After setting up my new Apple Watch today, I was greeted by this message on my fully-updated iMac, running macOS 10.12.6:
(What if I told you both macOS Sierra and the new Apple Watch were made by the same company?)
Auto Unlock does work with my Series 3 Watch on my MacBook Pro running High Sierra. I guess Sierra is just left out in the cold, at least until Apple pushes an update for it. With High Sierra due out Monday, I have to wonder if that will ever happen.
Enthusiasts of all types always have that one special obsession. For muscle car people, maybe it’s one particular year of Ford Mustang. Photographers always have a favorite lens, while baseball players may have a favored bat or glove.
Ask almost any macOS fan, and they’ll tell you that Snow Leopard is their favorite version of all time.
There are a bunch of good reasons for that, beyond pure nostalgia.
Buzzfeed has posted a great video looking behind the scenes at how Apple prepares for an iPhone launch. It’s fascinating and a rare look behind the curtain.
Apple has published a new support page explaining the ins and outs of these updated standards in the iTunes Store:
You can buy or rent movies from the iTunes Store in high-definition (HD) or 4K resolution formats. These videos might also feature high dynamic range (HDR) or Dolby Vision.
When you buy or rent a movie from the iTunes Store, it automatically plays in the highest-quality format available for the device on which you’re watching it.
That works for me. I have a 1080 TV, so why use bandwidth I don’t need to? This, however, does bug me:
You can download a local copy of an HD movie, and you might be able to download HDR and Dolby Vision versions, but you can’t download a 4K version.
I assume this is some sort of licensing thing, but I don’t like it. If I pay for something, I want it taking up space on my home media server. If I buy a new TV, I could stream previously-purchased movies in 4K, but I can’t play them offline unless I download the 1080 versions.
If I wasn’t already Mayor of Dongletown with my HyperDrive, I’d be all over this.
This week on Query, we talk about some ways to learn Markdown, how iMessage works and a bunch more.
Yesterday, I was pleased to join Megan Morrone on Episode 361 of iOS Today. We spoke about the release of iOS 11, and a bunch of my favorite apps and iPhone accessories.
Your watch should say something about you. More than a mere timepiece, it should be part of your daily fashion, sharing something about your personality with the world.
Me, I’m a nerd. I collect antique computers and make podcasts for a living. I have a dogcow tattoo on my ankle. I know who I am.
I’ve worn an Apple Watch for several years. I like having select notifications come to my wrist, and I love the fitness features.
Before the Apple Watch, I wore a Casio Telememo 30. If you aren’t a Casio expert, it’s the classic calculator watch. I could figure tips and save phone numbers wherever I went. It was cheap, lightweight and told anyone who noticed it that I am a nerd.
I must admit that I even tried the whole iPod-nano-as-a-watch thing.
There is one watch in my collection, however, that is the nerdiest of them all. It was a promotional item from Apple in the summer of 1995, and it is the undisputed nerd watch champion.
Curiously, the band comes with “Mac OS” stamped into it, even though that wouldn’t be the name Apple used for its system software until 1997. The name was in the lexicon, however, as part of the Copland project. This watch proved to be a little … aspirational.
The watch itself came with a stunning blue metal case with a Japanese quartz movement inside. The hands are big and colorful, matching Apple’s corporate aesthetic at the time. It looks a little like the never-shipped Gizmo theme for Mac OS 8.
I just had a new battery put in it, and the jewelry store staff all wanted to see it. In a world of Fitbits and Apple Watches, the Mac OS watch still turns heads.
I have spent the bulk of 2017 writing about the different Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Graham-Cassidy, in my view, is the most radical of them all.
Read every word of this and then call your Representatives and tell them to vote against this bill.
Apple Watch Series 3 reviews are in and it’s not great news for those of us who have been excited about (and preordered) LTE models.
The promise of this product is clear. Leave your iPhone behind, but still be accessible, as John Gruber writes:
Apple turned Apple Watch into a goddamn cell phone, without making the device thicker or heavier, and it still lasts all day.
That promise hasn’t quite been met, as Lauren Goode writes. Her first review unit behaved so erratically, Apple replaced it:
But that doesn’t mean the LTE connectivity issues went away. On more than one occasion, I detached myself from the phone, traveled blocks away from my home or office, and watched the Watch struggle to connect to LTE. It would appear to pick up a single bar of some random Wi-Fi signal, and hang on that, rather than switching to LTE.
Goode isn’t alone in experiencing these problems, but not all reviews I’ve read mention them.
However, it’s definitely a thing, as Apple ended up making a statement to The Verge on the issue:
When Apple Watch Series 3 joins unauthenticated Wi-Fi networks without connectivity, it may at times prevent the watch from using cellular. We are investigating a fix for a future software release.
Yikes. While I trust Apple will work this out, it’s sure a bad look for a brand-new device.