Two visionary lawyers, the leftist feminist Dorothy Kenyon and the queer Black theorist Pauli Murray, had long argued that gender discrimination violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, which had previously only applied to race. The Supreme Court had never agreed. It hadn’t budged much from its ruling a century earlier barring a woman from practicing law because, per one justice, “The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.” In her second brief to the Supreme Court, 1973’s Frontiero v. Richardson, Ginsburg would coolly observe that “the method of communication between the Creator and the jurist is never disclosed.”
The popularity of the iPod led Apple to create a Mac designed specifically to tempt people to switch from Windows. It didn’t go as planned, but the result was a Mac model that’s been with us for fifteen years and counting.
This month Relay FM is raising money for St. Jude, a remarkable organization that is both a hospital that provides free medical care for kids with cancer, and a research institution that’s committed to finding ways to fight that cancer.
Right now as I write this, Myke and Stephen of Relay FM are in the midst of a six-hour podcastathon stream in support of St. Jude. (If you miss it, check it out on the Relay YouTube channel later.) Among the highlights is a game show co-hosted by me and Dan.
I donated to St. Jude today. You should too, if you are able.
My thanks to Mobi for sponsoring Six Colors this week.
Mobi has been around since 2005 as the regional wireless carrier for Hawaiʻi, but is now bringing its rethought approach to wireless to the mainland U.S. Mobi is app focused, provides customer care through Apple Business Chat in iMessage (as well as the usual channels—phone, email, text, and more), and focused on affordability—with no gimmicks.
You can switch using the Mobi app and even use Apple Pay to set up your account. Mobi’s unlimited talk and text plan is $9.99, including 1GB of data, and there are flexible data options. eSIM, iPad, and Apple Watch support are coming soon. (And yes, there’s an Android app as well.)
September 18, 2020
Watchers watching watches. Bundlers bundling bundles. Give to St. Jude.
Good news! Apple just announced a service that might actually save you money. Or you could just ignore it, and that’s fine too. It’s AppleOne, the new bundle of a bunch of existing Apple services that can, depending on how you look at it, either save you money or get you an Apple subscription service you’re lukewarm on for cheap or free.
Let’s consider the shape of this bundle.
Apple Music: This is the core of the bundle, if you ask me. If you’re someone who prefers Spotify to Apple Music, I don’t think any of Apple’s bundles will satisfy you. If you don’t care, or prefer Apple Music, Apple’s bundle might make it worth your while to switch.
iCloud: You should be backing up your iOS devices. iCloud storage space lets you do that, and that’s why it’s worth paying for. Apple doesn’t provide users with enough free iCloud space, so bundling in iCloud storage is a good idea—you should probably be paying for some regardless. That said, I’m disappointed that Apple thinks 50GB (or 200GB for families) is sufficient. All of Apple’s iCloud tiers could stand to be hiked up a little bit, if you ask me.
Apple TV+: Apple’s video streaming service is about a year old, and shortly all of those one year free trials will begin to come due. At $5 per month, Apple TV+ isn’t too expensive, but it’s still an expense—and one that I haven’t even begun to pay! But I have to admit, Apple’s strategy of letting me try their service for a year has had the desired effect. I have been delighted with numerous shows on Apple TV+, including “For All Mankind”, “Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet”, “Central Park”, “The Morning Show”, and at the moment, “Ted Lasso”, which might be the best of the bunch. (Seriously.)
Apple Arcade: For a service that seemed to have it all, I seem to have stopped playing Apple Arcade games. I hope that this is just a bit of a sag as Apple shifts gears from what it thought Apple Arcade would be to what it actually is. But I admit to having given some thought to dumping the service entirely, once I check in with my family to make sure that they’re not addicted to an Apple Arcade game I’m not playing. But as a part of a bundle, access to Apple Arcade seems reasonable.
Apple is bundling those four services together for $15 (for an individual) or $20 (for a family). If you want three of those four services, you’ll save money. It’s not a bad deal.
The AppleOne Premier bundle, on the other hand, is a hefty $30 combination of those four services and two others:
Apple News+: I’ve been critical of this service, which relies on the unpleasant News app and doesn’t exactly feature a must-have collection of content. I recently did a one-month trial of Apple News+, and I was surprised that it did have some value. No, I don’t use News to read the news every day, but thanks to the new URL-intercepting features Apple has added to iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur, News+ has done a pretty good job of redirecting me from paywall links on the web to full, unlocked stories in the News app. I wouldn’t pay $5 a month for the privilege, but unlocking a bunch of additional stories on the Web as a part of a larger bundle is something to build on.
