MacRumors reports that Apple has cut the price of the HomePod in the online store from $349 to $299.
We don’t have firm numbers on how many HomePods Apple is selling, but I suspect it’s not enormously high. The product has seen little in the way of improvements since its initial launch more than a year ago, and it’s been widely discounted at retailers in the last six months or so. (I bought a second one for $265 from Target over the holiday season.)
There have been some rumors that Apple might launch a cheaper model, but to me there’s still an open question of what exactly that might look like: where is Apple going to make tradeoffs to save cost?
The bigger issue to me is whether or not Apple’s going to invest in the HomePod’s future. Though I’m confident that the company is still heavily invested in Siri, it’s a matter of what Siri innovations make their way to the HomePod.1 Otherwise, it might as well be the iPod Hi-Fi 2.0.
High-end iMac or iMac Pro? Ever since the iMac Pro was released in 2017, that’s been a key question for pro-level Mac users who aren’t sure if taking the perilous leap from the summit of the iMac product line across to the $4,999 (and up) iMac Pro was worth the financial risk. With the 2019 updates to the iMac line, the gap between the two products has narrowed even more, making the question that much harder to answer.
I’ve been using a base-model iMac Pro as my primary computer since it shipped, and last week Apple sent me a high-end 2019 iMac, so as I write this I am literally sitting in that iMac Pro gap. (It’s comfy here, thanks for asking.) The 5K iMac is equipped with the 3.6GHz 8-core ninth-generation Core i9 processor, 16GB of RAM, a Radeon Pro Vega 48 GPU, and 512GB of SSD storage—a configuration you can buy today on Apple’s website for $3449—no small gap of $1550 from the price of the base-model iMac Pro.
If you’re in a market for a new, powerful desktop Mac, should you buy the top-tier iMac or leap across the gap and into the warm embrace of the iMac Pro? Reader, you will be shocked to learn that it all depends on your priorities.
It was a big week for Services in Cupertino, with Tim Cook announcing Apple News+, Apple Arcade, the Apple Card, and, of course, Apple TV+. The company’s clearly making a hard push to build Services revenue, as it’s repeatedly promised to do, but part of me wonders if perhaps Apple hasn’t pushed hard enough. To my mind, it’s leaving money on the table by not offering more services for its hundreds of millions of users.
Don’t worry: I’m here to help. I’ve invested a lot of time—minutes really!—in concocting ways that Apple could further boost its Services portfolio by taking advantage of just a few opportunities that it’s missed:
Apple Podcasts+
Look, there just aren’t enough hours in the day anymore. Between work, chores, all the TV shows we are contractually obligated to watch, and, oh yeah, our friends and family, we barely have time to sleep, much less listen to all those podcasts people have been telling us we can’t miss. That’s where Apple’s new Podcasts+ service comes in. For just $4.99/month, Apple will run all those podcasts your friends have been talking about through a machine learning algorithm, then have Siri provide you with a summarized digest of the most important moments, so you don’t have to stand blankly around the water cooler while everybody is talking about the latest episodes. Creators don’t get left out either: for $14.99/month, Apple will use the same technology to produce your podcast for you, leaving you more time for binging all that peak TV.
Apple Keyboard+
We’ve all heard the anecdotes of bad keyboards—Apple’s now even apologized for the problems experienced by “a small number of users”—but clearly something more pervasive is happening here. Keyboards shouldn’t die when they get a little bit of dust in them. But that’s a problem that can be fixed with the new Keyboard+ service from Apple. For just $5.99/month you can have a genuine Apple Genius show up at your door each week with a toolkit and a can of compressed air. They will then carefully disassemble your keyboard, prying off each individual key cap and removing all foreign objects, then painstakingly reassemble it all, just as it was, except maybe without the ‘e’ key. For the special Keyboard++ $9.99/month service, they will just bring you a new laptop every month, just in time for the previous one’s keyboard to stop working.
The modular Mac Pro
Why sell a computer once when you can sell it over and over and over again? We know that the upcoming Mac Pro is supposedly “modular” but what if that really means that it’s a service! For a low, low fee of $49.99/month, you can make sure that your Mac Pro is always updated with the latest components, whether it be faster drives, more RAM, or a better graphics card.* And since new modules are sure to come out infrequently, it’s a great way for Apple to rake in subscription revenue over time! (*Installation requires you to bring your Mac Pro to an Apple Store and leave it there for 48 hours for the upgrade to be completed. Also, your entire disk will be wiped, even if it’s not the part being upgraded, so make sure to make a backup. Does not include provisions for a loaner machine.)
