By Dan Moren

March 18, 2020 6:28 AM PT

Apple updates MacBook Air with new processors, keyboard, and boosts Mac mini storage

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

The iPad Pro isn’t the only Apple device to see a notable keyboard-based update today. The MacBook Air, which Apple dubs “the world’s most loved notebook”¹ has received a notable boost today, with not only the new Magic Keyboard, but improved storage, and a better processor line-up.

The Magic Keyboard is the same found in the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, with improved key travel, a scissor mechanism, and, as Apple says, “the new inverted-“T” arrangement for the arrow keys makes them easier to find without looking down.”² (These people get me.)

The 10th-generation Intel Core processors featured in the new MacBooks mark the first time quad-core chips have appeared in the product, and they range from a Core i3 at 1.1GHz to a 1.2GHz Core i7 with Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz, making them twice as fast as the previous generation of MacBook Air. They also include Intel Iris Plus Graphics, which Apple says boosts the notebook’s graphics performance by 80 percent, and now allows the Air to drive an external 6K display.

Storage has also been doubled for the standard configurations, starting at a very reasonable 256GB for the base Core i3 model at that ever-desirable $999 price point ($899 for educational buyers); a $1299 model sports a Core i5 and 512GB of storage. Customization options on both models include doubling the RAM from the standard 8GB to 16GB for $200, and 1TB or 2TB of storage, the price of which varies depending on the model. A 1.2GHz Core i7 processor is also available as a build-to-order option.

Apple has also included Bluetooth 5.0, as well as beefing up the sound system, which now includes support for Dolby Atmos playback, and a three-mic array with directional beam forming, features that debuted on the 16-inch MacBook Pro last year.

A side-by-side comparison with the previous model also notes that Apple has reduced its battery life estimates on the new models, which are now only rated for 11 hours of wireless web and 12 hours of Apple TV app movie playback, down from 12 and 13 respectively. It’s also slightly heavier than its predecessor: 2.8 pounds instead of 2.75.

All in all, it’s a traditional Apple update: better things in the same package, at an equivalent or lower price point. Hard to argue with that.

Oh, and Apple also took the time to say that it had boosted Mac mini storage configurations: the $799 model comes with a 256GB SSD, while the $1099 model starts at 512GB. A nice boost for, er, the world’s most loved small-footprint computer.

[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.]

By Dan Moren

March 18, 2020 5:58 AM PT

Apple’s brand new iPad Pro has LiDAR and a trackpad

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

New iPad Pro models have arrived and, as predicted, they’re shaking things up with the addition of a better processor, new camera technology, and, yes, trackpad support.

It’s the last one that much time and attention has been spent on in recent months, and here’s the deal: Apple specifically calls out precision tasks like writing and selecting text, working with spreadsheets, and “pro workflows.” There’s also gesture support for switching between apps, activating the Dock, and using Slide Over. Apple says most third-party apps won’t need to be changed, but that new APIs allow developers to get even more out of it. And, of course, Apple’s enhanced its own iWork productivity apps with trackpad support. The trackpad support arrives with iPadOS 13.4, which Apple says will drop on March 24, and will also work with earlier iPad models and the Magic Mouse 2 and Magic Trackpad 2, as well as third-party USB or Bluetooth mice.

Of course, trackpad support means new hardware, and that’s come in the form of the Magic Keyboard. Like the Smart Keyboard, it attaches to the iPad via magnets, but it uses cantilevered hinges so you can set different viewing angles, and it features both a scissor mechanism with 1mm of travel, and full-sized backlit keys. (Plus, most importantly, an inverted-T arrow key layout.) Essentially it looks like the Magic Keyboard on the new MacBooks and the Smart Keyboard had a baby.

The keyboard also has a USB-C port on the side of the hinge, with can provide pass-through charging for the iPad, so that you can still use the iPad Pro’s USB-C port for peripherals. And it’s compatible not only with the new iPad Pro models introduced today, but also the previous models, the third-generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro and the first-generation 11-inch iPad Pro.

While the keyboard may get all the attention, the new iPad Pro also delivers a brand new camera system with not just a 12MP standard wide-angle lens but a 10MP Ultra Wide camera. (For those paying attention at home, that’s slightly less megapixels than the Ultra Wide lens on the iPhone 11 series.) To complement the camera, Apple’s also improved the iPad’s audio, with five “studio-quality” microphones.

The new models also include LiDAR, a first for any mobile device. LiDAR is a light-based version of radar, which most people are probably familiar with as one of the sensors used in autonomous vehicles. LiDAR bounces a laser off an object, then measures it with a sensor allowing it to come up with very precise measurements. Apple touts the use of that sensor in Augmented Reality applications—as a proof of concept, the company has improved its Measure app, which now makes it easy to, say, measure a person’s height, as well as providing a Ruler View with better measurements. But that’s definitely one place that third-party developers may have the opportunity to lead the way in interesting applications.

Finally, there’s a new chip at the heart of these models: the A12Z Bionic. It features an eight-core CPU, eight-core GPU, Neural Engine, and better thermal architecture to bring the best performance ever in an iPad, which Apple says is faster and more powerful than most Windows PC laptops.¹

The new iPads are up for order today in space gray and silver, with the 11-inch model starting at $799 and the 12.9-inch model at $999, both with 128GB of storage. There are also 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB options available, as well as the additional cell add on for $150. The Magic Keyboard comes in sizes for both iPads, though it’ll cost a premium in the larger size: $299 for the 11-inch model, and $349 for the 12.9-inch model.