Apple Fitness+: A new service Apple introduced this week that’s due later this year, Fitness+ features fitness classes for all levels, including beginners. (I recently ran my first 5K, which was great, but I still could use some advice and training about other forms of exercise.)
I figure I’d probably try Fitness+ at some point, but I will definitely be using it because it’s part of the Premier bundle, and I will be buying the Premier bundle.
The reason is simple: like a lot of you (at least, those of you in the countries in which all these services are offered), I’m already paying Apple $30/month for this stuff! I pay $10 a month for 2 TB of iCloud storage for backups and my photo library, $5 for Arcade, $15 for an Apple Music family subscription, and will shortly be paying $5 more for Apple TV+. That’s $34.87. For $30, I’ll get all of that, plus some extra news-source access from News+ and access to fitness courses from Fitness+. It’s a no-brainer.
On Tuesday after the Apple event I talked to a friend who uses one Apple service and not of the others. He expressed some disappointment about AppleOne, but I prefer to look on the bright side: Apple’s still selling each one of these services individually, so nobody is going to be forced into a bundle they don’t want to be in. But if you’re already partaking in a couple of Apple’s services, the AppleOne bundle is an opportunity to pick up additional services for cheap or free or, in the most extreme circumstances (meaning me), for you to add services and still save money!
It’s been a long time since an Apple announcement saved me money rather than costing me money. I’ll take it as a win.
As smoke from wildfires chokes the West Coast, social media has been flooded with crowdsourced maps providing near-real time updates on just how horrendous the air really is. Much of the data are from relatively inexpensive sensors from a company called PurpleAir. They’ve only been available for the past few years, but they’re already changing everything from government maps of air quality to how communities are watching out for each other — and keeping track of the air they breathe.
This is a great story about the value that low-cost air sensors provide, namely that they allow a level of coverage detail that would otherwise be impossible.
I discovered this when we were suffering from terrible air quality but our closest official sensor said things were fine. I bought a PurpleAir sensor of my own (which a neighbor discovered the day I got it and correctly intuited was mine) and am using their network to get a clearer idea about just how bad the air quality is outside.
The immediate timing of the releases might seem like a positive for consumers who were clamoring for new features, but it’s been highly disruptive to developers…. But with the timing of these launches, developers had less than a full day with the golden master before the public release, leading to many late nights, delayed releases, and vocalfrustration.
Amidst the chaos, Apple published a note to its developer portal yesterday imploring developers to “Make sure your apps are ready when iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 become available to customers worldwide.” That note came with no acknowledgement that, for many, that would be nigh impossible given the timeframe.
I’d really love to know why Apple ended up releasing the software in this fashion. I want to believe that it was just an unfortunate chain of events that forced this timing. Clearly the App Review team was prepared for an onslaught of app submissions from surprised developers, so someone at Apple knew this was coming.
This is yet another event from 2020 that I hope is never repeated.
On Tuesday Apple unveiled a bunch of new stuff, including two new Apple Watches, two new iPads, a new fitness subscription service, and a bundle of its many services
And, oh yeah, the A14 processor.
It was almost certainly not the debut that the company had planned. Apple likes to trumpet the innovations in chip design it has made over the past year at its biggest event of the year, the launch of the new iPhones. It’s been nine years since an A-series chip has debuted outside of the iPhone1.
But 2020 has proven to be really, really good at disrupting plans. And while the iPad Air was ready to be announced, the iPhone 12 wasn’t. So Apple unveiled the A14 processor and boasted about how it made the new iPad Air so much faster than the previous model. It’s up to 40% faster, with 30% faster graphics performance, and machine-learning performance is up to 10 times faster.
But all of those figures compare the A14 in the iPad Air to the A12 processor in the previous model, not the A13 processor found in the iPhone 11 series. Now, Apple would likely claim that it’s only fair to make a comparison across devices with similar screen sizes and thermal characteristics. But in scrupulously adhering to the comparisons to the A12, Apple is not telling us how much faster the base A14 processor—likely the foundation of the next generation of iPad Pro models and possibly even the first round of Macs running Apple Silicon—is compared to its immediate predecessor.
