Jeopardy experiments more with streaming (and Jason lost), we reminisce about Netflix history, Paramount+ hugs Pluto, “The Pitt” should brace for franchising, and the sad fate of “Star Trek.” And a big announcement!
Call the foldable iPhone whatever you want, just don’t call it late for dinner. Also, Apple puts its pinkie down and Microsoft has a great plan to fight the MacBook Neo.
A rose by any other name
The rumor mill continues to work overtime on the foldable iPhone. It almost makes one wonder if they know they don’t get time and a half. Last week brought rumors it wouldn’t arrive until 2027 that were quickly squashed by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. This week people are still speculating that production is running into some problems.
In addition to these rumored production problems, it might also be really hard to get a foldable iPhone because it’ll cost more than $2,000. And I hate to be the one to break it to you, Chad, but you don’t have $2,000.…
Andrew Leland is an author and audio producer. I interviewed him for my former podcast, Parallel, about his memoir. Now he’s written an excellent, practical piece for the public radio-focused site Transom about working as an audio journalist while blind or visually impaired. It’s a great read for anyone interested in an audio career, but also for employers considering hiring one of us. Andrew has plenty to say about the real-world accessibility of software and hardware tools for audio work:
Especially in the realm of music production, Pro Tools on the Mac remains the industry standard. Andy Slater told me, “I’ve never seen a PC in a recording studio, and I’ve been in a lot of recording studios.” Michelle Guadalupe Felix Garcia, a blind audio engineer based in Sonora, Mexico, co-founded the Audio Accessibility Alliance last year to advocate for inclusion in audio production (and live sound). “A Pro Tools user who’s blind is exactly as capable as a Pro Tools user who’s sighted,” she told me, echoing sentiments from numerous other blind professional producers and engineers I spoke to.
He also heard about how switching from PC to Mac is different for blind users:
After months of false starts, KALW eventually connected Rachel Longan with Felix Garcia, the blind engineer, who wanted to teach her Pro Tools, but Longan didn’t have access to or experience with a Mac. The differences in screen-reading metaphors on Mac vs. PC are significant, and require far more adjustment than that switch does for a sighted user.
Leland’s article gets real when it comes to problem-solving and challenges for blind producers, and he reminds us just how much of the process involves creatively hacking solutions to meet very specific needs. It’s a long, detailed piece with a ton of resources and tips.
AirPods Max and whether they’re worth it, Backblaze’s quiet decision to stop backing up cloud-synced folders, Amazon’s acquisition of Apple’s satellite provider, and Samsung vs. Apple’s foldable phone design philosophies.
Now the bad news: Since the MacBook Neo is powered by the A18 Pro chip from 2024’s iPhone 16 Pro, a product that’s been discontinued, there is likely a finite number of chips available for MacBook Neo production. Which is why, as reported by Tim Culpan, Apple faces a dilemma, namely: What happens when it runs out of chips to use in the MacBook Neo?
This is a really juicy question. If Apple’s hottest new Mac is limited by the number of A18 Pro chips available, there are only so many MacBook Neos that Apple can possibly sell. And if the chip isn’t being made anymore, what can the company do?
While we are all left puzzling this one, I don’t believe that this is as much of a dilemma for Apple. Even if Neo sales are higher than forecast, I do not believe that Apple simply never imagined that it might have a hit product on its hands! If there’s any company that believes in its own greatness, it’s Apple, which is why I’m pretty confident that Apple’s MacBook Neo strategy always came with a contingency plan for runaway success.
What we don’t know is what that contingency plan is. One possibility is that it would go back to its chipmaker, TSMC, and beg to get some space to build some fresh A18 Pro chips. This doesn’t make sense for a few reasons. Apple’s not using this particular TSMC chip process anymore, and TSMC’s capacity is likely sold out with business from other partners. Beyond that, the profit margins built into the MacBook Neo are based on odds and sods from the high-volume iPhone 16 Pro, not fresh new chips baked just for the MacBook Neo. If Apple asks TSMC to fire up the A18 Pro forge again, one of the main methods of making the Neo affordable disappears.
Short of there being a Mystery Chip out there that we don’t know about, I have to assume that the most obvious solution is the right one: Apple has probably always intended to replace the A18 Pro MacBook Neo with an A19 Pro model as soon as it begins scraping the bottom of the A18 bin.
Another part of Apple’s Neo strategy is a reusable design. I have to believe that the MacBook Neo was specifically designed to be updated to a new chip at very little extra cost, because every time you do major product redesigns, margins go down. That MacBook Neo was designed to last four or five years, at least, with different chips sliding in, probably once a year.
