WinterFest 2016 - A collection of artisanal Mac software at 25 percent off! Great software works together.
December 22, 2016 9:44 AM PT
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this whole car/truck metaphor that we use when trying to talk about the rise and fall of the personal computer. It led me to dig up the original Steve Jobs video and think about how Apple sees the Mac today. So I made a video.
December 22, 2016 9:22 AM PT
Dan and Jason read a lot. And both of them keep running into people who say they hear us praising books, and then they go and read them! This is a great responsibility, and not one we take lightly. Here are 14 books we loved this year.
Continue Reading "Our favorite books of the year"
[Get into the buying, er, holiday spirit by reading our gift guide!]
December 22, 2016 8:09 AM PT
Last December I made a wish list for the Mac in the coming year. In true journalistic fashion, I hedged about whether my list was a bunch of predictions or just flights of fancy. In reality, it was a bit of both—I was trying to predict 2017 without wishing for things that seemed completely unreasonable.
So with that in mind, how did I do? Let’s look back at the dreams of 12 months ago and whether they were dashed or fulfilled during this rough year for the Mac.
December 21, 2016 8:45 AM PT
Wireless headphones aren’t new. Individual wireless earbuds aren’t even that new. But the profile, power, and prowess of Apple make the AirPods special. These are the wireless earbuds that people will notice and talk about—and probably buy in large numbers. The good news is, they’re worthy of the attention.
A cynic would say that Apple removed the headphone jack on the iPhone 7 as a way to push users toward wireless audio products like the AirPods. In fact, wireless headphones have been around quite some time. And they have distinct advantages.
A couple of years ago, tired of having my headphones yanked out of my ears by a stray kitchen knob while cooking, I bought a set of Jaybird Bluetooth earbuds and have been using them ever since, mostly for listening to podcasts while walking the dog, running, or working in the kitchen. Not having cords to flap around or get caught is definitely a freeing experience.
Yes, there are drawbacks—having to plug the headphones in every so often to recharge their battery is the biggest added annoyance—but in general the move to wireless was a good one. The only problem with those earbuds is that they’re not truly wireless, because the earbuds are still wired to one another. The wire can hang down in front like a necklace, or you can bind it up and wear it around the back of your head, but neither configuration is ideal.
Fundamentally, earbuds deserved to be treated as individual objects, not tethered together. That’s the premise of the AirPods as well as several other wireless earbuds of this type. Each earbud is its own separate entity, so you can stick one or both in your ears and truly say goodbye to dangling wires.
In form, the tips of the AirPods are quite similar to the EarPod design Apple’s been using for several years. (They appear to be a bit more tapered at the ear end.) While there are no attached cables, the stems of the earbuds extend further away from your ears, all the better to pack in an antenna, battery, and microphone. Since there are no ports in which to plug charging cables, each pair of AirPods comes with a small carrying case, roughly the size and shape of a packet of dental floss. The case has a Lightning port on the bottom, and it will charge the AirPods when you drop them in. (They drop in with a clear, pleasant magnetic click, and a small light indicates charging status.)
According to Apple, the AirPods will last about five hours on a charge, and 15 minutes in the case will recharge them enough for three more hours of playback. In my usage these seemed like reasonable estimates—it took a lot of effort to wear down my AirPods, and even a brief visit to the charging case would revive them. Apple says that all told, fully charged AirPods and a fully charged case will provide 24 hours of listening time.
Given the average length of my old public-transit commute, I wouldn’t have even needed to bring the case with me, but given the size of each AirPod earbud, the case is more than just a charging system. It’s also an important organizational tool—because if you leave these earbuds floating around, you will probably lose them. Keep the earbuds in the case when not in use and everyone’s happy. (And yeah, the case adds another item you need to carry around with you—but on the positive side, these headphones won’t ever get tangled cords.)
The secret sauce—okay, magic—of the AirPods comes in the details that Apple has sweated in order to make the AirPods more than just a generic set of Bluetooth headphones. (Though they can be that if they must—I was able to pair them with an Android phone and they worked just fine.)
