As a native Safari extension, Magic Lasso blocks all intrusive ads, trackers and annoyances – letting you experience a faster, cleaner and more secure experience across all your devices.
However, I think Apple needs to go one step further in their next step and add timestamps to Apple Podcasts, a long-overdue feature that’d enable users to share links to individual moments within a podcast, directly to a specific point in the transcript.
Similar to what’s already now available for Transcripts, listeners could tap on a paragraph, seek to the beginning of a sentence, and the use the Share sheet to not only “Copy” the text, but “Copy link at timestamp” – something I’m surprised didn’t come along with this feature.
This is a great idea and frankly, I’m kind of surprised that Apple hasn’t offered this feature already. As Matt points out, it’s in a couple of the company’s other apps, and third party options like Overcast provide this kind of functionality. Sharing a podcast episode is good, but sometimes you want to tell somebody “Hey, listen to this part right here.” Having a way to quickly and easily send that excerpt to someone seems like a no-brainer.
These are huge changes. Apple claims there are going to be more than 600 new APIs for app developers, along with numerous other alterations to policies and technology required by the DMA. You can see why Apple has essentially been working on this since the iOS 17 development process started a year ago—this is essentially an entire segment of the iOS 17 update that was never announced last June but instead sat and waited for a final rollout just as the DMA was about to take effect.
As is painfully clear from Apple’s press release on Thursday, the company deeply dislikes being mandated by law to make these changes. At every turn, while assuring the public that Apple is going to do its best to keep users as safe and secure as possible, it stops to point out that the DMA will make iOS less secure.
There’s no denying that these changes increase the danger for EU iPhone users. Apple has spent a decade honing the techniques it will use in the EU in a vital testbed—the Mac. While I wouldn’t call the Mac a hotbed of malware and scams, there’s far more of it on the Mac than there is on the iPhone. There will undoubtedly be more of it in the EU, post-DMA-rollout, than before.
But also new to the EU will be true competition with Apple in browsers and app stores. The economics of app sales in Europe will change. Apps that might never have been approved by Apple will have other avenues for sale. App developers fed up with Apple’s 30 percent cut will be able to strike out on their own.
For years, Apple has been preparing for this moment, not just by introducing features like notarization on the Mac, but by denouncing the concept of “sideloading” apps (i.e., loading them from outside the App Store) as a danger to all users. Beginning in March, the entire world will be watching the EU to see if Apple’s warnings were true—or if it was just a smokescreen designed to scare regulators and legislators out of creating laws like the DMA.
Here’s what Apple says is going to change:
Alternative app marketplaces. It doesn’t seem like Apple will let any old developer offer apps on their websites, as is the case on macOS. Instead, Apple has created a new set of tools that allow developers to build alternate app stores. If you’re a developer who wants to make an app—let’s say a video game emulator, since those are frequently rejected from the App Store—you can’t sell it or give it away yourself. You’ll need to find a place in an alternative app store.
Altstore has been a sideloading marketplace on iOS for a while now, taking advantage of bugs and limitations in iOS. According to Altstore, it’s going legit in the EU, doing the work to become an official “alternative marketplace.” You can bet Facebook and Epic Games will be there. I’d imagine that SetApp, the seven-year-old app subscription service, will jump in, too. (Apple will apparently require that alternative app marketplaces show proof of a substantial line of credit—presumably to prevent fly-by-night operations that show up, take everyone’s money, and run.)
Apple will also let users set an app marketplace other than the App Store as their default. That’ll be weird.
Alternative payment systems. Not only will apps in the EU be able to link out to external websites, but even in-app purchases and subscriptions can bypass Apple and use other means. Apple has built new APIs for developers to use for both of these scenarios.
Alternative browser engines. While there are currently several web browsers on iOS, they’re all using Safari’s rendering engine, WebKit, under the hood. That’s because Apple doesn’t allow other browser engines on the platform, period. This will change in the EU, which means that (for example) Google Chrome on the iPhone in Europe could use Google’s rendering engine. This has intriguing web-app implications since some web apps just don’t run on Safari but do run on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.
Contactless payment without Wallet. Currently, all apps that want to use the iPhone’s tap-to-pay functionality for purchases, transit passes, and even door locks all run through Apple’s Wallet app. Apple will now allow apps to access Apple’s tap-to-pay hardware directly throughout the European Economic Area (which includes non-EU countries Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway.) In the EU, Apple will let a third-party app be the default for tap-to-pay transactions.
I’m not clear on how this will make things better for users, but it does mean that EU banks will be able to force users to open their apps to pay for things, presumably bypassing Apple taking a cut of Apple Pay transactions.
It’s not an app free-for-all. App developers who go outside the App Store will still need to notarize their apps, which allows Apple to scan them for malware and cryptographically sign them. That signature allows the operating system to identify if an app has been modified in any way, which is a good security feature, and it allows Apple to revoke its security approval if the developer turns out to be distributing malware.
