By Dan Moren

October 25, 2023 1:27 PM PT

A Mac event is the perfect time for Apple to show off its peripheral vision

Next week’s Apple event may not feature Tim Cook dressed as a mummy—more’s the pity—but Apple’s teaser video has all but confirmed what many had expected: this October event is all about the Mac.

The rumor mill continues to debate what exactly might be in store: will new iMacs been M2-based or usher in the era of the M3? Will there be new MacBook Pros with new high-end Apple silicon chips? Will that lonely 13-inch MacBook Pro be refreshed or banished into the night?

Amongst all those possible updates, I’m presonally looking for a dark horse announcement here, something that’s a bit…ancillary to the main event.

In 2023, Apple’s been on a mission to seek out and eliminate Lightning ports with extreme prejudice. We’ve already seen the introduction of USB-C iPhones, USB-C AirPods Pro, and even a USB-C Apple Pencil. But there remain a few stragglers in the line-up, and the ones that seem most ripe for replacement at this upcoming event are the Mac peripherals: the Magic Keyboard, the Magic Mouse, and the Magic Trackpad.

Now, Apple could just swap out the Lightning ports for USB-C and call it a day, and the smart money is on that being the case. After all, why mess with what seems to be basically a winning formula? But it’s also an opportunity to give each of these devices a more thorough refresh—and maybe it’s about time.

The Magic Keyboard has been revamped the most recently of the three, alongside the 2021 Apple silicon iMac’s introduction. At the time it gained a Touch ID sensor, rearranged function keys, and multiple colors to match the respective iMacs. But this update also made it an outlier in a couple ways: for one, rounded corners that give a bizarre shape to the keys there (the Escape, Function, Right Arrow, and Touch ID sensor) and, far more egregiously, the lack of an inverted-T layout for the arrow keys.¹ The Magic Keyboard inexplicably stuck with the full-height left- and right-arrow keys and half-height up- and down-arrow keys in an era where Apple had abandoned that layout across the rest of its devices, including MacBook keyboards and the Magic Keyboard for iPad. This would be an ideal time for the company to return the layout, which many touch typists find much easier to navigate.

The Magic Mouse has remained unchanged since its introduction in 2015. Over the years, it’s achieved a certain degree of notoriety for the location of its Lightning port on the underside, which makes it impossible to use while it’s charging. While the charging is relatively fast, it’s still an awkward design that Apple could take the opportunity to update.

Finally, the Magic Trackpad, long my pointing device of choice, which also dates back to 2015. It’s hard for me to criticize it too much, since it does what it needs to do with aplomb, but it would be interesting to see Apple explore other options and capabilities, whether that means building in Touch ID or adding support for the Apple Pencil to turn it into a sort of mini graphics tablet.

I also want to call out two places where Apple could improve all of these devices: one aesthetic, one functional.

The first is color. While you can get very slick color-matched versions of any of these with an M1 iMac, those buying them on their own are relegated to just two options: white/silver and black/gray. And the compact Magic Keyboard only comes in the first of those. That’s a real shame, given that the iMac versions—complete with color-matched cables!—exist. I can understand Apple not wanting to manage all the various SKUs, but frankly, let people choose the color peripherals they want! It’s not too much to ask, especially when the rest of your products are woefully skimpy on colors.

On the functional side, Apple either needs to improve or replace its Bluetooth support. My Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad frequently disconnect from my Mac mini, which is all of about eighteen inches away, and the keyboard in particular is egregious in terms of the amount of time it takes for typed characters to show up on screen. This certainly seems like a place that Apple could use its vaunted engineering prowess to offer something that’s a little extra in much the same way that it does with AirPods. Not only would a custom wireless chip potentially allow for more robust and reliable connections, but it could also simplify switching peripherals between devices, a process that Bluetooth makes fairly painful.²

With eight years since the Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse have been revamped, it’s about time for Apple to take a closer look at its Mac accessories. To be honest, I’ll probably replace my Magic Keyboard and Trackpad even if Apple just switches them to USB-C, but if the company’s looking to liven up what might otherwise be a ho-hum event, this could bring just a little bit of treat to a spooky occasion.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]

By Shelly Brisbin

October 25, 2023 8:52 AM PT

The iPhone 15 Pro brings tangible accessibility benefits

What makes an iPhone accessible? Mostly, it’s the software: the operating system and apps that follow guidelines Apple has set for that purpose. If new hardware plays a role, it’s often in the opposite direction. For some with hearing or vision disabilities, the loss of the Home button has made hanging onto an iPhone SE feel worth the struggle.