Pairing them with my iPhone 7 couldn’t have been easier: When I flipped open the AirPods case while they were next to the phone, up slid a screen showing AirPods with a large button marked Connect. That was it. The information synced across iCloud to my other Apple devices; I could switch the AirPods to my iMac running macOS Sierra by or my iPad Pro by choosing “Jason’s AirPods” from the sound output selector.
When you put an earbud in one ear, you hear a pleasant chime to let you know that the earbuds are on and connected to a device. (If you switch devices, you’ll hear the chime again.) There’s a similar, sadder tone that plays when you’ve just about drained the batteries down.
Perhaps the best single feature of the AirPods is their infrared proximity sensors, which is how they know to chime when you’ve placed one in your ear. More importantly, this sensor forms the basis of a natural and useful interface gesture: removing one earbud. When you remove an earbud, which is generally the universal signal that you’re trying to hear something happening in the outside world, the AirPods will automatically pause your audio. When you pop that earbud back into your ear, playback resumes.
The first day I wore AirPods out in the world, I was walking my dog down a dog path when another dog and person came toward us from the other direction. I popped an earbud out, said hello, and when we moved past one another I popped the earbud back in—and my podcast resumed. (The AirPods only resume your audio playback in this specific context—when you take out one earbud and then replace it. If you pop both earbuds out, it assumes that a listening session has ended, and you’ll need to press play to get your audio started up when you return.)
As clever and humane as that interface is, its flip side is the weakest feature of the AirPods: their reliance on Siri for just about everything else. You can summon Siri with two taps on either earbud, just as if you held down the Home button or said “Hey Siri” out loud. (If you want, you can deactivate this gesture entirely or have it merely represent a play/pause control.)
If Apple’s strength is integrating various technologies together, it’s also a weakness. In this case, a pretty terrific bit of hardware is let down by a software feature of only middling reliability. Too many of Siri’s commands still seem to direct responses to a screen, which makes it inappropriate for voice-only use.
But I’m not sure I’d blame this all on Siri. The fact is, the AirPods come with only two gestures—a double-tap and removing an earbud—when headphones with traditional clickers offer three buttons and an array of double- and triple-taps and press-and-hold gestures. Because the AirPods only have two available gestures, Apple has used Siri as a catch-all, figuring that you can adjust volume and skip tracks and do all of the other stuff you need to do from Siri, so it’ll be okay.
That’s a mistake, for a few reasons. First, Siri control is only functional when there’s an Internet connection. If you want to adjust the volume of your AirPods when you’re in an area with no service, you’ll need to pull out your phone or launch the Now Playing widget on your Apple Watch to do it. Why Apple doesn’t allow Siri to gracefully degrade to a few basic hardware-oriented commands when there’s no network connectivity is beyond me. The Internet doesn’t need to exist for me to tell my phone to skip to the next track—but that’s how Apple has apparently built this feature.
Then there’s the difference in convenience between a few clicks or taps and having to tap, say a phrase, and wait for it to be interpreted. There’s a lot of extra baggage there, which is great when you need a pocket supercomputer to interpret a complex phrase like “Play the playlist ‘Best of Alternative 2016’.” But it seems a little sillier to do all of that just to say “decrease volume.” (Also, if you’re on the subway, people will think you’re a weirdo. Or that you’re telling them to shut up.)
Apple has packed so much into the AirPods that it’s understandable that this first-generation product would have some limits. That said, even without adding buttons or touch surfaces, Apple might have been able to do more with this technology. Imagine the ability to customize double-taps per earbud, so that a double-tap on your left ear can perform a different task from the right. Add in support for a triple tap. Now you’ve got a wider palette of gestures to choose from. But, at least for now, this is what we’ve got.
In my use of the AirPods, I tried very hard not to use Siri when at all possible. My Apple Watch was a pretty good remote control, and I could always resort to the classic “squeeze the iPhone in my pocket” maneuver to adjust volume. This is the price of minimalism.
Everybody’s ears are different, inside and out. A sound you find pleasing might be awful to someone else. And I’m sure AirPods won’t please audiophiles. But as someone who has been using good in-ear monitors with custom-molded silicone tips for years now—in other words, someone who at least has a passing familiarity with pretty good sound—I can tell you that, at least to my ears, AirPods sound just fine.