Putting a newer chip in the MacBook Neo is the obvious solution. Now, if MacBook Neo sales really are wildly beyond Apple’s greatest dreams, perhaps the company is scrambling to get an A19 Pro model ready to go. But it’s a matter of advancing an anticipated time-frame, not inventing a strategy out of nowhere. (And again, it’s a good problem to have!)
I’ve seen various arguments against this approach, but I don’t think they hold water. Will people who bought an A18 Pro MacBook Neo be bent out of shape if a newer, faster model gets released six or nine months later? I’d guess that most of them wouldn’t notice and wouldn’t care, and there are always people who are put out when new computers eclipse the one you just bought—that’s life. Would Apple risk losing the momentum of its new, hit product because a few people had their feelings hurt because Apple released a newer version of the MacBook Neo? That’s a hard no.
Another argument is that, essentially, Apple can’t release a new generation of MacBook Neo just six or nine months after it released the last one! Apple has repeatedly shown that it’s willing to ship two versions of the same product in the same calendar year—and may be about to do it again this year with the M5 and M6 MacBook Pro. Yes, it’s unorthodox, but the MacBook Neo is also a really weird new kind of Mac, and maybe the rules are different for a computer like this.
Would Apple even make a big deal out of such a move? Updating some or all MacBook Neo models to a new chip would probably amount to nothing more than a press release. Sites like this one would certainly notice and cover it in detail, but I’m not sure anyone else would notice or care.
I do wonder if Apple might extend the life of the A18 Pro model by splitting the MacBook Neo product line in two. Before the bin is entirely empty, perhaps it could upgrade the $699 model to the A19 Pro while continuing to sell the remaining A18 Pro chips in the $599 model. Then, once there are no more A18 Pros to be sold, the A19 Pro could move down on the price list. These are spec changes that we’d notice, of course, but they probably wouldn’t affect the trajectory of the MacBook Neo in the slightest.
What I don’t expect Apple to do is allow the Neo to lose its momentum by making it unavailable for some period of time while it works on its chip shortage. If that means eating into margins, it’ll do that. If that means making a quick chip change, it’ll do that. But Apple strikes me as a company with a killer instinct, and it knows it’s taking the entire cheap PC laptop market to the woodshed right now. I don’t think it’s going to pause for a moment.
Well, maybe for a moment. It should pause just long enough to ensure that the bin of A19 Pro chips is nice and full, so it doesn’t get into this situation again next year.
Quick—what’s the most important iPhone ever? The original started it all. The iPhone 6 Plus brought in large sizes for the first time. The iPhone X redefined the phone for a new decade.
But there’s also a strong argument to be made for the iPhone 4, which debuted in spectacular and infamous fashion, generated one of Apple’s most remarkable controversies, and also ended up being one of the most influential iPhones in terms of design.
Most important? Well, maybe. But there’s no doubt that the iPhone 4 is the most interesting iPhone ever.
Today Amazon.com, Inc. and Globalstar, Inc. announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire Globalstar, enabling Amazon Leo to add direct-to-device (D2D) services to its low Earth orbit satellite network and extend cellular coverage to customers beyond the reach of terrestrial networks. In addition, Amazon and Apple announced an agreement for Amazon Leo to power satellite services for iPhone and Apple Watch, including Emergency SOS via satellite.
This deal had been recently rumored. Amazon acquiring Globalstar gives it a leg up in its attempt to take on Starlink, which is the biggest player in this space. But Apple previously sank a billion-dollar-plus investment into Globalstar, whose system underpins its satellite features.
That stake seems to have bought Apple some assurances, including support for not only current but future devices. The ongoing question for Apple’s satellite features is whether users will ever end up paying for them, something that the company has been happy to continually kick down the road. It’s possible the deal is structured in such a way that Apple doesn’t have to pass on the cost to its users, at least for some period of time, but we’ll see what happens this year when the latest round of iPhones comes out.
As for Apple getting in bed with one of its competitors, Amazon is hardly the only other major tech company that Apple now has a close tie to: we know it’s using Google’s Gemini for its forthcoming AI models and, of course, it’s long depended on components made by Samsung. As tech companies get larger and larger, it’s harder and harder for them not to be collaborators.
Is it possible that Apple could run out of MacBook Neos? What’s Apple’s smart glasses strategy, really? We tackle both questions, discuss Jason’s new UWB smart lock, consider the shape and name of the folding iPhone, and more!