I don’t think Apple’s doing this because it’s not proud of the A14. (On the contrary, Apple seems very aware of how important this chip is, including the fact that it’s Apple’s first to be manufactured using Taiwan Semiconductor’s new 5-nanometer process.) No, this is about leaving some space for Apple’s forthcoming iPhone launch event to boast a bit more about the A14. Which makes sense. The iPhone is Apple’s most important product. It deserves to be boasted about a bit.
In the meantime, we’re left with pure speculation about how the A14 compares to the A13. Last year I tested the iPhone 11 against previous models, and the results showed a 29% improvement in single-core CPU performance and a 55% improvement in multi-core CPU performance. If a single high-performance core in the A14 is 40% faster than that of the A12, that would suggest that it would be maybe ten percent faster at single core operations? Presumably multi-core performance would be greater, but we just don’t know.
The biggest jumps in performance these days seem to be happening in machine-learning tasks, where Apple has doubled the Neural Engine’s core count from eight to sixteen, as well as double the number of machine-learning accelerators (which allow optimized matrix multiplication used in ML tasks) in the CPU itself.
Are there other optimizations in the A14 that we don’t know about yet? Oh, probably. Consider that the new iPhones will likely feature upgraded cameras and some of them will include LIDAR sensors (introduced on the 2020 iPad Pro—the iPad’s really stealing the iPhone’s thunder this year). Those cameras and sensors will probably be taking advantage of some very specific secret sauce Apple has ladled into the A14, and Apple isn’t going to say a peep about any of that until the iPhone gets its moment in the sun.
So, for now, what we know is that there’s a new iPad Air, it’s got an A14 processor, that A14 processor is better than the A12 in a bunch of ways and better than the A13 in ways we don’t really know yet. We’ll learn more when the new iPhones are announced, and we’ll presumably learn even more when new iPad Pro models appear with a scaled-up version of the A14.
And as for Macs with Apple silicon? Who knows. The first Apple silicon Mac could ship with something as modest as the same A12Z that’s in the iPad Pro and the Apple silicon Developer Transition Kit. It could ship with an A14X processor designed for Mac laptops and iPad Pros alike. Or it could ship with something completely different—though even then, I’d lay odds that it will be a chip based on the A14, even if it’s got an entirely different name.
The iPad 2 introduced the A5 processor months before it appeared in the iPhone 4S. ↩
Nicole Wetsman, reporting for The Verge, answers a question I had about exactly how Apple is marketing the oxygen sensor in the Apple Watch Series 6:
The Apple Watch’s blood oxygen sensor isn’t a medical device and won’t be able to diagnose or monitor any medical conditions. The company says the feature is simply there to help users understand their fitness and wellness.
Medical devices require a lot more regulation and testing, so Apple can’t market this sensor as such—and until the effectiveness of sensors like this have been studied, you probably shouldn’t rely on it as a tool that you’re depending on to diagnose your health.
Tuesday’s announcement of the new iPad Air continues Apple’s aggressive importation of iPad Pro features into the lower ends of the iPad product line. But it also brings the $599 iPad Air surprisingly close to the $799 iPad Pro in numerous ways—perhaps too close for comfort.
That’s why Tuesday’s announcements are great for the iPad product line in two ways. Not only is there a cheaper, more powerful iPad with a bunch of features that were previously limited to the highest-end models, but it’s now clear that Apple will need to supply new high-end features to the iPad Pro in short order.
Good, Better, Best. It’s a classic approach to selling products. Get people in the door with a low price, and then steer them upward to a more expensive model with more features. It’s a technique that Apple has used quite frequently, and it’s present in both of Tuesday’s major product announcements.
While Tim Cook’s era has been marked by a strategy of lowering the prices on older products and keeping them on sale, sometimes the technology in that old product becomes a liability and needs to be phased out. That occasionally leads Apple to create a “new” product that’s actually a combination of modern technology and lower-end specs. The obvious example is the iPhone SE, which has twice replaced an aging product with a slightly updated set of specs within that old product’s design.
This led a lot of us to believe that the rumor that Apple was readying a low-cost Apple Watch would mean that the old Apple Watch Series 3 currently being sold for $199 would be phased out and replaced with an “Apple Watch SE.” The SE part came true—that’s the name of the new $279 watch that’s a mixture of Apple Watch Series 3, 4 and 6 features. But the “Series 3 phased out” part? It didn’t happen.