I have spent very little time with Apple’s EarPods over the years. The fact is, the original iPod earbuds were so awful—they didn’t sound good and they didn’t fit my ears well—that I quickly switched to third-party headphones and never looked back. But the AirPods (and, yes, the EarPods) sound surprisingly good, for both music and podcasts. I was impressed with the depth of the bass and the clarity of the treble. As a skeptical listener, I came away believing that the sound of the AirPods was not a limiting factor. They sound good. I’m sure they will not sound good to some people, but the vast majority of people will find them pleasing.
Likewise, ear shape can be an issue. I know someone who tried the AirPods and said they kept falling out of their ears. My right ear started hurting after about half an hour of use, until I repositioned the stem of the earbud to point a bit more in toward my neck, at which point it was much more comfortable. Some people, just by the luck of the shape of their ears, will not be able to wear AirPods comfortably.
In many hours of use, an earbud fell out of my ears twice. In both cases, the fall was caused by brushing against the stems with another object, namely the sleeve or hood of my sweatshirt. Otherwise, they stayed in my ears despite several attempts to shake them out. I never felt this way with a pair of wired earbuds.
The big difference is probably the lack of wires coming out of the bottom of the stems. You may not notice the force that wires exert, constantly pulling against your ears and trying to coax those earbuds out of position, but compare the feeling of wearing EarPods to AirPods and you will realize that those wires really do have an impact. I never felt that EarPods were reliably seated in my ears, but AirPods stay in my ears even if I simulate enthusiastic headbanging or shake my head wildly from side to side.
AirPods feel like a classic Apple product. Its custom hardware and tweaked software interact to create a product that’s packed with high technology but never feels complicated or flaky. They are exactly what you’d imagine if I told you that Apple was making a set of completely wireless earbuds. You pop them in your ears and go—they really do just work.
They’re not a perfect product, for sure. If there’s any way for Apple to add more tap gestures via a software update, I hope the company will consider that. I’d like to see Siri to stop requiring an Internet connection to perform basic tasks. And if Apple can find a way to create next-generation AirPods with more tap gestures or on-device buttons or touch-sensitive gestural areas, they’ll be that much more effective.
But if you’re the user of any Apple device and you are in the market for a pair of headphones, the AirPods deserve serious consideration. Once you’ve cooked a meal or run a mile with no wires coming out of your ears, you will wonder how you ever lived without this product. And isn’t that the most Apple-like feeling of all?
Apple quietly extended its discount on USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 accessories by three months today, changing a footnote on its Mac Accessories page to extend the date from December 31 to March 31.
So if you want to prepare for our USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 future—and seriously, I doubt if any Mac Apple releases in 2017 will not feature the USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 port—you’ve got a few more months to buy those adapters and cables and accessories at a discount.
December 20, 2016 9:59 AM PT
We like technology. And we like gadgets. It has always been so. As the year comes to a close, we thought we’d share with you some of the favorite gadgets we’ve picked up in the last year.
Yes, I extol the virtues of the Amazon Echo on what seems like a regular basis. But it was my favorite gadget of last year, and I’ve only continued to find it a benefit this year. If you’re looking to dip your toe into the voice-activated assistant pool, it’s hard not to like the second genration of Amazon’s Echo Dot. At just $50, it’s a bargain; it has all the same microphone and intelligence features of the full-size model, lacking only the better speaker. (And yeah, its speaker is really pretty poor.) Fortunately, a built-in aux jack lets you connect an external speaker, or you can pair one over Bluetooth.—DM
My house is a mess of conflicting smart-home technologies and home-entertainment devices. I’m slowly trying to clean it all up, or at least get it all working together. One way that I’ve managed to improve and simplify things is by replacing my old Logitech Harmony universal remote with the Logitech Harmony Hub.