Apple Park+
Are you obsessed with Apple? Do you spend endless hours digging into obscure and private APIs to see what you can discover about new Apple announcements? Creating your own implementations of yet-to-be-released Apple products and then releasing them to the public? Well, then, perhaps you are a candidate for the new Apple Park+ service. For just $99/month, Apple will give you a desk in a secure room in its Apple Park headquarters, where you can do all of that digging and investigation in peace and quiet, without being distracted by the Internet or, you know, windows. (Offer valid for Steve Troughton-Smith and Guilherme Rambo only.)
[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.]
Matthew Palmer’s Rocket is an app that lets you enter emoji into just about any app on your Mac just by typing a few characters—rather than using the Emoji picker. (Dan wrote about Rocket last year.)
As a big user of Slack, which uses the same approach as Rocket, I’ve discovered that it’s much easier to type :rocket: than open the Emoji picker and scroll around until I find the proper emoji. Likewise :flag-us: or :roll-eyes:. With Rocket, you can do that in just about any app—and as you type, it automatically guesses what you’re looking for based on what you’ve typed so far, so frequently it only takes a couple of letters to get exactly the emoji you want.
Rocket, which is free with a $5 “Pro” tier to unlock a few additional features, lives in the menu bar, but is basically invisible—until you type that trigger character, which I’ve set to the colon to match Slack’s approach. Rocket lets you set a default skin tone for emoji that support skin tones, and it can be turned off selectively inside particular apps and websites. The latest update added support for VoiceOver, making Rocket perhaps the first emoji picker that can be used by the blind.
Quite frankly, this should be a feature of macOS, but since that will probably never happen, I’m glad that Rocket exists. It makes it much easier for me to 😉 or 😥 or otherwise express myself in emoji.
These days I’m pretty judicious with my TV time: if something’s not working for me an episode or two in, it’s often not going to get the chance to go further. And frankly, given the embarrassment of riches that is Peak TV, we’ve got more shows to watch than we could possibly have time for in a thousand lifetimes.
So, when I stumble across something that not only does work but which I devour in the course of, say, a week, well, it’s a pleasant surprise.
To that end, allow me to recommend the first season of Get Shorty, loosely based on the Elmore Leonard novel of the same name, which was itself previously adapted into a 1995 John Travolta film. The show shares little in common with the book and movie, other than the basic premise: a mob enforcer finds himself embroiled in the surreal world of Hollywood as he tries to make a movie.
The mix of these two worlds—crime and entertainment—proves rich ground for our characters, who already exist in a heightened environment that’s like, well, something out of a TV show. The first season of the black comedy chronicles the attempts to get a period romantic drama produced and the pitfalls that our hero encounters from both his criminal connections and the bizarre world of movie-making.
As with other adaptations based on Leonard’s works, the strength of Get Shorty largely rests on its colorful characters: our hero, Miles Daly (Chris O’Dowd), is an Irish ex-pat who is weary of his job as an enforcer and just wants to create something instead of destroying things; his pal and partner, Louis (Deadwood’s Sean Bridgers), is initially reluctant to get involved, and generally takes a more practical approach of meting out violence when necessary, despite seemingly being at odds with his Mormon faith; and washed-up producer Rick Moreweather (Ray Romano), who’s just looking to get a win under his belt, enabling his blissful ignorance about exactly who he’s gotten involved with.
Chris O’Dowd, as Miles, nails the right blend of cheer and deadpan menace, while simultaneously making this occasionally unsavory character tremendously sympathetic, especially when dealing with his estranged wife Katie (Lucy Walters) and their daughter Emma (Carolyn Dodd). He wants to get out of the life of crime because of them, but finds himself even more closely tied to his casino-owning employer and crime boss, Amara de Escalones (Lidia Porto, in a performance that somehow manages to be both threatening and yet convey her character’s extreme vulnerability).
