By Dan Moren

December 31, 2016 3:03 PM PT

The Back Page: A new year

As 2016 draws to a close—and I think we can all issue a hearty “thank heavens” that it’s about to disappear in the rearview mirror—it’s time to look forward to the year at hand. A new year with new surprises, a few sea changes, and probably a few disappointments as well. And while every year is a big one for a company as important as Apple, there are a few places that avid watchers of Cupertino will probably be paying special attention to in 2017.

The future of the Mac: If there was one big question mark hanging over Apple at the end of the year, it’s what exactly the next few years of the company’s most venerable product line will look like. Mac desktops didn’t get any updates in 2016, and even the laptop line got only minor changes, with the exception of the new Touch Bar MacBook Pro—which itself brought some definite eyebrow-raising. Will Apple recommit itself to the personal computer, or is it content to have it operate in the niches where iOS doesn’t yet reach? The first half of 2017 will set the tone.

The next iPhone: After three years where the iPhone’s form factor has remained largely unchanged, there’s a lot of expectation built up around this fall’s iPhone. Will it be the 7s? The 8? Rumors of OLED displays, virtual Home buttons, and edge-to-edge screens suggest a significant overhaul, though the past has shown that the final product is often less radical than the whispers. And despite the fact that next year’s model will fall on the 10th anniversary of the original model’s debut, don’t expect Apple—even Tim Cook’s new and different Apple—to spend much time dwelling on history.

Special projects: What’s next? Automobiles, augmented reality, streaming TV…these are just a few of the areas in which Apple has demonstrated some interest in over the last couple years. Expectations for the company are always high, often unreasonably so, especially when it comes to new projects. Will 2017 be the year that the company decides to share its next idea with the public? I certainly don’t hold out high hopes for anything related to cars in the coming year, but I don’t think it’s out of the question that we may get to see an inkling of what so interests Apple in AR, a subject Tim Cook has hinted at several times.

This list is far from exhaustive. I’m also curious to see if the MacBook Air reaches its end of life (with the new MacBook potentially acquiring more features, such as additional ports, that might make it a worthier successor), whether the iPad can reverse its strong decline (and whether Apple introduces yet another screen size to help appeal to some part of the market not already served by the available three sizes?), and just what the company has up its sleeve—if you’ll pardon the expression—for the Apple Watch.

So it seems there are just a few things to keep an eye on in 2017—you know, just in case you were worried that Apple had gotten boring.

[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

December 31, 2016 3:01 PM PT

The Hackett File: Mac in a box

Since the beginning in 1984, the all-in-one form factor has been synonymous with the Mac.

That very first Macintosh, with its 9-inch, 512 x 342 display in the same 16 pound case as its 8 MHz processor became the template for a whole slew of “compact” Macs that would follow it, ending with the Macintosh Color Classic II (also badged as the Performa 275) in May 1994.

After that, Apple’s all-in-ones got bigger and more bloated. The LC 520 ushered in a new design, built around a 14″ color CRT. This updated case, with its CRT atop a narrower base isn’t nearly as iconic as the compact Macs, but was used throughout the 90s on a whole big mess of Performas.

The Power Macintosh 5000 series continued the trend, using an ever bigger display, and adding more serious horsepower to the AIO than it had seen before.

Throughout this time, Apple was still shipping desktop Macs that sat horizontally on the desk under a CRT as well as both mini and full-sized towers. At some points, the all-in-ones enjoyed equal footing with those other designs, and at others, they were set aside as low-cost or even education-only machines. Notable one-off models like the Macintosh TV or the 20th Anniversary Mac shipped as all-in-ones.

When Steve Jobs came back, the first new computer he introduced was an all-in-one. The iMac G3 was designed to re-capture the hearts of Macintosh customers — and find new ones! — by portraying an approachability and friendliness that had been lost in Apple’s other designs.

Jobs returned to this design for a whole bunch of reasons. all-in-ones are easy to setup and easy to move around. (Jobs praised the handle on the top of the iMac at its introduction.) They offer an appliance-like approach to computing, willing to work without the mess that is normally found with tower-based setups.

This was illustrated perfectly by Apple in 2008, when it introduced the first aluminum iMac:

Today, all you really need to get things going with an iMac is a power cord. The speakers, camera and display are all built-in. With Bluetooth, you don’t need wired snaking to your mouse and keyboard.

Of course, one reason I — and Jason and Dan — love the iMac is that it’s flexible. I can run it without any wires, but I don’t have to. The back is chock-full of ports that make it a perfect hub for any writing, podcast recording or video producing I need to do on a given day. Inside, it’s got a fast CPU, silent, reliable SSD storage and 32 GB of RAM. The front is dominated by an amazing 27-inch, 5K display with wide color gamut support. It’s beefy, but it’s not nerdy. My studio can still look nice and neat, despite the mess of things the iMac is hooked up to.