If replacing the old model with a new “SE” model is the Tim Cook doctrine, how do we describe what happened on Tuesday? Tim Cook Plus? He brought in the new model and kept the old one.
Good, Better, Best. The $199 model gets people to consider an Apple Watch… but once you compare the three models side by side, that $279 model starts to look a lot more interesting. Perhaps that Series 3 will still bring people in to the Apple Watch world who might otherwise have passed it by for a FitBit or some other fitness band, but my guess is that it will ultimately be more important as a “good” product that makes potential buyers curious about the Apple Watch but then drives them toward the “better” end of the spectrum.
And if you’re thinking that the Series 3 might be a good watch for Apple’s new Family Setup feature, which allows parents to buy Apple Watches for their kids (or their aging parents) without requiring an iPhone—nope. The Series 3 is only available in a non-cellular version, and Family Setup requires a cellular Apple Watch.
Then there’s the iPad, which saw the updating of “good” and “better” on Tuesday. A few years ago the iPad product line was in disarray and sales were flat, but Apple has gotten things in shape. The eighth-generation iPad holds down the bottom of the line with a solid $329 price, but it’s now the only holdout (beyond the iPad mini, which lives in its own little pocket universe) in terms of having large bezels, a home button, a Lightning port, and support for the original Apple Pencil.
The new iPad has a slightly faster processor and… well, that’s about it. If it weren’t already called just “iPad,” it would be called iPad SE.
The iPad Air is sky blue? Far out, man.
But the “better” iPad… oh, that’s the iPad Air. And it got a huge update, picking up a whole bunch of iPad Pro features. While its limited storage options make it a questionable value for people who are torn between the $799 iPad Pro (128 GB) and the $599 iPad Air (64 GB), its audience is unlikely to come from iPad Pro users who have decided to save some cash. More likely, it will appeal to iPad users who want something nice, but aren’t willing to pay for the “best” of the iPad Pro.
Good, Better, Best. It’s good to be “better,” and the iPad Air is now a whole lot better than it was on Monday. And as for the “best,” well, I have to believe that Apple wouldn’t be so free with migrating iPad Pro-only exclusive features down into the “better” zone of the product line if it didn’t have a whole bunch of new features to roll out in the iPad Pro in the near future.
The product we didn’t see Tuesday that we usually see this time of year, iPhone, has its own good/better/best going as well. The iPhone SE1 is good, the iPhone 11 is better, and the iPhone 11 Pro is best. Rumor has it that Apple will be introducing two iPhone 12 models and two iPhone 12 Pro models soon. Even if that’s true, I expect that the larger shape of the product line—a low-cost model, a mid-range product, and a high-end one packed with cutting-edge technology—will win the day.
Good, better, best. You can’t fight it.
Okay, the iPhone XR is still being sold and it probably also counts as “good.” ↩
Apple announced new Apple Watches and iPads on Tuesday, and here’s our quick reaction to the news. Shockingly, we walk away feeling pretty good about… Apple’s services? Plus: Surprise! Those operating system updates are coming sooner than anyone suspected!
Apple’s concluded its latest event and it was a quick, efficient affair at just over an hour. Still, Apple didn’t waste too much time, rolling out a handful of expected announcements, one or two surprises, and some unforeseen details. Here’s a quick rundown of what was shown off and the salient details that struck me.
Apple Watch goes to VI
There are two new Apple Watch models: at the top of the spectrum, the new Series 6, which packs in additional features—an improved always-on display, a new system chip, and a blood oxygen sensor; and the Apple Watch SE which doesn’t replace the low-end Series 3, as expected, but stakes out a $279 GPS/$329 GPS + Cellular middle ground. It uses the new larger screen form factor, but lacks the always-on display, ECG capabilities, and new blood oxygen sensor as the Series 6. It also comes in an aluminum finish only and a smaller range of colors. (Hey, there are blue and red Apple Watch finishes now! Awesome!)
Overall, Apple’s reserved the always-on screen as one of its primary selling points for the Series 6 which, though disappointing, is hardly surprising. There will come a day, surely, when every Apple Watch being sold has an always-on display, but today is not the day. Still, at 65-70 percent of the price of the Series 6, it seems to provide more than 65-70 percent of the features, so I imagine it’ll convert a lot of people who want the cheap price of the Series 3, but the much nicer bigger screen.