The Harmony Hub is clever because it’s a little pod, including infrared blaster, that’s connected to your home internet. You can use your mobile device as a remote or buy a bundle that includes a physical remote (which I recommend). Now we’ve got a physical remote, with clicky buttons, that doesn’t need to be pointed in exactly the right location in order to turn various devices all and off. (My kids had a terrible habit of waving the remote around when the remote was still blasting out commands, leaving the TV on but the speakers off, or the game console on and the TV off.) The new remote is just sending radio signals to the Harmony Hub, which fires off infrared commands from an out-of-the-way location in view of all the devices it needs to control. (It also comes with remote infrared blasters, if you’ve got devices hidden behind a cabinet door.)
It gets better. My old Harmony remote could only be updated with a janky web app with a Mac app wrapped around it, and required a USB connection to update and reboot the remote. The Harmony Hub is programmable via an iOS app, and updates itself seamlessly as I sit on my couch. And since the Hub is on my local network, it ties in to my other smart home stuff—I can, for example, trigger an action on the Harmony Hub via my Amazon Echo.—JS
I’ve been a fairly new convert to the networked speaker arena, but I picked up a Sonos Play: 1—which is discounted to $169 as of this writing—this year on the news that it would at some point integrate with the aforementioned Echo. I’ve found myself enjoying the Play:1 quite a bit—so much so that I picked up a second one. The sound quality is phenomenal, and Sonos’s integrations with popular music services like Amazon, Spotify, and Apple Music make it a friendly and easy-to-use device, though I still wish I could simply have it play music from iTunes or audio from my computer.—DM
So it turns out that sous vide cooking—a method by which you cook food in a plastic bag at a constant temperature—is all the rage these days. But you know what? One of the most satisfying gadgets I’ve bought recently is Anova’s immersion cooker.
It comes in a box that is clearly inspired by Apple’s packaging, and the product itself is beautifully designed silver-and-black appliance. The Anova cooker is a cylinder that you attach to the side of one of your pots with an included clamp. Plug it in and dial in your target temperature, and it starts to churn and warm the water in the pot. There’s a Bluetooth feature—and on newer models, even a Wi-Fi feature—that let you connect the cooker to a mediocre iOS app. I wouldn’t bother—the cute little translucent dial lets you easily pick a target temperature.
There are no end to the sous vide cookbooks and websites out there, so all I’ll say is that with the Anova cooker I can make chicken that is guaranteed to not be overcooked—very hard to do on the grill or in the oven—and beef that is exactly at the level of doneness that I desire, every time. Brian Chen’s sous vide explainer in the New York Times led me to buy a $14 chuck roast that, after a day of immersion cooking, turned into eight tender steaks. Eight steaks for $14! Amazing.—JS
Noise-canceling headphones have always struck me as a bit of a luxury, but with several multi-hour flights in the past few months, I decided to treat myself to a pair of the $349 Bose QuietComfort 35s. Most reviewers seem to agree that even if Bose models don’t always have the best sound, their noise-cancelation is second to none, and I’d have to agree. Putting on the headphones and flipping on the noise-cancelation feels like a curtain dropping around you. They’re particularly brilliant in places with constant noise, like a plane or train. I found I could hear my music or watch a TV show without hearing any background noise. The Bluetooth version works pretty well, pairing with two devices simultaneously, and featuring a quoted 20-hour battery life, a backup cord for wired use, an airline adapter, and a very nice hardshell carrying case.—DM
Look, if you want to buy a Kindle you should buy a Paperwhite. But I love Kindles and the new high-end super-premium Kindle Oasis is pretty great. It’s got physical page-turn buttons, is ridiculously thin and light, and comes with a leather case that offers not just protection, but battery recharging.
If you’re outside the Amazon ecosystem, it’s worth looking at the Kobo Aura One, which is a great piece of hardware. It’s got a big screen that makes it feel like you’re reading a hardcover book, and it’s waterproof, to boot.
I can’t decide which one I’m going to take on my upcoming vacation. The Aura One’s waterproof but the Oasis is so light! Oh well—either way, I can’t go wrong.—JS
[Get into the buying, er, holiday spirit by reading our gift guide!]
Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch reports on an Apple-internal message from Tim Cook about the company’s commitment to Mac desktops. Here’s Cook’s response, as reported by Panzarino:
The desktop is very strategic for us. It’s unique compared to the notebook because you can pack a lot more performance in a desktop — the largest screens, the most memory and storage, a greater variety of I/O, and fastest performance. So there are many different reasons why desktops are really important, and in some cases critical, to people.