[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.]

By Jason Snell

March 13, 2020 1:38 PM PT

Last updated July 21, 2020

Fun With Charts: The pace of macOS updates

Note: This story has not been updated since 2020.

My friend and former Macworld colleague Rob Griffiths keeps a record of macOS releases, which is exactly the kind of thing I’d expect from the guy who created Mac OS X Hints. Prodded by Stephen Hackett, who is apparently now the official Six Colors Chart Muse, I’ve decided to use Rob’s data to take a look at how often Apple updates macOS.

In terms of total updates released during the lifespan of a major version, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and macOS 10.13 High Sierra share the crown with 12. However, High Sierra was only the “current” version of macOS for 385 days, while Tiger reigned for nearly three years. That means that Tiger actually was the version of macOS with the longest time between updates, at an average of one update for every 88 days of release.

Of course, the vagaries of software release schedules and the appearance of urgent bug-fix releases can skew the numbers. But it is interesting to see that after several years at a pace of a system update every two months, the past three releases of macOS have seen updates on an average of one per month.

Not that the updates come out smoothly, on a monthly cadence. Since Apple shifted to a fall release schedule in 2013 with Mavericks, October has seen by far the most releases, with ten. But over two decades of development, the updates tend to be fairly evenly spread out—with a peak in September and October.

We know that macOS 10.15.4 is currently in beta testing, so Catalina seems to have at least one release left in it—though if Apple keeps up its current pace, we’ll see a half-dozen Catalina updates between now and the release of macOS 10.16. As for iOS releases? That’s another chart for another day.

By Jason Snell

March 11, 2020 2:31 PM PT

Quick Tip: Customize Apple Watch workouts

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

How long have I been doing workouts with the Apple Watch? A long time. And yet until today when I was walking my dog, I had never really considered that some of the information that appears on the face of my watch when I’m walking or hiking is completely irrelevant to me. I’m not interested in a calorie count or my average speed. In fact, all I’m really interested in is the elapsed time, distance, and my heart rate.

“Surely there must be a setting for this,” you might be saying to yourself, and of course there is. I’m compelled to document it here mostly because I suspect a lot of people never bother to consider customizing their workout screens. You should do it! It’s much better when you can have it the way you want it!

In the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, tap Workout, then Workout View, and then the name of the workout type you’d like to customize. Tap the Edit button and you’ll be able to choose from numerous statistics related to that workout type. In my case, I gave some consideration to Current Elevation or Elevation Gain, but decided in the end that I’d rather have the three main elements (and the current time) display in large type, instead.

By Dan Moren

March 11, 2020 8:19 AM PT

Quick Tip: Make Safari tabs open at the end

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

Change! It’s the worst, isn’t it? Case in point: When Apple adjusted the behavior of Safari tabs on the Mac to always open after the current tab, I—a die-hard always-put-new-tabs-at-the-end lifer—was bereft. For a while, I subsisted on the OpenAtEnd Safari extension, but when the more recent macOS updates killed off the legacy Safari plugin infrastructure, I lost my only recourse.

Until the eagle-eyed TJ Luoma noticed that Safari’s hidden Debug menu contained an option to control the tab-opening behavior, including options to open new tabs at the end:

@gruber @jsnell @dmoren ISTR that I've heard talk about frustrations with where Safari on the Mac opens new tabs in relation to existing tabs. I just noticed this setting in Safari’s “Debug" menu, and wondered if it might fix the issue? Maybe it's new? Thought it worth mentioning pic.twitter.com/vFvWs3TE2d

— TJ Luoma (@tjluoma) March 11, 2020

Sounded like exactly what I was looking for! Off on a quest I went. First step: figure out how to enable the Debug menu. Note that this is different from the Develop menu, which can be enabled with a simple checkbox in the Advanced pane of Safari’s Preferences. The Debug menu is intended for internal testing usage, so enabling it requires a trip to the Terminal and use of the defaults command.

Moreover, the new security strictures put in place in macOS Mojave and Catalina mean that the old Terminal commands don’t always work. After a little poking around, I discovered that in order to use some of them, you first must make sure that Terminal has Full Disk Access in the System Preferences > Security & Privacy pane. (Note, of course, that you are deliberately weakening some aspects of macOS’s protections by doing that, since the Terminal app now has access to every file on your disk—though that was more or less the case in previous versions of macOS.)

Once you’ve done that, you can issue the following command in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 1

You’ll then need to restart Safari, and voila! The Debug menu has appeared. To enable the tab-opening behavior, go all the way to the bottom of the menu and choose Tab Ordering > Position of New Tabs > After Last Tab. And, in order to make sure that tabs opened via links follow the same behavior, make sure to check off Tab Ordering > Apply Position to Spawned Tabs and, for good measure, Apply Position to All Blank Tabs (or whatever combination thereof you prefer).

It’s unclear how long these options will last—in theory they could be removed in any future build, or, at the very least, require you to go through this dance again. But for the moment, sweet sweet opening tabs at the end is back, friends.

[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.]