Time Machine used to be a mess. I would try it with each new macOS release, get frustrated, and give up. My incoming email from readers was sometimes dominated by Time Machine problems, particularly when Apple transitioned from HFS+ to APFS as the Mac’s default startup volume file system. At one point, Time Machine volumes had to be formatted as HFS+ even after APFS became the default startup volume format.
Which is why I’m so pleased that Time Machine generally—generally, mind you—now performs as I would expect as part of my backup-and-archive systems.1 I use Backblaze for encrypted Internet-hosted backups, Carbon Copy Cloner for nightly local clones, and Time Machine for continuous archiving and backups. I also use Dropbox and iCloud Drive for nearly all of my documents.
Often, however, I want to exclude something—or a lot of somethings—from Time Machine. A file or folder is too big (like Parallels virtual machines), a volume contains a clone of another volume (and thus should be ignored), or some data changes so frequently that it’s not ideal to archive using Time Machine.
Here’s how you can control what Time Machine archives.
Via the main System Settings interface
Use System Settings to exclude files, folders, or volumes from Time Machine backups.
Open System Settings and go to General: Time Machine. Click Options. The Exclude from Backups list shows everything you’ve added, and anything Apple has included. You can drag items in or click the + (plus) icon to open a file or folder (or volume) selector. Select an item and click – (minus) to remove it.
As you can see from my list, I have many external volumes, and all of them are excluded from Time Machine—all external volumes are added to this list by default, and I’ve left it that way. After many, many hard disk drive failures, including a mirrored RAID, I no longer own enough local capacity to back up all my volumes. I put less-critical files on external volumes and rely on Backblaze.
You may also note that a couple of external volumes have Time Machine icons. Those are included in Time Machine by default, and if you select one, the – (minus) icon is grayed out. Typically, the only entry besides those volumes Apple automatically includes is /Users/Shared/adi, which is related to Apple’s digital commerce—that folder can be removed from exclusions, but I don’t know any good reason to.
Dial in your Time Machine exclusions
You can use tmutil on the command line to get quick answers about what Time Machine will back up or exclude.
If you’re comfortable with the command line, you can also get to know tmutil, which provides text-based control over the same features presented in the Time Machine settings, plus quite a lot else. (In all of these examples, replace /path/to/item or similar with the actual path, of course!)
For instance, if you want to exclude a file or folder, but also may want to move that item later, use:
tmutil addexclusion /path/to/item
Wherever you relocate that item to, the exclusion follows. Or, if you want to use a fixed path and make sure it is invariant, same as the Exclude from Backups, use:
The sudo command will prompt you to enter an administrative password because it requires elevated system privileges. The -p flag forces the time machine to excluse a path rather than a file.
A neat tip, if you didn’t know it: you can use the Finder to copy absolute paths for items:
In the Finder, select a file or folder.
Hold down the Option key and choose Edit.
Note the Copy “name” as Pathname option: choose it. You can also press Command-Option-C.
The Clipboard stores a path that can be quite short for a local volume, or verge on the absurd for files or folders on iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, or other cloud-accessible systems. For instance, take a gander at:
If you’d like to use the command line to check on items that are excluded or included, you can use:
tmutil isexcluded /path/to/item
You can use shell-based wildcard expansion, too, so if you did a lot of fussing with inclusion and exclusion in nested folders, you can enter the first part of the path, like ~glenn then use ./* to get a list with [Excluded] or [Included] before each directory at that level of the path, like tmutil isexcluded ~glenn/*.2
For further reading
Joe Kissell has written loads about Time Machine in Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac, including strategies, complements, and alternatives.
[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use/glennin our subscriber-only Discord community.]
Some people still have terrible experiences with it, but I receive so much less email about Time Machine, and have had so many fewer problems, that I can rate it “not a complete mess” now. ↩
These shell-based expansions are processed by the bash or other shell that handles the command-line interface. They’re passed to the command. But it means you can use any typical expansion with tmutil. ↩
This week we’ll see all there isn’t to know about the foldable iPhone, how success is an issue for the MacBook Neo, and then look at some stupid Mac tricks.
CONFIRMED (disclaimer: not confirmed)
Absolutely huge news on the foldable iPhone front this week.
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Every morning, I start my day with breakfast, a cup of tea, and my iPad. This is the latest version of a ritual that began years ago with an actual newspaper that an actual human being left in my driveway. For the last five years, it’s all been mediated by my RSS reader, but it’s an experience that integrates newsletters and RSS feeds together in one place.