Part of the notarization process will actually contain data about the app and its functionality, including screenshots—and that information will be displayed by iOS when an app is going to be installed from an alternative source. This means that what we think of now as an app’s “App Store description” will actually ride along with an app outside the App Store. And Apple will see it beforehand and approve it.
In addition to notarization, Apple is adding new features that will warn users of what they’re getting themselves into. Apps on the App Store that use payment processors other than Apple will get a warning label. Warnings will also appear in the app when going to non-Apple processors, and Apple will add layers of the App Review process itself to make sure that apps communicate that they’re not using Apple’s services.
It may seem like Apple has essentially reserved the right to reject all apps from its platform, even those in alternative app marketplaces, by rejecting notarization. But in practice, it’s unlikely to happen. Not only is Apple’s five-year track record on Mac notarization pretty clean, but Apple knows that the EU is watching the company carefully, and any capricious use of these security features would be frowned upon.
App developers: Deal or no deal? As a part of its announcements, Apple has offered app developers completely new financial terms—if they want them. Under the new terms, developers on the App Store pay either 10% (for small developers, down from 15%) or 17% (down from 30%). There’s an additional 3% fee if they use Apple’s payment processing. For large developers, it’s a dramatic reduction in the amount of money Apple’s taking from every purchase—presumably as an inducement to keep apps in the App Store.
There’s one other interesting catch to this new set of terms: A new “Core Technology Fee” that Apple is charging for access to its development tools and operating systems. Presumably convinced that demanding that developers outside the App Store continue to pay Apple 27% of sales might not fly with EU regulators, Apple has instead built a new fee system that charges 50 euro cents per year for (essentially) each active user.
So let’s say you’re Spotify, and you have roughly 40 million iPhone users in the EU. You’d pay Apple €19.5 million a year for access to its platforms, but you’d be able to sell your own subscriptions separately, without Apple forcing you into Apple’s payment systems and taking a cut (30% for year one, 15% after that). Spotify will have to do the math on that one and make a decision.
Apple gives app developers the first million users for free, which means this will be much less likely to hurt small developers. As we already saw when Apple cut its percentage share from small developers in half, Apple doesn’t care about money from small developers—it just wants to make sure that the big boys are paying up.
It’s also important to note that these new terms are not required. If an app developer doesn’t want to use an alternative payment method or alternative distribution, it can stay in the App Store as is, and the existing App Store terms apply. Developers of free and low-cost apps may want to choose these options as insurance against their app going viral—the last thing an indie developer of a free app wants is for their app to go viral and discover they owe Apple a million Euros.
So what happens next?
Developers got access to the software and documentation that enables these features on Thursday when the iOS 17.4 developer beta was released. Given that the DMA goes into effect in March, iOS 17.4 will ship by then—and then this grand experiment begins.
If you’re not in the EU, nothing should change. Will there be sneaky ways to “move” to Europe and install software outside the App Store? I’d imagine that Apple has tried very hard to make that impossible, but there are always workarounds, and I imagine a new game of cat-and-mouse will ensue.
That said, the existence of these features almost certainly ensures that the EU won’t be the only place to have them. Undoubtedly, every other legislator and regulator in the world is watching this situation and preparing their own DMA-like regulations. Some may rush in, while others may wait and see just what happens.
After all, we don’t actually know how this will go. Apple has insisted all along that features like these increase the danger for users and that all of its policies were designed to protect its customers. Of course, the other perspective is that these policies were also created in order to give Apple complete control over both policy and economics on the App Store and to generate enormous amounts of App Store revenue without any competition.
Both things can be true. I think it’s certainly the case that the EU rules will create a cottage industry of scammers who will provide detailed instructions about how to bypass Apple’s safety settings and then overcharge them or spy on them or do other nefarious deeds. We know this because it already happens on the Mac!
I have to think that Apple will have a team of security people watching carefully as these features roll out across the EU. But there will also be a team of PR people ready to publicize any incident that feeds into Apple’s narrative about the DMA endangering EU citizens.
This is a risky game for Apple, though. As the rest of the world watches to see the result of what will happen in Europe, Apple’s statements about the dangers of sideloading will be put to the test. If there aren’t major security issues with the rollout of these new features, Apple’s protests will be revealed as toothless and self-serving, and these changes will likely be mirrored all over the world.
I don’t think Apple is actually rooting for EU customers using these new features to be victims of crimes and scams—because that will reflect badly on Apple, not just the DMA. But I do think that Apple executives are confident that such ugly events are inevitable—and the company will be poised to loudly point them out and blame the DMA.
Among the changes in iOS 17.4 is one that’ll be an enormous improvement in podcast accessibility: transcripts in the Podcasts app.
When a podcast episode has a transcript available, an icon resembling a speech bubble appears in the bottom left corner of the playback screen. Tapping it brings up a transcript, highlighted in real time—very much in the style of Apple Music lyrics, but with smaller text. You can search transcripts, select text, and tap on text to jump to that point in the podcast.
