Apple & Tech

And the Mac and the iPad continue to move closer together… Source: Gurman: Apple working on touchscreen Macs – Six Colors

Jason Snell reacting to an article on Bloomberg about a possible new development for the Mac in 2025: touchscreen. I’m unfazed about this rumour at all. Touching the screen will probably represent 10%-20% of user interaction use cases, while the touchpad or the mouse will grab the rest.

There is one thing that I wonder if it would be possible: can you imagine the macOS UI reacting to the finger coming closer to the screen without actually touching it, something along the lines of the hover gesture with the latest iPad and the Apple Pencil? That could be interesting to watch. Apple will need to increase the size of UI elements, right now, many things are way too small to interact with the fingers. So yeah, the Mac is getting closer to the iPad.

One last thing: I would have thought that Apple would start with the iMac instead of a MacBook Pro, though. The bigger screen and the lack of a touchpad on the iMac would make the touchscreen a helpful option.

A pivotal year for AR/VR? Hu.ma.ne are set to announce their thing this year. Apple is reportedly set to announce their AR/VR headset this year. Other than that, it is expected to be a quiet year for Apple, helping to set the stage for a focus on the headset. BYW, the updated Mac Pro, a niche product, won’t make much noise in the grand scheme of things. What else will bring noise on the line? The iPhone 15 switching to USB-C? Then what? Nothing that I can think of.

Why is it so slow to read content in Apple News in general? Opening an article in News takes 2 to 3 times longer to render than its equivalent through the RSS feed in News Explorer (my RSS reader). Another case for RSS feeds.

I cannot count how often I select an image, thinking it will look nice as wallpaper. Most of the time, it sucks. Would it be cool if Apple added a smart album with selected photos based on their potential to be great as wallpaper? This could be something done using on-device AI, just like face recognition.

With the introduction of an always-on display in the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, many users have wondered how much impact the feature has on battery life. A new video takes a careful look at just how much battery drain there is with the always-on display and whether turning off the wallpaper reduces that drain.

And

it was found that by having the wallpaper enabled for the always-on display, an iPhone 14 Pro will drain around 0.8% per hour, compared to 0.6% an hour for the wallpaper disabled on the always-on display. Source: Test Shows How Much Battery Drain Your Wallpaper Causes on the iPhone 14 Pro’s Always-On Display - MacRumors

People asked for an always-on display because Android had it for a long time, and they got it. Be careful for what you wish for. This is something that Apple could improve with a more power-efficient A17 this coming fall in the iPhone 15 Pro line.

If reports and rumors about Apple’s upcoming products this years are to be believed, 2023 looks to be pretty boring. I’m ok with this only if Apple spend more time fixing things instead of constantly adding up and pilling up unfinished features. What worries me is that Apple’s Reality Pro (what a weird and uninspired name) becomes a resources draining hole within the company for a product that is so niche.

Personally, I’m 99% sure to upgrade to the iPhone 15 Ultra. The next possibility is the 15-inch MacBook Air.

In recent months, we’ve seen the addition of many AI-based features in apps like Notion and Craft, two apps that I know pretty well. Now I’m wondering if it would be a good idea that Apple integrates such features at the operating system level. Just like we can double tap a word in a text and get its definition from the dictionary, wouldn’t be cool if we could select a whole text and ask for a summary or anything involving the selected content? Continue reading →

Here’s a great visual recollection of a trip to Italy back in 2011, when Steve Jobs died. Great images. Gentle words. It’s not only about the iPhone as a great camera, but about Italy, a place I visited last summer, and how it felt to be there when Steve death made the news. Must see and read. Continue reading →

The DMA holds the promise to return Apple to an earlier age without these gluttonous service and tax aspirations driving seemingly every major decision at the company. The EU just might make Apple lovable again by outlawing their monopolistic excesses. What a twist. Source: Apple’s big monopoly loss comes curtesy of the EU For once, I agree with David Heinemeier Hansson. Apple’s arrogance is slowly killing all the magic. Continue reading →