Ditching the power adapter for the Watch seems like a solid idea—of Apple’s products, I imagine it’s the one that requires the lowest power draw; any old USB power adapter can probably handle it. The new Family Setup option is another nice addition; perhaps more plausible to get a Watch for a younger kid than an iPhone?
Those new bands are cool, but don’t expect them all to be affordable. The Solo Loop is $49, which isn’t surprising, but the Braided Loop is a pretty eye-popping $99. Just on the edge of impulse purchase there.
Service lineup shapes up with Fitness+
An Apple fitness service has been rumored for some time, and if you had to guess what it might look like, this seems pretty much it: close integration with Apple Watch sensor details, custom Apple Music playlists, and professional trainers.
Look, I’m excited about Apple Fitness+, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be THIS excited.
Interesting to see Apple roll this out when they still maintain a partnership with Nike, which offers its own fitness service—though Nike also has a free tier, which Apple Fitness+ lacks. (You do get that three free months with a new purchase, which is on par with the original Apple Music trial, if not quite the generous terms of that one-year free of Apple TV+.) The rest of us get a free month.
Apple’s not only been making a big deal about fitness for a while, but it’s also clearly been backing that up by building out a fitness team, and from little we saw of Fitness+, it’s not a fly-by-night affair. I think a lot of people currently stuck in their houses are going to be inspired to give it a shot, and tying it into other Apple products1 is potentially going to win it some converts.
Speaking of tying it in with other products….
Bundle up!
Apple One to rule them all.
With the leaks over the weekend, the news about the Apple One bundle did not come as a shock—even the name was pretty well staked out. But what we do have now are details—specifically three plans.
Individual costs $14.95 per month and includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and 50GB of iCloud storage. (Individually, around $21/month.)
Family bumps that to 200GB of iCloud storage that you can share among six family members for $19.95 per month. (Individually, around $28/month.)
Premier also includes Apple News+, Apple Fitness+, and 2TB of iCloud Storage “where available” (countries that support Apple News+, presumably), for $29.95 and can still be shared amongst six family members. (Individually, around $55/month.)
Currently, I’m only paying for Apple Music and 200GB of iCloud storage, which costs me $12.98, but that’s because I’m still on that one year Apple TV+ free trial. Once that’s over, it’ll bump me up to $17.97 (assuming the $4.99 Apple TV+ subscription holds true). Which means if I sign up for the Family Plan—something which I don’t currently need—I’ll get Apple Arcade for essentially $2 per month which, okay, fine, but not something that really does it for me.
The Premier plan seems the most attractive, pricewise, but the real question is whether you use or would use enough of those services to justify the savings. But Apple News+ very much feels like it’s being thrown in there after the fact because it’s the service nobody really wants?
Worst of all, today’s announcements did nothing for iCloud storage tiers. Everybody still gets a measly 5GB to start, so if you’re going to be paying more for some of those plans, might be worth it to at least get some additional services for a discount.
iPad goes out for some Air
The eighth-generation iPad update was one of the more surprising announcements, but it’s not as though it’s a major one. The A12 Bionic provides a nice speed bump and holds down that valuable $329 price point, but that’s about it.
Such pretty colors!
The iPad Air, though, got the big expected redesign, mimicking the Pro’s look but with some novel aspects. Most significantly, the iPad debuts—possibly for the first time ever—Apple’s next-generation silicon, the A14. There’s no doubt in my mind that it will also be in the iPhone 12, and was likely supposed to debut simultaneously in both, had the iPhone been ready in time. I’ve also crossed my fingers that whatever Apple silicon Mac gets unveiled by the end of the year will have a version of it as well.
There’s also the new Touch ID sensor embedded in the Sleep/Wake button. There’s been speculation for a long time that Apple wasn’t done with Touch ID yet, and now we’ve got our answer. The big question is whether that will make it into other Apple products: I imagine the underlying improved sensor could show up in a Mac, for example, but given the problems our face-mask lifestyles have raised, might the soon-to-arrive iPhone 12 have both Touch ID and Face ID? Doesn’t seem out of the question to me, and it would be a welcome addition.