But this year, there’s another hardware story (and I’m mighty surprised to be writing this): What’s inside Apple’s Pro iPhones is giving an important boost to usability for people with disabilities.

The Action Button

Turning the tactile, easy-to-use ring/silent switch into a multifunction button you can use to launch a shortcut, open the camera, or fire up Voice Memos is a fair way of giving back where something’s been taken away. There’s also a whole screen full of accessibility features you can choose to assign to the Action button: everything from turning on the VoiceOver screen reader or Live Captions to adding a color filter or starting AssistiveTouch.

Quick access to most of these options isn’t new: you can use Back Tap or Accessibility Shortcut (a triple-click of the Side button) to summon a lot of them. But particularly if you have a motor disability, the choice between invoking your preferred feature by tapping, triple-clicking, or a press and hold of the Action Button is just one more level of flexibility, not to mention the chance to program quick access to various tools at the same time.

Since you can launch a shortcut with the Action Button (also available via Back Tap), there’s no end to the ways you can customize your own accessibility by doing things more quickly. I have a blind friend who’s using the Action Button to quickly toggle the speed of podcast playback between two favorite settings. Using a shortcut means she need not open Overcast using VoiceOver and then swipe to the speed slider every time she wants to make a change. Sometimes, accessibility means saving steps.

The accessibility options available for the Action Button also come with brief descriptions that could introduce or explain these features to people who have never dived levels deep into Accessibility settings.

Wideband and Precision Finding

Precision finding is great for anyone who’s looking for their phone or for a friend in a crowd. But how great is it when one or more of the parties doing the looking is blind?

Find My was never precise enough to lead anyone to the exact restaurant table or funnel cake booth. But precision finding, powered by the second-generation Ultra Wideband chip, gives guidance with sound and VoiceOver speech.

Intelligent Portrait Mode and Other Photo Magic

If taking photos isn’t a big part of the way you use your phone, an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max could seem like overkill. For accessibility-related uses of the camera, like magnification, scanning text, and using AI or human assistants to describe or analyze a scene, an older camera system works just as well as this year’s best. But as cameras get better, so do the machine-learning tools these phones offer to improve your photos.

A visually impaired photographer can use any of the iPhone 15 cameras with more confidence, knowing that after-the-fact portrait mode (and other enhancements to an image he or she has already taken) are available. That’s a kind of accessibility of opportunity masquerading as a mainstream camera feature.

LIDAR

Pro phones have included a LIDAR sensor since the iPhone 12 range. It’s a camera system thing. But like the Ultra Wideband chip, LIDAR can help detect what’s in your environment.

In each generation of the Pro phones since the 12, LIDAR has given Pro users access to new detection features. First, you could have what the camera saw described to you: a red car on a dirt road, a wooden table with keys, and a pair of glasses. Then came People Detection, just in time for the mid-pandemic. LIDAR and the Magnifier app let you identify the presence of a person and how far that person is from you. Door Detection was next. Aim your phone at a building or down a hallway and find out not only where doors are located but whether they’re open or closed, wood or glass, have signage or not, and what that signage says.

This year, we got the unfortunately named Point and Speak. It’s not a child’s toy but a tool for reading text labels. Hold your phone up to a microwave, washing machine, or other gadget, and point to where you think a label is located. The phone helps you aim and reads text it finds over or under (you choose) your pointing finger. Great for a microwave, dishwasher, or any device with buttons to be pressed.

None of the detection features is perfect. Point and Speak, in particular, could use some seasoning. But these features give some insight into how Apple teams working on accessibility have been able to weave interesting features with relatively small potential user bases into the ways iPhone hardware uses develop over time.

Is it also proof of concept for greater things to come? You bet. But for at least a few people where accessibility is a main requirement, it’s also reason enough to splurge on an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max right now.