Crime shows aren’t always my thing, but Get Shorty evokes an atmosphere of one of my favorites of recent years—and another Elmore Leonard adaptation—Justified. Get Shorty, by comparison, is played more for laughs, and never quite ascends the emotional heights of that show, but it adeptly melds the small-time gangster story with Hollywood satire reminiscent of another recently concluded favorite, Showtime’s Episodes. Get Shorty sails along on the charm of its cast and its moments of extreme and hilarious dissonance, punctuated occasionally with violence that is both brutal and casual. (Be warned: this is definitely an adult show.) But it also manages to have a surprising amount of heart for a show that is essentially entirely about crooks (even when they wear suits), and treats even its most ridiculous characters with a respect that keeps it all from sliding into out-and-out reprehensibility.
The first season is available on Netflix; a second season aired last August, but is still only available on Epix and season three is scheduled for later this year.
[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.]
When the original iPod scrolled onto the scene in 2001, some of the Mac faithful were concerned it was going to be a distraction for Apple, a company that was still digging out of the massive hole of the 1990s.
When the iTunes Store opened 16 years ago, I think people knew it was gong to propel the iPod to new heights, especially when it showed up on Windows several months after launch.
The iPod and iTunes were, in many ways, two sides of the same coin. They made each other more valuable, both to Apple and its customers.
That symbiotic relationship is right out of Apple’s playbook, and something the company tries to repeat when possible. After all, it’s the combination of hardware, software and services that makes so many of the company’s products good.
That’s what makes Apple TV, and in particular Apple TV+ so interesting.
The company has spent over a billion dollars on creating its own content for the upcoming streaming service. It is here to play ball with the likes of Netflix, Hulu and others. It has a very impressive roster of Hollywood starpower to draw people in, and what looks to be a wide range of content that should all be family friendly.
The old Apple would reserve this content to its own hardware platforms, letting people stream this content to the Apple TV, iOS devices and Macs only.
But this is not the old Apple. On its website, in 80 point font, Apple says this content will be “Coming this fall exclusively on the Apple TV app.”
While that app is on all of Apple’s platforms, it’s also going to be on streaming boxes built by the likes of Roku and Amazon, as well baked into smart TVs like the ones made by Samsung.
That’s right: Apple content, streamed via Samsung hardware.
Samsung.
S.a.m.s.u.n.g.
If that doesn’t tell you all you need to know about new Apple, I don’t know what would. Apple is uncoupling its hardware and content, so the latter can spread far beyond the former.
Welcome to the new world.
[Stephen Hackett is the author of 512 Pixels and co-founder of Relay FM.]
For years now, Apple has been telling every Wall Street analyst that would listen about its increased focus on growing revenue from ongoing services. As iPhone sales growth has slowed, it’s been a source of growth—and that’s very important to investors.
It makes sense. Apple has built a customer base that is deeply connected with its ecosystem, and it’s a customer base that is willing to pay for good tech products. And yet, for a lot of people, it’s a bit disturbing to see Apple pivot to selling subscriptions to video services and news services and game services rather than focusing on what it does best, which is the combination of hardware and software.
As John Siracusa said on the Accidental Tech Podcast this week, if you’ve followed Apple for a long time, it’s not a surprise to see Apple change itself. Apple is, if anything, a company of constant reinvention. While this seems like a huge stretch from what Apple’s done in the past, though, it’s also a function of the times we live in. Even if Apple didn’t want to get into services, it would probably have to—because its competitors are doing it, and if it does nothing it risks getting left behind.
I’m sympathetic to Tim Cook’s suggestion that Apple is now about a synthesis of not just hardware and software, but services. The mere existence of the Internet as a connecting factor means that Apple hasn’t been able to just focus on hardware and software for years now. Apple’s first attempt at Internet services were almost laughable, but it keeps getting better. And the App Store and Apple Pay have been pretty successful. If Apple can find a way to bring its entire ecosystem—hardware, software, and services—together to create great experiences, people will happily pay for them.
But I am a bit concerned about what the growth of services does to the wallets of the people who use Apple’s products. I can put this all in the context of Wall Street demanding growth, which is true, but another way to view it is that Apple isn’t satisfied with you paying it every few years for a new Mac and a new iPhone—it wants your money every single month. So, by the way, do streaming services and cable companies and wireless companies and pretty much everyone else.
I’m not surprised we’ve gotten to this point. Pat McGovern, the founder of IDG (my old employer) used to talk about recurring subscription revenue all the time. He felt like the future of the media business was getting people to give you their credit card so you could charge them monthly. And Pat was right.