The Air also gets a USB-C port and support for the Magic Keyboard, a smart move since it opens up sales of that accessory to a big new market. Other than the additional cameras, LIDAR, and the bigger screen option, the Air is pretty competitive against the Pro; the big thing holding it back at present is storage—the base model is just 64GB, and you’ll have to fork over another $150 to move up to 256GB.
Unlike the Apple Watch, the iPad Air does include a charger in the box. For one thing, it’s a USB-C adapter to provide faster charging; I have noticed that even my 10.5-inch iPad Pro from 2017 struggles to power up from a low charge with a USB-C-to-Lightning cable connected to my iMac. For another, many users probably don’t have a USB-C charger sitting around as they do with countless traditional USB power plugs, and, as Washington Post tech reporter and my former Macworld colleague Heather Kelly pointed out, the majority of recent iPad purchasers are new to iPad period.
Finally, let’s all give a big welcome back to color! The blue and green iPads look great to me, and I’d happily take either of them to replace my tried-and-true space gray model. Here’s hoping that more color makes its way to the Mac lineup too!
Update: A previous version of this article misstated the base-level iPad Air storage as 32GB; it’s 64GB.
I note the Apple press release on Fitness+ calls out the iPhone 6s or later, iPhone SE, iPad Pro, 5th generation iPad or later, iPad mini 4 or later, iPad Air 2 or third-generation iPad Air, Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD…but no mention of the Mac whatsoever. Even though the Fitness app could run on forthcoming Apple Silicon Macs? Guess we’ll have to wait and see. ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
Apple held an event on Tuesday that focused on the iPad and Apple Watch, though there were some more products announced than that.
Here’s a summary:
A new iPad Air that picks up many of the features of the iPad Pro, including support for the Apple Pencil 2, a USB-C port, and compatibility with the Magic Keyboard. It’s the first appearance of Apple’s new A14 processor that will presumably power the next iPhone. Prices start at $599 and it will be available next month. Here’s the press release and Apple’s iPad Air page.
A new eighth-generation iPad with an A12 processor. Prices start at $329 and it’s available to order today and ships Friday. Here’s the press release and Apple’s iPad page.
The Apple Watch Series 6, which adds a blood-oxygen sensor, an always-on altimeter, a brighter always-on screen mode, Ultra Wideband radios, and a bunch of new colors. There are also new watch band styles and some new watch faces. Prices start at $399 and it’s available to order today with availability on Friday. Here’s the press release and Apple’s Series 6 page.
A lower-priced Apple Watch SE that offers many of the features of the higher-end watch, but omits a few like the always-on display and oxygen sensor. Prices start at $279 and it’s available to order today and ships Friday. Here’s the press release and Apple’s Apple Watch SE page.
The Apple Watch Series 3, which many assumed would be discontinued with the arrival of the SE, continues to be sold as the entry-level Apple Watch.
A new subscription service, Apple Fitness+, which integrates with the Fitness app on the iPhone (and now iPad and Apple TV), providing personalized training in various categories, with new video workouts with professional trainers being added every week. The service launches later this year. It’s priced at $10 per month or $80 for a year, and purchasers of new Apple Watches will get three months free. Here’s the press release and Apple’s Apple fitness+ page.
The new AppleOne subscription service bundle, which piles a bunch of Apple’s subscription services in one place. There are three tiers: an individual plan for $15 per month that includes Music, TV+, Arcade, and 50GB of iCloud; a family plan for $20 per month with the same services and 200GB of iCloud; and a Premier tier for $30 that includes those services as well as News+ and Fitness+ and 2TB of iCloud. The Premier tier will only be available in countries where News+ exists. It will be available this fall. Here’s the press release and Apple’s AppleOne page.
Apple’s special event live stream began at 10am Pacific and lasted about an hour! We posted some live thoughts at the @sixcolorsevent Twitter account, and that text is also appended below.
Shortly after the event concludes, you can hear Dan discuss it live with Lex Friedman and John Moltz on The Rebound and at approximately 1:30 Pacific I’ll be discussing it live with Myke Hurley on Upgrade.
In the first of two episodes of Upgrade this week, Jason and Myke predict what will happen at September 15’s Apple event in the traditional form of a draft! We’ll be back on Tuesday for post-event reaction and the scoring of our picks.
