By Philip Michaels

App Report: Picture perfect

Let’s set aside the Mac this week and turn our app spotlight to the iPhone… and a more specific part of the iPhone at that — the camera.

A few of the following apps promise to extend the capabilities of your iPhone’s cameras, even if you haven’t paid up for the more sophisticated setup found on the Pro models. As for the rest, they’ll help you manage the photos you wind up taking and storing on your phone.

Do you have an app you’d like us to take a look at? Send an email to apps@sixcolors.com with a brief description — the app’s name, what it does and what it costs. We consider every app tip we receive, though due to the heavy volume, we won’t be able to respond to each and every email.

Now let’s turn our attention back to the big picture of this week’s camera-focused apps.

Continue reading “App Report: Picture perfect”…

By Philip Michaels

iPhone 18 Pro Review: Highest Pro price ever poses a challenge for upgraders

Apple doesn’t roll out new iPhones every September because it’s fond of fall colors. In fact, if you’re a fellow old like me, you might remember the days when models like the iPhone 3G or iPhone 4 hit stores in the summertime. It wasn’t until 2012 and the iPhone 5 that Apple settled on fall release dates for its main models.

The fall rollouts are timed so that retail shelves are packed with new models just in time for the holiday shopping season. That way, people pressed for new gift ideas can always grab the latest iPhone model, and Apple’s financial division can celebrate a merry Christmas indeed toting up the sales figures.

A glance at the calendar right at this moment reveals that we find ourselves in that sweet spot right between the September release of the new iPhone 18 Pro models and the time when people start stampeding to stores, online or otherwise, looking for gadgets to buy ahead of the holidays. And that means deciding whether the latest iPhones should replace whatever phone you happen to be carrying around at the moment.

Of course, early adopters are going to take the plunge right away. But for the rest of us, deciding whether to upgrade to a new iPhone takes time, with that go/no-go decision hinging on exactly what the latest model can do that our current phone cannot.

I feel like I’m well-positioned to answer that question, having handled every iPhone since the first one came out in 2007. And, more germane to the issue at hand, I’ve also had a chance to spend some time using the iPhone 18 Pro to see just what’s different with Apple’s latest phone and how it builds upon what’s come before.

Continue reading “iPhone 18 Pro Review: Highest Pro price ever poses a challenge for upgraders”…

By Jason Snell

Quick thoughts about the new MacBook Pro

Hello from Los Angeles, where I’ve gotten a first look at the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display. This is an all-day event, so I expect to learn much more as we get going, but the hands-on area is completely backed up, so I’m going to put some stray thoughts here right away.

It’s not the MacBook Ultra

I was standing right next to John Gruber when John Ternus announced on stage that we were about to see the new MacBook Pro, and he gave a shrug of resignation. John had come around to thinking that it might be called the MacBook Studio. I didn’t think Apple would go there, and I guess I was right?

In the long run, technology introduced at the high end comes down to the lower end eventually. Creating a whole new line of MacBooks above the MacBook Pro would imply that Apple is more or less permanently committed to having an additional differentiated product line. I didn’t think it would go that far, when presumably all Mac laptops will get touch and OLED… eventually.

However, these new laptops are still a cut above when it comes to what they cost… and as a result, Apple is still selling the older MacBook Pro M5 Pro and Max models as well. This is very much what the company did when the first Retina MacBook Pro models hit the scene—and were so expensive that it needed to keep the more affordable non-retina models around. For a while.

But again, inevitably, every MacBook Pro and then every Mac became a Retina Mac. And so it didn’t really make sense to create a new category of MacBook, nor does it today.

An unusual upgrade

Usually, a new MacBook Pro brings powerful new chips—but not this time. These new laptops have the same M5 Pro and M5 Max chips that are in the still-available previous models. According to reports from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, that’s because Apple decided not to release M6 Pro and Max chips and instead jump straight to M7 next year.

So… no new chips. But the body design is entirely new, something that happens only once every few years. In addition to that PROLED XDR display (it’s a pun and all in caps and I don’t know what to think about the name?) that is a real touchscreen, the big change is that the new laptops are appreciably lighter—about 15% lighter. The 14-inch model weighs 3.0 pounds (1.38kg), compared to 3.5 pounds (1.60kg) on the previous models. The 16-inch model goes from 4.7 pounds to 4.0 pounds. The new 14-inch model is closer to a 13-inch MacBook Air in weight than the older 14-inch MacBook Pro is.

It’s also almost imperceptibly smaller—hundredths of an inch thinner, less than a tenth of an inch wider, and about two-tenths of an inch less deep. So, smaller, but not so much that you’d notice. Obviously the priority was getting the weight down.

You know what weighs the most in a laptop? The battery. And Apple’s claiming 22 hours of battery life (24 for the 16-inch model) on these systems, which is unchanged from the older ones. That’s good news in that they managed to be lighter without sacrificing battery life, but it’s bad news for anyone who was hoping for Apple to maybe stretch battery life a bit more.

Minor touch affordances

Another question I had coming into this event was just how much effort Apple would make to adapt the macOS interface for touch. The answer is: A little, but not a lot. When you touch the screen, the interface makes subtle adaptations—more spacing in menus, more feedback when selecting and dragging items—but what it doesn’t do is flip into some new Touch Mode that looks and behaves totally unlike the Mac.