The current generation iMac is the best desktop we have ever made and its beautiful Retina 5K display is the best desktop display in the world.
Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we’re committed to desktops. If there’s any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that.
I think people are still worried, but bring on 2017 and, with any luck, some of the stuff on the road map will become reality.
December 19, 2016 • 1 hour, 56 minutes
This week on Upgrade, Jason reviews the AirPods while Myke waits for his to arrive. We also discuss Apple’s removal of the battery indicator from MacBooks, and at the very end of the show do a special Myke at the Movies review of “Rogue One.”
December 16, 2016 3:17 PM PT
I’ve written about using Ferrite to edit podcasts on iOS, but sometimes a video does a better job of demonstrating how software works. So with that in mind, I edited (or to be more accurate, re-edited) this week’s episode of Clockwise in Ferrite on my iPad Pro and captured the audio and video while I was doing it. The full edit took about 25 minutes, but I’ve compressed it substantially in this annotated video of the process.
At the end of the video, you’ll see me encoding an MP3 via TwistedWave, though sometimes I use Auphonic instead. Finally, I upload the result with Transmit for iOS.
(You can see a time-lapse of me editing on the Mac in Logic Pro X if you’d like to compare.)
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December 15, 2016 1:06 PM PT
Apple’s AirPods are up for pre-order and arriving in Apple Stores next week. I’ve got a set in hand, and rather than jumping straight to the review, I thought I’d answer some of the most common questions I’m seeing about Apple’s new wireless earbuds.
Do they fit the same as Apple’s standard EarPods? Because those keep falling out of my ears.
The main earbud portion of the AirPods seems to be identical in shape and size to the existing wired Apple EarPods. (The stem is bigger and thicker, owing to all the electronics that are packed within.) So they’ll probably fit your ears more or less the same as EarPods do.
The big difference is in the lack of wires coming out of the bottom of the stems. You may not notice the force that wires exert, constantly pulling against your ears and trying to coax those earbuds out of position, but compare the feeling of wearing EarPods to AirPods and you will realize that those wires really do have an impact. I never felt that EarPods were reliably seated in my ears, and they would often fall out; the AirPods stay in my ears even if I simulate enthusiastic headbanging. The only time I’ve had an AirPod fall out so far is when I took off my hoodie and the hood snagged on one of the AirPods, popping it out. The rest of the time, they’ve felt solid and secure in my ears without feeling weighty.
Is there any way to stop it automatically playing music when you put it in your ear?
This is actually a misunderstanding of how the AirPods work. When you connect and disconnect them, they’re basically emulating how wired headphones work with iOS devices. If you’re already playing audio when you connect them, that audio will start playing out of the AirPods. If you’re not playing audio, nothing happens. Likewise, when you take the AirPods out of your ears or connect them to a different device, the audio stops playing just as sure as if you unplugged a set of headphones.
The one exception is how the AirPods handle a situation where you take an AirPod out of your ear momentarily. When you do this, your device audio pauses temporarily. When you put the AirPod back in your ear, your device audio resumes. In this way, taking one AirPod out of an ear is an interface command—it’s literally the equivalent of tapping the play/pause button.
Can you use them one at a time, with full functionality?
I heard this question from several runners who are expecting to need to conserve battery power on long runs. (The battery life is five hours, how long are you people running?!) The answer is yes: If you use a single AirPod, it will work just fine, and your iPhone will switch over to a mono mixdown so that you hear both sides of any stereo audio. It also means, as my pal Adam Engst pointed out, that you can run with one AirPod in and your other ear uncovered—which is smart if you’re running on roads and need to listen for traffic.
Can you wear them a long time before your ears start to hurt?
I got a lot of questions about the comfort of the AirPods, and there’s no good way to answer this question because everyone’s ears are shaped differently. The first time I went out with the AirPods, my right ear started to hurt after about half an hour. I readjusted the earbud and it was more comfortable, and since then I’ve had no problems because I discovered the “right” way for the AirPods to sit in my ears. But I can make no promises — if you hate earbuds you may hate AirPods. They may be wireless marvels, but they’re still earbuds.
