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FBI is investigating breach that may have hit its wiretapping tools — The Register
The FBI identified and addressed suspicious activities on FBI networks related to wiretapping and surveillance systems, marking a significant breach of law enforcement infrastructure.
The same FBI that demanded Apple build a backdoor for them in 2016?
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Apple Planning ‘MacBook Ultra’ With Touchscreen and Higher Price:
Instead of succeeding the newly announced M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros, the “MacBook Ultra” will be a new, top-tier Apple laptop. Gurman added that the device is likely to sit above the current M5 MacBook Pros, rather than replace them, suggesting that they will remain on sale.
Well, how many laptops can Apple have in their product line?
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Lil Finder Guy — Basic Apple Guy
Who is it? What is it? Is it friend or foe? Has it arrived in peace, or is it plotting to corrupt our SSDs and fray our USB-C cables?
I hope Apple keep the little guy for a while. It’s so cute and fun.
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The New Apple Finally Begins to Emerge — Parker Ortolani
Molly Anderson’s already proven herself to be an incredibly talented industrial designer, and if the latest iPhones and the MacBook Neo are the first real fruits of her leadership, that bodes incredibly well for the future.
New product design at Apple takes a long time. How much of influence those two new figures had on the MacBook Neo?
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It’s a good start. Looks quite different than my other web app. Still a lot to implement.
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Working on my future bookmarks manager webapp. I’m still refining the specs document. I decided to add the possibility to save text quotes in addition to bookmarks. Quotes might be linked to a bookmark. My specs document is quite long and detailed. I wonder how good Claude Code will be to digest all this from the start.
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Neon Signs — Take
Let’s leave the software malaise aside for a moment, hard as that might be; the Neo is a scrappy assemblage of parts, that is trying to find a new route to what Apple considers acceptable, and that is a sign of health.
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‘The Window Chrome of Our Discontent’:
This entire idea that application window chrome should disappear is madness. Some people — at Apple, quite obviously — think it looks better, in the abstract, but I can’t see how it makes actually using these apps more productive. Artists don’t want to use invisible tools.
Well, if window chrome is absent, what’s left for Apple to differentiate itself from others than UI elements inside a window? Buttons!
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A UI should step back and let user content come forward. But Apple often treats the UI itself as a key part of its identity and differentiation. That creates a tension: the more the UI disappears, the harder it becomes for Apple to stand apart from Microsoft or Google.
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I’m really tempted by the MacBook Neo, but really, it makes no sense as an owner of an M4 iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard: it’s a powerhouse in a compact design. The only problem: iPadOS. It’s THE biggest issue in this story.
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Good Job Apple, Now Back to Software?
Ok, Apple did a great job this week. A lot has already been said about Apple’s announcements. The MacBook Neo is a killer, even as an entry device. My wife is getting one. It’s the original Mac mini in a laptop shape. Apple did a great balancing act with the Neo. The only two quibbles: only 8 GB of RAM (I wanted 12 GB) and the lack of a MagSafe port. Continue reading →
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One vendor doesn’t mind high RAM prices: VMware — The Register
The high price of memory and solid-state storage has almost everyone worried – but not VMware, because the most innovative new feature in the Cloud Foundation 9 (VCF 9) private cloud suite it launched last year is memory tiering tech that allows offload of data from RAM to NVMe drives.
VMware has always promoted VCF 9 memory tiering as offering the chance to reduce infrastructure costs by reducing the amount of RAM needed in new servers, and by creating the opportunity to upgrade the NVMe drives in old boxes and effectively increase their memory capacity.
Well, yeah, memory tiering certainly helps reduce the cost of servers, but even NVMe drives, which are built on electronic chips too, are impacted by price increases. And, servers must be compatible with this feature. No magic bullet here.
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People’s reactions to Apple hardware announcements so far have been quite positive, if not enthusiastic, much more so than any software announcements in recent years. The difference is stark.
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To understand what Apple launched today, we have to go back just over five years, when Apple launched the M1 in November 2020. I wrote then:
“This approach to integration into a single chip, maximum throughput, rapid access to memory, optimal computing performance based on the task, and adaptation to machine learning algorithms is the future — not only for mobile chips, but also for desktop and laptop computers.”
That turned out to be right.
What Apple achieved with their new M5 Pro and M5 Max is quite impressive. Even more impressive is that the architectural decisions made back in 2020 (or earlier) are still paying off today. If only Apple had the wisdom to make similar smart decisions with Siri architecture. Apple seems stuck on redoing its homework forever with software.
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Apple Does Value (Week) — On my Om
Apple has decided that $599 is the new floor for a “real” Apple device—not a hand-me-down, not last year’s leftovers, but a current-generation product with current-generation silicon.
If Om Malik is right, this would put the new entry-level MacBook price at 599 US$. The question now becomes: what do you get for that amount of money beyond the A18 Pro chip?
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Dim that background for me, will ya?
★ HazeOver — Mac Utility for Highlighting the Frontmost Window: What HazeOver does is highlight the active window by dimming all background windows. That’s it. But it does this simple task with aplomb, and it makes a significant difference in the day-to-day usability of MacOS. Not just MacOS 26 Tahoe — all recent versions of MacOS suffer from a design that makes it difficult to distinguish, instantly, the frontmost (a.k.a. key) window from background windows. Continue reading →
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Apple is still proud of Liquid Glass. Found on the iPhone 17e mini website. 😵💫
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Prices of the new iPad Air and iPhone 17e seems in line with previous generation products they replace and not affected by the current tech environment where prices are going up drastically… it looks rather well too for the upcoming entry-level MacBook pricing.
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During any tech transition, the people who retain old-school knowledge while the new-school is developing are particularly valuable. Nobody needs to know punch cards anymore, but I’m sure that while punch cards were being phased out, extensive knowledge about them was incredibly useful.
The same is true about cloud migration. Those who did traditional data centers and started to get interested and involved in cloud migration were (and still are) very in demand.