Most evidence suggests that birds, as unlikely as it seems, are the only surviving descendants of the dinosaurs. I’d argue that the Mac has its own analog to this unlikely relationship, a famous-in-death ancestor who ultimately inspired a common, almost boring descendant that’s with us to this day.
Because it’s hard not to look at the Mac mini and consider it the rightful heir of the famous, beloved failure that was the Power Mac G4 Cube.
Less than five years after the Cube left the scene, Steve Jobs took another crack at creating a Mac that defied the narrow definitions of the PC industry. The Mac mini fit in 85 cubic inches, at 6.5 inches square and two inches high—one-fifth the height of the Cube.
Apple’s hardware designers learned their lesson, however—the Mac mini wasn’t floating in a clear, easy-to-crack outer shell. It was just a solid lump of densely-packed computer. Like the iPod, the Mac mini was a product that was engineered to fit in as small a space as possible. (Constrained, of course, by the physical size of its CD/DVD drive.)
If you popped a Mac mini open and looked inside, you could marvel at the internal design. I must’ve opened one up at least 50 times, whether to upgrade hardware or to shoot photos. (The March and April 2005 issues of Macworld both feature multiple photos of a Mac mini I opened using the official method of inserting a putty knife into the bottom edges of the case until all the retaining clips gave way and allowed the top cover to slide off.)
With a meager base RAM configuration of 256MB, a lot of people ended up buying third-party RAM, finding or buying a putty knife, and doing their own memory upgrades. The rest of the Mac mini was harder to take apart, since it was a series of layers of intertwined ribbon cables and interconnect boards. If you weren’t careful, you’d fail to reconnect the Bluetooth or Wi-Fi antenna and have to get the putty knife out again.
The Mac mini wasn’t just smaller than the G4 Cube, though—it was also cheaper. The Cube’s original base price was $1,799—and people complained mightily that it was overpriced for what it offered in terms of specs and performance. The Mac mini, on the other hand, was offered for a groundbreaking price: $499.
Of course, in true Apple fashion, it only started at $499. If you wanted a decent amount of RAM, that was a $75 or $425 upgrade. A larger hard drive was $50 extra. Not even Bluetooth ($50) and Wi-Fi ($79) were standard. A DVD-writing SuperDrive was $100. As Macworld’s story said at the time, “Throw in some of those upgrades, and a $499 computer can become a $1,203 computer very quickly.”
And Apple’s sights weren’t on the Mac market. Steve Jobs made it clear that this was also a play to appeal to PC users. Keep in mind, this was the height of the iPod’s dominance—the Mac mini was introduced at the same Macworld Expo keynote as the original iPod Shuffle—and Apple’s retail stores were receiving a surge of PC users. Apple wanted to sell Macs to as many of those PC users as possible.
The original concept was that Apple might not be able to convince those potential Mac buyers to walk out with an iMac or a laptop… but what about a $499 Mac that could work with their existing PC keyboard, mouse, and display? That’s one of the reasons Steve Jobs sold the Mac mini with “Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard, and Mouse” as a feature. Apple really did expect PC users to switch to Mac by disconnecting their Dell and popping a Mac mini into its place. Apple even included a DVI-to-VGA adapter in the box, so you could quickly attach it to a PC-standard monitor.
I’m sure some PC buyers did, but it turned out that most of them didn’t. The iMac, iBook, and PowerBook were more appealing systems. I think most PC users in the market for a new computer were happy to get rid of their old PC, display, keyboard, and mouse included, and replace it with something better.
While the Mac mini never became the ultimate vehicle for PC switchers, Mac users immediately recognized the appeal of a tiny, cheap Mac. My editorial in Macworld that month specifically mentioned that I was planning on using a Mac mini as a replacement for a Power Mac server, and I’m here to report that I’ve had a Mac mini running as a server in my house ever since.
Today’s Mac mini.
Fifteen years later, the Mac mini is still with us. Over the years it’s grown flatter, wider, and more expensive. Today’s Mac mini starts at $799 (that $499 price, which only lasted a year, would be about $650 in today’s dollars)—and people are still quibbling over its base specs and complaining that you can spec it up into a much more expensive configuration. Some things never change.
But the Mac mini soldiers on. It hasn’t been a priority at Apple in more than a decade, but it has enough dedicated users, and unique use cases, that Apple hasn’t been able to quit it. I hope it never does.
