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By Jason Snell for Macworld

Why the MacBook Air might spell the end of configurable Macs

There’s been a lot written about the potential merging together of the software that runs (and runs on) the Mac and the iPad. 2019 is shaping up to be a huge year, as Apple’s devices get closer together than they’ve ever been before.

But while the focus on Apple’s smooshing together of its platforms has been primarily about the software (iOS apps running on the Mac) and hardware (the potential of future Macs running Apple-designed ARM processors), the new MacBook Air got me thinking about another way Apple’s approach to iPads and iPhones may dramatically change how we shop for Macs in the future.

Continue reading on Macworld ↦


By Jason Snell

iPad Pro 2018 review: A computer, not a PC

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

You have to judge a product on what it is.

In starting the pricing of the 2018 iPad Pro models at $799 and $999, in comparing the power of the A12X chip inside to PC laptops, in replacing the Lightning port of previous iOS devices with the USB-C port found on Mac and PC devices, Apple is sending a clear message: The iPad Pro is not meant to be a toy or a curiosity or an alternate device. It is just as serious a device as a computer, Apple suggests, and if that’s true we should judge it accordingly.

But just because the iPad Pro needs to be taken as seriously as a computer doesn’t mean it should be judged as a PC. The iPad is not a computer, not as the term’s been defined for the past 40 years. It’s something new and different, and it excels in some ways that PCs don’t while also struggling to do some things that PCs do well.

No, the iPad Pro can’t do everything a PC can do—nor should we expect it to, because it’s not a PC. If you choose to use an iPad Pro rather than a MacBook or a Windows laptop, you are presumably doing so because some aspect of the iPad Pro makes it more appealing than those products. In other words, there’s something else it does better than those devices, making it worth the trade-off.

Better is to judge the iPad on what it is—and where its potential lies. While it’s misguided to consider the iPad’s path incomplete until it turns itself into a PC, it’s fair to ask if the spectacular hardware Apple’s developed here is being let down by its software.

The iPad Pro isn’t a PC, and shouldn’t be judged as such. It’s something new, and different. But being new and different doesn’t mean it gets a free pass. It’s still got to measure up.

You have to judge a product on what it is.

Continue reading “iPad Pro 2018 review: A computer, not a PC”…


By Jason Snell for Tom's Guide

4 iPad Features That Apple Should Bring to the iPhone

Most of the time, the iPhone stands at center stage in the iOS world. But every now and then, the iPad gets a moment. With this week’s release of new iPad Pro models, people are talking about Apple’s tablet and its laptop-equivalent power and price. The debate about whether the iPad can ever truly serve as a replacement for a conventional PC rages on.

But let’s take a break from all that talk about iPads and PCs and instead ponder a different question: What is Apple doing on the iPad that could, one day, benefit the iPhone?

The new iPad Pro inherits numerous features from the iPhone X family of devices, including Face ID, shrunken-down bezels for an edge-to-edge look, a Liquid Retina display reminiscent of the iPhone XR’s screen, a version of the A12 processor and the absence of a headphone jack. But it’s also not hard to imagine the iPad leading its smaller iOS cousin in a few new product directions.

Continue reading on Tom's Guide ↦


November 9, 2018

Live from an iPad Pro!


By Dan Moren for Macworld

Chips ahoy: The Mac’s transition to Apple processors is happening sooner than you think

The recent Apple event in New York City had a lot going on, and we’re still working through all the new products the company showed off. But as the dust clears, there’s one lasting impression about which I feel remarkably certain.

There’s a sea change coming.

John Gruber alluded to this in his piece at Daring Fireball about the new MacBook Air:

Look at the iPad’s A12X compared to the iPhone’s A12 and you can see how much attention Apple is paying to the iPad’s system architecture. There’s no reason they won’t pay as much or more attention to the Mac’s custom silicon when they switch from Intel to their own chip designs. It should be downright glorious.

That line in the middle, delivered in a matter-of-the-fact fashion, has stuck with me. Not “if they switch.” “When.”

Like many other Apple watchers, I’m considering this transition a foregone conclusion. I’ve already put a stake in the ground that Apple will ship a Mac with custom silicon by 2020 at the absolute latest, and I stand by that.

The question is: which Mac goes first? There are, to my mind, two major contenders in this space.