As we look forward to 2017, the future of the Mac Pro and Mac mini are hard to distill. Will Apple update its two other desktop machines? Will the iMac be the only non-notebook Mac users can buy? I don’t know, but the all-in-one design is ready to take on another decade, without a doubt.

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

By Jason Snell

December 31, 2016 3:00 PM PT

By Request: Holiday helpers

Subscriber Joe writes, “Hindsight is 20/20. How about a list of all the polite ways to say to family, ‘I don’t know how Windows or Android works.’”

Oh, the holidays are a Very Special time for those of us who are technologically savvy, aren’t they? Because we are usually the designated Person Who Knows About That Stuff for our families. (When friends and neighbors ask me about their tech problems and needs, they’re often apologetic. I tell them: No, no, don’t worry about it. This is what I do. It’s my role.)

If you can, help. This is the golden rule. If you can help your friends or family along, you should give it a try. If they’re having a Mac or iOS problem, you can probably help. And so you should give it a try. That doesn’t necessarily mean giving them intense lessons about every aspect of the device—but it might mean fixing a small problem or pointing them at an online resource they can use to learn more.

If you can’t help, disclose and apologize. This goes to Joe’s original question. I’m not Miss Manners, but I don’t think admitting that you don’t understand a certain platform is impolite at all. That said, there are some basic things that you can do to troubleshoot even a Windows PC or an Android phone or tablet, and you might want to give those a shot under the flag of surrender. You’d be surprised how many things you may be able to fix even though you know nothing about the device in question!

By the way, making your policy clear—I don’t provide tech support for platforms I don’t understand—can be a helpful tool in a few different ways. If you would like to help them if only they used products you understand, you can use this policy as an encouragement to get them to, say, switch from Android to iPhone. If you would like to not help them, well, just beg off helping them and hope they don’t work out that if they bought a new iPhone you’d actually be able to answer their questions.

Try the basics. Even on Android and Windows, I know the basics: Turn it on and off. Toggle the Wi-Fi. Unplug the router and plug it back in. You probably know this already, but the tech world is vastly improved by the act of power-cycling devices. Doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen the operating system running on that Smart Refrigerator—reboot it and see what happens. (It’s probably harder to unplug the fridge, but I bet there’s a settings menu with a restart option.)

Fix their TV. No, seriously, Find that TV remote, hit the menu button, and find out how to turn off motion smoothing and all those zoom modes that prevent you from seeing the entire picture. If they’ve got a cable box with both HD and non-HD channels, see if you can remove the non-HD channels so they don’t show up in the program guide. I’d tell you they’ll thank you later, but they probably won’t—but they might notice that their TV looks better all of a sudden.

Get them a password manager. If you’re feeling especially generous, get all your family members set up with 1Password or LastPass so that they’re not using the same password on every service they use. They won’t thank you right then, probably, but they might thank you a whole lot one day down the line. (Oh, who are we kidding? They’ll never thank you, but you’ll know that you did the right thing anyway.)

Acceptance. Look, you’re the Computer Person in their lives. This is the path we’ve all chosen. We don’t have to love it, but we need to accept it. Be helpful when you can, and firm when you don’t know the answer. Because while your friends and family may be desperate for your help, they’re also people who are confused and frustrated with technology. If you profess your own confusion and frustration with an issue, they won’t get their problem solved, but they’ll at least appreciate your commiseration.

By Dan Moren

December 31, 2016 2:50 PM PT

What I Use: Back it up

Everybody knows your data is only as safe as your copies of it. Backup is an essential part of not just your data security and integrity, but also your mental well-being—recovering from a catastrophic data loss is a hell of a stressful experience. So while everybody should back up their data in some fashion, and some fashion is definitely better than none, multiple backups aren’t just for the paranoid.

I employ several backup strategies across my devices to minimize the impact of data loss. I would love to say “prevent” data loss, but the truth is that no system is a hundred percent effective at providing that kind of safety net. The best you can do is implement a system with multiple redundancies that cover the most common eventualities and hope for the best.

From a low-level vantage point, there are a number of apps and built-in features that let me rest confident in the security of my individual files. For example, macOS has long offered versioning for apps that want to take advantage of it. If you screw up and delete a table in Numbers, for example, you can go to File > Revert To > Browse Versions… to see all your recent changes, and instantly pop back to the one you want. (Not all apps use this, obviously, though some—like BBEdit—offer robust auto-saving on their own.)

File backup is also a handy byproduct of using cloud storage, which has become increasingly prevalent and cheap, to be able to access your files anywhere. Using an app like Dropbox or a service like iCloud Drive automatically stores a copy of your files on those services, which means there’s a copy you can access from any device where you can log into your account. I store most of my most crucial files in Dropbox (which also provides versioning via their website) and have begun using iCloud Drive for specific types of documents, in addition to my music and photo libraries.