Apple has detailed how this will work on the creator side: By default, Apple’s backend systems will find a new episode of a podcast and transcribe it. When a new podcast episode drops, the transcript won’t be available right away—but will appear once Apple has had a chance to consume it.
Transcripts will be done by Apple by default. Podcasters will also be able to use their own transcripts, rather than Apple’s, by opting in to that feature in Apple Podcasts Connect and then supplying a transcript (in VTT or SRT format) and embedding the transcript URL in a <podcast:transcript> field in their podcast RSS. (It appears that private podcasts—like our own Six Colors podcast for members—won’t be auto-transcribed by Apple, but they should be able to still provide their own transcript and have that picked up by Apple.)
Speaking as a prolific podcaster, I’m really happy that Apple has provided this feature because it dramatically improves the accessibility of our podcasts. Transcription technology has only recently gotten good enough to make automated transcripts readable, but the ideal solution to the problem was always to have platform owners like Apple build in this technology themselves.
iOS 17.4 is in beta now and should be out for everyone by March.
There’s a lot to unpack in Apple’s announcements about its changes for the European Union, and we’ll certainly be digging into that, but the company actually announced another big change that will apply across the globe:
Today, Apple is introducing new options for how apps globally can deliver in-app experiences to users, including streaming games and mini-programs. Developers can now submit a single app with the capability to stream all of the games offered in their catalog.
Apps will also be able to provide enhanced discovery opportunities for streaming games, mini-apps, mini-games, chatbots, and plug-ins that are found within their apps.
Additionally, mini-apps, mini-games, chatbots, and plug-ins will be able to incorporate Apple’s In-App Purchase system to offer their users paid digital content or services for the first time, such as a subscription for an individual chatbot.
As you might recall, this was a source of contention between Apple and Microsoft back in 2020, when the latter was working on an iOS version of its GamePass service, but ended up not being able to release it because of App Store rules.
It certainly seems as though that (along with competing services from Sony and Nvidia) will now be possible, though so far I haven’t seen any comment from those companies about whether or not they plan to bring them to market.
Different ways of viewing the Mac at 40; making our own plans for Vision Pro; and a brief mention that Apple is changing rules in the EU recorded just before those plans were made public!
It works in a really dead-simple way. You hit “Add Trip” and you pick your start and end date, and your location. You can stack up as many as you want: Like London, Santorini, Naxos, Athens, and Vienna — hypothetically. As soon as there’s a day without a trip it snaps right back to showing you your home weather. Brilliant for when your trip is winding down and you want to see what you’ll be headed back to. It’s only as granular as a whole day, so on travel days you need to pick which is more important to get a heads up about.
It sure would be great if I could pipe a calendar with a trip itinerary right into the app, and maybe even get the hourly forecast based on my flight time. And it would be even better if that was something that happened at the system level instead of forking over my whole calendar for such a feature.
With apps like Flighty, or even United’s updated app with Live Activities, I could travel across time zones as smoothly as a progress bar. Instead, I’m always adding and subtracting the change in time zone and the total flight time.
Fight!
Unfortunately, support for this level of travel detail isn’t built into iOS or watchOS. Apple devices always think that wherever they are right now and whatever timezone they’re in right now are constants. All this, even though my iPhone has emails, boarding passes, and calendar entries that indicate I’m on the move.
Any scheduling I do during the trip needs to be offset appropriately before the journey, or for once I return home. I don’t want to see what time a dinner reservation in London is in Pacific Standard Time, because that’s not how I will think about it when I’m there, and vice versa.
Add to that that any time-based modes like Sleep1, Do Not Disturb, and other Focus Modes will all trigger based on the time zone my devices were in before I switched on Airplane Mode at the start of a flight. Ironically, Airplane Mode doesn’t think the time will ever change.
Not every journey is a dramatic crossing of the international date line, hoping across the pond to Europe, or even a flight from California to the East Coast2, but you do gain and lose hours that can have an effect on when you want to sleep or start your day. Hello jet lag!
There’s an app that a friend of my swears by for jet lag, Timeshifter, which I haven’t ventured to try, but it sure seems like the kind of nagging “health” notification that Apple Watch product managers would salivate over.
Flights of fancy
Apple should add a layer of travel savvy to its devices. Sure, there’s complexity here—programmers detest time-zone programming for a reason—but this is exactly the kind of lifestyle feature that users appreciate. It’s not as if Apple doesn’t already have the components lying around: if my flight information is in Calendar, that’s everything needed for time zones and locations for weather. It’s not like I’m asking for an AI virtual travel assistant.
Beyond the basics, there’s even more Apple could do. When I arrive in Paris, instead of flashing a notification that transit directions are available, or telling me there’s a detailed map of CDG3 available, my phone should ask me if I want to switch my navigation preferences to transit or walking while I am in Paris… and then revert to my default when I leave.