I also write this as someone who made his own foray into subscription services (of a sort) a few years ago. This newsletter is, of course, a benefit to people who have provided their credit card numbers and signed up for monthly or annual recurring payments. (Thank you! I’m happy to provide you this service.)
But as someone who relies on the monthly recurring support of others, the rise of so many different voices attempting to get your money does give me pause. While some might argue we are simply changing where our money goes, it’s hard not to think that this is all additive, and that at some point people will reach a breaking point. (It’s probably already starting.) Certainly few people will be able to subscribe to more than a couple of video-streaming services, but there will be a half-dozen major players in that space in the next year. They all can’t make it, can they?
In any event, as someone who is part of a subscription service, I want to thank you for subscribing. I appreciate that you’re the kind of person who finds it valuable to be a part of our community—newsletter, secret podcast, and Slack group—as well as wanting to support the work that Dan and I do as independent tech writers. Subscription services aren’t just for the big guys to pad their bank accounts. They’re also away for the little guys to find ways to make a living through memberships and Patreons. Thank you for being a part of this corner of the 21st century economy.
Apple Card, announced this week, isn’t a revolutionary new product that will change credit cards forever, nor is it the best deal in the world of payment cards. But its unique attributes, combined with Apple’s power as a platform owner, make this card a likely success—and a good choice for iPhone users.
Matthew Panzarino, once again, with the scoop. AirPower, the long awaited wireless charging pad that Apple announced back in 2017, has been officially canceled:
“After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project. We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch. We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward,” said Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering in an emailed statement today.
As Panzarino says (and I too had heard), the challenges appear to be ones of physics, rather than pure engineering. Heat was a real issue in the product, and one that the company wasn’t able to overcome.
Yes, this week’s Apple event wasn’t quite business as usual for the company. It was a long presentation, studded with A-list celebrities and announcements for services–no hardware in sight–that mostly aren’t shipping yet, many of which don’t even have price points. That’s not exactly the moves we’ve come to expect from Apple.
But we were warned upfront by Tim Cook that this time would be a little different, and the company has been banging the drum about bolstering its Services business for a few years now. So while there may have been some head-scratching about the execution of the event, there shouldn’t have been any shock about the overall purpose.
That said, though this event might have looked different on the surface, dig a little deeper and you’ll quickly realize that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Because every single announcement Apple made is, at its base, about one thing:
I’ve seen numerous celebrities in the audience at Apple events over the years, but Monday’s event at the Steve Jobs Theater was different. Captain America himself, Chris Evans, was in the audience. (I just missed him, but I think I spotted Tim Robbins talking to Apple’s Eddy Cue.) On stage were plenty of famous entertainment-industry faces, from directors like Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams to actors like Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. Even Oprah was there.
This was an Apple event unlike any other, and for many different reasons. There wasn’t any new hardware or software to speak of, for one, and such a concept would’ve seemed impossible for Apple even a couple of years ago. Stranger still, the event was aimed as much at the entertainment industry as at the people who buy Apple’s products—but then, Apple waded into some pretty strange waters when it became a full-fledged movie and TV producer.
The physical Apple Card, of course, has no number. The app displays the last 4 digits of the card number that is on the mag stripe of the card only, you never see the full card number.
The most interesting part of this is all the security that’s going into the system. By tying this so closely to Apple Pay, the company can backport some of the security and privacy advances it’s made there to using the card for non-online transactions as well. I’m sure there are a lot of folks who would be all too happy to have a credit card with better security, even if it’s not the best reward card or lowest-interest card around.
Today I updated my story about which Mac laptop to buy for a student. When I wrote it in 2017, I was torn between the MacBook and the low-end 13-inch MacBook Pro. Today, the answer is a lot simpler: it’s the MacBook Air.
I wish I understood the status of my previous picks, which haven’t been upgraded as the rest of the MacBook line has been. And I suspect that anyone with a student who needs the kind of power that only a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar will provide has already heard from that student about their specific tech needs. This advice is meant to be more broad, and is based on what I get asked frequently by fellow parents.