Continue reading on Macworld ↦


Marco Arment’s review of the 2018 Mac mini: https://marco.org/2018/11/06/mac-mini-2018-review
John Gruber’s review of the 2018 MacBook Air: https://daringfireball.net/2018/11/the_2018_retina_macbook_air
Gruber’s commentary on Dan Frakes’s move to Apple: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/11/02/frakes-mac-app-store
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By Dan Moren

Second Star Wars live action series will follow Cassian Andor

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

If it seems like just a couple weeks ago that we were getting news on Jon Favreau’s live action Star Wars series, The Mandalorian, that’s because it…was. But Disney has already announced it’s working on a second live action series set in the Star Wars universe, this one following Rogue One‘s Cassian Andor. Actor Diego Luna will return to the role for the show, which will center on espionage adventures prior to the events of Rogue One, for obvious reasons.

Honestly, I was just thinking about Cassian the other day and how I was bummed we wouldn’t get more about him. That said, I’m fascinated to see how they draw his character; when we meet him in Rogue One, he’s not exactly the nicest of guys. Will this be a darker series in tone?

Given Solo‘s apparently disappointing box office and the death of the Boba Fett movie, this seems to point to Disney repositioning Star Wars into a serialized TV format. (This makes three series, including the currently airing Resistance animated show, and not including the forthcoming conclusion to the Clone Wars series).

In some ways, that pivot’s no surprise, given the era of Peak TV we live in now, plus the ability to build ongoing original content for the company’s upcoming streaming service. The question is whether viewers will show up for this content in a way that they didn’t necessarily for the feature films. Right now Disney’s Episode IX is still scheduled for December 2019, and there is a trilogy in development from The Last Jedi‘s Rian Johnson as well as some number of films from Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss–but little is known about any of those movies.

[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.]


2018 Mac mini RAM replacements feasible, but not simple

Update: The guide linked below uses some pictures from the 2014 Mac mini model, and though they are apparently similar to the 2018 in many ways, those looking to do their own upgrades will be better served by waiting for an official guide from iFixit.

Glad as we all are to see Apple didn’t solder the RAM to the motherboard in its latest Mac mini update, the process still isn’t as simple as in days of yore. Rod Bland has posted a guide on iFixit detailing the process, which requires a few specialized tools.

I’ve upgraded Mac minis in the past, and while everything is friendlier than the first models, which famously required a putty knife to open, this is yet another reminder that the days of easily upgradable computers are waning. It’ll be interesting to see what the company’s forthcoming Mac Pro looks like in this department.


By Jason Snell for Macworld

The rules of magnetic attraction in Apple products

magnets-pencil

There was a time when magnets were the most terrifying things in computing. Magnets erased floppy disks and tape cassettes and even hard drives. But in the modern era, magnets are our friends. Apple has used them for various important tasks over the years, from the convenient breakaway charging cable of MagSafe to the sensor that knows you’ve closed your MacBook’s lid—and the attraction that helps keep it closed.

But in the last few years, Apple has brought the rules of magnetic attraction to the Apple Watch, the iPhone, and now the iPad. How do they work? You don’t need to know to appreciate what magnets do for modern Apple devices. And that goes double for the new iPad Pro, with its 102 magnets—as cited in Apple’s launch video about the product, no less—and all of the magnetic accessories that go along with it.

Continue reading on Macworld ↦


Digging into Apple’s custom silicon

Ars Technica’s Samuel Axon scored an interview with Apple’s Phil Schiller and Anand Shimpi all about Apple’s custom silicon in the new iPad Pro. It’s an interesting read, and a rare dive into the nitty gritty technical details.

The iPad Pro outperforms every MacBook Pro we tested except for the most recent, most powerful 15-inch MacBook Pro with an 8th generation Intel Core i9 CPU. Generally, these laptops cost three times as much as the iPad Pro.

“You typically only see this kind of performance in bigger machines—bigger machines with fans,” Shimpi claimed. “You can deliver it in this 5.9 millimeter thin iPad Pro because we’ve built such a good, such a very efficient architecture.”

Ars also gets into the more interesting context to these chip discussions: namely, how does Apple’s venture into custom silicon affect the future of the Mac? That remains one of the most interesting and exciting potential stories of—likely—the next year or two, so it’s interesting to pick up the breadcrumbs here and there.


By Jason Snell

MacBook Air review: Center of the Mac world?

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

Think back to the fall of 2010. The iPad was just a few months old, and Apple introduced a new design for the MacBook Air. The previous model was an impressively thin and light laptop (that could famously fit in a mailing envelope), but it was expensive and had a single USB port concealed beneath a weird flip-down door. But the new models—and there were two, at 13 and 11 inches—were entirely different. They were still thin and light, but now they offered two USB ports and a new wedge-shaped design.