What happens when you double-tap an AirPod?
By default, this brings up Siri—on iOS and the Mac. But you can change your iOS settings to make this gesture instead equate to the play/pause button. To do so, go to the Bluetooth menu in Settings, tap the Info button next to your AirPods, and choose Play/Pause from the Double Tap On AirPods menu. From this menu you can also turn off the “ear detection” feature if you’d rather your device not react when you’re taking your AirPods in and out of your ears.
If you pair AirPods with a Bluetooth-compatible device that hasn’t been designed to work specifically with the AirPods—I used an Android phone for my testing—they’ll still work, and the double-tap gesture generates a Play/Pause command.
Can you voice-control AirPods when you don’t have an Internet connection?
Nope, and this seems like a real oversight. Before there was Siri, there was Voice Control, which let you perform basic on-device functions like media playback without the use of the Internet. Maybe Siri should be able to perform basic playback functions like volume control without an Internet connection?
Can I have them?
Sure. Get out your credit card and stop by your local Apple Store. But no, you can’t have mine.
More questions? Tweet them @jsnell and I’ll try to answer, here or there.
December 15, 2016 9:40 AM PT
What do “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” opening this week, and the Mac have in common? John Knoll…
December 15, 2016 9:17 AM PT
‘Tis the season when we list a bunch of our favorite stuff of the year. But some stuff doesn’t fit in a tidy category. And so, I present to you: My favorite uncategorizable stuff!
For that sweet spot of a party game that’s easy to learn, fast to play, and still a challenge, Codenames is exactly what you’re looking for. The premise involves a thin veneer of spying, but the game is really about trying to clue your partner into identifying which words in a 5 × 5 grid of cards are “your” words, without having them guess those of your opponent. It’s a bit Taboo, a bit Pictionary, and a bit Guess Who, but I’ve found that everybody I’ve played with has enjoyed it, and you can generally find it for under $15.
Fair warning: I’ve only played once, and it’s not for the faint of heart, but if you have a friend who’s a die-hard Star Wars fan, Star Wars: Rebellion is a heck of a lot of fun. The expansive one-on-one game (which has a two-on-two variant) sees one player in the role of the Rebel Alliance, challenging the other player’s Galactic Empire. The Empire is trying to find the Rebels’ hidden base while the Alliance is attempting to sway the galaxy to its side. Settle in, because this $70 game takes a few hours to play—and you’ll probably want to blast some Star Wars soundtracks while you do so.
I enjoy most cooperative games—there’s something refreshing about battling a common enemy with your friends—and Pandemic Legacy takes that formula to the next level, by creating a “year”-long campaign where you and your team of CDC battle the outbreaks of disease around the globe. The game starts off much like the traditional Pandemic, but an ongoing narrative throws in some twists and turns. (I won’t spoil them.) Much like its predecessor, Risk Legacy, decisions you make as you progress affect the ultimate outcome of the story, and the very board and game mechanics change as you go. It’s a fun ride, even if it can be finicky about rules and proper procedures at times.
If you travel a lot, or if you simply end up using random Wi-Fi networks a lot, you might be concerned—rightfully so—about the security of your network connection. That’s a good reason to turn to the security of a VPN like Cloak. The service, which offers both monthly/yearly subscription plans for $10/$99 and time-limited passes starting at $4 for a week, offers both iOS and Mac apps that you can use on all your devices. Whenever you connect to network that you haven’t designated as trustworthy, Cloak will automatically log into the VPN, encrypting all the data from your device. You can also choose from a variety of different locations for the VPN you’re connecting to, which may help deal with some geographic restrictions.
I’m not sure how we could accomplish anything over at The Incomparable without the help of Doodle. The free service lets you find the time that works the best for any meeting, whether it be a podcast, party, D&D session, or, I don’t know, a work meeting I guess. Choose a handful of dates, send an invitation to everybody on your list, and everybody can pick the times that they’re available, making it easy to pick the one that works for the most people. The iOS app even lets you know if you have conflicts on your calendar. There are paid private and business plans, but the free option is probably sufficient for most people.