My phone should allow me to designate my home-away-from-home. Let’s stick with Paris as an example: I want to have something as easy as tapping “Home” but for my hotel. You can favorite the hotel, but it gets lost in all your other favorites, recent searches, and other detritus, unlike “Home,” which Maps thinks is a helpful navigation suggestion in Paris. (This also works for when I’m visiting my mom and staying at her house.)
In addition to keeping that hotel at the ready, my device should also be able to understand things like the address of the next hotel, so if it’s check out time and there’s a trip to Strasbourg, apps won’t keep suggesting my Paris hotel as a destination for navigation. We’ve moved on. Literally.
You don’t even need to travel far to see how things might benefit you. If you live in a place with mountainous terrain and microclimates, you could even be alerted to a chance of rain or snow a short distance from you just when you’ve got an event on your calendar there. Or imagine being given a heads-up when you’re headed to an office in a nearby region that’s ten degrees warmer, so you can dress appropriately.
From the simple to the more complex, there are plenty of ways Apple could make its devices better at anticipating our movements. This goes for Apple’s own apps, but also allowing third-party apps—like Mercury and Flighty—to tie into the same information. That would be the real ticket to success.
Fun Fact: The face-mask unlock that uses the Watch for an assist doesn’t work when your Watch is in Sleep Mode. If you travel with a face mask on a plane, like I’m doing, you need to turn off Sleep if you want to use that. ↩
The new, detailed map for CDG is not very useful. It has no walking directions inside the airport, and it doesn’t understand that the airport has multiple levels. It’s definitely not ready for the Spatial era. ↩
[Joe Rosensteel is a VFX artist and writer based in Los Angeles.]
My feature for The Verge on the Mac’s 40th anniversary came together surprisingly quickly, given that the anniversary has been four decades in the making. As I was writing it, I realized I was leading off with interviews I had done with Steve Jobs for the Mac’s 20th and with Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, and Bud Tribble for the Mac’s 30th anniversary.
It made me realize that the article ideally should have the voice of someone at the Apple of today, too. One of the conditions of my interview with Jobs—hard to believe it’s half the Mac’s life ago, now—was that I only talk to him about the future, not the past. It’s a tough task, asking someone about the future when you’re supposed to be interested in the past, but that’s just how Apple rolls—then and now. It’s always focused on what’s next, a bit of corporate culture instilled by Jobs himself.
The obvious choice was Greg “Joz” Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. Joz has been working at Apple since 1986, and I first remember encountering him at an early PowerBook briefing. In a tight timeframe, I managed to get a few quick questions into Joz for the Mac’s 40th anniversary.
The issue I keep coming back to (apparently every 10 years!) is how since 2001 Apple just keeps adding new non-Mac product lines. (A new one on the way in a couple of weeks.) The Mac is roughly 10% of Apple’s business. So how do you give love to a platform that is only a fraction of your business when there’s another platform that’s more than half your business?
“The Mac is the foundation of Apple… and today 40 years later it remains a critical part of our business that we continue to invest in,” Joswiak said. “Through all of its changes and evolutions over the years, we couldn’t be more proud to say that the Mac is more popular and relevant than ever… It’s exciting to see more people switching to Mac than ever before. The Mac will always be part of Apple. It’s a product that runs deep within the company, and defines who we are.”
I asked Joswiak about where the Mac fits in among all these other platforms, and he pointed out that Apple, one of the largest companies in the world, runs on the Mac. “As a platform, the Mac is still breaking new ground and continuing to propel the concept of computing forward in unprecedented ways,” he said. “People can do things on a Mac laptop that they would have never dreamed possible 40 or even 10 years ago. And today, the Mac also plays an important complementary role to other devices in the Apple ecosystem, whether it’s iPhone, iPad, or soon… Vision Pro.”
As has been pointed out a lot today, the Mac is the unique tech product to have somehow survived and thrived over 40 years, when many hit products don’t manage even 10 years in the spotlight. I’ve got my own theories about why that is, but I was curious if Joswiak—who, again, has been around Apple since 1986—had his own theories.
“From the beginning, the Mac has always embraced big changes to stay at the forefront of personal computing,” he said. “It revolutionized the concept of the personal computer 40 years ago and is still doing so today — challenging the notion of what’s possible on a laptop or desktop computer. Mac has [led] with nearly every major technological wave… This constant evolution paired with our unrelenting dedication to the user experience across hardware, software, and design, has led the Mac to become a product that has not only stood the test of time, but that has built a loyalty among users like no other.”
There’s no denying that. From the very beginning to today, the attachment people feel for their Macs seems like it’s one of the product line’s definining characteristics. “People love their Mac,” Joswiak told me. “It’s hard to imagine any other PC that people love as much as the Mac. That was true with the very first Mac, and it’s still true with the Macs we make today.”
We got together with Backstage pass members live on Zoom earlier today to discuss all sorts of stuff, including the Mac’s 40th birthday (with a classic Mac demo from Jason), the forthcoming Apple Vision Pro, and even some Apple Car talk. We’ve embedded the video below, or you can watch it on YouTube.