Beyond backing up specific files, having full device backups of your Macs and iOS devices can prove crucial in cases where you, say, drop your iPhone down a flight of stairs at the bottom of which is a pool of hydrochloric acid. (Let’s face it: it’s probably happened.) Apple provides an iCloud Backup service that makes it easy to dump the contents of your device into the cloud, but it also only offers by default a piddling amount of storage space that may or may not be sufficient for your entire iPhone or iPad. Your options are to pay a small amount to increase the limit, or, if you have a Mac (or PC), back up to iTunes. The downside to the latter approach is that if—heaven forbid—your computer is lost or damaged, you lose your backup data there. Unless that data is in turn backed up…but we’ll get to that in a moment.

When it comes to backing up my Macs, I use a combination of apps and services to keep backup copies of all my data. I’ve got three Macs: a MacBook Air, an iMac, and a Mac mini. On the iMac and the MacBook Air, I use Apple’s built-in Time Machine to back up to local drives (my MacBook Air actually backs up over the network to an internal drive on my iMac). Time Machine has its share of wonkiness, but it generally seems to work pretty well for me, and I fortunately haven’t had need to put it through the wringer. My Mac mini, meanwhile, backs up to a hard drive every night using Shirt Pocket’s SuperDuper!, which has the benefit of creating a bootable backup that I can use to start up my mini in case of a serious problem. It’s also handy when you need to replace a drive or upgrade to your own Fusion Drive.

But as good as the combination of cloud storage and local backups are, I also opt for one further piece of peace of mind by using the online backup service CrashPlan to back up my Mac mini—which itself is my local repository for critical data—to the cloud. I like CrashPlan a lot, and fortunately haven’t had a need to try and use it restore all my data. (Alternative solutions like Backblaze or Arq are great too—the important part is to have that offsite backup.) And, as an added benefit, it’s a great way to retrieve files from the cloud when you’re away from home.

Hopefully you’ll never need to put your backup strategy to the test, but having multiple backups that include an off-site copy will probably protect you from anything short of an extinction-level event. And hey, look on the bright side: in that case, you’ll probably have way bigger things to worry about.

[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

December 31, 2016 2:48 PM PT

Nothing happens next week

Next week is the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. I just tried to write a phrase to describe it, and I don’t think I can do so without ushering up some sort of Lovecraftian horror in your mind. Because that’s how I feel about the Consumer Electronics Show: It’s a horror show.

I’m not saying that just as someone who dislikes Las Vegas, big crowds, and trade shows, though those things are undeniably true. CES is pretty rough to cover as a journalist. No, let me rephrase it: CES is impossible to cover as a journalist. If you’ve got a plan and a bunch of appointments and a laser focus, you can survive it, but even then you will have missed far more than you will have caught. The flight out of McCarran Airport at the end of the week is never a victory march, always a retreat in defeat.

But the fact is, CES is nonsense on so many non-journalistic levels. Yes, some products get announced there. But it’s not like it was, especially for major announcements. Apple proved to the entire tech industry that the biggest players in tech don’t need the hype of an outside group’s event in order to lure the most important press to their product announcements. Now every major player calls its own press conferences or hosts its own events in order to get the word out.

So that takes out the biggest players and their biggest announcements. Then there’s the matter of competition: There’s no denying that the smartphone is the single biggest product category in the tech industry today. And the world’s biggest trade show for mobile devices takes place just a month later: Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Phone makers prefer to launch their products in a more focused environment, and one with less noise. So that’s drained CES of another wave of exciting product launches.

The thing that keeps CES afloat are the business deals. Wander the halls and you’ll realize that, despite its name, CES is not really a consumer trade show. It’s all about manufacturers making deals with distributers, tiny companies you’ve never heard of with ridiculous products you’d never want trying to convince a manufacturer or distributor to make or sell their products. It’s interesting from a tech-spelunking perspective, but most of those products won’t ever see the light of day.

Also there’s an entire show floor full of cars.

There was a time when CES and Macworld Expo competed over the same week of the year, and that led to some unfortunate collisions. Steve Jobs would take the stage in San Francisco and CES would grind to a halt as they watched someone a few hundred miles away completely steal their thunder. Journalists would fly in to San Francisco for the Apple keynote, then jet to Vegas to catch the rest of CES. (This also led to an extremely skewed impression in the media that Macworld Expo was just an Apple keynote—when Apple pulled out of Macworld Expo, you could read between the lines and figure out which journalists had never spent more than a single day at Macworld Expo.)

Macworld Expo is dead and CES lives on, but Apple’s approach to launching its products severely affected both. CES will never have the firepower it had a decade or two ago, when Microsoft would make major product announcements in one of its many keynotes.

Yes, next week news will flow out of the desert in the same way that water doesn’t. But after you filter out the stuff you don’t care about and the stuff that will never actually ship to consumers, you’ll be left with very little. My advice is to ignore CES altogether and maybe, at the end of the week, read a week-in-review synopsis from an outlet like The Wirecutter. You’re not going to miss anything.

And will I be in Vegas next week? Oh, you sweet summer child. I will be on vacation in Hawaii, aggressively not noticing any silly nonsense coming out of the desert.