(Also, yes, I recommend you send them with a can of compressed air and they should scope out where the Apple Authorized Repair center is on campus. Imagine how much stuff a college student can spill onto a keyboard…)
As I sit here waiting for my AirPods to show up, here’s Federico at MacStories with some detailed first impressions:
The new H1 chip in the second-generation AirPods vastly improves connection times with faster speeds when switching AirPods between different Apple devices. Where the old AirPods used to take well over 5 seconds (and usually around 10, especially on the Mac) to switch as the active headphones between the iPhone, iPad Pro, or Mac mini, the second-generation AirPods can switch between devices/platforms in 2-3 seconds thanks to their improved wireless architecture. It’s downright remarkable how fast the new connection is. Whatever Apple has done with their new H1 chip in the AirPods, I hope to see adoption of it in more audio products from the company in the near future – starting, perhaps, with proper over-ear headphones.
The rumors are that Apple-branded over-ear headphones are on the way, and presumably the H1 will end up in Beats headphones as well. I actually gave up switching my AirPods between devices, due to a combination of slow connection times and decreasing battery life. I’m looking forward to giving this new pair a spin, and attaching a new sticker to their wireless-charging case.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
It was an unusual Apple event on Monday. No hardware, not much in the way of software, and a whole lot of services. Plus, a bunch of famous Hollywood types standing on a stage in Cupertino talking about their TV shows. Here are some quick-hit reactions…
Apple News+
Magazines!
Demoing Apple News+ on an iPhone rather than an iPad seems to be a careful choice to make it clear that this isn’t a digital replica like so many “magazine on iPad” efforts have been. The problem is, it seems like only about half of the magazines are in Apple News format rather than available as PDFs.
Apple News format articles are better in so many ways, including accessibility and readability on smaller devices. The PDF replicas are… less inspiring. Presumably Apple won’t bother recommending articles out of PDF replicas elsewhere in the News app, which suggests that Apple is very much trying to make it worth all the partners’ whiles to switch to the more flexible Apple News format.
Apple’s deals with newspapers also interest me. There aren’t too many, but as a Californian I like the idea of getting access to Los Angeles Times content that currently lives behind a firewall, as well as at least a select portion of Wall Street Journal content. The News app is a bit confused about the whole thing, however. I thought I favorited the L.A. Times in Apple News, but the page I went to was entirely paywalled—it was only when I used the Apple News+ tab and found a Times article, and then tapped on the Times logo, that I was able to favorite a version of the L.A. Times that gave me access to full articles.
In short, the News+ content in the News app itself seems to be a bit of a work in progress. It’s nice that the content is there, but it’s a mess. The entire Apple News app is still weird and awkward and could use with a complete overhaul; adding News+ into the mix just underscores that point.
Apple Card
Is the Apple Card going to be the best deal for people who are searching for cash-back bonuses from their credit card? Certainly not, just as Apple hardware is never going to be the cheapest in any category. If you want to do the work to find the best deal and redeem the right points in the right places, you have better options.
Apple is, however, hoping that a lot of its customers will not be interested in redeeming points and using gift cards and otherwise chasing that deal. Instead, Apple offers simplicity (sign up for the card right on your phone), privacy (private transactions and no resale of your data to third parties), and convenience (cash-back rewards appear the same day in Apple Pay Cash). That combination is pretty on-brand for Apple.
As for the physical Apple credit card, which joins a recent trend of fancy metal credit cards? It’s exactly what you’d expect from Apple, whether you think of Apple as cool, pretentious, or a bit of both.
Apple Arcade
The new Apple Arcade service seems to be Apple’s final acceptance that the economic structure of the App Store has led to the dominance of free-to-play games with in-app purchases. Apple makes a lot of money from that system, so rather than replace it, it’s adding a new service designed to provide a revenue stream to developers making a different sort of game, and to appeal to people who love those games. Our house is full of fans of your Monument Valleys and your Alto’s Odysseys, so we’re the perfect audience for Apple Arcade. There is something freeing about knowing that anyone in my family will be able to finish a game (or get bored with it) and then just flip through the Arcade tab in the App Store, looking for something else to play.
Will Apple charge more than we actually spend on games in the App Store every month? Almost certainly. But Apple Arcade will be convenient and curated and, undoubtedly, populated with a lot of desirable games that won’t be available anywhere else. Depending on the quality of the games in the service, it could be really great.
I do wonder how game developers view this service—and how well it will serve them once the service launches. Even if this service is great for consumers, it won’t work if developers just can’t make the economics work. I really do believe Apple is trying to create a place where games like these can be successful, and I hope it succeeds.