Our widget usage on smartphones, views on Palworld’s Nintendo resemblance, whether we’ve activated Stolen Device Protection, and our readiness to pay a premium for ad-free streaming amidst Netflix and Amazon’s pricing changes.
Another great Mac at 40 overview from my ol’ PC World counterpart Harry McCracken at Fast Company:
Even if everyone knows the 1984 Mac was a big deal, that doesn’t mean we fully understand it. I’m still gaining new appreciation for all the ways it mattered, despite following its progress from the start and being a Mac user—off and on—since 1987….
The most celebrated part of that original Mac was its software interface, which brimmed with new ideas, despite the lazy conventional wisdom that it merely imitated work done at Xerox’s PARC lab. But at the moment, I’m most fascinated by its industrial design. That petite all-in-one beige case, created by Jerry Manock and Terry Oyama, was unlike anything anyone had seen until then—at least outside of a kitchen. Jobs is said to have latched on to the Cuisinart food processor as design inspiration.
Harry’s also right about the classic Mac being both iconic and not particularly influential from a hardware standpoint. That classic Mac silhouette wasn’t really knocked off by competitors and only lasted in the Mac line for about a decade.
Before I started writing my piece on the Mac’s 40th anniversary for The Verge, I was thinking of different ways to plot out the arc of the Mac’s history. I ended up going with the fact that the Mac has been the underdog for most of its existence, but I also considered plotting the Mac’s history as defined by the Mac’s four distinct processor eras.
The Innovation era (Motorola 680×0)
The early days of the Mac were about justifying its existence as the first and most popular1 personal computer with what’s now a familiar graphical user interface style rather than being driven by a command line.
The IBM PC and the emerging DOS PC clone standard weren’t the only enemies here. Plenty of other platforms existed in the early days, including the one that generated most of Apple’s revenue, the Apple II.
History tends to flatten everything into simple narratives, so you might expect that the moment the Mac was introduced, Apple began pivoting away from the Apple II. That did not happen. Apple didn’t discontinue the last Apple II model until nearly a decade into the Mac’s existence. After the Mac was introduced, Apple kept introducing new Apple II models: The compact IIc three months later and the 16-bit IIGS more than two years later.
But the Mac started winning hearts and minds, especially in the design community, where the prospect of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) graphics and typography was just too powerful to ignore.
During this era, the Mac expanded, perhaps most notably with the Mac II, which was a more traditional standalone box with card slots and support for external monitors. The System, as Mac OS was called back then, also continued to advance, reaching a pinnacle with version 6.0.8 and then blowing right through it with the next milestone release.
System 7 was this era’s major reinvention of the Mac, and its introduction in 1991 gave the original Mac OS a decade of additional life. It was a game-changer, with proper multitasking support, system extensions, a revamped Apple Menu, file sharing, aliases, AppleScript, and a new full-color interface.
The Desperation era (PowerPC)
But by the early 90s, Microsoft had made the graphical interface of Windows passable (with version 3.1) and then extremely Mac-like (with Windows 95). Apple was feeling pressure on the software front, and Motorola’s 6080×0 series processors were also reaching the end of their life.
In came PowerPC, a new chip series from an alliance of Apple, Motorola, and (of all companies!) IBM. The transition from Mac to Power Mac (as the first PowerPC-based Macs were named) led to a lot of trepidation in the Mac community, but Apple executed the whole thing incredibly well, including using clever code-translation software to ensure that older Mac apps would still run. (This transition would set the standard for subsequent Mac chip transitions, all of which were executed smoothly.)
This is more or less where I began my career as a professional Mac person rather than just a user and fan. The PowerPC transition was solid, but the overall market was getting ugly. Windows 95 really did change the game, because while old-school PC fans hated the Mac-ification of their computers, most regular people really did like the graphical interface!
Real talk: For Mac users, Windows 95 was a pale knock-off. But for PC users, it was good enough to completely eliminate any possible reason to switch to a Mac. That, combined with the rapid speed increases of Intel’s processors, made the “Wintel alliance” of this era basically a Death Star of computing. These were dark times.
Apple cycled through CEOs during this era and made a desperate stab at licensing Mac OS to clone-makers, a move aimed at expanding the market that ended up just cannibalizing Apple’s own Mac sales. (I admit that I bought a Power Computing clone during this era. It was great.)
Meanwhile, Mac OS was also reaching the end of its life cycle. Microsoft was working on a modern version of Windows, Windows NT, that added modern memory management, multiprocessor support, and many other features. Mac OS was patched and patched again to create ramshackle solutions to things like multitasking and multiprocessor support, but it was clear that Apple needed a new solution.
Unfortunately, the company botched its own next-generation Mac projects—and it had more than one. It went so far as to announce one, Copland, as “Mac OS 8″—and even showed it off at WWDC one year. It never shipped. What shipped in Mac OS 8 was a re-skinned version of System 7 with some extensions to keep the plates spinning while Apple’s desperation increased.