As fun as it is to play role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons or board games like Trivial Pursuit in person, sometimes you just can’t get everybody into the same place. For The Incomparable’s Total Party Kill and Game Night podcasts, we’ve managed to span the vast abyss of space and time zones by using Roll 20. It’s an online gaming service that incorprates video and voice chat as well as a shared map where you can move gaming tokens, roll virtual dice, and even create complicated macros and scripts, if you’re so inclined. The basic model is free, but pony up a little bit and you can add more storage space for your game assets, tablet support, or even access to the API if you’re feeling ambitious.
[Get into the buying, er, holiday spirit by reading our gift guide!]
[Dan Moren is a freelance writer, podcaster, and former Macworld editor. You can email him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter at @dmoren.]
December 15, 2016 8:04 AM PT
My thanks to Journaly for sponsoring Six Colors this week.
Journaly is a customizable and automatic Journal app, available for both macOS and iOS, with support for sync. Journaly is currently 30 percent off as an introductory special.
Journaly lets you journal just about anything, from notes to mood to places, and is customizable. There’s also an auto-journaling mode that can automatically create entries when you can’t.
December 14, 2016 8:35 AM PT
The iPhone may be approaching its tenth birthday, but it often seems as though the iOS app scene is doing anything but slowing down. That said, the huge preponderance of apps has made it trickier to separate the wheat from the chaff. Still, we soldier on, testing new apps as they arrive, and where necessary, pitting them against old favorites. We’ve combed through both recent and more longstanding apps for the ones that have stood out for us.
Continue Reading "Our Favorites: iOS apps"
[Get into the buying, er, holiday spirit by reading our gift guide!]
I’ve been using the iPad Pro for a year now, too, but not like Federico Viticci. It’s his primary computing device, and he’s done amazing things with it. If you’ve ever been curious about what Federico uses—his apps, accessories, and workflows—to do his entire job on an iPad Pro, now you can find out.
In a press release today Apple announced that AirPods are now available to order online. Demand has already outpaced supply; when I checked about an hour after the press release was dropped, Apple was quoting four weeks for shipping.
According to the PR, AirPods will also be in Apple Stores and other outlets “next week”:
AirPods will be shipping in limited quantities at launch and customers are encouraged to check online for updates on availability and estimated delivery dates. Stores will receive regular AirPod shipments.
Introduced in September, AirPods were initially scheduled to ship in October, but were delayed a couple of months when Apple said they just weren’t ready.
December 12, 2016 • 2 hours, 21 minutes
This week on Upgrade: Myke’s got a new office! Also, we follow up on our conversation about ARM Macs and try to explain Single Sign On for Apple TV. Finally, after 25 years, Jason has watched “Home Alone” and will discuss it on a new Myke at the Movies.
December 12, 2016 8:39 AM PT
I’ve detailed my very favorite apps here in 2014 and Dan and I praised more apps last year. I’m not going to restate the stuff mentioned in those stories—yep, still writing this in BBEdit—but here are a few Mac apps that I’ve come to appreciate this past year.
Continue Reading "Our favorites: This year's Mac app discoveries"
December 9, 2016 10:38 PM PT
Apple’s products are saddled with astronomical expectations, but in recent years perhaps none was so anticipated as the Apple Watch, Apple’s first go at tapping into the budding wearables market. It may not be fair to say that the Watch didn’t live up to those expectations, but early versions of the device, and especially its software, received a lukewarm reception.
Since its initial launch, Apple has taken steps to change not only the Watch and its operating system, but also its overall perception and marketing message. They’re ditching something that didn’t quite work in the first version—the high-end fashion angle—and focusing on what did work: Health and fitness tracking. In the long term, this arguably more important shift in focus has the potential to make the Apple Watch much more attractive and compelling to potential customers—including the fashion forward.
December 9, 2016 9:33 AM PT
All work and no play make all of us more than a little bit dull. Great games abound on Apple’s platforms, and you shouldn’t feel the least bit guilty about indulging in them. After all, sometimes the brain does its best work when it’s distracted. At least, that’s totally what we keep telling ourselves.
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