In that moment, the MacBook Air went from being a bit of an oddball to being the heart and soul of the Mac laptop line—and since two-thirds of Mac sales are laptops, it’s probably safe to say that the MacBook Air is the definitive Mac of this decade. For the past eight years, its exterior design has largely remained unchanged, as other products have come and gone.

Just when we thought it was dead, after several years of essentially no updates, the MacBook Air has returned with a new version that’s clearly inspired by the classic design. It’s been so long since the last major MacBook Air update, in fact, that most of the “new” features on this device are simply a recap of all the changes Apple has made to other Macs the past few years, finally rolled into this one: a new keyboard, Retina display, Force Touch trackpad, Apple-designed T2 processor, USB-C/Thunderbolt 3, “Hey Siri”, and Touch ID.

Surprise! The definitive Mac of the 2010s is going to survive this decade. And while this MacBook Air is dramatically different from previous models in many ways, it’s also got a bunch of familiar touches that make it undeniably a MacBook Air. Like its predecessors, it’s not the computer for everyone… but it will probably be the most popular laptop among the (count ’em) six models Apple currently offers.

Continue reading “MacBook Air review: Center of the Mac world?”…


The new space gray Mac mini (top) with its silver second-generation predecessor.

By Jason Snell

Mac mini 2018 review: The Swiss army knife of Macs returns

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

When the Mac mini was introduced at Macworld Expo in 2005, what caught the eye was the $499 base price, the lowest price ever for a Mac1. In an era where the iPod was in the process of entirely rehabbing the Apple brand in the eyes of the general public, the Mac mini was for switchers--people who decided that the iPod was so good, maybe a computer made by Apple would be better than whatever PC they were using right then.

It was a good idea, and I suspect that the Mac mini drove a lot of switchers--or at least got them into an Apple Store, where perhaps they ended up walking out with an iMac instead.

Apple and the Mac are in very different place today, though. Most of the Macs it sells are laptops. The concept of the low-end desktop switcher feels outmoded. (Which is not to say there aren't any, just that there maybe aren't as many as there might have been in 2005.)

In the intervening 13 years, the Mac mini has become something different. As the one Mac without a built-in monitor that isn't an expensive and large Mac Pro, it's become a bit of a Swiss army knife, fitting as a tiny Internet or file server (I've had a Mac mini running in my house more or less constantly for more than a decade), running lights and audio in theaters and at rock concerts, and thousands of other small niches that are vitally important for the people who live in them.

Just last week, hours after an Apple media event, I found myself in an edit bay at the offices of Stitcher in midtown Manhattan, recording a podcast. The multi-microphone, multi-display audio setup was powered by--you guessed it--a Mac mini.

Apple has witnessed how the Mac mini has gone from being the best Mac it could build for $499 to one that's a vital tool for professional and home users in a variety of contexts. And so, after a long time in the wilderness, the Mac mini has at last been updated--the right way. The last time the Mac mini got updated, Apple took away the highest-end configurations. This time, the Mac mini has been built with those many niche uses in mind.


  1. For the record, you had to pay an additional $50 for Bluetooth, $79 for Wi-Fi, and $100 for a SuperDrive, and you could max out the Mac mini at $1200 if you tried. 

Continue reading “Mac mini 2018 review: The Swiss army knife of Macs returns”…


November 2, 2018

We’re close to the finish line. But we’re not there yet.


By Dan Moren for Macworld

4 Apple products and technologies that are running out of time

What is dead may never die, as the Ironborn of Game of Thrones are fond of saying. This week, Apple resurrected both the MacBook Air and the Mac mini at its event, proving that death is sometimes only a temporary state of affairs–at least where tech products are concerned.

But just as this week’s Apple event giveth, there’s also the suggestion that it might taketh away; some Apple products and technologies find themselves in limbo after the announcements of the week, meaning that the writing may perhaps be on the wall for them.

Of course, not all of these products and technologies will die immediately–some may linger on for a while yet, and a few of them may not stay dead. (As the Air and mini showed us, sometimes they’re just hibernating.) But Apple has a habit of being brutal when it comes to cutting the dead weight from its lineup, even when it comes to killing those things that it once considered its darlings.

Continue reading on Macworld ↦


Apple’s latest record quarter: Why Apple loves China but hates sales figures

It’s another record quarter as a part of a record fiscal year for Apple. The revenue was nearly $63 billion, the profit more than $14 billion, and for the year Apple generated $265 billion in revenue and nearly $60 billion in profit. It’s the company’s eighth straight quarter of revenue growth, and that growth has accelerated every one of those quarters. This is a healthy company; you couldn’t find a healthier one if you tried.

