these.
With more board configurations than there are atoms in the universe, the ancient Chinese game of Go has long been considered a grand challenge for artificial intelligence. On March 9, 2016, the worlds of Go and artificial intelligence collided in South Korea for an extraordinary best-of-five-game competition, coined The DeepMind Challenge Match. Hundreds of millions of people around the world watched as a legendary Go master took on an unproven AI challenger for the first time in history.
Directed by Greg Kohs with an original score by Academy Award nominee, Hauschka, AlphaGo chronicles a journey from the halls of Oxford, through the backstreets of Bordeaux, past the coding terminals of DeepMind in London, and ultimately, to the seven-day tournament in Seoul. As the drama unfolds, more questions emerge: What can artificial intelligence reveal about a 3000-year-old game? What can it teach us about humanity?
I tried learning Go back in college but I quickly found out I’m nowhere near smart enough to play it – and I was a pretty decent chess player. But the game fascinates me nonetheless.
I had a question: What’s the right way to disinfect my screens and keyboards without damaging them?
I did a lot of reading, found a lot of conflicting advice. Fortunately, I came across this Apple Support page, which offered this highlighted addition:
Is it OK to use a disinfectant on my Apple product?
Using a 70 percent isopropyl alcohol wipe or Clorox Disinfecting Wipes, you may gently wipe the hard, nonporous surfaces of your Apple product, such as the display, keyboard, or other exterior surfaces. Don’t use bleach. Avoid getting moisture in any opening, and don’t submerge your Apple product in any cleaning agents. Don’t use on fabric or leather surfaces.
Launch your Music app, tap the For You tab, scroll that top row to the side, and you should see a “Get Up! Mix” slide into view. For me, it was the second item, right next to my Favorites Mix.
If you don’t see it, you can also ask Siri to:
Play Get Up Mix
Both worked for me, even on my HomePod.
As to the mix itself, I absolutely love it. Great selection of songs, all of them in line with music I love. Not a dud in the bunch. Definitely worth checking out.
The macOS version of your app can now be included in a universal purchase, allowing customers to enjoy your app and in‑app purchases across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS by purchasing only once.
John Voorhees, MacStories:
Prior to universal purchase, Mac apps were treated as separate products by Apple’s stores, which meant developers had to either charge separately for apps and, in some cases, jump through complex receipt-checking hoops to bundle their apps. This change should make the process of charging a single price or signing up for one subscription for apps across the Mac, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS much simpler and will enable cross-platform In-App purchases too.
Universal purchase will certainly make life simpler, both for developers and for users.
Foxconn, the top assembler of Apple’s iPhones, said it has secured enough workers to meet “seasonal demand” at all major Chinese plants, stressing a steady recovery from the labor shortage caused by the novel coronavirus epidemic on the mainland.
And:
The company is expected to hit a peak production period after July to manufacture iPhones for release in the fall.
This is certainly good news for Apple and for the economy. But it only addresses the supply side of the equation. It remains to be seen when demand for electronics will recover, given the massive impact the coronavirus crisis has had on the stock market, jobs, and buyers’ budgets.
Over the weekend, Jeff Bezos sent out a memo to all employees. Follow the headline link to read the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts:
Across the world, people are feeling the economic effects of this crisis, and I’m sad to tell you I predict things are going to get worse before they get better. We’re hiring for 100,000 new roles and raising wages for our hourly workers who are fulfilling orders and delivering to customers during this period of stress and turmoil. At the same time, other businesses like restaurants and bars are being forced to shut their doors. We hope people who’ve been laid off will come work with us until they’re able to go back to the jobs they had.
And:
We’ve placed purchase orders for millions of face masks we want to give to our employees and contractors who cannot work from home, but very few of those orders have been filled. Masks remain in short supply globally and are at this point being directed by governments to the highest-need facilities like hospitals and clinics. It’s easy to understand why the incredible medical providers serving our communities need to be first in line. When our turn for masks comes, our first priority will be getting them in the hands of our employees and partners working to get essential products to people.
And:
My own time and thinking is now wholly focused on COVID-19 and on how Amazon can best play its role. I want you to know Amazon will continue to do its part, and we won’t stop looking for new opportunities to help.
Amazon is certainly filling a vital role during this crisis. I do worry about the fulfillment and delivery people at the front lines, in terms of potential exposure.
I also worry that Amazon is making further inroads on replacing mom and pop brick and mortar, shops that might never recover from this crisis, territory that Amazon might never give back. So the phrase “until they’re able to go back to the jobs they had” is a real question mark for me.
Apple Park in Cupertino is in the heart of Santa Clara County, the Northern California epicenter for coronavirus outbreak. The Apple Park campus, including the Visitor’s Center, is closed.
An occasional promotion has been relaunched by Apple, providing those who added credit to their Apple ID an extra bonus amount on top. Purchases will add an extra 10% of credit on top for a fund addition, worth up to $200 in the United States, 200 GBP in the United Kingdom, and up to 300 euro in some European territories, with similar offers provided in a number of other markets.
The bonus will only be applied to one purchase, according to the terms of the offer, meaning it will only apply on the first top-up purchased since the offer’s introduction. The offer stands until April 3, 2020, with eligibility of users varying based on their account information and purchase history.
If you use this promotion, it’s basically getting free money. And who can’t use a bit of extra money?
Stumbled on this Cake post over the weekend, wherein Cake co-founder Chris MacAskill talks about setting up a call with Intel CEO Andy Grove behind Steve Jobs’ back.
A tiny taste:
I got Andy’s assistant on the phone. His assistants were executives-in-training who spent 2 years mentoring under Andy. I explained that if Steve heard about this call I would be fired. I justified the call by saying sometimes history has shown you have to do the right thing and keep it secret from Steve until later, as the Mac team famously did when they hid a Sony engineer in the Apple building so Steve wouldn’t find out.
I said I had no idea what Steve’s relationship with Andy was. For all I knew, Steve thought Intel chips were shit (the word Steve would have used). But I knew Steve liked people at the top of their fields who admired and mentored him. Could I meet with Andy and explain our situation so Andy could call Steve?
Great read. If you’ve got some time on your hands.
Apple this past week had set purchase limits across several of its products. For example, the new MacBook Air and Mac mini were limited to five orders per customer, the new iPad Pro was limited to two 11-inch models per customer and two 12.9-inch models per customer, and iPhones were limited to two of each model per customer.
Why the limits? Could be a campaign to combat gray-market in response to supply chain shortages.