Apple’s Mac OS desperation ended up saving not just the Mac but the entire company. Rather than buying the shiny, new, and untested BeOS from former Apple exec Jean-Louis Gasseé, CEO Gil Amelio and CTO Ellen Hancock went with a more battle-tested, tried-and-true operating system: NeXTStep, from Steve Jobs’s NeXT. Oh, and Jobs came along in the deal… as an advisor. Sure. Yep.
You know the rest. Jobs took over, NexT became Mac OS X, the G3 iMac revived Apple’s fortunes and kept the company alive long enough to fund OS X development and the creation of the iPod and Apple retail stores, and things stabilized.
The Halo Effect era (Intel)
The PowerPC alliance was falling apart. IBM’s new G5 processor gave the Mac some speed advantages over Intel PCs, but they suffered from heating problems that forced some Power Mac models to be liquid-cooled and utterly precluded Apple from building a G5 laptop. Famously, Steve Jobs said on stage that IBM would be supplying a G5 processor running at a gaudy 3GHz… but IBM never delivered.
NeXtSTEP had run on Intel processors, and deep within Apple, the OS-on-Intel skunkworks project had continued. This was its moment: Apple announced it was embarking on another processor transition, this time to Intel. The enemy had become an ally.
Psychologically, this was an enormous move for Apple. Intel had spent years branding itself as the standard in computing. Even when PowerPC chips had speed advantages over Intel chips, to explain why a chip with a lower clock speed was actually faster required a lengthy lecture about chip architecture that would put almost anyone to sleep. Apple’s sales pitch for the Mac was now a lot simpler: We have the same chips that they do.
It doesn’t seem like much, but during this period, it was incredibly reassuring. The iPod had helped rehab Apple’s brand with people who had never been Mac users before. It drew them to the new Apple retail stores, and the Mac was right there. People who had never had a fondness for Apple products now asked themselves: If I love this iPod so much, maybe I would like Apple’s computer, too?
It was called the iPod Halo Effect, and it was real. The fact that Macs ran Intel processors was an extra reassuring bullet point. A lot of people bought their first Macs during this period, reassured in part by the fact that Boot Camp and virtualization software existed that would allow them to also use Windows software in a pinch. (Most of them never needed to, but it eased their anxiety.)
During this era, the Mac was on the upswing. But as the iPhone and iPad entered Apple’s product line and siphoned off attention from the Mac, the platform suffered from a deep malaise in the 2010s. I have theories about why this happened, but no tangible evidence. Maybe it was just the natural effect of focusing on other platforms, or maybe there were specific decisions made inside Apple to put the Mac on life support while it built a new computing platform based on the iPad.
Either way, the late 2010s Mac was plagued by bad laptop keyboards, OS updates that lacked complete support for new features on iOS, a dearth of new Mac software, and a couple of compatibility-breaking OS updates that wiped out lots of apps from the early days of OS X. It was a bad decade for Intel, too, and that showed in a bunch of lackluster chip updates that couldn’t match the innovation going on in Apple’s other product lines.
The Graduation era (Apple silicon)
What a way to break out of the malaise! Apple switched the entire platform to chips based on the ones it had designed for the iPhone and iPad over the previous decade. Now, rather than being starved of the attention given to other Apple platforms, the Mac was being reinvigorated by the fruits of that labor.
Apple silicon Macs were faster than Intel Macs and far more power efficient. When the COVID pandemic hit, loads of people bought new Macs, driving the Mac to its two biggest sales years of all time. Not bad for a 40-year-old computing platform.
The big question is, what happens next? Nothing ever ends, after all. As I mentioned in my Verge article, the Mac’s move to Apple silicon can be viewed as a Faustian bargain. Apple’s long-term goal seems to be for developers to build apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac all together. In the end, does that mean that the Mac will be a container for “legacy” apps while most new apps are coming from Apple’s other platforms or the web?
It’s possible. But that prospect is better than a scenario where the Mac just can’t keep up because it doesn’t run any new apps. I’d also argue that the Mac has a unique position among Apple’s platforms: Not only is it where software development is done, but it’s also the only platform that can run iPhone/iPad apps and full Mac apps. It’s a superset of Apple’s platforms, not a subset. That’s a powerful place for the Mac to be.
I’m optimistic about the future of the Mac. Tech products come and go. The iPod was the biggest tech product of the early to mid-2000s, and these days, when you see the word, you’re more likely to think it’s a misspelling of “iPad.” Somehow, through three chip transitions and two entirely different operating systems, the Mac has survived.
More than that, the Mac has thrived. More people are using Macs today than at any other point in its existence. That’s miraculous, and it’s a testament to the Mac’s ability to change with the times while continuing to appeal.
Here’s to the next era, wherever it might take us.
To celebrate this milestone, mac40th.com showcases every Macintosh desktop and portable Apple has ever made… The site is easy to use: you’ll see a continuous stream of random Macs – just keep clicking ‘Show me more Macs’ and that’s what you’ll get. If you’re a hard core Mac fan, this site should keep you busy for a very long time.