Yes, Apple’s stock is getting hit because its guidance—the amount of money it expects to make during the current quarter—is actually slightly below what Wall Street analysts were expecting. For the record, the revenue Apple has guided to—between $89 and $93 billion—would be the most revenue Apple has ever generated in a quarter, and somewhere between 1 and 5 percent growth. In other words, get ready for another record Apple quarter, because this one’s shaping up to be huge.

As always, it’s worth reading between the lines of the federally-mandated financial disclosure tables and listening to the specifics of the company’s ritual phone call with financial analysts to see what else is on the company’s mind. Here are a few things that I noticed.

Continue reading on Macworld ↦


Apple announced new MacBook Airs and Mac minis: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/10/30/2018-macbook-air-mac-mini-hands-on/
And new iPads: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/10/30/2018-ipad-pro-hands-on/
Jason Snell’s thoughts on the event: https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/10/brooklyn-event-impressions-love-for-the-mac/
Our thanks to LightStream (http://lightstream.com/rebound). Consolidate your credit card debt with a LightStream loan featuring great interest rates and no fees. You could save thousands of dollars in interest! Get an additional rate discount by going to LightStream.com/REBOUND.
And our thanks to the National Security Agency. The National Security Agency plays a big role in protecting us from foreign cyber operations, and you can help! If you work in computer science, networking, programming or electrical engineering, learn more about careers at the National Security Agency by visiting IntelligenceCareers.gov/NSA (http://intelligencecareers.gov/nsa).


By Jason Snell

This is Tim: A transcript of the Apple Q4 2018 analyst call

Note: This story has not been updated since 2023.

[Here’s a complete transcript of Thursday’s Apple call with analysts.]

Tim Cook: Good afternoon everyone and thanks for joining us. I just got back from Brooklyn where we marked our fourth major launch event of the year. In addition to being a great time it put an exclamation point at the end of a remarkable fiscal 2018. This year we shipped our two billionth iOS device, celebrated the 10th anniversary of the App Store, and achieved the strongest revenue and earnings in Apple’s history.

Continue reading “This is Tim: A transcript of the Apple Q4 2018 analyst call”…


By Jason Snell

Apple results: A record September quarter with $62.9B revenue

Note: This story has not been updated since 2023.

Apple reported the results from its fiscal fourth quarter Thursday, saying it generated $62.9 billion in revenue, with Services revenue reaching an all-time high of $10 billion. iPhone sales were up slightly over the same quarter last year, but iPhone revenue during the same period was up 29 percent. Mac sales dropped 2 percent but Mac revenues rose 3 percent. iPad unit sales fell 6 percent and iPad revenues dropped 19 percent.

A phone call with analysts is forthcoming. We'll be here with llive coverage of the analyst call, and more. And yes, if you want to be in on the excitement of the analyst call1, you can listen to it too.


  1. When Tim says "this is Tim" or "customer sat" you have to drink. When analysts ask for "more color", an Apple exec drinks. 

Continue reading “Apple results: A record September quarter with $62.9B revenue”…


By Dan Moren

The Back Page: A MacBook for every seasoning

If there’s one thing Apple has no shortage of, it’s consumer-oriented mobile computing devices. (or, as they’re catchily known in the biz, COMCDs—wait, that’s nothing.) With the company’s resurrection of the MacBook Air, there’s a full line-up of these products, from the lowly $329 iPad all the way up to the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro.

Now, this may seem confusing. After all, if you’re in the market for a Mac laptop, which MacBook do you get? How do you tell the difference between the MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro? Why would you pay hundreds of dollars more for an iPad Pro over a cheap, but funcational iPad?

But this isn’t confusion—it’s brilliance. What we’re seeing here is the earliest stages of Apple’s brilliant new marketing plan: soon, all of Apple’s lineup will be mobile computing devices, sliced up for very specific markets. So it’ll be easy to pick the MacBook or iPad that’s perfect for you. Here are just a few of the earliest concepts that Apple is experimenting with for its COMCD—you know what, I’m just going to stop trying to make that a thing:

MacBook Throw We’ve all probably tossed our laptops down on a bed or a couch without thinking much about it. But what if you could toss your MacBook anywhere? Introducing the new MacBook Throw, with a form factor specially crafted to provide unparalleled aerodynamics. It’s the most throwable MacBook yet! Toss it on a counter. On a table. At a fleeing mugger. Plus, with a new feature we’re calling BooMacrang, your computer always returns right back to your hands. Why worry about dropping a MacBook when you can throw it?