[Shelly Brisbin is a radio producer, host of the Parallel podcast, and author of the book iOS Access for All. She's the host of Lions, Towers & Shields, a podcast about classic movies, on The Incomparable network.]

By Dan Moren

October 25, 2023 8:33 AM PT

Apple hikes prices for Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+ and Apple One bundles

It takes money to make money: specifically, it takes your money to make money for large corporations. As online services around the world raise their prices, Apple is no exception; today, the company announced higher costs for several of its online services, including Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+ and its Apple One bundles. (Prices for Apple Music and Apple Fitness+ remain unchanged.)

MacRumors reports on the details of the price changes, which see each service hiked between $2-3 per month, as well as $3-5 for the Apple One bundles. Those prices are effective today for new subscribers, and for existing customers in 30 days or their next renewal date.

This increase really shouldn’t come as a surprise: Disney+, Hulu, Netflix—almost every major streaming service has raised their prices over the last year. In some cases, this is to compensate for lost revenue from customers canceling cable packages where older more conventional networks and studios used to bring in money for selling their shows. But it’s also a matter of demand: people are hungry for content, and content isn’t cheap.

This is the second price hike for Apple TV+, which debuted at a $4.99 monthly price (free for several months in many cases)—with a rather paltry library of content—before subsequently rising to $6.99 a year ago. Apple’s built up its TV+ content substantially since launch, and the company seems to be making the argument that all of that new material is worth more money. Whether that’s true will, ultimately, be up to the consumer.

I do have to raise an eyebrow at the increased costs for both Apple Arcade and Apple News+. Neither of these services seem to have been blockbuster hits for the company, and perhaps Apple’s decided it’s not just going to make it up in volume. News+ did see some additions this year, including Puzzles and integration with subscriber-only podcasts. But I think both have mainly benefited from being included in the Apple One bundle: I know that if I had my way, I’d gladly trade them both for Apple Fitness+ and a lower overall price, but there’s a reason Apple’s not offering a “build your own bundle” plan.

Let’s also not forget that, of course, Services remains a sector that Apple has bet heavily on as iPhone sales mature and it looks to diversify its business. And given that the company’s deal with Google is under increased scrutiny, Apple would probably like to find a way to offset the possibility of losing that $18-20b, which represents around a quarter of the company’s Services revenue in 2022.

This might also just be the new world order for online services: expect the price raises to increase until morale improves. Or until the churning Thunderdome of competition starts eliminating streamers.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]

By Dan Moren

October 24, 2023 9:08 AM PT

Spooktacular Apple Event on Halloween Eve

Chalk this one up as something I’ve never seen before: an Apple event in the evening. The company on Tuesday announced a “Scary Fast” event coming Monday, October 30 at 5pm Pacific time.

It’s largely expected that this event will feature new Macs, as reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman this weekend: the money seems to be on a refreshed 24-inch iMac, though other announcements are possible.

Given the late hour, it’s likely this event will be entirely pre-recorded. We’re expecting treats over tricks, but the real question is whether we’ll get a glimpse at Tim Cook’s Halloween costume.¹

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]

By Dan Moren

October 23, 2023 6:24 AM PT

Quick Tip: macOS Sonoma/iOS 17’s AutoFill everywhere is a lifesaver

One of the interesting things about Apple’s big yearly platform updates is that the features that are big and flashy often aren’t the ones that make the biggest difference.

After several weeks of using the updates, you start to get into a bit of a rhythm, which means figuring out what actually changes the way you use your devices.

For me, one of the best new features of iOS/iPadOS 17 and macOS Sonoma is a small one, squirreled away in a contextual menu: AutoFill.

Of course, AutoFill has been around forever. In Safari, it’s what lets you fill out forms with saved information so you don’t end up typing your address or credit card information a billion times. It also works with your stored passwords, letting you pop those in as well.

But the web is imperfect, and sometimes AutoFill just doesn’t work quite right: fields aren’t correctly defined and the information doesn’t get put in. What to do?