To celebrate my calculator app PCalc turning 30 today, I've written up all the history I can still remember: http://pcalc.com/thirty There's also a rare 30%-off sale, which runs until midnight tonight, PST: Mac: https://pcalc.com/store/pcalcmac iOS: https://pcalc.com/store/pcalc A big thanks to everybody who has used PCalc during the last three decades! James Thomson https://mastodon.social/@jamesthomson/109562907458479500 I never bought PCalc but for as long I’ve been following the Apple story, PCalc always was somewhere to be seen in a magazine, on the web or an App Store. Continue reading →

I got a pleasant surprise under the tree for this Christmas🎄: AirPods Pro 2. Some observations: I would say the clicking sound when closing the lid is different, with a bit lower tonality. The setup experience is top-notch, of course. Sound quality is definitively upgraded with more present bass and deeper sound. Noise cancellation is better too. I’ll have to experience it in a noisy place like an airplane tomorrow. For my next trip, I will leave my AirPods Max behind (they are too big for sleeping on the plane) and use the new, much lighter ones and easier to travel with. Continue reading →

I finally tested a FaceTime call with my iPhone 13 Pro and the Belkin iPhone mount with my M1 MacBook Air running macOS Ventura. The setup was easy. iPhone automatically detected as a possible camera source within FaceTime. The image quality was obviously top-notch. The sound was great too. The tabletop feature required a bit of tweaking but eventually led to good (but not “top-notch”) results. The only problem is the weight of the combined iPhone 13 Pro with a case and the Belkin mount: the screen panel of my MacBook tends to move back during the call. Continue reading →

Updated my last Mac to macOS Ventura and discovered something super useful when using Stage Manager. If you want to have an application always visible, make sure to select “Assign To: All Desktops” from the application icon in the Dock. This is particularly useful with the Finder so we can easily do drag & drop of a file into the active window; the Finder needs to always be available for this to be possible. Continue reading →

Found a great place for my Tidbyt.

Back in the nineties, I tried drawing a few things, like this Apple's Newton MessagePad. Not bad, hen!?

Nobody Cares Apple Missed Their Apple Silicon Timeline birchtree.me

Matt is right, we don’t care. I don’t care. The big enigma, though, is the Mac Pro. What is it going to look like?

Apple’s rumored 15-inch ‌MacBook Air‌ is expected to feature the same general design as the 13-inch ‌MacBook Air‌ that was released in 2022 with flat edges, a large Force Touch trackpad, a keyboard with function keys, and more. It will also likely include a MagSafe charging port, upgraded speaker system, and a 1080p camera. Source: 15.5-Inch MacBook Air Expected to Launch in Spring 2023 - MacRumors This year, as an M1 MacBook Air owner, I decided to skip the M2 MacBook Air. Continue reading →

Bloomberg: Apple to Allow Outside App Stores in Overhaul Spurred by EU Laws. Boom. If true, it’s massive. I can imagine Apple's engineering efforts to make it happen for WWDC 2023. I wrote earlier this year that I changed my mind about sideloading apps on the iPhone. I still stand with my change of heart. I expect the iPhone experience to suffer with increased complexity for ordinary users. Not by much, but somehow, things will have to change to accommodate new workflows. Continue reading →

Freeform, the visual and collaborative application from Apple, is finally out for the iPad, the Mac and… I spent some time with it on the iPad and found it enjoyable and deceptively minimalistic. On the Mac, once updated to Ventura 13.1, Freeform can be used to continue working on the content, albeit with a different set of tools, since there is no Apple Pencil support over there. One question is, why is the tools palette on the iPad different from the one with Apple Notes? Continue reading →

Isn’t that weird that we need to jump to an external website to enjoy the 2022 Replay? Why not have it within Music.app itself? 🤔