Not surprising, really—this is a conventional laptop with touch, not a convertible with a fold-back or flip-around hinge that makes it into something more like a big tablet. If Apple wants to make that laptop in the future, it can—and it can add a more complex touch mode then. Instead, this interface strikes me as Apple doing right by its own MacBook Pro users by making the touch interface nice, but also acknowledging that for most people, touch will be an additive part of interfacing with their Mac, on top of keyboard and trackpad.

That said, one portion of Apple’s intro video showed a developer using Xcode to test an iOS app, and they were touching the app in the iOS simulator. That… is a really cool use case. For the first time, developers will be able to touch their apps right on their laptop screen during development.

Apple sees the light

“I think you’re all really going to like this,” Ternus said on stage as he revealed the light-up Apple logo on the back of the new MacBook Pro. Spoken like someone who has been at Apple for many years and remembers the Old Ways.

Lighting up the Apple logo on the back of the display was always a fun feature. I’m sure there were all sorts of practical reasons why it made more sense to put a metallic laser-cut Apple or whatever back there, but not only did it feel less fun, it deprived the world of cafés full of little glowing Apple logos. Imagine the lost branding opportunities, Apple!

So… it’s back. I look forward to hearing Apple’s storytelling behind that decision, if there is any beyond the obvious, “why not?” But it warms my heart to see a glowing Apple logo and I hope that this retro design trend makes its way to every Apple laptop over time.

(Next up: Bring back the “breathing” sleep indicator.)

By Glenn Fleishman

Sorry, new developers, it’s vibecodetown

If you're like me, you receive three to five emails each day extolling the virtues of a new iPhone, iPad, or Mac app. If you're like Jason, you get dozens of these emails. If you're lucky, you're like neither of us—in that one respect.

They're often written in a friendly manner. They start with a reference or two to something I've written, then describe how the developer had an itch to scratch that solved a problem mentioned in my column. (Or not—the emails aren't always on target.) So they wrote TextEdit Genius (a fake name), which dramatically expands the capabilities of TextEdit. Or a Notes exporter. Or an app that lets you frame photos. Or whatever.

Don’t get me wrong. As a long-time tech writer, I love emails from developers.¹ However, these particular messages are obviously, or not so obviously, written by chatbots. Perhaps the prompt is, "Try not to sound like an LLM," and then the developers further edit so they have at least a smidgeon of a voice. The apps they promote are almost certainly vibe coded, a term I loathe that describes using AI to write software or help write it. But not all of those apps are vibe coded—and that's the problem.

If you're a serious developer, whether writing all the code by hand or using agentic assistance, with the intent to support and mature your app for years to come, how do you get the word out? How can you become a BBEdit, PCalc, or A Better Finder Attributes? In our current environment, how do you create an app that pierces through the fog?

Continue reading “Sorry, new developers, it’s vibecodetown”…

By Jason Snell

Apple clears the decks ahead of its biggest announcement

Apple’s thunder keeps rolling this week. First it was the iPad mini, and now it’s a set of relatively minor announcements that would have just gotten lost in the anticipated introduction of OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro models on Wednesday.

Apple updated the base-model MacBook Pro from an M5 chip to an M6. This is the low-end model that basically exists to snag buyers who don’t want to use a MacBook Air. (To be fair, it’s got a much better display and active cooling, too.)

But don’t be confused: This is not Apple’s big MacBook Pro announcement of the week. What’s been abundantly clear is that whatever Apple announces Wednesday—whether it’s a set of replacements for the higher-end M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros, or an even higher-priced tier of OLED models above the existing high-end—will not impact the design or price of the $1,999 base M5 (now M6) model.

Apple also bumped the iMac to M6, retaining the existing design and colors introduced in the M1 model. There are some minor technical enhancements here, most notably Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, with 2.5Gb Ethernet (on models with the Ethernet power adapter). But Apple does not seem interested in altering the Apple silicon iteration of the iMac in any substantial way.

Finally, Apple announced a slew of Creator Studio updates, showing that the company is not going to stand still when it comes to advancing its new creative software suite. There’s new content in Final Cut, improvements to music creation and an AI helper in Logic, generative fill in Pixelmator, and a bunch of AI features (leveraging both Apple’s own models and ones from OpenAI) sprinkled throughout the bundle.

Busy week already! I’ll be in L.A. Wednesday for whatever Apple’s announcing, and will be sure to report back here.

By Glenn Fleishman

Why Notes will never let us edit Markdown

The Notes app added Markdown import and export in the version 26 operating system releases, and the macOS 27 Golden Gate update lets us copy and paste as Markdown. Why can't we just write natively in that hoary, simple format?

I use Markdown all day, every day. In fact, I'm writing these words in Markdown without you even knowing it. All content-management systems (CMSes) I'm aware of support native Markdown entries when posting, and many writing and note-taking apps integrate Markdown conventions without needing to trumpet them.¹ I typed two hash marks (##) at the start of a line by instinct when writing a Kickstarter post in that company's slightly awkward editor, and it formatted the line as Subhead (heading 2 in its style). Huh!

But Notes is a different animal: it's a rich-media note-taking app, not a text app (TextEdit or BBEdit) or word-processor/layout app (Word or Pages). Or, to paraphrase the humanist computer book writer Robin Williams, "Notes is not a typewriter."²

Continue reading “Why Notes will never let us edit Markdown”…