I’m also intrigued by Apple’s announcement that the Mac as a part of the service. I have to believe that this is linked, somehow, with its more general move to let iOS apps run on the Mac, beginning this fall. With a service like this spinning up, presumably Apple has made an effort to make it relatively easy for iOS game developers to get their games running on the Mac starting this fall. We’ll see.
Apple TV+
Introducing “See” with images projected on the walls of the Steve Jobs Theater.
It really had to happen. Apple’s not spending billions on a worldwide TV service in order to make some money selling more Apple TV boxes. When Apple announced its first deal to get Apple video content onto Samsung TVs in January, it was clear that it would be attempting to get its new video service everywhere. With its announcement that the Apple TV app will be on Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices, the deed is done. You can spend $29 and get Apple’s video service on your HDTV, via a cheap Roku box. You can spend $49 and get it in 4K. If you’d prefer an all-Apple experience, the Apple TV box is there for you, but it’s not required to watch Apple’s TV shows.
As for Apple TV+ itself, what can be said? We got a vague launch time—this fall—and no hint of a price. We also didn’t get any show trailers, just a single quick-hit “sizzle reel.” Instead, Apple relied on star power, with directors and actors presenting their shows in segments that felt a lot like the introduction to categories at the Oscars. Some were better than others (trained comedy professionals Steve Carell and Kumail Nanjiani showed off their skills), but it was otherwise kind of lifeless.
As my podcast partner (and chief TV critic at The Hollywood Reporter) Tim Goodman likes to say, in the end we need to see the shows—no sizzle reel, no trailer can really let us judge the work. Steven Spielberg’s story of opening up a copy of Amazing Stories as a kid is great, but I remember when he told that story in 1985… and then I saw “Ghost Train,” the first episode of the original NBC series. It was a lifeless drag. All the talent and on-stage storytelling can’t help you if the shows are no good. It’ll be fall before we have any idea on that front.
What I do love about Apple TV+ is that it’s going to roll out everywhere. This is what happens when you make your own stuff—Apple, like Netflix and Amazon, is basically insisting on the worldwide rights for all of the shows they make themselves, and the result is that these new-generation companies don’t get stuck with different rights in different countries like more traditional broadcast networks do. In the background, Apple has been hiring development executives all over the world, including several prominent hires from the BBC.
Of course, the shows they put on stage Monday are all made in North America. But they’re the ones that are the furthest along. Apple’s long-term goal is to supplement its high-budget Hollywood content with material made in other parts of the world, very much along the line of what Netflix is doing (but at a much smaller scale).
Anyway, I was excited to be in the same room as Jennifer Aniston and JJ Abrams, but it’s going to be the shows that make or break the service. All Apple needs is a couple of certifiable must-watch shows and people will pay.
The audio mavens over at Rogue Amoeba have updated their SoundSource utility for macOS to version 4, bringing a ton of new features and a brand new interface.
Think of SoundSource like a supercharged version of the system audio widget that lives in your menu bar. But instead of only controlling volume, output, and (if you remember to hold down the Option key) input, it adds a ton of more powerful options, like the ability to control volumes and audio outputs on a per-app basis, apply Audio Units and EQ settings, and tweak input levels. There are also level meters for each app, so you can get an idea of where audio is coming from at a glance, and a Magic Boost feature that helps improve quiet audio without blowing out your eardrums by making loud sounds too loud.
It’s especially handy that you can now not only choose which apps you want to control, but also “pin” SoundSource to be visible, so you can easily refer to it while you’re checking levels in other apps.
I’ve long been a user of the earlier versions of SoundSource, and I’ve been testing betas of SoundSource 4 for a few months. It’s one of those apps that you don’t know you need until you use it for a while–then you wonder why it’s not installed on every single Mac you use.1
As with most of Rogue Amoeba’s apps, you can download a free, fully-featured trial version to check it out. A license runs $29, but if you’ve got SoundSource 3, you can snag a $19 upgrade.
For podcasters, it can save a lot of headaches by making sure that your recording software is always set to the correct input. ↩
[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.]
You’ll now be able to do other things while you’re using AirPlay to cast content from an iOS device to, say, your Apple TV. As Apple’s description notes, “AirPlay multitasking for video allows you to browse other apps, as well as play other short form audio and video files locally on your device without interrupting AirPlay.”
I was just lamenting the lack of this ability the other day. Glad to have it, along with some refinements to Wallet, Safari search, and–unmentioned in this article–the Settings app’s About screen. Anything else you’ve noticed?