MacBook Hair If you live in colder climates, as I do, you’ve winced when you’ve picked up your aluminum laptop on a frigid day. Or maybe you just don’t care for the hard, unyielding feeling of metal. Either way, the new MacBook Hair, coated entirely in the finest alpaca, may be right for you! Its amazingly soft exterior is luxurious to the hand, and attractive to the eye, and you’ll never find yourself looking at recycled aluminum the same way again. Included in the box is the latest Apple Comb to let you unsnarl those tangles that invariably occur. Word has it that braiding the hair is amazingly therapeutic!

SnackBook There you are, sitting at your desk, when 10:30am rolls around and you find yourself with a craving. But you’re tethered to your computer, desperately trying to get work done—what to do? Enter the SnackBook, Apple’s one-stop shop for productivity and combating the munchies. The SnackBook is built from a revolutionary alloy of marzipan that’s one hundred percent edible and biodegradeable. Just need something to take the edge off? Pop off a delicious keycap from the resilient butterfly keyboard. Want some heartier fare? Snap off a section of the chassis—as big as you like—and chow down. With the new SnackBook as your witness, you’ll never go hungry again.

iPad Bro Bro, do you even iPad, bro? Coated in an indestructible shellac of Axe body spray and shame, the iPad Bro is the mobile computing device that got two collars popped way up from the Washington Brost. With a new High Five feature that’ll never leave you hangin’ and an optional attachment that dispenses very very cheap beer1, the iPad Bro is sure to be perfect for every Broseph and Broreen in your life. Just don’t tell Todd—that dude is such a killjoy.


  1. Non-alcoholic, of course. Not that they’ll ever notice. 

[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 Stephen Hackett

The Hackett File: What’s a pro?

In that love-it-or-hate-it iPad commercial, it was asked “What’s a computer?”. The answer to that may still be unclear to some, but with the new Mac mini, Apple has another head-scratcher for us:

“What’s a pro?”

When Tom Boger, Apple’s head of Mac product marketing, introduced the new machine, he joked that it came in space gray because “pro customers are going to love that,” before praising it for being “an absolute beast on the inside.”

Boger then laid out his case. The new Mac mini comes with four or six processor cores in every model, can support up to 64 GB of user accessible RAM, and up to 2 TB of SSD storage, leaving all spinning media in the past. This is accessed via four Thunderbolt 3 ports, as well as a couple of USB A ports and an optional 10Gb ethernet upgrade. Apple’s custom T2 chip is onboard, keeping things safe, secure and speedy, and the Mac mini has an all-new cooling system designed to keep all of this hardware cool, quietly.

The new Mac mini is up to five times faster than the machine it replaces, but that dual-core system is four years old, so just about anything should be noticeably faster.

The Mac mini is a home run in the GPU department. All SKUs come with integrated graphics in the form of the Intel UHD Graphics 630 chipset. Needless to say, this wasn’t mentioned on stage when Boger was going through all of other much-improved hardware.

I am not saying this chipset is the end of the world. While it does benchmark slightly lower than something like the Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 in the $1,7999 13-inch TouchBar MacBook Pro, it is up to the tasks that home user will put it through.

But there’s my sticking point — the Mac mini is supposed to be for pros now. While it’s roughly in the same performance class as the 13-inch MacBook Pro, that means it’s not the machine for everyone.

It depends on your answer to the question: “What’s a pro?”

If you’re looking to do complex video editing, 3D rendering or other high-end tasks, you’re not the sort of pro the Mac mini can serve without the addition of an eGPU, which will easily add $1200 or more to the cost of the system.

You could easily spend entry-level iMac Pro money on a loaded Mac mini with an eGPU and 5K display.

However, if you aren’t the most demanding user, this Mac mini looks like a great option. You don’t have to be making the next Pixar film in your basement to be a pro these days.

Record or edit a podcast? You’re a pro.

Work in Photoshop, Illustrator or Sketch? You’re a pro.

Are you building an app in your spare time? Here, take this hat. It says “I’m a pro” on it.

Buying a pro Mac is complicated. The iMac is a great machine, but with high core counts on the horizon, it makes it a hard recommendation at the moment. The Mac Pro is … coming … soon … probably.

However, the MacBook Pro is more powerful than ever, and only getting better next month with the optional Vega GPU. The iMac Pro is the ultimate combination of power and elegance, and now, the Mac mini is on the table, too, as long as your work isn’t super bound to the GPU and can pay to skip over the entry-level Core i3 CPU.

[Stephen Hackett is the author of 512 Pixels and co-founder of Relay FM.]



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