In a very clever move, Apple has introduced essentially a manual mode for AutoFill. You’re no longer dependent on Safari recognizing that, yes, these are fields where you can put your address in. Instead, anywhere that you can enter text—and not just in Safari, but anywhere, in any app—bring up the contextual menu by right/two-finger/control clicking on the Mac or tapping and holding on iOS/iPadOS, and then go to the new AutoFill submenu. From there choose Contact or Passwords, depending on what info you want to bring up, and you can have it drop that info right into the form.

If you choose Passwords, you’ll get a window asking you to authenticate with biometrics or your password/passcode; once you do, you’ll have access to all your passwords in a searchable list. (And the system will offer up the one it thinks you want at the top.) Select any credential and it’ll be automatically filled into the text field for you. This works not just with your password, but with your username or two-factor code.¹

This has been a lifesaver for me on sites (and in apps) where the password field isn’t correctly recognized. Instead of having to regularly go to the Passwords section of Settings/System Settings, find the password, copy it, switch back to the app and paste it, I can access that all from within the app.

Even better, because it works anywhere on the system, it means that in my secondary browser on the Mac (Chrome), where I don’t save my credentials, I can now easily access all my passwords.

The fact that this works on iOS and iPadOS is even better; at least on the Mac it’s only a minor pain to switch back and forth between apps; on iOS, it’s a far more laborious process.

What I appreciate most of all about this feature is the self-awareness behind it. It’s essentially Apple admitting that sometimes its technology doesn’t know best, and puts the power back in the hands of users—and in doing so, it makes a great feature even better. Frankly, that’s an approach I’d like to see the company take in more places.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]

By Jason Snell

October 18, 2023 3:38 PM PT

Inadvertent balloon drops (or, the default conundrum)

When Apple shipped iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma, it introduced a slew of new video features, all based on intercepting video input and running it through a machine-learning pipeline that detects the subject and the background. The result is that apps on Apple’s platforms don’t need to be updated to take advantage of system-wide settings to blur the background and increase contrast between the subject and the background, both of which have the net effect of making your videoconference image look better. (Apple also uses those features to do some fun things with screen sharing.)

But when you’re analyzing every frame of every bit of video input on the system, you might as well have fun with it, right? So Apple decided to inject a little whimsy and use its machine-learning pipeline to detect some specific gestures and use them as triggers to render animations. The result: if you give two thumbs up in a video, by default your video will be altered to make it appear that you’re in the middle of a sudden fireworks show.

I get why this reaction feature is turned on by default. Features not turned on by default are… basically never turned on. If you want users to use a feature, turn it on. However, this is the result of that decision, as described by Matt Haughey on Mastodon:

A friend was in an online therapy session, describing his trauma so the therapist asked if he was alright and he did a thumbs up and then HUGE FIREWORKS BEHIND HIS HEAD.

It’s so bad that online therapy sessions now start with a warning dialog!

My podcast pal Myke Hurley reports that this happened in his online therapy session, too—except it wasn’t inappropriate fireworks, it was an inappropriate release of balloons.

The logical response to an inadvertent animation trigger is embarrassment—after all, you are on a live video call with someone when it happens! But after that, the second most logical response is to figure out how to turn it off. And here, we run into another challenge: any search of the interface of the app you’re using will turn up no trace of this feature, because it’s being done at a system level. Apple has decided to put all its camera controls under the blue camera icon that appears in the Menu Bar when a camera is active.

This is a tough question. If Apple has invested all this effort in building a new feature that it thinks is fun and that people will like, why turn it off by default? (Sad ironic fireworks in an online therapy session is why.)

Your operating system could trigger a more detailed warning about this new feature the first time you use a webcam on the new operating system. (I’m pretty sure it does—at least in macOS Sonoma?) The problem is, if you’re launching an app that’s using a webcam, in that moment you are probably trying to get to your meeting or therapy session or D&D game, and let’s face it, you’re probably running late. You will click OK or Continue on any window that gets in your way, probably without reading it. (Especially if you recently upgraded and are tired of all the alert windows.)

So what’s the alternative? Here’s the best thing I’ve come up with: The operating system should wait until after a session involving the webcam has ended, and then use one of its fancy new discoverability features to offer to walk the user through ways to improve their video systemwide, including the use of fun animated reactions. And if they aren’t willing to listen just then, come back and get them some other time when they’re in a better mood.