What a perfect celebration of the Mac. Just keep scrolling and clicking until you’ve gotten your fill.
Twenty years ago, on the Mac’s 20th anniversary, I asked Steve Jobs if the Mac would still be relevant to Apple in the age of the iPod. He scoffed at the prospect of the Mac not being important: “of course” it would be.
Yet, 10 years later, Apple’s revenue was increasingly dominated by the iPhone, and the recent success of the new iPad had provided another banner product for the company. When I interviewed Apple exec Phil Schiller for the Mac’s 30th anniversary, I found myself asking him about the Mac’s relevance, too. He also scoffed: “Our view is, the Mac keeps going forever,” he said.
Today marks 40 years since Jobs unveiled the original Macintosh at an event in Cupertino, and it once again feels right to ask what’s next for the Mac.
Forty years. In the world of technology, where many devices seem to evaporate after only a matter of months, lasting for a decade is an accomplishment—but four of them? It’s nearly unheard of.
And yet today marks the fortieth anniversary of the Macintosh, a device that—while it has certainly seen its ups and downs over the intervening years—has nevertheless been in constant production since that day Apple co-founder Steve Jobs first took the wraps off it back in 1984.
In that time it’s run on four different processor architectures and two major operating systems, making it bit of a computer of Theseus. It’s seen challengers rise and fall, been threatened with extinction more than once, and yet for all of that has emerged in recent years revitalized and stronger than ever.
Amongst Apple’s products, the iPhone may be more popular, the iPad more futuristic, and the Apple Watch a more impressive feat of engineering, but none have the emotional resonance of the 40-year-old pioneer of the personal computer. Ask any user who’s been around long enough, and no doubt their own personal story is intertwined with the Mac.
Sleeve 2’s customization is impressive, and it scrobbles too.
I listen to music on my Mac all day long, but It’s been a long while since I’ve displayed the currently playing track anywhere. I’ve gotten back into the habit thanks to the $6 utility Sleeve 2 by Replay.
What made me instantly buy Sleeve was its extensive capability to customize the currently playing track information. You can choose to show album art at a wide range of sizes (or omit it entirely), with your choice of corner rounding. You can choose display track name, album name, and artist name, and display them in a variety of fonts and weights. There’s customization for text alignment, drop shadows, and pretty much anything else you might want. You can set the track information to float above everything, always say on the Desktop layer, or float above briefly when the track changes, then land back on the desktop.
Three different customizations that just scratch the surface.
But what also distinguishes Sleeve 2 are the other Music-extending features that have been rolled in. The app integrates not just with Music (which I use) but Spotify, and it’ll also scrobble songs to Last.fm if you’re a latter-day scrobbler. And perhaps most importantly, it lets you program systemwide hot keys for controlling playback—and of course, you can opt to have those playback controls appear on the track information, too.
It’s the perfect example of a simple, low-cost Mac utility that makes life a little bit better. I’m happy to have my music back on my desktop again.
Celebrating 40 years of the Mac, we’ve gathered an all-star panel of longtime Mac users to pick the best Macs, Mac software, and Mac accessories, as well as induct a few events or devices into the Mac Hall of Shame.
Left to right: Boox Page, TCL NXTPAPER 11, Kobo Libra 2.
I’ve been writing about e-readers—Kindles, Kobos, and the like—since the first month of this site’s existence. I write about them not just because I’m an enthusiastic user of the devices in this category but also because I’m fascinated by these strange devices that are so very different from the phones, tablets and computers that fill the rest of our lives.
This month, I’ve been using a few different devices that push the definition of an e-reader to its limits. As a result, I’ve ended up challenging myself to define exactly why I like e-readers—and why I’m not satisfied just using an iPad or an iPhone to read books.
The unlikely contenders
A closer look at the Boox Page and TCL NXTPAPER 11.
After a somewhat underwhelming experience with the Boox Leaf 2 and a strangely satisfying time with the phone-shaped Boox Palma, I decided to take one more trip to the parallel world of Boox devices, which run Android but have E-Ink displays rather than the traditional backlit screens found in modern smartphones.
This time, I tried out the $250 Boox Page, which has physical page-turn buttons and uses the same screen as the $190 Kobo Libra 2 and $160 Kindle Paperwhite. It was a pretty great experience—with all the caveats that I’ve brought up before when writing about an Android-driven E-Ink device.
It feels and looks like a Kindle or Kobo, but the Boox Page will run pretty much any Android app.
When you buy a Kindle or Kobo, you can just turn it on and use it without any configuration beyond logging into your Amazon or Kobo accounts. Android devices aren’t like that—there’s a lot of work to get it the way you want it, including downloading apps and then configuring various extensions that make those apps behave better on the slow-refreshing E-Ink displays.