Still, I can’t help but feel that the whole experience is not quite as good as it should be. It’s a feeling that was stoked further by Terry Godier, whose essay Phantom Obligation served as an explanation for what motivated Godier to create Current, a newsreader app that tries to escape the tyranny of unread counts and reading debt and other pressures that turn reading from a pleasure into a chore.
Godier’s approach lets you treat different media sources in different ways, which is very clever. A breaking-news firehose might fade away after a few hours; a site devoted to thoughtful longform articles a few times a week or month would have more staying power.
It all makes sense to me, which is why I was surprised that when I tried Current, I bounced right off of it. I realized that the premise of Current is that it’s providing a gentle way to fade out the noise and allow users to focus on what’s important, whether it’s based on time or voice. It’s an app that seems meant for people who check their RSS readers several times a day, perhaps on their phone whenever they’ve got downtime. Makes sense to me—but that’s not me.
I’ve been so proud of my reading workflow, using Feedbin as a repository for all the newsletters I get, that I missed the other important part of that workflow: I open ReadKit once a day, read the items in my story list that interest me, and then close the iPad and go about my day. I am not looking for updates throughout the day, or using the app as a read-later service—in fact, my default view only shows me items from the past 48 hours—but as the true successor of that old morning newspaper.
This makes me realize that, rather than being frustrated that so many of my news sources these days offer newsletters but not RSS feeds, I might actually be better off subscribing to more newsletters, and unsubscribing from the equivalent RSS feeds of those sources. Yes, I’m frustrated that the San Francisco Chronicle doesn’t offer RSS, but it offers several daily newsletters that pop up in my newsreader in the morning, featuring links I can tap on to read stories in its app or on its website. Maybe that’s… better?
Similarly, I’ve started to look at some of the RSS feeds I subscribe to and realize that they’re just not important enough to drop multiple items in my feed over the course of a day. I’d actually rather have their posts collected into a bundle, whether that’s via a newsletter, my reader app, or some sort of script I write that turns the source’s new posts into a list of links.
That’s not quite the same thing as what Godier is trying to do, but it’s similar, because it suggests that the big-list-of-posts interface for RSS readers might not be quite right. If my RSS reader offered me the ability to select certain RSS feeds and display them as a single summary item with links to the stories, that would probably fit better into my reading approach. (And again, I can probably code up a simple script that generates these newsletter-like summaries and sends them to Feedbin.)
While I didn’t end up clicking with Current, I really like how Godier is challenging the entire idea of the “email inbox” RSS interface that’s been predominant forever. My insertion of newsletters into my Feedbin interface was the first clue that what I want to do is not actually read RSS, I want to read what I want using an app that makes that easy.
What is that app? What would we even call it? If it’s all email newsletters, should I just be reading in my mail client every morning? Mail clients are nice and all, but I wouldn’t call them optimized for longer-form reading. Read-later apps like Instapaper are sort of similar, but focused more on long-term storage. News apps tend to be siloed or impossible to personalize. (I am not visiting Apple News in the morning.)
I don’t have an answer here, but I’m enjoying the uncertainty. After five years of a system that has served me pretty well, I’m realizing that it’s got more rough edges than I had really noticed before. It’s okay, but it should be a lot better.
Maybe we should all revisit the assumptions we make about when and how we read. That was really Terry Godier’s point, and it’s a good one.
Software developer Photon, whose product requires running a bunch of Macs to connect to iMessage, discovered a pretty major bug:
Every Mac has a hidden expiration date. After exactly 49 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes, and 47 seconds of continuous uptime, a 32-bit unsigned integer overflow in Apple’s XNU kernel freezes the internal TCP timestamp clock… ICMP (ping) keeps working. Everything else dies. The only fix most people know is a reboot.
The whole story is wild (albeit technical). Photon says they’re working on a fix, but really, this is something Apple should be working on.
As someone who keeps a Mac mini running in my closet, I guarantee you that I have been affected by this bug. But who remembers that it’s been 50 days since the last time your Mac server became entirely unresponsive other than pings? Unless I’m traveling, I just shrug, reboot the Mac, and go on with my life. Not great.
Update: I’ve heard from some people who report very long uptimes on Mac servers running older versions of macOS. I guess the bigger question is, what OS versions does this actually impact? Tough thing to test, given that the bug appears only after 49+ days.
This week we find out which of us might buy the foldable iPhone and how the MacBook Neo’s success can be a problem before going looney over the Artemis Moon shot.