There’s no great answer here. For every Haughey or Hurley who is interrupted by inappropriate animations, there’s probably someone else who discovers the feature in a family call and thinks they’re delightful. But in a case like this, where embarrassment in front of other people is a strong possibility, I feel like our devices should probably ask permission rather than forgiveness.

By Jason Snell

October 17, 2023 10:11 AM PT

The price of Apple’s old-products strategy

It’s an entirely innocuous announcement that says so much.

Tuesday’s reveal of a new Apple Pencil that’s got a USB-C port and lacks numerous features of both the first- and second-generation Apple Pencils sure seems like minor stuff.

Think about it for a moment, though: This is a product that, at least in part, addresses one of the most baffling features of the 10th-generation iPad: support only for the first-generation Pencil via a rickety Lightning-to-USB dongle. This seems to be the Apple Pencil that should’ve been shipped a year ago for that iPad. Why did it have to wait a year?

After that, though, one might start interrogating the structure of the entire iPad product line, but don’t poke a stick in there—you might get a face full of bees. It feels like the iPad product line isn’t quite coherent, but the mess at the low end is the consequence of Apple’s Tim Cook-era strategy to keep old products around to hit specific price points.

There was a time when Apple didn’t let old products linger. Last year’s model was discontinued and replaced by this year’s. But Cook and his team have taken to heart the fact that the longer a product is in production, the cheaper it is to make—and therefore, keeping old products around is one way to lower prices and reach markets for whom Apple products are otherwise too pricey.

This strategy has a lot of advantages, but it does create clutter when you’re shopping for an Apple product. While you would think that Tuesday’s announcement of the USB-C Apple Pencil would mean that Apple can finally send the original Pencil to the cornfield, it doesn’t—because Apple still sells the ninth-generation iPad, which has Lightning and therefore can only use the first-generation Apple Pencil.

The ninth-generation iPad still exists not despite the 10th-generation model being superior in every way but because of it. The newer iPad has great specs, but as a result, Apple has priced it at $449 ($419 in education). The 9th-generation iPad starts at $329 ($309 in education). Apple has kept the old model around because it knows some (most?) schools would balk at the price of the newer model. (It’s probably also the case that schools that have invested in old iPad hardware would prefer to keep using a model that doesn’t break compatibility with their investments.)

It’s the same reason that the $1299 13-inch MacBook Pro exists. It’s a “new” product, but full of old tech, and it makes the MacBook Pro line confusing… but Apple knows that some corporate buyers just won’t buy a non-pro laptop, and yet the $1999 14-inch model is just too rich for their blood.

Tim Cook’s Apple has foregone simplicity in its product lines, when necessary, in order to ensure that it doesn’t lose sales. Now, I could argue that the right thing to do was release the 10th-generation iPad at a lower price and take the hit on profit margin in the short term, but there’s a reason Apple is one of the world’s most profitable companies, and it doesn’t involve taking hits on margin. I could also argue that if the 10th-generation iPad was meant for the low-end market but couldn’t be priced to reach it, then it wasn’t designed right.

But by keeping old products around, Apple is also free to release updated products more often. If Apple had determined that it couldn’t sell the 10th-generation iPad at a price its education customers would pay, it could’ve just… not released the product. Instead, we’ve got a messy product line with two low-end iPads in it, but at least people who want to buy a more modern iPad can do so. And when the new Apple Pencil ships in November, they can even use it without a janky adapter.

Still, it’s hard to look at the shenanigans in the iPad product line over the last few years and not get the sense that things are kind of a mess. This new Pencil should’ve shipped last year with the 10th-generation iPad. The new iPad has features that higher-end models don’t. There’s insufficient differentiation between the iPad Air and the iPad Pro. (Leaving old models aside, it just feels like there are too many iPads, doesn’t it?)

It’s possible that we’re witnessing a reset, however. There hasn’t been a single new iPad announcement this year, and given Tuesday’s Apple Pencil announcement, it sure feels like there won’t be one. Perhaps 2024 will bring us a new wave of iPads that will finally make the product line make more sense. But don’t get your hopes up too much: Apple will probably still keep selling some old models, too. It’s what today’s Apple does.