That all said, if you’re a relatively nerdy person who really wants a device that’s at the same level as the Kobo Libra or Kindle Paperwhite—but with slightly better hardware than both, as it’s got a flush screen like the Paperwhite and page-turn buttons like the Libra—you could be at home with the Boox Page. If you’re someone who wants access to the Kindle store and the Kobo store and the ability to read DRM-free ebooks with another reader (Moon Reader was my favorite, though there are many others), the Boox Page can do it all.
Unfortunately, I started down this Android tablet path largely because I wanted to read other stuff on the same device I use to read books. Think RSS feeds, newspapers, newsletters, and the rest. When it comes to this stuff, it’s hard to get past the fact that apps are built for fast-refreshing phone screens and just don’t work well with E-Ink displays. Even if you configure your RSS reader to be just right, you’ll end up having to jump to a web browser to read stuff that’s not contained in the feed—and the web experience on these devices just isn’t great.
So, while I really enjoyed reading several books on the Boox Page, I’m not sure there are enough good use cases for it. Even if you’re devoted to DRM-free ebooks, you can sideload those to either a Kindle or Kobo via an app like Calibre. I’ve been back on my Kobo Libra for the past few weeks, and it’s nice to have the simplicity, though I sure do miss the flush screen of the Page.
The NXTPAPER 11 displays color comics better than any black-and-white device, but it’s still just a tablet with a matte screen.
But wait: What if someone could build a device that had a screen that looked like E-Ink but offered full color and refresh rates that matched phones and tablets? Someone did, sort of. Which is why I also spent a little time with the NXTPAPER 11, an 11-inch Android tablet from TCL that claims to offer “an e-book viewing feel.”
It’s weird. It’s a regular Android tablet with a regular tablet screen, but TCL has applied a coating to the screen that feels very much like a Paperlike iPad screen protector. It reduces blue light and glare and makes the display textured like paper. TCL has also shipped Android extensions that let you push the tablet into “reading mode,” which is basically a black-and-white mode meant to ape the look of an e-reader.
It… sort of works? Leaving aside that the tablet screen is so huge that it’s basically a two-page version of a Kindle, when it’s in reading mode and you’re using the Kindle app, it’s a pretty close approximation of the look and feel of reading a Kindle book. At night, the backlighting makes things a bit bright, but there’s a white-on-black mode that’s pretty good.
And, of course, it’s still a regular display—so I read full-color comics on it, and they looked very good. Beyond that, I could pretty much run any Android app I wanted, including RSS readers and newspaper apps, and it provided the substandard iPad experience I’d expect from an Android tablet. (Also, while the NXPAPER 11 had decent battery life for a tablet, it pales in comparison to the low power consumption of an E-Ink device.)
This made me ask myself: Did I really want an e-reader, or did I just want an iPad mini with a glare protector running in a black-and-white accessibility mode?
What do I want, really?
Which brought me full circle. Nearly ten years ago, I wrote:
Backlit tablets just can’t compete with E-Ink-equipped Kindles when it comes to reading in the bright sun…. At night, the inverse applies. My Paperwhite, turned down all the way, is much darker than my iPad’s backlight at the lowest setting. Which means it’s much less likely to disturb my wife while she’s sleeping and I’m reading.
Whether dark or light or in between, I prefer reading on these devices. They never push notifications at me, I’m never tempted to switch over to Twitter or email, and the static black-and-white calm of words on a page evokes the best things about reading a paper book or newspaper.
This was a good reminder of what drew me to these devices in the first place. Namely:
A reflective (rather than backlit) screen that’s readable in bright sunlight and offers gentle side lighting for use in the dark without being blindingly bright.
Good ergonomics. A device should be light enough to be held in one hand easily, with dedicated page-turn buttons that don’t require me to do a lot of swiping and tapping just to read a book.
No distractions. I shouldn’t be able to flip over to social media or read my email or do anything else on the device that isn’t reading text. As my friend and e-reader aficionado Scott McNulty told me, “The more features you add to an E-Ink device, the worse it gets.”
Great battery life, with the ability to go a week or more without a charge.
In other words, while a $499 iPad mini with an anti-glare screen might be a pretty decent e-reader, it would fail most of these points. Even with anti-glare film, I doubt the iPad screen could match E-Ink’s visibility in bright light or its very low light capability, and volume buttons aren’t placed properly to act as comfortable page-turn buttons. And sure, I could keep my iPad in Do Not Disturb and make sure that no distracting apps were present on it, but would I want to? Am I going to buy two different iPads? No.
So, I’m back where I started. Last year, I read more than 50 books, and probably 99 percent of those pages were read on an E-Ink display. When I put my iPad down at night and pick up my Kobo, I’m saying goodbye to the outside world and focusing on the “printed” page. When I’m reading on an airplane, I’m not worried about draining my iPhone or iPad battery unnecessarily.
Maybe someday, the e-reader will be made irrelevant. But it’s been fifteen years since I bought my first Kindle, and it hasn’t happened so far. E-readers are really good at what they do—and when I say that I’ve tried the alternatives, I really mean it.
